Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “joy2,” came with the artist’s comment, “I also prefer it.”
This bears on a dispute I’m having with a famous thinker (not Sam Harris), who maintains that ethical precepts are objective, not subjective, using the argument that there’s no justification for treating anybody differently from how you’d wish to be treated (a Rawlsian form of the golden rule).
Sam Harris proposed an objective system of ethics in his book The Moral Landscape, arguing that the moral thing to do in any situation is the thing that increases the overall well being of conscious creatures (note that, since he refers to a “landscape,” he means overall well being, not the well being of individuals acting or being acted on). Sam thinks that what is ethnical can be determined, in principle, scientifically.
This is a form of utilitarianism, and is a valuable aid to our thinking about how we judge what is right and wrong, but I’ve criticized it, and so have many philosophers (see Russell Blackford’s critique here). In the end, while I think Sam’s criterion for ethical or unethical acts generally conforms to our own notions of right and wrong, it has too many problems to serve as a “scientific” way to decide ethical questions. And I still believe that, at bottom, what’s right and wrong depends on subjective preferences. Though these preferences will coincide for many, they won’t for many others, and thus morality cannot be reduced to a “science”.
If you agree with Sam, then tell me why it’s moral to eat meat given that the well being of a conscious pig or cow cannot be judged against the well being of a human. (Remember, we have to know which creatures are conscious, too.) And if it IS immoral, why are you eating meat?
But I digress. Here the boys go after the barmaid’s view of why we have morality in general.
I quote eXtwitter user greg16676935420:
“Hey @peta how come fish can eat other fish but we can’t eat fish”
“[ @peta blocked you ]”
“I guess I won’t be getting an answer”
Shouldn’t the argument logically be ” why can’t we eat other humans” given that fish eat other fish – the naturalistic fallacy?
Good call
I agree, that would mean humans can eat other humans, but fish can’t eat humans.
Humans eat plants, and fish eat plants.
But PETA isn’t weighing in on these pressing matters either.
So
[ 🙂… 🧠 … 🫠 ]
Remember – the difference between a math department and philosophy department is wastebaskets.
I think that you are entirely right on that Jerry.
He is entirely right, there is indeed no (objective) justification for treating people differently from how you’d wish to be treated.
But then there’s also no (objective) justification for treating people exactly as you’d wish to be treated.
That’s because there are no objective justifications, any more than there are objective morals. Notions of justice and justification are also subjective.
Do unto others … (the famous aphorism)
Meanwhile,
Most violent group of people alive : toddlers
https://x.com/stevestuwill/status/1984361897198760259?s=46
One Halloween day some time ago, a kid pointed a gun at me and screamed where’s my candy! I was in a lift and didn’t have any candy with me. But I negotiated with the mother to take the kid upstairs to my bag of mints. It was a plastic star wars gun. Violent criminals should be condemned for their childish behaviour. They ought to grow up.
I don’t think morals are objective at all. But can’t a moral realist eat meat while admitting to being immoral? Or does Harris claim that he is moral and that eating meat is immoral, and eats meat himself?
I don’t think Sam considered animals at all in his book, and I once ate at a steakhouse with Sam, so I’m pretty sure that, at the time at least, he was not a vegetarian. But, using the Rawlsian metaphor, if a cow could be behind the veil of ignorance, and could express preference, I’m pretty sure it would choose not to be killed and consumed.
What is the cow objecting to then – it’s murder, being cut up and sold, or being consumed?
Would it be unethical if our society was organized such that we only ate cows that died of old age or were so old that they were humanely euthanized (like we do for cats and dogs and people) and consumed after? I presume the “eating meat” objection is the killing the animal prematurely and not the flesh eating part.
If cows “objected” to being killed for humans’ nutrition by the Rawlsian calculus and we all became vegetarians, never to raise cattle again, is something lost when all the cows disappear? If I was a Rawlsian cow say, I’d rather be born and live a few years only to be killed (let’s assume painlessly) than never to exist at all because all living things die. I might even prefer to be a cow that is free range, protected from predators and disease but killed for my body and consumed than be a wild buffalo, free to range anywhere but likely to die slowly from infection or be devoured violently by wolves and left to rot. I would definitely choose to be an indoor domesticated cat than a wild one.
Of course we kill young animals and tend to mistreat them in factory farms which is completely objectionable if not unconscionable. I don’t eat much meat but try to source it from responsible farms when I do and I remain unconvinced that vegetarianism is the only ethical path. I would absolutely eat lab-grown meat with a few caveats.
Sam has talked about this. He is an unashamed carnivore.
D.A.
NYC
Ethical vegetarians may look down on me for choosing to eat meat, but that pig would eat me in a heartbeat.
Do you mean that Sus domesticus, or that vegetarian? Maybe I’m confusing pig with prig. (Ex vegetarian here.)
It’s been a while since I read Sam Harris’ book, but I think calling his philosophy objective is not quite right. I think he is looking for something like an axiomatized system of ethics, starting with “the worst possible torment is bad”. I won’t try to tax my memory any more than that.
But saying morality can’t be objective doesn’t mean it can’t be axiomatized. It’s like saying math is subjective because people can disagree on the basic axioms. For example, some mathematicians reject the axiom of infinity.
Once you have axioms you can use the scientific method to (provisionally) make objective statements about right and wrong. If you accept the axioms then you must accept the conclusion.
There is a big difference: maths is objective in the sense that it correctly models the external world (axioms derive from that, they are not arbitrary). There is nothing in the external world that a system of objective morals would model. Instead, morality is rooted in human psychology, and thus is necessarily subjective.
Good points. But what is the correct model of the external world? Finite or infinite? So the more esoteric ZF axioms have nothing to do with the external world. Ditto for Euclidian geometry.
So, mathematical axioms are rooted in “intuition”, and “morality axioms” are rooted in “psychology”.
From Euclid until the historically recent invention/discovery of non-Euclidean geometries, Euclid’s axioms were considered to be obvious truths. The modern formalist views of mathematics are very different. And there are still heated debates about the foundations of mathematics, which have been controversial since the 1600’s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_mathematics
Loved that treatment, especially this:
Nice citations from Feynman and Weinberg in that section, too.
That’s how I understand Sam, too. He says that we only need to agree that maximal suffering is bad and that any movement away from that suffering is good, then moral behavior becomes an empirical question amenable to science broadly construed, as our host puts it.
Morality and ethics of actions are a bit like the illusion of objects being coloured. So, for ethics and morality in particular, we have a sense of right and wrong. The concept of ethics exists, as does the concept of objects having colour. Ideally, we might adopt codes that get us to where we want to be on an individual level or a societal level.
Interestingly, Genesis cautions us not to see the world in terms of good and evil and have reactions to it. Yet parsons, pastors, priests, preachers and the odd philosopher are modern-day serpents promulgating seeing the world in terms of good and evil.
I think Genesis says that since the Fall, we know good from evil and there’s no going back to the paradise of ignorance.
Yet itwas God who told Adam and Eve not to taste the fruit of from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. So is it not thinking in terms of good and evil that is paradise?
I don’t see that reading of Genesis at all. The serpent didn’t promulgate seeing the world as good and evil. The serpent was the evil.
No … the serpent wanted Eve to see the world in terms of good and evil and its fruits. It was God that did not want Adam and Eve have knowledge of good and evil.
Gosh I think you’re right.
Shows how far kindergarten Christianity takes you.
You say:
“And I still believe that, at bottom, what’s right and wrong depends on subjective preferences. Though these preferences will coincide for many, they won’t for many others, and thus morality cannot be reduced to a “science”.
Here, if I may ventriloquize Harris, he would say, yes but people disagree about biology and physics; however, we don’t think these differences mean that we can’t reduce either field to a “science” do we?
You then go on to say, “And if it IS immoral, why are you eating meat?”
We do many things we think are immoral. Lying is a big one. We all lie even though most of us would argue that lying is immoral. Even people who engage in more grievous transgressions will often admit that what they’re doing is immoral.
Just because we deem something immoral, it doesn’t make us perfect.
I don’t see myself as immoral at all for eating meat. It’s not something I have to excuse myself for. It’s just not a moral question in my universe.
Lying can be a moral obligatory act. When the knock on the door comes and the uniformed thug asks, “Any Jews hiding in your attic?”, the only possible answer is “No”, even if that’s a lie. Especially if it’s a lie. I’m not saying I’d necessarily have the courage to hide anyone in my attic in the face of determined disincentives, but if I did, I’m sure not going to blow it by telling the truth just for truth’s sake. “Sorry, I couldn’t lie,” as they are being hauled away to someplace they aren’t coming back from?
Lying can even be morally neutral. Diplomats are expected to lie abroad in the service of their country. We don’t expect them always to be truthful because the game they play demands that they all be economical with the truth in order to achieve state objectives. We need diplomats so we just have to shrug about their lying. Part of the job.
So the task is to figure out when and where it’s not permissible to lie.
Enlightened self-interest dictates that it’s a bad idea to act like a sociopath, since that would give others the opportunity to do so. We are social animals and do best in communities, so instinct and enlightened self-interest prompt us to try and get along with the members of our close and greater communities. Hence things like “morality,” the art of figuring out how to live with other people. One could try arguing that morality consists of trying to contribute to the overall well being of one’s communities, but the trouble is that its members have differing ideas of just what would be the best contribution.
FWIW, a sociopath is not the least bit concerned about others’ moral views, except insofar as those view can be used to manipulate others. They have no shame.
For my understanding and sticking to hairless apes, evolutionary biology is the hard objective element, morality is the soft illusionary subjective.
To push it out further, we (life) are a product of a universe over aeons that doesn’t actually give a rats arse, our evolutionary brain feels after a few good lessons over time perhaps things could and should be different. SCIENCE is getting better at our behavioural understanding why and what that ‘different’ is and means. Physics, biology in tandem and that is ‘objective’ driven. Hard and fast in a nutshell, 1no free will.
I think Jerry is right.
I would argue though, not completely tongue in cheek, that if eating meat was immoral then eating vegetables is more so.
Excluding foraging and hunting, both pasture and horticulture require the clearance of a lot of land which destroys the habitat for many creatures (so, equally ‘immoral’ in each case).
However, pasture creates a new habitat in which good agricultural practice means conscious animals generally live safe (if shortened) lives free from disease, starvation, and predation (so, immoral with perhaps some morality regained).
Horticulture does not provide this opportunity, apart from giving pest creatures a food opportunity. But these are usually poisoned, killed or otherwise controlled (with purposeful predation or disease being at the core of many biological control agents). I’d say that this is more immoral because you’d have the same original habitat loss as well as (1) the lost opportunity to give other conscious animals an existence; and (2) the purposeful demise of the pest creatures.
I know this is simplistic (e.g., pasture agriculture also often controls for pest animals too including rodents, rabbits, carnivores etc). It’s also flawed (are insects ‘conscious’ and are spiders more conscious than spider mites?; is a high probability of a healthy but short life in captivity better or worse than the many factors that come with a life in the wild?). But that’s why I agree with Jerry – utilitarianism seems to offer little other than eternal rabbit-holing.
Perhaps I should have just quoted Douglas Adams and the Ameglian Major Cow section from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe:
“A green salad?” said the animal, rolling his eyes disapprovingly at Arthur.
“Are you going to tell me,” said Arthur, “that I shouldn’t have green salad?”
“Well,” said the animal, “I know many vegetables that are very clear on that point. Which is why it was eventually decided to cut through the whole tangled problem and breed an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am.”
Anything based or built upon a subjective premise is subjective not objective. All human moral and ethical choices are subjective. Whether or not one thinks it is the best approach, a utilitarian approach is a subjective choice, and everything designed from that premise will also be subjective.
I agree with Jerry
I also think the overall well-being of (all?) conscious creatures is vague and subjective. Furthermore, I think evolution and capitalism both “work” without this assumption. I would prefer to have everyone look after their self-interest rather than for Sam Harris to decide.
I’ve never understood “the argument that there’s no justification for treating anybody differently from how you’d wish to be treated”. Shouldn’t people be treated the way they wish to be treated rather than how i wish to be treated?
No. Because some people would prefer to be treated with warmth and adulation after they succeeded in killing me. Whereas, as long as I can truthfully say I would accept being executed myself for murder, I can go ahead and ask my kin (or the state) to cheerfully wring their wretched necks.
Less floridly, trans-identified people want to be treated as the sex they say they are, not the sex they are. We say, “No you can’t be.”
Plenty of schizophrenics want to be treated as Napoleon, so no.
I think the Naturalistic Fallacy is, in this case, the fallacy. The whole food chain depends on animals eating other animals. It is a system that has always been in place everywhere and has given us the animal kingdom. But humans are morally wrong to take part?
Very interesting idea, nicely stated!
On the other hand, isn’t “The whole food chain depends on animals eating other animals. Humans are animals. Therefore humans are not morally wrong to eat animals” the Appeal to nature fallacy?
I think I’ve just confused myself. I’d rather not eat meat (though I would still insist on pepperoni on my pizza), but am married to a carnivore. Needs must…
Rather than call morals ‘objective’ or ‘subjective’, why not call them ‘useful fictions’? This places morals into a class of ‘sometimes useful’ but ‘sometimes incoherent’ which, I suggest, maps more closely to the experiences of everyday life.
A bit like ‘free will’ or belief in god 🙂
Sam Harris – Peace be upon him – refers to hypothetical “happy cows”, which would be ok to eat, having lived lovely lives. The flaw in this idea is the fact that the cow is still being killed, which from the cow’s perspective is presumably an undesirable thing, regardless of how idyllic its life had been up to that point. Yes, cows are bad at imagining their futures, but some humans are similarly limited in mental capacity, and we don’t consider it ok to eat them. Human carnivores (who don’t eat other humans) are indulging in speciesism. It is a very popular position, but that doesn’t make it ethical.
Ethics are what we need to live by in order to get along with other people with whom we can strike mutually enforceable conventions. Since we can’t discuss mutually binding conventions with animals, and because they can’t gang up on us or agree to our terms anyway, there is no need to include them in our ethical framework. If speciesism is the belief that our species has greater inherent worth to us than any other species, that’s just us being predators and defending ourselves against predators. No biggie. Speciesism isn’t unethical, any more than digging rocks out of the ground is unethical. it’s just non-ethical.
We can choose to avoid causing unnecessary suffering to animals and we should have a care to not causing them to go extinct (if they are charismatic or if they are useful to us like pollinating insects). But those actions are driven by mercy and by self-interest, not by ethics, which can apply only to our own species.
“ethics, which can apply only to our own species.”
Peter Singer (and I) would disagree:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanding_Circle
For me (a big animal lover) it is not that we eat them, it is how we treat them.
D.A.
NYC