The Status of Empirical Knowledge in Interspecific Ethics
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כל הזכויות שמורות לאריאל צבל © 2019 Introduction This dissertation is about some aspects of moral competence. It focuses on how real people – particularly in the contemporary West – function in the real world when they address moral conflicts between the interests of human beings and nonhuman beings. Given that the moral consideration of such conflicts necessarily involves specific factual assumptions, my argument is twofold. First, I claim that knowledge of the relevant facts is a crucial aspect of moral competence. And second, I claim that this knowledge tends to be inadequate, and that is a major reason for compromised moral competence concerning such conflicts. Before presenting my argument in detail, I address its theoretical background. At the foundation of my argument lie critical insights about the social origin and function of morality. Although not my original contribution, these insights are by no means commonsensical or consensual. Therefore I will devote to them considerable space (chapters 1-2). Nevertheless, since they originate in critical studies of intra-human affairs, I will add specific adaptations to interspecific affairs. The central insight in the background of my argument is that moral competence is constructed by circumstances. It is not an isolated capacity of individuals, and it does not result merely from individual character, good will, a correct understanding of moral principles, or personal circumstances. Without denying the significance of such individual factors, it is important to acknowledge that moral competence is deeply affected by socio-historical factors, as well as biological ones, such as species identity. 1 כל הזכויות שמורות לאריאל צבל © 2019 Although the effect of such factors is not fully predetermined, it does provide highly probable results within a definite range.1 The effect of circumstances is not a simple matter of biased moral judgement due to apparent interests. Socio-historical and biological factors operate at every level of emotion, thought and activity. Accordingly, they put their mark on every aspect of moral competence: the ability to perceive beings and situations as worthy of moral attention (moral perception), the knowledge of morally-relevant information, the ability to tell right from wrong (moral knowledge) and to make moral judgement, the abilities to empathise with others, to care for them and to respect them, and the motivation to act according to moral sentiments and judgements. At some general level, this insight may be widely accepted. Whether you follow utilitarianism, contractarianism, virtue ethics or other approaches to moral philosophy, you may agree that some conditions are likely to impair people's moral competence. In that sense, general claims about the socio-historical and biological influences on moral competence should be widely accepted – at least once problems are presented explicitly. Nevertheless, an intuitive understanding of social constructionist insights may thrive along with a contradicting intuition, namely that once you acknowledged the limiting factors on your moral competence, the major challenge is behind you and balanced moral views are easily reachable. I believe that the casual dismissal of the problem of socially constructed bias by most moral philosophers expresses the potency of the latter intuition. 1 The wide range of abilities and conditions that constitute moral competence is often analysed in terms of moral philosophy, and it incorporates much of what moral philosophy is about. The term "moral competence", however, is more commonly used in psychological theory and applied psychological research, following the works of Piaget and Kohlberg (See: Walker and Pitts, "Naturalistic Conceptions of Moral Maturity;" Liszka, Moral Competence; Park and Peterson, "Moral Competence and Character Strengths;" Huebner, Lee and Hauser, "Moral-Conventional Distinction."). I do not challenge these perspectives, but I do add a heavy emphasis on the socio-historical conditions that tend to yield moral competence or hinder it. 2 כל הזכויות שמורות לאריאל צבל © 2019 Uncritical, conflicting intuitions seem to me like a problem serious enough to justify a systematic introduction to this subject (chapters 1-2) rather than a succinct introduction. While common intuition may allow overlooking widespread limitations on moral competence, I hope that a systematic analysis shows that overcoming some limitations is highly improbable due to social, historical and biological conditions. Furthermore, I suspect that referring to the social construction of moral competence in mere interspecific contexts may be misleading due to the prevalence of speciesism. Without being used to ask critical questions about what we know of chickens in the meat industry, for example, any attempt to outline existing morally-relevant empirical knowledge about them may seem uninteresting. Surely, agricultural details and basic chicken biology are beyond common knowledge, and discovering some agricultural facts may be shocking; but once we get hold of the technical details, what else is there to know?! The poor accessibility of agricultural information and the alleged inaccessibility of chickens' minds are likely to be recognised by anyone, yet other difficulties are easily overlooked. It is only in the context of power relations that have become unacceptable that we can best recognise the social construction of morality and understand how to approach related problems. Therefore I see the discourses on morality in the socio- historico-biological context of widely rejected aspects of sexism, racism or capitalism as a necessary background to the discourse on widely accepted speciesism. The idea that moral competence is constructed by circumstances has consensual aspects, which I emphasise. Nevertheless, some aspects of this insight may remain somewhat controversial. Controversy is likely to arise over the idea that preferring some moral conceptions over others may itself be influenced by socio-historical and biological 3 כל הזכויות שמורות לאריאל צבל © 2019 conditions. Correspondingly, moral conceptions (or approaches, theories, etc.) tend to be relatively more favourable for some social and biological groups. The conditions in question affect specific moral views and morally-motivated actions – through the very preference for specific moral conceptions. Therefore my analysis of influences on moral competence must address this more controversial subject as well. Evidently, attempting to determine which theory of moral philosophy is better than others in general is beyond the scope of the present work; yet it is necessary to examine whether some theories of moral philosophy are connected to compromised moral competence under some circumstances and concerning some moral problems. Throughout this dissertation, I argue that moral competence is compromised by several major factors: the actual invisibility of one or more of the parties who are involved in the moral problem at hand; the intensity of differences between them and us; their position as dominated and exploited by another party; our own involvement in their domination and exploitation; and the level of institutionalisation of all the previous factors. These factors influence all aspects of moral competence. This does not necessarily mean that limiting factors on moral competence could not be overcome. But the effort needed to overcome them depends on their intensity, and when limiting factors are too intensive, the moral competence of concerned individuals or a small oppositional group is beyond recovery, despite any effort they may make. My critique of morality is of Marxist and feminist origin. Perceiving morality as an ideological expression of actual, material relations draws on Marxist insight.2 One 2 The great majority of Marxist theory is, of course, bluntly speciesist. Nevertheless, Marxist insights are directly applicable to interspecific relations, and reviewers of mainstream Marxist attitudes towards nonhuman animals stress the inconsistency between speciesism and Marxist principles. See: Benton, 4 כל הזכויות שמורות לאריאל צבל © 2019 plausible implication of the Marxist attitude towards morality is acknowledging the ideological aspect of interspecific ethics as a discourse produced exclusively by humans, and therefore suspected of pro-human bias. The emphasis moral philosophy tends to put on allegedly unique human traits such as autonomy and rationality is not, in that respect, an impartial conceptual reaction to moral problems, but rather an ideological, speciesist project; similarly, the factual picture of a great gulf between humans and all other animal species is not a result of a pure quest for knowledge, but again, an ideological construction. No less important is to comprehend that acknowledging these ideological inclinations does not exempt the critic from these flaws, since she cannot observe human- nonhuman relationships from a neutral vantage point: you never stop being human. Indeed, the human mind is allegedly open to an unlimited variety of critical views; yet in reality we are rather limited; both moral concepts and empirical knowledge are the products of immense communal efforts we cannot exceed single-handedly or within a small oppositional community. Some feminist critical ideas are applicable to interspecific issues without considerable adaptation, or with simple adaptations that have already been suggested by feminist theorists.3 The feminist critique of traditional moral philosophy provides