Hi Bryan,

I hope I addressed some of your questions about my use of the Williams
quote in an earlier email, so I won't atttempt a line by line discussion of
your deconstruction of the quoted passage.

>Hi Jim... I'd like to respond to your post here...
 [deleted}

Williams quote:
>Before one gets to the question of how animals should
>>be treated, there is the fundamental point that this is the only question
>>there can be: how they should be treated.
>
Hyden:
>Huh? Talk about circular reasoning! wow....

Not sure I understand what's circular about it--the point seems relatively
straightforward, that animals stand as "moral patients" in relation to us.
We're the ones doing the thinking about ethics, policy, management, etc.,
and so the only question we can ask is, "Do *our* activities benefit or
harm animals?" Not (theoretically inconclusive questions like), "Do they
have rights?" or, "Are they persons with full moral status?"

Williams:
>The choice can only be whether
>>animals benefit from our practices or are harmed by them.
Hyden:
>Fine. But why does this differ from whether other humans benefit from "our"
>practices or are harmed by them. He simply does not say.

Well, for one thing, as autonomous [moral] agents with free will, other
human beings can choose *not* to be on the receiving end of either the
benefits or harms we dish out to them. This, I take it, is the idea behind
human freedom and human dignity. In deciding to act on other humans'
behalf, we need to take into account *their* views of the matter if we are
to act ethically toward them.

[deleted]
Williams:
>But in the case of human
>>relations to animals, the analogues to such thoughts are simply correct."
Hyden:
>Huh? Was that to be read "incorrect?" If so, it makes more sense, but is
>still baseless in his argument.

Not sure here that you've read the passage correctly--the word, "correct,"
is the correct word--"incorrect" would be incorrect. <smile>


>Well Jim, you say here that you are speciesist to some degree (however small
>of a degree). Were you not arguing that speciesism does not exist? I'm not
>saying that you did, but I'm wondering exactly where you stand on this.
>


Fair enough. A brief discussion of where I stand on this. I come from a
background that is fairly sympathetic to the animal rights/animal welfare
perspective. I had long assumed that animal rights (and rights of nature)
was the inevitable extension of English Liberalism outward from humans to
nonhumans, and that just as people had been mistaken about slavery and
women in the past, they would someday come to realize their views about
animals were similarly mistaken. I helped put together one of the first,
if not the first, courses on animal rights/animal welfare philosophy to be
offered at Cornell, in 1991. The course dealt with such thinkers as Singer
and Regan, Frey, Sapontzis, Midgley, Rollin, Clark, Jamieson, and a number
of others, including sociological/anthropological accounts from Tester,
Nelkin, Cartmill, etc.. To make a long story short: the longer I studied
the formal philosophical literature on the subject, the more disenchanted I
became with it. It became my conviction that the stuff just doesn't hold
up, philosophically. Thinkers whom I respect a great deal have helped me
understand some of the problems with a universalist approach to animal
ethics, as well as identifying similar problems with environmental ethics.
Or maybe I'm just getting old. :-)

I was arguing that speciesism is based on a false analogy to racism and
sexism. Significance? Racism and sexism are bad things, whereas (here
goes nothing) speciesism is a good thing. (I can feel the flames coming
on.) Or at least, speciesism is an unavoidable thing. The discussion here
takes on some of the flavor of the debate about anthropocentrism versus
biocentrism. Philosopher Bryan Norton distinguishes between "weak" and
"strong" anthropocentrism. Just as we are inescapably "weakly"
anthropocentric by virtue of being human, so too I think we cannot escape
our ("weak") speciesism, because we are human. The ethical question is,
then, how do we exercise our power over nature and over animals? A
"strong" speciesism would say that we can run roughshod over nature and
animals and simply do whatever we want to them. A weak speciesism says our
influence over nature and animals is inescapable, but that we must justify
our actions with good reasons.

And to relate it back to the hunting theme of the thread: whereas I used to
have a pretty conventional anti-hunting perspective, I have come to think
that (some) hunters actually have as good a claim or better to *use*
animals in their hunting activities, even though those activities cause the
death and occasional mutilation of animals, than do those activists who
romanticize animals as abstractions. (My view extends, by the way, to
other human activities with human benefits, including medical
experimentation that involves nonhuman animal subjects.) One reason is that
I have come to see that hunting is a very complicated human cultural
activity, not easily reducible to the hunting=killing equation that people
make it out to be. It's a lot more than that, and that is why I think the
pleasures or benefits that arise from hunting are not trivial. I think
most thoughtful hunters *could* give good reasons for their activities,
even though they may not do so in actuality; whereas I am not at all sure
that most moral vegetarians or vegans, however well-intentioned, could give
even a minimally satisfactory account of their activities when it comes to
either the environmental effects or the impacts on animals.

Jim Tantillo




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