Reply to John Altick’s Rejoinder to Graham and Nobis’s
Review of Putting Humans
First by Tibor Machan
David
Graham & Nathan Nobis
Forthcoming,
The
Journal of Ayn Rand Studies
David Graham, email: <spunth@thefreesite.com>; url: <http://reductioblog.com>,
is an independent scholar living in
Nathan Nobis, Ph.D., Department of
Philosophy and Religion, Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia; email: <aphilosopher@gmail.com>; url: <http://www.NathanNobis.com> has
teaching and research interests that include ethical theory, epistemology,
critical thinking and practical ethics, especially ethics and animals.
In his reply to the Nobis-Graham review of Tibor Machan's Putting Humans
First, John Altick defends Machan's
and Rand's theories of moral rights, specifically as they relate
to the rights of non-human animals and non-rational human beings. Nobis
and Graham argue that Altick's defense fails
and that it would be wrong to eat, wear, and experiment on non-rational – yet
conscious and sentient – human beings. Since morally relevant differences
between these kinds of humans and animals have not been identified to
justify a difference in treatment or consideration, it is wrong to harm animals
for these purposes also.
We appreciate John Altick’s response to our review of Putting Humans First and
are grateful to The Journal for
allowing us to respond: the more discussion of these important matters, the
better. In hopes that others will join the debate and address issues and
arguments that we do not, our reply will be brief.
The
vast majority of Altick’s discussion restates, in
slightly different language, Machan’s argument for
the conclusion that animals don’t have any “natural” moral rights. (The
questions of what legal rights
animals should have and what treatment of animals should be legally actionable
are separate issues; our focus is on ethics and moral philosophy, not the law.)
This argument is as follows:
(1)
For
a being to have moral rights against being harmed and exploited for gustatory
pleasures (i.e., food[1]),
medical and scientific experiments, entertainment, or other harmful uses (or
any other moral rights), that being must have
what Objectivists call “volitional consciousness,” i.e., roughly, the ability
to make reflective decisions.
(2) Animals lack this “volitional
consciousness.”
(3) Therefore, animals do not have any
moral rights.
Altick devotes several pages to restating premise (2). As we
clearly stated in our review, we agree with premise (2) too. Animals do not
have volitional consciousness. They do not reflect on their choices, are not
moral agents, do not perceive situations in moral terms, have no moral
obligations or duties, cannot enter into contracts, cannot reason in highly
abstract ways, are — like young children — not morally obligated to respect the
rights that normal adults are obligated to respect, cannot write symphonies and
poetry, cannot engage in religious worship, cannot reflect on the meaning of
existence, are not aware of their awareness, cannot publish philosophy
articles, and so on.
These truths, of course,
do not show that animals have no moral rights. An argument is sound only if all
its premises are true and, as our review makes clear, we argue that premise (1)
is false: to have moral rights against being harmed and exploited to be eaten,
used in harmful experiments, and harmed for other human purposes (or to have
any other kind of right), a being need
not have volitional consciousness, moral agency, rationality, or whatever
you want to call these sophisticated mental abilities that separate most humans from most, if not all,
animals.
Our main argument against Machan’s and Altick’s premise (1)
is the Argument from Marginal Cases (AMC). The argument, simply put, is that
there are many human beings who,
intuitively, have moral rights (or, to bypass talk of rights, would be morally
wrong to raise and kill to eat, wear, experiment on and use for other
exploitative purposes) even though they lack such sophisticated mental
abilities that Machan claims are necessary for having
rights. His premise (1) implies these vulnerable humans lack such rights and,
presumably, that harming these humans in these ways would not be wrong, so his
premise is false.
Machan tries to address the AMC in Putting Humans
First using a common argument that Graham (2002) has termed the Argument
from Species Normality. The argument basically claims that since “normal” human
beings have volitional consciousness and the rights that come from that, so do
“non-normal” human beings, even though they lack volitional consciousness.
We objected to the
Argument from Species Normality by showing that its premises have a variety of
absurd, false consequences. We showed that a variety of attempts to make these
logical leaps from characteristics associated with “normal” humans to sought
characteristics for “non-normal” humans all depend on demonstrably false
premises. These arguments appear throughout our review.
As far as we can see, Altick does not respond to our objections. He does not
attempt to explain how “normal” adult human beings’ having volitional
consciousness (and, for the sake of argument, the moral rights that result, and
only result, from having such a
consciousness) would result in “non-normal” human beings, who lack volitional
consciousness, having such moral rights also. He did not articulate a new
premise for consideration, one that he argues does not succumb to objections.
As for the AMC itself, on
page [8] of his response Altick writes, “So what
about infants, vegetables, and mentally retarded individual human
beings? This is a slippery issue and one that very easily falls treacherously away
from the point of Machan’s argument.” This exhausts Altick’s response to the AMC.
As we show in our review,
the AMC, far from being a “slippery issue” that falls away from the “point” of Machan’s argument, is fatal to his arguments both against
animal rights and for human rights,
especially vulnerable ones. The AMC shows that these arguments have a false
premise, namely (1) above. If “the point,” or a point, of Machan’s argument was to show
that animals have no rights, our point was to show that his argument is
unsound. At least one entire book has
been devoted to the AMC (1997), and neither Machan
nor Altick provide plausible responses to it.
In an article and
resulting discussion from The Navigator
that readers of The Journal should
find interesting, Shawn Klein (2004a) argues that requiring volitional
consciousness for moral rights-holding “seems to put
the defender of rights in a precarious position. He can either reject the idea
that marginal humans have rights and thus should be given legal protection
against harm and abuse; or he must modify the basis for rights [to, e.g.,
sentience, consciousness, or, as Tom Regan (2003, 2004) argues, being a
subject-of-a-life] to include marginal humans—and along with them, it seems, at
least some higher-order animals.”
Klein recognizes the force of the AMC. He notes that appealing
to “marginal” humans’ “potential” to be rational agents won’t adequately
address the problem, since some of them lack that potential. He cautiously
suggests this admittedly undeveloped argument to circumvent the AMC:
(A)
“Under
normal developmental circumstances marginal human beings would be
normally functioning rational beings.”
(C) Therefore, marginal human beings have
moral rights (even though they are not rational, lack “volitional
consciousness,” etc.).
There is a logical leap from (A) to (C): a critical thinker won’t see any obvious connection. Premise (A) validly leads to conclusion (C) and we understand the basis of the inference only when a premise something like (B) is added:
(B)
If under normal developmental circumstances marginal human
beings would have one kind of
properties (e.g., biological or psychological ones) that give rise to another,
dependent kind of properties (e.g., moral properties), then these marginal human beings also have these second kind of
properties, even though they lack the basic, more fundamental properties that
they depend on.
Unfortunately,
premise (B) seems false. We can see this by considering a variety of different kinds
of properties and their relations.
Consider a
non-moral counter-example: under normal developmental circumstances marginal
human beings would be able to
graduate from middle school; assuming the ability to enter (and graduate from)
high school depends on that
middle-school ability, (B) seems to falsely imply that marginal humans are able
to enter and graduate from high school, irrespective of what their actual
cognitive abilities are. Another counterexample could be developed using IQ
scores and the intellectual abilities they depend on. Thus, (B) seems false.
Consider some
moral counter-examples: under normal developmental circumstances marginal human
beings would be able to act
intentionally and realize that their actions have good and bad consequences for
others. If someone has these properties, then that person has moral duties to
others (or they can have such duties). Premise (B) thus seems to false imply
that marginal humans have such moral duties. Another moral example: under
normal developmental circumstances marginal human beings would be able to intentionally treat others in very mean and unfair
ways. If someone has these properties, then, let’s say, that person could be a big jerk. Premise (B) seems
to imply that marginal humans could be
big jerks, even when they lack the psychological and communicative abilities
needed for being jerks. Similar arguments could be developed using
praise-worthy moral properties and the psychological and interpersonal
properties they depend on. Again, (B) seems false.
Premise (B) does not seem
to accurately describe the relations among any
sets of properties (at least, we can find none for which it is true),
especially those where one kind of property depends on (or supervenes) another
kind of property. (Premises attempting to derive dependent or supervenient properties from more basic properties had only
in “potential,” or had by “most” beings of a kind or “in general” or are
typical “for the species” fare as poorly.) It appears that any attempt to
reason from (A) to (C) will be ad hoc
with nothing in general to recommend it (Wilson 2005). Like Machan’s
response to the AMC, Klein’s response does not succeed. [2]
To return to Altick , although his response does not defend Machan’s views against several of our specific attacks —
and we probably could rest our reply at that — we would also like to address up
a few miscellaneous issues that Altick raises.
In several places he makes
an undefined distinction between what he calls “contingent rights” and “natural
rights.” He says that Machan’s argument refers to
“natural rights” while some of our arguments address “contingent rights,” such
as our reductio of Machan-ish
invalid reasoning “showing” that blind people have “rights” to drive a car because “normal” human beings have that
“right.”
We are not entirely sure
what the essential difference is between natural and contingent rights, much
less how it would relate to the discussion at hand since, to avoid this
confusion, we suggested that the relevant rights in question be whatever rights, moral status or
whatever animals would need to lack to make routinely harming them morally
permissible. Again, talk of rights can be red herring, a distraction from the
concrete issues.
But, putting that aside,
the AMC makes it unnecessary to get mired in such distinctions. The AMC is very
simple and direct. It contends that whatever rights “marginal” humans,
or human moral patients, have – natural, contingent, or otherwise – comparably-minded animals have them
also, if these humans’ rights depend
on the sophistication of their mental lives.
Presumably Altick, like Machan, holds that
marginal humans have whatever rights protect against being harmed and exploited
for food, medical experiments, and other human purposes. The AMC demands a relevant reason for distinguishing all
animals from marginal humans. It’s that simple. One reason Machan
gives for distinguishing animals from human marginal cases is given in the
Argument from Species Normality. We addressed that argument and showed that it
is unsound in our review. Altick, as we’ve already
noted, does not answer our objection or engage the real issue.
Second, on page [4] Altick says that “Graham and Nobis do not direct their
attacks against Machan’s conception of rights per se;
rather, they seem more interested in critiquing his application of his own
conception, and of criticizing Machan more on the
grounds of consistency rather than on his philosophical interpretation of
natural rights as such.”
We’re not sure what Altick means here. Part of any theory, or “conception,” of
rights has to do with who has those rights and why they have them, what it is about these individuals that make them have these rights. Rights are
not floating abstractions but protections that apply to individual beings. If a
theory is logically inconsistent on these key matters, this is a fatal flaw in
the theory. Logical inconsistency is a serious flaw for any theory or argument
and, again, Machan’s arguments are ultimately inconsistent because he claims premise (1) is true
for animals but that (1) is false for humans. His attempts to deny this
inconsistency are unconvincing. He needs to pick a side or revise his
arguments.
Third, again, that some
animals eat other animals, and even torment their prey, has implications for
how rational human beings should act only if this principle is true: if animals act some way, then it is always
morally permissible for rational human beings to act that way also. Readily
available counterexamples refute this premise, showing the moral irrelevance of
these kinds of claims (However, sometimes rational humans ought to emulate
animals’ non-maleficience and fairness [Balcombe, 2006, pp. 214-217]). The fact that natural forces
that are not moral agents (since they are not agents at all) are not immoral is
also morally irrelevant to how human moral agents ought to behave, contrary to Altick’s suggestion [p. 1].
Finally, Atlick seems to assume that a moral issue is a serious one
only if moral rights are involved. He writes that if a being doesn’t have moral
rights “there is not absolute reason
[to treat him or her in particular ways]; it becomes merely contingent and
circumstantial, advisable, rather than compulsory” [p. 5]. This is a very
controversial claim, one in need of serious defense. Many, likely most, moral
theorists don’t appeal to rights, yet they all think that some actions are
morally required, that a practical moral question can be of grave significance,
even though rights aren’t at issue.
To conclude, we should
bring things back to the concrete issues and make things personally
challenging, as the most important philosophy does. Each hour in the
Arguments have been
developed from nearly every
moral-theoretical perspective that has independent plausibility for human-human
relations for the conclusion that this
use of animals is morally wrong and should not be supported. We encourage
people to carefully identify these arguments’ exact premises and conclusions
and subject the reasoning to patient, engaged, critical thinking. For some of
the relevant empirical information needed to do this thinking, see www.TryVeg.com, www.VeganOutreach.org, and www.ChooseVeg.com, as well as the
philosophical references from our review and other writings (Nobis, 2008). We
hope that readers will rigorously and reasonably
pursue these issues and make informed, critically-reasoned, and ably-defended
decisions about what to think, feel, and do
about such pressing matters of life and death.
Altick, John. 2007. “Putting Humans First? YES!” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, 2007.
Balcombe, Jonathan. 2006. Pleasurable Kingdom: Animals and the Nature of Feeling Good.
Graham, David and Nobis, Nathan. 2006. “Putting
Humans First? Review of Putting Humans
First: Why We Are Nature's Favorite by Tibor Machan,” The Journal of
Ayn Rand Studies, Fall 2006, Vol. 8, No. 1,
85-104. Available at http://www.NathanNobis.com
Graham, David. 2004. A libertarian replies to Tibor Machan’s “why Animal Rights
Don’t Exist.” Available at: http://www.strike-the-root.com/4/graham/graham1.html.
Dombrowski, Daniel A. 1997. Babies and Beasts: The
Argument from Marginal Cases.
Klein, Shawn. 2004a. “The Problem
of Animal Rights.” Navigator, June, 2004.
Available at http://www.objectivistcenter.org/showcontent.aspx?ct=926&h=53
Klein, Shawn. 2004b. “Letters: Animals and the Law.” Navigator, November, 2004,
http://www.objectivistcenter.org/ct-985-Letters_Animal_Rights_Frank_Quattrone.aspx
Machan, Tibor. 2004. Putting Humans First: Why We
Are Nature's Favorite.
Nobis, Nathan. 2008. "Rational Engagement,
Emotional Response and the Prospects for Progress in Animal Use 'Debates'."
In Jeremy Garrett, ed., Animal Research in Theory and
Practice.
Regan, Tom. 2003. Animal Rights, Human Wrongs: An Introduction
to Moral Philosophy.
Regan, Tom. 2004 (1983). The Case for Animal Rights, updated
edition.
Wilson,
Scott. 2005. "The
Species-Norm Account of Moral Status", Between the Species:
An Electronic Journal for the Study of Philosophy and Animals.
Available at http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/%7Ejlynch/wilson.html
[1] Animals are raised and killed to be eaten for the
pleasure, convenience and custom of eating them, not nutritional or medical
necessity. Readers are encouraged to
consult the medical and nutritional literature on this issue, e.g., the
literature review found in the Position
Statement of the American Dietetic Association (2003); here is a selection
from the review’s abstract:
It is the position of the American Dietetic Association and Dietitians
of Canada that appropriately planned vegetarian diets are healthful,
nutritionally adequate and provide health benefits in the prevention and
treatment of certain diseases. . . . Well-planned vegan and other types of
vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including
during pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood and adolescence. Vegetarian
diets offer a number of nutritional benefits, including lower levels of
saturated fat, cholesterol, and animal protein as well as higher levels of
carbohydrates, fiber, magnesium, potassium, folate,
and antioxidants such as vitamins C and E and phytochemicals.
Vegetarians have been reported to have lower body mass indices than nonvegetarians, as well as lower rates of death from
ischemic heart disease; vegetarians also show lower blood cholesterol levels;
lower blood pressure; and lower rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and
prostate and colon cancer.
[2] In responding to a selection from
his book that Machan submitted as a letter to the
editor, Klein responds (2004b): “Machan . .
discharge[s] the objection from Singer and company [i.e., the AMC] too quickly.
The point of the marginal-humans argument, I take it, is not to say we should
reason from these special cases to a general rule or theory, but that these
special cases undermine what we took to be the general rule or theory.
This manner of arguing is comparable to arguing that a scientific hypothesis is
in need of revision or rejection because of certain observations that the
hypothesis doesn't appear to handle or predict. Singer and Regan are arguing
that our general theory of rights cannot handle the special cases of marginal
humans in a non-arbitrary way and is therefore in need of revision. I hope my
article shows why such a revision is not necessary.” Above we argued that
Klein’s “revision” fails.