PETA Outraged: Researchers Want To Conduct Experiments on Gorillas in the Wild!
Animal liberationists are mobilizing against plans to conduct Ebola virus research on gorillas in the wild. "This shocking plan to use gorillas so crassly reflects the supremicist mindset of human beings and demonstrates why it would be better if humankind had never evolved," an outraged Ingrid Newkirk, executive director of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), asserted in a press release. "When are human beings going to realize that a rat, is a pig, is a dog, is a gorilla, is a boy?" she asked. "If anyone has ever looked into the warm, brown eyes of a gorilla, they will know immediately that the gorilla only wants to maintain his or her family, engage in gentle play, and tread gently on the planet. If only humans were so benevolent."
Actually, I made some of that up. Gorillas may indeed be researched upon to combat the Ebola virus. But there was no angry PETA press release issued. Why? Well, the research is not intended to help sick people, but to prevent gorillas from dying in a raging Ebola epidemic that threatens the apes' continued existence. In other words, human beings are willing to risk their lives facing the dangers of the wild and potential Ebola infection in order to test a vaccine to thwart natural selection and keep gorillas from being wiped out. This is in keeping with human exceptionalism and our perceived moral duty to protect endangered species, an attitude no other known species in the universe has ever, once, demonstrated.
Post Script: My fictional press release contains nothing that Ingrid Newkirk has not actually stated in other venues. She has called the human use of animals the same evil "supremicism" carried out by the Nazis. She did say, "a rat, is a pig, is a dog, is a boy." And she told a writer that the world would be a better place without humans in it. (Source: New Yorker, "The Extremist," April 14, 2003, pp. 57-58.)
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 9:14 AM
13 Comments
13 Comments:
Wesley Smith: The doctrine of human exceptionalism does not simply assert the obvious fact that human beings typically have exceptional mental and moral faculties; above all, it asserts that humans have a unique moral standing. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the doctrine asserts that being a human organism is a necessary and sufficient condition for having intrinsic value – that is, for having the right to be treated with respect, or, in other words, the right never to be treated merely as means for the ends of others.
The other day I went to the library to find your book Culture of Death. (Amusingly enough, immediately beside it on the shelf, with its front cover facing outward, was Peter Singer’s Writings on an Ethical Life.) Culture of Death is, generally speaking, an eloquent plea on behalf of those members of society most at risk of having their interests overridden by what you see as the predominant utilitarian perspective of bioethics. But I searched in vain for a reasoned defence of human exceptionalism. In particular, the chapter “Protecting Animals at the Expense of People” is a long exercise in begging the question: it makes its points throughout by assuming that only human life has intrinsic value.
Here’s the nub of my comment: Without the premise of divine dispensation, the attempt to assign intrinsic value to all and only human beings is an attempt at squaring the circle. Logically, it won’t work. There is an overlap in faculties between humans and non-humans. In particular, the mental and moral faculties of many humans are no more, and are sometimes less, sophisticated than the mental and moral faculties of many non-humans. To grant such humans admission to the moral community simply and merely because they are human arbitrarily contradicts the criterion of moral agency and transcendence that you use for assigning unique moral value to humans. Further, it opens the door to all sorts of bizarre, counter-intuitive conclusions based on assigning outcomes according to kind (e.g., that a student who fails a course should receive a passing grade because she belongs to a class most of whose members did pass the course).
A contractarian ethic in the tradition of Thomas Hobbes can neatly admit all humans to the moral community while excluding all non-humans. But such an ethic is not based on the notion of intrinsic value and so does not guarantee permanent protection to anyone. On the other hand, giving the doctrine of human exceptionalism a religious foundation (“Humans have unique moral standing because God says so”) would remove its internal contradictions and fit neatly with the Discovery Institute’s idea of intelligent design. Intelligent design does not strictly entail human moral exceptionalism, but it does make it more plausible.
The other logically defensible option (one free of internal contradictions), but one that I’m sure you will reject, is to ascribe intrinsic value not just to humans but to many non-humans as well, including those gorillas at risk from Ebola. I find it fascinating that apparently we humans have a deep-seated difficulty in attributing moral worth to members of our own group (family, tribe, nation, species, whatever) without simultaneously excluding and denigrating others – lest we become, as we fear we might become, “just another animal in the forest”.
aeolus: Thank you for reading COD. I wasn't discussing "human exceptionalism" in COD. I was trying to warn against the agendas that I find worrying in mainstream bioethics, particularly personhood theory.
You are laboring under a false premise: Human exceptionalism doesn't deny that other species have moral worth. Nor is it to deny that they can suffer, etc. To the contrary. It is because they are sentient beings and not mere things that give human beings--the only truly moral agents in the known universe--a profound duty to treat them humanely and properly. In other words, I believe that there is a hierarchy of moral worth, with humans at the pinaccle.
Don't you>?
aeolus:
In response to your statements:
"Without the premise of divine dispensation, the attempt to assign intrinsic value to all and only human beings is an attempt at squaring the circle. Logically, it won't work. There is an overlap in faculties between humans and non-humans;"
and
"On the other hand, giving the doctrine of human exceptionalism a religious foundation (“Humans have unique moral standing because God says so”) would remove its internal contradictions and fit neatly with the Discovery Institute’s idea of intelligent design. Intelligent design does not strictly entail human moral exceptionalism, but it does make it more plausible."
Ah, but there *are* logical differentiation between human moral worth and animal moral worth that don't rely on the existence of God.
Anybody who believes in pan-experientalism (which rejects both classic dualism and modern mechanicism) acknowledges that you can't get a mind inside the machine (a human being) out of nothing. Nothing begets nothing. Therefore, for a mind to be begotten by matter, all matter must have at least a proto-mind, or a proto-consciousness as it is known philosophically.
From there it's simply a matter of increase. The more complex the individual, the more responsibilities put upon said individual. Humans are at the pinaccle of the hierarch, to borrow Wesley's words, because humans have the most advanced chemical systems that lead to the most advanced form of consciousness (at least here on Earth - the heavens are another matter).
You can make claims of human exceptionalism based on consciousness studies that do not have anything at all to do with religion (David Chalmers, my favorite proponent of this philosophy, is an avid atheist) and have them be both logical and non-contradictory. I recommend reading his articles on the development of consciousness.
Yes. I have quoted others who have made secular arguments for human exceptionalism, as do I.
The other point, though, is that it can't be based individual by individual. If we pursue that course, the course of personhood theory, then the cause of universal human rights collapses because we have to earn our rights each moment. Fail to achieve or lose sufficient capacities, and you become less than human.
T.E. Fine: I too admire David Chalmers, and I've heard him lecture. But the doctrine of human exceptionalism says that even the least mentally sophisticated human organism (presumably a zygote) has a higher moral status than the most sophisticated non-human (e.g., a chimpanzee with the mental faculties of a normal three-year-old human child). Assuming that many animals are neither Cartesian automatons nor Chalmersian zombies, there appear to be insurmountable logical difficulties confronting the claim that humans and only humans are never to be treated merely as means to the ends of others. If David Chalmers has made an argument specifically directed at resolving this conundrum, please let me know. I'd certainly be interested in reading what he has to say on the subject.
aeolus:
You appear to approve of using some humans as a means to the ends of other humans. Alas. This presumption is decidedly illiberal and has been the bane of human history--the idea that we can judge some humans to be worth more than others and that, concomitantly, the less worthy may be oppressed and exploited. In other words, this seems the same old bigotry, just aimed at different victims.
aeolus:
Chalmers hasn't discussed exceptionalism in any of the papers that I've read. If he ever does I'd be quite interested in what he has to say (and I agree with him on the "zombie" issue).
What Chalmers and other propnents of pan-experientalism say is that everything (from humans to boot strings) has some form of consciousness. Stuart Hameroff theorizes that consciousness is a form of "quantum computer" generated by microtubals.
So from them and their ilk we get the how, but we don't get the what without going a bit further.
The what in this case is "what differentiates humans from cats and boot strings?" That would be the quality of consciousness. All creatures are aware, but only man is aware that he is aware. Hence, Homo Sapien Sapien. Man knowing knowing (man knowing that he knows).
Now, all organisms use other organisms. A tiger uses a gazelle for dinner. A bird will use an aligator to get the gunk between his teeth and get a free meal out of the deal. A grasshopper will use grass for food, a flea will use a host, and an ant colony will use other ants within the colony to do certain tasks.
Humans, however, are the only animals capable of understanding how, what, and why we use other organisms. Therefore, this higher level of consciousness imposes upon us a moral obligation.
1) As the highest consciousness on the planet, we have a responsibility to protect others with the same type of high consciousness.
2) We must respect all things with lower consciousness because we are aware that they are aware, even if they aren't. (I've re-written that sentence thrice and I still feel like Lone Star, "At last we meet for the first time for the last time!")
3) Because we still live on this earth, we must use other organisms, but we must be cautious when we do so. We can't be like a lion who tears up his gazelle. We have to think things through.
Now, go back to number one there. We have to protect other things with a high consciousness. Why should the zygote (unsophisticated consciousness) get higher billing than an adult chimpanzee (sophisticated in comparison)?
The zygote has all the biological necessities to become a creature with the highest consciousness. To be honest, it's a small person, just missing a few limbs, a head, a brain, but it's got the DNA that will make those limbs, head, and brain. It's just in the construction phase. It's not a "potential" life - it's already alive. Embedded in its cells are the necessary instructions to build the kind of brain that will let it do complex math and be aware that it is aware. An adult chimp, no matter how sophisticated, will not do this.
Going back to number three, just because the chimp will not do calculus and will not say to itself, "I think, therefore I am," doesn't mean that the person that zygote becomes has the right to shoot it for no good reason. The person may use the animal, so long as respect to its intrinsic being is maintained. We know that there's a self inside that chimp. We may use the chimp, for food, for research, to aid our growth so that we are able to aid the growth of the rest of the planet, but we cannot do it callously.
We are at the top of the food chain. We have the highest consciousness. We have responsibilities, and we cannot fulfill those responsibilities unless we use the resources available to us. That includes other animals. If we cannot grow, we cannot help.
As a P. S., I'd like to add that if one is willing to accept that an animal has consciousness based on the fact that it responds to certain stimuli and behaves as a conscious creature would, then one must accept that a zygote, which also responds to stimuli, has consciousness, or at the very least a type of proto-consciousness. Therefore, anybody who suggests that zygotes don't have souls because most of them spontaneously abort in the earliest part of pregnancy would have to accept that yes, a life really has been lost. But think of how many human lives are lost daily anyway. I don't think it's asking too much that God take in unborn babies. Heaven's a big enough place. This little bit wasn't directed at Aeolus, btw- it was just a comment in regards to something someone else said earlier.
Tabitha
Reading these posts, it is interesting how much smarter you all are than me--and younger! There is hope for the world.
Tabitha, I think your teleological "in construction" argument is problematic, in part because not all human organisms even have the DNA blueprints for "high consciousness", but I thank you for your argument nonetheless.
Aeolus:
Thank you, too, for the fun and enlightening debate. I know we don't agree on many aspects of bioethics, but I've found your arguments refreshing and interesting, and I hope that you've had as much fun with our discussions as I have. My hat is off to you.
Wesley:
I wouldn't necessarily say "smarter" here, just that we've had a different variety of reading than you. What was it Sagan said? "You can only read so many books in a lifetime. The trick is knowing which ones to read." ...I think. Heh.
It's good that you have this blog available for us to discuss on. There's a wide variety of material out there that nobody as an individual can find on his own just because the bookshelves are so vast. This is a good place for us to all apply our individual learning to a specific issue.
I hope you're having fun, too, Wesley.
P.S. - I highly recommend reading some of David Chalmers' papers. He's fascinating, and he really knows his stuff. He's probably my third-favorite philosopher (my first is Tom Paine and the second is Christian de Quincey). I have links to his on-line articles if anybody is interested in consciousness studies.
I am having a great time. Thanks. It is fascinating to see which posts people react to, and what in the post they react to. Take this one, for example. I wrote it as a hit on PETA's advocacy, but the comment about human exceptionalism sparked the discussion.
My interests and legal training lead me to emphasize the practical a bit more than the philosophical. Or to put it another way, I care a great deal about consequences, actual and forseeable, that flow from philosophical first principles. Since circa 1993 I have seriously engaged these deeper issues that lie beyond the merely political (in which I was engaged before), and the purely legal (which came before that), I have come to realize that the first principle we choose to embrace ultimately matters completely as to what we will believe and the policies that will flow therefrom. That choice puts us on a certain path, and the implacable power of human logic takes over from there.
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