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-PREFACE
-Practical ethics covers a wide area. We can find ethical ramifications
-in most of our choices, if we look hard enough. This
-book does not attempt to cover this whole area. The problems
-it deals with have been selected on two grounds: their relevance,
-and the extent to which philosophical reasoning can contribute
-to a discussion of them.
-I regard an ethical issue as relevant if it is one that any thinking
-person must face. Some of the issues discussed in this book
-confront us daily: what are our personal responsibilities towards
-the poor? Are we justified in treating animals as nothing more
-than machines- producing flesh for us to eat? Should we be
-using paper that is not recycled? And why should we bother
-about acting in accordance with moral principles anyway?
-Other problems, like abortion and euthanasia, fortunately are
-not everyday decisions for most of us; but they are issues that
-can arise at some time in our lives. They are also issues of current
-concern about which any active participant in our society's decision-
-making process needs to reflect.
-The extent to which an issue can usefully be discussed philosophically
-depends on the kind of issue it is. Some issues are
-controversial largely because there are facts in dispute. For example,
-whether the release of new organisms created by the
-use of recombinant DNA ought to be permitted seems to hang
-largely on whether the organisms pose a serious risk to the
-environment. Although philosophers may lack the expertise to
-tackle this question, they may still be able to say something
-useful about whether it is acceptable to run a given risk of
-vii
-Preface
-environmental damage. In other cases, however, the facts are
-clear and accepted by both sides; it is conflicting ethical views
-that give rise to disagreement over what to do. Then the kind
-of reasoning and analysis that philosophers practise really can
-make a difference. The issues discussed in this book are ones
-in which ethical, rather than factual, disagreement determines
-the positions people take. The potential contribution of philosophers
-to discussions of these issues is therefore considerable.
-This book has played a central role in events that must give
-pause to anyone who thinks that freedom of thought and
-expression can be taken for granted in liberal democracies today.
-Since its first publication in 1979, it has been widely read and
-used in many courses at universities and colleges. It has been
-tr-anslated into German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and Swedish.
-The response has generally been positive. There are, of
-course, many who disagree with the arguments presented in
-the book, but the disagreement has almost always been at the
-level of reasoned debate. The only exception has been the reaction
-in German-speaking countries. In Germany, Austria, and
-Switzerland opposition to the views contained in this book
-reached such a peak that conferences or lectures at which I was
-invited to speak have been cancelled, and courses at German
-universitiej in which the book was to be used have been subjected
-to such repeated disruption that they could not continue.
-For readers interested in further details of this sorry story a fuller
-account is reprinted as an appendix.
-Naturally, the German opposition to this book has made me
-reflect on whether the views I have expressed really are, as at
-least some Germans appear to believe, so erroneous or so dangerous
-that they must not be uttered. Although much of the
-German opposition is simply misinformed about what I am
-saying, there is an underlying truth to the claim that the book
-breaks a taboo - or perhaps more than one taboo. In Germany
-since the defeat of Hitler it has not been possible openly to
-viii
-Preface
-discuss the question of euthanasia, nor the issue of whether a
-human life may be so full of misery as not to be wortl. living.
-More fundamental still, and not limited to Germany, is the taboo
-on comparing the value of human and nonhuman lives. In the
-commotion that followed the cancellation of a conference in
-Germany at which I had been invited to speak, the German
-sponsoring organisation, to disassociate itself from my views,
-passed a series of motions, one of which read: 'The uniqueness
-of human life forbids any comparison - or more specifically,
-equation - of human existence with other living beings, with
-their forms of life or interests.' Comparing, and in some cases
-equating, the lives of humans and animals is exactly what this
-book is about; in fact it could be said that if there is any single
-aspect of this book that distinguishes it from other approaches
-to such issues as human equality, abortion, euthanasia, and the
-environment, it is the fact that these topics are approached with
-a conscious disavowal of any assumption that all members of
-our own species have, merely because they are members of our
-species, any distinctive worth or inherent value that puts them
-above members of other species. The belief in human superiority
-is a very fundamental one, and it underlies our thinking in many
-sensitive areas. To challenge it is no trivial matter, and that such
-a challenge should provoke a strong reaction ought not to suprise
-us. Nevertheless, once we have understood that the
-breaching of this taboo on comparing humans and animals is
-partly responsible for the protests, it becomes clear that there is
-no going back. For reasons that are developed in subsequent
-chapters, to prohibit any cross-species comparisons would be
-philosophically indefensible. It would also make it impossible
-to overcome the wrongs we are now doing to nonhuman animals,
-and would reinforce attitudes that have done immense
-irreparable damage to the environment of this planet that we
-share with members of other species.
-So I have not backed away from the views that have caused
-so much controversy in German-speaking lands. If these views
-ix
-Preface
-have their dangers, the dangers of attempting to continue to
-maintain the present crumbling taboos are greater still. Needless
-to say, many will disagree with what I have to say. Objections
-and counter-arguments are welcome. Since the days of Plato,
-philosophy has advanced dialectically as philosophers have offered
-reasons for disagreeing with the views of other philosophers.
-Disagreement is good, because it is the way to a more
-defensible position; the suggestion that the views I have advanced
-should not even be discussed is, however, a totally different
-matter, and one that I am quite content to leave to readers,
-after they have read and reflected upon the chapters that follow.
-Though I have not changed my views on the issues that have
-aroused the most fanatical opposition, this revised edition contains
-many other changes. I have added two new chapters on
-important ethical questions that were not covered in the previous
-edition: Chapter 9 on the refugee question and chapter
-lOon the environment. Chapter 2 has a new section on equality
-and disability. The sections of Chapter 6 on embryo experimentation
-and fetal tissue use are also new. Every chapter has
-been reworked, factual material has been updated, and where
-my position has been misunderstood by my critics, I have tried
-to make it clearer.
-As far as my underlying ethical views are concerned, some
-of my friends and colleagues will no doubt be distressed to find
-that countless hours spent discussing these matters with me
-have served only to reinforce my conviction that the consequentialist
-approach to ethics taken in the first edition is fundamentally
-sound. There have been two significant changes to
-the form of consequentialism espoused. The first is that I make
-use of the distinction drawn by R. M. Hare, in his book Moral
-Thinking, between two distinct levels of moral reasoning - the
-everyday intuitive level and the more reflective, critical level.
-The second is that I have dropped the suggestion - which I
-advanced rather tentatively in the fifth chapter ofthe first edition
-- that one might try to combine both the 'total' and 'prior
-x
-Preface
-existence' versions of utilitarianism, applying the former to sentient
-beings who are not self-conscious and the latter to those
-who are. I now think that preference utilitarianism draws a
-sufficiently sharp distinction between these two categories of
-being to enable us to apply one version of utilitarianism to all
-sentient beings. Nevertheless, I am still not entirely satisfied with
-my treatment of this whole question of how we should deal
-with ethical choices that involve bringing a being or beings into
-existence. As Chapters 4-7 make clear, the way in which we
-answer this perplexing question has implications for the issues
-of abortion, the treatment of severely disabled newborn infants,
-and for the killing of animals. The period between editions of
-this book has seen the publication of by far the most intricate
-and far-sighted analysis to date of this problem: Derek Parfii's
-Reasons and Persons. Unfortunately, Parfit himself remains baffled
-by the questions he has raised, and his conclusion is that
-the search for 'Theory X' - a satisfactory way of answering the
-question - must continue. So perhaps it is hardly to be expected
-that a satisfactory solution can emerge in this, both slimmer
-and more wide-ranging, volume.
-In writing this book I have made extensive use of my own
-previously published articles and books. Thus Chapter 3 is based
-on Animal Liberation (New York ReviewlRandom House, 2d
-edition, 1990), although it takes into account objections made
-since the book first appeared in 1975. The sections of Chapter
-6 on such topics as in vitro fertilisation, the argument from
-potential, embryo experimentation, and the use of fetal tissue,
-all draw on work I wrote jointly with Karen Dawson, which
-was published as 'IVF and the Argument From Potential' in
-Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 17 (1988), and in Peter Singer,
-Helga Kuhse, and others, Embryo Experimentation (Cambridge
-UniversiW Press, 1990). In this revised edition, Chapter 7 includes
-points reached together with Helga Kuhse in working
-on our much fuller treatment of the issue of euthanasia for
-xi
-Preface
-severely disabled infants, Should the Baby Live? (Oxford University
-Press, 1985). Chapter 8 restates arguments from 'Famine,
-Affluence and Morality', Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 1
-(1972) and from 'Reconsidering the Famine Relief Argument'
-in Peter Brown and Henry Shue (eds.) Food Policy: The Responsibility
-of the United States in the Life and Death Choices (New York,
-The Free Press, 1977). Chapter 9 again draws on a co-authored
-piece, this time written with my wife, Renata Singer, and first
-published as 'The Ethics of Refugee Policy' in M. Gibney (ed.),
-Open Borders? Closed Societies? (Greenwood Press, New York,
-1988). Chapter lOis based on 'Environmental Values', a chapter
-that I contributed to Ian Marsh (ed.), The Environmental Challenge
-(Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 1991). Parts of Chapter
-11 draw on my first book, Democracy and Disobedience (Oxford,
-Clarendon Press, 1973).
-H. J. McCloskey, Derek Parfit, and Robert Young provided
-useful comments on a draft version of the first edition of this
-book. Robert Young's ideas also entered into my thinking at an
-earlier stage, when we jointly taught a course on these topics
-at La Trobe University. The chapter on euthanasia, in particular,
-owes much to his ideas, though he may not agree with everything
-in it. Going back further still, my interest in ethics was
-stimulated by H. J. McCloskey, whom I was fortunate to have
-as a teacher during my undergraduate years; while the mark
-left by R. M. Hare, who taught me at Oxford, is apparent in the
-ethical foundations underlying the positions taken in this book.
-Jeremy Mynott, of Cambridge University Press, encouraged me
-to write the book and helped to shape and improve it as it went
-along.
-For assistance with the revised edition, I must thank those
-with whom I have worked jointly on material that has been
-included in this book: Karen Dawson, Helga Kuhse, and Renata
-Singer. Helga Kuhse, in particular, has been a close colleague
-for the past ten years, and during that period I have learned
-much by discussing most of the topics in this book with her.
-xii
-Preface
-She also read and commented on several chapters of this revised
-edition. Paola Cavalieri gave me detailed comments and criticism
-on the entire draft, and I thank her for suggesting several
-improvements. There are, of course, many others who have
-challenged what I wrote in the first edition and forced me to
-think about these issues again, but to thank them all is impossible,
-and to thank a few would be unjust. This time it was
-Terence Moore, at Cambridge University Press, whose enthusiasm
-for the book provided the stimulus for me to carry out
-the revisions.
-To give an uncluttered text, the notes, references, and suggested
-further reading are grouped together at the end of the
-book.
-xiii
-1
-ABOUT ETHICS
-THIS book is about practical ethics, that is, the application
-of ethics or morality - I shall use the words interchangeably
-- to practical issues like the treatment of ethnic minorities,
-equality for women, the use of animals for food and research,
-the preservation of the natural environment, abortion, euthanasia,
-and the obligation of the wealthy to help the poor. No
-doubt the reader will want to get on to these issues without
-delay; but there are some preliminaries that must be dealt with
-at the start. In order to have a useful discussion within ethics,
-it is necessary to say a little about ethics, so that we have a clear
-understanding of what we are doing when we discuss ethical
-questions. This first chapter therefore sets the stage for the remainder
-of the book. In order to prevent it from growing into
-an entire volume itself, I have kept it brief. If at times it is
-dogmatic, that is because I cannot take the space properly to
-consider all the different conceptions of ethics that might be
-opposed to the one I shall defend; but this chapter will at least
-serve to reveal the assumptions on which the remainder of the
-book is based.
-WHAT ETHICS IS NOT
-Some people think that morality is now out of date. They regard
-morality as a system of nasty puritanical prohibitions, mainly
-designed to stop people having fun. Traditional moralists claim
-to be the defenders of morality in general, but they are really
-defending a particular moral code. They have been allowed to
-1
-Pradical Ethics
-preempt the field to such an extent that when a newspaper
-headline reads BISHOP ATIACKS DECLINING MORAL STANDARDS,
-we expect to read yet again about promiscuity, homosexuality,
-pornography, and so on, and not about the puny
-amounts we give as overseas aid to poorer nations, or our reckless
-indifference to the natural environment of our planet.
-So the first thing to say about ethics is that it is not a set of
-prohibitions particularly concerned with sex. Even in the era of
-AIDS, sex raises no unique moral issues at all. Decisions about
-sex may involve considerations of honesty, concern for others,
-prudence, and so on, but there is nothing special about sex in
-this respect, for the same could be said of decisions about driving
-a car. (In fact, the moral issues raised by driving a car, both
-from an environmental and from a safety point of view, are
-much more serious than those raised by sex.) Accordingly, this
-book contains no discussion of sexual morality. There are more
-important ethical issues to be considered.
-Second, ethics is not an ideal system that is noble in theory
-but no good in practice. The reverse of this is closer to the truth:
-an ethical judgment that is no good in practice must suffer from
-a theoretical defect as well, for the whole point of ethical judgments
-is to guide practice.
-Some people think that ethics is inapplicable to the real world
-because they regard it as a system of short and simple rules like
-'Do not lie', 'Do not steal', and 'Do not kill'. It is not surprising
-that those who hold this view of ethics should also believe that
-ethics is not suited to life's complexities. In unusual situations,
-simple rules conflict; and even when they do not, following a
-rule can lead to disaster. It may normally be wrong to lie, but
-if you were living in Nazi Germany and the Gestapo came to
-your door looking for Jews, it would surely be right to deny
-the existence of the Jewish family hiding in your attic.
-Like the failure of a restrictive sexual morality, the failure of
-an ethic of simple rules must not be taken as a failure of ethics
-as a whole. It is only a failure of one view of ethics, and not
-2
-About Ethics
-even an irremediable failure of that view. The deontologists -
-those who think that ethics is a system of rules - can rescue
-their position by finding more complicated and more specific
-rules that do not conflict with each other, or by ranking the
-rules in some hierarchical structure to resolve conflicts between
-them. Moreover, there is a long-standing approach to ethics
-that is quite untouched by the complexities that make simple
-rules difficult to apply. This is the consequentialist view. Consequentialists
-start not with moral rules but with goals. They
-assess actions by the extent to which they further these goals.
-The best-known, though not the only, consequentialist theory
-is utilitarianism. The classical utilitarian regards an action as
-right if it produces as much or more of an increase in the happiness
-of all affected by it than any alternative action, and wrong
-if it does not.
-The consequences of an action vary according to the circumstances
-in which it is performed. Hence a utilitarian can never
-properly be accused of a lack of realism, or of a rigid adherence
-to ideals in defiance of practical experience. The utilitarian will
-judge lying bad in some circumstances and good in others, depending
-on its consequences.
-Third, ethics is not something intelligible only in the context
-of religion. I shall treat ethics as entirely independent of religion.
-Some theists say that ethics cannot do without religion because
-the very meaning of 'good' is nothing other than 'what
-God approves'. Plato refuted a similar claim more than two
-thousand years ago by arguing that if the gods approve of some
-actions it must be because those actions are good, in which case
-it cannot be the gods' approval that makes them good. The
-alternative view makes divine approval entirely arbitrary: if the
-gods had happened to approve of torture and disapprove of
-helping our neighbours, torture would have been good and
-helping our neighbours bad. Some modem theists have attempted
-to extricate themselves from this type of dilemma by
-maintaining that God is good and so could not possibly approve
-3
-\
-Pradical Ethics
-of torture; but these theists are caught in a trap of their own
-making, for what can they possibly mean by the assertion that
-God is good? That God is approved of by God?
-Traditionally, the more important link between religion and
-ethics was that religion was thought to provide a reason for
-doing what is right, the reason being that those who are virtuous
-will be rewarded by an eternity of bliss while the rest roast in
-hell. Not all religious thinkers have accepted this argument:
-Immanuel Kant, a most pious Christian, scorned anything that
-smacked of a self-interested motive for obeying the moral law.
-We must obey it, he said, for its own sake. Nor do we have to
-be Kantians to dispense with the motivation offered by traditional
-religion. There is a long line of thought that finds the
-source of ethics in the attitudes of benevolence and sympathy
-for others that most people have. This is, however, a complex
-topic, and since it is the subject of the final chapter of this book
-I shall not pursue it here. It is enough to say that our everyday
-observation of our fellow human beings clearly shows that ethical
-behaviour does not require belief in heaven and hell.
-The fourth, and last, claim about ethics that I shall deny in
-this opening chapter is that ethics is relative or subjective. At
-least, I shall deny these claims in some of the senses in which
-they are often made. This point requires a more extended discussion
-than the other three.
-Let us take first the oft -asserted idea that ethics is relative to
-the society one happens to live in. This is true in one sense and
-false in another. It is true that, as we have already seen in
-discussing consequentialism, actions that are right in one situation
-because of their good consequences may be wrong in
-another situation because of their bad consequences. Thus casual
-sexual intercourse may be wrong when it leads to the existence
-of children who cannot be adequately cared for, and not
-wrong when, because of the existence of effective contraception,
-it does not lead to reproduction at all. But this is only a superficial
-form of relativism. While it suggests that the applicability
-4
-About Ethics
-of a specific principle like 'Casual sex is wrong' may be relative
-to time and place, it says nothing against such a principle being
-objectively valid in specific circumstances, or against the universal
-applicability of a more general principle like 'Do what
-increases happiness and reduces suffering:
-The more fundamental form of relativism became popular in
-the nineteenth century when data on the morai-beliefs and
-practices of far-flung societies began pouring in. To the strict
-reign of Victorian prudery the knowledge that there were places
-where sexual relations between unmarried people were regarded
-as perfectly wholesome brought the seeds of a revolution
-in sexual attitudes. It is not surprising that to some the new
-knowledge suggested, not merely that the moral code of nineteenth-
-century Europe was not objectively valid, but that no
-moral judgment can do more than reflect the customs of the
-society in which it is made.
-Marxists adapted this form of relativism to their own theories.
-The ruling ideas of each period, they said, are the ideas of its
-ruling class, and so the morality of a society is relative to its
-dominant economic class, and thus indirectly relative to its economic
-basis. So they triumphantly refuted the claims of feudal
-and bourgeois morality to objective, universal validity. But this
-raises a problem: if all morality is relative, what is so special
-about communism? Why side with the proletariat rather than
-the bourgeoisie?
-Engels dealt with this problem in the only way possible, by
-abandoning relativism in favour of the more limited claim that
-the morality of a society divided into classes will always be
-relative to the ruling class, although the morality of a society
-without class antagonisms could be a 'really human' morality.
-This is no longer relativism at all. Nevertheless, Marxism, in a
-confused sort of way, still provides the impetus for a lot of woolly
-relativist ideas.
-The problem that led Engels to abandon relativism defeats
-ordinary ethical relativism as well. Anyone who has thought
-5
-Practical Ethics
-through a difficult ethical decision knows that being told what
-our society thinks we ought to do does not settle the quandary.
-We have to reach our own decision. The beliefs and customs
-we were brought up with may exercise great influence on us,
-but once we start to reflect upon them we can decide whether
-to act in accordance with them, or to go against them.
-The opposite view - that ethics is always relative to a particular
-society - has most implausible consequences. If our society
-disapproves of slavery, while another society approves of it, we
-have no basis to choose between these conflicting views. Indeed,
-on a relativist analysis there is really no conflict - when I say
-slavery is wrong I am really only saying that my society disapproves
-of slavery, and when the slaveowners from the other
-society say that slavery is right, they are only saying that their
-society approves of it. Why argue? Obviously we could both be
-speaking the truth.
-Worse still, the relativist cannot satisfactorily account for the
-nonconformist. If 'slavery is wrong' means 'my society disapproves
-of slavery', then someone who lives in a society that
-does not disapprove of slavery is, in claiming that slavery is
-wrong, making a simple factual error. An opinion poll could
-demonstrate the error of an ethical judgment. Would-be reformers
-are therefore in a parlous situation: when they set out
-to change the ethical views of their fellow-citizens they are
-necessarily mistaken; it is only when they succeed in winning
-most of the society over to their own views that those views
-become right.
-These difficulties are enough to sink ethical relativism; ethical
-subjectivism at least avoids making nonsense of the valiant efforts
-of would-be moral reformers, for it makes ethical judgments
-depend on the approval or disapproval of the person
-making the judgment, rather than that person's society. There
-are other difficulties, though, that at least some forms of ethical
-subjectivism cannot overcome.
-If those who say that ethics is subjective mean by this that
-6
-About Ethics
-when I say that cruelty to animals is wrong I am really only
-saying that I disapprove of cruelty to animals, they are faced
-with an aggravated form of one of the difficulties of relativism:
-the inability to account for ethical disagreement. What was true
-for the relativist of disagreement between people from different
-societies is for the subjectivist true of disagreement between any
-two people. I say cruelty to animals is wrong: someone else
-says it is not wrong. If this means that I disapprove of cruelty
-to animals and someone else does not, both statements may be
-true and so there is nothing to argue about.
-Other theories often described as 'subjectivist' are not open
-to this objection. Suppose someone maintains that ethical judgmeJ:?
-ts are neither true nor false because they do not describe
-anything - neither objective moral facts, nor one's own subjective
-states of mind. This theory might hold that, as C. 1.
-Stevenson suggested, ethical judgments express attitudes, rather
-than describe them, and we disagree about ethics because we
-try, by expressing our own attitude, to bring our listeners to a
-similar attitude. Or it might be, as R. M. Hare has urged, that
-ethical judgments are prescriptions and therefore more closely
-related to commands than to statements of fact. On this view
-we disagree because we care about what people do. Those features
-of ethical argument that imply the existence of objective
-moral standards can be explained away by maintaining that this
-is some kind of error - perhaps the legacy of the belief that
-ethics is a God-given system of law, or perhaps just another
-example of our tendency to objectify our personal wants and
-preferences. J. 1. Mackie has defended this view.
-Provided they are carefully distinguished from the crude form
-of subjectivism that sees ethical judgments as descriptions of the
-speaker's attitudes, these are plausible accounts of ethics. In
-their denial of a realm of ethical facts that is part of the real
-world, existing quite independently of us, they are no doubt
-correct; but does it follow from this that ethical judgments are
-immune from criticism, that there is no role for reason or ar-
-7
-Practical Ethics
-gument in ethics, and that, from the standpoint of reason, any
-ethical judgment is as good as any other? I do not think it does,
-and none of the three philosophers referred to in the previous
-paragraph denies reason and argument a role in ethics, though
-they disagree as to the significance of this role.
-This issue of the role that reason can play in ethics is the
-crucial point raised by the claim that ethics is subjective. The
-non-existence of a mysterious realm of objective ethical facts
-does not imply the non-existence of ethical reasoning. It may
-even help, since if we could arrive at ethical judgments only by
-intuiting these strange ethical facts, ethical argument would be
-more difficult still. So what has to be shown to put practical
-ethics on a sound basis is that ethical reasoning is possible. Here
-the temptation is to say simply that the proof of the pudding
-lies in the eating, and the proof that reasoning is possible in
-ethics is to be found in the remaining chapters of this book; but
-this is not entirely satisfactory. From a theoretical point of view
-it is unsatisfactory because we might find ourselves reasoning
-about ethics without really understanding how this can happen;
-and from a practical point of view it is unsatisfactory because
-our reasoning is more likely to go astray if we lack a grasp of
-its foundations. I shall therefore attempt to say something about
-how we can reason in ethics.
-WHAT ETHICS IS: ONE VIEW
-What follows is a sketch of a view of ethics that allows reason
-an important role in ethical decisions. It is not the only possible
-view of ethics, but it is a plausible view. Once again, however,
-I shall have to pass over qualifications and objections worth a
-chapter to themselves. To those who think these undiscussed
-objections defeat the position I am advancing, I can only say,
-again, that this whole chapter may be treated as no more than
-a statement of the assumptions on which this book is based. In
-8
-About Ethics
-that way it will at least assist in giving a clear view of what I
-take ethics to be.
-What is it to make a moral judgment, or to argue about an
-ethical issue, or to live according to ethical standards? How do
-moral judgments differ from other practical judgments? Why
-do we regard a woman's decision to have an abortion as raising
-an ethical issue, but not her decision to change her job? What
-is the difference between a person who lives by ethical standards
-and one who doesn't?
-An these questions are reJated, so we only need to consider
-one of them; but to do this we need to say something about
-the nature of ethics. Suppose that we have studied the lives of
-a number of different people, and we know a lot about what
-they do, what they believe, and so on. Can we then decide
-which of them are living by ethical standards and which are
-not?
-We might think that the way to proceed here is to find out
-who be~teves it wrong to lie, cheat, steal, and so on and does
-not do any of these things, and who has no such beliefs, and
-shows no such restraint in their actions. Then those in the first
-group would be living according to ethical standards and those
-in the second group would not be. But this procedure mistakenly
-assimilates two distinctions: the first is the distinction between
-living according to (what we judge to be) the right ethical standards
-and living according to (what we judge to be) mistaken
-ethical standards; the second is the distinction between living
-according to some ethical standards, and living according to no
-ethical standards at all. Those who lie and cheat, but do not
-believe what they are doing to be wrong, may be living according
-to ethical standards. They may believe, for any of a
-number of possible reasons, that it is right to lie, cheat, steal,
-and so on. They are not living according to conventional ethical
-standards, but they may be living according to some other ethical
-standards.
-This first attempt to distinguish the ethical from the non-
-9
-Practical Ethics
-ethical was mistaken, but we can learn from our mistakes. We
-found that we must concede that those who hold unconventional
-ethical beliefs are still living according to ethical standards,
-if they believe, for any reason, that it is right to do as they are doing.
-The italicised condition gives us a clue to the answer we are
-seeking. The notion of living according to ethical standards is
-tied up with the notion of defending the way one is living, of
-giving a reason for it, of justifying it. Thus people may do all
-kinds of things we regard as wrong, yet still be living according
-to ethical standards, if they are prepared to defend and justify
-what they do. We may find the justification inadequate, and
-may hold that the actions are wrong, but the attempt at justification,
-whether successful or not, is sufficient to bring the
-person's conduct within the domain of the ethical as opposed
-to the non-ethical. When, on the other hand, people cannot
-put forward any justification for what they do, we may reject
-their claim to be living according to ethical standards, even if
-what they do is in accordance with conventional moral principles.
-We can go further. If we are to accept that a person is living
-according to ethical standards, the justification must be of a
-certain kind. For instance, a justification in terms of self -interest
-alone will not do. When Macbeth, contemplating the murder
-of Duncan, admits that only 'vaulting ambition' drives him to
-do it, he is admitting that the act cannot be justified ethically.
-'So that I can be king in his place' is not a weak attempt at an
-ethical justification for assassination; it is not the sort ofreason
-that counts as an ethical justification at all. Self-interested acts
-must be shown to be compatible with more broadly based ethical
-principles if they are to be ethically defen~ible, for the notion
-of ethics carries with it the idea of something bigger than the
-individual. If I am to defend my conduct on ethical grounds, I
-cannot point only to the benefits it brings me. I must address
-myself to a larger audience.
-From ancient times, philosophers and moralists have exlO
-/
-About Ethics
-pressed the idea that ethical conduct is acceptable from a point
-of view that is somehow universal. The 'Golden Rule' attributed
-to Moses, to be found in the book of Leviticus and subsequently
-repeated by Jesus, tells us to go beyond our own personal interests
-and 'love thy neighbour as thyself' - in other words, give
-the same weight to the interests of others as one gives to one's
-own interests. The same idea of putting oneself in the position
-of another is involved in the other Christian formulation of the
-commandment, that we do to others as we would have them
-do to us. The Stoics held that ethics derives from a universal
-natural law. Kant developed this idea into his famous formula:
-'Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same
-time will that it should become a universal law.' Kant's theory
-has itself been modified and developed by R. M. Hare, who sees
-universalisability as a logical feature of moral judgments. The
-eighteenth -century British philosophers Hutcheson, Hume, and
-Adam Smith appealed to an imaginary 'impartial spectator' as
-the test of a moral judgment, and this theory has its modem
-version in the Ideal Observer theory. Utilitarians, from Jeremy
-Bentham to J. J. C. Smart, take it as axiomatic that in deciding
-moral issues 'each counts for one and none for more than one';
-while John Rawls, a leading contemporary critic of utilitarianism,
-incorporates essentially the same axiom into his own theory
-by deriving basic ethical principles from an imaginary choice in
-which those choosing do not know whether they will be the
-ones who gain or lose by the principles they select. Even Continental
-European philosophers like the existentialist Jean -Paul
-Sartre and the critical theorist Jiirgen Habermas, who differ in
-many ways from their English-speaking colleagues - and from
-each other - agree that ethics is in some sense universal.
-One could argue endlessly about the merits of each of these
-characterisations of the ethical; but what they have in common
-is more important than their differences. They agree that an
-ethica~rinciple cannot be justified in relation to any partial or
-sectional group. Ethics takes a universal point of view. This does
-II
-Practical Ethics
-not mean that a particular ethical judgment must be universally
-applicable. Circumstances alter causes, as we have seen. What
-it does mean is that in making ethical judgments we go beyond
-our own likes and dislikes. From an ethical point of view, the
-fact that it is I who benefit from, say, a more equal distribution
-of income and you who lose by it, is irrelevant. Ethics requires
-us to go beyond T and 'you' to the universal law, the universalisable
-judgment, the standpoint of the impartial spectator
-or ideal observer, or whatever we choose to call it.
-Can we use this universal aspect of ethics to derive an ethical
-theory that will give us guidance about right and wrong? Philosophers
-from the Stoics to Hare and Rawls have attempted
-this. No attempt has met with general acceptance. The problem
-is that if we describe the universal aspect of ethics in bare, formal
-terms, a wide range of ethical theories, including quite irreconcilable
-ones, are compatible with this notion of universality;
-if, on the other hand, we build up our description of the universal
-aspect of ethics so that it leads us ineluctably to one
-particular ethical theory, we shall be accused of smuggling our
-own ethical beliefs into our definition of the ethical - and this
-definition was supposed to be broad enough, and neutral
-enough, to encompass all serious candidates for the status of
-'ethical theory'. Since so many others have failed to overcome
-this obstacle to deducing an ethical theory from the universal
-aspect of ethics, it would be foolhardy to attempt to do so in a
-brief introduction to a work with a quite different aim. Nevertheless
-I shall propose something only a little less ambitious.
-The universal aspect of ethics, I suggest, does provide a persuasive,
-although not conclusive, reason for taking a broadly
-utilitarian position.
-My reason for suggesting this is as follows. In accepting that
-ethical judgments must be made from a universal point of view,
-I am accepting that my own interests cannot, simply because
-they are my interests, count more than the interests of anyone
-else. Thus my very natural concern that my own interests be
-12 .r
-About Ethics
-Iboked after must, when I think ethically, be extended to the
-interests of others. Now, imagine that I am trying to decide
-between two possible courses of action - perhaps whether to
-eat all the fruits I have collected myself, or to share them with
-others. Imagine, too, that I am deciding in a complete ethical
-vacuum, that I know nothing of any ethical considerations - I
-am, we might say, in a pre-ethical stage ofthinking. How would
-I make up my mind? One thing that would be still relevant
-would be how the possible courses of action will affect my
-interests. Indeed, if we define 'interests' broadly enough, so that
-we count anything people desire as in their interests (unless it
-is incompatible with another desire or desires), then it would
-seem that at this pre-ethical stage, only one's own interests can
-be relevant to the decision.
-Suppose I then begin to think ethically, to the extent of recognising
-that my own interests cannot count for more, simply
-because they are my own, than the interests of others. In place
-of my own interests, I now have to take into account the interests
-of all those affected by my decision. This requires me to
-weigh up all these interests and adopt the course of action most
-likely to maximise the interests of those affected. Thus at least
-at some level in my moral reasoning I must choose the course
-of action that has the best consequences, on balance, for all
-affected. (I say 'at some level in my moral reasoning' because,
-as we shall see later, there are utilitarian reasons for believing
-that we ought not to try to calculate these consequences for
-every ethical decision we make in our daily lives, but only in
-very unusual circumstances, or perhaps when we are reflecting
-on our choice of general principles to guide us in future. In
-other words, in the specific example given, at first glance one
-might think it obvious that sharing the fruit that I have gathered
-has better consequences for all affected than not sharing them.
-This may in t~ end also be the best general principle for us all
-to adopt, but before we can have grounds for believing this to
-be the case, we must also consider whether the effect of a general
-13
-Practical Ethics
-practice of sharing gathered fruits will benefit all those affected,
-by bringing about a more equal distribution, or whether it will
-reduce the amount of food gathered, because some will cease
-to gather anything if they know that they will get sufficient from
-their share of what others gather.)
-The way of thinking I have outlined is a form of utilitarianism.
-It differs from classical utilitarianism in that 'best consequences'
-is understood as meaning what, on balance, furthers the interests
-of those affected, rather than merely what increases pleasure
-and reduces pain. (It has, however, been suggested that classical
-utilitarians like Bentham and John Stuart Mill used 'pleasure'
-and 'pain' in a broad sense that allowed them to include achieving
-what one desired as a 'pleasure' and the reverse as a 'pain'.
-If this interpretation is correct, the difference between classical
-utilitarianism and utilitarianism based on interests disappears.)
-What does this show? It does not show that utilitarianism
-can be deduced from the universal aspect of ethics. There are
-other ethical ideals - like individual rights, the sanctity of life,
-justice, purity, and so on - that are universal in the required
-sense, and are, at least in some versions, incompatible with
-utilitarianism. It does show that we very swiftly arrive at an
-initially utilitarian position once we apply the universal aspect
-of ethics to simple, pre-ethical decision making. This, I believe,
-places the onus of proof on those who seek to go beyond utilitarianism.
-The utilitarian position is a minimal one, a first base
-that we reach by universalising self-interested decision making.
-We cannot, if we are to think ethically, refuse to take this step.
-If we are to be persuaded that we should go beyond utilitarianism
-and accept non-utilitarian moral rules or ideals, we need
-to be provided with good reasons for taking this further step.
-Until such reasons are produced, we have some grounds for
-remaining utilitarians.
-This tentative argument for utilitarianism corresponds to the
-way in which I shall discuss practical issues in this book. I am
-inclined to hold a utilitarian position, and to some extent the
-14
-About Ethics
-book may be taken as an attempt to indicate how a consistent
-utilitarianism would deal with a number of controversial problems.
-But I shall not take utilitarianism as the only ethical position
-worth considering. I shall try to show the bearing of other
-views, of theories of rights, of justice, of the sanctity of life, and
-so on, on the problems discussed. In this way readers will be
-able to come to their own conclusions about the relative merits
-of utilitarian and non-utilitarian approaches, and about the
-whole issue of the role of reason and argument in ethics.
-}
-15
-2
-EQUALITY AND ITS
-IMPLICATIONS
-THE BASIS OF EQUALITY
-THE present century has seen dramatic changes in moral
-attitudes. Most ofthese changes are still controversial. Abortion,
-almost everywhere prohibited thirty years ago, is now legal
-in many countries (though it is still opposed by substantial and
-respected sections of the population). The same is true of
-changes in attitudes to sex outside marriage, homosexuality,
-pornography, euthanasia, and suicide. Great as the changes
-have been, no new consensus has been reached. The issues
-remain controversial and it is possible to defend either side
-without jeopardising one's intellectual or social standing.
-Equality seems to be different. The change in attitudes to
-inequality - especially racial inequality - has been no less sudden
-and dramatic than the change in attitudes to sex, but it has
-been more complete. Racist assumptions shared by most Europeans
-at the tum of the century are now totally unacceptable,
-at least in public life. A poet could not now write of 'lesser
-breeds without the law', and retain - indeed enhance - his
-reputation, as Rudyard Kipling did in 1897. This does not mean
-that there are no longer any racists, but only that they must
-disguise their racism if their views and policies are to have any
-chance of general acceptance. Even South Africa has abandoned
-apartheid. The principle that all humans are equal is now part
-of the prevailing political and ethical orthodoxy. But what, exactly,
-does it mean and why do we accept it?
-Once we go beyond the agreement that blatant forms of racial
-16 r
-Equality and Its Implications
-discrimination are wrong, once we question the basis of the
-principle that all humans are equal and seek to apply this principle
-to particular cases, the consensus starts to weaken. One
-sign of this was the furor that occurred during the 1970s over
-the claims made by Arthur Jensen, professor of educational
-psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and H. J.
-Eysenck, professor of psychology at the University of London,
-about genetically based variations in intelligence between different
-races. Many of the most forceful opponents of Jensen
-and Eysenck assume that these claims, if sound, would justify
-racial discrimination. Are they right? Similar questions can
-be asked about research into differences between males and
-females.
-Another issue requiring us to think about the principle of
-equality is 'affirmative action'. Some philosophers and lawyers
-have argued that the principle of equality requires that when
-allocating jobs or university places we should favour members
-of disadvantaged minorities. Others have contended that the
-same principle of equality rules out any discrimination on racial
-grounds, whether for or against the worst-off members of society.
-We can only answer these questions if we are clear about
-what it is we intend to say, and can justifiably say, when we
-assert that all humans are equal - hence the need for an inquiry
-into the ethical foundations of the principle of equality.
-When we say that all humans are equal, irrespective of race
-or sex, what exactly are we claiming? Racists, sexists, and other
-opponents of equality have often pointed out that, by whatever
-test we choose, it simply is not true that all humans are equal.
-Some are tall, some are short; some are good at mathematics,
-others are poor at it; some can run 100 metres in ten seconds,
-some take fifteen> or twenty; some would never intentionally
-hurt another being, others would kill a stranger for $100 if they
-could get away with it; some have emotional lives that touch
-the heights of ecstasy and the depths of despair, while others
-17
-Pradical Ethics
-live on a more even plane, relatively untouched by what goes
-on around them. And so we could go on. The plain fact is that
-humans differ, and the differences apply to so many characteristics
-that the search for a factual basis on which to erect the
-principle of equality seems hopeless.
-John Rawls has suggested, in his influential book A Theory of
-Justice, that equality can be founded on the natural characteristics
-of human beings, provided we select what he calls a 'range
-property'. Suppose we draw a circle on a piece of paper. Then
-all points within the circle - this is the 'range' - have the property
-of being within the circle, and they have this property
-equally, Some points may be closer to the centre and others
-nearer the edge, but all are, equally, points inside the circle.
-Similarly, Rawls suggests, the property of 'moral personality' is
-a property that virtually all humans possess, and all humans
-who possess this property possess it equally. By 'moral personality'
-Rawls does not mean 'morally good personality'; he is
-using 'moral' in contrast to 'amoral'. A moral person, Rawls
-says, must have a sense of justice. More broadly, one might say
-that to be a moral person is to be the kind of person to whom
-one can make moral appeals, with some prospect that the appeal
-will be heeded.
-Rawls maintains that moral personality is the basis of human
-equality, a view that derives from his 'contract' approach to
-justice. The contract tradition sees ethics as a kind of mutually
-beneficial agreement - roughly, 'Don't hit me and I won't hit
-you.' Hence only those capable of appreciating that they are not
-being hit, and of restraining their own hitting accordingly, are
-within the sphere of ethics.
-There are problems with using moral personality as the basis
-of equality. One objection is that having a moral personality is
-a matter of degree. Some people are highly sensitive to issues
-of justice and ethics generally; others, for a variety of reasons,
-have only a limited awareness of such principles. The suggestion
-that being a moral person is the minimum necessary for coming
-18
-Equality and Its Implications
-within the scope of the principle of equality still leaves it open
-just where this minimal line is to be drawn. Nor is it intuitively
-obvious why, if moral personality is so important, we should
-not have grades of moral status, with rights and duties corresponding
-to the degree of refinement of one's sense of justice.
-Still more serious is the objection that it is not true that all
-humans are moral persons, even in the most minimal sense.
-Infants and small children, along with some intellectually disabled
-humans, lack the required sense of justice. Shall we then
-say that all humans are equal, except for very young or intellectually
-disabled ones? This is certainly not what we ordinarily
-understand by the principle of equality. If this revised principle
-implies that we may disregard the interests of very young or
-intellectually disabled humans in ways that would be wrong if
-they were older or more intelligent, we would need far stronger
-arguments to induce us to accept it. (Rawls deals with infants
-and children by including potential moral persons along with
-actual ones within the scope of the principle of equality. But
-this is an ad hoc device, confessedly designed to square his
-theory with our ordinary moral intuitions, rather than something
-for which independent arguments can be produced. Moreover
-although Rawls admits that those with irreparable
-intellectual disabilities 'may present a difficulty' he offers no
-suggestions towards the solution of this difficulty.)
-So the possession of 'moral personality' does not provide a
-satisfactory basis for the principle that all humans are equal. I
-doubt that any natural characteristic, whether a 'range property'
-or not, can fulfil this function, for I doubt that there is any
-morally significant property that all humans possess equally.
-There is another possible line of defence for the belief that
-there is a factual basis for a .principle of equality that prohibits
-racism and sexism. We can admit that humans differ as individuals,
-and yet insist that there are no morally significant differences
-between the races and sexes. Knowing that someone
-is of African or European descent, female or male, does not
--' 19
-Pradical Ethics
-enable us to draw conclusions about her or his intelligence,
-sense of justice, depth of feelings, or anything else that would
-entitle us to treat her or him as less than equal. The racist claim
-that people of European descent are superior to those of other
-races in these capacities is in this sense false. The differences
-between individuals in these respects are not captured by racial
-boundaries. The same is true of the sexist stereotype that sees
-women as emotionally deeper and more caring, but also less
-rational, less aggressive, and less enterprising than men. Obviously
-this is not true of women as a whole. Some women are
-emotionally shallower, less caring, and more rational, more
-aggressive and, more enterprising than some men.
-The fact that humans differ as individuals, not as races or
-sexes, is important, and we shall return to it when we come to
-discuss the implications of the claims made by Jensen, Eysenck,
-and others; yet it provides neither a satisfactory prinCiple of
-equality nor an adequate defence against a more sophisticated
-opponent of equality than the blatant racist or sexist. Suppose
-that someone proposes that people should be given intelligence
-tests and then classified into higher or lower status categories
-on the basis of the results. Perhaps those who scored above 125
-would be a slave-owning class; those scoring between 100 and
-125 would be free citizens but lack the right to own slaves;
-while those scoring below 100 would be made the slaves of
-those who had scored above 125. A hierarchical society of this
-sort seems as abhorrent as one based on race or sex; but if we
-base our support for equality on the factual claim that differences
-between individuals cut across racial and sexual boundaries, we
-have no grounds for opposing this kind of inegalitarianism. For
-this hierarchical society would be based on real differences between
-people.
-We can reject this 'hierarchy of intelligence' and similar fantastic
-schemes only if we are clear that the claim to equality
-does not rest on the possession of intelligence, moral personality,
-rationality, or similar matters offact. There is no logically com-
-20
-Equality and Its Implications
-pelling reason for assuming that a difference in ability between
-two people justifies any difference in the amount of consideration
-we give to their interests. Equality is a basic ethical principle,
-not an assertion of fact. We can see this if we return to
-our earlier discussion of the universal aspect of ethical judgments.
-We saw in the previous chapter that when I make an ethical
-judgment I must go beyond a personal or sectional point of view
-and take into account the interests of all those affected. This
-means that we weigh up interests, considered simply as interests
-and not as my interests, or the interests of Australians, or of
-people of European descent. This provides us with a basic principle
-of equality: the principle of equal consideration of interests.
-The essence of the principle of equal consideration of interests
-is that we give equal weight in our moral deliberations to the
-like interests of all those affected by our actions. This means
-that if only X and Y would be affected by a possible act, and if
-X stands to lose more than Y stands to gain, it is better not to
-do the act. We cannot, if we accept the principle of equal consideration
-of interests, say that doing the act is better, despite
-the facts described, because we are more concerned about Y
-than we are about X. What the principle really amounts to is
-this: an interest is an interest, whoever's interest it may be.
-We can make this more concrete by considering a particular
-interest, say the interest we have in the relief of pain. Then the
-principle says that the ultimate moral reason for relieving pain
-is simply the undesirability of pain as such, and not the undesirability
-of X's pain, which might be different from the undesirability
-of V's pain. Of course, X's pain might be more
-undesirable than V's pain because it is more painful, and then
-the principle of equal consideration would give greater weight
-to the relief of X's pain. Again, even wftere the pains are equal,
-other factors might be relevant, especially if others are affected.
-If there has been an earthquake we might give priority to the
-relief of a dpctor's pain so she can treat other victims. But the
-21
-Practical Ethics
-doctor's pain itself counts only once, and with no added weighting.
-The principle of equal consideration of interests acts like a
-pair of scales, weighing interests impartially. True scales favour
-the side where the interest is stronger or where several interests
-combine to outweigh a smaller number of similar interests; but
-they take n~ account of whose interests they are weighing.
-From this point of view race is irrelevant to the consideration
-of interests; for all that counts are the interests themselves. To
-give less consideration to a specified amount of pain because
-that pain was experienced by a member of a particular race
-would be to make an arbitrary distinction. Why pick on race?
-Why not on whether a person was born in a leap year? Or
-whether there is more than one vowel in her surname? All
-these characteristics are equally irrelevant to the undesirability
-of pain from the universal point of view. Hence the principle
-of equal consideration of interests shows straightforwardly why
-the most blatant forms of racism, like that of the Nazis, are
-wrong. For the Nazis were concerned only for the welfare of
-members of the 'Aryan' race, and the sufferings of Jews, Gypsies,
-and Slavs were of no concern to them.
-The principle of equal consideration of interests is sometimes
-thought to be a purely formal principle, lacking in substance
-and too weak to exclude any inegalitarian practice. We have
-already seen, however, that it does exclude racism and sexism,
-at least in their most blatant forms. If we look at the impact of
-the principle on the imaginary hierarchical society based on
-intelligence tests we can see that it is strong enough to provide
-a basis for rejecting this more sophisticated form of inegalitarianism,
-too.
-The principle of equal consideration of interests prohibits
-making our readiness to consider the interests of others depend
-on their abilities or other characteristics, apart from the characteristic
-of having interests. It is true that we cannot know
-where equal consideration of interests will lead us until we
-know what interests people have, and this may vary according
-22
-Equality and Its Implications
-to their abilities or other characteristics. Consideration of the
-interests of mathematically gifted children may lead us to teach
-them advanced mathematics at an early age, which for different
-children might be entirely pointless or positively harmful. But
-the basic element, the taking into account of the person's interests,
-whatever they may be, must apply to everyone, irrespective
-of race, sex, or scores on an intelligence test. Enslaving
-those who score below a certain line on an intelligence test
-would not - barring extraordinary and implausible beliefs'about
-human nature - be compatible with equal consideration. Intelligence
-has nothing to do with many important interests that
-humans have, like the interest in avoiding pain, in developing
-one's abilities, in satisfying basic needs for food and shelter, in
-enjoying friendly and loving relations with others, and in being
-free to pursue one's projects without unnecessary interference
-from others. Slavery prevents the slaves from satisfying these
-interests as they would want to; and the benefits it confers on
-the slave-owners are hardly comparable in importance to the
-harm it does to the slaves.
-So the principle of equal consideration of interests is strong
-enough to rule out an intelligence-based slave society as well
-as cruder forms of racism and sexism. It also rules out discrimination
-on the grounds of disability, whether intellectual or
-physical, in so far as the disability is not relevant to the interests
-under consideration (as, for example, severe intellectual disability
-might be if we are considering a person's interest in voting
-in an election). The principle of equal consideration of interests
-therefore may be a defensible form of the principle that all
-humans are equal, a form that we can use in discussing more
-controversial issues about equality. Before we go on to these
-- .. topics, however, it will be useful to say a little more about the
-nature of the principle.
-Equal consideration of interests is a minimal prinCiple of
-equality in the sense that it does not dictate equal treatment.
-Take a relatively straightforward example of an interest, the
-23
-Practical Ethics
-interest in having physical pain relieved. Imagine that after an
-earthquake I come across two victims, one with a crushed leg,
-in agony, and one with a gashed thigh, in slight pain. I have
-only two shots of morphine left. Equal treatment would suggest
-that I give one to each injured person, but one shot would not
-do much to relieve the pain of the person with the crushed leg.
-She would still be in much more pain than the other victim,
-and even after I have given her one shot. giving her the second
-shot would bring greater relief than giving a shot to the person
-in slight pain. Hence equal consideration of interests in this
-situation leads to what some may consider an inegalitarian result:
-two shots of morphine for one person, and none for the
-other.
-There is a still more controversial inegalitarian implication of
-the principle of equal consideration of interests. In the case
-above, although equal consideration of interests leads to unequal
-treatment, this unequal treatment is an attempt to produce
-a more egalitarian result. By giving the double dose to the more
-seriously injured person, we bring about a situation in which
-there is less difference in the degree of suffering felt by the two
-victims than there would be if we gave one dose to each. Instead
-of ending up with one person in considerable pain and one in
-no pain, we end up with two people in slight pain. This is in
-line with the principle of declining marginal utility, a principle
-well-known to economists, which states that for a given individuaL
-a set amount of something is more useful when people
-have little of it than when they have a lot. If I am struggling to
-survive on 200 grams of rice a day, and you provide me with
-an extra fifty grams per day, you have improved my position
-significantly; but if I already have a kilo of rice per day, I won't
-care much about the extra fifty grams. When marginal utility
-is taken into account the principle of equal consideration of
-interests inclines us towards an equal distribution of income,
-and to that extent the egalitarian will endorse its conclusions.
-What is likely to trouble the egalitarian about the principle of
-24
-Equality and Its Implications
-equal consideration of interests is that there are circumstances
-in which the principle of declining marginal utility does not
-hold or is overridden by countervailing factors.
-We can vary the example of the earthquake victims to illustrate
-this point. Let us say, again, that there are two victims,
-one more severely injured than the other, but this time we shall
-say that the more severely injured victim, A, has lost a leg and
-is in danger of losing a toe from her remaining leg; while the
-less severely injured victim, B, has an injury to her leg, but the
-limb can be saved. We have medical supplies for only one person.
-If we use them on the more severely injured victim the
-most we can do is save her toe, whereas if we use them on the
-less severely injured victim we can save her leg. In other words,
-we assume that the situation is as follows: without medical
-treatment, A loses a leg and a toe, while B loses only a leg; if
-we give the treatment to A, A loses a leg and B loses a leg; if we
-give the treatment to B, A loses a leg and a toe, while Bioses
-nothing.
-Assuming that it is worse to lose a leg than it is to lose a toe
-(even when that toe is on one's sole remaining foot) the principle
-of declining marginal utility does not suffice to give us the
-right answer in this situation. We will do more to further the
-interests, impartially considered, of those affected by our actions
-if we use our limited resources on the less seriously injured
-victim than on the more seriously injured one. Therefore this
-is what the principle of equal consideration of interests leads us
-to do. Thus equal consideration of interests can, in special cases,
-widen rather than narrow the gap between two peQple at different
-levels of welfare. It is for this reason that the principle is
-a minimal principle of equality, rather than a thoroughgoing
-egalitarian principle. A more thoroughgoing form of egalitarianism
-would, however, be difficult to justify, both in general
-terms and in its application to special cases of the kind just
-described.
-Minimal as it is, the principle of equal consideration of in-
-25
-Practical Ethics
-terests can seem too demanding in some cases. Can any of us
-really give equal consideration to the welfare of our family and
-the welfare of strangers? This question will be dealt with in
-Chapter 9, when we consider our obligations to assist those in
-need in poorer parts of the world. I shall try to show then that
-it does not force us to abandon the principle, although the
-principle may force us to abandon some other views we hold.
-Meanwhile we shall see how the principle assists us in discussing
-some of the controversial issues raised by demands for equality.
-EQUALITY AND GENETIC DIVERSITY
-In 1969 Arthur Jensen published a long article in the Harvard
-Educational Review entitled 'How Much Can We Boost IQ and
-Scholastic Achievement?' One short section of the article discussed
-the probable causes of the undisputed fact that - on
-average - African Americans do not score as well as most other
-Americans in standard IQ tests. Jensen summarised the upshot
-of this section as follows:
-All we are left with are various lines of evidence, no one of which
-is definitive alone, but which, viewed altogether, make it a not
-unreasonable hypothesis that genetic factors are strongly implicated
-in the average negro-white intelligence difference. The
-preponderance of evidence is, in my opinion, less consistent with
-a strictly environmental hypothesis than with a genetic hypothesis,
-which, of course, does not exclude the influence of environment
-or its interaction with genetic factors.
-This heavily qualified statement comes in the midst of a detailed
-review of a complex scientific subject, published in a scholarly
-journal. It would hardly have been surprising if it passed unnoticed
-by anyone but scientists working in the area of psychology
-or genetics. Instead it was widely reported in the
-popular press as an attempt to defend racism on scientific
-grounds. Jensen was accused of spreading racist propaganda
-and likened to Hitler. His lectures were shouted down and stu-
-26
-Equality and Its Implications
-dents demanded that he be dismissed from his university post.
-H. J. Eysenck, a British professor of psychology who supported
-Jensen's theories received similar treatment, in Britain and Australia
-as well as in the United States. Interestingly, Eysenck's
-argument did not suggest that those of European descent have
-the highest average intelligence among Americans; instead, he
-noted some evidence that Americans of Japanese and Chinese
-descent do better on tests of abstract reasoning (despite coming
-from backgrounds lower on the socioeconomic scale) than
-Americans of European descent.
-The opposition to genetic explanations of alleged racial differences
-in intelligence is only one manifestation of a more
-general opposition to genetic explanations in other socially sensitive
-areas. It closely parallels, for instance, initial feminist hostility
-to the idea that there are biological factors behind male
-dominance. (The second wave of the feminist movement seems
-to be more willing to entertain the idea that biological differences
-between the sexes are influential in, for example, greater
-male aggression and stronger female caring behaviour.) The
-opposition to genetic explanations also has obvious links with
-the intensity of feeling aroused by sociobiological approaches
-to the study of human behaviour. The worry here is that if
-human social behaviour is seen as deriving from that of other
-social mammals, we shall come to think of hierarchy, male
-dominance, and inequality as part of our evolved nature, and
-as unchangeable. More recently, the commencement of the international
-scientific project that is designed to map the human
-genome - that is, to provide a detailed scientific description of
-the genetic code typical of human beings - has attracted prot~~ts
-because of apprehension over what such a map might reveal
-about genetic differences between humans, and the use to which
-such information might be put.
-It would be inappropriate for me to attempt to assess the
-scientific merits of biological explanations of human behaviour
-in general, or of racial or sexual differences in particular. My
-27
-Practical Ethics
-concern is rather with the implications of these theories for the
-ideal of equality. For this purpose it is not necessary for us to
-establish whether the theories are right. All we have to ask is:
-suppose that one ethnic group does tum out to have a higher
-average IQ than another, and that part of this difference has a
-genetic basis. Would this mean that racism is defensible, and
-we have to reject the principle of equality? A similar question
-can be asked about the impact of theories of biological differences
-between the sexes. In neither case does the question assume
-that the theories are sound. It would be most unfortunate
-if our scepticism about such things led us to neglect these questions
-and then unexpected evidence turned up confirming the
-theories, with the result that a confused and unprepared public
-took the theories to have implications for the ideal of equality
-that they do not have.
-I shall begin by considering the implications of the view that
-there is a difference in the average IQ of two different ethnic
-groups, and that genetic factors are responsible for at least a
-part of this difference. I shall then consider the impact of alleged
-differences in temperament and ability between the sexes.
-Racial Differences and Racial Equality
-Let us suppose, just for the sake of exploring the consequences,
-that evidence accumulates supporting the hypothesis that there
-are differences in intelligence between the different ethnic
-groups of human beings. (We should not assume that this would
-mean that Europeans come out on top. As we have already
-. seen, there is some evidence to the contrary.) What significance
-would this have for our views about racial equality?
-First a word of caution. When people talk of differences in
-intelligence between ethnic groups, they are usually referring
-to differences in scores on standard IQ tests. Now 'IQ' stands
-for 'intelligence quotient' but this does not mean that an IQ test
-really measures what we mean by 'intelligence' in ordinary
-28
-Equality and Its Implications
-contexts. Obviously there is some correlation between the two:
-if schoolchildren regarded by their teachers as highly intelligent
-did not generally score better on IQ tests than schoolchildren
-regarded as below normal intelligence, the tests would have to
-be changed - as indeed they were changed in the past. But this
-does not show how close the correlation is, and since our ordinary
-concept of intelligence is vague, there is no way of telling.
-Some psychologists have attempted to overcome this difficulty
-by simply defining 'intelligence' as 'what intelligence tests measure',
-but this merely introduces a new concept of 'intelligence',
-which is easier to measure than our ordinary notion but may
-be quite different in meaning. Since 'intelligence' is a word in
-everyday use, to use the same word in a different sense is a sure
-path to confusion. What we should talk about, then, is differences
-in IQ, rather than differences in intelligence, since this is
-all that the available evidence could support.
-The distinction between intelligence and scores on IQ tests
-has led some to conclude that IQ is of no importance; this is
-the opposite, but equally erroneous, extreme to the view that
-IQ is identical with intelligence. IQ is important in our society.
-One's IQ is a factor in one's prospects of improving one's occupational
-status, income, or social class. If there are genetic
-factors in racial differences in IQ, there will be genetic factors
-in racial differences in occupational status, income, and social
-class. So if we are interested in equality, we cannot ignore IQ.
-When people of different racial origin are given IQ tests, there
-tend to be differences in the average scores they get. The existence
-of such differences is not seriously disputed, even by those
-who most vigorously opposed the views put forward by Jensen
-and Eysenck. What is hotly disputed is whether the differeI\ces I
-are primarily to be explained by heredity or by enviro~ent _
-in other words, whether they reflect innate differences between
-different groups of human beings, or whether they are due to
-the different social and educational situations in which these
-groups find themselves. Almost everyone accepts that environ-
-29
-Practical Ethics
-mental factors do playa role in IQ differences between groups;
-the debate is over whether they can explain all or virtually all
-of the differences.
-Let us suppose that the genetic hypothesis turns out to be
-correct (making this supposition, as I have said, not because we
-believe it is correct but in order to explore its implications);
-what would be the implications of genetically based differences
-in IQ between different races? I believe that the implications of
-this supposition are less drastic than they are often supposed to
-be and give no comfort to genuine racists. I have three reasons
-for this view.
-First, the genetic hypothesis does not imply that we should
-reduce our efforts to overcome other causes of inequality between
-people, for example, in the quality of housing and schooling
-available to less well-off people. Admittedly, if the genetic
-hypothesis is correct, these efforts will not bring about a situation
-in which different racial groups have equal IQs. But this
-is no reason for accepting a situation in which any people are
-hindered by their environment from doing as well as they can.
-Perhaps we should put special efforts into helping those who
-start from a position of disadvantage, so that we end with a
-more egalitarian result.
-Second, the fact that the average IQ of one racial group is a
-few points higher than that of another does not allow anyone
-to say that all members of the higher IQ group have higher IQs
-than all members of the lower IQ group - this is clearly false
-for any racial group - or that any particular individual in the
-higher IQ group has a higher IQ than a particular individual in
-the lower IQ group - this will often be false. The point is that
-these figures are averages and say nothing about individuals.
-There will be a substantial overlap in IQ scores between the two
-groups. So whatever the cause of the difference in average IQs,
-it will provide no justification for racial segregation in education
-or any other field. It remains true that members of different
-30
-Equality and Its Implications
-racial groups must be treated as individuals, irrespective of their
-race.
-The third reason why the genetic hypothesis gives no support
-for racism is the most fundamental of the three. It is simply
-that, as we saw earlier, the principle of equality is not based on
-any actual equality that all people share. I have argued that the
-only defensible basis for the principle of equality is equal consideration
-of interests, and I have also suggested that the most
-important human interests - such as the interest in avoiding
-pain, in developing one's abilities, in satisfying basic needs for
-food and shelter, in enjoying warm personal relationships, in
-being free to pursue one's projects without interference, and
-many others - are not affected by differences in intelligence.
-We can be even more confident that they are not affected by
-differences in IQ. Thomas Jefferson, who drafted the ringing
-assertion of equality with which the American Declaration of
-Independence begins, knew this. In reply to an author who had
-endeavoured to refute the then common view that Africans lack
-intelligence, he wrote:
-Be assured that no person living wishes more sincerely than I
-do, to see a complete refutation of the doubts I have myself
-entertained and expressed on the grade of understanding allotted
-to them by nature, and to find that they are on a par with
-ourselves ... but whatever be their degree of talent, it is no measure
-of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to
-others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the property
-or person of others.
-Jefferson was right. Equal status does not depend on intelligence.
-Racists who maintain the contrary are in peril of being
-forced to kneel before the next genius they encounter.
-These three reasons suffice to show that claims that for genetic
-reasons one racial group is not as good as another at IQ tests
-do not provide grounds for denying the moral principle that all
-humans are equal. The third reason, however, has further ram-
-31
-Practical Ethics
-ifications that we shall follow up after discussing differences
-between the sexes.
-Sexual Differences and Sexual Equality
-The debates over psychological differences between females and
-males are not about IQ in general. On general IQ tests there are
-no consistent differences in the average scores of females and
-males. But IQ tests measure a range of different abilities, and
-when we break the results down according to the type of ability
-measured, we do find significant differences between the sexes.
-There is some evidence suggesting that females have greater
-verbal ability than males. This involves being better able to
-understand complex pieces of writing and being more creative
-with words. Males, on the other hand, appear to have greater
-mathematical ability, and also do better on tests involving what
-is known as 'visual-spatial' ability. An example of a task requiring
-visual-spatial ability is one in which the subject is asked
-to find a shape, say a square, which is embedded or hidden in
-a more complex design.
-We shall discuss the significance of these relatively minor
-differences in intellectual abilities shortly. The sexes also differ
-markedly in one major non-intellectual characteristic: aggression.
-Studies conducted on children in several different cultures
-have borne out what parents have long suspected: boys are
-more likely to play roughly, attack each other and fight back
-when attacked, than girls. Males are readier to hurt others than
-females; a tendency reflected in the fact that almost all violent
-criminals are male. It has been suggested that aggression is
-associated with competitiveness and the drive to dominate others
-and get to the top of whatever pyramid one is a part of. In
-contrast, females are readier to adopt a role that involves caring
-for others.
-These are the major psychological differences that have repeatedly
-been observed in many studies of females and males.
-32
-Equality and Its Implications
-What is the origin of these differences? Once again the rival
-explanations are environmental versus biological, nurture versus
-nature. Although this question of origin is important in some
-special contexts, it was given too much weight by the first wave
-of feminists who assumed that the case for women's liberation
-rested on acceptance of the environmental side of the controversy.
-What is true of racial discrimination holds here, too:
-discrimination can be shown to be wrong whatever the origin
-of the known psychological differences. But first let us look
-briefly at the rival explanations.
-Anyone who has had anything to do with children will know
-that in all sorts of ways children learn that the sexes have different
-roles. Boys get trucks or guns for their birthday presents;
-girls get dolls or brush and comb sets. Girls are put into dresses
-and told how nice they look; boys are dressed in jeans and
-praised for their strength and daring. Children's books almost
-invariably used to portray fathers going out to work while mothers
-clean the house and cook the dinner; some still do, although
-in many countries feminist criticisms of this type of literature
-have had some impact.
-Social conditioning exists, certainly, but does it explain the
-differences between the sexes? It is, at best, an incomplete explanation.
-We still need to know why our society - and not just
-ours, but practically every human society - should shape children
-in this way. One popular answer is that in earlier, simpler
-societies, the sexes had different roles because women had to
-breast-feed their children during the long period before weaning.
-This meant that the women stayed closer to home while
-the men went out to hunt. As a result females evolved a more
-social and emotional character, while males became tougher
-and more aggressive. Because physical strength and aggression
-were the ultimate forms of power in these simple societies, males
-became dominant. The sex roles that exist today are, on this
-view, an inheritance from these simpler circumstances, an inheritance
-that became obsolete once technology made it possible
-33
-Practical Ethics
-for the weakest person to operate a crane that lifts fifty tons, or
-fire a missile that kills millions. Nor do women have to be tied
-to home and children in the way they used to be, since a woman
-can now combine motherhood and a career.
-The alternative view is that while social conditiOning plays
-some role in determining psychological differences between the
-sexes, biological factors are also at work. The evidence for this
-view is particularly strong in respect of aggression. In The Psychology
-of Sex Differences, Eleanor Emmons Maccoby and Carol
-Nagy Jacklin give four grounds for their belief that the greater
-aggression of males has a biological component:
-Males are more aggressive than females in all human societies
-in which the difference has been studied.
-2 Similar differences are found in humans and in apes and other
-closely related animals.
-3 The differences are found in very young children, at an age
-when there is no evidence of any social conditioning in this
-direction (indeed Maccoby and Jacklin found some evidence
-that boys are more severely punished for showing aggression
-than girls).
-4 Aggression has been shown to vary according to the level of
-sex hormones, and females become more aggressive if they
-receive male hormones.
-The evidence for a biological basis of the differences in visualspatial
-ability is a little more complicated, but it consists largely
-of genetic studies that suggest that this ability is influenced by
-a recessive sex-linked gene. As a result, it is estimated, approximately
-50 per cent of males have a genetic advantage in situations
-demanding visual-spatial ability, but only 25 per cent
-of females have this advantage.
-Evidence for and against a biological factor in the superior
-verbal ability of females and the superior mathematical ability
-of males is, at present, too weak to suggest a conclusion one
-way or the other.
-Adopting the strategy we used before in discussing race and
-IQ, I shall not go further into the evidence for and against these
-34
-/
-Equality and Its Implications
-biological explanations of differences between males and females.
-Instead I shall ask what the implications of the biological
-hypotheses would be.
-The differences in the intellectual strengths and weaknesses
-of the sexes cannot explain more than a minute proportion of
-the difference in positions that males and females hold in our
-society. It might explain why, for example, there should be more
-males than females in professions like architecture and engineering,
-professions that may require visual-spatial ability; but
-even in these professions, the magnitude of the differences in
-numbers cannot be explained by the genetic theory of visualspatial
-ability. This theory suggests that half as many females
-are as genetically advantaged in this area as males, which would
-account for the lower average scores offemales in tests of visualspatial
-ability, but cannot account for the fact that in most countries
-there are not merely twice as many males as females in
-architecture and engineering, but at least ten times as many.
-Moreover, if superior visual-spatial ability explains the male
-dominance of architecture and engineering, why isn't there a
-corresponding female advantage in professions requiring high
-verbal ability? It is true that there are more women journalists
-than engineers, and probably more women have achieved lasting
-fame as novelists than in any other area of life; yet female
-journalists and television commentators continue to be outnumbered
-by males, outside specifically 'women's subjects' such
-as cookery and child care. So even if one accepts biological
-explanations for the patterning of these abilities, one can still
-argue that women do not have the same opportunities as men
-to make the most of the abilities they have.
-What of differences in aggression? One's first reaction might
-be that feminists should be delighted with the evidence on this
-point - what better way could there be of showing the superiority
-of females than by demonstrating their greater reluctance
-to hurt others? But the fact that most violent criminals are male
-may be only one side of greater male aggression. The other side
-35
-Practical Ethics
-could be greater male competitiveness, ambition, and drive to
-achieve power. This would have different, and for feminists less
-welcome, implications. Some years ago an American sociologist,
-Steven Goldberg, built a provocatively entitled book, The Inevitability
-of Patriarchy, around the thesis that the biological basis
-of greater male aggression will always make it impossible to
-bring about a society in which women have as much political
-power as men. From this claim it is easy to move to the view
-that women should accept their inferior position in society and
-not strive to compete with males, or to bring up their daughters
-to compete with males in these respects; instead women should
-return to their traditional sphere of looking after the home and
-children. This is just the kind of argument that has aroused the
-hostility of some feminists to biological explanations of male
-dominance.
-As in the case of race and IQ, the moral conclusions alleged
-to follow from the biological theories do not really follow from
-them at all. Similar arguments apply.
-First, whatever the origin of psychological differences between
-the sexes, social conditioning can emphasise or soften
-these differences. As Maccoby and Jacklin stress, the biological
-bias towards, say, male visual-spatial superiority is really a
-greater natural readiness to learn these skills. Where women
-are brought up to be independent, their visual-spatial ability is
-much higher than when they are kept at home and dependent
-on males. This is no doubt true of other differences as well.
-Hence feminists may well be right to attack the way in which
-we encourage girls and boys to develop in distinct directions,
-even if this encouragement is not itself responsible for creating
-psychological differences between the sexes, but only reinforces
-innate predispositions.
-Second, whatever the origin of psychological differences between
-the sexes, they exist only when averages are taken, and
-some females are more aggressive and have better visual-spatial
-ability than some males. We have seen that the genetic hypo-
-36
-Equality and Its Implications
-thesis offered in explanation of male visual-spatial superiority
-itself suggests that a quarter of all females will have greater
-natural visual-spatial ability than half of all males. Our own
-observations should convince us that there are females who are
-also more aggressive than some males. So, biological explanations
-or not, we are never in a position to say: 'You're a woman,
-so you can't become an engineer', or 'Because you are female,
-you will not have the drive and ambition needed to succeed in
-politiCS: Nor should we assume that no male can possibly have
-sufficient gentleness and warmth to stay at home with the children
-while their mother goes out to work. We must assess
-people as individuals, not merely lump them into 'female' and
-'male' if we are to find out what they are really like; and we
-must keep the roles occupied by females and males flexible if
-people are to be able to do what they are best suited for.
-The third reason is, like the previous two, parallel to the
-reasons I have given for believing that a biological explanation
-of racial differences in IQ would not justify racism. The most
-important human interests are no more affected by differences
-in aggression than they are by differences in intelligence. Less
-aggressive people have the same interest in avoiding pain,
-developing their abilities, having adequate food and shelter,
-enjoying good personal relationships, and so on, as more aggressive
-people. There is no reason why more aggressive people
-ought to be rewarded for their aggression with higher salaries
-and the ability to provide better for these interests.
-Since aggression, unlike intelligence, is not generally regarded
-as a desirable trait, the male chauvinist is hardly likely to deny
-that greater aggression in itself provides no ethical justification
-of male supremacy. He may, however, offer it as an explanation,
-rather than a justification, of the fact that males hold most of
-the leading positions in politics, business, the universities and
-other areas in which people of both sexes compete for power
-and status. He may then go on to suggest that this shows that
-the present situation is merely the result of competition between
-37
-Practical Ethics
-males and females under conditions of equal opportunity.
-Hence, it is not, he may say, unfair. This suggestion raises the
-further ramifications of biological differences between people
-that, as I said at the close of our discussion of the race and IQ
-issue, need to be followed up in more depth.
-FROM EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY TO EQUALITY
-OF CONSIDERATION
-In most Western societies large differences in income and social
-status are commonly thought to be all right, as long as they
-were brought into being under conditions of equal opportunity.
-The idea is that there is no injustice in Jill earning $200,000
-and Jack earning $20,000, as long as Jack had his chance to
-be where Jill is today. Suppose that the difference in income is
-due to the fact that Jill is a doctor whereas Jack is a farm worker.
-This would be acceptable if Jack had the same opportunity as
-Jill to be a doctor, and this is taken to mean that Jack was not
-kept out of medical school because of his race, or religion, or
-a disability that was irrelevant to his ability to be a doctor, or
-something similar - in effect, if Jack's school results had been
-as good as Jill's, he would have been able to study medicine,
-become a doctor, and earn $200,000 a year. Life, on this view,
-is a kind of race in which it is fitting that the winners should
-get the prizes, as long as all get an equal start. The equal start
-represents equality of opportunity and this, some say, is as far
-as equality should go.
-To say that Jack and Jill had equal opportunities to become
-a doctor, because Jack would have got into medical school if
-his results had been as good as Jill's, is to take a superficial view
-of equal opportunity that will not stand up to further probing.
-We need to ask why Jack's results were not as good as Jill's.
-Perhaps his education up to that point had been inferior - bigger
-classes, less qualified teachers, inadequate resources, and so on.
-If so, he was not competing on equal terms with Jill after all.
-38
-Equality and Its Implications
-Genuine equality of opportunity requires us to ensure that
-schools give the same advantages to everyone.
-Making schools equal would be difficult enough, but it is the
-easiest of the tasks that await a thoroughgoing proponent of
-equal opportunity. Even if schools are the same, some children
-will be favoured by the kind of home they come from. A quiet
-room to study, plenty of books, and parents who encourage
-their child to do well at school could explain why Jill succeeds
-where Jack, forced to share a room with two younger brothers
-and put up with his father.'s complaints that he is wasting his
-time with books instead of getting out and earning his keep,
-does not. But how does one equalise a home? Or parents?
-Unless we are prepared to abandon the traditional family setting
-and bring up our children in communal nurseries, we can't.
-This might be enough to show the inadequacy of equal opportunity
-as an ideal of equality, but the ultimate objection -
-the one that connects with our previous discussion of equality
-- is still to come. Even if we did rear our children communally,
-as on a kibbutz in Israel, they would inherit different abilities
-and character traits, including different levels of aggression and
-different IQs. Eliminating differences in the child's environment
-would not affect differences in genetic endowment. True, it
-might reduce the disparity between, say, IQ scores, since it is
-likely that, at present, social differences accentuate genetic differences;
-but the genetic differences would remain and on most
-estimates they are a major component of the existing differences
-in IQ. (Remember that we are now talking of individuals. We
-do not know if race affects IQ, but there is little doubt that
-differences in IQ between individuals of the same race are, in
-part, genetically determined.)
-So equality of opportunity is not an attractive ideal. It rewards
-the lucky, who inherit those abilities that allow them to pursue
-interesting and lucrative careers. It penalises the unlucky, whose
-genes make it very hard for them to achieve similar success.
-We can now fit our earlier discussion of race and sex differ-
-39
-Practical Ethics
-ences into a broader picture. Whatever the facts about the social
-or genetic basis of racial differences in IQ, removing social disadvantages
-will not suffice to bring about an equal or a just
-distribution of income - not an equal distribution, because those
-who inherit the abilities associated with high IQ will continue
-to earn more than those who do not; and not a just distribution
-because distribution according to the abilities one inherits is
-based on an arbitrary form of selection that has nothing to do
-with what people deserve or need. The same is true of visualspatial
-ability and aggression, if these do lead to higher incomes
-or status. If, as I have argued, the basis of equality is equal
-consideration of interests, and the most important human interests
-have little or nothing to do with these factors, there is
-something questionable about a society in which income and
-social status correlate to a significant degree with them.
-When we pay people high salaries for programming computers
-and low salaries for cleaning offices, we are, in effect,
-paying people for having a high IQ, and this means that we are
-paying people for something determined in part before they are
-born and almost wholly determined before they reach an age
-at which they are responsible for their actions. From the point
-of view of justice and utility there is something wrong here.
-Both would be better served by a society that adopted the famous
-Marxist slogan: 'From each according to his ability, to
-each according to his needs.' If this could be achieved, the
-differences between the races and sexes would lose their social
-significance. Only then would we have a society truly based on
-the principle of equal consideration of interests.
-Is it realistic to aim at a society that rewards people according
-to their needs rather than their IQ, aggression, or other inherited
-abilities? Don't we have to pay people more to be doctors or
-lawyers or university professors, to do the intellectually demanding
-work that is essential for our well-being?
-There are difficulties in paying people according to their needs
-rather than their inherited abilities. If one country attempts to
-40
-Equality and Its Implications
-introduce such a scheme while others do not, the result is likely
-to be some kind of 'brain drain'. We have already seen this, on
-a small scale, in the number of scientists and doctors who have
-left Britain to work in the United States - not because Britain
-does pay people according to need rather than inherited abilities,
-but because these sections of the community, though relatively
-well-paid by British standards, were much better paid in the
-United States. If anyone country were to make a serious attempt
-to equalise the salaries of doctors and manual workers, there
-can be no doubt that the number of doctors emigrating would
-greatly increase. This is part of the problem of 'socialism in one
-country'. Marx expected the socialist revolution to be a worldwide
-one. When the Russian Marxists found that their revolution
-had not sparked off the anticipated world revolution,
-they had to adapt Marxist ideas to this new situation. They did
-so by harshly restricting freedom, including the freedom to emigrate.
-Without these restrictions, during the communist period
-in the Soviet Union and other communist states, and despite
-the considerable pay differentials that still did exist in those
-nations when under communist rule, and that continue to exist
-in the remaining communist countries, there would have been
-a crippling outflow of skilled people to the capitalist nations,
-which rewarded skill more highly.l But if 'socialism in one
-country' requires making the country an armed camp, with
-border guards keeping watch on the citizens within as well as
-the enemy without, socialism may not be worth the price.
-To allow these difficulties to lead us to the conclusion that
-we can do nothing to improve the distribution of income that
-now exists in capitalist countries would, however, be too pessimistic.
-There is, in the more affluent Western nations, a good
-According to one observer, salary differentials in China are quite steep, in
-some areas steeper than in Western nations. For instance, a full professor
-gets almost seven times as much as a junior lecturer, whereas in Britain,
-Australia, or the United States, the ratio is more like three to one. See Simon
-Leys, Chinese Shadows (New York, 1977).
-41
-Practical Ethics
-deal of scope for reducing pay differentials before the point is
-reached at which significant numbers of people begin to think
-of emigrating. This is, of course, especially true of those countries,
-like the United States, where pay differentials are presently
-very great. It is here that pressure for a more equitable distribution
-can best be applied.
-What of the problems of redistribution within a single nation?
-There is a popular belief that if we did not pay people a lot of
-money to be doctors or university professors, they would not
-undertake the studies required to achieve these positions. I do
-not know what evidence there is in support of this assumption,
-but it seems to me highly dubious. My own salary is considerably
-higher than the salaries ofthe people employed by the university
-to mow the lawns and keep the grounds clean, but if our salaries
-were identical I would still not want to swap positions with
-them - although their jobs are a lot more pleasant than some
-lowly paid work. Nor do I believe that my doctor would jump
-at a chance to change places with his receptionist if their salaries
-did not differ. It is true that my doctor and I have had to study
-for several years to get where we are, but I at least look back
-on my student years as one of the most enjoyable periods of
-my life.
-Although I do not think it is because of the money that people
-choose to become doctors rather than receptionists, there is one
-qualification to be made to the suggestion that payment should
-be based on need rather than ability. It must be admitted that
-the prospect of earning more money sometimes leads people to
-make greater efforts to use the abilities they have, and these
-greater efforts can benefit patients, customers, students, or the
-public as a whole. It might therefore be worth trying to reward
-effort, which would mean paying people more if they worked
-near the upper limits of their abilities, whatever those abilities
-might be. This, however, is quite different from paying people
-for the level of ability they happen to have, which is something
-they cannot themselves control. As Jeffrey Gray, a British pro-
-42
--.
-Equality and Its Implications
-fessor of psychology, has written, the evidence for genetic control
-of IQ suggests that to pay people differently for 'upper-class'
-and 'lower-class' jobs is 'a wasteful use of resources in the guise
-of "incentives" that either tempt people to do what is beyond
-their powers or reward them more for what they would do
-anyway'.
-We have, up to now, been thinking of people such as university
-professors, who (at least in some countries) are paid by
-the government, and doctors, whose incomes are determined
-either by government bodies, where there is some kind of national
-health service, or by the government protection given to
-professional associations like a medical association, which enables
-the profession to exclude those who might seek to advertise
-their services at a lower cost. These incomes are therefore
-already subject to government control and could be altered
-without drastically changing the powers of government. The
-private business sector of the economy is a different matter.
-Business people who are quick to seize an opportunity will,
-under any private enterprise system, make more money than
-their rivals or, if they are employed by a large corporation, may
-be promoted faster. Taxation can help to redistribute some of
-this income, but there are limits to how effective a steeply progressive
-tax system can be - there almost seems to be a law to
-the effect that the higher the rate of tax, the greater the amount
-of tax avoidance.
-So do we have to abolish private enterprise if we are to eliminate
-undeserved wealth? That suggestion raises issues too large
-to be discussed here; but it can be said that private enterprise
-has a habit of reasserting itself under the most inhospitable
-conditions. As the Russians and East Europeans soon found,
-communist societies still had their black markets, and if you
-wanted your plumbing fixed swiftly it was advisable to pay a
-bit extra on the side. Only a radical change in human nature -
-a decline in acquisitive and self-centred desires - could overcome
-the tendency for people to find a way around any system
-43
-Practical Ethics
-that suppresses private enterprise. Since no such change in human
-nature is in sight, we shall probably continue to pay most
-to those with inherited abilities, rather than those who have
-the greatest needs. To hope for something entirely different is
-unrealistic. To work for wider recognition of the principle of
-payment according to needs and effort rather than inherited
-ability is both realistic and, I believe, right.
-AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
-The preceding section suggested that moving to a more egalitarian
-society in which differences of income are reduced is
-ethically desirable but likely to prove difficult. Short of bringing
-about general equality, we might at least attempt to ensure that
-where there are important differences in income, status, and
-power, women and racial minorities should not be on the worse
-end in numbers disproportionate to their numbers in the community
-as a whole. Inequalities among members of the same
-ethnic group may be no more justifiable than those between
-ethnic groups, or between males and females, but when these
-inequalities coincide with an obvious difference between people
-like the differences between African Americans and Americans
-of European descent, or between males and females, they do
-more to produce a divided society with a sense of superiority
-on the one side and a sense of inferiority on the other. Racial
-and sexual inequality may therefore have a more divisive effect
-than other forms of inequality. It may also do more to create a
-feeling of hopelessness among the inferior group, since their sex
-or their race is not the product of their own actions and there
-is nothing they can do to change it.
-How are racial and sexual equality to be achieved within an
-inegalitarian society? We have seen that equality of opportunity
-is practically unrealisable, and if it could be realised might allow
-innate differences in aggression or IQ unfairly to determine
-44
-Equality and Its Implications
-membership of the upper strata. One way of overcoming these
-obstacles is to go beyond equality of opportunity and give preferential
-treatment to members of disadvantaged groups. This is
-affirmative action (sometimes also called 'reverse discrimination').
-It may be the best hope of reducing long-standing inequalities;
-yet it appears to offend against the principle of
-equality itself. Hence it is controversial.
-Affirmative action is most often used in education and employment.
-Education is a particularly important area, since it
-has an important influence on one's prospects of earning a high
-income, holding a satisfying job, and achieving power and status
-in the community. Moreover in the United States education has
-been at the centre of the dispute over affirmative action because
-of Supreme Court cases over university admission procedures
-favouring disadvantaged groups. These cases have arisen because
-males of European descent were denied admission to
-courses although their academic records and admission test
-scores were better than those of some African American students
-admitted. The universities did not deny this; they sought to
-justify it by explaining that they operated admission schemes
-intended to help disadvantaged students.
-The leading case, as far as United States law is concerned, is
-Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. Alan Bakke applied
-for admission to the medical school of the University of California
-at Davis. In an attempt to increase the number of members
-of minority groups who attended medical school, the university
-reserved 16 out of every 100 places for students belonging to a
-disadvantaged minority. Since these students would not have
-won sQ,JIlany places in open competition, fewer students of
-European descent were admitted than there would have been
-without this reservation. Some of these students denied places
-would certainly have been offered them if, scoring as they did
-on the admission tests, they had been members of a disadvantaged
-minority. Bakke was among these rejected European
-45
-Practical Ethics
-American students and on being rejected he sued the university.
-Let us take this case as a standard case of affirmative action. Is
-it defensible?
-I shall start by putting aside one argument sometimes used
-to justify discrimination in favour of members of disadvantaged
-groups. It is sometimes said that if, say, 20 per cent of the
-population is a racial minority, and yet only 2 per cent of doctors
-are from this minority, this is sufficient evidence that, somewhere
-along the line, our community discriminates on the basis
-of race. (Similar arguments have been mounted in support of
-claims of sexual discrimination.) Our discussion of the geneticsversus-
-environment debate indicates why this argument is inconclusive.
-It may be the case that members of the underrepresented
-group are, on average, less gifted for the kind of
-study one must do to become a doctor. I am not saying that
-this is true, or even probable, but it cannot be ruled out at this
-stage. So a disproportionately small number of doctors from a
-particular ethnic minority is not in itself proof of discrimination
-against members of that minority. (Just as the disproportionately
-large number of African American athletes in the U.S.
-Olympic athletic team is not in itself proof of discrimination
-against European Americans.) There might, of course, be other
-evidence suggesting that the small number of doctors from the
-minority group really is the result of discrimination; but this
-would need to be shown. In the absence of positive evidence
-of discrimination, it is not possible to justify affirmative action
-on the grounds that it merely redresses the balance of discrimination
-existing in the community.
-Another way of defending a decision to accept a minority
-student in preference to a student from the majority group who
-scored higher in admission tests would be to argue that standard
-tests do not give an accurate indication of ability when one
-student has been severely disadvantaged. This is in line with
-the point made in the last section about the impossibility of
-achieving equal opportunity. Education and home background
-46
-Equality and Its Implications
-presumably influence test scores. A student with a background
-of deprivation who scores 55 per cent in an admission test may
-have better prospects of graduating in minimum time than a
-more privileged student who scores 70 per cent. Adjusting test
-scores on this basis would not mean admitting disadvantaged
-minority students in preference to better-qualified students. It
-would reflect a decision that the disadvantaged students really
-were better qualified than the others. This is not racial discrimination.
-The University of California could not attempt this defence,
-for its medical school at Davis had simply reserved 16 per cent
-of places for minority students. The quota did not vary according
-to the ability displayed by minority applicants. This may be in
-the interests of ultimate equality, but it is undeniably racial
-discrimination.
-In this chapter we have seen that the only defensible basis
-for the claim that all humans are equal is the principle of equal
-consideration of interests. That principle outlaws forms of racial
-and sexual discrimination which give less weight to the interests
-of those discriminated against. Could Bakke claim that in rejecting
-his application the medical school gave less weight to
-his interests than to those of African American students?
-We have only to ask this question to appreciate that university
-admission is not normally a result of consideration of the interests
-of each applicant. It depends rather on matching the
-applicants against standards that the university draws up with
-certain policies in mind. Take the most straightforward case:
-admission rigidly governed by scores on an intelligence test.
-Suppose those rejected by this procedure complained that their
-interests had been given less consideration than the interests of
-applicants of higher intelligence. The university would reply that
-its procedure did not take the applicants' interests into account
-at all, and so could hardly give less consideration to the interests
-of one applicant than it gave to others. We could then ask the
-university why it used intelligence as the criterion of admission.
-47
-Practical Ethics
-It might say, first, that to pass the examinations required for
-graduation takes a high level of intelligence. There is no point
-in admitting students unable to pass, for they will not be able
-to graduate. They will waste their own time and the university's
-resources. Secondly, the university may say, the higher the intelligence
-of our graduates, the more useful they are likely to
-be to the community. The more intelligent our doctors, the
-better they will be at preventing and curing disease. Hence the
-more intelligent the students a medical school selects, the better
-value the community gets for its outlay on medical education.
-This particular admission procedure is of course one-sided; a
-good doctor must have other qualities in addition to a high
-degree of intelligence. It is only an example, however, and that
-objection is not relevant to the point I am using the example
-to make. This point is that no one objects to intelligence as a
-criterion for selection in the way that they object to race as a
-criterion; yet those of higher intelligence admitted under an
-intelligence-based scheme have no more of an intrinsic right to
-admission than those admitted by reverse discrimination. Higher
-intelligence, I have argued before, carries with it no right or
-justifiable claim to more of the good things our society offers.
-If a university admits students of higher intelligence it does so
-not in consideration of their greater interest in being admitted,
-nor in recognition of their right to be admitted, but because it
-favours goals that it believes will be advanced by this admission
-procedure. So if this same university should adopt new goals
-and use affirmative action to promote them, applicants who
-would have been admitted under the old procedure cannot
-claim that the new procedure violates their right to be admitted,
-or treats them with less respect than others. They had no special
-claim to be admitted in the first place; they were the fortunate
-beneficiaries of the old university policy. Now that this policy
-has changed others benefit, not they. If this seems unfair, it is
-only because we had become accustomed to the old policy.
-So affirmative action cannot justifiably be condemned on the
-48
-Equality and Its Implications
-grounds that it violates the rights of university applicants, or
-treats them with less than equal consideration. There is no inherent
-right to admission, and equal consideration of the interests
-of applicants is not involved in normal admission tests.
-If affirmative action is open to objection it must be because the
-goals it seeks to advance are bad, or because it will not really
-promote these goals.
-The principle of equality might be a ground for condemning
-the goals of a racially discriminatory admissions procedure.
-When universities discriminate against already disadvantaged
-minorities we suspect that the discrimination really does result
-from less concern for the interests of the minority. Why else did
-universities in the American South excluded African Americans
-until segregation was held to be unconstitutional? Here, in contrast
-to the affirmative action situation, those rejected could
-justifiably claim that their interests were not being weighed
-equally with the interests of European Americans who were
-admitted. Other explanations may have been offered, but they
-were surely specious.
-Opponents of affirmative action have not objected to the goals
-of social equality and greater minority representation in the
-professions. They would be hard put to do so. Equal consideration
-of interests supports moves towards equality because of
-the principle of diminishing marginal utility, because it relieves
-the feeling of hopeless inferiority that can exist when members
-of one race or sex are always worse off than members of another
-race or the other sex, and because severe inequality between
-races means a divided community with consequent racial
-tension.
-Within the overall goal of social equality, greater minority
-representation in professions like law and medicine is desirable
-for several reasons. Members of minority groups are more likely
-to work among their own people than those who come from
-the mainstream ethnic groups, and this may help to overcome
-the scarcity of doctors and lawyers in poor neighbourhoods
-49
-Practical Ethics
-where most members of disadvantaged minorities live. They
-may also have a better understanding of the problems disadvantaged
-people face than any outsider would have. Minority
-and female doctors and lawyers can serve as role models to
-other members of minority groups, and to women, breaking
-down the unconscious mental barriers against aspiring to such
-positions. Finally, the existence of a diverse student group will
-help members of the dominant ethnic group to learn more about
-the attitudes of African Americans and women, and thus become
-better able, as doctors and lawyers, to serve the whole
-community.
-Opponents of affirmative action are on stronger ground when
-they claim that affirmative action will not promote equality. As
-Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., said, in the Bakke case, 'Preferential
-programs may only reinforce common stereotypes holding that
-certain groups are unable to achieve success without special
-protection: To achieve real equality, it might be said, members
-of minority groups and women must win their places on their
-merits. As long as they get into law school more easily than
-others, law graduates from disadvantaged minority groups -
-including those who would have got in under open competition
-- will be regarded as inferior.
-There is also a long-term objection to affirmative action as a
-means to equality. In the present social climate we may be
-confident that race will be taken into account only to benefit
-disadvantaged minorities; but will this climate last? Should old
--fashioned racism return, won't our approval of racial quotas
-now make it easier to tum them against minority groups? Can
-we really expect the introduction of racial distinctions to advance
-the goal of the elimination of racial distinctions?
-These practical objections raise difficult factual issues. Though
-they were referred to in the Bakke case, they have not been
-central in the American legal battles over affirmative action.
-Judges are properly reluctant to decide cases on factual grounds
-on which they have no special expertise. Alan Bakke won his
-50
-Equality and Its Implications
-case chiefly on the grounds that the u.s. Civil Rights Act of
-1964 provides that no person shall, on the grounds of colour,
-race, or national origin, be excluded from any activity receiving
-federal financial assistance. A bare majority of the judges held
-that this excluded all discrimination, benign or not. They added,
-however, that there would be no objection to a university including
-race as one among a number of factors, like athletic or
-artistic ability, work experience, demonstrated compassion, a
-history of overcoming disadvantage, or leadership potential. The
-court thus effectively allowed universities to choose their student
-body in accord with their own goals, as long as they did
-not use quotas.
-That may be the law in the United States, but in other countries
-- and in general, when we look at the issue with an eye
-to ethics, rather than the law - the distinction between quotas
-and other ways of giving preference to disadvantaged groups
-may be less significant. The important point is that affirmative
-action, whether by quotas or some other method, is not contrary
-to any sound principle of equality and does not violate any
-rights of those excluded by it. Properly applied, it is in keeping
-with equal consideration of interests, in its aspirations at least.
-The only real doubt is whether it will work. In the absence of
-more promising alternatives it seems worth a try.
-A CONCLUDING NOTE: EQUALITY AND DISABILITY
-In this chapter we have been concerned with the interplay of
-the moral principle of equality and the differences, real or alleged,
-between groups of people. Perhaps the clearest way of
-seeing the irrelevance of IQ, or specific abilities, to the moral
-principle of equality, is to consider the situation of people with
-disabilities, whether physical or intellectual. When we consider
-how such people are to be treated, there is no argument about
-whether they are as able as people without disabilities. By definition,
-they are lacking at least some ability that normal people
-51
-Practical Ethics
-have. These disabilities will sometimes mean that they should
-be treated differently from others. When we are looking for firefighters,
-we can justifiably exclude someone who is confined to
-a wheelchair; and if we are seeking a proof-reader, a blind
-person need not apply. But the fact that a specific disability may
-rule a person out of consideration for a particular position does
-not mean that that person's interests should be given less consideration
-than those of anyone else. Nor does it justify discrimination
-against disabled people in any situation in which the
-particular disability a person has is not relevant to the employment
-or service offered.
-For centuries, disabled people have been subjected to prejudice,
-in some cases no less severe than those under which
-racial minorities have suffered. Intellectually disabled people
-were locked up, out of sight of the public, in appalling conditions.
-Some were virtual slaves, exploited for cheap labour in
-households or factories. Under a so-called "euthanasia program"
-the Nazis murdered tens of thousands of intellectually
-disabled people who were quite capable of wanting to continue
-living and enjoying their lives. Even today, some businesses will
-not hire a person in a wheelchair for a job that she could do as
-well as anyone else. Others seeking a salesperson will not hire
-someone whose appearance is abnormal. for fear that sales will
-fall. (Similar arguments were used against employing members
-of racial minorities; we can best overcome such prejudices by
-becoming used to people who are different from us.)
-We are now just starting to think about the injustice that has
-been done to disabled people, and to consider them as a disadvantaged
-group. That we have been slow in doing so may
-well be due to the confusion between factual equality and moral
-equality discussed earlier in this chapter. Because disabled people
-are different, in some respects, we have not seen it as discriminatory
-to treat them differently. We have overlooked the
-fact that, as in the examples given above, the disabled person's
-disability has been irrelevant to the different - and disadvan-
-52
-Equality and Its Implications
-tageous - treatment. There is therefore a need to ensure that
-legislation that prohibits discrimination on grounds of race, ethnicity
-or gender also prohibits discrimination on the grounds of
-disability, unless the disability can be shown to be relevant to
-the employment or service offered.
-Nor is that all. Many of the arguments for affirmative action
-in the case of those disadvantaged by race or gender apply even
-more strongly to disabled people. Mere equality of opportunity
-will not be enough in situations in which a disability makes it
-impossible to become an equal member of the community. Giving
-disabled people equal opportunity to attend university is
-not much use if the library is accessible only by a flight of stairs
-that they cannot use. Many disabled children are capable of
-benefitting from normal schooling, but are prevented from taking
-part because additional resources are required to cope with
-their special needs. Since such needs are often very central to
-the lives of disabled people, the principle of equal consideration
-of interests will give them much greater weight than more minor
-needs of others. For this reason, it will generally be justifiable
-to spend more on behalf of disabled people than we spend on
-behalf of others. Just how much more is, of course, a difficult
-question. Where resources are scarce, there must be some limit.
-By giving equal consideration to the interests of those with
-disabilities, and empathetically imagining ourselves in their situation,
-we can, in principle, reach the right answer; but it will
-not be easy to determine what exactly, in each particular situation,
-that answer should be.
-Some will claim to find a contradiction between this recognition
-of disabled people as a group that has been subjected to
-unjustifiable discrimination, and arguments that appear later in
-this book defending abortion and infanticide in the case of a
-fetus or an infant with a severe disability. For these later arguments
-presuppose that life is better without a disability than
-with one; and is this not itself a form of prejudice, held by
-people without disabilities, and parallel to the prejudice that it
-53
-Practical Ethics
-is better to be a member of the European race, or a man, than
-to be of African descent, or a woman?
-The error in this argument is not difficult to detect. It is one
-thing to argue that people with disabilities who want to live
-their lives to the full should be given every possible assistance
-in doing so. It is another, and quite different thing, to argue
-that if we are in a position to choose, for our next child, whether
-that child shall begin life with or without a disability, it is mere
-prejudice or bias that leads us to choose to have a child without
-a disability. If disabled people who must use wheelchairs to get
-around were suddenly offered a miracle drug that would, with
-no side effects, give them full use of their legs, how many of
-them would refuse to take it on the grounds that life with a
-disability is in no way inferior to life without a disability? In
-seeking medical assistance to overcome and eliminate disabilfry,
-when it is available,· disabled people themselves show that the
-preference for a life without disability is no mere prejudice.
-Some disabled people might say that they make this choice only
-because society puts so many obstacles in the way of disabled
-people. They claim that it is social conditions that disable them,
-not their physical or intellectual condition. This assertions twists
-the more limited truth, that social conditions make the lives of
-the disabled much more difficult than they need be, into a
-sweeping falsehood. To be able to walk, to see, to hear, to be
-relatively free from pain and discomfort, to communicate effectively
-- all these are, under virtually any social conditions,
-genuine benefits. To say this is not to deny that people lacking
-these abilities may triumph over their disabilities and have lives
-of astonishing richness and diversity. Nevertheless, we show no
-prejudice against disabled people if we prefer, whether for ourselves
-or for our children, not to be faced with hurdles so great
-that to surmount them is in itself a triumph.
-54
-3
-EQUALITY FOR ANIMALS?
-RACISM AND SPECIESISM
-I N Chapter 2, I gave reasons for believing that the fundamental
-principle of equality, on which the equality of all human
-beings rests, is the principle of equal consideration of interests.
-Only a basic moral principle of this kind can allow us to defend
-a form of equality that embraces all human beings, with all the
-differences that exist between them. I shall now contend that
-while this principle does provide an adequate basis for human
-equality, it provides a basis that cannot be limited to humans.
-In other words I shall suggest that, having accepted the principle
-of equality as a sound moral basis for relations with others of
-our own species, we are also committed to accepting it as a
-sound moral basis for relations with those outside our own
-species - the non-human animals.
-This suggestion may at first seem bizarre. We are used to
-regarding discrimination against members of racial minorities,
-or against women, as among the most important moral and
-political issues facing the world today. These are serious matters,
-worthy of the time and energy of any concerned person. But
-animals? Isn't the welfare of animals in a different category
-altogether, a matter for people who are dotty about dogs and
-cats? How can anyone waste their time on equality for animals
-when so many humans are denied real equality?
-This attitude reflects a popular prejudice against taking the
-interests of animals seriously - a prejudice no better founded
-than the prejudice of white slaveowners against taking the in-
-55
-Practical Ethics
-terests of their African slaves seriously. It is easy for us to criticise
-the prejudices of our grandfathers, from which our fathers freed
-themselves. It is more difficult to distance ourselves from our
-own views, so that we can dispassionately search for prejudices
-among the beliefs and values we hold. What is needed now is
-a willingness to follow the arguments where they lead, without
-a prior assumption that the issue is not worth our attention.
-The argument for extending the principle of equality beyond
-our own species is simple, so simple that it amounts to no more
-than a clear understanding of the nature ofthe principle of equal
-consideration of interests. We have seen that this principle implies
-that our concern for others ought not to depend on what
-they are like, or what abilities they possess (although precisely
-what this concern requires us to do may vary according to the
-characteristics of those affected by what we do). It is on this
-basis that we are able to say that the fact that some people are
-not members of our race does not entitle us to exploit them,
-and similarly the fact that some people are less intelligent than
-others does not mean that their interests may be disregarded.
-But the principle also implies that the fact that beings are not
-members of our species does not entitle us to exploit them, and
-similarly the fact that other animals are less intelligent than we
-are does not mean that their interests may be disregarded.
-We saw in Chapter 2 that many philosophers have advocated
-equal consideration of interests, in some form or other, as a
-basic moral principle. Only a few have recognised that the principle
-has applications beyond our own species, one of the few
-being Jeremy Bentham, the founding father of modem utilitarianism.
-In a forward-looking passage, written at a time when
-African slaves in the British dominions were still being treated
-much as we now treat nonhuman animals, Bentham wrote:
-The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may
-acquire those rights which never could have been withholden
-from them but by the hand oftyranny. The French have already
-discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a
-56
-Equality for Animals?
-human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice
-of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognised that the
-number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination
-of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning
-a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should
-trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps
-the faculty of discourse? But a fullgrown horse or dog is beyond
-comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal,
-than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old.
-But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The
-question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can
-they suffer?
-In this passage Bentham points to the capacity for suffering as
-the vital characteristic that entitles a being to equal consideration.
-The capacity for suffering - or more strictly, for suffering
-and/or enjoyment or happiness - is not just another characteristic
-like the capacity for language, or for higher mathematics.
-Bentham is not saying that those who try to mark 'the insuperable
-line' that determines whether the interests of a being
-should be considered happen to have selected the wrong characteristic.
-The capacity for suffering and enjoying things is a
-prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be
-satisfied before we can speak of interests in any meaningful
-way. It would be nonsense to say that it was not in the interests
-of a stone to be kicked along the road by a schoolboy. A stone
-does not have interests because it cannot suffer. Nothing that
-we can do to it could possibly make any difference to its welfare.
-A mouse, on the other hand, does have an interest in not being
-tormented, because mice will suffer if they are treated in this
-way.
-If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for refusing
-to take that suffering into consideration. No matter what
-the nature of the being, the principle of equality requires that
-the suffering be counted equally with the like suffering - in so
-far as rough comparisons can be made - of any other being. If
-a being is not capable of suffering, or of experiencing enjoyment
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-or happiness, there is nothing to be taken into account. This is
-why the limit of sentience (using the term as a convenient, if
-not strictly accurate, shorthand for the capacity to suffer or
-experience enjoyment or happiness) is the only defensible
-boundary of concern for the interests of others. To mark this
-boundary by some characteristic like intelligence or rationality
-would be to mark it in an arbitrary way. Why not choose some
-other characteristic, like skin colour?
-Racists violate the principle of equality by giving greater
-weight to the interests of members of their own race when there
-is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of
-another race. Racists of European descent typically have not
-accepted that pain matters as much when it is felt by Africans,
-for example, as when it is felt by Europeans. Similarly those I
-would call 'speciesists' give greater weight to the interests of
-members of their own species when there is a clash between
-their interests and the interests of those of other species. Human
-speciesists do not accept that pain is as bad when it is felt by
-pigs or mice as when it is felt by humans.
-That, then, is really the whole of the argument for extending
-the principle of equality to nonhuman animals; but there may
-be some doubts about what this equality amounts to in practice.
-In particular, the last sentence of the previous paragraph may
-prompt some people to reply: 'Surely pain felt by a mouse just
-is not as bad as pain felt by a human. Humans have much
-greater awareness of what is happening to them, and this makes
-their suffering worse. You can't equate the suffering of, say, a
-person dying slowly from cancer, and a laboratory mouse undergoing
-the same fate.'
-I fully accept that in the case described the human cancer
-victim normally suffers more than the nonhuman cancer victim.
-This in no way undermines the extension of equal consideration
-of interests to nonhumans. It means, rather, that we must take
-care when we compare the interests of different species. In some
-situations a member of one species will suffer more than a
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-member of another species. In this case we should still apply
-the principle of equal consideration of interests but the result
-of so doing is, of course, to give priority to relieving the greater
-suffering. A simpler case may help to make this clear.
-If I give a horse a hard slap across its rump with my open
-hand, the horse may start, but it presumably feels little pain. Its
-skin is thick enough to protect it against a mere slap. If I slap
-a baby in the same way, however, the baby will cry and presumably
-does feel pain, for the baby's skin is more sensitive. So
-it is worse to slap a baby than a horse, if both slaps are administered
-with equal force. But there must be some kind of blow
-- I don't know exactly what it would be, but perhaps a blow
-with a heavy stick - that would cause the horse as much pain
-as we cause a baby by a simple slap. That is what I mean by
-'the same amount of pain' and if we consider it wrong to inflict
-that much pain on a baby for no good reason then we must,
-unless we are speciesists, consider it equally wrong to inflict the
-same amount of pain on a horse for no good reason.
-There are other differences between humans and animals that
-cause other complications. Normal adult human beings have
-mental capacities that will, in certain circumstances, lead them
-to suffer more than animals would in the same circumstances.
-If, for instance, we decided to perform extremely painful or
-lethal scientific experiments on normal adult humans, kidnapped
-at random from public parks for this purpose, adults
-who entered parks would become fearful that they would be
-kidnapped. The resultant terror would be a form of suffering
-additional to the pain of the experiment. The same experiments
-performed on nonhuman animals would cause less suffering
-since the animals would not have the anticipatory dread of being
-kidnapped and experimented upon. This does not mean, of
-course, that it would be right to perform the experiment on
-animals, but only that there is a reason, and one that is not
-speciesist, for preferring to use animals rather than normal adult
-humans, if the experiment is to be done at all. Note, however,
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-that this same argument gives us a reason for preferring to use
-human infants - orphans perhaps - or severely intellectually
-disabled humans for experiments, rather than adults, since infants
-and severely intellectually disabled humans would also
-have no idea of what was going to happen to them. As far as
-this argument is concerned, nonhuman animals and infants and
-severely intellectually disabled humans are in the same category;
-and if we use this argument to justify experiments on
-nonhuman animals we have to ask ourselves whether we are
-also prepared to allow experiments on human infants and severely
-intellectually disabled adults. If we make a distinction
-between animals and these humans, how can we do it, other
-than on the basis of a morally indefensible preference for members
-of our own species?
-There are many areas in which the superior mental powers
-of normal adult humans make a difference: anticipation, more
-detailed memory, greater knowledge of what is happening, and
-so on. These differences explain why a human dying from cancer
-is likely to suffer more than a mouse. It is the mental anguish
-that makes the human's position so much harder to bear. Yet
-these differences do not all point to greater suffering on the part
-of the normal human being. Sometimes animals may suffer
-more because of their more limited understanding. If, for instance,
-we are taking prisoners in wartime we can explain to
-them that while they must submit to capture, search, and confinement
-they will not otherwise be harmed and will be set free
-at the conclusion of hostilities. Ifwe capture wild animals, however,
-we cannot explain that we are not threatening their lives.
-A wild animal cannot distinguish an attempt to overpower and
-confine from an attempt to kill; the one causes as much terror
-as the other.
-It may be objected that comparisons of the sufferings of different
-species are impossible to make, and that for this reason
-when the interests of animals and humans clash, the principle
-of equality gives no guidance. It is true that comparisons of
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-suffering between members of different species cannot be made
-precisely. Nor, for that matter, can comparisons of suffering
-between different human beings be made precisely. Precision is
-not essential. As we shall see shortly, even if we were to prevent
-the infliction of suffering on animals only when the interests of
-humans will not be affected to anything like the extent that
-animals are affected, we would be forced to make radical
-changes in our treatment of animals that would involve our
-diet, the farming methods we use, experimental procedures in
-many fields of science, our approach to wildlife and to hunting,
-trapping and the wearing of furs, and areas of entertainment
-like circuses, rodeos, and zoos. As a result, the total quantity of
-suffering caused would be greatly reduced; so greatly that it is
-hard to imagine any other change of moral attitude that would
-cause so great a reduction in the total sum of suffering in the
-universe.
-So far I have said a lot about the infliction of suffering on
-animals, but nothing about killing them. This omission has been
-deliberate. The application of the principle of equality to the
-infliction of suffering is, in theory at least, fairly straightforward.
-Pain and suffering are bad and should be prevented or minimised,
-irrespective of the race, sex, or species of the being that
-suffers. How bad a pain is depends on how intense it is and
-how long it lasts, but pains of the same intensity and duration
-are equally bad, whether felt by humans or animals. When we
-come to consider the value of life, we cannot say quite so confidently
-that a life is a life, and equally valuable, whether it is
-a human life or an animal life. It would not be speciesist to hold
-that the life of a self-aware being, capable of abstract thought,
-of planning for the future, of complex acts of communication,
-and so on, is more valuable than the life of a being without
-these capacities. (I am not saying whether this view is justifiable
-or not; only that it cannot simply be rejected as speciesist, because
-it is not on the basis of species itself that one life is held
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-to be more valuable than another.) The value of life is a notoriously
-difficult ethical question, and we can only arrive at a
-reasoned conclusion about the comparative value of human and
-animal life after we have discussed the value of life in general.
-This is a topic for a separate chapter. Meanwhile there are important
-conclusions to be derived from the extension beyond
-our own species of the principle of equal consideration of interests,
-irrespective of our conclusions about the value of life.
-SPECIESISM IN PRACTICE
-Animals as Food
-For most people in modem, urbanised societies, the principal
-form of contact with nonhuman animals is at meal times. The
-use of animals for food is probably the oldest and the most
-widespread form of animal use. There is also a sense in which
-it is the most basic form of animal use, the foundation stone on
-which rests the belief that animals exist for our pleasure and
-convenience.
-If animals count in their own right, our use of animals for
-food becomes questionable - especially when animal flesh is a
-luxury rather than a necessity. Eskimos living in an environment
-where they must kill animals for food or starve might be justified
-in claiming that their interest in surviving overrides that of the
-animals they kill. Most of us cannot defend our diet in this way.
-Citizens of industrialised societies can easily obtain an adequate
-diet without the use of animal flesh. The overwhelming weight
-of medical evidence indicates that animal flesh is not necessary
-for good health or longevity. Nor is animal production in industrialised
-societies an efficient way of producing food, since
-most of the animals consumed have been fattened on grains
-and other foods that we could have eaten directly. When we
-feed these grains to animals, only about 10 per cent of the
-nutritional value remains as meat for human consumption. So,
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-Equality for Animals?
-with the exception of animals raised entirely on grazing land
-unsuitable for crops, animals are eaten neither for health, nor
-to increase our food supply. Their flesh is a luxury, consumed
-because people like its taste.
-In considering the ethics of the use of animal flesh for human
-food in industrialised societies, we are considering a situation
-in which a relatively minor human interest must be balanced
-against the lives and welfare of the animals involved. The principle
-of equal consideration of interests does not allow major
-interests to be sacrificed for minor interests.
-The case against using animals for food is at its strongest when
-animals are made to lead miserable lives so that their flesh can
-be made available to humans at the lowest possible cost. Modem
-forms of intensive farming apply science and technology to the
-attitude that animals are objects for us to use. In order to have
-meat on the table at a price that people can afford, our society
-tolerates methods of meat production that confine sentient animals
-in cramped, unsuitable conditions for the entire duration
-of their lives. Animals are treated like machines that convert
-fodder into flesh, and any innovation that results in a higher
-'conversion ratio' is liable to be adopted. As one authority on
-the subject has said, 'Cruelty is acknowledged only when profitability
-ceases: To avoid speciesism we must stop these practices.
-Our custom is all the support that factory farmers need.
-The decision to cease giving them that SUppOIt may be difficult,
-but it is less difficult than it would have been for a white Southerner
-to go against the traditions of his society and free his slaves;
-if we do not change our dietary habits, how can we censure
-those slaveholders who would not change their own way of
-living?
-These arguments apply to animals who have been reared in
-factory farms - which means that we should not eat chicken,
-pork, or veal, unless we know that the meat we are eating was
-not produced by factory farm methods. The same is true of beef
-that has come from cattle kept in crowded feedlots (as most
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-beef does in the United States). Eggs will come from hens kept
-in small wire cages, too small even to allow them to stretch
-their wings, unless the eggs are specifically sold as 'free range'
-(or unless one lives in a relatively enlightened country like
-Switzerland, which has prohibited the cage system of keeping
-hens).
-These arguments do not take us all the way to a vegetarian
-diet, since some animals, for instance sheep, and in some countries
-cattle, still graze freely outdoors. This could change. The
-American pattern of fattening cattle in crowded feedlots is
-spreading to other countries. Meanwhile, the lives offree-ranging
-animals are undoubtedly better than those of animals reared
-in factory farms. It is still doubtful if using them for food is
-compatible with equal consideration of interests. One problem
-is, of course, that using them as food involves killing them -
-but this is an issue to which, as I have said, we shall return
-when we have discussed the value of life in the next chapter.
-Apart from taking their lives there are also many other things
-done to animals in order to bring them cheaply to our dinner
-table. Castration, the separation of mother and young, the
-breaking up of herds, branding, transporting, and finally the
-moments of slaughter - all of these are likely to involve suffering
-and do not take the animals' interests into account. Perhaps
-animals could be reared on a small scale without suffering in
-these ways, but it does not seem economical or practical to do
-so on the scale required for feeding our large urban populations.
-In any case, the important question is not whether animal flesh
-could be produced without suffering, but whether the flesh we
-are considering buying was produced without suffering. Unless
-we can be confident that it was, the principle of equal consideration
-of interests implies that it was wrong to sacrifice important
-interests of the animal in order to satisfy less important
-interests of our own; consequently we should boycott the end
-result of this process.
-For those of us living in cities where it is difficult to know
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-how the animals we might eat have lived and died, this conclusion
-brings us close to a vegetarian way of life. I shall consider
-some objections to it in the final section of this chapter.
-Experimenting on Animals
-Perhaps the area in which speciesism can most clearly be observed
-is the use of animals in experiments. Here the issue stands
-out starkly, because experimenters often seek to justify experimenting
-on animals by claiming that the experiments lead us
-to discoveries about humans; if this is so, the experimenter must
-agree that human and nonhuman animals are similar in crucial
-respects. For instance, if forcing a rat to choose between starving
-to death and crossing an electrified grid to obtain food tells us
-anything about the reactions of humans to stress, we must assume
-that the rat feels stress in this kind of situation.
-People sometimes think that all animal experiments serve
-vital medical purposes, and can be justified on the grounds that
-they relieve more suffering than they cause. This comfortable
-belief is mistaken. Drug companies test new shampoos and cosmetics
-they are intending to market by dripping concentrated
-solutions of them into the eyes of rabbits, in a test known as
-the Draize test. (Pressure from the animal liberation movement
-has led several cosmetic companies to abandon this practice.
-An alternative test, not using animaL has now been found.
-Nevertheless, many companies, including some of the largest,
-still continue to perform the Draize test.) Food additives, including
-artificial colourings and preservatives, are tested by what
-is known as the LD50 - a test designed to find the 'lethal dose',
-or level of consumption that will make 50 per cent of a sample
-of animals die. In the process nearly all of the animals are made
-very sick before some finally die and others pull through. These
-tests are not necessary to prevent human suffering: even if there
-were no alternative to the use of animals to test the safety of
-the products, we already have enough shampoos and food col-
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-Practical Ethics
-ourings. There is no need to develop new ones that might be
-dangerous.
-In many countries, the armed forces perform atrocious experiments
-on animals that rarely come to light. To give just one
-example: at the u.s. Armed Forces Radiobiology Institute, in
-Bethesda, Maryland, rhesus monkeys have been trained to run
-inside a large wheel. If they slow down too much, the wheel
-slows down, too, and the monkeys get an electric shock. Once
-the monkeys are trained to run for long periods, they are given
-lethal doses of radiation. Then, while sick and vomiting, they
-are forced to continue to run until they drop. This is supposed
-to provide information on the capacities of soldiers to continue
-to fight after a nuclear attack.
-Nor can all university experiments be defended on the
-grounds that they relieve more suffering than they inflict. Three
-experimenters at Princeton University kept 256 young rats without
-food or water until they died. They concluded that young
-rats under conditions of fatal thirst and starvation are much
-more active than normal adult rats given food and water. In a
-well-known series of experiments that went on for more than
-fifteen years, H. F. Harlow of the Primate Research Center, Madison,
-Wisconsin, reared monkeys under conditions of maternal
-deprivation and total isolation. He found that in this way he
-could reduce the monkeys to a state in which, when placed
-among normal monkeys, they sat huddled in a comer in a
-condition of persistent depression and fear. Harlow also produced
-monkey mothers so neurotic that they smashed their
-infant's face into the floor and rubbed it back and forth. Although
-Harlow himself is no longer alive, some of his former
-students at other U.S. universities continue to perform variations
-on his experiments.
-In these cases, and many others like them, the benefits to
-humans are either nonexistent or uncertain, while the losses to
-members of other species are certain and real. Hence the ex-
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-Equality for Animals?
-periments indicate a failure to give equal consideration to the
-interests of all beings, irrespective of species.
-In the past, argument about animal experimentation has often
-missed this point because it has been put in absolutist terms:
-would the opponent of experimentation be prepared to let thousands
-die from a terrible disease that could be cured by experimenting
-on one animal? This is a purely hypothetical question,
-since experiments do not have such dramatic results, but as long
-as its hypothetical nature is clear, I think the question should
-be answered affirmatively - in other words, if one, or even a
-dozen animals had to suffer experiments in order to save thousands,
-I would think it right and in accordance with equal
-consideration of interests that they should do so. This, at any
-rate, is the answer a utilitarian must give. Those who believe
-in absolute rights might hold that it is always wrong to sacrifice
-one being, whether human or animal. for the benefit of another.
-In that case the experiment should not be carried out. whatever
-the consequences.
-To the hypothetical question about saving thousands of people
-through a single experiment on an animal. opponents of
-speciesism can reply with a hypothetical question of their own:
-would experimenters be prepared to perform their experiments
-on orphaned humans with severe and irreversible brain damage
-if that were the only way to save thousands? (I say 'orphaned'
-in order to avoid the complication of the feelings of the human
-parents.) If experimenters are not prepared to use orphaned
-humans with severe and irreversible brain damage, their readiness
-to use nonhuman animals seems to discriminate on the
-basis of species alone, since apes, monkeys, dogs, cats, and even
-mice and rats are more intelligent, more aware of what is happening
-to them, more sensitive to pain, and so on, than many
-severely braindamaged humans barely surviving in hospital
-wards and other institutions. There seems to be no morally
-relevant characteristic that such humans have that nonhuman
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-animals lack. Experimenters, then, show bias in favour of their
-own species whenever they carry out experiments on nonhuman
-animals for purposes that they would not think justified
-them in using human beings at an equal or lower level of sentience,
-awareness, sensitivity, and so on. If this bias were eliminated,
-the number of experiments performed on animals would
-be greatly reduced.
-Other Forms of Speciesism
-I have concentrated on the use of animals as food and in research,
-since these are examples of large-scale, systematic speciesism.
-They are not, of course, the only areas in which the
-principle of equal consideration of interests, extended beyond
-the human species, has practical implications. There are many
-other areas that raise similar issues, including the fur trade,
-hunting in all its different forms, circuses, rodeos, zoos, and the
-pet business. Since the philosophical questions raised by these
-issues are not very different from those raised by the use of
-animals as food and in research, I shall leave it to the reader to
-apply the appropriate ethical principles to them.
-SOME OBJECTIONS
-I first put forward the views outlined in this chapter in 1973.
-At that time there was no animal liberation .or animal rights
-movement. Since then a movement has sprung up, and some
-of the worst abuses of animals, like the Draize and LD50 tests,
-are now less widespread, even though they have not been eliminated.
-The fur trade has come under attack, and as a result fur
-sales have declined dramatically in countries like Britain, the
-Netherlands, Australia, and the United States. Some countries
-are also starting to phase out the most confining forms of factory
-farming. As already mentioned, Switzerland has prohibited the
-cage system of keeping laying hens. Britain has outlawed the
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-raising of calves in individual stalls, and is phasing out individual
-stalls for pigs. Sweden, as in other areas of social reform, is in
-the lead here, too: in 1988 the Swedish Parliament passed a
-law that will, over a ten-year period, lead to the elimination of
-all systems of factory farming that confine animals for long
-periods and prevent them carrying out their natural behaviour.
-Despite this increasing acceptance of many aspects of the case
-for animal liberation, and the slow but tangible progress made
-on behalf of animals, a variety of objections have emerged, some
-straightforward and predictable, some more subtle and unexpected.
-In this final section of the chapter I shall attempt to
-answer the most important of these objections. I shall begin
-with the more straightforward ones.
-How Do We Know That Animals Can Feel Pain?
-We can never directly experience the pain of another being,
-whether that being is human or not. When I see my daughter
-fall and scrape her knee, I know that she feels pain because of
-the way she behaves - she cries, she tells me her knee hurts,
-she rubs the sore spot, and so on. I know that I myself behave
-in a somewhat similar - if more inhibited - way when I feel
-pain, and so I accept that my daughter feels something like what
-I feel when I scrape my knee.
-The basis of my belief that animals can feel pain is similar to
-the basis of my belief that my daughter can feel pain. Animals
-in pain behave in much the same way as humans do, and their
-behaviour is sufficient justification for the belief that they feel
-pain. It is true that, with the exception of those apes who have
-been taught to communicate by sign language, they cannot
-actually say that they are feeling pain - but then when my
-daughter was very young she could not talk, either. She found
-other ways to make her inner states apparent, thereby demonstrating
-that we can be sure that a being is feeling pain even
-if the being cannot use language.
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-To back up our inference from animal behaviour, we can
-point to the fact that the nervous systems of all vertebrates, and
-especially of birds and mammals, are fundamentally similar.
-Those parts of the human nervous system that are concerned
-with feeling pain are relatively old, in evolutionary terms. Unlike
-the cerebral cortex, which developed fully only after our ancestors
-diverged from other mammals, the basic nervous system
-evolved in more distant ancestors common to ourselves and the
-other 'higher' animals. This anatomical parallel makes it likely
-that the capacity of animals to feel is similar to our own.
-It is significant that none of the grounds we have for believing
-that animals feel pain hold for plants. We cannot observe behaviour
-suggesting pain - sensational claims to the contrary
-have not been substantiated - and plants do not have a centrally
-organised nervous system like ours.
-Animals Eat Each Other, So Why Shouldn't We
-Eat Them?
-This might be called the Benjamin Franklin Objection. Franklin
-recounts in his Autobiography that he was for a time a vegetarian
-but his abstinence from animal flesh came to an end when he
-was watching some friends prepare to fry a fish they had just
-caught. When the fish was cut open, it was found to have a
-smaller fish in its stomach. 'Well', Franklin said to himself, 'if
-you eat one another, I don't see why we may not eat you' and
-he proceeded to do so.
-Franklin was at least honest. In telling this story, he confesses
-that he convinced himself of the validity of the objection only
-after the fish was already in the frying pan and smelling 'admirably
-well'; and he remarks that one of the advantages of
-being a 'reasonable creature' is that one can find a reason for
-whatever one wants to do. The replies that can be made to this
-objection are so obvious that Franklin's acceptance of it does
-testify more to his love of fried fish than to his powers of reason.
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-Equality for Animals?
-For a start, most animals who kill for food would not be able
-to survive if they did not, whereas we have no need to eat
-animal flesh. Next, it is odd that humans, who normally think
-of the behaviour of animals as 'beastly' should, when it suits
-them, use an argument that implies that we ought to look to
-animals for moral guidance. The most decisive point, however,
-is that nonhuman animals are not capable of considering the
-alternatives open to them or of reflecting on the ethics of their
-diet. Hence it is impossible to hold the animals responsible for
-what they do, or to judge that because of their killing they
-'deserve' to be treated in a similar way. Those who read these
-lines, on the other hand, must consider the justifiability of their
-dietary habits. You cannot evade responsibility by imitating
-beings who are incapable of making this choice.
-Sometimes people point to the fact that animals eat each other
-in order to make a slightly different point. This fact suggests,
-they think, not that animals deserve to be eaten, but rather that
-there is a natural law according to which the stronger prey upon
-the weaker, a kind of Darwinian 'survival of the fittest' in which
-by eating animals we are merely playing our part.
-This interpretation of the objection makes two basic mistakes,
-one a mistake of fact and the other an error of reasoning. The
-factual mistake lies in the assumption that our own consumption
-of animals is part of the natural evolutionary process. This
-might be true of a few primitive cultures that still hunt for food,
-but it has nothing to do with the mass production of domestic
-animals in factory farms.
-Suppose that we did hunt for our food, though, and this was
-part of some natural evolutionary process. There would still be
-an error of reasoning in the assumption that because this process
-is natural it is right. It is, no doubt, 'natural' for women to
-produce an infant every year or two from puberty to menopause,
-but this does not mean that it is wrong to interfere with this
-process. We need to know the natural laws that affect us in
-order to estimate the consequences of what we do; but we do
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-Practical Ethics
-not have to assume that the natural way of doing something is
-incapable of improvement.
-Differences between Humans and Animals
-That there is a huge gulf between humans and animals was
-unquestioned for most of the course of Western civilisation. The
-basis of this assumption has been undermined by Darwin's discovery
-of our animal origins and the associated decline in the
-credibility of the story of our Divine Creation, made in the image
-of God with an immortal soul. Some have found it difficult to
-accept that the differences between us and the other animals
-are differences of degree rather than kind. They have searched
-for ways of drawing a line between humans and animals. To
-date these boundaries have been shortlived. For instance, it used
-to be said that only humans used tools. Then it was observed
-that the Galapagos woodpecker used a cactus thorn to dig insects
-out of crevices in trees. Next it was suggested that even if other
-animals used tools, humans are the only toolmaking animals.
-But Jane Goodall found that chimpanzees in the jungles of
-Tanzania chewed up leaves to make a sponge for sopping up
-water, and trimmed the leaves off branches to make tools for
-catching insects. The use of language was another boundary
-line - but now chimpanzees, gorillas, and an orangutan have
-learnt Ameslan, the sign language of the deaf, and there is some
-evidence suggesting that whales and dolphins may have a complex
-language of their own.
-If these attempts to draw the line between humans and animals
-had fitted the facts of the situation, they would still not
-carry any moral weight. As Bentham pointed out, the fact that
-a being does not use language or make tools is hardly a reason
-for ignoring its suffering. Some philosophers have claimed that
-there is a more profound difference. They have claimed that
-animals cannot think or reason, and that accordingly they have
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-Equality for Animals?
-no conception of themselves, no self-consciousness. They live
-from instant to instant, and do not see themselves as distinct
-entities with a past and a future. Nor do they have autonomy,
-the ability to choose how to live one's life. It has been suggested
-that autonomous, self-conscious beings are in some way much
-more valuable, more morally significant, than beings who live
-from moment to moment, without the capacity to see themselves
-as distinct beings with a past and a future. Accordingly,
-on this view, the interests of autonomous, self-conscious beings
-ought normally to take priority over the interests of other beings.
-I shall not now consider whether some nonhuman animals
-are self-conscious and autonomous. The reason for this omission
-is that I do not believe that, in the present context, much depends
-on this question. We are now considering only the application
-of the principle of equal consideration of interests. In
-the next chapter, when we discuss questions about the value
-of life, we shall see that there are reasons for holding that selfconsciousness
-is crucial in debates about whether a being has
-a right to life; and we shall then investigate the evidence for
-self-consciousness in nonhuman animals. Meanwhile the more
-important issue is: does the fact that a being is self-conscious
-entitle that being to some kind of priority of consideration?
-The claim that self-conscious beings are entitled to prior consideration
-is compatible with the principle of equal consideration
-of interests if it amounts to no more than the claim that
-something that happens to self-conscious beings can be contrary
-to their interests while similar events would not be contrary to
-the interests of beings who were not self-conscious. This might
-be because the self-conscious creature has greater awareness of
-what is happening, can fit the event into the overall framework
-of a longer time period, has different desires, and so on. But
-this is a point I granted at the start of this chapter, and provided
-that it is not carried to ludicrous extremes - like insisting that
-if I am self-conscious and a veal calf is not, depriving me of veal
-73
-Practical Ethics
-causes more suffering than depriving the calf of his freedom to
-walk, stretch and eat grass - it is not denied by the criticisms I
-made of animal experimentation and factory farming.
-It would be a different matter if it were claimed that, even
-when a self-conscious being did not suffer more than a being
-that was merely sentient, the suffering of the self-conscious
-being is more important because these are more valuable types
-of being. This introduces nonutilitarian claims of value - claims
-that do not derive simply from taking a universal standpoint in
-the manner described in the final section of Chapter 1. Since
-the argument for utilitarianism developed in that section was
-admittedly tentative, I cannot use that argument to rule out all
-nonutilitarian values. Nevertheless we are entitled to ask why
-self-conscious beings should be considered more valuable and
-in particular why the alleged greater value of a self-conscious
-being should result in preferring the lesser interests of a selfconscious
-being to the greater interests of a merely sentient
-being, even where the self-consciousness of the former being is
-not itself at stake. This last point is an important one, for we
-are not now considering cases in which the lives of self-conscious
-beings are at risk but cases in which self-conscious beings
-will go on living, their faculties intact, whatever we decide. In
-these cases, if the existence of self-consciousness does not affect
-the nature of the interests under comparison, it is not clear why
-we should drag self-consciousness into the discussion at all, any
-more than we should drag species, race or sex into similar discussions.
-Interests are interests, and ought to be given equal
-consideration whether they are the interests of human or nonhuman
-animals, self-conscious or non-self-conscious animals.
-There is another possible reply to the claim that selfconsciousness,
-or autonomy, or some similar characteristic, can
-serve to distinguish human from nonhuman animals: recall that
-there are intellectually disabled humans who have less claim to
-be regarded as self-conscious or autonomous than many nonhuman
-animals. If we use these characteristics to place a gulf
-74
-1
-Equality for Animals?
-between humans and other animals, we place these less able
-humans on the other side of the gulf; and if the gulf is taken
-to mark a difference in moral status, then these humans would
-have the moral status of animals rather than humans.
-This reply is forceful, because most of us find horrifying the
-idea of using intellectually disabled humans in painful experiments,
-or fattening them for gourmet dinners. But some philosophers
-have argued that these consequences would not really
-follow from the use of a characteristic like self-consciousness or
-autonomy to distinguish humans from other animals. I shall
-consider three of these attempts.
-The first suggestion is that severely intellectually disabled humans
-who do not possess the capacities that mark the normal
-human off from other animals should nevertheless be treated
-as if they did possess these capacities, since they belong to a
-species, members of which normally do possess them. The suggestion
-is, in other words, that we treat individuals not in accordance
-with their actual qualities, but in accordance with the
-qualities normal for their species.
-It is interesting that this suggestion should be made in defence
-of treating members of our species better than members of another
-species, when it would be firmly rejected if it were used
-to justify treating members of our race or sex better than members
-of another race or sex. In the previous chapter, when discussing
-the impact of possible differences in IQ between
-members of different ethnic groups, I made the obvious point
-that whatever the difference between the average scores for different
-groups, some members of the group with the lower average
-score will do better than some members of groups with
-the higher average score, and so we ought to treat people as
-individuals and not according to the average score for their
-ethnic group, whatever the explanation of that average might
-be. If we accept this we cannot consistently accept the suggestion
-that when dealing with severely intellectually disabled humans
-we should grant them the status or rights normal for their spe-
-75
-Practical Ethics
-cies. For what is the significance of the fact that this time the
-line is to be drawn around the species rather than around the
-race or sex? We cannot insist that beings be treated as individuals
-in the one case, and as members of a group in the other.
-Membership of a species is no more relevant in these circumstances
-than membership of a race or sex.
-A second suggestion is that although severely intellectually
-disabled humans may not possess higher capacities than other
-animals, they are nonetheless human beings, and as such we
-have special relations with them that we do not have with other
-animals. As one reviewer of Animal Liberation put it: 'Partiality
-for our own species, and within it for much smaller groupings
-is, like the universe, something we had better accept . . . The
-danger in an attempt to eliminate partial affections is that it
-may remove the source of all affections.'
-This argument ties morality too closely to our affections. Of
-course some people may have a closer relationship with the
-most profoundly intellectually disabled human than they do
-with any nonhuman animal, and it would be absurd to tell
-them that they should not feel this way. They simply do, and
-as such there is nothing good or bad about it. The question is
-whether our moral obligations to a being should be made to
-depend on our feelings in this manner. NotOriously, some human
-beings have a closer relationship with their cat than with
-their neighbours. Would those who tie morality to affections
-accept that these people are justified in saving their cats from
-a fire before they save their neighbours? And even those who
-are prepared to answer this question affirmatively would, I trust,
-not want to go along with racists who could argue that if people
-have more natural relationships with, and greater affection towards,
-others of their own race, it is all right for them to give
-preference to the interests of other members of their own race.
-Ethics does not demand that we eliminate personal relationships
-and partial affections, but it does demand that when we act we
-76
-Equality for Animals?
-assess the moral claims of those affected by our actions with
-some degree of independence from our feelings for them.
-The third suggestion invokes the widely used 'slippery slope'
-argument. The idea of this argument is that once we take one
-step in a certain direction we shall find ourselves on a slippery
-slope and shall slither further than we wished to go. In the
-present context the argument is used to suggest that we need
-a clear line to divide those beings we can experiment upon,
-or fatten for dinner, from those we cannot. Species membership
-makes a nice sharp dividing line, whereas levels of selfconsciousness,
-autonomy, or sentience do not. Once we allow
-that an intellectually disabled human being has no higher moral
-status than an animal, the argument goes, we have begun our
-descent down a slope, the next level of which is denying rights
-to social misfits, and the bottom of which is a totalitarian gov-
-, ernment disposing of any groups it does not like by classifying
-them as subhuman.
-The slippery slope argument may serve as a valuable warning
-in some contexts, but it cannot bear too much weight. If we
-believe that, as I have argued in this chapter, the special status
-we now give to humans allows us to ignore the interests of
-billions of sentient creatures, we should not be deterred from
-trying to rectify this situation by the mere possibility that the
-principles on which we base this attempt will be misused by
-evil rulers for their own ends. And it is no more than a possibility.
-The change I have suggested might make no difference
-to our treatment of humans, or it might even improve it.
-In the end, no ethical line that is arbitrarily drawn can be
-secure. It is better to find a line that can be defended openly
-and honestly. When discussing euthanasia in Chapter 7 we shall
-see that a line drawn in the wrong place can have unfortunate
-results even for those placed on the higher, or human side of
-the line.
-It is also important to remember that the aim of my argument
-77
-Practical Ethics
-is to elevate the status of animals rather than to lower the status
-of any humans. I do not wish to suggest that intellectually
-disabled humans should be force-fed with food colourings until
-half of them die - although this would certainly give us a more
-accurate indication of whether the substance was safe for humans
-than testing it on rabbits or dogs does. I would like our
-conviction that it would be wrong to treat intellectually disabled
-humans in this way to be transferred to nonhuman animals at
-similar levels of self-consciousness and with similar capacities
-for suffering. It is excessively pessimistic to refrain from trying
-to alter our attitudes on the grounds that we might start treating
-intellectually disabled humans with the same lack of concern
-we now have for animals, rather than give animals the greater
-concern that we now have for intellectually disabled humans.
-Ethics and Reciprocity
-In the earliest surviving major work of moral philosophy in the
-Western tradition, Plato's RepUblic, there is to be found the following
-view of ethics:
-They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice,
-evil; but that there is more evil in the latter than good in the
-former. And so when men have both done and suffered injustice
-and have had experience of both, any who are not able to avoid
-the one and obtain the other, think that they had better agree
-among themselves to have neither; hence they begin to establish
-laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law
-is termed by them lawful and just. This, it is claimed, is the origin
-and nature of justice - it is a mean or compromise, between the
-best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the
-worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of
-retaliation.
-This was not Plato's own view; he put it into the mouth of
-Glaucon in order to allow Socrates, the hero of his dialogue, to
-refute it. It is a view that has never gained general acceptance,
-but has not died away either. Echoes of it can be found in the
-78
-Equality for Animals?
-ethical theories of contemporary philosophers like John Rawls
-and David Gauthier; and it has been used, by these philosophers
-and others, to justify the exclusion of animals from the sphere
-of ethics, or at least from its core. For if the basis of ethics is
-that I refrain from doing nasty things to others as long as they
-don't do nasty things to me, I have no reason against doing
-nasty things to those who are incapable of appreciating my
-restraint and controlling their conduct towards me accordingly.
-Animals, by and large, are in this category. When I am surfing
-far out from shore and a shark attacks, my concern for animals
-will not help; I am as likely to be eaten as the next surfer,
-though he may spend every Sunday afternoon taking potshots
-at sharks from a boat. Since animals cannot reciprocate, they
-are, on this view, outside the limits of the ethical contract.
-In assessing this conception of ethics we should distinguish
-between explanations of the origin of ethical judgments, and
-justifications of these judgments. The explanation of the origin
-of ethics in terms of a tacit contract between people for their
-mutual benefit has a certain plausibility (though in view of the
-quasi-ethical social rules that have been observed in the societies
-of other mammals, it is obviously a historical fantasy). But we
-could accept this account, as a historical explanation, without
-thereby committing ourselves to any views about the rightness
-or wrongness of the ethical system that has resulted. No matter
-how self-interested the origins of ethics may be, it is possible
-that once we have started thinking ethically we are led beyond
-these mundane premises. For we are capable of reasoning, and
-reason is not subordinate to self-interest. When we are reasoning
-about ethics, we are using concepts that, as we saw in the
-first chapter of this book, take us beyond our own personal
-interest, or even the interest of some sectional group. According
-to the contract view of ethics, this universalising process should
-stop at the boundaries of our community; but once the process
-has begun we may come to see that it would not be consistent
-with our other convictions to halt at that point. Just as the first
-79
-Practical Ethics
-mathematicians, who may have started counting in order to
-keep track of the number of people in their tribe, had no idea
-that they were taking the first steps along a path that would
-lead to the infinitesimal calculus, so the origin of ethics tells us
-nothing about where it will end.
-When we turn to the question of justification, we can see that
-contractual accounts of ethics have many problems. Clearly,
-such accounts exclude from the ethical sphere a lot more than
-nonhuman animals. Since severely intellectually disabled humans
-are equally incapable of reciprocating, they must also be
-excluded. The same goes for infants and very young children;
-but the problems of the contractual view are not limited to these
-special cases. The ultimate reason for entering into the ethical
-contract is, on this view, self-interest. Unless some additional
-universal element is brought in, one group of people has no
-reason to deal ethically with another if it is not in their interest
-to do so. If we take this seriously we shall have to revise our
-ethical judgments drastically. For instance, the white slave traders
-who transported African slaves to America had no selfinterested
-reason for treating Mricans any better than they did.
-The Africans had no way of retaliating. If they had only been
-contractualists, the slave traders could have rebutted the abolitionists
-by explaining to them that ethics stops at the boundaries
-of the community, and since Africans are not part of their
-community they have no duties to them.
-Nor is it only past practices that would be affected by taking
-the contractual model seriously. Though people often speak of
-the world today as a single community, there is no doubt that
-the power of people in, say, Chad, to reciprocate either good
-or evil that is done to them by, say, citizens ofthe United States
-is limited. Hence it does not seem that the contract view provides
-for any obligations on the part of wealthy nations to poorer
-nations.
-Most striking of all is the impact of the contract model on
-80
-Equality for Animals?
-our attitude to future generations. 'Why should I do anything
-for posterity? What has posterity ever done for me?' would be
-the view we ought to take if only those who can reciprocate
-are within the bounds of ethics. There is no way in which those
-who will be alive in the year 2100 can do anything to make
-our lives better or worse. Hence if obligations only exist where
-there can be reciprocity, we need have no worries about problems
-like the disposal of nuclear waste. True, some nuclear
-wastes will still be deadly for a quarter of a million years; but
-as long as we put it in containers that will keep it away from
-us for 100 years, we have done all that ethics demands of us.
-These examples should suffice to show that. whatever its
-origin, the ethics we have now does go beyond a tacit understanding
-between beings capable of reciprocity. The prospect of
-returning to such a basis wilt I trust, not be appealing. Since
-no account of the origin of morality compels us to base our
-morality on reciprocity, and since no other arguments in favour
-of this conclusion have been offered, we should reject this view
-of ethics.
-At this point in the discussion some contract theorists appeal
-to a looser view of the contract idea, urging that we include
-within the moral community all those who have or will have
-the capacity to take part in a reciprocal agreement, irrespective
-of whether they are in fact able to reciprocate, and irrespective,
-too, of when they will have this capacity. Plainly, this view is
-no longer based on reciprocity at alL for (unless we care greatly
-about having our grave kept tidy or our memory preserved for
-ever) later generations plainly cannot enter into reciprocal relationships
-with us, even though they will one day have the
-capacity to reciprocate. If contract theorists abandon reciprocity
-in this manner, however, what is left of the contract account?
-Why adopt it at all? And why limit morality to those who have
-the capacity to enter into agreements with us, if in fact there is
-no possibility of them ever doing so? Rather than cling to the
-81
-Pradical Ethics
-husk of a contract view that has lost its kernel. it would be
-better to abandon it altogether, and consider, on the basis of
-universalisabiIity, which beings ought to be included within
-morality.
-82
-4
-WHAT'S WRONG WITH KILLING?
-AN oversimplified summary of the first three chapters of
-this book might read like this: the first chapter sets up a
-conception of ethics from which, in the second chapter, the
-principle of equal consideration of interests is derived; this principle
-is then used to illuminate problems about the equality
-of humans and, in the third chapter, applied to non-human
-animals.
-Thus the principle of equal consideration of interests has been
-behind much of our discussion so far; but as I suggested in the
-previous chapter, the application of this principle when lives
-are at stake is less clear than when we are concerned with
-interests like avoiding pain and experiencing pleasure. In this
-chapter we shall look at some views about the value of life, and
-the wrongness oftaking life, in order to prepare the ground for
-the following chapters in which we shall tum to the practical
-issues of killing animals, abortion, euthanasia, and environmental
-ethics.
-HUMAN LIFE
-People often say that life is sacred. They almost never mean
-what they say. They do not mean, as their words seem to imply,
-that life itself is sacred. If they did, killing a pig or pulling up a
-cabbage would be as abhorrent to them as the murder of a t f I
-human being. When people say that life is sacred, it is !!uman I I:::,'" i'l r; ""-,
-Jife they have in mind. But why should huma,!! life have special :/
-value? r I ;( i,." 11"",-- F/,' (111 (fe. ? .• ,,] -jj )$:'" i'V 83
-~ - (~:/" ,{
-La; ,j).je I~ H,c' "\C'''''1'>1\.«11 ) .11\Jl'\,. , ,
-,)j .. A_ir~.
-Practical Ethics
-In discussing the doctrine of the sanctity of human life I shall
-not take the term 'sanctity' in a specifically religious sense. The
-doctrine may well have a religious origin, as I shall suggest later
-in this chapter. but it is now part of a broadly secular ethic, and
-it is as part of this secular ethic that it is most influential today.
-Nor shall I take the doctrine as maintaining that it is always
-wrong to take human life, for this would imply absolute pacifism,
-and there are many supporters of the sanctity of human
-life who concede that we may kill in self-defence. We may take
-the doctrine of the sanctity of human life to be no more than
-a way of saying that human life has some special value, a value
-quite distinct from the value of the lives of other living things.
-The view that human life has unique value is deeply rooted
-in our society and is enshrined in our law. To see how far it
-can be taken, I recommend a remarkable book: The Long Dying
-a/Baby Andrew, by Robert and Peggy Stinson. In December 1976
-Peggy Stinson, a Pennsylvania schoolteacher, was twenty-four
-weeks pregnant when she went into premature labor. The baby,
-whom Robert and Peggy named Andrew, was marginally viable.
-Despite a firm statement from both parents that they wanted
-'no heroics', the doctors in charge of their child used all the
-technology of modem medicine to keep him alive for nearly six
-months. Andrew had periodic fits. Towards the end of that
-period, it was clear that if he survived at all, he would be seriously
-and permanently impaired. Andrew was also suffering
-considerably: at one point his doctor told the Stinsons that it
-must 'hurt like hell' every time Andrew drew a breath. Andrew's
-treatment cost $104,000, at 1977 cost levels - today it could
-easily be three times that, for intensive care for extremely premature
-babies costs at least $1,500 per day.
-Andrew Stinson was kept alive, against the wishes of his
-parents, at a substantial financial cost, notwithstanding evident
-suffering, and despite the fact that, after a certain point it was
-clear that he would never be able to live an independent life,
-or to think and talk in the way that most humans do. Whether
-84 ,
-What's Wrong with Killing?
-such treatment of an infant human being is or is not the right
-thing to do - and I come back to this question in Chapter 7 -
-it makes a striking contrast with the casual way in which we
-take the lives of stray dogs, experimental monkeys, and beef
-cattle. What justifies the difference?
-In every society known to us there has been some prohibition
-on the taking of life. Presumably no society can survive if it
-allows its members to kill one another without restriction. Precisely
-who is protected, however, is a matter on which societies
-have differed. In many tribal societies the only serious offence
-is to kill an innocent member of the tribe itself - members of
-other tribes may be killed with impunity. In more sophisticated
-nation-states protection has generally extended to all within the
-nation's territorial boundaries, although there have been cases
-- like slave-owning states - in which a minority was excluded.
-Nowadays most agree, in theory if not in practice, that, apart
-from special cases like self-defence, war, possibly capital punishment,
-and one or two other doubtful areas, it is wrong to
-kill human beings irrespective of their race, religion, class, or
-nationality. The moral inadequacy of narrower principles, limiting
-the respect for life to a tribe, race, or nation, is taken for
-granted; but the argument of the preceding chapter must raise
-doubts about whether the boundary of our species marks a more
-defensible limit to the protected circle.
-At this point we should pause to ask what we mean by terms
-, like 'human life' or 'human being'. These terms figure prominently
-in debates about, for example, abortion. 'Is the fetus a
-human being?' is often taken as the crucial question in the
-abortion debate; but unless we think carefully about these terms
-such questions cannot be answered.
-It is possible to give 'human being' a precise meaning. We
-can use it as equivalent to 'member of the species Homo sapiens'.
-Whether a being is a member of a given species is something .i/,«Y>!~!CH~
-that can be determined scientifically, by an examination of the 'J.
-nature of the chromosomes in the cells of living organisms. In
-85
-Practical Ethics
-this sense there is no doubt that from the first moments of its
-existence an embryo conceived from human sperm and eggs is
-a human being; and the same is true of the most profoundly
-and irreparably intellectually disabled human being, even of an
-infant who is born anencephalic - literally, without a brain.
-There is another use of the term 'human', one proposed by
-Joseph Fletcher, a Protestant theologian and a prolific writer on
-ethical issues. Fletcher has compiled a list of what he calls 'indicators
-of humanhood' that includes the following: selfawareness,
-self-control, a sense ofthe future, a sense ofthe past,
-the capadty to relate to others, concern for others, communication,
-and curiosity. This is the sense of the term that we have
-in mind when we praise someone by saying that she is 'a real
-human being' or shows 'truly human qualities'. In saying this
-we are not, of course, referring to the person's membership in
-the spedes Homo sapiens which as a matter of biological fact
-is rarely in doubt; we are implying that human beings characteristically
-possess certain qualities, and this person possesses
-them to a high degree.
-These two senses of 'human being' overlap but do not coindde.
-The embryo, the later fetus, the profoundly intellectually
-disabled child, even the newborn infant - all are indisputably
-members of the spedes Homo sapiens, but none are self-aware,
-have a sense of the future, or the capadty to relate to others.
-Hence the choice between the two senses can make an important
-difference to how we answer questions like 'Is the fetus a
-human being?'
-When choosing which words to use in a situation like this
-we should choose terms that will enable us to express our meaning
-clearly, and that do not prejudge the answer to substantive
-questions. To stipulate that we shall use 'human' in, say, the
-first of the two senses just described, and that therefore the fetus
-is a human being and abortion is immoral would not do. Nor
-would it be any better to choose the second sense and argue
-86
-What's Wrong with Killing?
-on this basis that abortion is acceptable. The morality of abortion
-is a substantive issue, the answer to which cannot depend on
-a stipulation about how we shall use words. In order to avoid
-begging any questions, and to make my meaning clear, I shall
-for the moment put aside the tricky term 'human' and substitute
-two different terms, corresponding to the two different senses
-of 'human'. For the first sense, the biological sense, I shall simply
-use the cumbersome but predse expression 'member of the
-spedes Homo sapiens' while for the second sense I shall use the
-term 'person'.
-This use of 'person' is itself, unfortunately, liable to mislead,
-since 'person' is often used as if it meant the same as 'human
-being'. Yet the terms are not equivalent; there could be a person
-who is not a member of our spedes. There could also be members
-of our spedes who are not persons. The word 'person' has
-its origin in the Latin term for a mask worn by an actor in
-classical drama. By putting on masks the actors Signified that
-they were acting a role. Subsequently 'person' came to mean
-one who plays a role in life, one who is an agent. According to
-the Oxford Dictionary, one of the current meanings of the term
-is 'a self-consdous or rational being'. This sense has impeccable
-philosophical precedents. John Locke defines a person as 'A
-thinking intelligent being that has reason and reflection and can
-consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times
-and places:
-This definition makes 'person' close to what Fletcher meant
-by 'human', except that it selects two crudal characteristics -
-rationality and self-consdousness - as the core of the concept.
-Quite possibly Fletcher would agree that these two are central,
-and the others more or less follow from them. In any case, I
-propose to use 'person', in the sense of a rational and selfconsdous
-being, to capture those elements of the popular sense
-of 'human being' that are not covered by 'member of the spedes
-Homo sapiens'.
-87
-Practical Ethics
-The Value of the Life of Members of the Species
-Homo Sapiens
-With the clarification gained by our terminological interlude,
-and the argument of the preceding chapter to draw upon, this
-section can be very brief. The wrongness of inflicting pain on a
-being cannot depend on the being's species: nor can the wrongness
-of killing it. The biological facts upon which the boundary
-of our species is drawn do not have moral significance. To give
-preference to the life of a being simply because that being is a
-member of our species would put us in the same position as
-racists who give preference to those who are members of their
-race.
-To those who have read the preceding chapters of this book,
-this conclusion may seem obvious, for we have worked towards
-it gradually; but it differs strikingly from the prevailing attitude
-in our society, which as we have seen treats as sacred the lives
-of all members of our species. How is it that our society should
-have come to accept a view that bears up so poorly under critical
-scrutiny? A short historical digression may help to explain.
-If we go back to the origins of Western civilisation, to Greek
-or Roman times, we find that membership of Homo sapiens
-was not sufficient to guarantee that one's life would be protected.
-There was no respect for the lives of slaves or other
-'barbarians'; and even among the Greeks and Romans themselves,
-infants had no automatic right to life. Greeks and Romans
-killed deformed or weak infants by exposing them to the elements
-on a hilltop. Plato and Aristotle thought that the state
-should enforce the killing of deformed infants. The celebrated
-legislative codes said to have been drawn up by Lycurgus and
-Solon contained similar provisions. In this period it was thought
-better to end a life that had begun inauspiciously than to attempt
-to prolong that life, with all the problems it might bring.
-Our present attitudes date from the coming of Christianity.
-There was a specific theological motivation for the Christian
-88
-t·
-What's Wrong with Killing?
-insistence on the importance of species membership: the belief
-that all born of human parents are immortal and destined for
-an eternity of bliss or for everlasting torment. With this belief,
-the killing of Homo sapiens took on a fearful significance, since
-it consigned a being to his or her eternal fate. A second Christian
-doctrine that led to the same conclusion was the belief that since
-we are created by God we are his property, and to kill a human
-being is to usurp God's right to decide when we shall live and
-when we shall die. As Thomas Aquinas put it, taking a 'human
-life is a sin against God in the same way that killing a slave
-would be a sin against the master to whom the slave belonged.
-Non-human animals, on the other hand, were believed to have
-been placed by God under man's dominion, as recorded in the
-Bible (Genesis 1:29 and 9:1-3). Hence humans could kill nonhuman
-animals as they pleased, as long as the animals were
-not the property of another.
-During the centuries of Christian domination of European
-thought the ethical attitudes based on these doctrines became
-part of the unquestioned moral orthodoxy of European civilisation.
-Today the doctrines are no longer generally accepted,
-but the ethical attitudes to which they gave rise fit in with the
-deep-seated Western belief in the uniqueness and special privileges
-of our species, and have survived. Now that we are reassessing
-our speciesist view of nature, however, it is also time to
-reassess our belief in the sanctity of the lives of members of our
-species.
-The Value of a Person's Life
-We have broken down the doctrine of the sanctity of human
-life into two separate claims, one that there is special value in
-the life of a member of our species, and the other that there is
-special value in the life of a person. We have seen that the
-former claim cannot be defended. What of the latter? Is there
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-Practical Ethics
-special value in the life of a rational and self-conscious being,
-as distinct from a being that is merely sentient?
-One line of argument for answering this question affirmatively
-runs as follows. A self-conscious being is aware of itself as a
-distinct entity, with a past and a future. (This, remember, was
-Locke's criterion for being a person.) A being aware of itself in
-this way will be capable of having desires about its own future.
-For example, a professor of philosophy may hope to write a
-book demonstrating the objective nature of ethics; a student
-may look forward to graduating; a child may want to go for a
-ride in an aeroplane. To take the lives of any of these people,
-without their consent, is to thwart their desires for the future.
-Killing a snail or a day-old infant does not thwart any desires
-of this kind, because snails and newborn infants are incapable
-of having such desires.
-It may be said that when a person is killed we are not left
-with a thwarted desire in the same sense in which I have a
-thwarted desire when I am hiking through dry country and,
-pausing to ease my thirst, discover a hole in my waterbottle. In
-this case I have a desire that I cannot fulfil. and I feel frustration
-and discomfort because of the continuing and unsatisfied desire
-for water. When I am killed the desires I have for the future do
-not continue after my death, and I do not suffer from their nonfulfilment.
-But does this mean that preventing the fulfilment of
-these desires does not matter?
-Classical utilitarianism, as expounded by the founding father
-of utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham, and refined by later philosophers
-like John Stuart Mill and Henry Sidgwick, judges actions
-by their tendency to maximise pleasure or happiness and minimise
-pain or unhappiness. Terms like 'pleasure' and 'happiness'
-lack precision, but it is clear that they refer to something that
-is experienced, or felt - in other words, to states of consciousness.
-According to classical utilitarianism, therefore, there is no
-direct significance in the fact that desires for the future go un-
-90
-What's Wrong with Killing?
-fulfilled when people die. If you die instantaneously, whether
-you have any desires for the future makes no difference to the
-amount of pleasure or pain you experience. Thus for the classical
-utilitarian the status of 'person' is not directly relevant to the
-wrongness of killin,S.
-Indirectly, however, being a person may be important for the
-classical utilitarian. Its importance arises in the following manner.
-If I am a person, I have a conception of myself. I know
-that I have a future. I also know that my future existence could
-be cut short. If I think that this is likely to happen at any moment,
-my present existence will be fraught with anxiety, and
-will presumably be less enjoyable than if I do not think it is
-likely to happen for some time. If I learn that people like myself
-are very rarely killed, I will worry less. Hence the classical utilitarian
-can defend a prohibition on killing persons on the indirect
-ground that it will increase the happiness of people who would
-otherwise worry that they might be killed. I call this an indirect
-ground because it does not refer to any direct wrong done to
-the person killed, but rather to a consequence of it for other
-people. There is, of course, something odd about objecting to
-murder, not because of the wrong done to the victim, but because
-of the effect that the murder will have on others. One
-has to be a tough-minded classical utilitarian to be untroubled
-by this oddness. (Remember, though, that we are now only
-considering what is especially wrong about killing a person. The
-classical utilitarian can still regard killing as wrong because it
-eliminates the happiness that the victim would have experienced,
-had she lived. This objection to murder will apply to any
-being likely to have a happy future, irrespective of whether the
-being is a person.) For present purposes, however, the main
-point is that this indirect ground does provide a reason for taking
-the killing of a person, under certain conditions, more seriously
-than the killing of a non-personal being. If a being is incapable
-of conceiving of itself as existing over time, we need not take
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-Practical Ethics
-into account the possibility of it worrying about the prospect of
-its future existence being cut short. It can't worry about this,
-for it has no conception of its own future.
-I said that the indirect classical utilitarian reason for taking
-the killing of a person more seriously than the killing of a nonperson
-holds 'under certain conditions'. The most obvious of
-these conditions is that the killing of the person may become
-known to other persons, who derive from this knowledge a
-more gloomy estimate of their own chances of living to a ripe
-old age, or simply become fearful of being murdered. It is of
-course possible that a person could be killed in complete secrecy,
-so that no one else knew a murder had been committed. Then
-this indirect reason against killing would not apply.
-To this last point, however, a qualification must be made. In
-the circumstances described in the last paragraph, the indirect
-classical utilitarian reason against killing would not apply in so
-far as we judge this individual case. There is something to be said,
-however, against applying utilitarianism only or primarily at the
-level of each individual case. It may be that in the long run, we
-will achieve better results - greater overall happiness - if we
-urge people not to judge each individual action by the standard
-of utility, but instead to think along the lines of some broad
-principles that will cover all or virtually all of the situations that
-they are likely to encounter.
-Several reasons have been offered in support of this approach.
-R.M. Hare has suggested a useful distinction between two levels
-of moral reasoning: the intuitive and the critical. To consider,
-in theory, the possible circumstances in which one might maximise
-utility by secretly killing someone who wants to go on
-living is to reason at the critical level. As philosophers, or just
-as reflective, self-critical people, it can be interesting and helpful
-to our understanding of ethical theory to think about such unusual
-hypothetical cases. Everyday moral thinking, however,
-must be more intuitive. In real life we usually cannot foresee
-all the complexities of our choices. It is simply not practical to
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-What's Wrong with Killing?
-try to calculate the consequences, in advance, of every choice
-we make. Even if we were to limit ourselves to the more significant
-choices, there would be a danger that in many cases
-we would be calculating in less than ideal circumstances. We
-could be hurried, or flustered. We might be feeling angry, or
-hurt, or competitive. Our thoughts could be coloured by greed,
-or se~ual de~re, or thoughts of vengeance. Our own interests,
-or the interests of those we love, might be at stake. Or we might
-just not be very good at thinking about such complicated issues
-as the likely consequences of a significant choice. For all these
-reasons, Hare suggests, it will be better if, for our everyday
-ethical life, we adopt some broad ethical principles and do not
-deviate from them. These principles should include those that
-experience has shown, over the centuries, to be generally conducive
-to producing the best consequences: and in Hare's view
-that would include many of the standard moral principles, for
-example, telling the truth, keeping promises, not harming others,
-and so on. Respecting the lives of people who want to go
-on living would presumably be among these principles. Even
-though, at the critical level, we can conceive of circumstances
-in which better consequences would flow from acting against
-one or more of these principles, people will do better on the
-whole if they stick to the principles than if they do not.
-On this view, soundly chosen intuitive moral principles
-should be like a good tennis coach's instructions to a player.
-The instructions are given with an eye to what will payoff most
-of the time; they are a guide to playing "percentage tennis".
-Occasionally an individual player might go for a freak shot, and
-pull off a winner that has everyone applauding; but if the coach
-is any good at all, deviations from the instructions laid down
-will, more often than not, lose. So it is better to put the thought
-of going for those fr~ shots out of one's mind. Similarly, if
-we are guided by a set of well-chosen intuitive principles, we
-may do better if we do not attempt to calculate the consequences
-of each significant moral choice we must make, but instead
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-Practical Ethics
-consider what principles apply to it, and act accordingly. Perhaps
-very occasionally we will find ourselves in circumstances in
-which it is absolutely plain that departing from the principles
-will produce a much better result than we will obtain by sticking
-to them, and then we may be justified in making the departure.
-But for most of us, most of the time, such circumstances will
-not arise and can be excluded from our thinking. Therefore even
-though at the critical level the classical utilitarian must concede
-the possibility of cases in which it would be better not to respect
-a person's desire to continue living, because the person could
-be killed in complete secrecy, and a great deal of unalleviated
-misery could thereby be prevented, this kind of thinking has
-no place at the intuitive level that should guide our everyday
-actions. So, at least. a classical utilitarian can argue.
-That is, I think, the gist of what the classical utilitarian would
-say about the distinction between killing a person and killing
-some other type of being. There is, however, another version
-of utilitarianism that gives greater weight to the distinction. This
-other version of utilitarianism judges actions, not by their tendency
-to maximise pleasure or minimise pain, but by the extent
-to which they accord with the preferences of any beings affected
-by the action or its consequences. This version of utilitarianism
-is known as 'preference utilitarianism'. It is preference utilitarianism,
-rather than classical utilitarianism, that we reach by
-universalising our own interests in the manner described in the
-opening chapter of this book - if, that is, we make the plausible
-move of taking a person's interests to be what. on balance and
-after reflection on all the relevant facts, a person prefers.
-According to preference utilitarianism, an action contrary to
-the preference of any being is, unless this preference is outweighed
-by contrary preferences, wrong. Killing a person who
-prefers to continue living is therefore wrong, other things being
-equal. That the victims are not around after the act to lament
-the fact that their preferences have been disregarded is irrelevant.
-The wrong is done when the preference is thwarted.
-94
-What's Wrong with Killing?
-For preference utilitarians, taking the life of a person will
-normally be worse than taking the life of some other being,
-since persons are highly future-oriented in their preferences. To
-kill a person is therefore, normally, to violate not just one, but
-a wide range of the most central and significant preferences a
-being can have. Very often, it will make nonsense of everything
-that the victim has been trying to do in the past days, months,
-or even years ... In contrast, beings who cannot see themselves
-as entities with a future cannot have any preferences about their
-own future existence. This is not to deny that such beings might
-struggle against a situation in which their lives are in danger,
-as a fish struggles to get free of the barbed hook in its mouth;
-but this indicates no more than a preference for the cessation
-of a state of affairs that is perceived as painful or frightening.
-Struggle against danger and pain does not suggest that fish
-are capable of preferring their own future existence to nonexistence.
-The behaviour of a fish on a hook suggests a reason
-for not killing fish by that method, but does not in itself suggest
-a preference utilitarian reason against killing fish by a method
-that brings about death instantly, without first causing pain or
-distress. (Again, remember that we are here considering what
-is especially wrong about killing a person; I am not saying that
-there are never any preference utilitarian reasons against killing
-conscious beings who are not persons.)
-Does a Person Have a Right to Life?
-Although preference utilitarianism does provide a direct reason
-for not killing a person, some may find the reason - even when
-coupled with the important indirect reasons that any form of
-utilitarianism will take into account - not sufficiently stringent.
-Even for preference utilitarianism, the wrong done to the person
-killed is merely one factor to be taken into account, and the
-preference of the victim could sometimes be outweighed by the
-preferences of others. Some say that the prohibition on killing
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-Practical Ethics
-people is more absolute than this kind of utilitarian calculation
-implies. Our lives, we feel, are things to which we have a right,
-and rights are not to be traded off against the preferences or
-pleasures of others.
-I am not convinced that the notion of a moral right is a helpful
-or meaningful one, except when it is used as a shorthand way
-of referring to more fundamental moral considerations. Nevertheless,
-since the idea that we have a 'right to life' is a popular
-one, it is worth asking whether there are grounds for attributing
-rights to life to persons, as distinct from other living beings.
-Michael Tooley, a contemporary American philosopher, has
-argued that the only beings who have a right to life are those
-who can conceive of themselves as distinct entities existing over
-time - in other words, persons, as we have used the term. His
-argument is based on the claim that there is a conceptual connection
-between the desires a being is capable of having and
-the rights that the being can be said to have. As Tooley puts it:
-The basic intuition is that a right is something that can be violated
-and that, in genera!, to violate an individual's right to something
-is to frustrate the corresponding desire. Suppose, for example,
-that you own a car. Then I am under a prima facie obligation
-not to take it from you. However, the obligation is not unconditional:
-it depends in part upon the existence of a corresponding
-desire in you. If you do not care whether I take your car, then
-I generally do not violate your right by doing so.
-Tooley admits that it is difficult to formulate the connections
-between rights and desires precisely, because there are problem
-cases like people who are asleep or temporarily unconscious.
-He does not want to say that such people have no rights because
-they have, at that moment, no desires. Nevertheless, Tooley
-holds, the possession of a right must in some way be linked
-with the capacity to have the relevant desires, if not with having
-the actual desires themselves.
-The next step is to apply this view about rights to the case of
-the right to life. To put the matter as simply as possible - more
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-What's Wrong with Killing?
-simply than Tooley himself does and no doubt too simply - if
-the right to life is the right to continue existing as a distinct
-entity, then the desire relevant to possessing a right to life is the
-desire to continue existing as a distinct entity. But only a being
-who is capable of conceiving herself as a distinct entity existing
-over time - that is, only a person - could have this desire.
-Therefore only a person could have a right to life.
-This is how Tooley first formulated his position, in a striking
-article entitled "Abortion and Infanticide", first published in
-1972. The problem of how precisely to formulate the connections
-between rights and desires, however, led Tooley to alter
-his position in a subsequent book with the same title, Abortion
-and Infantidde. He there argues that an individual cannot at a
-given time - say, now - have a right to continued existence
-unless the individual is of a kind such that it can now be in its
-interests that it continue to exist. One might think that this
-makes a dramatic difference to the outcome of Tooley's position,
-for while a newborn infant would not seem to be capable of
-conceiving itself as a distinct entity existing over time, we commonly
-think that it can be in the interests of an infant to be
-saved from death, even if the death would have been entirely
-without pain or suffering. We certainly do this in retrospect: I
-might say, ifI know that I nearly died in infancy, that the person
-who snatched my pram from the path of the speeding train is
-my greatest benefactor, for without her swift thinking I would
-never have had the happy and fulfilling life that I am now living.
-Tooley argues, however, that the retrospective attribution of an
-interest in living to the infant is a mistake. I am not the infant
-from whom I developed. The infant could not look forward to
-developing into the kind of being I am, or even into any intermediate
-being, between the being I now am and the infant. I
-cannot even recall being the infant; there are no mental links
-between us. Continued existence cannot be in the interests of
-a being who never has had the concept of a continuing self -
-that is, never has been able to conceive of itself as existing over
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-Practical Ethics
-time. If the train had instantly killed the infant, the death would
-not have been contrary to the interests of the infant, because
-the infant would never have had the concept of existing over
-time. It is true that I would then not be alive, but I can say that
-it is in my interests to be alive only because I do have the concept
-of a continuing self. I can with equal truth say that it is in my
-interests that my parents met, because if they had never met,
-they could not have created the embryo from which I developed,
-and so I would not be alive. This does not mean that the creation
-of this embryo was in the interests of any potential being who
-was lurking around, waiting to be brought into existence. There
-was no such being, and had I not been brought into existence,
-there would not have been anyone who missed out on the life
-I have enjo'yed living. Similarly, we make a mistake if we now
-construct an interest in future life in the infant, who in the first
-days following birth can have no concept of continued existence,
-and with whom I have no mental links.
-Hence in his book Tooley reaches, though by a more circuitous
-route, a conclusion that is practically equivalent to the
-conclusion he reached in his article. To have a right to life, one
-must have, or at least at one time have had, the concept of
-having a continued existence. Note that this formulation avoids
-any problems in dealing with sleeping or unconscious people;
-it is enough that they have had, at one time, the concept of
-continued existence for us to be able to say that continued life
-may be in their interests. This makes sense: my desire to continue
-living - or to complete the book I am writing, or to travel
-around the world next year - does not cease whenever I am
-not consciously thinking about these things. We often desire
-things without the desire being at the forefront of our minds.
-The fact that we have the desire is apparent if we are reminded
-of it, or suddenly confronted with a situation in which we must
-choose between two courses of action, one of which makes the
-fulfilment of the desire less likely. In a similar way, when we
-go to sleep our desires for the future have not ceased to exist.
-98
-What's Wrong with Killing?
-They will still be there, when we wake. As the desires are still
-part of us, so, too, our interest in continued life remains part
-of us while we are asleep or unconscious.
-People and Respect for Autonomy
-To this point our discussion of the wrongness of killing people
-has focused on their capacity to envisage their future and have
-desires related to it. Another implication of being a person may
-also be relevant to the wrongness of killing. There is a strand
-of ethical thought, associated with Kant but including many
-modem writers who are not Kantians, according to which respect
-for autonomy is a basic moral principle. By 'autonomy'
-is meant the capacity to choose, to make and act on one's own
-decisions. Rational and self-conscious beings presumably have
-this ability, whereas beings who cannot consider the alternatives
-open to them are not capable of choosing in the required sense
-and hence cannot be autonomous. In particular, only a being
-who can grasp the difference between dying and continuing to
-live can autonomously choose to live. Hence killing a person
-who does not choose to die fails to respect that person's autonomy;
-and as the choice of living or dying is about the most
-fundamental choice anyone can make, the choice on which all
-other choices depend, killing a person who does not choose to
-die is the gravest possible violation of that person's autonomy.
-Not everyone agrees that respect for autonomy is a basic moral
-principle, or a valid moral principle at all. Utilitarians do not
-respect autonomy for its own sake, although they might give
-great weight to a person's desire to go on living, either in a
-preference utilitarian way, or as evidence that the person's life
-was on the whole a happy one. But if we are preference utilitarians
-we must allow that a desire to go on living can be
-outweighed by other desires, and if we are classical utilitarians
-we must recognise that people may be utterly mistaken in their
-expectations of happiness. So a utilitarian, in objecting to the
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-Practical Ethics
-killing of a person, cannot place the same stress on autonomy
-as those who take respect for autonomy as an independent
-moral principle. The classical utilitarian might have to accept
-that in some cases it would be right to kill a person who does
-not choose to die on the grounds that the person will otherwise
-lead a miserable life. This is true, however, only on the critical
-level of moral reasoning. As we saw earlier, utilitarians may
-encourage people to adopt, in their daily lives, principles that
-will in almost all cases lead to better consequences when followed
-than any alternative action. The principle of respect for
-autonomy would be a prime example of such a principle. We
-shall discuss actual cases that raise this issue shortly, in the
-discussion of euthanasia in Chapter 7. \
-It may be helpful here to draw together our conclusions about
-the value of a person's life. We have seen that there are four
-possible reasons for holding that a person's life has some distinctive
-value over and above the life of a merely sentient being:
-the classical utilitarian concern with the effects of the killing on
-others; the preference utilitarian concern with the frustration
-of the victim's desires and plans for the future; the argument
-that the capacity to conceive of oneself as existing over time is
-a necessary condition of a right to life; and respect for autonomy.
-Although at the level of critical reasoning a classical utilitarian
-would accept only the first, indirect, reason, and a preference
-utilitarian only the first two reasons, at the intuitive level utilitarians
-of both kinds would probably advocate respect for autonomy
-too. The distinction between critical and intuitive levels
-thus leads to a greater degree of convergence, at the level of
-everyday moral decision making, between utilitarians and those
-who hold other moral views than we would find if we took
-into account only the critical level of reasoning. In any case,
-none of the four reasons for giving special protection to the lives
-of persons can be rejected out of hand. We shall therefore bear
-all four in mind when we tum to practical issues involving
-killing.
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-What's Wrong with Killing?
-Before we do tum to practical questions about killing, however,
-we have still to consider claims about the value of life that
-are based neither on membership of our species, nor on being
-a person.
-CONSCIOUS LIFE
-There are many beings who are sentient and capable of experiencing
-pleasure and pain, but are not rational and selfconscious
-and so not persons. I shall refer to these beings as
-conscious being. Many non-human animals almost certainly
-fall into this category; so must newborn infants and some
-intellectually disabled humans. Exactly which of these lack
-self-consciousness is something we shall consider in the next
-chapters. If Tooley is right, those beings who do lack selfconsciousness
-cannot be said to have a right to life, in the full
-sense of 'right'. Still, for other reasons, it might be wrong to kill
-them. In the present section we shall ask if the life of a being
-who is conscious but not self-conscious has value, and if so,
-how the value of such a life compares with the value of a
-person's life.
-Should We Value Conscious Life?
-The most obvious reason for valuing the life of a being capable
-of experiencing pleasure or pain is the pleasure it can experience.
-If we value our own pleasures - like the pleasures of
-eating, of sex, of running at full speed and of swimming on a
-hot day - then the universal aspect of ethical judgments requires
-us to extend our positive evaluation of our own experience of
-these pleasures to the similar experiences of all who can experience
-them. But death is the end of all pleasurable experiences.
-Thus the fact that beings will experience pleasure in the
-future is a reason for saying that it would be wrong to kill them.
-Of course, a similar argument about pain points in the opposite
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-Practical Ethics
-direction, and it is only when we believe that the pleasure that
-beings are likely to experience outweighs the pain they are likely
-to suffer, that this argument counts against killing. So what this
-amounts to is that ~e should not cut short a measap! .. ~.
-This seems simple enough: we value pleasure, killing those
-who lead pleasant lives eliminates the pleasure they would
-otherwise experience, therefore such killing is wrong. But stating
-the argument in this way conceals something that, once
-noticed, makes the issue anything but simple. There are two
-ways of reducing the amount of pleasure in the world: one is
-to eliminate pleasures from the lives of those leading pleasant
-lives; the other is to eliminate those leading pleasant lives. Th~
-former leaves behind beings who experience less pleasure than
-they otherwise would have. The latter does not. This means
-that we cannot move automatically from a preference for a
-pleasant life rather than an unpleasant one, to a preference for
-a pleasant life rather than no life at all. For, it might be objected,
-being killed does not make us worse off; it makes us cease to
-exist. Once we have ceased to exist, we shall not miss the pleasure
-we would have experienced.
-Perhaps this seems sophistical - an instance of the ability of
-academic philosophers to find distinctions where there are no
-significant differences. If that is what you think, consider the
-opposite case: a case not of reducing pleasure, but of increasing
-it. There are two ways of increasing the amount of pleasure in
-the world: one is to increase the pleasure of those who now
-exist; the other is to increase the number of those who will lead
-pleasant lives. If killing those leading pleasant lives is bad because
-of the loss of pleasure, then it would seem to be good to
-increase the number of those leading pleasant lives. We could
-do this by having more children, provided we could reasonably
-expect their lives to be pleasant, or by rearing large numbers of
-animals under conditions that would ensure that their lives
-would be pleasant. But would it really be good to create more
-pleasure by creating more pleased beings?
-102
-What's Wrong with Killing?
-There seem to be two possible approaches to these perplexing
-issues. The first approach is simply to accept that it is good to
-increase the amount of pleasure in the world by increasing the
-number of pleasant lives, and bad to reduce the amount of
-pleasure in the world by reducing the number of pleasant lives.
-This approach has the advantage of being straightforward and
-clearly consistent, but it requires us to hold that if we could
-increase the number of beings leading pleasant lives without
-making others worse off, it would be good to do so. To see
-whether you are troubled by this conclusion, it may be helpful
-to consider a specific case. Imagine that a couple are trying to
-decide whether to have children. Suppose that as far as their
-own happiness is concerned, the advantages and disadvantages
-balance out. Children will interfere with their careers at a crucial
-stage of their professional lives, and they will have to give up
-their favourite recreation, cross-country skiing, for a few years
-at least. At the same time, they know that, like most parents,
-they will get joy and fulfilment from having children and watching
-them develop. Suppose that if others will be affected, the
-good and bad effects will cancel each other out. Finally, suppose
-that since the couple could provide their children with a good
-start in life, and the children would be citizens of a developed
-nation with a high living standard, it is probable that their
-children will lead pleasant lives. Should the couple count the
-likely future pleasure of their children as a significant reason
-for having children? I doubt that many couples would, but if
-we accept this first approach, they should.
-I shall call this approach the 'total' view since on this view
-we aim to increase the total amount of pleasure (and reduce
-the total amount of pain) and are indifferent whether this is
-done by increasing the pleasure of existing beings, or increasing
-the number of beings who exist.
-The second approach is to count only beings who already
-exist, prior to the decision we are taking, or at least will exist
-independently of that decision. We can call this the 'prior ex-
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-istence' view. It denies that there is value in increasing pleasure
-by creating additional beings. The prior existence view is more
-in harmony with the intuitive judgment most people have (I
-think) that couples are under no moral obligation to have children
-when the children are likely to lead pleasant lives and no
-one else is adversely affected. But how do we square the prior
-existence view with our intuitions about the reverse case, when
-a couple are considering having a child who, perhaps because
-it will inherit a genetic defect. would lead a thoroughly miserable
-life and die before its second birthday? We would think
-it wrong for a couple knowingly to conceive such a child; but
-if the pleasure a possible child will experience is not a reason
-for bringing it into the world, why is the pain a possible child /
-will experience a reason against bringing it into the world? The
-prior existence view must either hold that there is nothing
-wrong with bringing a miserable being into the world, or explain
-the asymmetry between cases of possible children who are likely
-to have pleasant lives, and possible children who are likely to
-have miserable lives. Denying that it is bad knowingly to bring
-a miserable child into the world is hardly likely to appeal to
-those who adopted the prior existence view in the first place
-because it seemed more in harmony with their intuitive judgments
-than the total view; but a convincing explanation of the
-asymmetry is not easy to find. Perhaps the best one can say -
-and it is not very good - is that there is nothing directly wrong
-in conceiving a child who will be miserable, but once such a
-child exists, since its life can contain nothing but misery, we
-should reduce the amount of pain in the world by an act of
-euthanasia. But euthanasia is a more harrowing process for the
-parents and others involved than non-conception. Hence we
-have an indirect reason for not conceiving a child bound to have
-a miserable existence.
-So is it wrong to cut short a pleasant life? We can hold that
-it is, on either the total view or the prior existence view, but
-our answers commit us to different things in each case. We can
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-"
-What's Wrong with Killing?
-only take the prior existence approach if we accept that it is not
-wrong to bring a miserable being into existence - or else offer
-an explanation for why this should be wrong, and yet it not be
-wrong to fail to bring into existence a being whose life will be
-pleasant. Alternatively we can take the total approach, but then
-we must accept that it is also good to create more beings whose
-lives will be pleasant - and this has some odd practical implications.
-Some of these implications we have already seen. Others
-will become evident in the next chapter.
-Comparing the Value of Different Lives
-If we can give an affirmative - albeit somewhat shaky - anSWer
-to the question whether the life of a being who is conscious but
-not self-conscious has some value, can we also compare the
-value of different lives, at different levels of consciousness or
-self-consciousness? We are not, of course, going to attempt to
-assign numerical values to the lives of different beings, or even
-to produce an ordered list. The best that we could hope for is
-some idea of the principles that, when supplemented with the
-appropriate detailed information about the lives of different
-beings, might serve as the basis for such a list. But the most
-fundamental issue is whether we can accept the idea of ordering
-the value of different lives at all.
-Some say that it is anthropocentric, even speciesist, to order
-the value of different lives in a hierarchical manner. If we do
-so we shall, inevitably, be placing ourselves at the top and other
-beings closer to us in proportion to the resemblance between
-them and ourselves. Instead we should recognise that from the
-points of view of the different beings themselves, each life is of
-equal value. Those who take this view recognise, of course, that
-a person's life may include the study of philosophy while a
-mouse's life cannot; but they say that the pleasures of a mouse's
-life are all that the mouse has, and so can be presumed to mean
-as much to the mouse as the pleasures of a person's life mean
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-Practical Ethics
-to the person. We cannot say that the one is more or less valuable
-than the other.
-Is it speciesist to judge that the life of a normal adult member
-of our species is more valuable than the life of a normal adult
-mouse? It would be possible to defend such a judgment only if
-we can find some neutral ground, some impartial standpoint
-from which we can make the comparison.
-The difficulty of finding neutral ground is a very real practical
-difficulty, but I am not convinced that it presents an insoluble
-theoretical problem. I would frame the question we need to ask
-in the following manner. Imagine that I have the peculiar property
-of being able to tum myself into an animal. so that like
-Puck in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, 'Sometimes a horse I'll be, /
-sometimes a hound: And suppose that when I am a horse, I
-really am a horse, with all and only the mental experiences of
-a horse, and when I am a human being I have all and only the
-mental experiences of a human being. Now let us make the
-additional supposition that I can enter a third state in which I
-remember exactly what it was like to be a horse and exactly
-what it was like to be a human being. What would this third
-state be like? In some respects - the degree of self-awareness
-and rationality involved, for instance - it might be more like a
-human existence than an equine one, but it would not be a
-human existence in every respect. In this third state, then, I
-could compare horse-existence with human-existence. Suppose
-that I were offered the opportunity of another life, and given
-the choice of life as a horse or as a human being, the lives in
-question being in each case about as good as horse or human
-lives can reasonably be expected to be on this planet. I would
-then be deciding, in effect, between the value of the life of a
-horse (to the horse) and the value of the life of a human (to
-the human).
-Undoubtedly this scenario requires us to suppose a lot of
-things that could never happen, and some things that strain our
-imagination. The coherence of an existence in which one is
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-what's Wrong with Killing?
-neither a horse nor a human, but remembers what it was like
-to be both, might be questioned. Nevertheless I think I can make
-some sense of the idea of choosing from this position; and I am
-fairly confident that from this position, some forms of life would
-be seen as preferable to others.
-If it is true that we can make sense of the choice between
-existence as a mouse and existence as a human, then - whichever
-way the choice would go - we can make sense of the idea
-that the life of one kind of animal possesses greater value than
-the life of another; and if this is so, then the claim that the life
-of every being has equal value is on very weak ground. We
-cannot defend this claim by saying that every being's life is allimportant
-for it, since we have now accepted a comparison that
-takes a more objective - or at least intersubjective - stance and
-thus goes beyond the value of the life of a being considered
-solely from the point of view of that being.
-So it would not necessarily be speciesist to rank the value of
-different lives in some hierarchical ordering. How we should go
-about doing this is another question, and I have nothing better
-to offer than the imaginative reconstruction of what it would
-be like to be a different kind of being. Some comparisons may
-be too difficult. We may have to say that we have not the
-slightest idea whether it would be better to be a fish or a snake;
-but then, we do not very often find ourselves forced to choose
-between killing a fish or a snake. Other comparisons might not
-be so difficult. In general it does seem that the more highly
-developed the conscious life of the being, the greater the degree
-of self-awareness and rationality and the broader the range of
-possible experiences, the more one would prefer that kind of
-life, if one were choosing between it and a being at a lower
-level of awareness. Can utilitarians defend such a preference?
-In a famous passage John Stuart Mill attempted to do so:
-Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of
-the lower animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance of a
-beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to
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-Practical Ethics
-be a fool. no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person
-of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though
-they should be persuaded that the fool. the dunce, or the rascal
-is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs ... It is
-better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better
-to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool.
-or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know
-their own side ofthe question. The other party to the comparison
-knows both sides.
-As many critics have pointed out, this argument is weak. Does
-Socrates really know what it is like to be a fool? Can he truly
-experience the joys of idle pleasure in simple things, untroubled
-by the desire to understand and improve the world? We may
-doubt it. But another significant aspect of this passage is less/
-often noticed. Mill's argument for preferring the life of a human
-being to that of an animal (with which most modem readers
-would be quite comfortable) is exactly paralleled by his argument
-for preferring the life of an intelligent human being to that
-offool. Given the context and the way in which the term "fool"
-was commonly used in his day, it seems likely that by this he
-means what we would now refer to as a person with an intellectual
-disability. With this further conclusion some modem
-readers will be distinctly uncomfortable; but as Mill's argument
-suggests, it is not easy to embrace the preference for the life of
-a human over that of a non-human, without at the same time
-endorsing a preference for the life of a normal human being
-over that of another human at a similar intellectual level to that
-of the non-human in the first comparison.
-Mill's argument is difficult to reconcile with classical utilitarianism,
-because it just does not seem true that the more intelligent
-being necessarily has a greater capacity for happiness; and
-even if we were to accept that the capacity is greater, the fact
-that, as Mill acknowledges, this capacity is less often filled (the
-fool is satisfied, Socrates is not) would have to be taken into
-consideration. Would a preference utilitarian have a better prospect
-of defending the judgments Mill makes? That would de-
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-What's Wrong with Killing?
-pend on how we compare different preferences, held with
-differing degrees of awareness and self-consciousness. It does
-not seem impossible that we should find ways of ranking such
-different preferences, but at this stage the question remains
-open.
-This chapter has focussed on the killing of conscious beings.
-Whether there is anything wrong about taking non-conscious
-life - the lives of trees or plants, for instance - will be taken up
-in Chapter 10, on environmental ethics.
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-5
-TAKING LIFE: ANIMALS
-I N Chapter 4 we examined some general principles about the
-value of life. In this and the following two chapters we shall
-draw from that discussion some conclusions about three cases
-of killing that have been the subject of heated debate: abortion,
-euthanasia, and killing animals. Of these three, the question of /
-killing animals has probably aroused the least controversy;
-nevertheless, for reasons that will become clear later, it is impossible
-to defend a position on abortion and euthanasia without
-taking some view about the killing of non-human animals.
-So we shall look at that question first.
-CAN A NON-HUMAN ANIMAL BE A PERSON?
-We have seen that there are reasons for holding that the killing
-of a person is more seriously wrong than the killing of a being
-who is not a person. This is true whether we accept preference
-utilitarianism, Tooley's argument about the right to life, or the
-principle of respect for autonomy. Even a classical utilitarian
-would say that there may be indirect reasons why it is worse
-to kill a person. So in discussing the wrongness of killing nonhuman
-animals it is important to ask if any of them are persons.
-It sounds odd to call an animal a person. This oddness may
-be no more than a symptom of our habit of keeping our own
-species sharply separated from others. In any case, we can avoid
-the linguistic oddness by rephrasing the question in accordance
-with our definition of 'person'. What we are really asking
-is whether any non-human animals are rational and self-
-IlO
-Taking Life: Animals
-conscious beings, aware of themselves as distinct entities with
-a past and a future.
-Are animals self-conscious? There is now solid evidence that
-some are. Perhaps the most dramatic evidence comes from apes
-who can communicate with us using a human language. The
-ancient dream of teaching our language to another species was
-realised when two American scientists, Allen and Beatrice Gardner,
-guessed that the failure of previous attempts to teach chimpanzees
-to talk was due to the chimpanzees' lacking, not the
-intelligence required for using language, but the vocal equipment
-needed to reproduce the sounds of human language. The
-Gardners therefore decided to treat a young chimpanzee as if
-she were a human baby without vocal chords. They communicated
-with her, and with each other when in her presence,
-by using American Sign Language, a language widely used by
-deaf people.
-The technique was a striking success. The chimpanzee, whom
-they called 'Washoe', learned to understand about 350 different
-signs, and to use about 150 of them correctly. She put signs
-together to form simple sentences. As for self-consciousness,
-Washoe does not hesitate, when shown her own image in a
-mirror and asked 'Who is that?' to reply: 'Me, Washoe: Later
-Washoe moved to Ellensburg, Washington, where she lived
-with other chimpanzees under the care of Roger and Deborah
-Fouts. Here she adopted an infant chimpanzee and soon began
-not only signing to him, but even deliberately teaching him
-signs, for example, by moulding his hands into the sign for 'food'
-in an appropriate context.
-Gorillas appear to be as good as chimpanzees at learning sign
-language. Almost twenty years ago Francine Patterson began
-signing and also speaking English with Koko, a lowland gorilla.
-Koko now has a working vocabulary of over 500 signs, and she
-has used about 1000 signs correctly on one or more occasions.
-She understands an even larger number of spoken English
-words. Her companion MichaeL who began to be exposed to
-III
-Pradical Ethics
-signs at a later age, has used about 400 signs. In front of a
-mirror, Koko will make faces, or examine her teeth. When
-asked: 'What's a smart gorilla?' Koko responded: 'Me: When
-someone remarked of Koko, in her presence, 'She's a goofball!'
-Koko (perhaps not understanding the term) signed: 'No, gorilla:
-An orangutan, Chantek, has been taught sign language by
-Lyn Miles. When shown a photograph of a gorilla pointing to
-her nose, Chantek was able to imitate the gorilla by pointing
-to his own nose. This implies that he has an image of his own
-body and can transfer that image from the two-dimensional
-plane of the visual image to perform the necessary bodily action.
-Apes also use signs to refer to past or future events, thus
-showing a sense of time. Koko, for example, when asked, si,i
-days after the event, what had happened on her birthday, signed
-'sleep eat'. Even more impressive is the evidence of temporal
-sense shown by the regular festivities held by the Fouts for the
-chimpanzees at Ellensburg. Each year, after Thanksgiving,
-Roger and Deborah Fouts set up a Christmas tree, covered with
-edible ornaments. The chimpanzees use the sign combination
-'candy tree' to refer to the Christmas tree. In 1989, when snow
-began to fall just after Thanksgiving but the tree had not yet
-appeared, a chimpanzee named Tatu asked 'Candy tree?' The
-Fouts interpret this as showing not only that Tatu remembered
-the tree, but also that she knew that this was the season for it.
-Later Tatu also remembered that the birthday of one of the
-chimpanzees, Dar, followed closely on that of Deborah Fouts.
-The chimpanzees got ice cream for their birthdays; and after
-the festivities for Deborah's birthday were over, Tatu asked: 'Dar
-ice cream?'
-Suppose that on the basis of such evidence we accept that
-the signing apes are self-conscious. Are they exceptional among
-all the non-human animals in this respect, precisely because
-they can use language? Or is it merely that language enables
-these animals to demonstrate to us a characteristic that they,
-and other animals, possessed all along?
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-Taking Life: Animals
-Some philosophers have argued that thinking requires language:
-one cannot think without formulating one's thoughts in
-words. The Oxford philosopher Stuart Hampshire, for example,
-has written:
-The difference here between a human being and an animal lies
-in the possibility of the human being expressing his intention
-and putting into words his intention to do so-and-so, for his own
-benefit or for the benefit of others. The difference is not merely
-that an animal in fact has no means of communicating, or of
-recording for itself, its intention, with the effect that no one can
-ever know what the intention was. It is a stronger difference,
-which is more correctly expressed as the senselessness of attributing
-intentions to an animal which has not the means to reflect
-upon, and to announce to itself or to others, its own future
-behaviour ... It would be senseless to attribute to an animal a
-memory that distinguished the order of events in the past, and
-it would be senseless to attribute to it an expectation of an order
-of events in the future. It does not have the concepts of order,
-or any concepts at all.
-Obviously Hampshire was wrong to distinguish so crudely between
-humans and animals; for as we have just seen, the signing
-apes have clearly shown that they do have 'an expectation of
-an order of events in the future: But Hampshire wrote before
-apes had learned to use sign language, so this lapse may be
-excusable. The same cannot be said for the much later defence
-of the same view by another English philosopher, Michael
-Leahy, in a book entitled Against Liberation. Like Hampshire,
-Leahy argues that animals, lacking language, cannot have intentions,
-or act 'for a reason:
-Suppose that such arguments were to be re-phrased so that
-they referred to animals who have not learned to use a language,
-rather than all animals. Would they then be correct? If so, no
-being without language can be a person. This applies, presumably,
-to young humans as well as to non-signing animals. It
-might be argued that many species of animals do use language,
-just not our language. Certainly most social animals have some
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-Practical Ethics
-means of communicating with each other, whether it be the
-melodious songs of the humpback whales, the buzzes and whistles
-of dolphins, the howls and barks of dogs, the songs of birds,
-and even the dance performed by honey bees returning to the
-hive, from which other bees learn the distance and direction of
-the food source from which the bee has come. But whether any
-of these amount to language, in the required sense, is doubtful;
-and since it would take us too far from our topic to pursue that
-issue, I shall assume that they do not, and consider what can
-be learned from the non-linguistic behaviour of animals.
-Is the line of argument that denies intentional behaviour to
-animals sound when it is limited to animals without language?
-I do not believe that it is. Hampshire's and Leahy's arguments
-are typical of those of many philosophers who have written
-along similar lines, in that they are attempts to do philosophy
-from the armchair, on a topic that demands investigation in the
-real world. There is nothing altogether inconceivable about a
-being possessing the capacity for conceptual thought without
-having a language and there are instances of animal behaviour
-that are extraordinarily difficult, if not downright impossible,
-to explain except under the assumption that the animals are
-thinking conceptually. In one experiment, for example, German
-researchers presented a chimpanzee named Julia with two series
-of five closed and transparent containers. At the end of one
-series was a box with a banana; the box at the end of the other
-series was empty. The box containing the banana could only
-be opened with a distinctively shaped key; this was apparent
-from looking at the box. This key could be seen inside another
-locked box; and to open that box, Julia needed another distinctive
-key, which had to be taken out of a third box which
-could only be opened with its own key, which was inside a
-fourth locked box. Finally, in front of Julia, were two initial
-boxes, open and each containing a distinctive key. Julia was
-able to choose the correct initial key, by which she could open
-the next box in the series that led, eventually, to the box with
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-Taking Life: Animals
-the banana. To do this, she must have been able to reason
-backwards from her desire to open the box with the banana to
-her need to have the key that would open it, to her need for
-the key that would open that box, and so on. Since Julia had
-not been taught any form of language, her behaviour proves
-that beings without language can think in quite complex ways.
-Nor is it only in laboratory experiments that the behaviour
-of animals points to the conclusion that they possess both memory
-of the past and expectations about the future, and that they
-are self-aware, that they form intentions and act on them. Frans
-de Waal and his colleagues have for several years watched chimpanzees
-living in semi-natural conditions in two acres of forest
-at Amsterdam Zoo. They have often observed co-operating activity
-that requires planning. For example, the chimpanzees like
-to climb the trees and break off branches, so that they can eat
-the leaves. To prevent the rapid destruction of the small forest,
-the zookeepers have placed electric fencing around the trunk
-of the trees. The chimpanzees overcome this by breaking large
-branches from dead trees (which have no fences around them)
-and dragging them to the base of a live tree. One chimpanzee
-then holds the dead branch while another climbs up it, over
-the fence and into the tree. The chimpanzee who gets into the
-tree in this way shares the leaves thus obtained with the one
-holding the branch.
-De Waal has also observed deliberately deceptive behaviour
-that clearly shows both self-consciousness and an awareness of
-the consciousness of another. Chimpanzees live in groups in
-which one male will be dominant and will attack other males
-Who mate with receptive females. Despite this, a good deal of
-sexual activity goes on when the dominant male is not watching.
-Male chimpanzees often seek to interest females in sexual activity
-by sitting with their legs apart, displaying their erect penis.
-(Human males who expose themselves in a similar way are
-continuing a form of chimpanzee behaviour that has become
-SOcially inappropriate.) On one occasion a junior male was en-
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-Practical Ethics
-tieing a female in this manner when the dominant male walked
-over. The junior male covered his erection with his hands so
-that the dominant male could not see it.
-Jane Goodall has described an incident showing forward
-planning by Figan, a young wild chimpanzee in the Gombe
-region of Tanzania. In order to bring the animals closer to her
-observation post, Goodall had hidden some bananas in a tree:
-One day, sometime after the group had been fed, Figan spotted
-a banana that had been overlooked - but Goliath [an adult male
-ranking above Figan in the group's hierarchy] was resting directly
-underneath it. After no more than a quick glance from the fruit
-to Goliath, Figan moved away and sat on the other side of the
-tent so that he could no longer see the fruit. Fifteen minutes
-later, when Goliath got up and left, Figan without a moment's
-hesitation went over and collected the banana. Quite obviously
-he had sized up the whole situation: if he had climbed for the
-fruit earlier, Goliath would almost certainly have snatched it
-away. If he had remained close to the banana, he would probably
-have looked at it from time to time. Chimps are very quick to
-notice and interpret the eye movements of their fellows, and
-Goliath would possibly, therefore, have seen the fruit himself.
-And so Figan had not only refrained from instantly gratifying his
-desire but had also gone away so that he could not 'give the
-game away' by looking at the banana.
-Goodall's description of this episode does, of course, attribute
-to Figan a complex set of intentions, including the intention to
-avoid 'giving the game away' and the intention to obtain the
-banana after Goliath's departure. It also attributes to Figan an
-'expectation of an order of events in the future', namely the
-expectatiGll that Goliath would move away, that the banana
-would still be there, and that he, Figan, would then go and get
-it. Yet there seems nothing at all 'senseless' about these attributions,
-despite the fact that Figan cannot put his intentions or
-expectations into words. If an animal can devise a careful plan
-for obtaining a banana, not now but at some future time, and
-can take precautions against his own propensity to give away
-116
-I
-I I,
-~
-,i
-!
-Taking Life: Animals
-the object of the plan, that animal must be aware of himself as
-a distinct entity, existing over time.
-KILLING NON· HUMAN PERSONS
-Some non-human animals are persons, as we have defined the
-term. To judge the significance of this we must set it in the
-context of our earlier discussion, in whieh I argued that the only
-defensible version of the doctrine of the sanctity of human life
-was what we might call the 'doctrine ofthe sanctity of personal
-life'. I suggested that if human life does have special value or a
-special claim to be protected, it has it in so far as most, human
-beings are persons. But if some non-human animals are persons,
-too, the lives of those animals must have the same special value
-or claim to protection. Whether we base these special moral
-features of the lives of human persons on preferential utilitarianism,
-on a right to life deriving from their capacity to see
-themselves as continuing selves, or on respect for autonomy,
-these arguments must apply to non-human persons as well.
-Only the indirect utilitarian reason for not killing persons - the
-fear that such acts are likely to arouse in other persons - applies
-less readily to non-human persons since non-humans are less
-likely than humans to learn about killings that take place at a
-distance from them. But then, this reason does not apply to all
-killings of human persons either, since it is possible to kill in
-such a way that no one learns that a person has been killed.
-Hence we should reject the doctrine that places the lives of
-members of our species above the lives of members of other
-species. Some members of other species are persons: some members
-of our own species are not. No objective assessment can
-support the view that it is always worse to kill members of our
-species who are not persons than members of other species who
-are. On the contrary, as we have seen there are strong arguments
-for thinking that to take the lives of persons is, in itself, more
-serious than taking the lives of non-persons. So it seems that
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-Practical Ethics
-killing, say, a chimpanzee is worse than the killing of a human
-being who, because of a congenital intellectual disability, is not
-and never can be a person.
-At present the killing of a chimpanzee is not regarded as a
-serious matter. Large numbers of chimpanzees are used in scientific
-research, and many of them die in the course of this
-research. For many years, because chimpanzees were difficult
-to breed in captivity, the corporations that supplied these animals
-captured them in African jungles. The standard method
-was to shoot a female with an infant by her side. The infant
-was then captured and shipped to Europe and the United States.
-Jane Goodall has estimated that for every infant who reached
-/ his or her destination alive, six chimpanzees died. Although
-chimpanzees have been placed on the threatened list, and this
-trade has now been banned, illegal killing and trading of chimpanzees,
-and of gorillas and orangutans, still continues.
-The great apes - chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans - may
-be the clearest cases of non-human persons, but there are almost
-certainly others. Systematic observation of whales and dolphins
-has, for obvious reasons, lagged far behind that of apes, and it
-is quite possible that these large-brained mammals will tum out
-to be rational and self-conscious. Despite an official moratorium,
-the whaling industry slaughters thousands of whales annually
-in the name of 'research', and the whaling nations are seeking
-to overturn the International Whaling Commission's moratorium
-so that they can return to full-scale commercial whaling.
-Closer to home, many of those who live with dogs and cats are
-convinced that these animals are self-conscious and have a sense
-of the future. They begin to expect their companion human
-being to come home at a certain time. In her book Emma and
-I, Sheila Hocken relates how her guide-dog spontaneously began
-to take her, every Friday, to the places where she did her
-weekend shopping, without needing to be told the day. People
-who feed feral cats on a weekly basis have found that they, too,
-will tum up on the right day of the week. Such observations
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-Taking Life: Animals
-may be 'unscientific', but to those who know dogs and cats well
-they are plausible and in the absence of better studies they
-should be taken seriously. According to official United States
-Department of Agriculture figures, approximately 140,000 dogs
-and 42,000 cats die in laboratories in the United States each
-year, and smaller but still sizeable numbers are used in every
-'developed' nation. And if dogs and cats qualify as persons, the
-mammals we use for food cannot be far behind. We think of
-dogs as being more like people than pigs; but pigs are highly
-intelligent animals and if we kept pigs as pets and reared dogs
-for food, we would probably reverse our order of preference.
-Are we turning persons into bacon?
-Admittedly, all this is speculative. It is notoriously difficult to
-establish when another being is self-conscious. But if it is wrong
-to kill a person when we can avoid doing so, and there is real
-doubt about whether a being we are thinking of killing is a
-person, we should give that being the benefit of the doubt. The
-rule here is the same as that among deer hunters: if you see
-something moving in the bushes and are not sure if it is a deer
-or a hunter, don't shoot! (We may think the hunters shouldn't
-shoot in either case, but the rule is a sound one within the
-ethical framework hunters use.) On these grounds, a great deal
-of the killing of non-human animals must be condemned.
-KILLING OTHER ANIMALS
-Arguments against killing based on the capacity to see oneself
-as an individual existing over time apply to some non-human
-animals, but there are others who, though presumably conscious,
-cannot plausibly be said to be persons. Of those animals
-that humans regularly kill in large numbers, fish appear to be
-the clearest case of animals who are conscious but not persons.
-The rightness or wrongness of killing these animals seems to
-rest on utilitarian considerations, for they are not autonomous
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-and - at least if Tooley's analysis of rights is correct - do not
-qualify for a right to life.
-Before we discuss the utilitarian approach to killing itself, we
-should remind ourselves that a wide variety of indirect reasons
-will figure in the utilitarian's calculations. Many modes of killing
-used on animals do not inflict an instantaneous death, so there
-is pain in the process of dying. There is also the effect of the
-death of one animal on his or her mate or other members of
-the animal's social group. There are many species of birds in
-which the bond between male and female lasts for a lifetime.
-The death of one member of this pair presumably causes distress,
-and a sense of loss and sorrow for the survivor. The mother-
-/ child relationship in mammals can be a source of intense suffering
-if either is killed or taken away. (Dairy farmers routinely
-remove calves from their mothers at an early age, so that the
-milk will be available for humans; anyone who has lived on a
-dairy farm will know that, for days after the calves have gone,
-the cows keep calling for them.) In some species the death of
-one animal may be felt by a larger group - as the behaviour of
-wolves and elephants suggests. All these factors would lead the
-utilitarian to oppose a lot of killing of animals, whether or not
-the animals are persons. These factors would not, however, be
-reasons for opposing killing non-persons in itself, apart from
-the pain and suffering it may cause.
-The utilitarian verdict on killing that is painless and causes
-no loss to others is more complicated, because it depends on
-how we choose between the two versions of utilitarianism outlined
-in the previous chapter. If we take what I called the 'prior
-existence' view, we shall hold that it is wrong to kill any being
-whose life is likely to contain, or can be brought to contain,
-more pleasure than pain. This view implies that it is normally
-wrong to kill animals for food, since usually we could bring it
-about that these animals had a few pleasant months or even
-years before they died - and the pleasure we get from eating
-them would not outweigh this.
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-Taking Life: Animals
-The other version of utilitarianism - the 'total' view - can
-lead to a different outcome that has been used to justify meateating.
-The nineteenth-century British political philosopher Leslie
-Stephen once wrote:
-'Of all the arguments for Vegetarianism none is so weak as
-the argument from humanity. The pig has a stronger interest
-than anyone in the demand for bacon. If all the world were
-Jewish, there would be no pigs at all:
-Stephen views animals as if they were replaceable, and with
-this those who accept the total view must agree. The total version
-of utilitarianism regards sentient beings as valuable only
-in so far as they make possible the existence of intrinsically
-valuable experiences like pleasure. It is as if sentient beings are
-receptacles of something valuable and it does not matter if a
-receptacle gets broken, so long as there is another receptacle to
-which the contents can be transferred without any getting spilt.
-(This metaphor should not be taken too seriously, however;
-unlike precious liquids, experiences like pleasure cannot exist
-independently from a conscious being, and so even on the total
-view, sentient beings cannot properly be thought of merely as
-receptacles.) Stephen's argument is that although meat-eaters
-are responsible for the death of the animal they eat and for the
-loss of pleasure experienced by that animaL they are also responsible
-for the creation of more animals, since if no one ate
-meat there would be no more animals bred for fattening. The
-loss meat-eaters inflict on one animal is thus balanced, on the
-total view, by the benefit they confer on the next. We may call
-this 'the replaceability argument'.
-The first point to note about the replaceability argument is
-that even if it is valid when the animals in question have a
-pleasant life it would not justify eating the flesh of animals reared
-in modem factory farms, where the animals are so crowded
-together and restricted in their movements that their lives seem
-to be more of a burden than a benefit to them.
-A second point is that if it is good to create happy life, then
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-Practical Ethics
-presumably it is good for there to be as many happy beings on
-our planet as it can possibly hold. Defenders of meat -eating had
-better hope that they can find a reason why it is better for there
-to be happy people rather than just the maximum possible number
-of happy beings, because otherwise the argument might
-imply that we should eliminate almost all human beings in order
-to make way for much larger numbers of smaller happy animals.
-If, however, the defenders of meat-eating do come up with a
-reason for preferring the creation of happy people to, say, happy
-mice, then their argument will not support meat-eating at all.
-For with the possible exception of arid areas suitable only for
-pasture, the surface of our globe can support more people if we
-grow plant foods than if we raise animals. .
-These two points greatly weaken the replaceability argument
-as a defence of meat-eating, but they do not go to the heart of
-the matter. Are some sentient beings really replaceable? The
-response to the first edition of this book suggests that the replaceability
-argument is probably the most controversial, and
-widely criticised, argument in this book. Unfortunately none of
-the critics have offered satisfactory alternative solutions to the
-underlying problems to which replaceability offers one - if not
-very congenial- answer.
-Henry Salt, a nineteenth-century English vegetarian and author
-of a book called Animals' Rights thought that the argument
-rested on a simple philosophical error:
-The fallacy lies in the confusion of thought that attempts to
-compare existence with non-existence. A person who is already
-in existence may feel that he would rather have lived than not,
-but he must first have the terra firma of existence to argue from:
-the moment he begins to argue as if from the abyss of the nonexistent,
-he talks nonsense, by predicating good or evil, happiness
-or unhappiness, of that of which we can predicate nothing.
-When I wrote the first edition of Animal Liberation I accepted
-Salt's view. I thought that it was absurd to talk as if one conferred
-a favour on a being by bringing it into existence, since
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-Taking Life: Animals
-at the time one confers this favour, there is no being at all. But
-now I am less confident. After all, as we saw in Chapter 4, we
-do seem to do something bad if we knowingly bring a miserable
-being into existence, and if this is so, it is difficult to explain
-why we do not do something good when we knowingly bring
-a happy being into existence.
-Derek Parfit has described another hypothetical situation that
-amounts to an even stronger case for the replaceability view.
-He asks us to imagine that two women are each planning to
-have a child. The first woman is already three months pregnant
-when her doctor gives her both bad and good news. The bad
-news is that the fetus she is carrying has a defect that will
-significantly diminish the future child's quality oflife - although
-not so adversely as to make the child's life utterly miserable, or
-not worth living at all. The good news is that this defect is easily
-treatable. All the woman has to do is take a pill that will have
-no side-effects, and the future child will not have the defect. In
-)
-this situation, Parfit plausibly suggests, we would all agree that
-the woman should take the pill, and that she does wrong if she
-refuses to take it.
-The second woman sees her doctor before she is pregnant,
-when she is about to stop using contraception, and also receives
-bad and good news. The bad news is that she has a medical
-condition that has the effect that if she conceives a child within
-the next three months, that child will have a significant defect
-- with exactly the same impact on the child's quality of life as
-the defect described in the previous paragraph. This defect is
-not treatable, but the good news is that the woman's condition
-is a temporary one, and if she waits three months before becoming
-pregnant, her child will not have the defect. Here too,
-Parfit suggests, we would all agree that the woman should wait
-before becoming pregnant, and that she does wrong if she does
-not wait.
-Suppose that the first woman does not take the pill, and the
-second woman does not wait before becoming pregnant, and
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-Practical Ethics
-that as a result each has a child with a significant disability. It
-would seem that they have each done something wrong. Are
-their wrong-doings of equal magnitude? If we assume that it
-would have been no greater hardship for the second woman to
-wait three months before becoming pregnant than it would have
-been for the first woman to take the pill, it would seem that
-the answer is yes, what each has done is equally wrong. But
-now consider what this answer implies. The first woman has
-harmed her child. That child can say to her mother: 'You should
-have taken the pill. If you had done so, I would not now have
-this disability, and my life would be significantly better: But if
-the child of the second woman tries to make the same claim,
-her mother has a devastating response. She can say: 'If I had /
-waited three months before becoming pregnant you would
-never have existed. I would have produced another child, from
-a different egg and different sperm. Your life, even with your
-disability, is definitely above the point at which life is so miserable
-that it ceases to be worth living. You never had a chance
-of existing without the disability. So I have not harmed you at
-all: This reply seems a complete defence to the charge of having
-harmed the child now in existence. If, despite this, we persist
-in our belief that it was wrong of the woman not to postpone
-her pregnancy, where does the wrongness lie? It cannot lie in
-bringing into existence the child to whom she gave birth, for
-that child has an adequate quality of life. Could it lie in not
-bringing a possible being into existence - to be precise, in not
-bringing into existence the child she would have had if she had
-waited three months? This is one possible answer, but it commits
-us to the total view, and implies that, other things being
-equal, it is good to bring into existence children without disabilities.
-A third possibility is that the wrong-doing lies, not in
-harming an identifiable child, nor simply in omitting to bring
-a possible child into existence, but in bringing into existence a
-child with a less satisfactory quality of life than another child
-whom one could have brought into existence. In other words,
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-'~~r-' tf
-Taking Life: Animals
-we have failed to bring about the best possible outcome. This
-last seems the most plausible answer, but it too suggests that at
-least possible people are replaceable. The question then becomes
-this: At what stage in the process that passes from possible
-people to actual people does replaceability cease to apply? What
-characteristic makes the difference?
-If we think of living creatures - human or non-human - as
-self-conscious individuals, leading their own lives and wanting
-to go on living, the replace ability argument holds little appeal.
-It is possible that when Salt so emphatically rejected the idea
-of replaceability, he was thinking of such beings, for he concludes
-the essay quoted above by claiming that Lucretius long
-ago refuted Stephen's 'vulgar sophism' in the following passage
-of De Rerum Natura:
-What loss were ours, if we had known not birth?
-Let living men to longer life aspire,
-While fond affection binds their hearts to earth:
-But who never hath tasted life's desire,
-Unborn, impersonal, can feel no dearth.
-This passage supports the claim that there is a difference between
-killing living beings who 'to longer life aspire' and failing to
-create a being who, unborn and impersonal, can feel no loss of
-life. But what of beings who, though alive, cannot aspire to
-longer life, because they lack the conception of themselves as
-living beings with a future? These being are, in a sense, 'impersonal'.
-Perhaps, therefore, in killing them, one does them
-no personal wrong, although one does reduce the quantity of
-happiness in the universe. But this wrong, if it is wrong, can
-be counter-balanced by bringing into existence similar beings
-who will lead equally happy lives. So perhaps the capacity to
-see oneself as existing over time, and thus to aspire to longer
-life (as well as to have other non-momentary, future-directed
-interests) is the characteristic that marks out those beings who
-cannot be considered replaceable.
-Although we shall return to this topic in the next two chap-
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-Practical Ethics
-ters, we can note here that this conclusion is in harmony with
-Tooley's views about what it takes to have a right to life. For a
-preference utilitarian, concerned with the satisfaction of preferences
-rather than experiences of suffering or happiness, there
-is a similar fit with the distinction already drawn between killing
-those who are rational and self-conscious beings, and those who
-are not. Rational, self-conscious beings are individuals, leading
-lives of their own and cannot in any sense be regarded merely
-as receptacles for containing a certain quantity of happiness.
-They have, in the words of the American philosopher James
-Rachels, a life that is biographical, and not merely biological.
-In contrast, beings who are conscious, but not self-conscious,
-more nearly approximate the picture of receptacles for experi- /
-ences of pleasure and pain, because their preferences will be of
-a more immediate sort. They will not have desires that project
-their images of their own existence into the future. Their conscious
-states are not internally linked over time. We can presume
-that if fish become unconscious, then before the loss of consciousness
-they would have no expectations or desires for anything
-that might happen subsequently, and if they regain
-consciousness, they have no awareness of having previously
-existed. Therefore if the fish were killed while unconscious and
-replaced by a similar number of other fish who could be created
-only because the first group of fish were killed, there would,
-from the perspective of fishy awareness, be no difference between
-that and the same fish losing and regaining consciousness.
-For a non-self-conscious being death is the cessation of experiences,
-in much the same way that birth is the beginning of
-experiences. Death cannot be contrary to an interest in continued
-life, any more than birth could be in accordance with an
-interest in commencing life. To this extent, with non-selfconscious
-life, birth and death cancel each other out; whereas
-with self-conscious beings the fact that once self-conscious one
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-Taking Life: Animals
-may desire to continue living means that death inflicts a loss
-for which the birth of another is insufficient compensation.
-The test of universalisability supports this view. If I imagine
-myself in tum as a self-conscious being and a conscious but not
-self-conscious being, it is only in the former case that I could
-have forward-looking desires that extend beyond periods of
-sleep or temporary unconsciousness, for example a desire to
-complete my studies, a desire to have children, or simply a desire
-to go on living, in addition to desires for immediate satisfaction
-or pleasure, or to get out of painful or distressing situations.
-Hence it is only in the former case that my death involves a
-greater loss than just a temporary loss of consciousness, and is
-not adequately compensated for by the creation of a being with
-similar prospects of pleasurable experiences.
-In reviewing the first edition of this book H. L. A. Hart, formerly
-professor of jurisprudence at the University of Oxford,
-suggested' that for a utilitarian, self-conscious beings must be
-replaceable in just the same way as non-self-conscious beings
-are. Whether one is a preference utilitarian or a classical utilitarian
-will, in Hart's view, make no difference here, because
-preference Utilitarianism is after all a form of maximizing utilitarianism:
-it requires that the overall satisfaction of different persons'
-preferences be maximized just as Classical Utilitarianianism
-requires overall experienced happiness to be maximized ... If
-preferences, even the desire to live, may be outweighed by the
-preferences of others, why cannot they be outweighed by new
-preferences created to take their place?
-It is of course true that preference utilitarianism is a form of
-maximising utilitarianism in the sense that it directs us to maximise
-the satisfaction of preferences, but Hart is on weaker
-ground when he suggests that this must mean that existing
-preferences can be outweighed by new preferences created to
-take their place. For while the satisfaction of an existing preference
-is a good thing, the package deal that involves creating
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-Pradical Ethics
-and then satisfying a preference need not be thought of as equivalent
-to it. Again, universalisability supports this way of conceiving
-preference utilitarianism. If I put myself in the place of
-another with an unsatisfied preference, and ask myself if I want
-that preference satisfied, the answer is (tautologically) yes. If,
-however, I ask myself whether I wish to have a new preference
-created that can then be satisfied, I will be quite uncertain. If I
-think of a case in which the satisfaction of the preference will
-be highly pleasurable, I may say yes. (We are glad that we are
-hungry if delicious food is on the table before us, and strong
-sexual desires are fine when we are able to satisfy them.) But
-if I think of the creation of a preference that is more like a
-privation, I will say no. (We don't cause ourselves headaches /
-simply in order to be able to take aspirin and thus satisfy our
-desire to be free of the pain.) This suggests that the creation and
-satisfaction of a preference is in itself neither good nor bad: our
-response to the idea of the creation and satisfaction of a preference
-varies according to whether the experience as a whole
-will be desirable or undesirable, in terms of other, long-standing
-preferences we may have, for example for pleasure rather than
-pain.
-Exactly how preference utilitarianism ought to evaluate the
-creation and satisfaction of a preference, as distinct from the
-satisfaction of an existing preference, is a difficult issue. In my
-initial response to Hart's criticism, I suggested that we think of
-the creation of an unsatisfied preference as putting a debit in a
-kind of moral ledger that is merely cancelled out by the satisfaction
-of the preference. (Some will see in this model confirmation
-of Marx's scornful remark that Bentham's utilitarianism
-is a philosophy suitable for a nation of shopkeepers!) The 'moral
-ledger' model has the advantage of explaining the puzzling
-asymmetry mentioned in the previous chapter, in connection
-with the difference between the total and the prior existence
-interpretations of utilitarianism. We consider it wrong to bring
-into existence a child who, because of a genetic defect, will lead
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-I
-f
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-Taking Life: Animals
-a thoroughly miserable existence for a year or two and then
-die; yet we do not consider it good or obligatory to bring into
-existence a child who, in all probability, will lead a happy life.
-The 'debit' view of preferences just outlined would explain why
-this should be so: to bring into existence a child, most of whose
-preferences we will be unable to satisfy, is to create a debit that
-we cannot cancel. This is wrong. To create a child whose preferences
-will be able to be satisfied, is to create a debit that can
-be cancelled. This is, in itself, I thought, ethically neutral. The
-model can also explain why, in Parfit's example, what the two
-women do is equally wrong - for both quite unnecessarily bring
-into existence a child who is likely to have a larger negative
-balance in the ledger than a child they could have brought into
-existence.
-Unfortunately, this same view carries a less desirable implication:
-it makes it wrong, other things being equal, to bring
-into existence a child- who will on the whole be very happy,
-and will be able to satisfy nearly all of her preferences, but will
-still have some preferences unsatisfied. For if the creation of
-each preference is a debit that is cancelled only when the desire
-is satisfied, even the best life will, taken in itself, leave a small
-debit in the ledger. Since everyone has some unsatisfied desires,
-the conclusion to be drawn is that it would have been better if
-none of us had been born. Thus the moral ledger model of
-creating and satisfying a preference will not do. It might be
-saved by attaching to it a stipulation that sets a given level of
-preference satisfaction, below complete satisfaction, as a minimum
-for overcoming the negative entry opened by the creation
-of a being with unsatisfied preferences. This might be the level
-at which we consider a life ceases to be worth living, from the
-perspective of the person leading that life. Such a solution seems
-a little ad hoc, but it may be possible to incorporate it into a
-plausible version of preference utilitarianism.
-Another possibility is to take our model from Shakespeare,
-Who speaks of 'life's uncertain voyage', and see the lives of self-
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-Practical Ethics
-conscious beings as arduous and uncertain journeys, at different
-stages, in which various amounts of hope and desire, as well
-as time and effort have been invested in order to reach particular
-goals or destinations. Suppose that I am thinking of travelling
-to Nepal, where I plan to trek to Thyangboche Monastery, at
-the base of Mt. Everest. I have always loved high mountains,
-and I know that I would enjoy being in the Himalayas for the
-first time. If during these early days of musing on the possibility
-of such a trip an insuperable obstacle arises - perhaps the Nepalese
-government bans tourism on the grounds that it is an
-environmental hazard - I will be a little put out, naturally, but
-my disappointment will be nothing compared with what it
-would have been if I had already arranged to take the necessary /
-time off work, perhaps bought a non-refundable plane ticket to
-Kathmandu, or even trekked a long distance towards my destination,
-before being barred from reaching my goal. Similarly,
-one can regard a decision not to bring an infant into the world
-as akin to preventing a journey from getting underway, but this
-is not in itself seriously wrong, for the voyager has made no
-plans and set no goals. Gradually, as goals are set, even if tentatively,
-and a lot is done in order to increase the probability
-of the goals being reached, the wrongness of bringing the journey
-to a premature end increases. Towards the end of life, when
-most things that might have been achieved have either been
-done, or are now unlikely to be accomplished, the loss of life
-may again be less of tragedy than it would have been at an
-earlier stage of life.
-The great virtue of this 'journey' model of a life is that it can
-explain why beings who can conceive of their own future existence
-and have embarked on their life journey are not replaceable,
-while at the same it can account for why it is wrong
-to bring a miserable being into existence. To do so is to send a
-being out on a journey that is doomed to disappointment and
-frustration. The model also offers a natural explanation of why
-Parfit's two women both do wrong, and to an equal degree:
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-Taking Life: Animals
-they both quite unnecessarily send out voyagers with fewer
-prospects of making a successful journey than other voyagers
-whom they might have placed at the starting line. The women's
-children can be thought of as replaceable before the journey
-begins, but this does not require us to hold that there is an
-obligation to bring more children into existence, let alone to
-regard people as replaceable once life's journey has properly
-begun.
-Both the modified moral ledger model and the journey model
-are metaphors, and should not be taken too literally. At best
-they suggest ways of thinking about when beings might be
-considered replaceable, and when they might not be so considered.
-As I indicated in the Preface, this is an area in which fully
-satisfactory answers are still to be found.
-Before we leave the topic of killing non-self-conscious beings,
-I should emphasise that to take the view that non-self-conscious
-beings are replaceable is not to say that their interests do not
-count. I hope that the third chapter of this book makes it clear
-that their interests do count. As long as sentIent beings are
-conscious, they have an interest in experiencing as much pleasure
-and as little pain as possible. Sentience suffices to place a
-being within the sphere of equal consideration of interests; but
-it does not mean that the being has a personal interest in continuing
-to live.
-CONCLUSIONS
-If the arguments in this chapter are correct, there is no single
-answer to the question: 'Is it normally wrong to take the life of
-an animal?' The term 'animal' - even in the restricted sense of
-'non-human animal' - covers too diverse a range of lives for
-one principle to apply to all of them.
-Some non-human animals appear to be rational and selfconscious,
-conceiving themselves as distinct beings with a past
-and a future. When this is so, or to the best of our knowledge
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-Practical Ethics
-may be so, the case against killing is strong, as strong as the
-case against killing permanently intellectually disabled human
-beings at a similar mental level. (I have in mind here the direct
-reasons against killing; the effects on relatives of the intellectually
-disabled human will sometimes - but not always - constitute
-additional indirect reasons against killing the human. For
-further discussion of this issue, see Chapter 7.)
-In the present state of our knowledge, this strong case against
-killing can be invoked most categorically against the slaughter
-of chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans. On the basis of what
-we now know about these near-relatives of ours, we should
-immediately extend to them the same full protection against
-being killed that we extend now to all human beings. A case
-can also be made, though with varying degrees of confidence,
-on behalf of whales, dolphins, monkeys, dogs, cats, pigs, seals,
-bears, cattle, sheep and so on, perhaps even to the point at
-which it may include all mammals - much depends on how
-far we are prepared to go in extending the benefit of the doubt,
-where a doubt exists. Even if we stopped at the species I have
-named, however - excluding the remainder of the mammals -
-our discussion has raised a very large question mark over the
-justifiability of a great deal of killing of animals carried out by
-humans, even when this killing takes place painlessly and without
-causing suffering to other members of the animal community.
-(Most of this killing, of course, does not take place
-under such ideal conditions.)
-When we come to animals who, as far as we can tell, are not
-rational and self-conscious beings, the case against killing is
-weaker. When we are not dealing with beings aware of themselves
-as distinct entities, the wrongness of painless killing derives
-from the loss of pleasure it involves. Where the life taken
-would not, on balance, have been pleasant, no direct wrong is
-done. Even when the animal killed would have lived pleasantly,
-it is at least arguable that no wrong is done if the animal killed
-will, as a result of the killing, be replaced by another animal
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-Taking Life: Animals
-living an equally pleasant life. Taking this view involves holding
-that a wrong done to an existing being can be made up for by
-a benefit conferred on an as yet non-existent being. Thus it is
-possible to regard non-self-conscious animals as interchangeable
-with each other in a way that self-conscious beings are not.
-This means that in some circumstances - when animals lead
-pleasant lives, are killed painlessly, their deaths do not cause
-suffering to other animals, and the killing of one animal makes
-possible its replacement by another who would not otherwise
-have lived - the killing of non-self -conscious animals may
-not be wrong.
-/ Is it possible, along these lines, to justify raising chickens for
-their meat, not in factory farm conditions but roaming freely
-around a farmyard? Let us make the questionable assumption
-that chickens are not self-conscious. Assume also that the birds
-can be killed painlessly, and the survivors do not appear to be
-affected by the death of one of their numbers. Assume, finally,
-that for economic reasons we could not rear the birds if we did
-not eat them. Then the replaceability argument appears to justify
-killing the birds, because depriving them of the pleasures of
-their existence can be offset against the pleasures of chickens
-who do not yet exist, and will exist only if existing chickens are
-killed.
-As a piece of critical moral reasoning, this argument may be
-sound. Even at that level, it is important to realise how limited
-it is in its application. It cannot justify factory farming, where
-animals do not have pleasant lives. Nor does it normally justify
-the killing of wild animals. A duck shot by a hunter (making
-the shaky assumption that ducks are not self-conscious, and the
-almost certainly false assumption that the shooter can be relied
-upon to kill the duck instantly) has probably had a pleasant
-life, but the shooting of a duck does not lead to its replacement
-by another. Unless the duck population is at the maximum that
-can be sustained by the available food supply, the killing of a
-duck ends a pleasant life without starting another, and is for
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-Practical Ethics
-that reason wrong on straightforward utilitarian grounds. So
-although there are situations in which it is not wrong to kill
-animals, these situations are special ones, and do not cover very
-many of the billions of premature deaths humans inflict, year
-after year, on animals.
-In any case, at the level of practical moral principles, it would
-be better to reject altogether the killing of animals for food,
-unless one must do so to survive. Killing animals for food makes
-us think of them as objects that we can use as we please. Their
-lives then count for little when weighed against our mere wants.
-As long as we continue to use animals in this way, to change
-our attitudes to animals in the way that they should be changed
-will be an impossible task. How can we encourage people to
-respect animals, and have equal concern for their interests, if
-they continue to eat them for their mere enjoyment? To foster
-the right attitudes of consideration for animals, including nonself-
-conscious ones, it may be best to make it a simple principle
-to avoid killing them for food.
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-TAKING LIFE: THE EMBRYO
-AND THE FETUS
-THE PROBLEM
-FEW ethicaUssues are as bitterly fought over today as abortion,
-and, while the pendulum has swung back and forth,
-neither side has had much success in altering the opinions of
-its opponents. Until 1967, abortion was illegal in almost all the
-Western democracies except Sweden and Denmark. Then Britain
-changed its law to allow abortion on broad social grounds,
-and in the 1973 case of Roe v Wade, the United States Supreme
-Court held that women have a constitutional right to an abortion
-in the first six months of pregnancy. Western European
-nations, including Roman Catholic countries like Italy, Spain
-and France, allliberalised their abortion laws. Only the Republic
-of Ireland held out against the trend.
-Opponents of abortion did not give up. In the United States,
-conservative Presidents have changed the composition of the
-Supreme Court, which in tum has nibbled around the margins
-of the Roe v Wade decision, allowing states to restrict, in various
-ways, access to abortion. Outside the United States, the issue
-of abortion re-surfaced in Eastern Europe after the collapse of
-communism. The communist states had allowed abortion, but
-as nationalist and religiOUS forces gathered strength, there were
-strong moves in countries like Poland for the re-introduction
-of restrictive laws. Since West Germany had more restrictive
-laws than East Germany, the need to introduce a single law for
-a united Germany also caused an intense debate.
-In 1978 the birth of Louise Brown raised a new issue about
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-the status of early human life. For Louise Brown was the first
-human to have been born from an embryo that had been fertilised
-outside a human body. The success of Robert Edwards
-and Patrick Steptoe in demonstrating the possibility of in vitro
-fertilization, or IVF, was based on several years of experimentation
-on early human embryos - none of which had survived.
-IVF is now a routine procedure for certain types of infertility,
-and has given rise to thousands of healthy babies. To reach this
-point, however, many more embryos had to be destroyed in
-experiments, and further improvement of IVF techniques will
-require continued experimentation. Perhaps more significant
-still, for the long-term, are the possibilities for other forms of
-experimentation opened up by the existence of a viable embryo
-outside the human body. Embryos can now be frozen and stored
-for many years before being thawed and implanted in a woman.
-Normal children develop from these embryos, but the technique
-means that there are large numbers of embryos now preserved
-in special freezers around the world. (At the time of writing
-there were about 11,000 frozen embryos in Australia alone.)
-Because the IVF procedure often produces more embryos than
-can safely be transferred to the uterus of the woman from whom
-the egg came, many of these frozen embryos will never be
-wanted, and presumably will either be destroyed, be donated
-for research, or given to other infertile couples.
-Other new technologies loom just a little way ahead. Embryos
-can be screened for genetic abnormalities, and then discarded
-if such abnormalities are found. Edwards has predicted that it
-will become scientifically feasible to grow embryos in vitro to
-the point at which, about 17 days after fertilisation, they develop
-blood stem cells, which could be used to treat various nowlethal
-blood diseases. Others, speculating about the further future'
-have asked if one day we will have banks of embryos or
-fetuses to provide organs for those who need them.
-Abortion and destructive embryo experimentation pose dif-
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-ficult ethical issues because the development ofthe human being
-is a gradual process. If we take the fertilised egg immediately
-after conception, it is hard to get upset about its death. The
-fertilised egg is a single cell. After several days, it is still only a
-tiny cluster of cells without a single anatomical feature of the
-being it will later become. The cells that will eventually become
-the embryo proper are at this stage indistinguishable from the
-cells that will become the placenta and amniotic sac. Up to about
-14 days after fertilisation, we cannot even tell if the embryo is
-going to be one or two individuals, because splitting can take
-place, leading to the formation of identical twins. At 14 days,
-the first anatomical feature, the so-called primitive streak, appears
-in the position in which the backbone will later develop.
-At this point the embryo could not possibly be conscious or feel
-pain. At the other extreme is the adult human being. To kill a
-human adult is murder, and, except in some special circumstances
-like those to be discussed in the next chapter, is unhesitatingly
-and universally condemned. Yet there is no obvious
-sharp line that divides the fertilised egg from the adult. Hence
-the problem.
-Most of this chapter will be concerned with the problem of
-abortion, but the discussion of the status of the fetus will have
-obvious implications for two related issues: embryo experimentation,
-and the use of fetal tissue for medical purposes. I
-begin the discussion of abortion stating the position of those
-opposed to abortion, which I shall refer to as the conservative
-position. I shall then examine some of the standard liberal responses,
-and show why they are inadequate. Finally I shall use
-our earlier discussion of the value of life to approach the issue
-from a broader perspective. In contrast to the common opinion
-that the moral question about abortion is a dilemma with no
-solution, I shall show that, at least within the bounds of nonreligious
-ethics, there is a clear-cut answer and those who take
-a different view are simply mistaken.
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-THE CONSERVATIVE POSITION
-The central argument against abortion, put as a formal argument,
-would go something like this:
-First premise: It is wrong to kill an innocent human being.
-Second premise: A human fetus is an innocent human being.
-Conclusion: Therefore it is wrong to kill a human fetus.
-The usual liberal response is to deny the second premise of
-this argument. So it is on whether the fetus is a human being
-that the issue is joined, and the dispute about abortion is often
-taken to be a dispute about when a human life begins.
-On this issue the conservative position is difficult to shake.
-The conservative points to the continuum between the fertilised
-egg and child, and challenges the liberal to point to any stage
-in this gradual process that marks a morally significant dividing
-line. Unless there is such a line, the conservative says, we
-must either upgrade the status of the earliest embryo to that
-of the child, or downgrade the status of the child to that of
-the embryo; but no one wants to allow children to be dispatched
-on the request of their parents, and so the only tenable
-position is to grant the fetus the protection we now grant the
-child.
-Is it true that there is no morally significant dividing line
-between fertilised egg and child? Those commonly suggested
-are: birth, viability, quickening, and the onset of consciousness.
-Let us consider these in tum.
-Birth
-Birth is the most visible possible dividing line, and the one that
-would suit liberals best. It coincides to some extent with our
-sympathies - we are less disturbed at the destruction of a fetus
-we have never seen than at the death of a being we can all see,
-hear and cuddle. But is this enough to make birth the line that
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-decides whether a being mayor may not be killed? The conservative
-can plausibly reply that the fetuslbaby is the same
-entity, whether inside or outside the womb, with the same
-human features (whether we can see them or not) and the same
-degree of awareness and capacity for feeling pain. A prematurely
-born infant may well be less developed in these respects than a
-fetus nearing the end of its normal term. It seems peculiar to
-hold that we may not kill the premature infant, but may kill
-the more developed fetus. The location of a being - inside or
-outside the womb - should not make that much difference to
-the wrongness of killing it.
-Viability
-If birth does not mark a crucial moral distinction, should we
-push the line back to the time at which the fetus could survive
-outside the womb? This overcomes one objection to taking birth
-as the decisive point, for it treats the viable fetus on a par with
-the infant, born prematurely, at the same stage of development.
-Viability is where the United States Supreme Court drew the
-line in Roe v. Wade. The Court held that the state has a legitimate
-interest in protecting potential life, and this interest becomes
-'compelling' at viability 'because the fetus then presumably has
-the capability of meaningful life outside the mother's womb'.
-Therefore statutes prohibiting abortion after viability would not,
-the Court said, be unconstitutional. But the judges who wrote
-the majority decision gave no indication why the mere capacity
-to exist outside the womb should make such a difference to the
-state's interest in protecting potential life. After all, if we talk,
-as the Court does, of potential human life, then the nonviable
-fetus is as much a potential adult human as the viable fetus. (I
-shall return to this issue of potentiality shortly; but it is a different
-issue from the conservative argument we are now discussing,
-which claims that the fetus is a human being, and not
-just a potential human being.)
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-There is another important objection to making viability the
-cut-off point. The point at which the fetus can survive outside
-the mother's body varies according to the state of medical
-technology. Thirty years ago it was generally accepted that a
-baby born more than two months premature could not survive.
-Now a six-month fetus - three months premature - can often
-be pulled through, thanks to sophisticated medical techniques,
-and fetuses born after as little as five and a half months of
-gestation have survived. This threatens to undermine the Supreme
-Court's neat division of pregnancy into trimesters, with
-the boundary of viability lying between the second and third
-trimesters.
-In the light of these medical developments, do we say that a
-six-month-old fetus should not be aborted now, but could have
-been aborted without wrongdoing thirty years ago? The same
-comparison can also be made, not between the present and the
-past, but between different places. A six-month-old fetus might
-have a fair chance of survival if born in a city where the latest
-medical techniques are used, but no chance at all if born in a
-remote village in Chad or New Guinea. Suppose that for some
-reason a woman, six months pregnant, was to fly from New
-York to a New Guinea village and that, once she had arrived
-in the village, there was no way she could return quickly to a
-city with modem medical facilities. Are we to say that it would
-have been wrong for her to have an abortion before she left
-New York, but now that she is in the village she may go ahead?
-The trip does not change the nature of the fetus, so why should
-it remove its claim to life?
-The liberal might reply that the fact that the fetus is totally
-dependent on the mother for its survival means that it has no
-right to life independent of her wishes. In other cases, however,
-we do not hold that total dependence on another person means
-that that person may decide whether one lives or dies. A newborn
-baby is totally dependent on its mother, if it happens to
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-be born in an isolated area in which there is no other lactating
-woman, nor the means for bottle feeding. An elderly woman
-may be totally dependent on her son looking after her, and a
-hiker who breaks her leg five days' walk from the nearest road
-may die if her companion does not bring help. We do not think
-that in these situations the mother may take the life ~fher baby,
-the son of his aged mother, or the hiker of her injured companion.
-So it is not plausible to suggest that the dependence of
-the nonviable fetus on its mother gives her the right to kill it;
-and if dependence does not justify making viability the dividing
-line, it is hard to see what does.
-Quickening
-If neither birth nor viability marks a morally significant distinction,
-there is less still to be said for a third candidate,
-quickening. Quickening is the time when the mother first feels
-the fetus move, and in traditional Catholic theology, this was
-thought to be the moment at which the fetus gained its soul.
-If we accepted that view, we might think quickening important,
-since the soul is, on the Christian view, what marks
-humans off from animals. But the idea that the soul enters
-the fetus at quickening is an outmoded piece of superstition,
-discarded now even by Catholic theologians. Putting aside
-these religious doctrines makes quickening insignificant. It is
-no more than the time when the fetus is first felt to move of
-its own accord; the fetus is alive before this moment, and
-ultrasound studies have shown that fetuses do in fact start
-moving as early as six weeks after fertilization, long before
-they can be felt to move. In any case, the capacity for physical
-motion - or the lack of it - has nothing to do with the
-seriousness of one's claim for continued life. We do not see
-the lack of such a capacity as negating the claims of paralysed
-people to go on living.
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-Consciousness
-Movement might be thought to be indirectly of moral significance,
-in so far as it is an indication of some form of awareness
-- and as we have already seen, consciousness, and the capaCity
-to feel pleasure or pain, are of real moral significance. Despite
-this, neither side in the abortion debate has made much mention
-of the development of consciousness in the fetus. Those
-opposed to abortion may show films about the 'silent scream'
-of the fetus when aborted, but the intention behind such films
-is merely to stir the emotions of the uncommitted. Opponents
-of abortion really want to uphold the right to life of the human
-being from conception, irrespective of whether it is conscious
-or not. For those in favour of abortion, to appeal to the absence
-of a capacity for consciousness has seemed a risky strategy.
-On the basis of the studies showing that movement takes place
-as early as six weeks after fertilization, coupled with other
-studies that have found some brain activity as early as the
-seventh week, it has been suggested that the fetus could be
-capable of feeling pain at this early stage of pregnancy. That
-possibility has made liberals very wary of appealing to the
-onset of consciousness as a point at which the fetus has a
-right to life. We shall return to the issue of consciousness in
-the fetus later in this chapter, because it is relevant to the
-issue of embryo and fetal experimentation. We will also then
-consider an earlier marker that could be relevant to embryo
-experimentation, but not to the abortion debate. As far as
-abortion is concerned, the discussion up to now has shown
-that the liberal search for a morally crucial dividing line between
-the newborn baby and the fetus has failed to yield any
-event or stage of development that can bear the weight of
-separating those with a right to life from those who lack such,
-a right, in a way that clearly shows fetuses to be in the latter
-category at the stage of development when most abortions
-take place. The conservative is on solid ground in insisting
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-that the development from the embryo to the infant is a gradual
-process.
-SOME LIBERAL ARGUMENTS
-Some liberals do not challenge the conservative claim that the
-fetus is an innocent human being, but argue that abortion is
-nonetheless permissible. I shall consider three arguments for
-this view.
-The Consequences of Restrictive Laws
-The first argument is that laws prohibiting abortion do not stop
-abortions, but merely drive them underground. Women who
-want to have abortions are often desperate. They will go to
-backyard abortionists or try folk remedies. Abortion performed
-by a qualified medical practitioner is as safe as any medical
-operation, but attempts to procure abortions by unqualified people
-often result in serious medical complications and sometimes
-death. Thus the effect of prohibiting abortion is not so much to
-reduce the number of abortions performed as to increase the
-difficulties and dangers for women with unwanted pregnancies.
-This argument has been influential in gaining support for
-more liberal abortion laws. It was accepted by the Canadian
-Royal Commission on the Status of Women, which concluded
-that: 'A law that has more bad effects than good ones is a bad
-law ... As long as it exists in its present form thousands of
-women will break it.'
-The main point to note about this argument is that it is an
-argument against laws prohibiting abortion, and not an argument
-against the view that abortion is wrong. This is an important
-distinction, often overlooked in the abortion debate.
-The present argument well illustrates the distinction, because
-one could quite consistently accept it and advocate that the law
-should allow abortion on request, while at the same time de-
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-ciding oneself - if one were pregnant - or counselling another
-who was pregnant, that it would be wrong to have an abortion.
-It is a mistake to assume that the law should always enforce
-morality. It may be that, as alleged in the case of abortion,
-attempts to enforce right conduct lead to consequences no one
-wants, and no decrease in wrong-doing; or it may be that, as
-is proposed by the next argument we shall consider, there is an
-area of private ethics with which the law ought not to interfere.
-So this first argument is an argument about abortion law, not
-about the ethics of abortion. Even within those limits, however,
-it is open to challenge, for it fails to meet the conservative claim
-that abortion is the deliberate killing of an innocent human
-being, and in the same ethical category as murder. Those who
-take this view of abortion will not rest content with the assertion
-that restrictive abortion laws do no more than drive women to
-backyard abortionists. They will insist that this situation can be
-changed, and the law properly enforced. They may also suggest
-measures to make pregnancy easier to accept for those women
-who become pregnant against their wishes. This is a perfectly
-reasonable response, given the initial ethical judgment against
-abortion, and for this reason the first argument does not succeed
-in avoiding the ethical issue.
-Not the Law's Business?
-The second argument is again an argument about abortion laws
-rather than the ethics of abortion. It uses the view that, as the
-report of a British government committee inquiring into laws
-about homosexuality and prostitution put it: 'There must remain
-a realm of private morality and immorality that is, in brief
-and crude terms, not the law's business: This view is widely
-accepted among liberal thinkers, and can be traced back to John
-Stuart Mill's On Liberty. The'one very simple principle' of this
-work is, in Mill's words:
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-Taking Life: The Embryo and the Fetus
-That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised
-over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is
-to prevent harm to others ... He cannot rightfully be compelled
-to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because
-it will make him happier, because in the opinions of others, to
-do so would be wise or even right.
-Mill's view is often and properly quoted in support of the repeal
-of laws that create 'victimless crimes' - like laws prohibiting
-homosexual relations between consenting adults, the use of
-marijuana and other drugs, prostitution, gambling and so on.
-Abortion is often included in this list, for example by the criminologist
-Edwin Schur in his book Crimes Without Victims. Those
-who consider abortion a victimless crime say that, while everyone
-is entitled to hold and act on his or her own view about
-the morality of abortion, no section of the community should
-try to force others to adhere to its own particular view. In a
-pluralist society, we should tolerate others with different moral
-views and leave the decision to have an abortion up to the
-woman concerned.
-The fallacy involved in numbering abortion among the victimless
-crimes should be obvious. The dispute about abortion
-is, largely, a dispute about whether or not abortion does have
-a 'victim'. Opponents of abortion maintain that the victim of
-abortion is the fetus. Those not opposed to abortion may deny
-that the fetus counts as a victim in any serious way. They might,
-for instance, say that a being cannot be a victim unless it has
-interests that are violated, and the fetus has no interests. But
-however this dispute may go, one cannot simply ignore it on
-the grounds that people should not attempt to force others to
-follow their own moral views. My view that what Hitler did to
-the Jews is wrong is a moral view, and ifthere were any prospect
-of a revival of Nazism I would certainly do my best to force
-others not to act contrary to this view. Mill's principle is defensible
-only if it is restricted, as Mill restricted it, to acts that do
-not harm others. To use the principle as a means of avoiding
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-the difficulties of resolving the ethical dispute over abortion is
-to take it for granted that abortion does not harm an 'other' -
-which is precisely the point that needs to be proven before we
-can legitimately apply the principle to the case of abortion.
-A Feminist Argument
-The last of the three arguments that seek to justify abortion
-without denying that the fetus is an innocent human being is
-that a woman has a right to choose what happens to her own
-body. This argument became prominent with the rise of the
-women's liberation movement and has been elaborated by
-American philosophers sympathetic to feminism. An influential
-argument has been presented by Judith Jarvis Thomson by
-means of an ingenious analogy. Imagine, she says, that you
-wake up one morning and find yourself in a hospital bed, somehow
-connected to an unconscious man in an adjacent bed. You
-are told that this man is a famous violinist with kidney disease.
-The only way he can survive is for his circulatory system to be
-plugged into the system of someone else with the same blood
-type, and you are the only person whose blood is suitable. So
-a society of music lovers kidnapped you, had the connecting
-operation performed, and there you are. Since you are now in
-a reputable hospital you could, if you choose, order a doctor to
-disconnect you from the violinist; but the violinist will then
-certainly die. On the other hand, if you remain connected for
-only (only?) nine months, the violinist will have recovered and
-you can be unplugged without endangering him.
-Thomson believes that if you found yourself in this unexpected
-predicament you would not be morally required to allow
-the violinist to use your kidneys for nine months. It might be
-generous or kind of you to do so, but to say this is, Thomson
-claims, quite different from saying that you would be doing
-wrong if you did not do it.
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-Note that Thomson's conclusion does not depend on denying
-that the violinist is an innocent human being, with the same
-right to life as any other innocent human being. On the contrary,
-Thomson affirms that the violinist does have a right to life -
-but to have a right to life does not, she says, entail a right to
-the use of another's body, even if without that use one will die.
-The parallel with pregnancy, especially pregnancy due to rape
-should be obvious. A woman pregnant through rape finds herself,
-through no choice of her own, linked to a fetus in much
-the same way as the person is linked to the violinist. True, a
-pregnant woman does not normally have to spend nine months
-in bed, but opponents of abortion would not regard this as a
-sufficient justification for abortion. Giving up a newborn baby
-for adoption might be more difficult, psychologically, than parting
-from the violinist at the end of his illness; but this in itself
-does not seem a sufficient reason for killing the fetus. Accepting
-for the sake of the argument that the fetus does count as a fullyfledged
-human being, having an abortion when the fetus is not
-viable has the same moral significance as unplugging oneself
-from the violinist. So if we agree with Thomson that it would
-not be wrong to unplug oneself from the violinist, we must also
-accept that, whatever the status of the fetus, abortion is not
-wrong - at least not when the pregnancy results from rape.
-Thomson's argument can probably be extended beyond cases
-of rape. Suppose that you found yourself connected to the violinist,
-not because you were kidnapped by music lovers, but
-because you had intended to enter the hospital to visit a sick
-friend, and when you got into the elevator, you carelessly
-pressed the wrong button, and ended up in a section of the
-hospital normally visited only by those who have volunteered
-to be connected to patients who would not otherwise survive.
-A team of doctors, waiting for the next volunteer, assumed you
-were it, jabbed you with an anaesthetic, and connected you. If
-Thomson's argument was sound in the kidnap case it is
-probably sound here too, since nine months unwillingly sup-
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-porting another is a high price to pay for ignorance or carelessness.
-In this way the argument might apply beyond rape
-cases to the much larger number of women who become pregnant
-through ignorance, carelessness, or contraceptive failure.
-But is the argument sound? The short answer is this: It is
-sound if the particular theory of rights that lies behind it is
-sound; and it is unsound if that theory of rights is unsound.
-The theory of rights in question can be illustrated by another
-of Thomson's fanciful examples: suppose I am desperately ill
-and the only thing that can save my life is the touch of my
-favourite film star's cool hand on my fevered brow. Well, Thomson
-says, even though I have a right to life, this does not mean
-that I have a right to force the film star to come to me, or that
-he is under any. moral obligation to fly over and save me -
-although it would be frightfully nice of him to do so. Thus
-Thomson does not accept that we are always obliged to take
-the best course of action, all things considered, or to do what
-has the best consequences. She accepts, instead, a system of
-rights and obligations that allows us to justify our actions independently
-of their consequences.
-I shall say more about this conception of rights in Chapter 8.
-At this stage it is enough to notice that a utilitarian would reject
-this theory of rights, and would reject Thomson's judgment in
-the case of the violinist. The utilitarian would hold that, however
-outraged I may be at having been kidnapped, if the consequences
-of disconnecting myself from the violinist are, on balance,
-and taking into account the interests of everyone affected,
-worse than the consequences of remaining connected, I ought
-to remain connected. This does not necessarily mean that utilitarians
-would regard a woman who disconnected herself as
-wicked or deserving of blame. They might recognize that she
-has been placed in an extraordinarily difficult situation, one in
-which to do what is right involves a considerable sacrifice. They
-might even grant that most people in this situation would follow
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-self-interest rather than do the right thing. Nevertheless, they
-would hold that to disconnect oneself is wrong.
-In rejecting Thomson's theory of rights, and with it her judgment
-in the case of the violinist, the utilitarian would also be
-rejecting her argument for abortion. Thomson claimed that her
-argument justified abortion even if we allowed the life of the
-fetus to count as heavily as the life of a normal person. The
-utilitarian would say that it would be wrong to refuse to sustain
-a person's life for nine months, if that was the only way the
-person could survive. Therefore if the life of the fetus ~s. gi~en
-the same weight as the life of a normal person, the utIhtanan
-would say that it would be wrong to refuse to carry the fetus
-until it can survive outside the womb.
-This concludes our discussion of the usual liberal replies to
-the conservative argument against abortion. We have seen that
-liberals have failed to establish a morally significant dividing
-line between the newborn baby and the fetus, and their arguments
-- with the possible exception of Thomson's argument if
-her theory of rights can be defended - also fail to justify abortion
-in ways that do not challenge the conservative claim that the
-fetus is an innocent human being. Nevertheless, it would be
-premature for conservatives to assume that their case against
-abortion is sound. It is now time to bring into this debate some
-more general conclusions about the value of life.
-THE VALUE OF FETAL LIFE
-Let us go back to the beginning. The central argument against
-abortion from which we started was:
-First premise: It is wrong to kill an innocent human bein~.
-Second premise: A human fetus is an innocent human bemg.
-Conclusion: Therefore it is wrong to kill a human fetus.
-The first set of replies we considered accepted the first premise
-of this argument but objected to the second. The second set of
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-replies rejected neither premise, but objected to drawing the
-conclusion from these premises (or objected to the further conclusion
-that abortion should be prohibited by law). None of the
-replies questioned the first premise of the argument. Given the
-widespread acceptance of the doctrine of the sanctity of human
-life, this is not surprising; but the discussion of this doctrine in
-the preceding chapters shows that this premise is less secure
-than many people think.
-The weakness of the first premise of the conservative argument
-is that it relies on our acceptance of the special status of
-human life. We have seen that 'human' is a term that straddles
-two distinct notions: being a member of the species Homo sapiens,
-and being a person. Once the term is dissected in this way,
-the weakness of the conservative's first premise becomes apparent.
-If 'human' is taken as equivalent to 'person', the second
-premise of the argument, which asserts that the fetus is a human
-being, is clearly false; for one cannot plausibly argue that a fetus
-is either rational or self-conscious. If, on the other hand, 'human'
-is taken to mean no more than 'member of the species
-Homo sapiens', then the conservative defence of the life of the
-fetus is based on a characteristic lacking moral significance and
-so the first premise is false. The point should by now be familiar:
-whether a being is or is not a member of our species is, in itself
-no more relevant to the wrongness of killing it than whether it
-is or is not a member of our race. The belief that mere membership
-of our species, irrespective of other characteristics,
-makes a great difference to the wrongness of killing a being is
-a legacy of religious doctrines that even those opposed to abortion
-hesitate to bring into the debate.
-Recognising this simple point transforms the abortion issue.
-We can now look at the fetus for what it is - the actual characteristics
-it possesses - and can value its life on the same scale
-as the lives of beings with similar characteristics who are not
-members of our species. It now becomes apparent that the 'Pro
-Life' or 'Right to Life' movement is misnamed. Far from having
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-concern for all life, or a scale of concern impartially based on
-the nature of the life in question, those who protest against
-abortion but dine regularly on the bodies of chickens, pigs and
-calves, show only a biased concern for the lives of members of
-our own species. For on any fair comparison of morally relevant
-characteristics, like rationality, self-consciousness, awareness,
-autonomy, pleasure and pain, and so on, the calf, the pig and
-the much derided chicken come out well ahead of the fetus at
-any stage of pregnancy - while if we make the comparison with
-a fetus of less than three months, a fish would show more signs
-of consciousness.
-My suggestion, then, is that we accord the life of a fetus no
-greater value than the life of a nonhuman animal at a similar
-level of rationality, self-consciousness, awareness, capacity to
-feel, etc. Since no fetus is a person, no fetus has the same claim
-to life as a person. We have yet to consider at what point the
-fetus is likely to become capable of feeling pain. For now it will
-be enough to say that until that capacity exists, an abortion
-terminates an existence that is of no "intrinsic" value at all.
-Mterwards, when the fetus may be conscious, though not selfconscious,
-abortion should not be taken lightly (if a woman
-ever does take abortion lightly). But a woman's serious interests
-would normally override the rudimentary interests even of a
-conscious fetus. Indeed, even an abortion late in pregnancy for
-the most trivial reasons is hard to condemn unless we also
-condemn the slaughter of far more developed forms of life for
-the taste of their flesh.
-The comparison between the fetus and other animals leads
-us to one more point. Where the balance of conflicting interests
-does make it necessary to kill a sentient creature, it is important
-that the killing be done as painlessly as possible. In the case of
-nonhuman animals the importance of humane killing is widely
-accepted; oddly, in the case of abortion little attention is paid
-to it. This is not because abortion is known to kill the fetus
-SWiftly and humanely. Late abortions - which are the very ones
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-in which the fetus may be able to suffer - are sometimes performed
-by injecting a salt solution into the amniotic sac that
-surrounds the fetus. It has been claimed that the effect of this
-is to cause the fetus to have convulsions and die between one
-and three hours later. Afterwards the dead fetus is expelled from
-the womb. If there are grounds for thinking that a method of
-abortion causes the fetus to suffer, that method should be
-avoided.
-THE FETUS AS POTENTIAL LIFE
-One likely objection to the argument I have offered in the preceding
-section is that it takes into account only the actual characteristics
-of the fetus, and not its potential characteristics. On
-the basis of its actual characteristics, some opponents of abortion
-will admit, the fetus compares unfavourably with many nonhuman
-animals; it is when we consider its potential to become
-a mature human being that membership of the species Homo
-sapiens becomes important, and the fetus far surpasses any
-chicken, pig or calf.
-Up to this point I have not raised the question of the potential
-of the fetus because I thought it best to concentrate on the central
-argument against abortion; but it is true that a different argument,
-based on the potential of the fetus, can be mounted. Now
-is the time to look at this other argument. We can state it as
-follows:
-First premise: It is wrong to kill a potential human being.
-Second premise: A human fetus is a potential human being.
-Conclusion: Therefore it is wrong to kill a human fetus.
-The second premise of this argument is stronger than the
-second premise of the preceding argument. Whereas it is problematic
-whether a fetus actually is a human being - it depends
-on what we mean by the term - it cannot be denied that the
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-fetus is a potential human being. This is true whether by 'human
-being' we mean 'member of the species Homo sapiens' or a
-rational and self-conscious being, a person. The strong second
-premise of the new argument is, however, purchased at the cost
-of a weaker first premise, for the wrongness of killing a potential
-human being - even a potential person - is more open to challenge
-than the wrongness of killing an actual human being.
-It is of course true that the potential rationality, selfconsciousness
-and so on of a fetal Homo sapiens surpasses that
-of a cow or pig; but it does not follow that the fetus has a
-stronger claim to life. There is no rule that says that a potential
-X has the same value as an X, or has all the rights of an X.
-There are many examples that show just the contrary. To pull
-out a sprouting acorn is not the same as cutting down a venerable
-oak. To drop a live chicken into a pot of boiling water
-would be much worse than doing the same to an egg. Prince
-Charles is a potential King of England, but he does not now
-have the rights of a king.
-In the absence of any general inference from 'A is a potential
-X' to 'A has the rights of an X', we should not accept that a
-potential person should have the rights of a person, unless we
-can be given some specific reason why this should hold in this
-particular case. But what could that reason be? This question
-becomes especially pertinent if we recall the grounds on which,
-in the previous chapter, it was suggested that the life of a person
-merits greater protection than the life of a being who is not a
-person. These reasons - from the indirect classical utilitarian
-concern with not arousing in others the fear that they may be
-the next killed, the weight given by the preference utilitarian
-to a person's desires, Tooley's link between a right to life and
-the capacity to see oneself as a continuing mental subject, and
-the principle of respect for autonomy - are all based on the fact
-that persons see themselves as distinct entities with a past and
-future. They do not apply to those who are not now and never
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-have been capable of seeing themselves in this way. If these are
-the grounds for not killing persons, the mere potential for becoming
-a person does not count against killing.
-It might be said that this reply misunderstands the relevance
-of the potential of the human fetus, and that this potential is
-important, not because it creates in the fetus a right or claim to
-life, but because anyone who kills a human fetus deprives the
-world of a future rational and self-conscious being. If rational
-and self-conscious beings are intrinsically valuable, to kill a
-human fetus is to deprive the world of something intrinsically
-valuable, and so wrong. The chief problem with this as an argument
-against abortion - apart from the difficulty of establishing
-that rational and self-conscious beings are of intrinsic
-value - is that it does not stand up as a reason for objecting to
-all abortions, or even to abortions carried out merely because
-the pregnancy is inconveniently timed. Moreover the argument
-leads us to condemn practices other than abortion that most
-anti-abortionists accept.
-The claim that rational and self-conscious beings are intrinsically
-valuable is not a reason for objecting to all abortions
-because not all abortions deprive the world of a rational and
-self-conscious being. Suppose a woman has been planning to
-join a mountain-climbing expedition in June, and in January
-she learns that she is two months pregnant. She has no children
-at present, and firmly intends to have a child within a year or
-two. The pregnancy is unwanted only because it is inconveniently
-timed. Opponents of abortion would presumably think
-an abortion in these circumstances particularly outrageous, for
-neither the life nor the health of the mother is at stake - only
-the enjoyment she gets from climbing mountains. Yet if abortion
-is wrong only because it deprives the world of a future person,
-this abortion is not wrong; it does no more than delay the entry
-of a person into the world.
-On the other hand this argument against abortion does lead
-us to condemn practices that reduce the future human popu-
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-lation: contraception, whether by 'artificial' means or by 'natural'
-means such as abstinence on days when the woman is
-likely to be fertile; and also celibacy. This argument has, in fact,
-all the difficulties of the 'total' form of utilitarianism, discussed
-in the previous two chapters, and it does not provide any reason
-for thinking abortion worse than any other means of population
-control. If the world is already overpopulated, the argument
-provides no reason at all against abortion.
-Is there any other significance in the fact that the fetus is a
-potential person? If there is I have no idea what it could be. In
-writings against abortion we often find reference to the fact that
-each human fetus is unique. Paul Ramsey, a former Professor
-of Religion at Princeton University, has said that modem genetics,
-by teaching us that the first fusion of sperm and ovum
-creates a 'never-to-be-repeated' informational speck, seems to
-lead us to the conclusion that' all destruction of fetal life should
-be classified as murder'. But why should this fact lead us to this
-conclusion? A canine fetus is also, no doubt, genetically unique.
-Does this mean that it is as wrong to abort a dog as a human?
-When identical twins are conceived, the genetic information is
-repeated. Would Ramsey therefore think it permissible to abort
-one of a pair of identical twins? The children that my wife and
-I would produce if we did not use contraceptives would be
-genetically unique. Does the fact that it is still indeterminate
-precisely what genetically unique character those children
-would have make the use of contraceptives less evil than abortion?
-Why should it? And if it does could the looming prospect
-of successful cloning - a technique in which the cells of one
-individual are used to reproduce a fetus that is a genetic carbon
-copy of the original - diminish the seriousness of abortion?
-Suppose the woman who wants to go mountain climbing were
-able to have her abortion, take a cell from the aborted fetus and
-then reimplant that cell in her womb so that an exact genetic
-replica of the aborted fetus would develop - the only difference
-being that the pregnancy would now come to term six months
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-later, and thus she could still join the expedition. Would that
-make the abortion acceptable? I doubt that many opponents of
-abortion would think so.
-THE STATUS OF THE EMBRYO IN THE LABORATORY
-It is now time to tum to the debate about experimenting on
-early human embryos, kept alive in a special fluid, outside the
-human body. This is a relatively new debate, because the possibility
-of keeping an embryo alive outside the body is new; but
-in many respects it goes over the same ground as the abortion
-debate. Although one central argument for abortion - the claim
-that a woman has the right to control her own body - is not
-directly applicable in the newer context, the argument against
-embryo experimentation relies on one of the two claims we
-have already examined: either that the embryo is entitled to
-protection because it is a human being, or that the embryo is
-entitled to protection because it is a potential human being.
-One might therefore think that the case against embryo experimentation
-is stronger than the case for abortion. For one
-argument in favour of abortion does not apply, while the major
-arguments against abortion do. In fact, however, the two arguments
-against abortion do not apply as straightforwardly as
-one might imagine to the embryo in the laboratory.
-First, is the embryo already a human being? We have already
-seen that claims for a right to life should not be based on species
-membership, so the fact that the embryo is of the species Homo
-sapiens does not show that the embryo is a human being in any
-morally relevant sense. And if the fetus is not a person, it is
-even more apparent that the embryo cannot be one. But there
-is a further interesting point to be made against the claim that
-the early embryo is a human being: human beings are individuals,
-and the early embryo is not even an individual. At any
-time up to about 14 days after fertilisation - and that is longer
-than human embryos have so far been kept alive outside the
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-body - the embryo can split into two or more genetically identical
-embryos. This happens naturally and leads to the formation
-of identical twins. When we have an embryo prior to this point,
-we cannot be sure if what we are looking at is the precursor of
-one or two individuals.
-This poses a problem for those who stress the continuity of
-our existence from conception to adulthood. Suppose we have
-an embryo in a dish on a laboratory bench. If we think of this
-embryo as the first stage of an individual human being, we might
-call it Mary. But now suppose the embryo divides into two
-identical embryos. Is one of them still Mary, and the other Jane?
-If so, which one is Mary? There is nothing to distinguish the
-two, no way of saying that the one we call Jane split off from
-the one we call Mary, rather than vice versa. So should we say
-that Mary is no longer with us, and instead we have Jane and
-Helen? But what happened to Mary? Did she die? Should we
-grieve for her? There is something absurd about these speculations.
-The absurdity stems from thinking of the embryo as an
-individual at a time at which it is only a cluster of cells. So,
-until the possibility of twinning is past, it is even more difficult
-to maintain that the embryo is a human being, in any morally
-significant sense, than it is to maintain that the fetus is a human
-being in a morally significant sense. This provides some basis
-for the laws and guidelines in Britain and various other countries
-that allow experimentation on the embryo up to 14 days after
-fertilisation. But for reasons already given, and others that we
-are about to discuss, this is still an unnecessarily restrictive limit.
-What of the argument from potential? Can the familiar claims
-about the potential of the embryo in the uterus be applied to
-the embryo in a dish in the laboratory? Before Robert Edwards
-began the research that led to the IVF procedure, no-one had
-observed a viable human embryo prior to the stage at which it
-implants in the wall of the uterus. In the normal process of
-reproduction inside the body, the embryo, or 'pre-embryo' as
-it is now sometimes called, remains unattached for the first
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-seven to fourteen days. As long as such embryos existed only
-inside the woman's body, there was no way of observing them
-during that period. The very existence of the embryo could not
-be established until after implantation. Under these circumstances,
-once the existence of an embryo was known, that embryo
-had a good chance of becoming a person, unless its
-development was deliberately interrupted. The probability of
-such an embryo becoming a person was therefore very much
-greater than the probability of an egg in a fertile woman uniting
-with sperm from that woman's partner and leading to a child.
-There was also, in those pre-IVF days, a further important
-distinction between the embryo and the egg and sperm.
-Whereas the embryo inside the female body has some definite
-chance (we shall consider later how great a chance) of developing
-into a child unless a deliberate human act interrupts its
-growth, the egg and sperm can only develop into a child if there
-is a deliberate human act. So in the one case, all that is needed
-for the embryo to have a prospect of realising its potential is for
-those involved to refrain from stopping it; in the other case, they
-have to carry out a positive act. The development of the embryo
-inside the female body can therefore be seen as a mere unfolding
-of a potential that is inherent in it. (Admittedly, this is an oversimplification,
-for it takes no account of the positive acts involved
-in childbirth; but it is close enough.) The development
-of the separated egg and sperm is more difficult to regard in this
-way, because no further development will take place unless the
-couple have sexual intercourse or use artificial insemination.
-Now consider what has happened as a result of the success
-ofIVF. The procedure involves removing one or more eggs from
-a woman's ovary, placing them in the appropriate fluid in a
-glass dish, and then adding sperm to the dish. In the more
-proficient laboratories, this leads to fertilisation in about 80%
-of the eggs thus treated. The embryo can then be kept in the
-dish for two to three days, while it grows and divides into two,
-four, and then eight cells. At about this stage the embryo is
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-usually transferred to a woman's uterus. Although the transfer
-itself is a simple procedure, it is after the transfer that things are
-most likely to go wrong: for reasons that are not fully understood,
-with even the most successful IVF teams, the probability
-of a given embryo that has been transferred to the uterus actually
-implanting there, and leading to a continuing pregnancy, is
-always less than 20%, and generally no more than 10%. In
-summary, then, before the advent of IVF, in every instance in
-which we knew of the existence of a normal human embryo,
-it would have been true to say of that embryo that, unless it
-was deliberately interfered with, it would most likely develop
-into a person. The process ofIVF, however, leads to the creation
-of embryos that cannot develop into a person unless there is
-some deliberate human act (the transfer to the uterus) and that
-even then, in the best of circumstances, will most likely not
-develop into a person.
-The upshot of all this is that IVF has reduced the difference
-between what can be said about the embryo, and what can be
-said about the egg and sperm, when still separate, but considered
-as a pair. Before IVF, any normal human embryo known to us
-had a far greater chance of becoming a child than any egg plus
-sperm prior to fertilisation taking place. But with IVF, there is
-a much more modest difference in the probability of a child
-resulting from a 2-cell embryo in a glass dish, and the probability
-of a child resulting from an egg and some sperm in a glass dish.
-To be specific, if we assume that the laboratory's fertilisation
-rate is 80% and its rate of pregnancy per embryo transferred is
-10%, then the probability of a child resulting from a given
-embryo is 10%, and the probability of a child resulting from an
-egg that has been placed in a fluid to which sperm has been
-added is 8%. So if the embryo is a potential person, why are
-not the egg-and--sperm, considered jointly, also a potential person?
-Yet no member of the pro-life movement wants to rescue
-eggs and sperm in order to save the lives of the people that they
-have the potential to become.
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-Consider the following, not too improbable scenario. In the
-IVF laboratory, a woman's egg has been obtained. It sits in one
-dish on the bench. The sperm from her partner sits in an adjacent
-dish, ready to be mixed into the solution containing the egg.
-Then some bad news arrives: the woman is bleeding from the
-uterus, and will not be in a suitable condition to receive an
-embryo for at least a month. There is therefore no point in going
-ahead with the procedure. A laboratory assistant is told to dispose
-of the egg and sperm. She does so by tipping them down
-the sink. So far, so good; but a few hours later, when the
-assistant returns to prepare the laboratory for the next procedure,
-she notices that the sink is blocked. The egg and its fluid
-are still there, in the bottom of the sink. She is about to clear
-the blockage, when she realizes that the sperm has been tipped
-into the sink too. Quite possibly, the egg has been fertilised!
-Now what is she to do? Those who draw a sharp distinction
-between the egg-and-sperm and the embryo must hold that,
-while the assistant was quite entitled to pour the egg and sperm
-down the sink, it would be wrong to clear the blockage now.
-This is difficult to accept. Potentiality seems not to be such an
-all-or-nothing concept; the difference between the egg-andsperm
-and the embryo is one of degree, related to the probability
-of development into a person.
-Traditional defenders of the right to life of the embryo have
-been reluctant to introduce degrees of potential into the debate,
-because once the notion is accepted, it seems undeniable that
-the early embryo is less of a potential person than the later
-embryo or the fetus. This could easily be understood as leading
-to the conclusion that the prohibition against destroying the
-early embryo is less stringent than the prohibition against destroying
-the later embryo or fetus. Nevertheless, some defenders
-of the argument from potential have invoked probability.
-Among these has been the Roman Catholic theologian John
-Noonan:
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-As life itself is a matter of probabilities, as most moral reasoning
-is an estimate of probabilities, so it seems in accord with the
-structure of reality and the nature of moral thought to found a
-moral judgment on the change in probabilities at conception ...
-Would the argument be different if only one out of ten children
-conceived came to term? Of course this argument would be
-different. This argument is an appeal to probabilities that actually
-exist, not to any and all states of affairs which may be imagined
-... If a spermatozoon is destroyed, one destroys a being which
-had a chance of far less than 1 in 200 million of developing into
-a reasoning being, possessed of the genetic code, a heart and
-other organs, and capable of pain. If a fetus is destroyed, one
-destroys a being already possessed of the genetic code, organs
-and sensitivity to pain, and one which had an 80 per cent chance
-of developing further into a baby outside the womb who, in
-time, would reason.
-The article from which this quotation is taken has been influential
-in the abortion debate, and has often been quoted and
-reprinted by those opposed to abortion, but the development
-of our understanding of the reproductive process has made
-Noonan's position untenable. The initial difficulty is that Noonan's
-figures for embryo survival even in the uterus are no longer
-regarded as accurate. At the time Noonan wrote, the estimate
-of pregnancy loss was based on clinical recognition of pregnancies
-at six to eight weeks after fertilisation. At this stage, the
-chance of lOSing the pregnancy through spontaneous abortion
-is about 15%. Recent technical advances allowing earlier recognition
-of pregnancy, however, provide startlingly different
-figures. If pregnancy is diagnosed before implantation (within
-14 days of fertilisation) the probability of a birth resulting is 25
-to 30%. Post-implantation this increases initially to 46 to 60%,
-and it is not until six weeks gestation that the chance of birth
-occurring increases to 85 to 90%.
-Noonan claimed that his argument is 'an appeal to probabilities
-that actually exist, not to any and all states of affairs which
-may be imagined'. But once we substitute the real probabilities
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-of embryos, at various stages of their existence, becoming persons,
-Noonan's argument no longer supports the moment of
-fertilisation as the time at which the embryo gains a significantly
-different moral status. Indeed, if we were to require an 80%
-probability of further development into a baby - the figure
-Noonan himself mentions - we would have to wait until nearly
-six weeks after fertilisation before the embryo would have the
-significance Noonan wants to claim for it.
-At one point in his argument Noonan refers to the number
-of sperm involved in a male ejaculation, and says that there is
-only one chance in 200,000,000 of a sperm becoming part of
-a living being. This focus on the sperm rather than the egg is a
-curious instance of male bias, but even if we let that pass, new
-technology provides still one more difficulty for the argument.
-There now exists a means of overcoming male infertility caused
-by a low sperm count. The egg is removed as in the normal in
-vitro procedure; but instead of adding a drop of seminal fluid
-to the dish with the egg, a single sperm is picked up with a fine
-needle and micro-injected under the outer layer of the egg. So
-if we compare the probability of the embryo becoming a person
-with the probability of the egg, together with the single sperm
-that has been picked up by the needle and is about to be microinjected
-into the egg, becoming a person, we will be unable to
-find any sharp distinction between the two. Does that mean
-that it would be wrong to stop the procedure, once the sperm
-has been picked up? Noonan's argument from probabilities
-would seem to commit him either to this implausible claim, or
-to accepting that we may destroy human embryos. This procedure
-also undermines Ramsey's claim about the importance
-of the unique genetic blueprint - that' "never-to-be-repeated"
-informational speck' having been determined in the case of the
-embryo but not in the case of the egg and sperm. For that too
-is here determined before fertilisation.
-In this section I have tried to show how the special circum-
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-stances of the embryo in the laboratory affect the application
-of the arguments discussed elsewhere in this chapter about the
-status of the embryo or fetus. I have not attempted to cover all
-aspects of in vitro fertilisation and embryo experimentation. To
-do that it would be necessary to investigate several other issues,
-including the appropriateness of allocating scarce medical resources
-to this area at a time when the world has a serious
-problem of overpopulation, and the speculation that the new
-techniques will be misused to produce children 'made-to order',
-either at the behest of parents or, worse still, of some mad
-dictator. To cover these important but disparate matters would
-take us too far from the main themes of this book. Brief mention
-must, however, be made of one other aspect of embryo experimentation:
-the role of the couple from whose gametes the
-embryo has developed.
-Feminists have played a valuable role in pointing out how
-vulnerable a couple may be to pressure from the medical team
-to donate an embryo for research purposes. They may be desperate
-for a child. The IVF team represent their last hope of
-achieving this goal. They know that there are many other couples
-seeking treatment. All this means that they are likely to be
-prepared to go to great lengths in order to please the medical
-team. When they are asked to donate eggs or embryos, can they
-really make a free choice? Only, I think, if it is quite clear that
-their answer will not affect their IVF treatment in any way.
-Wherever experimentation on embryos is carried out, there is
-a need to develop safeguards and forms of oversight to ensure
-that this is always the case.
-MAKING USE OF THE FETUS
-The prospects of using human fetuses for medical purposes has
-created a further controversial issue related to abortion. Research
-carried out specifically on fetuses has led to the hope of
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-finding cures for many serious illnesses by the transplantation
-of tissue or cells from the fetus. Compared with adult tissue,
-fetal tissue appears to grow better after transplantation, and to
-be less likely to be rejected by the patient. The example that
-has received the most publicity to date is Parkinson's disease,
-but the use of fetal tissue has also been suggested in the treatment
-of Alzheimer's Disease, Huntington's Disease, and diabetes;
-and fetal transplants have been used to save the life of
-another fetus, in a case in which a 30 week old fetus, in utero,
-suffering from a fatal immune system disorder was given fetal
-cells from aborted fetuses.
-Do fetuses have rights or interests that may be violated or
-harmed by using them for these purposes? I have already argued
-that the fetus has no right to, nor strictly speaking even an
-interest in, life. But we have seen that, in the case of animals,
-to say that a being has no right to life does not mean that the
-being has no rights or interests at all. If the fetus is capable of
-feeling pain, then, like animals, the fetus has an interest in not
-suffering pain, and that interest should be given equal consideration
-with the similar interests of any other being. It is easy
-to imagine that keeping a fetus alive after an abortion in order
-to preserve the tissue of the fetus in the best possible condition
-could cause pain and suffering to a fetus capable of feeling pain.
-So we must now return to a more detailed investigation of a
-topic touched upon earlier in this chapter: When does the fetus
-become conscious?
-Fortunately it is now possible to give a reasonably definite
-answer to this question. The part of the brain associated with
-sensations of pain, and more generally with consciousness, is
-the cerebral cortex. Until 18 weeks of gestation, the cerebral
-cortex is not sufficiently developed for synaptic connections to
-take place within it - in other words, the signals that give rise
-to pain in an adult are not being received. Between 18 and 25
-weeks, the brain of the fetus reaches a stage at which there is
-some nerve transmission in those parts associated with con-
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-sciousness. Even then, however, the fetus appears to be in a
-persistent state of sleep, and therefore may not be able to perceive
-pain. The fetus begins to 'wake up' at a gestational age of
-around 30 weeks. This is, of course, well beyond the stage of
-viability, and a 'fetus' that was alive and outside the womb at
-this stage would be a premature baby, and not a fetus at all.
-In order to give the fetus the benefit of the doubt, it would
-be reasonable to take the earliest possible time at which the
-fetus might be able to feel anything as the boundary after which
-the fetus should be protected. Thus we should disregard the
-uncertain evidence about wakefulness, and take as a more definite
-line, the time at which the brain is physically capable of
-receiving signals necessary for awareness. This suggests a
-boundary at 18 weeks of gestation. Prior to that time, there is
-no good basis for believing that the fetus needs protection from
-harmful research, because the fetus cannot be harmed. After
-that time, the fetus does need protection from harm, on the
-same basis as sentient, but not self-conscious, nonhuman animals
-need it.
-There is, however, one qualification that must be added to
-this statement. While the fetus prior to 18 weeks may, strictly
-speaking, be unable to be harmed, if the fetus is allowed to
-develop into a child, the future child could be very seriously
-harmed by an experiment that caused the child to be born in
-a disabled state. Therefore research that allows the fetus to survive
-beyond 18 weeks does not come under the permissive rule
-suggested in the previous paragraph.
-In discussions of the use of fetal tissue there is often mention
-of the risk of 'complicity' in the immoral act of abortion. Those
-wishing to defend the use of fetal tissue therefore go to great
-lengths in order to show that the use of fetal tissue can be kept
-entirely separate from the decision to carry out the abortion,
-and so does not serve to 'legitimise' abortions. For the same
-reason, many countries now have, or are developing, laws or
-guidelines for the use of fetal tissue from induced abortions,
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-Practical Ethics
-and many of these laws or guidelines are drawn up on the basis
-of the assumption, implicit or explicit, that it is important to
-separate the decision for the abortion from the use of the fetal
-tissue, lest the use of fetal tissue serve to increase the incidence
-of abortions. There may be, for example, a requirement that the
-donation has to be an entirely anonymous one. This prevents
-a woman having an abortion in order to donate tissue that might
-save the life of a relative, perhaps one of her existing children.
-It is possible that the motivation for such requirements is to
-protect the woman from pressure to have an abortion. Whether
-that is a valid ground for requiring anonymity is something I
-shall consider shortly. Here I wish only to point out that if it is
-the premise that abortion is immoral that supplies the motive
-for seeking to prevent any 'complicity' between the use of the
-fetal tissue and the carrying out of the abortion, or to ensure
-that fetal tissue use does not contribute to a higher incidence
-of abortions, then the arguments presented in this chapter count
-against that view. At least when carried out before 18 weeks,
-abortion is in itself morally neutral. Even later abortions, when
-some pain may be involved, could be justified if the outcome
-were to prevent much greater suffering by saving the life of a
-child suffering from an immune system disorder, or to cure
-Parkinson's or Alzheimer's disease in an older person. If the
-requirement that we separate the act of abortion from the donation
-of fetal tissue cannot be soundly based on the need to
-protect the fetus, can it be founded instead on a need to protect
-the parents, in particular the woman? Different aspects of this
-separation need to be considered. If the doctor counselling the
-pregnant woman about her abortion and the doctor seeking
-fetal tissue for a dying patient are one and the same, the conflict
-of interest is clear, and there seems a real risk that the doctor
-will not be able to give disinterested advice to the pregnant
-woman. So this separation is an important aspect of protecting
-the position of the pregnant woman.
-What, though, of the view that the pregnant woman must
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-Taking Life: The Embryo and the Fetus
-be separated from the recipient by a veil of anonymity? This,
-of course, prevents her having an abortion in order to provide
-tissue to someone she knows. Is this restriction justified by consideration
-of her own interests? On the one hand, without this
-protection it is easy to imagine scenarios in which a pregnant
-woman would find herself under great pressure to abort a pregnancy
-in order to save the life of a dying relative; or a woman
-who is not pregnant might feel that she has to become pregnant
-and then terminate the pregnancy to provide the needed fetal
-tissue. Feminists may well feel that in a society in which men
-are dominant, the prospects for further intensifying the oppression
-of women in this way is reason enough to exclude the
-designation of tissue for a particular known person.
-Yet the argument for the opposite conclusion is also strong.
-It is neither unusual nor unreasonable for a parent to make
-great sacrifices for a child. We allow both men and women to
-work long hours doing meaningless factory labor in order to
-save enough money to ensure that their children receive a good
-education. This suggests that sacrifice for the sake of a relative
-or loved one is not in itself wrong or something we need to
-prohibit. In many countries, we also allow women to have
-abortions for reasons that are far less important than the saving
-of a life. This indicates that we do not regard an abortion as
-something so bad (from the point of view of the fetus, or of the
-woman) that it should be prohibited, or even restricted to situations
-in which it is necessary to save a life. If we accept the
-assumptions that underly both these attitudes, we can scarcely
-criticise a woman who decides to have an abortion in order to
-provide fetal tissue that could save the life of her child. Not
-every woman may want to do this, but those who do may well
-be making a perfectly reasonable, autonomous decision. It is
-highly paternalistic for the law to step in and say that a doctor
-must not give effect to such decisions. From this perspective it
-is odd that some feminists, whom one might expect to find
-upholding the right of women to autonomy, should be among
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-those who think that women need special laws to protect them
-against the effects of their own freely chosen actions.
-There is considerable force in both of these opposed arguments,
-but we should favour autonomy unless there is clear
-evidence that the results of doing so are very bad indeed. I know
-of no evidence to that effect. I suspect, in fact. that much (though
-certainly not all) of the motivation for prohibiting designated
-donations of tissue derives from a desire to avoid causing more
-abortions, and in particular, to avoid women becoming pregnant
-in order to make fetal tissue available. But for the reasons
-already given, I see nothing inherently wrong with more abortions,
-or with pregnancies being undertaken in order to provide
-fetal tissue, as long as the women involved are freely choosing
-to do this, and the additional abortions really do make some
-contribution to saving the lives of others. If the chief objection
-is that the women's actions might be coerced rather than freely
-chosen, the solution would be not to prohibit all choices for
-abortion to provide fetal tissue, but rather to set up procedures
-to ensure that those who do this have chosen freely, in the light
-of all the available relevant information.
-At this point commerce is bound to rear its head. Someone
-will ask: What if women become pregnant and terminate their
-pregnancies not in order to save the lives of those they care
-about, but because they will be paid for the fetal tissue? Do not
-arguments from autonomy suggest that this, too, should be up
-to the woman to decide? Is it really worse to become pregnant
-and terminate the pregnancy in order to receive, say, $10,000
-than to spend six months doing repetitious labour in a noisy,
-polluted, hazardous factory for the same amount of money?
-Despite my willingness to facilitate fetal tissue use, I am much
-more reluctant to embrace the free market. This is not because
-I think that women would be unable to protect themselves from
-the exploitation of the market; it really does not seem to me a
-worse form of exploitation than those that we accept in more
-common forms of employment. Rather, I dislike the idea of a
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-Taking Life: The Embryo and the Fetus
-free market in fetal tissue because, as R.M. Titmuss argued many
-years ago in the case of blood supplies for medical purposes,
-when we choose between a social policy based on altruism and
-one based on commerce, we are choosing between two different
-types of society. It may well be better, for a variety of reasons,
-that there are some things that money cannot buy; some circumstances
-in which we must rely on the altruism of those we
-love, or even of strangers in our society. I support efforts to
-resist the creeping commercialisation of every aspect of our lives,
-and so I would resist the commercialisation of fetal tissue.
-ABORTION AND INFANTICIDE
-There remains one major objection to the argument I have
-advanced in favour of abortion. We have already seen that the
-strength of the conservative position lies in the difficulty liberals
-have in pointing to a morally significant line of demarcation
-between an embryo and a newborn baby. The standard liberal
-position needs to be able to point to some such line, because
-liberals usually hold that it is permissible to kill an embryo or
-fetus but not a baby. I have argued that the life of a fetus (and
-even more plainly, of an embryo) is of no greater value than
-the life of a nonhuman animal at a similar level of rationality,
-self-consciousness, awareness, capacity to feel. etc., and that
-since no fetus is a person no fetus has the same claim to life as
-a person. Now it must be admitted that these arguments apply
-to the newborn baby as much as to the fetus. A week-old baby
-is not a rational and self-conscious being, and there are many
-nonhuman animals whose rationality, self-consciousness,
-awareness, capacity to feel. and so on, exceed that of a human
-baby a week or a month old. If the fetus does not have the same
-claim to life as a person, it appears that the newborn baby does
-not either, and the life of a newborn baby is of less value to it
-than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee is to the nonhuman
-animal. Thus while my position on the status of fetal life may
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-Pradical Ethics
-be acceptable to many, the implications of this position for the
-status of newborn life are at odds with the virtually unchallenged
-assumption that the life of a newborn baby is as sacrosanct
-as that of an adult. Indeed, some people seem to think that the
-life of a baby is more precious than that of an adult. Lurid tales
-of German soldiers bayoneting Belgian babies figured prominently
-in the wave of anti-German propaganda that accompanied
-Britain's entry into the First World War. and it seemed
-to be tacitly assumed that this was a greater atrocity than the
-murder of adults would be.
-I do not regard the conflict between the position I have taken
-and widely accepted views about the sanctity of infant life as a
-ground for abandoning my position. These widely accepted
-views need to be challenged. It is true that infants appeal to us
-because they are small and helpless, and there are no doubt
-very good evolutionary reasons why we should instinctively
-feel protective towards them. It is also true that infants cannot
-be combatants and killing infants in wartime is the clearest
-possible case of killing civilians, which is prohibited by international
-convention. In general. since infants are harmless and
-morally incapable of committing a crime, those who kill them
-lack the excuses often offered for the killing of adults. None of
-this shows, however, that the killing of an infant is as bad as
-the killing of an (innocent) adult.
-In thinking about this matter we should put aside feelings
-based on the small. helpless, and - sometimes - cute appearance
-of human infants. To think that the lives of infants are of special
-value because infants are small and cute is on a par with thinking
-that a baby seal. with its soft white fur coat and large round
-eyes deserves greater protection than a gorilla, who lacks these
-attributes. Nor can the helplessness or the innocence of the
-infant Homo sapiens be a ground for preferring it to the equally
-helpless and innocent fetal Homo sapiens, or. for that matter.
-to laboratory rats who are 'innocent' in exactly the same sense
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-I
-I I
-(
-Taking Life: The Embryo and the Fetus
-as the human infant, and, in view of the experimenters' power
-over them, almost as helpless.
-If we can put aside these emotionally moving but strictly
-irrelevant aspects of the killing of a baby we can see that the
-grounds for not killing persons do not apply to newborn infants.
-The indirect, classical utilitarian reason does not apply, because
-no one capable of understanding what is happening when a
-newborn baby is killed could feel threatened by a policy that
-gave less protection to the newborn than to adults. In this respect
-Bentham was right to describe infanticide as 'of a nature not to
-give the slightest inquietude to the most timid imagination'.
-Once we are old enough to comprehend the policy, we are too
-old to be threatened by it.
-Similarly, the preference utilitarian reason for respecting the
-life of a person cannot apply to a newborn baby. Newborn babies
-cannot see themselves as beings who might or might not have
-a future, and so cannot have a desire to continue living. For the
-same reason, if a right to life must be based on the capacity to
-want to go on living, or on the ability to see oneself as a continuing
-mental subject, a newborn baby cannot have a right to
-life. Finally, a newborn baby is not an autonomous being, capable
-of making choices, and so to kill a newborn baby cannot
-violate the principle of respect for autonomy. In all this the
-newborn baby is on the same footing as the fetus, and hence
-fewer reasons exist against killing both babies and fetuses than
-exist against killing those who are capable of seeing themselves
-as distinct entities, existing over time.
-It would, of course, be difficult to say at what age children
-begin to see themselves as distinct entities existing over time.
-Even when we talk with two and three year old children it
-is usually very difficult to elicit any ccherent conception of
-death, or of the possibility that someone - let alone the child
-herself - might cease to exist. No doubt children vary greatly
-in the age at which they begin to understand these matters,
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-Pradical Ethics
-as they do in most things. But a difficulty in drawing the line
-is not a reason for drawing it in a place that is obviously
-wrong, any more than the notorious difficulty in saying how
-much hair a man has to have lost before we can call him
-'bald' is a reason for saying that someone whose pate is as
-smooth as a billiard ball is not bald. Of course, where rights
-are at risk, we should err on the side of safety. There is some
-plausibility in the view that, for legal purposes, since birth
-provides the only sharp, clear and easily understood line, the
-law of homicide should continue to apply immediately after
-birth. Since this is an argument at the level of public policy
-and the law, it is quite compatible with the view that. on
-purely ethical grounds, the killing of a newborn infant is not
-comparable with the killing of an older child or adult. Alternatively,
-recalling Hare's distinction between the critical and
-intuitive levels of moral reasoning, one could hold that the
-ethical judgment we have reached applies only at the level of
-critical morality; for everyday decision-making, we should act
-as if an infant has a right to life from the moment of birth.
-In the next chapter, however, we shall consider another possibility:
-that there should be at least some circumstances in
-which a full legal right to life comes into force not at birth,
-but only a short time after birth - perhaps a month. This
-would provide the ample safety margin mentioned above.
-If these conclusions seem too shocking to take seriously, it
-may be worth remembering that our present absolute protection
-of the lives of infants is a distinctively Christian attitude
-rather than a universal ethical value. Infanticide has been
-practised in societies ranging geographically from Tahiti to
-Greenland and varying in culture from the nomadic Australian
-aborigines to the sophisticated urban communities of ancient
-Greece or mandarin China. In some of these societies infanticide
-was not merely permitted but. in certain circumstances,
-deemed morally obligatory. Not to kill a deformed or sickly
-infant was often regarded as wrong, and infanticide was prob-
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-Taking Life: The Embryo and the Fetus
-ably the first, and in several societies the only, form of population
-control.
-We might think that we are just more 'civilised' than these
-'primitive' peoples. But it is not easy to feel confident that we
-are more civilised than the best Greek and Roman moralists. It
-was not just the Spartans who exposed their infants on hillsides:
-both Plato and Aristotle recommended the killing of deformed
-infants. Romans like Seneca, whose compassionate moral sense
-strikes the modem reader (or me, anyway) as superior to that
-of the early and mediaeval Christian writers, also thought infanticide
-the natural and humane solution to the problem posed
-by sick and deformed babies. The change in Western attitudes
-to infanticide since Roman times is, like the doctrine of the
-sanctity of human life of which it is a part, a product of Christianity.
-Perhaps it is now possible to think about these issues
-without assuming the Christian moral framework that has, for
-so long, prevented any fundamental reassessment.
-None of this is meant to suggest that someone who goes
-around randomly killing babies is morally on a par with a
-woman who has an abortion. We should certainly put very
-strict conditions on permissible infanticide; but these restrictions
-might owe more to the effects of infanticide on others than to
-the intrinsic wrongness of killing an infant. Obviously, in most
-cases, to kill an infant is to inflict a terrible loss on those who
-love and cherish the child. My comparison of abortion and
-infanticide was prompted by the objection that the position I
-have taken on abortion also justifies infanticide. I have admitted
-this charge - without regarding the admission as fatal to my
-position - to the extent that the intrinsic wrongness of killing
-the late fetus and the intrinsic wrongness of killing the newborn
-infant are not markedly different. In cases of abortion, however,
-we assume that the people most affected - the parents-to-be,
-or at least the mother-to-be - want to have the abortion. Thus
-infanticide can only be equated with abortion when those closest
-to the child do not want it to live. As an infant can be adopted
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-Practical Ethics
-by others in a way that a pre-viable fetus cannot be, such cases
-will be rare. (Some of them are discussed in the following chapter.)
-Killing an infant whose parents do not want it dead is, of
-course, an utterly different matter.
-174
-7
-TAKING LIFE: HUMANS
-I N dealing with an objection to the view of abortion presented
-in Chapter 6, we have already looked beyond abortion to
-infanticide. In so doing we will have confirmed the suspicion
-of supporters of the sanctity of human life that once abortion
-is accepted, euthanasia lurks around the next comer - and for
-them, euthanasia is an unequivocal evil. It has, they point out,
-been rejected by doctors since the fifth century B.C., when physicians
-first took the Oath of Hippocrates and swore 'to give no
-deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel'.
-Moreover, they argue, the Nazi extermination programme
-is a recent and terrible example of what can happen once we
-give the state the power to kill innocent human beings.
-I do not deny that if one accepts abortion on the grounds
-provided in Chapter 6, the case for killing other human beings,
-in certain circumstances, is strong. As I shall try to show in this
-chapter, however, this is not something to be regarded with
-horror, and the use of the Nazi analogy is utterly misleading.
-On the contrary, once we abandon those doctrines about the
-sanctity of human life that - as we saw in Chapter 4 - collapse
-as soon as they are questioned, it is the refusal to accept killing
-that, in some cases, is horrific.
-'Euthanasia' means, according to the dictionary, 'a gentle and
-easy death', but it is now used to refer to the killing of those
-who are incurably ill and in great pain or distress, for the sake
-of those killed, and in order to spare them further suffering or
-distress. This is the main topic of this chapter. I shall also consider,
-however, some cases in which, though killing is not con-
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-Pradical Ethics
-trary to the wishes of the human who is killed, it is also not
-carried out specifically for the sake of that being. As we shall
-see, some cases involving newborn infants fall into this category.
-Such cases may not be 'euthanasia' within the strict meaning
-of the term, but they can usefully be included within the same
-general discussion, as long as we are clear about the relevant
-differences.
-Within the usual definition of euthanasia there are three different
-types, each of which raises distinctive ethical issues. It
-will help our discussion if we begin by setting out this threefold
-distinction and then assess the justifiability of each type.
-TYPES OF EUTHANASIA
-Voluntary Euthanasia
-Most of the groups currently campaigning for changes in the
-law to allow euthanasia are campaigning for voluntary euthanasia
-- that is, euthanasia carried out at the request of the person
-killed.
-Sometimes voluntary euthanasia is scarcely distinguishable
-from assisted suicide. In Jean's Way, Derek Humphry has told
-how his wife Jean, when dying of cancer, asked him to provide
-her with the means to end her life swiftly and without pain.
-They had seen the situation coming and discussed it beforehand.
-Derek obtained some tablets and gave them to Jean, who took
-them and died soon afterwards.
-Dr Jack Kevorkian, a Michigan pathologist, went one step
-further when he built a 'suicide machine' to help terminally ill
-people commit suicide. His machine consisted of a metal pole
-with three different bottles attached to a tube of the kind used
-to provide an intravenous drip. The doctor inserts the tube in
-the patient's vein, but at this stage only a harmless saline solution
-can pass through it. The patient may then flip a switch,
-which will allow a coma-inducing drug to come through the
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-Taking Life: Humans
-tube; this is automatically followed by a lethal drug contained
-in the third bottle. Dr Kevorkian announced that he was prepared
-to make the machine available to any terminally ill patient
-who wished to use it. (Assisting suicide is not against the law
-in Michigan.) In June 1990, Janet Adkins, who was suffering
-from Alzheimer's disease, but still competent to make the decision
-to end her life, contacted Dr Kevorkian and told him of
-her wish to die, rather than go through the slow and progressive
-deterioration that the disease involves. Dr Kevorkian was in
-attendance while she made use of his machine, and then reported
-Janet Adkins's death to the police. He was subsequently
-charged with murder, but the judge refused to allow the charge
-to proceed to trial, on the grounds that Janet Adkins had caused
-her own death. The following year Dr Kevorkian made his
-device available to two other people, who used it in order to
-end their lives. 1
-In other cases, people wanting to die may be unable to kill
-themselves. In 1973 George Zygmaniak was injured in a motorcycle
-accident near his home in New Jersey. He was taken
-to hospital, where he was found to be totally paralysed from
-the neck down. He was also in considerable pain. He told his
-doctor and his brother, Lester, that he did not want to live in
-this condition. He begged them both to kill him. Lester questioned
-the doctor and hospital staff about George's prospects of
-recovery: he was told that they were nil. He then smuggled a
-gun into the hospital, and said to his brother: 'I am here to end
-your pain, George. Is it all right with you?' George, who was
-now unable to speak because of an operation to assist his breathing'
-nodded affirmatively. Lester shot him through the temple.
-The Zygmaniak case appears to be a clear instance of voluntary
-euthanasia, although without some of the procedural
-Dr Kevorkian was again charged with murder, and with providing a prohibited
-substance, in connection with the latter two cases, but was once more
-discharged.
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-Practical Ethics
-safeguards that advocates of the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia
-propose. For instance, medical opinions about the patient's
-prospects of recovery were obtained only in an informal
-manner. Nor was there a careful attempt to establish, before
-independent witnesses, that George's desire for death was of a
-fixed and rational kind, based on the best available information
-about his situation. The killing was not carried out by a doctor.
-An injection would have been less distressing to others than
-shooting. But these choices were not open to Lester Zygmaniak,
-for the law in New Jersey, as in most other places, regards mercy
-killing as murder, and if he had made his plans known, he
-would not have been able to carry them out.
-Euthanasia can be voluntary even if a person is not able, as
-Jean Humphry, Janet Adkins, and George Zygmaniak were able,
-to indicate the wish to die right up to the moment the tablets
-are swallowed, the switch thrown, or the trigger pulled. A person
-may, while in good health, make a written request for
-euthanasia if, through accident or illness, she should come to
-be incapable of making or expressing a decision to die, in pain,
-or without the use of her mental faculties, and there is no
-reasonable hope of recovery. In killing a person who has made
-such a request, who has re-affirmed it from time to time, and
-who is now in one of the states described, one could truly claim
-to be acting with her consent.
-There is now one country in which doctors can openly help
-their patients to die in a peaceful and dignified way. In the
-Netherlands, a series of court cases during the 1980s upheld a
-doctor's right to assist a patient to die, even if that assistance
-amounted to giving the patient a lethal injection. Doctors in the
-Netherlands who comply with certain guidelines (which will
-be described later in this chapter) can now quite openly carry
-out euthanasia and can report this on the death certificate without
-fear of prosecution. It has been estimated that about 2,300
-deaths each year result from euthanasia carried out in this way.
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-Taking Life: Humans
-Involuntary Euthanasia
-I shall regard euthanasia as involuntary when the person killed
-is capable of consenting to her own death, but does not do so,
-either because she is not asked, or because she is asked and
-chooses to go on living. Admittedly this definition lumps two
-different cases under one heading. There is a significant difference
-between killing someone who chooses to go on living and
-killing someone who has not consented to being killed, but if
-asked, would have consented. In practice, though, it is hard to
-imagine cases in which a person is capable of consenting and
-would have consented if asked, but was not asked. For why
-not ask? Only in the most bizarre situations could one conceive
-of a reason for not obtaining the consent of a person both able
-and willing to consent.
-Killing someone who has not consented to being killed can
-properly be regarded as euthanasia only when the motive for
-killing is the desire to prevent unbearable suffering on the part
-of the person killed. It is, of course, odd that anyone acting from
-this motive should disregard the wishes of the person for whose
-sake the action is done. Genuine cases of involuntary euthanasia
-appear to be very rare.
-Non-voluntary Euthanasia
-These two definitions leave room for a third kind of euthanasia.
-If a human being is not capable of understanding the choice
-between life and death, euthanasia would be neither voluntary
-nor involuntary, but non-voluntary. Those unable to give consent
-would include incurably ill or severely disabled infants, and
-people who through accident, illness, or old age have permanently
-lost the capacity to understand the issue involved, without
-having previously requested or rejected euthanasia in these
-circumstances.
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-Practical Ethics
-Several cases of non-voluntary euthanasia have reached the
-courts and the popular press. Here is one example. Louis Repouille
-had a son who was described as 'incurably imbecile',
-had been bed-ridden since infancy and blind for five years.
-According to Repouille: 'He was just like dead all the time .... He
-couldn't walk, he couldn't talk, he couldn't do anything: In
-the end Repouille killed his son with chloroform.
-In 1988 a case arose that well illustrates the way in which
-modem medical technology forces us to make life and death
-decisions. Samuel Linares, an infant, swallowed a small object
-that stuck in his windpipe, causing a loss of oxygen to the brain.
-He was admitted to a Chicago hospital in a coma and placed
-on a respirator. Eight months later he was still comatose, still
-on the respirator, and the hospital was planning to move Samuel
-to a long-term care unit. Shortly before the move, Samuel's
-parents visited him in the hospital. His mother left the room,
-while his father produced a pistol and told the nurse to keep
-away. He then disconnected Samuel from the respirator, and
-cradled the baby in his arms until he died. When he was sure
-Samuel was dead, he gave up his pistol and surrendered to
-police. He was charged with murder, but the grand jury refused
-to issue a homicide indictment, and he subsequently received
-a suspended sentence on a minor charge arising from the use
-of the pistol.
-Obviously, such cases raise different issues from those raised
-by voluntary euthanasia. There is no desire to die on the part
-of the infant. It may also be questioned whether, in such cases,
-the death is carried out for the sake of the infant, or for the sake
-of the family as a whole. If Louis Repouille's son was 'just like
-dead all the time', then he may have been so profoundly braindamaged
-that he was not capable of suffering at all. That is also
-likely to have been true of the comatose Samuel Linares. In that
-case, while caring for him would have been a great and no
-doubt futile burden for the family, and in the Linares case, a
-drain on the state's limited medical resources as well, the infants
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-Taking Life: Humans
-were not suffering, and death could not be said to be in, or
-contrary to, their interests. It is therefore not euthanasia, strictly
-speaking, as I have defined the term. It might nevertheless be
-a justifiable ending of a human life.
-Since cases of infanticide and non-voluntary euthanasia are
-the kind of case most nearly akin to our previous discussions
-of the status of animals and the human fetus, We shall consider
-them first.
-JUSTIFYING INFANTICIDE AND
-NON-VOLUNTARY EUTHANASIA
-I As we have seen, euthanasia is non-voluntary when the subject
-has never had the capacity to choose to live or die. This is
-the situation of the severely disabled infant or the older human
-being who has been profoundly intellectually disabled
-since birth. Euthanasia or other forms of killing are also nonvoluntary
-when the subject is not now but once was capable
-of making the crucial choice, and did not then express any
-preference relevant to her present condition.
-The case of someone who has never been capable of choosing
-to live or die is a little more straightforward than that of a person
-who had, but has now lost, the capacity to make such a decision.
-We shall, once again, separate the two cases and take the more
-straightforward one first. For simplicity, I shall concentrate on
-infants, although everything I say about them would apply to
-older children or adults whose mental age is and has always
-been that of an infant.
-Life and Death Decisions for Disabled Infants
-If we were to approach the issue of life or death for a seriously
-disabled human infant without any prior discussion of the ethics
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-of killing in generaL we might be unable to resolve the conflict
-between the widely accepted obligation to protect the sanctity
-of human life, and the goal of reducing suffering. Some say that
-such decisions are 'subjective', or that life and death questions
-must be left to God and Nature. Our previous discussions have,
-however, prepared the ground, and the principles established
-and applied in the preceding three chapters make the issue much
-less baffling than most take it to be.
-In Chapter 4 we saw that the fact that a being is a human
-being, in the sense of a member of the species Homo sapiens,
-is not relevant to the wrongness of killing it; it is, rather, characteristics
-like rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness
-that make a difference. Infants lack these characteristics. Killing
-them, therefore, cannot be equated with killing normal human
-beings, or any other self-conscious beings. This conclusion is
-not limited to infants who, because of irreversible intellectual
-disabilities, will never be rationaL self-conscious beings. We saw
-in our discussion of abortion that the potential of a fetus to
-become a rationaL self-conscious being cannot count against
-killing it at a stage when it lacks these characteristics -:- not, that
-is, unless we are also prepared to count the value of rational
-self-conscious life as a reason against contraception and celibacy.
-No infant - disabled or not - has as strong a claim to life
-as beings capable of seeing themselves as distinct entities, existing
-over time.
-The difference between killing disabled and normal infants
-lies not in any supposed right to life that the latter has and the
-former lacks, but in other considerations about killing. Most
-obviously there is the difference that often exists in the attitudes
-of the parents. The birth of a child is usually a happy event for
-the parents. They have, nowadays, often planned for the child.
-The mother has carried it for nine months. From birth, a natural
-affection begins to bind the parents to it. So one important
-reason why it is normally a terrible thing to kill an infant is the
-effect the killing will have on its parents.
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-Taking Life: Humans
-It is different when the infant is born with a serious disability.
-Birth abnormalities vary, of course. Some are trivial and have
-little effect on the child or its parents; but others turn the normally
-joyful event of birth into a threat to the happiness of the
-parents, and any other children they may have.
-Parents may, with good reason, regret that a disabled child
-was ever born. In that event the effect that the death of the
-child will have on its parents can be a reason for, rather than
-against killing it. Some parents want even the most gravely
-disabled infant to live as long as possible, and this desire would
-then be a reason against killing the infant. But what if this is
-not the case? In the discussion that follows I shall assume that
-the parents do not want the disabled child to live. I shall also
-assume that the disability is so serious that - again in contrast
-to the situation of an unwanted but normal child today - there
-are no other couples keen to adopt the infant. This is a realistic
-assumption even in a society in which there is a long waitinglist
-of couples wishing to adopt normal babies. It is true that
-from time to time cases of infants who are severely disabled and
-are being allowed to die have reached the courts in a glare of
-publicity, and this has led to couples offering to adopt the child.
-Unfortunately such offers are the product of the highly publicised
-dramatic life-and-death situation, and do not extend to
-the less publicised but far more common situations in which
-parents feel themselves unable to look after a severely disabled
-child, and the child then languishes in an institution.
-Infants are sentient beings who are neither rational nor selfconscious.
-So if we turn to consider the infants in themselves,
-independently of the attitudes of their parents, since their species
-is not relevant to their moral status, the principles that govern
-the wrongness of killing non-human animals who are sentient
-but not rational or self-conscious must apply here too. As we
-saw, the most plausible arguments for attributing a right to life
-to a being apply only if there is some awareness of oneself as
-a being existing over time, or as a continuing mental self. Nor
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-Practical Ethics
-can respect for autonomy apply where there is no capacity for
-autonomy. The remaining principles identified in Chapter 4 are
-utilitarian. Hence the quality of life that the infant can be expected
-to have is important.
-One relatively common birth disability is a faulty development
-of the spine known as spina bifida. Its prevalence varies in
-different countries, but it can affect as many as one in five
-hundred live births. In the more severe cases, the child will be
-permanently paralysed from the waist down and lack c?ntrol
-of bowels or bladder. Often excess fluid accumulates III the
-brain, a condition known as hydrocephalus, which can result
-in intellectual disabilities. Though some forms of treatment exist,
-if the child is badly affected at birth, the paralysis, incontinence,
-and intellectual disability cannot be overcome.
-Some doctors closely connected with children suffering from
-severe spina bifida believe that the lives of the worst affected
-children are so miserable that it is wrong to resort to surgery
-to keep them alive. Published descriptions of the lives of these
-children support the judgment that these worst affected children
-will have lives filled with pain and discomfort. They ne,ed repeated
-major surgery to prevent curvature of the spine, due to
-the paralysis, and to correct other abnormalities. Some children
-with spina bifida have had forty major operations before they
-reach their teenage years.
-When the life of an infant will be so miserable as not to be
-worth living, from the internal perspective of the being who
-will lead that life, both the 'prior existence' and the 'total' version
-of utilitarianism entail that, if there are no 'extrinsic' reasons
-for keeping the infant alive - like the feelings M the parents
-- it is better that the child should be helped to die without
-further suffering. A more difficult problem arises - and the convergence
-between the two views ends - when we consider
-disabilities that make the child's life prospects significantly less
-promising than those of a normal child, but not so bleak as to
-make the child's life not worth living. Haemophilia is probably
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-Taking Life: Humans
-in this category. The haemophiliac lacks the element in normal
-blood that makes it clot and thus risks prolonged bleeding,
-especially internal bleeding, from the slightest injury. If allowed
-to continue, this bleeding leads to permanent crippling and
-eventually death. The bleeding is very painful and although
-improved treatments have eliminated the need for constant
-blood transfusions, haemophiliacs still have to spend a lot of
-time in hospital. They are unable to play most sports and live
-constantly on the edge of crisis. Nevertheless, haemophiliacs do
-not appear to spend their time wondering whether to end it
-all; most find life definitely worth living, despite the difficulties
-they face.
-Given these facts, suppose that a newborn baby is diagnosed
-as a haemophiliac. The parents, daunted by the prospect of
-bringing up a child with this condition, are not anxious for him
-to live. Could euthanasia be defended here? Our first reaction
-may well be a firm 'no', for the infant can be expected to have
-a life that is worth living, even if not quite as good as that of a
-normal baby. The 'prior existence' version of utilitarianism supports
-this judgment. The infant exists. His life can be expected
-to contain a positive balance of happiness over misery. To kill
-him would deprive him of this positive balance of happiness.
-Therefore it would be wrong.
-On the 'total' version of utilitarianism, however, we cannot
-reach a decision on the basis of this information alone. The total
-view makes it necessary to ask whether the death of the haemophiliac
-infant would lead to the creation of another being
-who would not otherwise have existed. In other words, if the
-haemophiliac child is killed, will his parents have another child
-whom they would not have if the haemophiliac child lives? If
-they would, is the second child likely to have a better life than
-the one killed?
-Often it will be possible to answer both these questions affirmatively.
-A woman may plan to have two children. If one
-dies while she is of child-bearing age, she may conceive another
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-Practical Ethics
-in its place. Suppose a woman planning to have two children
-has one normal child, and then gives birth to a haemophiliac
-child. The burden of caring for that child may make it impossible
-for her to cope with a third child; but if the disabled child were
-to die, she would have another. It is also plausible to suppose
-that the prospects of a happy life are better for a normal child
-than for a haemophiliac.
-When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of
-another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total
-amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is
-killed. The loss of happy life for the first infant is outweighed
-by the gain of a happier life for the second. Therefore, if killing
-the haemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others, it
-would, according to the total view, be right to kill him.
-The total view treats infants as replaceable, in much the same
-way as it treats non-self-conscious animals (as we saw in Chapter
-5). Many will think that the replaceability argument cannot
-be applied to human infants. The direct killing of even the most
-hopelessly disabled infant is still officially regarded as murder;
-how then could the killing of infants with far less serious problems,
-like haemophilia, be accepted? Yet on further reflection,
-the implications of the replaceability argument do not seem
-quite so bizarre. For there are disabled members of our species
-whom we now deal with exactly as the argument suggests we
-should. These cases closely resemble the ones we have been
-discussing. There is only one difference, and that is a difference
-of timing - the timing of the discovery of the problem, and the
-consequent killing of the disabled being.
-Prenatal diagnosis is now a routine procedure for pregnant
-women. There are various medical techniques for obtaining
-information about the fetus during the early months of pregnancy.
-At one stage in the development of these procedures, it
-was possible to discover the sex of the fetus, but not whether
-the fetus would suffer from haemophilia. Haemophilia is a sexlinked
-genetic defect, from which only males suffer; females can
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-Taking Life: Humans
-carry the gene and pass it on to their male offspring without
-themselves being affected. So a woman who knew that she
-carried the gene for haemophilia could, at that stage, avoid
-giving birth to a haemophiliac child only by finding out the sex
-of the fetus, and aborting all males fetuses. Statistically, only
-half of these male children of women who carried the defective
-gene would have suffered from haemophilia, but there was then
-no way to find out to which half a particular fetus belonged.
-Therefore twice as many fetuses were being killed as necessary,
-in order to avoid the birth of children with haemophilia. This
-practice was widespread in many countries, and yet did not
-cause any great outcry. Now that we have techniques for
-identifying haemophilia before birth, we can be more selective,
-but the principle is the same: women are offered, and usually
-accept, abortions in order to avoid giving birth to children with
-haemophilia.
-The same can be said about some other conditions that can
-be detected before birth. Down's syndrome, formerly known as
-mongolism, is one of these. Children with this condition have
-intellectual disabilities and most will never be able to live independently,
-but their lives, like those of small children, can be
-joyful. The risk of having a Down's syndrome child increases
-sharply with the age of the mother, and for this reason prenatal
-diagnosis is routinely offered to pregnant women over 35.
-Again, undergoing the procedure implies that if the test for
-Down's syndrome is positive, the woman will consider aborting
-the fetus and, if she still wishes to have another child, will start
-another pregnancy, which has a good chance of being normal.
-Prenatal diagnosis, followed by abortion in selected cases, is
-common practice in countries with liberal abortion laws and
-advanced medical techniques. I think this is as it should be. As
-the arguments of Chapter 6 indicate, I believe that abortion can
-be justified. Note, however, that neither haemophilia nor
-Down's syndrome is so crippling as to make life not worth living,
-from the inner perspective of the person with the condition. To
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-Practical Ethics
-abort a fetus with one of these disabilities, intending to have
-another child who will not be disabled, is to treat fetuses as
-interchangeable or replaceable. If the mother has previously
-decided to have a certain number of children, say two, then
-what she is doing, in effect, is rejecting one potential child in
-favour of another. She could, in defence of her actions, say: the
-loss of life of the aborted fetus is outweighed by the gain of a
-better life for the normal child who will be conceived only if
-the disabled one dies.
-When death occurs before birth, replaceability does not conflict
-with generally accepted moral convictions. That a fetus is
-known to be disabled is widely accepted as a ground for abortion.
-Yet in discussing abortion, we saw that birth does not
-mark a morally significant dividing line. I cannot see how one
-could defend the view that fetuses may be 'replaced' before
-birth, but newborn infants may not be. Nor is there any other
-point, such as viability, that does a better job of dividing the
-fetus from the infant. Self-consciousness, which could provide
-a basis for holding that it is wrong to kill one being and replace
-it with another, is not to be found in either the fetus or the
-newborn infant. Neither the fetus nor the newborn infant is an
-individual capable of regarding itself as a distinct entity with a
-life of its own to lead, and it is only for newborn infants, or for
-still earlier stages of human life, that replaceability should be
-considered to be an ethically acceptable option.
-It may still be objected that to replace either a fetus or a
-newborn infant is wrqng because it suggests to disabled people
-living today that their lives are less worth living than the lives
-of people who are not disabled. Yet it is surely flying in the face
-of reality to deny that, on average, this is so. That is the only
-way to make sense of actions that we all take for granted. Recall
-thalidomide: this drug, when taken by pregnant women, caused
-many children to be born without arms or legs. Once the cause
-of the abnormal births was discovered, the drug was taken off
-the market, and the company responsible had to pay compen-
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-Taking Life: Humans
-sation. If we really believed that there is no reason to think of
-the life of a disabled person as likely to be any worse than that
-of a normal person, we would not have regarded this as a
-tragedy. No compensation would have been sought, or awarded
-by the courts. The children would merely have been 'different'.
-We could even have left the drug on the market, so that women
-who found it a useful sleeping pill during pregnancy could continue
-to take it. If this sounds grotesque, that is only because
-we are all in no doubt at all that it is better to be born with
-limbs than without them. To believe this involves no disrespect
-at all for those who are lacking limbs; it simply recognises the
-reality of the difficulties they face.
-In any case, the position taken here does not imply that it
-would be better that no people born with severe disabilities
-should survive; it implies only that the parents of such infants
-should be able to make this decision. Nor does this imply lack
-ofrespect or equal consideration for people with disabilities who
-are now living their own lives in accordance with their own
-wishes. As we saw at the end of Chapter 2, the principle of
-equal consideration of interests rejects any discounting of the
-interests of people on grounds of disability.
-Even those who reject abortion and the idea that the fetus is
-replaceable are likely to regard possible people as replaceable.
-Recall the second woman in Partit's case of the two women,
-described in Chapter 5. She was told by her doctor that if she
-went ahead with her plan to become pregnant immediately,
-her child would have a disability (it could have been haemophilia);
-but if she waited three months her child would not have
-the disability. If we think she would do wrong not to wait, it
-can only be because we are comparing the two possible lives
-and judging one to have better prospects than the other. Of
-course, at this stage no life has begun; but the question is, when
-does a life, in the morally significant sense, really begin? In
-Chapters 4 and 5 we saw several reasons for saying that life
-only begins in the morally significant sense when there is aware-
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-Pradical Ethics
-ness of one's existence over time. The metaphor of life as a
-journey also provides a reason for holding that in infancy, life's
-voyage has scarcely begun.
-Regarding newborn infants as replaceable, as we now regard
-fetuses, would have considerable advantages over prenatal diagnosis
-followed by abortion. Prenatal diagnosis still cannot
-detect all major disabilities. Some disabilities, in fact. are not
-present before birth; they may be the result of extremely premature
-birth, or of something going wrong in the birth process
-itself. At present parents can choose to keep or destroy their
-disabled offspring only if the disability happens to be detected
-during pregnancy. There is no logical basis for restricting parents'
-choice to these particular disabilities. If disabled newborn
-infants were not regarded as having a right to life until, say, a
-week or a month after birth it would allow parents, in consultation
-with their doctors, to choose on the basis of far greater
-knowledge of the infant's condition than is possible before birth.
-All these remarks have been concerned with the wrongness
-of ending the life of the infant, considered in itself rather than
-for its effects on others. When we take effects on others into
-account, the picture may alter. Obviously, to go through the
-whole of pregnancy and labour, only to give birth to a child
-who one decides should not live, would be a difficult, perhaps
-heartbreaking, experience. For this reason many women would
-prefer prenatal diagnosis and abortion rather than live birth with
-the possibility of infanticide; but ifthe latter is not morally worse
-than the former, this would seem to be a choice that the woman
-herself should be allowed to make.
-Another factor to take into account is the possibility of adoption.
-When there are more couples wishing to adopt than normal
-children available for adoption, a childless couple may be
-prepared to adopt a haemophiliac. This would relieve the
-mother of the burden of bringing up a haemophiliac child, and
-enable her to have another child, if she wished. Then the replaceability
-argument could not justify infanticide, for bringing
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-Taking Life: Humans
-the other child into existence would not be dependent on the
-death ofthe haemophiliac. The death ofthe haemophiliac would
-then be a straightforward loss of a life of positive quality, not
-outweighed by the creation of another being with a better life.
-So the issue of ending life for disabled newborn infants is not
-without complications, which we do not have the space to
-discuss adequately. Nevertheless the main point is clear: killing
-a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person.
-Very often it is not wrong at all.
-Other Non-voluntary Life and Death Decisions
-In the preceding section we discussed justifiable killing for
-beings who have never been capable of choosing to live or die.
-Ending a life without consent may also be considered in the
-case of those who were once persons capable of choosing to
-live or die, but now, through accident or old age, have permanently
-lost this capacity, and did not, prior to losing it, express
-any views about whether they wished to go on living in such
-circumstances. These cases are not rare. Many hospitals care for
-motor accident victims whose brains have been damaged beyond
-all possible recovery. They may survive, in a coma, or
-perhaps barely conscious, for several years. In 1991, the Lancet
-reported that Rita Greene, a nurse, had been a patient at D.C.
-General Hospital in Washington for thirty-nine years without
-knowing it. Now aged sixty-three, she had been in a vegetative
-state since undergoing open heart surgery in 1952. The report
-stated that at any given time, between 5,000 and 10,000 Americans
-are surviving in a vegetative state. In other developed
-countries, where life-prolonging technology is not used so aggressively,
-there are far fewer long-term patients in this
-condition.
-In most respects, these human beings do not differ importantly
-from disabled infants. They are not self-conscious, rational,
-or autonomous, and so considerations of a right to life
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-Practical Ethics
-or of respecting autonomy do not apply. If they have no experiences
-at all, and can never have any again, their lives have
-no intrinsic value. Their life's journey has come to an end. They
-are biologically alive, but not biographically. (If this verdict
-seems harsh, ask yourself whether there is anything to choose
-between the following options: (a) instant death or (b) instant
-coma, followed by death, without recovery, in ten years' time.
-I can see no advantage in survival in a comatose state, if death
-without recovery is certain.) The lives of those who are not in
-a coma and are conscious but not self-conscious have value if
-such beings experience more pleasure than pain, or have preferences
-that can be satisfied; but it is difficult to see the point
-of keeping such human beings alive if their life is, on the whole,
-miserable.
-There is one important respect in which these cases differ
-from disabled infants. In discussing infanticide in the final section
-of Chapter 6, I cited Bentham's comment that infanticide
-need not 'give the slightest inquietude to the most timid imagination'.
-This is because those old enough to be aware of the
-killing of disabled infants are necessarily outside the scope of
-the policy. This cannot be said of euthanasia applied to those
-who once were rational and self-conscious. So a possible objection
-to this form of euthanasia would be that it will lead to
-insecurity and fear among those who are not now, but might
-come to be, within its scope. For instance, elderly people, knowing
-that non-voluntary euthanasia is sometimes applied to senile
-elderly patients, bedridden, suffering, and lacking the capacity
-to accept or reject death, might fear that every injection or tablet
-will be lethal. This fear might be quite irrational, but it would
-be difficult to convince people of this, particularly if old age
-really had affected their memory or powers of reasoning.
-This objection might be met by a procedure allowing those
-who do not wish to be subjected to non-voluntary euthanasia
-under any circumstances to register their refusal. Perhaps this
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-Taking Life: Humans
-would suffice; but perhaps it would not provide enough reassurance.
-If not, non-voluntary euthanasia would be justifiable
-only for those never capable of choosing to live or die.
-JUSTIFYING VOLUNTARY EUTHANASIA
-Under existing laws in most countries, people suffering uruelievable
-pain or distress from an incurable illness who beg their
-doctors to end their lives are asking their doctors to risk a murder
-charge. Although juries are extremely reluctant to convict in
-cases of this kind the law is clear that neither the request, nor
-the degree of suffering, nor the incurable condition of the person
-killed, is a defence to a charge of murder. Advocates of voluntary
-euthanasia propose that this law be changed so that a doctor
-could legally act on a patient's desire to die without further
-suffering. Doctors have been able to do this quite openly in the
-Netherlands, as a result of a series of court decisions during the
-1980s, as long as they comply with certain conditions. In Germany,
-doctors may provide a patient with the means to end her
-life, but they may not administer the substance to her.
-The case for voluntary euthanasia has some common ground
-with the case for non-voluntary euthanasia, in that death is a
-benefit for the one killed. The two kinds of euthanasia differ,
-however, in that voluntary euthanasia involves the killing of a
-person, a rational and self-conscious being and not a merely
-conscious being. (To be strictly accurate it must be said that this
-is not always so, because although only rational and self-conscious
-beings can consent to their own deaths, they may not be
-rational and self-conscious at the time euthanasia is contemplated
-- the doctor may, for instance, be acting on a prior written
-request for euthanasia if, through accident or illness, one's rational
-faculties should be irretrievably lost. For simplicity we
-shall, henceforth, disregard this complication.)
-We have seen that it is possible to justify ending the life of a
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-Practical Ethics
-human being who lacks the capacity to consent. We must now
-ask in what way the ethical issues are different when the being
-is capable of consenting, and does in fact consent.
-Let us return to the general principles about killing proposed
-in Chapter 4. I argued there that killing a self-conscious being
-is a more serious matter than killing a merely conscious being.
-I gave four distinct grounds on which this could be argued:
-The classical utilitarian claim that since self-conscious beings
-are capable of fearing their own death, killing them has worse
-effects on others.
-2 The preference utilitarian calculation that counts the thwarting
-of the victim's desire to go on living as an important reason
-against killing.
-3 A theory of rights according to which to have a right one must
-have the ability to desire that to which one has a right, so that
-to have a right to life one must be able to desire one's own
-continued existence.
-4 Respect for the autonomous decisions of rational agents.
-Now suppose we have a situation in which a person suffering
-from a painful and incurable disease wishes to die. If the individual
-were not a person - not rational or self-conscious -
-euthanasia would, as I have said, be justifiable. Do any of the
-four grounds for holding that it is normally worse to kill a person
-provide reasons against killing when the individual is a person
-who wants to die?
-The classical utilitarian objection does not apply to killing that
-takes place only with the genuine consent of the person killed.
-That people are killed under these conditions would have no
-tendency to spread fear or insecurity, since we have no cause
-to be fearful of being killed with our own genuine consent. If
-we do not wish to be killed, we simply do not consent. In fact,
-the argument from fear points in favour of voluntary euthanasia,
-for if voluntary euthanasia is not permitted we may, with good
-cause, be fearful that our deaths will be unnecessarily drawn
-out and distressing. In the Netherlands, a nationwide study
-commissioned by the government found that 'Many patients
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-Taking Life: Humans
-want an assurance that their doctor will assist them to die should
-suffering become unbearable: Often, having received this assurance,
-no persistent request for euthanasia eventuated. The
-availability of euthanasia brought comfort without euthanasia
-having to be provided.
-Preference utilitarianism also points in favour of, not against,
-voluntary euthanasia. Just as preference utilitarianism must
-count a desire to go on living as a reason against killing, so it
-must count a desire to die as a reason for killing.
-Next, according to the theory of rights we have considered,
-it is an essential feature of a right that one can waive one's
-rights if one so chooses. I may have a right to privacy; but I
-can, if I wish, film every detail of my daily life and invite the
-neighbours to my home movies. Neighbours sufficiently intrigued
-to accept my invitation could do so without violating
-my right to privacy, since the right has on this occasion been
-waived. Similarly, to say that I have a right to life is not to say
-that it would be wrong for my doctor to end my life, if she does
-so at my request. In making this request I waive my right to
-life.
-Lastly, the principle of respect for autonomy tells us to allow
-rational agents to live their own lives according to their own
-autonomous decisions, free from coercion or interference; but
-if rational agents should autonomously choose to die, then respect
-for autonomy will lead us to assist them to do as they
-choose.
-So, although there are reasons for thinking that killing a selfconscious
-being is normally worse than killing any other kind
-of being, in the special case of voluntary euthanasia most of
-these reasons count for euthanasia rather than against. Surprising
-as this result might at first seem, it really does no more
-than reflect the fact that what is special about self-conscious
-beings is that they can know that they exist over time and will,
-unless they die, continue to exist. Normally this continued existence
-is fervently desired; when the foreseeable continued ex-
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-Practical Ethics
-istence is dreaded rather than desired however, the desire to die
-may take the place of the normal desire to live, reversing the
-reasons against killing based on the desire to live. Thus the case
-for voluntary euthanasia is arguably much stronger than the
-case for non-voluntary euthanasia.
-Some opponents of the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia
-might concede that all this follows, if we have a genuinely free
-and rational decision to die: but, they add, we can never be
-sure that a request to be killed is the result of a free and rational
-decision. Will not the sick and elderly be pressured by their
-relatives to end their lives quickly? Will it not be possible to
-commit outright murder by pretending that a person has requested
-euthanasia? And even if there is no pressure of falsification,
-can anyone who is ill, suffering pain, and very probably
-in a drugged and confused state of mind, make a rational decision
-about whether to live or die?
-These questions raise technical difficulties for the legalisation
-of voluntary euthanasia, rather than objections to the underlying
-ethical principles; but they are serious difficulties nonetheless.
-The guidelines developed by the courts in the Netherlands
-have sought to meet them by proposing that euthanasia
-is acceptable only if
-• It is carried out by a physician.
-• The patient has explicitly requested euthanasia in a manner
-that leaves no doubt of the patient's desire to die.
-• The patient's decision is well-informed, free, and durable.
-• The patient has an irreversible condition causing protracted
-physical or mental suffering that the patients finds unbearable.
-• There is no reasonable alternative (reasonable from the patient's
-point of view) to alleviate the patient's suffering.
-• The doctor has consulted another independent professional
-who agrees with his or her judgment.
-Euthanasia in these circumstances is strongly supported by the
-Royal Dutch Medical Association, and by the general public in
-the Netherlands. The guidelines make murder in the guise of
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-euthanasia rather far-fetched, and there is no evidence of an
-increase in the murder rate in the Netherlands.
-It is often said, in debates about euthanasia, that doctors can
-be mistaken. In rare instances patients diagnosed by two competent
-doctors as suffering from an incurable condition have
-survived and enjoyed years of good health. Possibly the legalisation
-of voluntary euthanasia would, over the years, mean
-the deaths of a few people who would otherwise have recovered
-from their immediate illness and lived for some extra years. This
-is not, however, the knockdown argument against euthanasia
-that some imagine it to be. Against a very small number of
-unnecessary deaths that might occur if euthanasia is legalised
-we must place the very large amount of pain and distress that
-will be suffered if euthanasia is not legalised, by patients who
-really are terminally ill. Longer life is not such a supreme good
-that it outweighs all other considerations. (If it were, there
-would be many more effective ways of saving life - such as a
-ban on smoking, or a reduction of speed limits to 40 kilometres
-per hour - than prohibiting voluntary euthanasia.) The possibility
-that two doctors may make a mistake means that the
-person who opts for euthanasia is deciding on the balance of
-probabilities and giving up a very slight chance of survival in
-order to avoid suffering that will almost certainly end in death.
-This may be a perfectly rational choice. Probability is the guide
-of life, and of death, too. Against this, some will reply that
-improved care for the terminally ill has eliminated pain and
-made voluntary euthanasia unnecessary. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross,
-whose On Death and Dying is perhaps the best-known book on
-care for the dying, has claimed that none of her patients request
-euthanasia. Given personal attention and the right medication,
-she says, people come to accept their deaths and die peacefully
-without pain.
-Kubler-Ross may be right. It may be possible, now, to eliminate
-pain. In almost all cases, it may even be possible to do it
-in a way that leaves patients in possession of their rational
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-faculties and free from vomiting, nausea, or other distressing
-side-effects. Unfortunately only a minority of dying patients now
-receive this kind of care. Nor is physical pain the only problem.
-There can also be other distressing conditions, like bones so
-fragile they fracture at sudden movements, uncontrollable nausea
-and vomiting, slow starvation due to a cancerous growth,
-inability to control one's bowels or bladder, difficulty in breathing,
-and so on.
-Dr Timothy Quill, a doctor from Rochester, New York, has
-described how he prescribed barbiturate sleeping pills for 'Diane',
-a patient with a severe form of leukaemia, knowing that
-she wanted the tablets in order to be able to end her life. Dr
-Quill had known Diane for many years, and admired her courage
-in dealing with previous serious illnesses. In an article in
-the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr Quill wrote:
-It was extraordinarily important to Diane to maintain control of
-herself and her own dignity during the time remaining to her.
-When this was no longer possible, she clearly wanted to die. As
-a former director of a hospice program, I know how to use pain
-medicines to keep patients comfortable and lessen suffering. I
-explained the philosophy of comfort care, which I strongly believe
-in. Although Diane understood and appreciated this, she
-had known of people lingering in what was called relative comfort,
-and she wanted no part of it. When the time came, she
-wanted to take her life in the least painful way possible. Knowing
-of her desire for independence and her decision to stay in control,
-I thought this request made perfect sense .... In our discussion
-it became clear that preoccupation with her fear of a lingering
-death would interfere with Diane's getting the most out of the
-time she had left until she found a safe way to ensure her death.
-Not all dying patients who wish to die are fortunate enough
-to have a doctor like Timothy Quill. Betty Rollin has described,
-in her moving book Last Wish, how her mother developed ovarian
-cancer that spread to other parts of her body. One morning
-her mother said to her:
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-I've had a wonderful life, but now it's over, or it should be. I'm
-not afraid to die, but I am afraid of this illness, what it's doing
-to me .... There's never any relief from it now. Nothing but
-nausea and this pain .... There won't be any more chemotherapy.
-There's no treatment anymore. So what happens to me
-now? I know what happens. I'll die slowly .... I don't want
-that. ... Who does it benefit if I die slowly? If it benefits my
-children I'd be willing. But it's not going to do you any
-good .... There's no point in a slow death, none. I've never liked
-doing things with no point. I've got to end this.
-Betty Rollin found it very difficult to help her mother to carry
-out her desire: 'Physician after physician turned down our pleas
-for help (How many pills? What kind?).' After her book about
-her mother'S death was published, she received hundreds of
-letters, many from people, or close relatives of people, who had
-tried to die, failed, and suffered even more. Many of these people
-were denied help from doctors, because although suicide is legal
-in most jurisdictions, assisted suicide is not.
-Perhaps one day it will be possible to treat all terminally ill
-and incurable patients in such a way that no one requests euthanasia
-and the subject becomes a non-issue; but this is now
-just a utopian ideal, and no reason at all to deny euthanasia to
-those who must live and die in far less comfortable conditions.
-It is, in any case, highly paternalistic to tell dying patients that
-they are now so well looked after that they need not be offered
-the option of euthanasia. It would be more in keeping with
-respect for individual freedom and autonomy to legalise euthanasia
-and let patients decide whether their situation is
-bearable.
-Do these arguments for voluntary euthanasia perhaps give
-too much weight to individual freedom and autonomy? After
-all, we do not allow people free choices on matters like, for
-instance, the taking of heroin. This is a restriction of freedom
-but, in the view of many, one that can be justified on paternalistic
-grounds. If preventing people from becoming heroin
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-addicts is justifiable paternalism, why isn't preventing people
-from having themselves killed?
-The question is a reasonable one, because respect for individual
-freedom can be carried too far. John Stuart Mill thought
-that the state should never interfere with the individual except
-to prevent harm to others. The individual's own good, Mill
-thought, is not a proper reason for state intervention. But Mill
-may have had too high an opinion of the rationality of a human
-being. It may occasionally be right to prevent people from making
-choices that are obviously not rationally based and that we
-can be sure they will later regret. The prohibition of voluntary
-euthanasia cannot be justified on paternalistic grounds, however,
-for voluntary euthanasia is an act for which good reasons
-exist. Voluntary euthanasia occurs only when, to the best of
-medical knowledge, a person is suffering from an incurable and
-painful or extremely distressing condition. In these circumstances
-one cannot say that to choose to die quickly is obviously
-irrational. The strength of the case for voluntary euthanasia lies
-in this combination of respect for the preferences, or autonomy,
-of those who decide for euthanasia; and the clear rational basis
-of the decision itself.
-NOT JUSTIFYING INVOLUNTARY EUTHANASIA
-Involuntary euthanasia resembles voluntary euthanasia in that
-it involves the killing of those capable of consenting to their
-own death. It differs in that they do not consent. This difference
-is crucial, as the argument of the preceding section shows. All
-the four reasons against killing self-conscious beings apply when
-the person killed does not choose to die.
-Would it ever be possible to justify involuntary euthanasia
-on paternalistic grounds, to save someone extreme agony? It
-might be possible to imagine a case in which the agony was so
-great, and so certain, that the weight of utilitarian considerations
-favouring euthanasia override all four reasons against killing
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-self-conscious beings. Yet to make this decision one would have
-to be confident that one can judge when a person's life is so
-bad as to be not worth living, better than that person can judge
-herself. It is not clear that we are ever justified in having much
-confidence in our judgments about whether the life of another
-person is, to that person, worth living. That the other person
-wishes to go on living is good evidence that her life is worth
-living. What better evidence could there be?
-The only kind of case in which the paternalistic argument
-is at all plausible is one in which the person to be killed
-does not realise what agony she will suffer in future, and if
-she is not killed now she will have to live through to the
-very end. On these grounds one might kill a person who has
-- though she does not yet realise it - fallen into the hands
-of homicidal sadists who will torture her to death. These cases
-are, fortunately, more commonly encountered in fiction than
-reality.
-If in real life we are unlikely ever to encounter a case of
-justifiable involuntary euthanasia, then it may be best to dismiss
-from our minds the fanciful cases in which one might imagine
-defending it, and treat the rule against involuntary euthanasia
-as, for all practical purposes, absolute. Here Hare's distinction
-between critical and intuitive levels of moral reasoning (see
-Chapter 4), is again relevant. The case described in the preceding
-paragraph is one in which, if we were reasoning at the critical
-level, we might consider involuntary euthanasia justifiable; but
-at the intuitive level, the level of moral reasoning we apply in
-our daily lives, we can simply say that euthanasia is only justifiable
-if those killed either
-lack the ability to consent to death, because they lack the
-capacity to understand the choice between their own continued
-existence or non-existence; or
-2 have the capacity to choose between their own continued life
-or death and to make an informed, voluntary, and settled
-decision to die.
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-ACTIVE AND PASSIVE EUTHANASIA
-The conclusions we have reached in this chapter will shock a
-large number of readers, for they violate one of the most fundamental
-tenets of Western ethics - the wrongness of killing
-innocent human beings. I have already made one attempt to
-show that my conclusions are, at least in the area of disabled
-infants, a less radical departure from existing practice than one
-might suppose. I pointed out that many societies allow a pregnant
-woman to kill a fetus at a late stage of pregnancy if there
-is a significant risk of it being disabled; and since the line between
-a developed fetus and a newborn infant is not a crucial
-moral divide, it is difficult to see why it is worse to kill a newborn
-infant known to be disabled. In this section I shall argue that
-there is another area of accepted medical practice that is not
-intrinsically different from the practices that the arguments of
-this chapter would allow.
-I have already referred to the birth defect known as spina
-bifida, in which the infant is born with an opening in the back,
-exposing the spinal cord. Until 1957, most of these infants died
-young, but in that year doctors began using a new kind of valve,
-to drain off the excess fluid that otherwise accumulates in the
-head with this condition. In some hospitals it then became
-standard practice to make vigorous efforts to save every spina
-bifida infant. The result was that few such infants died - but of
-those who survived, many were severely disabled, with gross
-paralysis, multiple deformities.- of the legs and spine, and no
-control of bowel or bladder. Intellectual disabilities were also
-common. In short, the existence of these children caused great
-difficulty for their families and was often a misery for the children
-themselves.
-After studying the results of this policy of active treatment a
-British doctor, John Lorber, proposed that instead of treating
-all cases of spina bifida, only those who have the defect in a
-mild form should be selected for treatment. (He proposed that
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-Taking Life: Humans
-the final decision should be up to the parents, but parents nearly
-always accept the recommendations of the doctors.) This principle
-of selective treatment has now been widely accepted in
-many countries and in Britain has been recognised as legitimate
-by the Department of Health and Social Security. The result is
-that fewer spina bifida children survive beyond infancy, but
-those who do survive are, by and large, the ones whose physical
-and mental disabilities are relatively minor.
-The policy of selection, then, appears to be a desirable one:
-but what happens to those disabled infants not selected for
-treatment? Lorber does not disguise the fact that in these cases
-the hope is that the infant will die soon and without suffering.
-It is to achieve this objective that surgical operations and other
-forms of active treatment are not undertaken, although pain
-and discomfort are as far as possible relieved. If the infant happens
-to get an infection, the kind of infection that in a normal
-infant would be swiftly cleared up with antibiotics, no antibiotics
-are given. Since the survival of the infant is not desired, no steps
-are taken to prevent a condition, easily curable by ordinary
-medical techniques, proving fatal.
-All this is, as I have said, accepted medical practice. In articles
-in medical journals, doctors have described cases in which they
-have allowed infants to die. These cases are not limited to spina
-bifida, but include, for instance, babies born with Down's syndrome
-and other complications. In 1982, the 'Baby Doe' case
-brought this practice to the attention of the American public.
-'Baby Doe' was the legal pseudonym of a baby born in Bloomington,
-Indiana, with Down's syndrome and some additional
-problems. The most serious of these was that the passage from
-the mouth to the stomach - the oesophagus - was not properly
-formed. This meant that Baby Doe could not receive nourishment
-by mouth. The problem could have been repaired by surgery
-- but in this case the parents, after discussing the situation
-with their obstetrician, refused permission for surgery. Without
-surgery, Baby Doe would soon die. Baby Doe's father later said
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-that as a schoolteacher he had worked closely with Down's
-syndrome children, and that he and his wife had decided that
-it was in the best interests of Baby Doe, and of their family as
-a whole (they had two other children), to refuse consent for
-the operation. The hospital authorities, uncertain of their legal
-position, took the matter to court. Both the local county court
-and the Indiana State Supreme Court upheld the parents' right
-to refuse consent to surgery. The case attracted national media
-attention, and an attempt was made to take it to the U.S. Supreme
-Court, but before this could happen, Baby Doe died.
-One result ofthe Baby Doe case was that the U.S. government,
-headed at the time by President Ronald Reagan, who had come
-to power with the backing of the right-wing religious 'Moral
-Majority', issued a regulation directing that all infants are to be
-given necessary life-saving treatment, irrespective of disability.
-But the new regulations were strongly resisted by the American
-Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
-In court hearings on the regulations, even Dr C. Everett Koop,
-Reagan's surgeon-general and the driving force behind the attempt
-to ensure that all infants should be treated, had to admit
-that there were some cases in which he would not provide lifesustaining
-treatment. Dr Koop mentioned three conditions in
-which, he said, life-sustaining treatment was not appropriate:
-anencephalic infants (infants born without a brain); infants who
-had, usually as a result of extreme prematurity, suffered such
-severe bleeding in the brain that they would never be able to
-breathe without a respirator and would never be able even to
-recognise another person; and infants lacking a major part of
-their digestive tract, who could only be kept alive by means of
-a drip providing nourishment directly into the bloodstream.
-The regulations were eventually accepted only in a watereddown
-form, allowing some flexibility to doctors. Even so, a
-subsequent survey of American paediatricians specialising in the
-care of newborn infants showed that 76 percent thought that
-the regulations were not necessary, 66 percent considered the
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-regulations interfered with parents' right to determine what
-course of action was in the best interests of their children, and
-60 percent believed that the regulations did not allow adequate
-consideration of infants' suffering.
-In a series of British cases, the courts have accepted the view
-that the quality of a child's life is a relevant consideration in
-deciding whether life-sustaining treatment should be provided.
-In a case called In re B, concerning a baby like Baby Doe, with
-Down's syndrome and an intestinal obstruction, the court said
-that surgery should be carried out, because the infant's life
-would not be 'demonstrably awful'. In another case, Re C, where
-the baby had a poorly formed brain combined with severe physical
-handicaps, the court authorised the paediatric team to refrain
-from giving life-prolonging treatment. This was also the
-course taken in the case of Re Baby J: this infant was born
-extremely prematurely, and was blind and deaf and would probably
-never have been able to speak.
-Thus, though many would disagree with Baby Doe's parents
-about allowing a Down's syndrome infant to die (because people
-with Down's syndrome can live enjoyable lives and be warm
-and loving individuals), virtually everyone recognises that in
-more severe conditions, allowing an infant to die is the only
-humane and ethically acceptable course to take. The question
-is: if it is right to allow infants to die, why is it wrong to kill
-them?
-This question has not escaped the notice of the doctors involved.
-Frequently they answer it by a pious reference to the
-nineteenth-century poet, Arthur Clough, who wrote:
-Thou shalt not kill; but need'st not strive
-Officiously to keep alive.
-Unfortunately for those who appeal to Clough's immortal
-lines as an authoritative ethical pronouncement, they come
-from a biting satire - 'The Latest Decalogue' - the intent of
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-Practical Ethics
-which is to mock the attitudes described. The opening lines, for
-example, are:
-Thou shalt have one god only; who
-Would be at the expense of two.
-No graven images may be
-Worshipped except the currency.
-So Clough cannot be numbered on the side of those who
-think it wrong to kill, but right not to try too hard to keep alive.
-Is there, nonetheless, something to be said for this idea? The
-view that there is something to be said for it is often termed
-'the acts and omissions doctrine'. It holds that there is an important
-moral distinction between performing an act that has
-certain consequences - say, the death of a disabled child - and
-omitting to do something that has the same consequences. If
-this doctrine is correct, the doctor who gives the child a lethal
-injection does wrong; the doctor who omits to give the child
-antibiotics, knowing full well that without antibiotics the child
-will die, does not.
-What grounds are there for accepting the acts and omissions
-doctrine? Few champion the doctrine for its own sake, as an
-important ethical first principle. It is, rather, an implication of
-one view of ethics, of a view that holds that as long as we do
-not violate specified moral rules that place determinate moral
-obligations upon us, we do all that morality demands of us.
-These rules are of the kind made familiar by the Ten Commandments
-and similar moral codes: Do not kill, Do not lie,
-Do not steal, and so on. Characteristically they are formulated
-in the negative, so that to obey them it is necessary only to
-abstain from the actions they prohibit. Hence obedience can be
-demanded of every member of the community.
-An ethic consisting of specific duties, prescribed by moral rules
-that everyone can be expected to obey, must make a sharp moral
-distinction between acts and omissions. Take, for example, the
-rule: 'Do not kill.' If this rule is interpreted, as it has been in
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-the Western tradition, as prohibiting only the taking of innocent
-human life, it is not too difficult to avoid overt acts in violation
-of it. Few of us are murderers. It is not so easy to avoid letting
-innocent humans die. Many people die because of insufficient
-food, or poor medical facilities. If we could assist some of them,
-but do not do so, we are letting them die. Taking the rule against
-killing to apply to omissions would make living in accordance
-with it a mark of saintliness or moral heroism, rather than a
-minimum required of every morally decent person.
-An ethic that judges acts according to whether they do or do
-not violate specific moral rules must, therefore, place moral
-weight on the distinction between acts and omissions. An ethic
-that judges acts by their consequences will not do so, for the
-consequences of an act and an omission will often be, in all
-significant respects, indistinguishable. For instance, omitting to
-give antibiotics to a child with pneumonia may have consequences
-no less fatal than giving the child a lethal injection.
-Which approach is right? I have argued for a consequentialist
-approach to ethics. The acts/omissions issue poses the choice
-between these two basic approaches in an unusually clear and
-direct way. What we need to do is imagine two parallel situations
-differing only in that in one a person performs an act
-resulting in the death of another human being, while in the
-other she omits to do something, with the same result. Here is
-a description of a relatively common situation, taken from an
-essay by Sir Gustav Nossal, an eminent Australian medical
-researcher:
-An old lady of 83 has been admitted [to a nursing home for the
-aged) because her increasing degree of mental confusion has
-made it impossible for her to stay in her own home, and there
-is no one willing and able to look after h~r. Over three years,
-her condition deteriorates. She loses the ability to speak, requires
-to be fed, and becomes incontinent. Finally, she cannot sit in an
-armchair any longer, and is confined permanently to bed. One
-day, she contracts pneumonia.
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-In a patient who was enjoying a reasonable quality of life, pneumonia
-would be routinely treated with antibiotics. Should this
-patient be given antibiotics? Nossal continues:
-The relatives are contacted, and the matron of the nursing home
-tells them that she and the doctor she uses most frequently have
-worked out a loose arrangement for cases of this type. With
-advanced senile dementia, they treat the first three infections
-with antibiotics, and after that, mindful of the adage that 'pneumonia
-is the old person's friend', they let nature take its course.
-The matron emphasises that if the relatives desire, all infections
-can be vigorously treated. The relatives agree with the rule of
-thumb. The patient dies of a urinary tract infection six months
-later.
-This patient died when she did as a result of a deliberate omission.
-Many people would think that this omission was welljustified.
-They might question whether it would not have been
-better to omit treatment even for the initial occurrence of pneumonia.
-There is, after all, no moral magic about the number
-three. Would it also have been justifiable, at the time of the
-omission, to give an injection that would bring about the patient's
-death in a peaceful way?
-Comparing these two possible ways of bringing about a patient's
-death at a particular time, is it reasonable to hold that
-the doctor who gives the injection is a murderer who deserves
-to go to jail, while the doctor who decides not to administer
-antibiotics is practising good and compassionate medicine? That
-may be what courts of law would say, but surely it is an untenable
-distinction. In both cases, the outcome is the death of
-the patient. In both cases, the doctor knows that this will be
-the result, and decides what she will do on the basis of this
-knowledge, because she judges this result to be better than the
-alternative. In both cases the doctor must take responsibility for
-her decision - it would not be correct for the doctor who decided
-not to provide antibiotics to say that she was not responsible
-for the patient's death because she did nothing. Doing nothing
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-in this situation is itself a deliberate choice and one cannot
-escape responsibility for its consequences.
-One might say, of course, that the doctor who withholds
-antibiotics does not kill the patient, she merely allows the patient
-to die; but one must then answer the further question why
-killing is wrong, and letting die is not. The answer that most
-advocates of the distinction give is simply that there is a moral
-rule against killing innocent human beings and none against
-allowing them to die. This answer treats a conventionally accepted
-moral rule as if it were beyond questioning; it does not
-go on to ask whether we should have a moral rule against killing
-(but not against allowing to die). But we have already seen that
-the conventionally accepted principle of the sanctity of human
-life is untenable. The moral rules that prohibit killing, but accept
-'letting die' cannot be taken for granted either.
-Reflecting on these cases leads us to the conclusion that there
-is no intrinsic moral difference between killing and allowing to
-die. That is, there is no difference which depends solely on the
-distinction between an act and an omission. (This does not mean
-that all cases of allowing to die are morally equivalent to killing.
-Other factors - extrinsic factors - will sometimes be relevant.
-This will be discussed further in Chapter 8.) Allowing to die -
-sometimes called 'passive euthanasia' - is already accepted as
-a humane and proper course of action in certain cases. If there
-is no intrinsic moral difference between killing and allowing to
-die, active euthanasia should also be accepted as humane and
-proper in certain circumstances.
-Others have suggested that the difference between withholding
-treatment necessary to prolong life, and giving a lethal injection,
-lies in the intention with which the two are done. Those
-who take this view resort to the 'doctrine of double effect', a
-doctrine widely held among Roman Catholic moral theologians
-and moral philosophers, to argue that one action (for example,
-refraining from life-sustaining treatment) may have two effects
-(in this case, not causing additional suffering to the patient, and
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-shortening the patient's life). They then argue that as long as
-the directly intended effect is the beneficial one that does not
-violate an absolute moral rule, the action is permissible. Though
-we foresee that our action (or omission) will result in the death
-of the patient, this is merely an unwanted side-effect. But the
-distinction between directly intended effect and side-effect is a
-contrived one. We cannot avoid responsibility simply by directing
-our intention to one effect rather than another. If we
-foresee both effects, we must take responsibility for the foreseen
-effects of what we do. We often want to do something, but
-cannot do it because of its other, unwanted consequences. For
-example, a chemical company might want to get rid of toxic
-waste in the most economical manner, by dumping it in the
-nearest river. Would we allow the executives of the company
-to say that all they directly intended was to improve the efficiency
-of the factory, thus promoting employment and keeping
-down the cost of living? Would we regard the pollution as
-excusable because it is merely an unwanted side-effect of furthering
-these worthy objectives?
-Obviously the defenders of the doctrine of double effect would
-not accept such an excuse. In rejecting it, however, they would
-have to rely upon a judgment that the cost - the polluted river
-- is disproportionate to the gains. Here a consequentialist judgment
-lurks behind the doctrine of double effect. The same is
-true when the doctrine is used in medical care. Normally, saving
-life takes precedence over relieving pain. If in the case of a
-particular patient it does not, this can only be because we have
-judged that the patient's prospects for a future life of acceptable
-quality are so poor that in this case relieving suffering can take
-precedence. This is, in other words, not a decision based on
-acceptance of the sanctity of human life, but a decision based
-on a disguised quality of life judgment.
-Equally unsatisfactory is the common appeal to a distinction
-between 'ordinary' and 'extraordinary' means of treatment,
-coupled with the belief that it is not obligatory to provide ex-
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-traordinary means. Together with my colleague, Helga Kuhse,
-I carried out a survey of paediatricians and obstetricians in Australia
-and found that they had remarkable ideas about what
-constituted 'ordinary' and what 'extraordinary' means. Some
-even thought that the use of antibiotics - the cheapest, simplest,
-and most common medical procedure - could be extraordinary.
-The reason for this range of views is easy to find. When one
-looks at the justifications given by moral theologians and philosophers
-for the distinction, it turns out that what is 'ordinary'
-in one situation can become 'extraordinary' in another. For
-example, in the famous case of Karen Ann Quinlan, the young
-New Jersey woman who was in a coma for ten years before
-she died, a Roman Catholic bishop testified that the use of a
-respirator was 'extraordinary' and hence optional because Quinlan
-had no hope of recovery from the coma. Obviously, if doctors
-had thought that Quinlan was likely to recover, the use of the
-respirator would not have been optional, and would have been
-declared 'ordinary'. Again, it is the quality of life of the patient
-(and where resources are limited and could be used more effectively
-to save lives elsewhere, the cost of the treatment) that
-is determining whether a given form of treatment is ordinary
-or extraordinary, and therefore is to be provided or not. Those
-who appeal to this distinction are cloaking their consequentialist
-views in the robe of an absolutist ethic; but the robe is worn
-out, and the disguise is now transparent.
-So it is not possible to appeal to either the doctrine of double
-effect or the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary
-means in order to show that allowing a patient to die is morally
-different from actively helping a patient to die. Indeed, because
-of extrinsic differences - especially differences in the time it
-takes for death to occur - active euthanasia may be the only
-humane and morally proper course. Passive euthanasia can be
-a slow process. In an article in the British Medical Journal, John
-Lorber has charted the fate of twenty-five infants born with
-spina bifida on whom it had been decided, in view of the poor
-211
-Practical Ethics
-prospects for a worthwhile life, not to operate. It will be recalled
-that Lorber freely grants that the object of not treating infants
-is that they should die soon and painlessly. Yet of the twentyfive
-untreated infants, fourteen were still alive after one month,
-and seven after three months. In Lorber's sample, all the infants
-died within nine months, but this cannot be guaranteed, or at
-least, cannot be guaranteed without stepping over the fine line
-between active and passive euthanasia. (Lorber's opponents
-have claimed that the untreated infants under his care all die
-because they are given sedatives and fed only on demand. Sleepy
-babies do not have healthy appetites.) An Australian clinic following
-Lorber's approach to spina bifida found that of seventynine
-untreated infants, five survived for more than two years.
-For both the infants, and their families, this must be a longdrawn
-out ordeal. It is also (although in a society with a reasonable
-level of affluence this should not be the primary consideration)
-a considerable burden on the hospital staff and the
-community's medical resources.
-Consider, to take another example, infants born with Down's
-syndrome and a blockage in the digestive system which, if not
-removed, will make it impossible for the baby to eat. Like 'Baby
-Doe', these infants may be allowed to die. Yet the blockage can
-be removed and has nothing to do with the degree of intellectual
-disability the child will have. Moreover, the death resulting from
-the failure to operate in these circumstances is, though sure,
-neither swift nor painless. The infant dies from dehydration or
-hunger. Baby Doe took about five days to die, and in other
-recorded instances of this practice, it has taken up to two weeks
-for death to come.
-It is interesting, in this context, to think again of our earlier
-argument that membership of the species Homo sapiens does
-not entitle a being to better treatment than a being at a similar
-mental level who is a member of a different species. We could
-also have said - except that it seemed too obvious to need saying
-- that membership of the species Homo sapiens is not a reason
-212
-I,
-I
-I
-Taking Life: Humans
-for giving a being worse treatment than a member of a different
-species. Yet in respect of euthanasia, this needs to be said. We
-do not doubt that it is right to shoot badly injured or sick animals
-if they are in pain and their chances of recovery are negligible.
-To 'allow nature to take its course', withholding treatment but
-refusing to kill, would obviously be wrong. It is only our misplaced
-respect for the doctrine of the sanctity of human life that
-prevents us from seeing that what it is obviously wrong to do
-to a horse, it is equally wrong to do to a disabled infant.
-To summarise: passive ways of ending life result in a drawnout
-death. They introduce irrelevant factors (a blockage in the
-intestine, or an easily curable infection) into the selection of
-those who shall die. If we are able to admit that our objective
-is a swift and painless death we should not leave it up to chance
-to determine whether this objective is achieved. Having chosen
-death we should ensure that it comes in the best possible way.
-THE SLIPPERY SLOPE: FROM EUTHANASIA
-TO GENO~IDE?
-Before we leave this topic we must consider an objection that
-looms so large in the anti-euthanasia literature that it merits a
-section to itself. It is, for instance, the reason why John Lorber
-rejects active euthanasia. Lorber has written:
-I wholly disagree with euthanasia. Though it is fully logical, and
-in expert and conscientious hands it could be the most humane
-way of dealing with such a situation, legalizing euthanasia would
-be a most dangerous weapon in the hands of the State or ignorant
-or unscrupulous individuals. One does not have to go far back
-in history to know what crimes can be committed if euthanasia
-were legalized.
-Would euthanasia be the first step down a slippery slope? In
-the absence of prominent moral footholds to check our descent,
-would we slide all the way down into the abyss of state terror
-and mass murder? The experience of Nazism, to which Lorber
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-Practical Ethics
-no doubt is referring, has often been used as an illustration of
-what could follow acceptance of euthanasia. Here is a more
-specific example, from an article by another doctor, Leo
-Alexander:
-Whatever proportions [Nazi) crimes finally assumed, it became
-evident to all who investigated them that they had started from
-small beginnings. The beginnings at first were merely a subtle
-shift in emphasis in the basic attitude of the physicians. It started
-with the acceptance of the attitude, basic in the euthanasia movement,
-that there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived.
-This attitude in its early stages concerned itself merely with the
-severely and chronically sick. Gradually the sphere of those to
-be included in the category was enlarged to encompass the socially
-unproductive, the ideologically unwanted, the racially unwanted
-and finally all non-Germans. But it is important to realize
-that the infinitely small wedged-in lever from which this entire
-trend of mind received its impetus was the attitude toward the
-nonrehabilitable sick.
-Alexander singles out the Nazis' so-called euthanasia program
-as the root of all the horrendous crimes the Nazis later committed,
-because that program implied 'that there is such a thing
-as life not worthy to be lived'. Lorber could hardly agree with
-Alexander on this, since his recommended procedure of not
-treating selected infants is based on exactly this judgment. Although
-people sometimes talk as if we should never judge a
-human life to be not worth living, there are times when such
-a judgment is obviously correct. A life of physical suffering,
-unredeemed by any form of pleasure or by a minimal level of
-self-consciousness, is not worth living. Surveys undertaken by
-health care economists in which people are asked how much
-they value being alive in certain states of health, regularly find
-that people give some states a negative value - that is, they
-indicate that they would prefer to be dead than to survive in
-that condition. Apparently, the life of the elderly woman described
-by Sir Gustav Nossal was, in the opinion of the matron
-of the nursing home, the doctor, and the relatives, not worth
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-Taking Life: Humans
-living. If we can set criteria for deciding who is to be allowed
-to die and who is to be given treatment, then why should it be
-wrong to set criteria, perhaps the same criteria, for deciding
-who should be killed?
-So it is not the attitude that some lives are not worth living
-that marks out the Nazis from normal people who do not commit
-mass murder. What then is it? Is it that they went beyond
-passive euthanasia, and practised active euthanasia? Many,
-like Lorber, worry about the power that a program of active
-euthanasia could place in the hands of an unscrupulous government.
-This worry is not negligible, but should not be
-exaggerated. Unscrupulous governments already have within
-their power more plausible means of getting rid of their opponents
-than euthanasia administered by doctors on medical
-grounds. 'Suicides' can be arranged. 'Accidents' can occur. If
-necessary, assassins can be hired. Our best defence against such
-possibilities is to do everything possible to keep our government
-democratic, open, and in the hands of people who would not
-seriously wish to kill their opponents. Once the wish is serious
-enough, governments will find a way, whether euthanasia is
-legal or not.
-In fact the Nazis did not have a euthanasia program, in the
-proper sense of the word. Their so-called euthanasia program
-was not motivated by concern for the suffering of those killed.
-If it had been, why would the Nazis have kept their operations
-secret, deceived relatives about the cause of death ofthose killed,
-and exempted from the program certain privileged classes, such
-as veterans of the armed services, or relatives of the euthanasia
-staff? Nazi 'euthanasia' was never voluntary, and often was
-involuntary rather than non-voluntary. 'Doing away with useless
-mouths' - a phrase used by those in charge - gives a better
-idea ofthe objectives of the program than 'mercy-killing'. Both
-racial origin and ability to work were among the factors considered
-in the selection of patients to be killed. It was the Nazi
-belief in the importance of maintaining a pure Aryan Yolk - a
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-Practical Ethics
-somewhat mystical entity that was thought of as more important
-than mere individuals lives - that made both the so-called euthanasia
-program and later the entire holocaust possible. Proposals
-for the legalisation of euthanasia, in contrast, are based
-on respect for autonomy and the goal of avoiding pointless
-suffering.
-This essential difference in the aims of Nazi 'euthanasia' and
-modem proposals may be granted, but the slippery slope argument
-could still be defended as a way of suggesting that the
-present strict rule against the direct killing of innocent human
-beings serves a useful purpose. However arbitrary and unjustifiable
-the distinctions between human and non-human, fetus
-and infant, killing and allowing to die may be, the rule against
-direct killing of innocent humans at least marks a workable line.
-The distinction between an infant whose life may be worth
-living, and one whose life definitely is not, is much more difficult
-to draw. Perhaps people who see that certain kinds of human
-beings are killed in certain circumstances may go on to conclude
-that it is not wrong to kill others not very different from the
-first kind. So will the boundary of acceptable killing be pushed
-gradually back? In the absence of any logical stopping place,
-will the outcome be the loss of all respect for human life?
-If our laws were altered so that anyone could carry out an
-act of euthanasia, the absence of a clear line between those who
-might justifiably be killed and those who might not would pose
-a real danger; but that is not what advocates of euthanasia
-propose. If acts of euthanasia could only be carried out by a
-member of the medical profession, with the concurrence of a
-second doctor, it is not likely that the propensity to kill would
-spread unchecked throughout the community. Doctors already
-have a good deal of power over life and death, through their
-ability to withhold treatment. There has been no suggestion that
-doctors who begin by allowing severely disabled infants to die
-from pneumonia will move on to withhold antibiotics from
-racial minorities or political extremists. In fact legalising eu-
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-Taking Life: Humans
-thanasia might well act as a check on the power of doctors since
-it would bring into the open and under the scrutiny of another
-doctor what some doctors now do on their own initiative and
-in secret.
-There is, anyway, little historical evidence to suggest that a
-permissive attitude towards the killing of one category of human
-beings leads to a breakdown of restrictions against killing other
-humans. Ancient Greeks regularly killed or exposed infants, but
-appear to have been at least as scrupulous about taking the lives
-of their fellow-citizens as medieval Christians or modem Americans.
-In traditional Eskimo societies it was the custom for a
-man to kill his elderly parents, but the murder of a normal
-healthy adult was almost unheard of. I mention these practices
-not to suggest that they should be imitated, but only to indicate
-that lines can be drawn at places different from where we now
-draw them. If these societies could separate human beings into
-different categories without transferring their attitudes from one
-group to another, we with our more sophisticated legal systems
-and greater medical knowledge should be able to do the same.
-All of this is not to deny that departing from the traditional
-sanctity-of-life ethic carries with it a very small but nevertheless
-finite risk of unwanted consequences. Against this risk we must
-balance the tangible harm to which the traditional ethic gives
-rise - harm to those whose misery is needlessly prolonged. We
-must also ask if the widespread acceptance of abortion and
-passive euthanasia has not already revealed flaws in the traditional
-ethic that make it a weak defence against those who
-lack respect for individual lives. A sounder, if less clear-cut,
-ethic may in the long run provide a firmer ground for resisting
-unjustifiable killing.
-217
-8
-RICH AND POOR
-SOME FACTS ABOUT POVERTY
-I N the discussion of euthanasia in Chapter 7, we questioned
-the distinction between killing and allowing to die, concluding
-that it is of no intrinsic ethical significance. This conclusion
-has implications that go far beyond euthanasia.
-Consider these facts: by the most cautious estimates, 400
-million people lack the calories, protein, vitamins and minerals
-needed to sustain their bodies and minds in a healthy state.
-Millions are constantly hungry; others suffer from deficiency
-diseases and from infections they would be able to resist on a
-better diet. Children are the worst affected. According to one
-study, 14 million children under five die every year from the
-combined effects of malnutrition and infection. In some districts
-half the children born can be expected to die before their fifth
-birthday.
-Nor is lack of food the only hardship of the poor. To give a
-broader picture, Robert McNamara, when president of the
-World Bank, suggested the term 'absolute poverty'. The poverty
-we are familiar with in industrialised nations is relative poverty
-- meaning that some citizens are poor, relative to the wealth
-enjoyed by their neighbours. People living in relative poverty
-in Australia might be quite comfortably off by comparison with
-pensioners in Britain, and British pensioners are not poor in
-comparison with the poverty that exists in Mali or Ethiopia.
-Absolute poverty, on the other hand, is poverty by any standard.
-In McNamara's words:
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-I
-I ,
-Rich and Poor
-Poverty at the absolute level ... is life at the very margin of existence.
-The absolute poor are severely deprived human beings
-struggling to survive in a set of squalid and degraded circumstances
-almost beyond the power of our sophisticated imaginations
-and privileged circumstances to conceive.
-Compared to those fortunate enough to live in developed countries,
-individuals in the poorest nations have:
-An infant mortality rate eight times higher
-A life expectancy one-third lower
-An adult literacy rate 60 per cent less
-A nutritional level, for one out of every two in the population,
-below acceptable standards;
-And for millions of infants, less protein than is sufficient to permit
-optimum development of the brain.
-McNamara has summed up absolute poverty as 'a condition of
-life so characterised by malnutrition, illiteracy, disease, squalid
-surroundings, high infant mortality and low life expectancy as
-to be beneath any reasonable definition of human decency'.
-Absolute poverty is, as McNamara has said, responsible for
-the loss of countless lives, especially among infants and young
-children. When absolute poverty does not cause death, it still
-causes misery of a kind not often seen in the affluent nations.
-Malnutrition in young children stunts both physical and mental
-development. According to the United Nations Development
-Programme, 180 million children under the age of five suffer
-from serious malnutrition. Millions of people on poor diets suffer
-from deficiency diseases, like goitre, or blindness caused by
-a lack of vitamin A. The food value of what the poor eat is
-further reduced by parasites such as hookworm and ringworm,
-which are endemic in conditions of poor sanitation and health
-education.
-Death and disease apart, absolute poverty remains a miserable
-condition of life, with inadequate food, shelter, clothing, sanitation,
-health services and education. The Worldwatch Institute
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-Practical Ethics
-estimates that as many as 1.2 billion people - or 23 per cent of
-the world's population - live in absolute poverty. For the purposes
-of this estimate, absolute poverty is defined as "the lack
-of sufficient income in cash or kind to meet the most basic
-biological needs for food, clothing, and shelter." Absolute poverty
-is probably the principal cause of human misery today.
-SOME FACTS ABOUT WEALTH
-This is the background situation, the situation that prevails
-on our planet all the time. It does not make headlines. People
-died from malnutrition and related diseases yesterday, and
-more will die tomorrow. The occasional droughts, cyclones,
-earthquakes, and floods that take the lives of tens of thousands
-in one place and at one time are more newsworthy. They add
-greatly to the total amount of human suffering; but it is wrong
-to assume that when there are no major calamities reported,
-all is well.
-The problem is not that the world cannot produce enough to
-feed and shelter its people. People in the poor countries consume,
-on average, 180 kilos of grain a year, while North Americans
-average around 900 kilos. The difference is caused by the
-fact that in the rich countries we feed most of our grain to
-animals, converting it into meat, milk, and eggs. Because this
-is a highly inefficient process, people in rich countries are responsible
-for the consumption of far more food than those in
-poor countries who eat few animal products. If we stopped
-feeding animals on grains and soybeans, the amount of food
-saved would - if distributed to those who need it - be more
-than enough to end hunger throughout the world.
-These facts about animal food do not mean that we can easily
-solve the world food problem by cutting down on animal products,
-but they show that the problem is essentially one of distribution
-rather than production. The world does produce
-enough food. Moreover, the poorer nations themselves could
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-Rich and Poor
-produce far more if they made more use of improved agricultural
-techniques.
-So why are people hungry? Poor people cannot afford to buy
-grain grown by farmers in the richer nations. Poor farmers cannot
-afford to buy improved seeds, or fertilisers, or the machinery
-needed for drilling wells and pumping water. Only by transferring
-some of the wealth of the rich nations to the poor can
-the situation be changed.
-That this wealth exists is clear. Against the picture of absolute
-poverty that McNamara has painted, one might pose a picture
-of 'absolute affluence'. Those who are absolutely affluent are
-not necessarily affluent by comparison with their neighbours,
-but they are affluent by any reasonable definition of human
-needs. This means that they have more income than they need
-to provide themselves adequately with all the basic necessities
-of life. After buying (either directly or through their taxes) food,
-shelter, clothing, basic health services, and education, the absolutely
-affluent are still able to spend money on luxuries. The
-absolutely affluent choose their food for the pleasures of the
-palate, not to stop hunger; they buy new clothes to look good,
-not to keep warm; they move house to be in a better neighbourhood
-or have a playroom for the children, not to keep out
-the rain; and after all this there is still money to spend on stereo
-systems, video-cameras, and overseas holidays.
-At this stage I am making no ethical judgments about absolute
-affluence, merely pointing out that it exists. Its defining characteristic
-is a significant amount of income above the level necessary
-to provide for the basic human needs of oneself and one's
-dependents. By this standard, the majority of citizens of Western
-Europe, North America, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the
-oil-rich Middle Eastern states are all absolutely affluent. To
-quote McNamara once more:
-'The average citizen of a developed country enjoys wealth beyond
-the wildest dreams of the one billion people in countries with
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-Practical Ethics
-per capita incomes under $200: These, therefore, are the countries
-- and individuals - who have wealth that they could, without
-threatening their own basic welfare, transfer to the absolutely
-poor.
-At present, very little is being transferred. Only Sweden, the
-Netherlands, Norway, and some of the oil-exporting Arab states
-have reached the modest target, set by the United Nations, of
-0.7 per cent of gross national product (GNP). Britain gives 0.31
-per cent of its GNP in official development assistance and a
-small additional amount in unofficial aid from voluntary organisations.
-The total comes to about £2 per month per person,
-and compares with 5.5 per cent of GNP spent on alcohol. and
-3 per cent on tobacco. Other, even wealthier nations, give little
-more: Germany gives 0.41 per cent and Japan 0.32 per cent.
-The United States gives a mere 0.15 per cent of its GNP.
-THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF MURDER?
-If these are the facts, we cannot avoid concluding that by not
-giving more than we do, people in rich countries are allowing
-those in poor countries to suffer from absolute poverty, with
-consequent malnutrition, ill health, and death. This is not a
-conclusion that applies only to governments. It applies to each
-absolutely affluent individual. for each of us has the opportunity
-to do something about the situation; for instance, to give our
-time or money to voluntary organisations like Oxfam, Care,
-War on Want, Freedom from Hunger, Community Aid Abroad,
-and so on. If, then, allowing someone to die is not intrinsically
-different from killing someone, it would seem that we are all
-murderers.
-Is this verdict too harsh? Many will reject it as self-evidently
-absurd. They would sooner take it as showing that allowing to
-die cannot be equivalent to killing than as showing that living
-in an affluent style without contributing to an overseas aid
-agency is ethically equivalent to going over to Ethiopia and
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-I,
-Rich and Poor
-shooting a few peasants. And no doubt. put as bluntly as that.
-the verdict is too harsh.
-There are several significant differences between spending
-money on luxuries instead of using it to save lives, and deliberately
-shooting people.
-First, the motivation will normally be different. Those who
-deliberately shoot others go out of their way to kill; they presumably
-want their victims dead, from malice, sadism, or some
-equally unpleasant motive. A person who buys a new stereo
-system presumably wants to enhance her enjoyment of music
-- not in itself a terrible thing. At worst, spending money on
-luxuries instead of giving it away indicates selfishness and.indifference
-to the sufferings of others, characteristics that may
-be undesirable but are not comparable with actual malice or
-similar motives.
-Second, it is not difficult for most of us to act in accordance
-with a rule against killing people: it is, on the other hand, very
-difficult to obey a rule that commands us to save all the lives
-we can. To live a comfortable, or even luxurious life it is not
-necessary to kill anyone; but it is necessary to allow some to
-die whom we might have saved, for the money that we need
-to live comfortably could have been given away. Thus the duty
-to avoid killing is much easier to discharge completely than the
-duty to save. Saving every life we could would mean cutting
-our standard of living down to the bare essentials needed to
-keep us alive. l To discharge this duty completely would require
-a degree of moral heroism utterly different from that required
-by mere avoidance of killing.
-Strictly, we would need to cut down to the minimum level compatible with
-earning the income which, after providing for our needs, left us most to give
-away. Thus if my present position earns me, say, $40,000 a year, but requires
-me to spend $5,000 a year on dressing respectably and maintaining a car, I
-cannot save more people by giving away the car and clothes if that will mean
-taking a job that, although it does not involve me in these expenses, earns
-me only $20,000.
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-Practical Ethics
-A third difference is the greater certainty of the outcome of
-shooting when compared with not giving aid. If I point a loaded
-gun at someone at close range and pull the trigger, it is virtually
-certain that the person will be killed; whereas the money that
-I could give might be spent on a project that turns out to be
-unsuccessful and helps no one.
-Fourth, when people are shot there are identifiable individuals
-who have been harmed. We can point to them and to their
-grieving families. When I buy my stereo system, I cannot know
-who my money would have saved if I had given it away. In a
-time of famine I may see dead bodies and grieving families on
-television reports, and I might not doubt that my money would
-have saved some of them; even then it is impossible to point
-to a body and say that had I not bought the stereo, that person
-would have survived.
-Fifth, it might be said that the plight of the hungry is not my
-doing, and so I cannot be held responsible for it. The starving
-would have been starving if I had never existed. If I kill, however,
-I am responsible for my victims' deaths, for those people
-would not have died if I had not killed them.
-These differences need not shake our previous conclusion that
-there is no intrinsic difference between killing and allowing to
-die. They are extrinsic differences, that is, differences normally
-but not necessarily associated with the distinction between killing
-and allowing to die. We can imagine cases in which someone
-allows another to die for malicious or sadistic reasons; we can
-imagine a world in which there are so few people needing
-assistance, and they are so easy to assist, that our duty not to
-allow people to die is as easily discharged as our duty not to
-kill; we can imagine situations in which the outcome of not
-helping is as sure as shooting; we can imagine cases in which
-we can identify the person we allow to die. We can even imagine
-a case of allowing to die in which, if I had not existed, the
-person would not have died - for instance, a case in which if
-I had not been in a position to help (though I don't help)
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-Rich and Poor
-someone else would have been in my position and would have
-helped.
-Our previous discussion of euthanasia illustrates the extrinsic
-nature of these differences, for they do not provide a basis for
-distinguishing active from passive euthanasia. If a doctor decides,
-in consultation with the parents, not to operate on - and
-thus to allow to die - a Down's syndrome infant with an intestinal
-blockage, her motivation will be similar to that of a
-doctor who gives a lethal injection rather than allow the infant
-to die. No extraordinary sacrifice or moral heroism will be required
-in either case. Not operating will just as certainly end in
-death as administering the injection. Allowing to die does have
-an identifiable victim. Finally, it may well be that the doctor is
-personally responsible for the death of the infant she decides
-not to operate upon, since she may know that if she had not
-taken this case, other doctors in the hospital would have
-operated.
-Nevertheless, euthanasia is a special case, and very different
-from allowing people to starve to death. (The major difference
-being that when euthanasia is justifiable, death is a good thing.)
-The extrinsic differences that normally mark off killing and allowing
-to die do explain why we normally regard killing as much
-worse than allowing to die.
-To explain our conventional ethical attitudes is not to justify
-them. Do the five differences not only explain, but also justify,
-our attitudes? Let us consider them one by one:
-1. Take the lack of an identifiable victim first. Suppose that
-I am a travelling salesperson, selling tinned food, and I learn
-that a batch of tins contains a contaminant, the known effect
-of which, when consumed, is to double the risk that the consumer
-will die from stomach cancer. Suppose I continue to sell
-the tins. My decision may have no identifiable victims. Some
-of those who eat the food will die from cancer. The proportion
-of consumers dying in this way will be twice that of the community
-at large, but who among the consumers died because
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-Practical Ethics
-they ate what I sold, and who would have contracted the disease
-anyway? It is impossible to tell; but surely this impossibility
-makes my decision no less reprehensible than it would have
-been had the contaminant had more readily detectable, though
-equally fatal, effects.
-2. The lack of certainty that by giving money I could save a
-life does reduce the wrongness of not giving, by comparison
-with deliberate killing; but it is insufficient to show that not
-giving is acceptable conduct. The motorist who speeds through
-pedestrian crossings, heedless of anyone who might be on them,
-is not a murderer. She may never actually hit a pedestrian; yet
-what she does is very wrong indeed.
-3. The notion of responsibility for acts rather than omissions
-is more puzzling. On the one hand, we feel ourselves to be
-under a greater obligation to help those whose misfortunes we
-have caused. (It is for this reason that advocates of overseas aid
-often argue that Western nations have created the poverty of
-third world nations, through forms of economic exploitation
-that go back to the colonial system.) On the other hand, any
-consequentialist would insist that we are responsible for all the
-consequences of our actions, and if a consequence of my spending
-money on a luxury item is that someone dies, I am responsible
-for that death. It is true that the person would have
-died even if I had never existed, but what is the relevance of
-that? The fact is that I do exist, and the consequentialist will
-say that our responsibilities derive from the world as it is, not
-as it might have been.
-One way of making sense of the non-consequentialist view
-of responsibility is by basing it on a theory of rights of the kind
-proposed by John Locke or, more recently, Robert Nozick. If
-everyone l:J.as a right to life, and this right is a right against others
-who might threaten my life, but not a right to assistance from
-others when my life is in danger, then we can understand the
-feeling that we are responsible for acting to kill but not for
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-Rich and Poor
-omitting to save. The former violates the rights of others, the
-latter does not.
-Should we accept such a theory of rights? If we build up our
-theory of rights by imagining, as Locke and Nozick do, individuals
-living independently from each other in a 'state of nature',
-it may seem natural to adopt a conception of rights in which
-as long as each leaves the other alone, no rights are violated. I
-might, on this view, quite properly have maintained my independent
-existence if I had wished to do so. So if I do not make
-you any worse off than you would have been if I had had
-nothing at all to do with you, how can I have violated your
-rights? But why start from such an unhistorical, abstract and
-ultimately inexplicable idea as an independent individual? Our
-ancestors were - like other primates - social beings long before
-they were human beings, and could not have developed the
-abilities and capacities of human beings if they had not been
-social beings first. In any case, we are not, now, isolated individuals.
-So why should we assume that rights must be restricted
-to rights against interference? We might, instead, adopt the view
-that taking rights to life seriously is incompatible with standing
-by and watching people die when one could easily save them.
-4. What of the difference in motivation? That a person does
-not positively wish for the death of another lessens the severity
-of the blame she deserves; but not by as much as our present
-attitudes to giving aid suggest. The behaviour of the speeding
-motorist is again comparable, for such motorists usually have
-no desire at all to kill anyone. They merely enjoy speeding and
-are indifferent to the consequences. Despite their lack of malice,
-those who kill with cars deserve not only blame but also severe
-punishment.
-5. Finally, the fact that to avoid killing people is normally not
-difficult, whereas to save all one possibly could save is heroic,
-must make an important difference to our attitude to failure to
-do what the respective principles demand. Not to kill is a min-
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-Practical Ethics
-imum standard of acceptable conduct we can require of everyone;
-to save all one possibly could is not something that can
-realistically be required, especially not in societies accustomed
-to giving as little as ours do. Given the generally accepted standards,
-people who give, say, $1,000 a year to an overseas aid
-organisation are more aptly praised for above average generosity
-than blamed for giving less than they might. The appropriateness
-of praise and blame is, however, a separate issue from the rightness
-or wrongness of actions. The former evaluates the agent:
-the latter evaluates the action. Perhaps many people who give
-$1,000 really ought to give at least $5,000, but to blame them
-for not giving more could be counterproductive. It might make
-them feel that what is required is too demanding, and if one is
-going to be blamed anyway, one might as well not give anything
-at all.
-(That an ethic that put saving all one possibly can on the
-same footing as not killing would be an ethic for saints or heroes
-should not lead us to assume that the alternative must be an
-ethic that makes it obligatory not to kill, but puts us under no
-obligation to save anyone. There are positions in between these
-extremes, as we shall soon see.)
-Here is a summary of the five differences that normally exist
-between killing and allowing to die, in the context of absolute
-poverty and overseas aid. The lack of an identifiable victim is
-of no moral significance, though it may play an important role
-in explaining our attitudes. The idea that we are directly responsible
-for those we kill, but not for those we do not help,
-depends on a questionable notion of responsibility and may
-need to be based on a controversial theory of rights. Differences
-in certainty and motivation are ethically significant, and show
-that not aiding the poor is not to be condemned as murdering
-them; it could, however, be on a par with killing someone as
-a result of reckless driving, which is serious enough. Finally the
-difficulty of completely discharging the duty of saving all one
-possibly can makes it inappropriate to blame those who fall
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-Rich and Poor
-short of this target as we blame those who kill; but this does
-not show that the act itself is less serious. Nor does it indicate
-anything about those who, far from saving all they possibly can,
-make no effort to save anyone.
-These conclusions suggest a new approach. Instead of attempting
-to deal with the contrast between affluence and poverty
-by comparing not saving with deliberate killing, let us
-consider afresh whether we have an obligation to assist those
-whose lives are in danger, and if so, how this obligation applies
-to the present world situation.
-THE OBLIGATION TO ASSIST
-The Argument for an Obligation to Assist
-The path from the library at my university to the humanities
-lecture theatre passes a shallow ornamental pond. Suppose that
-on my way to give a lecture I notice that a small child has fallen
-in and is in danger of drowning. Would anyone deny that I
-ought to wade in and pull the child out? This will mean getting
-my clothes muddy and either cancelling my lecture or delaying
-it until I can find something dry to change into; but compared
-with the avoidable death of a child this is insignificant.
-A plausible principle that would support the judgment that I
-ought to pull the child out is this: if it is in our power to prevent
-something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing
-anything of comparable moral significance, we ought to do it.
-This principle seems uncontroversial. It will obviously win the
-assent of consequentialists; but non-consequentialists should
-accept it too, because the injunction to prevent what is bad
-applies only when nothing comparably significant is at stake.
-Thus the principle cannot lead to the kinds of actions of which
-non-consequentialists strongly disapprove - serious violations
-of individual rights, injustice, broken promises, and so on. If
-non-consequentialists regard any of these as comparable in
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-Practical Ethics
-moral significance to the bad thing that is to be prevented, they
-will automatically regard the principle as not applying in those
-cases in which the bad thing can only be prevented by violating
-rights, doing injustice, breaking promises, or whatever else is
-at stake. Most non-consequentialists hold that we ought to prevent
-what is bad and promote what is good. Their dispute with
-consequentialists lies in their insistence that this is not the sole
-ultimate ethical principle: that it is an ethical principle is not
-denied by any plausible ethical theory.
-Nevertheless the uncontroversial appearance of the principle
-that we ought to prevent what is bad when we can do so without
-sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance is deceptive.
-If it were taken seriously and acted upon, our lives and
-our world would be fundamentally changed. For the principle
-applies, not just to rare situations in which one can save a child
-from a pond, but to the everyday situation in which we can
-assist those living in absolute poverty. In saying this I assume
-that absolute poverty, with its hunger and malnutrition, lack of
-shelter, illiteracy, disease, high infant mortality, and low life
-expectancy, is a bad thing. And I assume that it is within the
-power of the affluent to reduce absolute poverty, without sacrificing
-anything of comparable moral significance. If these two
-assumptions and the principle we have been discussing are correct,
-we have an obligation to help those in absolute poverty
-that is no less strong than our obligation to rescue a drowning
-child from a pond. Not to help would be wrong, whether or
-not it is intrinsically equivalent to killing. Helping is not, as
-conventionally thought, a charitable act that it is praiseworthy
-to do, but not wrong to omit; it is something that everyone
-ought to do.
-This is the argument for an obligation to assist. Set out more
-formally, it would look like this.
-First premise: If we can prevent something bad without sacrificing
-anything of comparable significance, we ought to do it.
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-Rich and Poor
-Second premise: Absolute poverty is bad.
-Third premise: There is some absolute poverty we can prevent
-without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance.
-Conclusion: We ought to prevent some absolute poverty.
-The first premise is the substantive moral premise on which
-the argument rests, and I have tried to show that it can be
-accepted by people who hold a variety of ethical positions.
-The second premise is unlikely to be challenged. Absolute
-poverty is, as McNamara put it, 'beneath any reasonable definition
-of human decency' and it would be hard to find a plausible
-ethical view that did not regard it as a bad thing.
-The third premise is more controversial, even though it is
-cautiously framed. It claims only that some absolute poverty
-can be prevented without the sacrifice of anything of comparable
-moral significance. It thus avoids the objection that any aid I
-can give is just 'drops in the ocean' for the point is not whether
-my personal contribution will make any noticeable impression
-on world poverty as a whole (of course it won't) but whether
-it will prevent some poverty. This is all the argument needs to
-sustain its conclusion, since the second premise says that any
-absolute poverty is bad, and not merely the total amount of
-absolute poverty. If without sacrificing anything of comparable
-moral significance we can provide just one family with the
-means to raise itself out of absolute poverty, the third premise
-is vindicated.
-I have left the notion of moral significance unexamined in
-order to show that the argument does not depend on any specific
-values or ethical principles. I think the third premise is true for
-most people living in industrialised nations, on any defensible
-view of what is morally significant. Our affluence means that
-we have income we can dispose of without giving up the basic
-necessities of life, and we can use this income to reduce absolute
-poverty. Just how much we will think ourselves obliged to give
-up will depend on what we consider to be of comparable moral
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-Practical Ethics
-significance to the poverty we could prevent: stylish clothes,
-expensive dinners, a sophisticated stereo system, overseas holidays,
-a (second?) car, a larger house, private schools for our
-children, and so on. For a utilitarian, none of these is likely to
-be of comparable significance to the reduction of absolute poverty;
-and those who are not utilitarians surely must, if they
-subscribe to the principle of universalisability, accept that at
-least some of these things are of far less moral significance than
-the absolute poverty that could be prevented by the money they
-cost. So the third premise seems to be true on any plausible
-ethical view - although the precise amount of absolute poverty
-that can be prevented before anything of moral significance is
-sacrificed will vary according to the ethical view one accepts.
-Objections to the Argument
-Taking care of our own. Anyone who has worked to increase
-overseas aid will have come across the argument that we should
-look after those near us, our families, and then the poor in our
-own country, before we think about poverty in distant places.
-No doubt we do instinctively prefer to help those who are
-close to us. Few could stand by and watch a child drown; many
-can ignore a famine in Mrica. But the question is not what we
-usually do, but what we ought to do, and it is difficult to see
-any sound moral justification for the view that distance, or
-community membership, makes a crucial difference to our
-obligations.
-Consider, for instance, racial affinities. Should people of European
-origin help poor Europeans before helping poor Africans?
-Most of us would reject such a suggestion out of hand,
-and our discussion of the principle of equal consideration of
-interests in Chapter 2 has shown why we should reject it: people's
-need for food has nothing to do with their race, and if
-Mricans need food more than Europeans, it would be a violation
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-Rich and Poor
-of the principle of equal consideration to give preference to
-Europeans.
-The same point applies to citizenship or nationhood .. Every
-affluent nation has some relatively poor citizens, but absolute
-poverty is limited largely to the poor nations. Those living on
-the streets of Calcutta, or in the drought-prone Sahel region of
-Mrica, are experiencing poverty unknown in the West. Under
-these circumstances it would be wrong to decide that only those
-fortunate enough to be citizens of our own community will
-share our abundance.
-We feel obligations of kinship more strongly than those of
-citizenship. Which parents could give away their last bowl of
-rice if their own children were starving? To do so would seem
-unnatural, contrary to our nature as biologically evolved beings
-- although whether it would be wrong is another question
-altogether. In any case, we are not faced with that situation,
-but with one in which our own children are well-fed, wellclothed,
-well-educated, and would now like new bikes, a stereo
-set, or their own car. In these circumstances any special obligations
-we might have to our children have been fulfilled, and
-the needs of strangers make a stronger claim upon us.
-The element of truth in the view that we should first take
-care of our own, lies in the advantage of a recognised system
-of responsibilities. When families and local communities look
-after their own poorer members, ties of affection and personal
-relationships achieve ends that would otherwise require a large,
-impersonal bureaucracy. Hence it would be absurd to propose
-that from now on we all regard ourselves as equally responsible
-for the welfare of everyone in the world; but the argument for
-an obligation to assist does not propose that. It applies only
-when some are in absolute poverty, and others can help without
-sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance. To allow
-one's own kin to sink into absolute poverty would be to sacrifice
-something of comparable significance; and before that point had
-been reached, the breakdown of the system of family and com-
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-Practical Ethics
-munity responsibility would be a factor to weigh the balance
-in favour of a small degree of preference for family and community.
-This small degree of preference is, however, decisively
-outweighed by existing discrepancies in wealth and property.
-Property rights. Do people have a right to private property, a
-right that contradicts the view that they are under an obligation
-to give some of their wealth away to those in absolute poverty?
-According to some theories of rights (for instance, Robert Nozick's),
-provided one has acquired one's property without the
-use of unjust means like force and fraud, one may be entitled
-to enormous wealth while others starve. This individualistic
-conception of rights is in contrast to other views, like the early
-Christian doctrine to be found in the works of Thomas Aquinas,
-which holds that since property exists for the satisfaction of
-human needs, 'whatever a man has in superabundance is owed,
-of natural right, to the poor for their sustenance'. A socialist
-would also, of course, see wealth as belonging to the community
-rather than the individual, while utilitarians, whether socialist
-or not, would be prepared to override property rights to prevent
-great evils.
-Does the argument for an obligation to assist others therefore
-presuppose one of these other theories of property rights, and
-not an individualistic theory like Nozick's? Not necessarily. A
-theory of property rights can insist on our right to retain wealth
-without pronouncing on whether the rich ought to give to the
-poor. Nozick, for example, rejects the use of compulsory means
-like taxation to redistribute income, but suggests that we can
-achieve the ends we deem morally desirable by voluntary
-means. So Nozick would reject the claim that rich people have
-an 'obligation' to give to the poor, in so far as this implies that
-the poor have a right to our aid, but might accept that giving
-is something we ought to do and failing to give, though within
-one's rights, is wrong - for there is more to an ethical life than
-respecting the rights of others.
-234
-Rich and Poor
-The argument for an obligation to assist can survive, with
-only minor modifications, even if we accept an individualistic
-theory of property rights. In any cci.e, however, I do not think
-we should accept such a theory. It leaves too much to chance
-to be an acceptable ethical view. For instance, those whose
-forefathers happened to inhabit some sandy wastes around the
-Persian Gulf are now fabulously wealthy, because oil lay under
-those sands; while those whose forefathers settled on better land
-south of the Sahara live in absolute poverty, because of drought
-and bad harvests. Can this distribution be acceptable from an
-impartial point of view? If we imagine ourselves about to begin
-life as a citizen of either Bahrein or Chad - but we do not know
-which - would we accept the principle that citizens of Bahrein
-are under no obligation to assist people living in Chad?
-Population and the ethics of triage. Perhaps the most serious objection
-to the argument that we have an obligation to assist is
-that since the major cause of absolute poverty is overpopulation,
-helping those now in poverty will only ensure that yet more
-people are born to live in poverty in the future.
-In its most extreme form, this objection is taken to show that
-we should adopt a policy of 'triage'. The term comes from medical
-policies adopted in wartime. With too few doctors to cope
-with all the casualties, the wounded were divided into three
-categories: those wl).O would probably survive without medical
-assistance, those who might survive if they received assistance,
-but otherwise probably would not, and those who even with
-medical assistance probably would not survive. Only those in
-the middle category were given medical assistance. The idea, of
-course, was to use limited medical resources as effectively as
-possible. For those in the first category, medical treatment was
-not strictly necessary; for those in the third category, it was
-likely to be useless. It has been suggested that we should apply
-the same policies to countries, according to their prospects of
-becoming self-sustaining. We would not aid countries that even
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-Practical Ethics
-without our help will soon be able to feed their populations.
-We would not aid countries th~t, even with our help, will not
-be able to limit their population to a level they can feed. We
-would aid those countries where our help might make the difference
-between success and failure in bringing food and population
-into balance.
-Advocates of this theory are understandably reluctant to give
-a complete list of the countries they would place into the 'hopeless'
-category; Bangladesh has been cited as an example, and
-so have some of the countries of the Sahel region of Africa.
-Adopting the policy of triage would, then, mean cutting off
-assistance to these countries and allowing famine, disease, and
-natural disasters to reduce the population of those countries to
-the level at which they can provide adequately for all.
-In support of this view Garrett Hardin has offered a metaphor:
-we in the rich nations are like the occupants of a crowded
-lifeboat adrift in a sea full of drowning people. If we try to save
-the drowning by bringing them aboard, our boat will be overloaded
-and we shall all drown. Since it is better that some
-survive than none, we should leave the others to drown. In the
-world today, according to Hardin, 'lifeboat ethics' apply. The
-rich should leave the poor to starve, for otherwise the poor will
-drag the rich down with them.
-Against this view, some writers have argued that overpopulation
-is a myth. The world produces ample food to feed its
-population, and could, according to some estimates, feed ten
-times as many. People are hungry not because there are too
-many but because of inequitable land distribution, the manipulation
-of third world economies by the developed nations,
-wastage of food in the West, and so on.
-Putting aside the controversial issue of the extent to which
-food production might one day be increased, it is true, as we
-have already seen, that the world now produces enough to feed
-its inhabitants - the amount lost by being fed to animals itself
-being enough to meet existing grain shortages. Nevertheless
-236
-Rich and Poor
-population growth calillot be ignored. Bangladesh could, with
-land reform and using better techniques, feed its present population
-of 115 million; but by the year 2000, according to United
-Nations Population Division estiniates, its population will be
-150 million. The enormous effort that will have to go into feeding
-an extra 35 million people, all added to the population
-within a decade, means that Bangladesh must develop at full
-speed ~o stay where it is. Other low-income countries are in
-similar situations. By the end of the century, Ethiopia's population
-is expected to rise from 49 to 66 million; Somalia's from
-7 to 9 million, India's from 853 to 1041 million, Zaire's from
-35 to 49 million.2
-What will happen if the world population continues to grow?
-It cannot do so indefinitely. It will be checked by a decline in
-birth rates or a rise in death rates. Those who advocate triage
-are proposing that we allow the population growth of some
-countries to be checked by a rise in death rates - that is, by
-increased malnutrition, and related diseases; by widespread famines;
-by increased infant mortality; and by epidemics of infectious
-diseases.
-The consequences of triage on this scale are so horrible that
-we are inclined to reject it without further argument. How could
-we sit by our television sets, watching millions starve while we
-do nothing? Would not that be the end of all notions of human
-equality and re,spect for human life? (Those who attack the
-proposals for legalising euthanasia discussed in Chapter 7, saying
-that these proposals will weaken respect for human life,
-would surely do better to object to the idea that we should
-reduce or end our overseas aid programs, for that proposal, if
-2 Ominously, in the twelve years that have passed between editions of this
-book, the signs are that the situation is becoming even worse than was then
-predicted. In 1979 Bangladesh had a population of 80 million and it was
-predicted that by 2000 its population would reach 146 million; Ethiopia's
-was only 29 million, and was predicted to reach 54 million; and India's was
-620 million and predicted to reach 958 million.
-237
-Practical Ethics
-implemented, would be responsible for a far greater loss of
-human life.) Don't people have a right to our assistance, irrespective
-of the consequences?
-Anyone whose initial reaction to triage was not one of repugnance
-would be an unpleasant sort of person. Yet initial
-reactions based on strong feelings are not always reliable guides.
-Advocates of triage are rightly concerned with the long-term
-consequences of our actions. They say that helping the poor
-and starving now merely ensures more poor and starving in the
-future. When our capacity to help is finally unable to cope - as
-one day it must be - the suffering will be greater than it would
-be if we stopped helping now. If this is correct, there is nothing
-we can do to prevent absolute starvation and poverty, in the
-long run, and so we have no obligation to assist. Nor does it
-seem reasonable to hold that under these circumstances people
-have a right to our assistance. If we do accept such a right,
-irrespective of the consequences, we are saying that, in Hardin's
-metaphor, we should continue to haul the drowning into our
-lifeboat until the boat sinks and we all drown.
-If triage is to be rejected it must be tackled on its own ground,
-within the framework of consequentialist ethics. Here it is vulnerable.
-Any consequentialist ethics must take probability of
-outcome into account. A course of action that will certainly
-produce some benefit is to be preferred to an alternative course
-that may lead to a slightly larger benefit, but is equally likely
-to result in no benefit at all. Only if the greater magnitude of
-the uncertain benefit outweighs its uncertainty should we
-choose it. Better one certain unit of benefit than a 10 per cent
-chance of five units; but better a 50 per cent chance of three
-units than a single certain unit. The same principle applies when
-we are trying to avoid evils.
-The policy of triage involves a certain, very great evil: population
-control by famine and disease. Tens of millions would
-die slowly. Hundreds of millions would continue to live in absolute
-poverty, at the very margin of existence. Against this
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-Rich and Poor
-prospect, advocates of the policy place a possible evil that is
-greater still: the same process offamine and disease, taking place
-in, say, fifty years' time, when tpe world's popUlation may be
-three times its present level, and the number who will die from
-famine, or struggle on in absolute poverty, will be that much
-greater. The question is: how probable is this forecast that continued
-assistance now will lead to greater disasters in the future?
-Forecasts of population growth are notoriously fallible, and
-theories about the factors that affect it remain speculative. One
-theory, at least as plausible as any other, is that countries pass
-through a 'demographic transition' as their standard of living
-rises. When people are very poor and have no access to modem
-medicine their fertility is high, but population is kept in check
-by high death rates. The introduction of sanitation, modem
-medical techniques, and other improvements reduces the death
-rate, but initially has little effect on the birth rate. Then population
-grows rapidly. Some poor countries, especially in subSaharan
-Africa, are now in this phase. If standards of living
-continue to rise, however, couples begin to realise that to have
-the same number of children surviving to maturity as in the
-past, they do not need to give birth to as many children as their
-parents did. The need for children to provide economic support
-in old age diminishes. Improved education and the emancipation
-and employment of women also reduce the birth-rate, and
-so population growth begins to level off. Most rich nations have
-reached this stage, and their populations are growing only very
-slowly, if at all.
-If this theory is right, there is an alternative to the disasters
-accepted as inevitable by supporters of triage. We can assist poor
-countries to raise the living standards of the poorest members
-of their population. We can encourage the governments of these
-countries to enact land reform measures, improve education,
-and liberate women from a purely child-bearing role. We can
-also help other countries to make contraception and sterilisation
-widely available. There is a fair chance that these measures will
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-Practical Ethics
-hasten the onset of the demographic transition and bring population
-growth down to a manageable level. According to
-United Nations estimates, in 1965 the average woman in the
-third world gave birth to six children, and only 8 per cent were
-using some form of contraception; by 1991 the average number
-of children had dropped to just below four, and more than half
-the women in the third world were taking contraceptive measures.
-Notable successes in encouraging the use of contraception
-had occurred in Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil,
-and Bangladesh. This achievement reflected a relatively low
-expenditure in developing countries - considering the size and
-significance of the problem - of $3 billion annually, with only
-20 per cent of this sum coming from developed nations. So
-expenditure in this area seems likely to be highly cost-effective.
-Success cannot be guaranteed; but the evidence suggests that
-we can reduce population growth by improving economic security
-and education, and making contraceptives more widely
-available. This prospect makes triage ethically unacceptable. We
-cannot allow millions to die from starvation and disease when
-there is a reasonable probability that population can be brought
-under control without such horrors.
-Population growth is therefore not a reason against giving
-overseas aid, although it should make us think about the kind
-of aid to give. Instead of food handouts, it may be better to give
-aid that leads to a slowing of population growth. This may mean
-agricultural assistance for the rural poor, or assistance with education,
-or the provision of contraceptive services. Whatever
-kind of aid proves most effective in specific circumstances, the
-obligation to assist is not reduced.
-One awkward question remains. What should we do about
-a poor and already overpopulated country that, for religious or
-nationalistic reasons, restricts the use of contraceptives and refuses
-to slow its population growth? Should we nevertheless
-offer development assistance? Or should we make our offer
-conditional on effective steps being taken to reduce the birth-
-240
-Rich and Poor
-rate? To the latter course, some would object that putting conditions
-on aid is an attempt to impose our own ideas on
-independent sovereign nations. So it is - but is this imposition
-unjustifiable? If the argument for an\Jbligation to assist is sound,
-we have an obligation to reduce absolute poverty; but we have
-no obligation to make sacrifices that, to the best of our knowledge,
-have no prospect of reducing poverty in the long run.
-Hence we have no obligation to assist countries whose governments
-have policies that will make our aid ineffective. This could
-be very harsh on poor citizens of these countries - for they may
-have no say in the government's policies - but we will help
-more people in the long run by using our resources where they
-are most effective. (The same principles may apply, incidentally,
-to countries that refuse to take other steps that could make
-assistance effective - like refusing to reform systems of land
-holding that impose intolerable burdens on poor tenant
-farmers.)
-Leaving it to the government. We often hear that overseas aid
-should be a government responsibility, not left to privately run
-charities. Giving privately, it is said, allows the government to
-escape its responsibilities.
-Since increasing government aid is the surest way of making
-a significant increase to the total amount of aid given, I would
-agree that the governments of affluent nations should give much
-more genuine, no-string~-attached, aid than they give now. Less
-than one-sixth of one per cent of GNP is a scandalously small
-amount for a nation as wealthy as the United States to give.
-Even the official UN target of 0.7 per cent seems much less than
-affluent nations can and should give - though it is a target few
-have reached. But is this a reason against each of us giving what
-we can privately, through voluntary agencies? To believe that
-it is seems to assume that the more people there are who give
-through voluntary agencies, the less likely it is that the government
-will do its part. Is this plausible? The opposite view - that
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-Practical Ethics
-if no one gives voluntarily the government will assume that its
-citizens are not in favour of overseas aid, and will cut its programme
-accordingly - is more reasonable. In any case, unless
-there is a definite probability that by refusing to give we would
-be helping to bring about an increase in government assistance,
-refusing to give privately is wrong for the same reason that triage
-is wrong: it is a refusal to prevent a definite evil for the sake of
-a very uncertain gain. The onus of showing how a refusal to
-give privately will make the government give more is on those
-who refuse to give.
-This is not to say that giving privately is enough. Certainly
-we should campaign for entirely new standards for both public
-and private overseas aid. We should also work for fairer trading
-arrangements between rich and poor countries, and less domination
-of the economies of poor countries by multinational
-corporations more concerned about producing profits for shareholders
-back home than food for the local poor. Perhaps it is
-more important to be politically active in the interests of the
-poor than to give to them oneself - but why not do both?
-Unfortunately, many use the view that overseas aid is the government's
-responsibility as a reason against giving, but not as
-a reason for being politically active.
-Too high a standard? The final objection to the argument for an
-obligation to assist is that it sets a standard so high that none
-but a saint could attain it. This objection comes in at least three
-versions. The first maintains that, human nature being what it
-is, we cannot achieve so high a standard, and since it is absurd
-to say that we ought to do what we cannot do, we must reject
-the claim that we ought to give so much. The second version
-asserts that even if we could achieve so high a standard, to do
-so would be undesirable. The third version of the objection is
-that to set so high a standard is undesirable because it will be
-perceived as too difficult to reach, and will discourage many
-from even attempting to do so.
-242
-Rich and Poor
-Those who put forward the first version of the objection are
-often influenced by the fact that we have evolved from a natural
-process in which those with a high degree of concern for their
-own interests, or the interests of their offspring and kin, can be
-expected to leave more descendants in futJre generations, and
-eventually to completely replace any who are entirely altruistic.
-Thus the biologist Garrett Hardin has argued, in support of his
-'lifeboat ethics', that altruism can only exist 'on a small scale,
-over the short term, and within small, intimate groups'; while
-Richard Dawkins has written, in his provocative book The Selfish
-Gene: 'Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal
-love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts
-which simply do not make evolutionary sense: I have already
-noted, in discussing the objection that we should first take care
-of our own, the very strong tendency for partiality in human
-beings. We naturally have a stronger desire to further our own
-interests, and those of our close kin, than we have to further
-the interests of strangers. What this means is that we would be
-foolish to expect widespread conformity to a standard that demands
-impartial concern, and for that reason it would scarcely
-be appropriate or feasible to condemn all those who fail to reach
-such a standard. Yet to act impartially, though it might be very
-difficult, is not impossible; The commonly quoted assertion that
-'ought' implies 'can' is a reason for rejecting such moral judgments
-as 'You ought to have saved all the people from the
-sinking ship', when in fact if you had taken one more person
-into the lifeboat, it would have sunk and you would not have
-saved any. In that situation, it is absurd to say that you ought
-to have done what you could not possibly do. When we have
-money to spend on luxuries and others are starving, however,
-it is clear that we can all give much more than we do give, and
-we can therefore all come closer to the impartial standard proposed
-in this chapter. Nor is there, as we approach closer to this
-standard, any barrier beyond which we cannot go. For that
-reason there is no basis for saying that the impartial standard
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-Practical Ethics
-is mistaken because 'ought' implies 'can' and we cannot be
-impartial.
-The second version of the objection has been put by several
-philosophers during the past decade, among them Susan Wolf
-in a forceful article entitled 'Moral Saints'. Wolf argues that if
-we all took the kind of moral stance defended in this chapter,
-we would have to do without a great deal that makes life interesting:
-opera, gourmet cooking, elegant clothes, and professional
-sport, for a start. The kind of life we come to see as
-ethically required of us would be a single-minded pursuit of the
-overall good, lacking that broad diversity of interests and activities
-that, on a less demanding view, can be part of our ideal of
-a good life for a human being. To this, however, one can respond
-that while the rich and varied life that Wolf upholds as an ideal
-may be the most desirable form of life for a human being in a
-world of plenty, it is wrong to assume that it remains a good
-life in a world in which buying luxuries for oneself means accepting
-the continued avoidable suffering of others. A doctor
-faced with hundreds of injured victims of a train crash can
-scarcely think it defensible to treat fifty of them and then go to
-the opera, on the grounds that going to the opera is part of a
-well-rounded human life. The life-or-death needs of others must
-take priority. Perhaps we are like the doctor in that we live in
-a time when we all have an opportunity to help to mitigate a
-disaster.
-Associated with this second version of the objection is the
-claim that an impartial ethic of the kind advocated here makes
-it impossible to have serious personal relationships based on
-love and friendship; these relationships are, of their nature,
-partial. We put the interests of our loved ones, our family, and
-our friends ahead of those of strangers; if we did not do so,
-would these relationships survive? I have already indicated, in
-the response I gave when considering the objection that we
-should first take care of our own, that there is a place, within
-an impartially grounded moral framework, for recognising some
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-Rich and Poor
-degree of partiality for kin, and the same can be said for other
-close personal relationships. Clearly, for most people, personal
-relationships are among the necessities of a flourishing life, and
-to give them up would be to sacrifice something of great moral
-significance. Hence no such sacrifice is required by the principle
-for which I am here arguing.
-The third version of the objection asks: might it not be counterproductive
-to demand that people give up so much? Might
-not people say: 'As I can't do what is morally required anyway,
-I won't bother to give at all: If, however, we were to set a more
-realistic standard, people might make a genuine effort to reach
-it. Thus setting a lower standard might actually result in more
-aid being given.
-It is important to get the status of this third version of the
-objection clear. Its accuracy as a prediction of human behaviour
-is quite compatible with the argument that we are obliged to
-give to the point at which by giving more we sacrifice something
-of comparable moral significance. What would follow from the
-objection is that public advocacy of this standard of giving is
-undesirable. It would mean that in order to do the maximum
-to reduce absolute poverty, we should advocate a standard
-lower than the amount we think people really ought to give.
-Of course we ourselves - those of us who accept the original
-argument, with its hig1;ler standard - would know that we ought
-to do more than we publicly propose people ought to do, and
-we might actually give more than we urge others to give. There
-is no inconsistency here, since in both our private and our public
-behaviour we are trying to do what will most reduce absolute
-poverty.
-For a consequentialist, this apparent conflict between public
-and private morality is always a possibility, and not in itself an
-indication that the underlying principle is wrong. The consequences
-of a principle are one thing, the consequences of publicly
-advocating it another. A variant of this idea is already
-acknowledged by the distinction between the intuitive and crit-
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-Practical Ethics
-icallevels of morality, of which I have made use in previous
-chapters. If we think of principles that are suitable for the intuitive
-level of morality as those that should be generally advocated,
-these are the principles that, when advocated, will give
-rise to the best consequences. Where overseas aid is concerned,
-those will be the principles that le-ad to largest amount being
-given by the affluent to the poor.
-Is it true that the standard set by our argument is so high as
-to be counterproductive? There is not much evidence to go by,
-but discussions of the argument, with students and others have
-led me to think it might be. Yet, the conventionally accepted
-standard - a few coins in a collection tin when one is waved
-under your nose - is obviously far too low. What level should
-we advocate? Any figure will be arbitrary, but there may be
-something to be said for a round percentage of one's income
-like, say, 10 per cent - more than a token donation, yet not so
-high as to be beyond all but saints. (This figure has the additional
-advantage of being reminiscent of the ancient tithe, or tenth,
-that was traditionally given to the church, whose responsibilities
-included care of the poor in one's local community. Perhaps
-the idea can be revived and applied to the global community.)
-Some families, of course, will find 10 per cent a considerable
-strain on their finances. Others may be able to give more without
-difficulty. No figure should be advocated as a rigid minimum
-or maximum; but it seems safe to advocate that those earning
-average or above average incomes in affluent societies, unless
-they have an unusually large number of dependents or other
-special needs, oUght to give a tenth of their income to reducing
-absolute poverty. By any reasonable ethical standards this is the
-minimum we ought to do, and we do wrong if we do less.
-246
-9
-INSIDERS AND OUTSIDERS
-THE SHELTER
-I T is February 2002, and the world is taking stock of the
-damage done by the nuclear war in the Middle East towards
-the close of the previous year. The global level of radioactivity
-now and for about eight years to come is so high that only those
-living in fallout shelters can be confident of surviving in reasonable
-health. For the rest, who must breathe unfiltered air
-and consume food and water with high levels of radiation, the
-prospects are grim. Probably 10 per cent will die of radiation
-sickness within the next two months; another 30 per cent are
-expected to develop fatal forms of cancer within five years; and
-even the remainder will have rates of cancer ten times higher
-than normal, while the risk that their children will be malformed
-is fifty times greater than before the war.
-The fortunate ones, of course, are those who were far-sighted
-enough to buy a share in tl;le fallout shelters built by real-estate
-speculators as international tensions rose in the late 1990s. Most
-of these shelters were designed as underground villages, each
-with enough accommodation and supplies to provide for the
-needs of 10,000 people for twenty years. The villages are selfgoverning,
-with democratic constitutions that were agreed to
-in advance. They also have sophisticated security systems that
-enable them to admit to the shelter whoever they decide to
-admit, and keep out all others.
-The news that it will not be necessary to stay in the shelters
-for much more than eight years has naturally been greeted with
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-Practical Ethics
-joy by the members of an underground community called Fairhaven.
-But it has also led to the first serious friction among
-them. For above the shaft that leads down to Fairhaven, there
-are thousands of people who are not investors in a shelter. These
-people can be seen, and heard, through television cameras installed
-at the entrance. They are pleading to be admitted. They
-know that ifthey can get into a shelter quickly, they will escape
-most of the consequences of exposure to radiation. At first,
-before it was known how long it would be until it was safe to
-return to the outside, these pleas had virtually no support from
-within the shelter. Now, however, the case for admitting at least
-some of them has become much stronger. Since the supplies
-need last only eight years, they will stretch to more than double
-the number of people at present in the shelters. Accommodation
-presents only slightly greater problems: Fairhaven was designed
-to function as a luxury retreat when not needed for a real emergency,
-and it is equipped with tennis courts, swimming pools,
-and a large gymnasium. If everyone were to consent to keep fit
-by doing aerobics in their own living rooms, it would be possible
-to provide primitive but adequate sleeping space for all those
-whom the supplies can stretch to feed.
-So those outside are now not lacking advocates on the inside.
-The most extreme, labelled 'bleeding hearts' by their opponents,
-propose that the shelter should admit an additional 10,000 people
-- as many as it can reasonably expect to feed and house
-until it is safe to return to the outside. This will mean giving up
-all luxury in food and facilities; but the bleeding hearts point
-out that the fate for those who remain on the outside will be
-far worse.
-The bleeding hearts are opposed by some who urge that
-these outsiders generally are an inferior kind of person, for they
-were either not sufficiently far-sighted, or else not sufficiently
-wealthy, to invest in a shelter; hence, it is said, they will cause
-social problems in the shelter, placing an additional strain on
-health, welfare, and educational services and contributing to an
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-Insiders and Outsiders
-increase in crime and juvenile delinquency. The opposition to
-admitting outsiders is also supported by a small group who say
-that it would be an injustice to those who have paid for their
-share of the shelter if others who have not paid benefit by it.
-These opponents of admitting others are articulate, but few;
-their numbers are bolstered considerably, however, by many
-who say only that they really enjoy tennis and swimming and
-don't want to give it up.
-Between the bleeding hearts and those who oppose admitting
-any outsiders, stands a middle group: those who think that, as
-an exceptional act of benevolence and charity, some outsiders
-should be admitted, but not so many as to make a significant
-difference to the quality of life within the shelter. They propose
-converting a quarter of the tennis courts to sleeping accommodation,
-and giving up a small public open space that has
-attracted little use anyway. By these means, an extra 500 people
-could be accommodated, which the self-styled 'moderates' think
-would be a sensible figure, sufficient to show that Fairhaven is
-not insensitive to the plight of those less fortunate than its own
-members.
-A referendum is held. There are three proposals: to admit
-10,000 outsiders; to admit 500 outsiders; and to admit no outsiders.
-For which would you vote?
-THE REAL WORLD
-Like the issue of overseas aid, the situation of refugees today
-raises an ethical question about the boundaries of our moral
-community - not, as in earlier chapters, on grounds of species,
-stage of development, or intellectual capacities, but on nationality.
-The great majority of the approximately 15 million refugees
-in the world today are receiving refuge, at least temporarily,
-in the poorer and less developed countries of the world. More
-than 12 million refugees are in the less developed countries of
-Africa, Asia and Latin America. The effect on a poor country of
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-Practical Ethics
-receiving a sudden influx of millions of refugees can be gauged
-from the experience of Pakistan during the 1980s, when it was
-home to 2.8 million Afghan refugees - mainly living in the
-North West Frontier province. Although Pakistan did get some
-outside assistance to feed its refugees, the effects of bearing the
-burden of this refugee population for seven years was easily
-seen around refugee villages. Whole hillsides were denuded of
-trees as a result of the collection of wood for fuel for the refugees.
-According to Article 14 of the 1948 United Nations Declaration
-of Human Rights, 'Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy
-in other countries asylum from persecution.' The United
-Nations High Commission for Refugees was established in 1950
-and the commissioner entrusted with the protection of any
-person who is outside the country of his nationality because of a
-well founded fear of persecution by reason of his race, religion,
-nationality or political opinion, and is unwilling or unable to
-avail himself of the protection of his own government'. This definition
-was originally designed to meet the dislocation caused
-by the Second World War in Europe. It is a narrow one, demanding
-that claims to refugee status be investigated case by case. It
-has failed to cover the large-scale movements of people in times
-of war, famine, or civil disturbance that have occurred since.
-Less than generous responses to refugees are usually justified
-by blaming the victim. It has become common to distinguish
-'genuine refugees' from 'economic refugees' and to claim that
-the latter should receive no assistance. This distinction is dubious,
-for most refugees leave their countries at great risk and
-peril to their lives - crossing seas in leaky boats under attack
-from pirates, or making long journeys over armed borders, to
-arrive penniless in refugee camps. To distinguish between someone
-fleeing from political persecution and someone who flees
-from a land made uninhabitable by prolonged drought is difficult
-to justify when they are in equal need of a refuge. The
-UN definition, which would not classify the latter as a refugee,
-defines away the problem.
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-Insiders and Outsiders
-What are the possible durable solutions for refugees in the
-world today? The main option~ are: voluntary repatriation, local
-integration in the country they first flee to, and reiettlement.
-Probably the best and most humane solution for refugees
-would be to return home. Unfortunately for the majority, voluntary
-repatriation is not possible because the conditions that
-caused them to flee have not changed sufficiently. Local settlement,
-where refugees can remain and rebuild their lives in
-neighbouring countries, is too often impossible because of the
-inability of poor, economically struggling - and politically unstable
-- countries to absorb a new population when their indigenous
-people face a daily struggle for survival. This option
-works best where ethnic and tribal links cross national frontiers.
-The difficulty of achieving either voluntary repatriation or
-local settlement leaves resettlement in a more remote country
-as the only remaining option. With the number of refugees
-needing resettlement reaching dimensions never before experienced,
-the main response of the industrialised countries has
-been to institute deterrent policies and close their doors as tight
-as they can. Admittedly, resettlement can never solve the problems
-that make refugees leave their homes. Nor is it, of itself,
-a solution to the world refugee problem. Only about 2 per cent
-of the world's refugees are permanently resettled. Nevertheless,
-the resettlement option is a significant one. It provides markedly
-better lives for a considerable number of individuals, even if not
-for a large proportion of the total number of refugees.
-Resettlement also affects the policies of those countries to
-which refugees first flee. If such countries have no hope that
-refugees will be resettled, they know that their burden will grow
-with every refugee who enters their country. And countries of
-first refuge are among those least able to support additional
-people. When the resettlement option tightens, the countries to
-which refugees first go adopt policies to try to discourage
-potential refugees from leaving their country. This policy will
-include turning people back at the border, making the camps
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-Practical Ethics
-as unattractive as possible, and screening the refugees as they
-cross the border.
-Resettlement is the only s.olution for those who cannot return
-to their own countries in the foreseeable future and are only
-welcome temporarily in the country to which they have fled;
-in other words for those who have nowhere to go. There are
-millions who would choose this option if there were countries
-who would take them. For these refugees, resettlement may
-mean the difference between life and death. It certainly is their
-only hope for a decent existence.
-THE EX GRATIA APPROACH
-A widely held attitude is that we are under no moral or legal
-obligation to accept any refugees at all; and if we do accept
-some, it is an indication of our generous and humanitarian
-character. Though popular, this view is not self-evidently morally
-sound. Indeed, it appears to conflict with other attitudes
-that are, if we can judge from what people say, at least as widely
-held, including the belief in the equality of all human beings,
-and the rejection of principles that discriminate on the basis of
-race or national origin.
-All developed nations safeguard the welfare of their residents
-in many ways - protecting their legal rights, educating their
-children, and providing sodal security payments and access to
-medical care, either universally or for those who fall. below a
-defined level of poverty. Refugees receive none of these benefits
-unless they are accepted into the country. Since the overwhelming
-majority of them are not accepted, the overwhelming majority
-will not receive these benefits. But is this distinction in
-the way in which we treat residents and nomesidents ethically
-defensible?
-Very few moral philosophers have given any attention to the
-issue of refugees, even though it is clearly one of the major
-moral issues of our time and raises significant moral questions
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-Insiders and Outsiders
-about who is a member of our moral community. Take, for
-example, John Rawls, the Harvard philosopher whose book, A
-Theory of Justice, has been the most widely discussed artount of
-justice since its publication in 1971. This 500-page volume deals
-exclusively with justice within a society, thus ignoring all the
-hard questions about the principles that ought to govern how
-wealthy societies respond to the claims of poorer nations, or of
-outsiders in need.
-One of the few philosophers who has addressed this issue is
-another American, Michael Walzer. His Spheres of Justice opens
-with a chapter entitled 'The Distribution of Membership' in
-which he asks how we constitute the community within which
-distribution takes place. In the course of this chapter Walzer
-seeks to justify something close to the present situation with
-regard to refugee policy. The first question Walzer addresses is:
-do countries have the right to close their borders to potential
-immigrants? His answer is that they do, because without such
-closure, or at least the power to close borders if desired, distinct
-communities cannot exist.
-Given that the decision to close borders can rightfully be
-made, Walzer then goes on to consider how it should be exercised.
-He compares the political community with a club, and
-with a family. Clubs are examples of the ex gratia approach:
-'Individuals may be able to give good reason why they should
-be selected, but no one on the outside has a right to be inside:
-But Walzer considers the analogy imperfect, because states are
-also a bit like families. They are morally bound to open the
-doors of their country - not to anyone who wants to come in,
-perhaps, but to a particular group of outsiders, recognised as
-national or ethnic 'relatives: In this way Walzer uses the analogy
-of a family to justify the principle of family reunion as a
-basis for immigration policy.
-As far as refugees are concerned, however, this is not much
-help. Does a political community have the right to exclude
-destitute, persecuted, and stateless men and women simply be-
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-Practical Ethics
-cause they are foreigners? In Walzer's view the community is
-bound by a prindple of mutual aid and he rightly notes that
-this prindple may have wider effects when applied to a community
-than when applied to an individual, because so many
-benevolent actions are open to a community that will only
-marginally affect its members. To take a stranger into one's
-family is something that we might consider goes beyond the
-requirement of mutual aid; but to take a stranger, or even many
-strangers, into the community is far less burdensome.
-In Walzer's view, a nation with vast unoccupied lands - he
-takes Australia as his example, though by assumption rather
-than by any examination of Australia's water and soil resources
-- may indeed have an obligation in mutual aid to take in people
-from densely populated, famine-stricken lands of Southeast
-Asia. The choice for the Australian community would then be
-to give up whatever homogeneity their sodety possessed, or to
-retreat to a small portion of the land they occupied, yielding
-the remainder to those who needed it.
-Although not accepting any general obligation on affluent
-nations to admit refugees, Walzer does uphold the popular prindple
-of asylum. In accordance with this prindple, any refugee
-who manages to reach the shores of another country can claim
-asylum and cannot be deported back to a country in which he
-may be persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, or
-political opinion. It is interesting that this prindple is so widely
-supported, while the obligation to accept refugees is not. The
-distinction drawn may reflect some of the prindples discussed
-in previous chapters of this book. The prindple of proximity
-clearly plays a role - the person seeking asylum is just physically
-closer to us than those in other countries. Perhaps our stronger
-support for asylum rests in part on the distinction between an
-act (deporting a refugee who has arrived here) and an omission
-(not offering a place to a refugee in a distant camp). It could
-also be an instance of the difference between doing something
-to an identifiable individual, and doing something that we know
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-Insiders and Outsiders·
-will have the same effect on someone, but we will never be
-able to tell on whom it has this effect. A further factor is probably
-the relatively small number of people who are actually able to
-arrive in order to seek asylum, in contrast to the much larger
-number of refugees of whose existence we are aware, although
-they are far from us. This is the 'drops in the ocean' argument
-that was discussed in connection with overseas aid. We can,
-perhaps, cope with all the asylum seekers, but no matter how
-many refugees we admit, the problem will still be there. As in
-the case of the parallel argument against giving overseas aid,
-this overlooks the fact that in admitting refugees, we enable
-spedfic individuals to live decent lives and thus are doing something
-that is worthwhile, no matter how many other refugees
-remain whom we are unable to help.
-Moderately liberal governments, prepared to heed at least
-some humanitarian sentiments, act much as Walzer suggests
-they should. They hold that communities have a right to dedde
-whom they will admit; the claims of family reunion come first,
-and those of outsiders from the national ethnic group - should
-the state have an ethnic identity - next. The admission of those
-in need is an ex gratia act. The right of asylum is usually respected,
-as long as the numbers are relatively small. Refugees,
-unless they can appeal to some spedal sense of political affinity,
-have no real claim to be accepted, and have to throw themselves
-on the charity of the receiving country. All of this is in general
-agreement with immigration policy in the Western democrades.
-As far as refugees are concerned, the ex gratia approach is the
-current orthodoxy.
-THE FALLACY OF THE CURRENT APPROACH
-The current orthodoxy rests on vague and usually unargued
-assumptions about the community's right to determine its membership.
-A consequentialist would hold, instead, that immigration
-policy should be based squarely on the interests of all those
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-Practical Ethics
-affected. Where the interests of different parties conflict, we
-should be giving equal consideration to all interests, which
-would mean that more pressing or more fundamental interests
-take precedence over less fundamental interests. The first step
-in applying the principle of equal consideration of interests is
-to identify those whose interests are affected. The first and most
-obvious group is the refugees themselves. Their most pressing
-and fundamental interests are clearly at stake. Life in a refugee
-camp offers little prospect of anything more than a bare subsistence,
-and sometimes hardly even that. Here is one observer's
-impression of a camp on the Thai-Cambodian border in 1986.
-At the time the camp was home for 144,000 people:
-The visit of a foreigner causes a ripple of excitement. People
-gather round and ask eamestly about the progress of their case
-for resettlement, or share their great despair at continual rejection
-by the selection bodies for the various countries which will accept
-refugees .... People wept as they spoke, most had an air of quiet
-desperation .... On rice distribution day, thousands of girls and
-women mill in the distribution area, receiving the weekly rations
-for their family. From the bamboo observation tower the ground
-below was just a swirling sea of black hair and bags of rice hoisted
-onto heads for the walk home. A proud, largely farming people,
-forced to become dependent on UN rations of water, tinned fish
-and broken rice, just to survive.
-Most of these people could hope for no significant change in
-their lives for many years to come. Yet I, along with the others
-from outside, could get into a car and drive out of the camp,
-return to Taphraya or Aran, drink iced water, eat rice or noodles
-at the roadside restaurant at the comer, and observe life passing
-by. Those simplest parts of life were invested with a freedom I'd
-never valued so highly.
-At the same time, refugees accepted into another country have
-a good chance of establishing themselves and leading a life as
-satisfactory and fulfilling as most of us. Sometimes the interests
-of the refugees in being accepted are as basic as the interest in
-life itself. In other cases the situation may not be one of life or
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-Insiders and Outsiders
-death, but it will still profoundly affect the whole course of a
-person's life.
-The next most directly affected group is the residents of the
-recipient nation. How much they will be affected will vary according
-to how many refugees are taken, how well they will fit
-into the community, the current state of the national economy,
-and so on. Some residents will be more affected than others:
-some will find themselves competing with the refugees for jobs,
-and others will not; some will find themselves in a neighborhood
-with a high population of refugees, and others will not;
-and this list could be continued indefinitely, too.
-We should not assume that residents of the recipient nation
-will be affected for the worse: the economy may receive a boost
-from a substantial intake of refugees, and many residents may
-find business opportunities in providing for their needs. Others
-may enjoy the more cosmopolitan atmosphere created by new
-arrivals from other countries: the exotic food shops and restaurants
-that spring up, and in the long run, the benefits of different
-ideas and ways of living. One could argue that in many ways
-refugees make the best immigrants. They have nowhere else to
-go and must commit themselves totally to their new country,
-unlike immigrants who can go home when or if they please.
-The fact that they have survived and escaped from hardship
-suggests stamina, initiative, and resources that would be of great
-benefit to any receiving country. Certainly some refugee groups,
-for instance the Indo-Chinese, have displayed great entrepreneurial
-vigour when resettled in countries like Australia or the
-United States.
-There are also some other possible and more diffuse consequences
-that we at least need to think about. For example, it
-has been argued that to take large numbers of refugees from
-poor countries into affluent ones will simply encourage the flow
-of refugees in the future. If poor and over-populated countries
-can get rid of their surplus people to other countries, they will
-have a reduced incentive to do something about the root causes
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-Practical Ethics
-of the poverty of their people, and to slow population growth.
-The end result could be just as much suffering as if we had
-never taken the refugees in the first place.
-Consequences also arise from not taking significant numbers
-of refugees. Economic stability and world peace depend on international
-co-operation based on some measure of respect and
-trust; but the resource-rich and not over-populated countries
-of the world cannot expect to win the respect or trust of the
-poorest and most crowded countries if they leave them to cope
-with most of the refugee problem as best they can.
-So we have a complex mix of interests - some definite, some
-highly speculative - to be considered. Equal interests are to be
-given equal weight, but which way does the balance lie? Consider
-a reasonably affluent nation that is not desperately overcrowded,
-like Australia (I take Australia merely as an example
-of a country with which I am familiar; one could, with minor
-modifications, substitute other affluent nations.) In the early
-1990s Australia is admitting about 12,000 refugees a year, at a
-time when there are several million refugees in refugee camps
-around the world, many of whom have no hope of returning
-to their previous country and are seeking resettlement in a country
-like Australia. Now let us imagine that Australia decides to
-accept twice as many refugees each year as it has in fact been
-doing. What can we say are the definite consequences of such
-a decision, and what are the possible consequences?
-The first definite consequence would be that each year 12,000
-more refugees would have been out of the refugee camps and
-settled in Australia, where they could expect, after a few years
-of struggle, to share in the material comforts, civil rights, and
-political security of that country. So 12,000 people would have
-been very much better off.
-The second definite consequence would have been that each
-year Australia would have had 12,000 more immigrants, and
-that these additional immigrants would not have been selected
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-on the basis of possessing skills needed in the Australian economy.
-They would therefore place an additional demand on welfare
-services. Some long-term residents of Australia may be
-disconcerted by the changes that take place in their neighborhood,
-as significant numbers of people from a very different
-culture move in. More refugees would make some impact on
-initial post-arrival services such as the provision of English language
-classes, housing in the first few months, job placement,
-and retraining. But the differences would be minor - after all,
-a decade earlier, Australia had accepted approximately 22,000
-refugees a year. There were no marked adverse effects from this
-larger intake.
-At this point, if we are considering the definite consequences
-of a doubled refugee intake, in terms of having a significant
-impact on the interests of others, we come to a halt. We may
-wonder if the increased numbers will lead to a revival of racist
-feeling in the community. We could debate the impact on the
-Australian environment. We might guess that a larger intake of
-refugees will encourage others, in the country from which the
-refugees came, to become refugees themselves in order to better
-their economic condition. Or we could refer hopefully to the
-contribution towards international goodwill that may flow from
-a country like Australia easing the burden ofless well-off nations
-in supporting refugees. But all of these consequences are highly
-speculative.
-Consider the environmental impact of an extra 12,000 refugees.
-Certainly, more people will put some additional pressure
-on the environment. This means that the increased number of
-refugees accepted will be just one item in a long list of factors
-that includes the natural rate of reproduction; the government's
-desire to increase exports by encouraging an industry based on
-converting virgin forests to wood-chips; the subdivision of rural
-land in scenic areas for holiday houses; the spurt in popularity
-of vehicles suitable for off-road use; the development of ski
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-resorts in sensitive alpine areas; the use of no-deposit bottles
-and other containers that increase litter - the list could be prolonged
-indefinitely.
-If as a community we allow these other factors to have their
-impact on the environment, while appealing to the need to
-protect our environment as a reason for restricting our intake
-of refugees to its present leveL we are implicitly giving less
-weight to the interests of refugees in coming to Australia than
-we give to the interests of Australian residents in having holiday
-houses, roaring around the countryside in four-wheeldrive
-vehicles, going skiing, and throwing away their drink
-containers without bothering to return them for recycling. Such
-a weighting is surely morally outrageous, so flagrant a violation
-of the principle of equal consideration of interests that I
-trust it has only to be exposed in order to be seen as indefensible.
-The other arguments are even more problematical. No one
-can really say whether doubling Australia's intake of refugees
-would have any effect at all on the numbers who might consider
-fleeing their own homes; nor is it possible to predict the consequences
-in terms of international relations. As with the similar
-argument linking overseas aid with increased population, in a
-situation in which the definite consequences of the proposed
-additional intake of refugees are positive, it would be wrong to
-decide against the larger intake on such speculative grounds,
-especially since the speculative factors point in different directions.
-So there is a strong case for Australia to double its refugee
-intake. But there was nothing in the argument that relied on
-the specific level of refugees now being taken by Australia. If
-this argument goes through, it would also seem to follow that
-Australia should be taking not an extra 12,000 refugees, but an
-extra 24,000 refugees a year. Now the argument seems to be
-going too far, for it can then be reapplied to this new level:
-should Australia be taking 48,000 refugees? We can double and
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-redouble the intakes of all the major nations of the developed
-world, and the refugee camps around the world will still not
-be empty. Indeed, the number of refugees who would seek
-resettlement in the developed countries is not fixed, and probably
-there is some truth in the claim that if all those now in
-refugee camps were to be accepted, more refugees would arrive
-to take their places. Since the interests of the refugees in resettlement
-in a more prosperous country will always be greater
-than the conflicting interests of the residents of those countries
-it would seem that the principle of equal consideration of in~
-terests points to a world in which all countries continue to accept
-refugees until they are reduced to the same standard of poverty
-and overcrowding as the third world countries from which the
-refugees are seeking to flee.
-Is this a reason for rejecting the original argument? Does it
-mean that if we follow the original argument through it leads
-to consequences that we cannot possibly accept; and therefore
-there must be a flaw in the argument that has led us to such
-an absurd conclusion? This does not follow. The argument
-we put forward for doubling Australia'S refugee intake does
-not really imply that the doubled intake should then be redoubled,
-and redoubled again, ad infinitum. At some point in
-this process - perhaps when the refugee intake is four times
-what it now is, or perhaps when it is sixty-four times its
-present level - the adverse consequences that are now only
-speculative possibilities would become probabilities or virtual
-certainties.
-There would come a point at which, for instance, the resident
-community had eliminated all luxuries that imperilled the environment,
-and yet the basic needs of the expanding population
-were putting such pressure on fragile ecological systems that a
-further expansion would do irreparable harm. Or there might
-come a point at which tolerance in a multicultural society was
-breaking down because of resentment among the resident community,
-whose members believed that their children were un-
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-able to get jobs because of competition from the hard-working
-new arrivals; and this loss of tolerance might reach the point
-at which it was a serious danger to the peace and security of
-all previously accepted refugees and other imI:p.igrants from different
-cultures. When any such point had been reached, the
-balance of interests would have swung against a further increase
-in the intake of refugees.
-The present refugee intake might increase quite dramatically
-before any consequences like those mentioned above were
-reached; and some may take this as a consequence sufficiently
-unacceptable to support the rejection of our line of argument.
-Certainly anyone starting from the assumption that the status
-quo must be roughly right will be likely to take that view.
-But the status quo is the outcome of a system of national
-selfishness and political expediency, and not the result of a
-considered attempt to work out the moral obligations of the
-developed nations in a world with 15 million refugees.
-It would not be difficult for the nations of the developed world
-to move closer towards fulfilling their moral obligations to refugees.
-There is no objective evidence to show that doubling
-their refugee intake would cause them any harm whatsoever.
-Much present evidence, as well as past experience, points the
-other way, suggesting that they and their present population
-would probably benefit.
-But, the leaders will cry, what is moral is not what is
-politically acceptable! This is a spurious excuse for inaction.
-In many policy areas, presidents and prime ministers are quite
-happy to try to convince the electorate of what is right - of
-the need to tighten belts in order to balance budgets, or to
-desist from drinking and driving. They could just as easily
-gradually increase their refugee intakes, monitoring the effects
-of the increase through careful research. In this way they
-would fulfill their moral and geopolitical obligations and still
-benefit their own communities.
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-Insiders and Outsiders
-SHELTERS AND REFUGES
-How would you have voted, in the referendum conducted in
-Fairhaven in 1998? I think most people would have been prepared
-to sacrifice not just a quarter, but all of the tennis courts
-to the greater need of those outside. But if you would have
-voted with the 'bleeding hearts' in that situation, it is difficult
-to see how you can disagree with the conclusion that affluent
-nations should be taking far, far more refugees than they are
-taking today. For the situation of refugees is scarcely better than
-that of the outsiders in peril from nuclear radiation; and the
-luxuries that we would have to sacrifice are surely no greater.
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-10
-THE ENVIRONMENT
-A river tumbles through forested ravines and rocky gorges towards
-the sea. The state hydro-electricity commission sees the
-falling water as untapped energy. Building a dam across one of
-the gorges would provide three years of employment for a thousand
-people, and longer-term employment for twenty or thirty.
-The dam would store enough water to ensure that the state could
-economically meet its energy needs for the next decade. This
-would encourage the establishment of energy-intensive industry
-thus further contributing to employment and economic growth.
-The rough terrain of the river valley makes it accessible only to
-the reasonably fit, but it is nevertheless a favoured spot for bushwalking.
-The river itself attracts the more daring whitewater
-rafters. Deep in the sheltered valleys are stands of rare Huon
-Pine, many of the trees being over a thousand years old. The
-valleys and gorges are home to many birds and animals, including
-an endangered species of marsupial mouse that has seldom
-been found outside the valley. There may be other rare plants
-and animals as well, but no one knows, for scientists are yet to
-investigate the region fully.
-S ~ 0 U L.D the dam be built? This is one example of a situation
-m WhICh we must choose between very different sets of
-values. The description is loosely based on a proposed dam on
-the Franklin River, in the southwest of Australia's island state,
-Tasmania - an account of the outcome can be found in Chapter
-II, but I have deliberately altered some details, and the above
-description should be treated as a hypothetical case. Many other
-examples would have posed the choice between values equally
-well: logging virgin forests, building a paper mill that will release
-pollutants into coastal waters, or opening a new mine on the
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-edge of a national park. A different set of examples would raise
-related, but slightly different, issues: the use of products that
-contribute to the depletion of the ozone layer, or to the greenhouse
-effect; building more nuclear power stations; and so on.
-In this chapter I explore the values that underlie debates about
-these decisions, and the example I have presented can serve as
-a point of reference to these debates. I shall focus particularly
-on the values at issue in controversies about the preservation
-of wilderness because here the fundamentally different values
-ofthe two parties are most apparent. When we are talking about
-flooding a river valley, the choice before us is starkly clear.
-In general we can say that those who favour building the
-dam are valuing employment and a higher per capita income
-for the state above the preservation of wilderness, of plants and
-animals (both common ones and members of an endangered
-species), and of opportunities for outdoor recreational activities.
-Before we begin to scrutinise the values of those who would
-have the dam build'and those who would not, however, let us
-briefly investigate the origins of modern attitudes towards the
-natural world.
-THE WESTERN TRADITION
-Western attitudes to nature grew out of a blend of those of the
-Hebrew people, as represented in the early books of the Bible,
-and the philosophy of the ancient Greeks, particularly that of
-Aristotle. In contrast to some other ancient traditions, for example,
-those of India, both the Hebrew and the Greek traditions
-made human beings the centre of the moral universe - indeed
-not merely the centre, but very often, the entirety of the morally
-significant features of this world.
-The biblical story of creation, in Genesis, makes clear the
-Hebrew view of the special place of human beings in the divine
-plan:
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-And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:
-and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and
-over the fowl of the air, and over the earth, and over every
-creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
-So God created man in his own image, in the image of God
-created he him; male and female created he them.
-And God blessed them, and God said upon them, Be fruitful,
-and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have
-dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air,
-and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
-Today Christians debate the meaning of this grant of 'dominion';
-and those concerned about the environment claim that
-it should be regarded not as a license to do as we will with other
-living things, but rather as a directive to look after them, on
-God's behalf, and be answerable to God for the way in which
-we treat them. There is, however, little justification in the text
-itself for such an interpretation; and given the example God set
-when he drowned almost every animal on earth in order to
-punish human beings for their wickedness, it is no wonder that
-people should think the flooding of a single river valley is nothing
-worth worrying about. After the flood there is a repetition
-of the grant of dominion in more ominous language: 'And the
-fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of
-the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth
-upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your
-hands are they delivered:
-The implication is clear: to act in a way that causes fear and
-dread to everything that moves on the earth is not improper;
-it is, in fact, in accordance with a God-given decree.
-The most influential early Christian thinkers had no doubts
-about how man's dominion was to be understood. 'Doth God
-care for oxen?' asked Paul, in the course of a discussion of an
-Old Testament command to rest one's ox on the sabbath, but
-it was only a rhetorical question - he took it for granted that
-the answer must be negative, and the command was to be
-explained in terms of some benefit to humans. Augustine shared
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-this line of thought; referring to stories in the New Testament
-in which Jesus destroyed a fig tree and caused a herd of pigs
-to drown, Augustine explained these puzzling incidents as intended
-to teach us that 'to refrain from the killing of animals
-and the destroying of plants is the height of superstition'.
-When Christianity prevailed in the Roman Empire, it also
-absorbed elements of the ancient Greek attitude to the natural
-world. The Greek influence was entrenched in Christian philosophy
-by the greatest of the medieval scholastics, Thomas
-Aquinas, whose life work was the melding of Christian theology
-with the thought of Aristotle. Aristotle regarded nature as a
-hierarchy in which those with less reasoning ability exist for
-the sake of those with more:
-Plants exist for the sake of animals, and brute beasts for the sake
-of man - domestic animals for his use and food, wild ones (or
-at any rate most of them) for food and other accessories of life,
-such as clothing and various tools.
-Since nature makes nothing purposeless or in vain, it is undeniably
-true that she has made all animals for the sake of man.
-In his own major work, the Summa Theologica, Aquinas followed
-this passage from Aristotle almost word for word, adding
-that the position accords with God's command, as given in
-Genesis. In his classification of sins, Aquinas has room only for
-sins against God, ourselves, or our neighbours. There is no possibility
-of sinning against non-human animals, or against the
-natural world.
-This was the thinking of mainstream Christianity for at least
-its first eighteen centuries. There we!e gentler spirits, certainly,
-like Basil, John Chrysostom, and Francis of Assisi, but for most
-of Christian history they have had no significant impact on the
-dominant tradition. It is therefore worth emphasising the major
-features of this dominant Western tradition, because these features
-can serve as a point of comparison when we discuss different
-views of the natural environment.
-According to the dominant Western tradition, the natural
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-world exists for the benefit of human beings. God gave human
-beings dominion over the natural world, and God does not care
-how we treat it. Human beings are the only morally important
-members of this world. Nature itself is of no intrinsic value, and
-the destruction of plants and animals cannot be sinful. unless
-by this destruction we harm human beings.
-Harsh as this tradition is, it does not rule out concern for the
-preservation of nature, as long as that concern can be related
-to human well-being. Often, of course, it can be. One could,
-entirely within the limits of the dominant Western tradition,
-oppose nuclear power on the grounds that nuclear fuel. whether
-in bombs or power stations, is so hazardous to human life that
-the uranium is better left in the ground. Similarly, many arguments
-against pollution, the use of gases harmful to the ozone
-layer, the burning of fossil fuels, and the destruction of forests,
-could be couched in terms of the harm to human health and
-welfare from the pollutants, or the changes to the climate that
-will occur as a result of the use of fossil fuels and the loss of
-forest. The greenhouse effect - to take just one danger to our
-environment - threatens to bring about a rise in sea level that
-will inundate low-lying coastal areas. This includes the fertile
-and densely populated Nile delta in Egypt. and the Bengal delta
-region, which covers 80 per cent of Bangladesh and is already
-subject to violent seasonal storms that cause disastrous floods.
-The homes and livelihood of 46 million people are at risk in
-these two deltas alone. A rise in sea level could also wipe out
-entire island nations such as the Maldives, none of which is
-more than a metre or two above sea level. So it is obvious that
-even within a human-centred moral framework, the preservation
-of our environment is a value of the greatest possible
-importance.
-From the standpoint of a form of civilisation based on growing
-crops and grazing animals, wilderness may seem to be a wasteland,
-a useless area that needs clearing in order to render it
-productive and valuable. There was a time when villages sur-
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-rounded by farmland seemed like oases of cultivation amongst
-the deserts of forest or rough mountain slopes. Now, however,
-a different metaphor is more appropriate: the remnants of true
-wilderness left to us are like islands amidst a sea of human
-activity that threatens to engulf them. This gives wilderness a
-scarcity value that provides the basis for a strong argument for
-preservation, even within the terms of a human-centred ethic.
-That argument becomes much stronger still when we take a
-long-term view. To this immensely important aspect of environmental
-values we shall now tum.
-FUTURE GENERATIONS
-A virgin forest is the product of all the millions of years that
-have passed since the beginning of our planet. If it is cut down,
-another forest may grow up, but the continuity has been broken.
-The disruption in the natural life cycles of the plants and animals
-means that the forest will never again be as it would have been,
-had it not been cut. The gains made from cutting the forest -
-employment. profits for business, export earnings, and cheaper
-cardboard and paper for packaging - are short-term benefits.
-Even if the forest is not cut. but drowned to build a dam to
-create electricity, it is likely that the benefits will last for only a
-generation or two: after that new technology will render such
-methods of generating power obsolete. Once the forest is cut or
-drowned, however, the link with the past has gone for ever.
-That is a cost that will be borne by every generation that succeeds
-us on this planet. It is for that reason that environmentalists are
-right to speak of wilderness as a 'world heritage'. It is something
-that we have inherited from our ancestors, and that we must
-preserve for our descendants, if they are to have it at all.
-In contrast to many more stable, tradition-oriented human
-societies, our modem political and cultural ethos has great difficulty
-in recognising long-term values. Politicians are notorious
-for not looking beyond the next election; but even if they do,
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-Pradical Ethics
-they will find their economic advisers telling them that anything
-to be gained in the future should be discounted to such a degree
-as to make it easy to disregard the long-term future altogether.
-Economists have been taught to apply a discount rate to all
-future goods. In other words, a million dollars in twenty years
-is not worth a million dollars today, even when we allow for
-inflation. Economists will discount the value of the million dollars
-by a certain percentage, usually corresponding to the real
-long-term interest rates. This makes economic sense, because if
-I had a thousand dollars today I could invest it so that it would
-be worth more, in real terms, in twenty years. But the use of a
-discount rate means that values gained one hundred years hence
-rank very low, in comparison with values gained today; and
-values gained one thousand years in the future scarcely count
-at all. This is not because of any uncertainty about whether
-there will be human beings or other sentient creatures inhabiting
-this planet at that time, but merely because of the cumulative
-effect of the rate of return on money invested now. From the
-standpoint of the priceless and timeless values of wilderness,
-however, applying a discount rate gives us the wrong answer.
-There are some things that, once lost, no amount of money can
-regain. Thus to justify the destruction of an ancient forest on
-the grounds that it will earn us substantial export income is
-unsound, even if we could invest that income and increase its
-value from year to year; for no matter how much we increased
-its value, it could never buy back the link with the past represented
-by the forest.
-This argument does not show that there can be no justification
-for cutting any virgin forests, but it does mean that any such
-justification must take full account of the value of the forests to
-the generations to come in the more remote future, as well as
-in the more immediate future. This value will obviously be
-related to the particular scenic or biological significance of the
-forest; but as the proportion of true wilderness on the earth
-dwindles, every part of it becomes significant) because the op-
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-The Environment
-portunities for experiencing wilderness become scarce, and the
-likelihood of a reasonable selection of the major forms of wilderness
-being preserved is reduced.
-Can we be sure that future generations will appreciate wilderness?
-Perhaps they will be happier sitting in air-conditioned
-shopping malls, playing computer games more sophisticated
-than any we can imagine? That is possible. But there are
-several reasons why we should not give this possibility too
-much weight. First, the trend has been in the opposite direction:
-the appreciation of wilderness has never been higher
-than it is today, especially among those nations that have
-overcome the problems of poverty and hunger and have relatively
-little wilderness left. Wilderness is valued as something
-of immense beauty, as a reservoir of scientific knowledge still
-to be gained, for the recreational opportunities that it provides,
-and because many people just like to know that something
-natural is still there, relatively untouched by modem civilisation.
-If, as we all hope, future generations are able to provide
-for the basic needs of most people, we can expect that for
-centuries to come, they, too, will value wilderness for the
-same reasons that we value it.
-Arguments for preservation based on the beauty of wilderness
-are sometimes treated as if they were of little weight because
-they are 'merely aesthetic'. That is a mistake. We go to great
-lengths to preserve the artistic treasures of earlier human civilisations.
-It is difficult to imagine any economic gain that we
-would be prepared to accept as adequate compensation for, for
-instance, the destruction of the paintings in the Louvre. How
-should we compare the aesthetic value of wilderness with that
-of the paintings in the Louvre? Here, perhaps, judgment does
-become inescapably subjective; so I shall report my own experiences.
-I have looked at the paintings in the Louvre, and in
-many of the other great galleries of Europe and the United
-States. I think I have a reasonable sense of appreciation of the
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-Practical Ethics
-fine arts; yet I have not had, in any museum, experiences that
-have filled my aesthetic senses in the way that they are filled
-when I walk in a natural setting and pause to survey the view
-from a rocky peak overlooking a forested valley, or sit by a
-stream tumbling over moss-covered boulders set amongst tall
-tree-ferns, growing in the shade of the forest canopy. I do not
-think I am alone in this; for many people, wilderness is the
-source of the greatest feelings of aesthetic appreciation, rising
-to an almost spiritual intensity.
-It may nevertheless be true that this appreciation of nature
-will not be shared by people living a century or two hence. But
-if wilderness can be the source of such deep joy and satisfaction,
-that would be a great loss. To some extent, whether future
-generations value wilderness is up to us; it is, at least, a decision
-we can influence. By our preservation of areas of wilderness,
-we provide an opportunity for generations to come, and by the
-books and films we produce, we create a culture that can be
-handed on to our children and their children. If we feel that a
-walk in the forest, with senses attuned to the appreciation of
-such an experience, is a more deeply rewarding way to spend
-a day than playing computer games, or if we feel that to carry
-one's food and shelter in a backpack for a week while hiking
-through an unspoiled natural environment will do more to develop
-character than watching television for an equivalent period,
-then we ought to encourage future generations to have a
-feeling for nature; if they end up preferring computer games,
-we shall have failed.
-Finally, if we preserve intact the amount of wilderness that
-exists now, future generations will at least have the choice of
-getting up from their computer games and going to see a world
-that has not been created by human beings. If we destroy the
-wilderness, that choice is gone forever. Just as we rightly spend
-large sums to preserve cities like Venice, even though future
-generations conceivably may not be interested in such architectural
-treasures, so we should preserve wilderness even
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-I
-I
-I:
-The Environment
-though it is possible that future generations will care little for
-it. Thus we will not wrong future generations, as we have been
-wronged by members of past generations whose thoughtless
-actions have deprived us of the possibility of seeing such animals
-as the dodo, Steller's sea cow, or the thylacine, the Tasmanian
-marsupial 'tiger'. We must take care not to inflict equally irreparable
-losses on the generations to follow us.
-Here, too, the effort to mitigate the greenhouse effect deserves
-the highest priority. For if by 'wilderness' we mean that part of
-our planet that is unaffected by human activity, perhaps it is
-already too late: there may be no wilderness left anywhere on
-our planet. Bill McKibben has argued that by depleting the
-ozone layer and increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the
-atmosphere, we have already brought about the change encapsulated
-in the title of his book - The End of Nature: 'By changing
-the weather, we make every spot on earth man-made and artificial.
-We have deprived nature of its independence, and that
-is fatal to its meaning. Nature's independence is its meaning;
-without it there is nothing but us.'
-This is a profoundly disturbing thought. Yet McKibben does
-not develop it in order to suggest that we may as well give up
-our efforts to reverse the trend. It is true that in one sense of
-the term, 'nature' is finished. We have passed a watershed in
-the history of our planet. As McKibben says, 'we live in a postnatural
-world'. Nothing can undo that; the climate of our planet
-is under our influence. We still have, however, much that we
-value in nature, and it may still b,e possible to save what is left.
-Thus a human-centred ethic can be the basis of powerful
-arguments for what we may call 'environmental values'. Such
-an ethic does not imply that economic growth is more important
-than the preservation of wilderness; on the contrary, it is quite
-compatible with a human-centred ethic to see economic growth
-based on the exploitation of irreplaceable resources as something
-that brings gains to the present generation, and possibly
-the next generation or two, but at a price that will be paid by
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-Practical Ethics
-every generation to come. But in the light of our discussion of
-speciesism in Chapter 3, it should also be clear that it is wrong
-to limit ourselves to a human-centred ethic. We now need to
-consider more fundamental challenges to this traditional Western
-appro~.s;h to environmental issues.
-IS THERE VALUE BEYOND SENTIENT BEINGS?
-Although some debates about significant environmental issues
-can be conducted by appealing only to the long-term interests
-of our own species, in any serious exploration of environmental
-values a central issue will be the question of intrinsic value. We
-have already seen that it is arbitrary to hold that only human
-beings are of intrinsic value. If we find value in human conscious
-experiences, we cannot deny that there is value in at least some
-experiences of non-human beings. How far does intrinsic value
-extend? To all, but only, sentient beings? Or beyond the boundary
-of sentience?
-To explore this question a few remarks on the notion of'intrinsic
-value' will be helpful. Something is of intrinsic value if
-it is good or desirable in itself; the contrast is with 'instrumental
-value', that is, value as a means to some other end or purpose.
-Our own happiness, for example, is of intrinsic value, at least
-to most of us, in that we desire it for its own sake. Money, on
-the other hand, is only of instrumental value to us. We want it
-because of the things we can buy with it, but if we were marooned
-on a desert island, we would not want it. (Whereas
-happiness would be just as important to us on a desert island
-as anywhere else.)
-Now consider again for a moment the issue of damming the
-river described at the beginning of this chapter. If the decision
-were to be made on the basis of human interests alone, we
-would balance the economic benefits of the dam for the citizens
-of the state against the loss for bushwalkers, scientists, and
-others, now and in the future, who value the preservation of
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-the river in its natural state. We have already seen that because
-this calculation includes an indefinite number of future generations,
-the loss of the wild river is a much greater cost than
-we might at first imagine. Even so, once we broaden the basis
-of our decision beyond the interests of human beings, we have
-much more to set against the economic benefits of building the
-dam. Into the calculations must now go the interests of all the
-non-human animals who live in the area that will be flooded.
-A few may be able to move to a neighboring area that is suitable,
-but wilderness is not full of vacant niches awaiting an occupant;
-if there is territory that can sustain a native animaL it is most
-likely already occupied. Thus most of the animals living in the
-flooded area will die: either they will be drowned, or they will
-starve. Neither drowning nor starvation are easy ways to die,
-and the suffering involved in these deaths should, as we have
-seen, be given no less weight than we would give to an equivalent
-amount of suffering experienced by human beings. This
-will significantly increase the weight of considerations against
-building the dam.
-What of the fact that the animals will die, apart from the
-suffering that will occur in the course of dying? As we have
-seen, one can, without being guilty of arbitrary discrimination
-on the basis of species, regard the death of a non-human animal
-who is not a person as less significant than the death of a person,
-since humans are capable of foresight and forward planning in
-ways that non-human animals are not. This difference between
-causing death to a person and to a being who is not a person
-does not mean that the death of an animal who is not a person
-should be treated as being of no account. On the contrary,
-utilitarians will take into account the loss that death inflicts on
-the animals - the loss of all their future existence, and the
-experiences that their future lives would have contained. When
-a proposed dam would flood a valley and kill thousands, perhaps
-millions, of sentient creatures, these deaths should be given
-great importance in any assessment of the costs and benefits of
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-building the dam. For those utilitarians who accept the total
-view discussed in Chapter 4, moreover, if the dam destroys the
-habitat in which the animals lived, then it is relevant that this
-loss is a continuing one. If the dam is not built, animals will
-presumably continue to live in the valley for thousands of years,
-experiencing their own distinctive pleasures and pains. One
-might question whether life for animals in a natural environment
-yields a surplus of pleasure over pain, or of satisfaction
-over frustration of preferences. At this point the idea of calculating
-benefits becomes almost absurd; but that does not mean
-that the loss of future animal lives should be dismissed from
-our decision making.
-That, however, may not be all. Should we also give weight,
-not only to the suffering and death of individual animals, but
-to the fact that an entire species may disappear? What of the
-loss of trees that have stood for thousands of years? How much
-- if any - weight should we give to the preservation of the
-animals, the species, the trees and the valley's ecosystem, independently
-of the interests of human beings - whether economic,
-recreational, or scientific - in their preservation?
-Here we have a fundamental moral disagreement: a disagreement
-about what kinds of beings ought to be considered in
-our moral deliberations. Let us look at what has been said on
-behalf of extending ethics beyond sentient beings.
-REvERENCE FOR LIFE
-The ethical position developed in this book is an extension of
-the ethic of the dominant Western tradition. This extended
-ethic draws the boundary of moral consideration around all
-sentient creatures, but leaves other living things outside that
-boundary. The drowning of the ancient forests, the possible
-loss of an entire species, the destruction of several complex
-ecosystems, the blockage of the wild river itself, and the loss
-of those rocky gorges are factors to be taken into account only
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-in so far as they adversely affect sentient creatures. Is a more
-radical break with the traditional position possible? Can some
-or all of these aspects of the flooding of the valley be shown
-to have intrinsic value, so that they must be taken into account
-independently of their effects on human beings or non-human
-animals?
-To extend an ethic in a plausible way beyond sentient beings
-is a difficult task. An ethic based on the interests of sentient
-creatures is on familiar ground. Sentient creatures have wants
-and desires. The question: 'What is it like to be a possum
-drowning?' at least makes sense, even if it is impossible for
-us to give a more precise answer than 'It must be horrible'.
-In reaching moral decisions affecting sentient creatures, we
-can attempt to add up the effects of different actions on all
-the sentient creatures affected by the alternative actions open
-to us. This provides us with at least some rough guide to what
-might be the right thing to do. But there is nothing that corresponds
-to what it is like to be a tree dying because its roots
-have been flooded. Once we abandon the interests of sentient
-creatures as our source of value, where do we find value?
-What is good or bad for nonsentient creatures, and why does
-it matter?
-It might be thought that as long as we limit ourselves to living
-things, the answer is not too difficult to find. We know what
-is good or bad for the plants in our garden: water, sunlight, and
-compost are good; extremes of heat or cold are bad. The same
-applies to plants in any forest or wilderness, so why not regard
-their flourishing as good in itself, independently of its usefulness
-to sentient creatures?
-One problem here is that without conscious interests to guide
-us, we have no way of assessing the relative weights to be given
-to the flourishing of different forms of life. Is a two-thousandyear-
-old Huon pine more worthy of preservation than a tussock
-of grass? Most people will say that it is, but such a judgment
-seems to have more to do with our feelings of awe for the age,
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-size, and beauty of the tree, or with the length of time it would
-take to replace it, than with our perception of some intrinsic
-value in the flourishing of an old tree that is not possessed by
-a young grass tussock.
-If we cease talking in terms of sentience, the boundary
-between living and inanimate natural objects becomes more
-difficult to defend. Would it really be worse to cut down an
-old tree than to destroy a beautiful stalactite that has taken
-even longer to grow? On what grounds could such a judgment
-be made? Probably the best known defence of an ethic that
-extends to all living things is that of Albert Schweitzer. The
-phrase he used, 'reverence for life', is often quoted; the arguments
-he offered in support of such a position are less wellknown.
-Here is one of the few passages in which he defended
-his ethic:
-True philosophy must commence with the most immediate and
-comprehensive facts of consciousness. And this may be formulated
-as follows: 'I am life which wills to live, and 1 exist in the
-midst of life which wills to live: ... Just as in my own will-tolive
-there is a yearning for more life, and for that mysterious
-exaltation of the will which is called pleasure, and terror in face
-of annihilation and that injury to the will-to-live which is called
-pain; so the same obtains in all the will-to-live around me,
-equally whether it can express itself to my comprehension or
-whether it remains unvoiced.
-Ethics thus consists in this, that I experience the necessity of
-practising the same reverence for life toward all will-to-live, as
-toward my own. Therein I have already the needed fundamental
-principle of morality. It is good to maintain and cherish life; it
-is evil to destroy and to check life. A man is really ethical only
-when he obeys the constraint laid on him to help all life which
-he is able to succour, and when he goes out of his way to avoid
-injuring anything living. He does not ask how far this or that
-life deserves sympathy as valuable in itself. nor how far it is
-capable of feeling. To him life as such is sacred. He shatters no
-ice crystal that sparkles in the sun, tears no leaf from its tree,
-breaks off no flower, and is careful not to crush any insect as he
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-walks. If he works by lamplight on a summer evening he prefers
-to keep the window shut and to breathe stifling air, rather than
-to see insect after insect fall on his table with singed and sinking
-wings.
-A similar view has been defended recently by the contemporary
-American philosopher Paul Taylor. In his book Respect for
-Nature, Taylor argues that every living thing is 'pursuing its
-own good in its own unique way.' Once we see this, we can
-see all living things 'as we see ourselves' and therefore 'we
-are ready to place the same value on their existence as we
-do on our own'.
-It is not clear how we should interpret Schweitzer's position.
-The reference to the ice crystal is especially puzzling, for an ice
-crystal is not alive at all. Putting this aside, however, the problem
-with the defences offered by both Schweitzer and Taylor for
-their ethical views is that they use language metaphorically and
-then argue as if what they had said was literally true. We may
-often talk about plants 'seeking' water or light so that they can
-survive, and this way of thinking about plants makes it easier
-to accept talk of their 'will to live', or of them 'pursuing' their
-own good. But once we stop to reflect on the fact that plants
-are not conscious and cannot engage in any intentional behaviour,
-it is clear that all this language is metaphorical; one might
-just as well say that a river is pursuing its own good and striving
-to reach the sea, or Jhat the' good' of a guided missile is to blow
-itself up along with its target. It is misleading of Schweitzer to
-attempt to sway us towards an ethic of reverence for all life
-by referring to 'yearning', 'exaltation', 'pleasure', and 'terror'.
-Plants experience none of these.
-Moreover, in the case of plants, rivers, and guided missiles,
-it is possible to give a purely physical explanation of what is
-happening; and in the absence of consciousness, there is no
-good reason why we should have greater respect for the physical
-processes that govern the growth and decay of living things than
-we have for those that govern non-living things. This being so,
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-it is at least not obvious why we should have greater reverence
-for a tree than for a stalactite, or for a Single-celled organism
-than for a mountain.
-DEEP ECOLOGY
-More than forty years ago the American ecologist AIdo Leopold
-wrote that there was a need for a 'new ethic', an 'ethic dealing
-with man's relation to land and to the animals and plants which
-grow upon it'. His proposed 'land ethic' would enlarge 'the
-boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants,
-and animals, or collectively, the land'. The rise of ecological
-concern in the early 1970s led to a revival of interest in this
-attitude. The Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess wrote a brief
-but influential article distinguishing between 'shallow' and
-'deep' strands in the ecological movement. Shallow ecological
-thinking was limited to the traditional moral framework; those
-who thought in this way were anxious to avoid pollution to
-our water supply so that we could have safe water to drink,
-and they sought to preserve wilderness so that people could
-continue to enjoy walking through it. Deep ecologists, on the
-other hand, wanted to preserve the integrity of the biosphere
-for its own sake, irrespective of the possible benefits to humans
-that might flow from so doing. Subsequently several other writers
-have attempted to develop some form of 'deep' environmental
-theory.
-Where the reverence for life ethic emphasises individual living
-organisms, proposals for deep ecology ethics tend to take something
-larger as the object of value: species, ecological systems,
-even the biosphere as a whole. Leopold summed up the basis
-of his new land ethic thus: 'A thing is right when it tends to
-preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community.
-It is wrong when it tends otherwise: In a paper published
-in 1984, Arne Naess and George Sessions, an American
-philosopher involved in the deep ecology movement, set out
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-several principles for a deep ecological ethic, beginning with the
-following:
-The well-being and flourishing of human and non-human Life
-on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value,
-inherent value). These values are independent of the usefulness
-of the non-human world for human purposes.
-2 Richness and diversity oflife forms contribute to the realisation
-of these values and are also values in themselves.
-3 Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity
-except to satisfy vital needs.
-Although these principles refer only to life, in the same paper
-Naess and Sessions say that deep ecology uses the term 'biosphere'
-in a more comprehensive way, to refer also to nonliving
-things such as rivers (watersheds), landscapes, and
-ecosystems. Two Australians working at the deep end of environmental
-ethics, Richard Sylvan and Val Plumwood, also
-extend their ethic beyond living things, including in it an obligation
-'not to jeopardise the well-being of natural objects or
-systems without good reason'.
-In the previous section I quoted Paul Taylor's remark to the
-effect that we should be ready not merely to respect every living
-thing, but to place the same value on the life of every living
-thing as we place on our own. This is a common theme among
-deep ecologists, often extended beyond living things. In Deep
-Ecology Bill Devall and George Sessions defend a form of 'biocentric
-egalitarianism':
-The intuition of biocentric equality is that all things in the biosphere
-have an equal right to live and blossom and to reach their
-own individual forms of unfolding and self-realisation within the
-larger Self-realisation. This basic intuition is that all organisms
-and entities in the ecosphere, as parts of the interrelated whole,
-are equal in intrinsic worth.
-If, as this quotation appears to suggest. this biocentric equality
-rests on a 'basic intuition', it is up against some strong intuitions
-that point in the opposite direction - for example, the intuition
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-Practical Ethics
-that the rights to 'live and blossom' of normal adult humans
-ought to be preferred over those of yeasts, and the rights of
-gorillas over those of grasses. If, however, the point is that
-humans, gorillas, yeasts, and grasses are all parts of an interrelated
-whole, then it can still be asked how this establishes that
-they are equal in intrinsic worth. Is it because every living thing
-plays its role in an ecosystem on which all depend for their
-survival? But, firstly, even if this showed that there is intrinsic
-worth in micro-organisms and plants as a whole, it says nothing
-at all about the value of individual micro-organisms or plants,
-since no individual is necessary for the survival of the ecosystem
-as a whole. Secondly, the fact that all organisms are part of an
-interrelated whole does not suggest that they are all of intrinsic
-worth, let alone of equal intrinsic worth. They may be of worth
-only because they are needed for the existence of the whole,
-and the whole may be of worth only because it supports the
-existence of conscious beings.
-The ethics of deep ecology thus fail to yield persuasive answers
-to questions about the value of the lives of individual living
-beings. Perhaps, though, this is the wrong kind of question to
-ask. As the science of ecology looks at systems rather than
-individual organisms, so ecological ethics might be more plausible
-if applied at a higher level, perhaps at the level of species
-and ecosystems. Behind many attempts to derive values from
-ecological ethics at this level lies some form of holism - some
-sense that the species or ecosystem is not just a collection of
-individuals, but really an entity in its own right. This holism is
-made explicit in Lawrence Johnson's A Morally Deep World.
-Johnson is quite prepared to talk about the interests of a species,
-in a sense that is distinct from the sum of the interests of each
-member of the species, and to argue that the interests of a
-species, or an ecosystem, ought to be taken into account, alongside
-individual interests, in our moral deliberations. In The Ecological
-Self, Freya Mathews contends that any 'self-realising
-system' has intrinsic value in that it seeks to maintain or preserve
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-itself. While living organisms are paradigm examples of selfrealising
-systems, Mathews, like Johnson, includes species and
-ecosystems as holistic entities or selves with their own form of
-realisation. She even includes the entire global ecosystem, following
-James Lovelock in referring to it by the name of the
-Greek goddess of the earth, Gaia. On this basis she defends her
-own form of biocentric egalitarianism.
-There is, of course, a real philosophical question about
-whether a species or an ecosystem can be considered as the sort
-of individual that can have interests, or a 'self' to be realised;
-and even if it can, the deep ecology ethic will face problems
-similar to those we identified in considering the idea of reverence
-for life. For it is necessary, not merely that trees, species,
-and ecosystems can properly be said to have interests, but that
-they have morally significant interests. If they are to be regarded
-as 'selves' it will need to be shown that the survival or realisation
-of that kind of self has moral value, independently of the value
-it has because of its importance in sustaining conscious life.
-We saw in discussing the ethic of reverence for life that one
-way of establishing that an interest is morally significant is to
-ask what it is like for the entity affected to have that interest
-unsatisfied. The same question can be asked about selfrealisation:
-what is it like for the self to remain unrealised? Such
-questions yield intelligible answers when asked of sentient
-beings, but not when asked of trees, species, or ecosystems. The
-fact that, as James Lovelock points out in Gaia: A New Look at
-Life on Earth, the biosphere can respond to events in ways that
-resemble a self-maintaining system, does not in itself show that
-the biosphere consciously desires to maintain itself. Calling the
-global ecosystem by the name of a Greek goddess seems a nice
-idea, but it may not be the best way of helping us to think
-clearly about its nature. Similarly, on a smaller scale, there is
-nothing that corresponds to what it feels like to be an ecosystem
-flooded by a dam, because there is no such feeling. In this respect
-trees, ecosystems, and species are more like rocks than they are
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-Practical Ethics
-like sentient beings; so the divide between sentient and nonsentient
-creatures is to that extent a firmer basis for a morally
-important boundary than the divide between living and nonliving
-things, or between holistic entities and any other entities
-that we might not regard as holistic. (Whatever these other
-entities could be: even a single atom is, when seen from the
-appropriate level, a complex system that 'seeks' to maintain
-itself.)
-This rejection of the ethical basis for a deep ecology ethic does
-not mean that the case for the preservation of wilderness is not
-strong. All it means is that one kind of argument - the argument
-from the intrinsic value of the plants, species, or ecosystems -
-is, at best, problematic. Unless it can be placed on a different,
-and firmer footing, we should confine ourselves to arguments
-based on the interests of sentient creatures, present and future,
-human and non-human. These arguments are quite sufficient
-to show that, at least in a society where no one needs to destroy
-wilderness in order to obtain food for survival or materials for
-shelter from the elements, the value of preserving the remaining
-significant areas of wilderness greatly exceeds the economic
-values gained by its destruction.
-DEVELOPING AN ENVIRONMENTAL ETHIC
-In the long run, the set of ethical virtues praised and the set of
-ethical prohibitions adopted by the ethic of specific societies will
-always reflect the conditions under which they must live and
-work in order to survive. That statement is close to being a
-tautology, because if a society's ethic did not take into account
-whatever was needed for survival, the society would cease to
-exist. Many of the ethical standards that we accept today can
-be explained in these terms. Some are universal and can be
-expected to be beneficial to the community in virtually any
-conditions in which humans live. Obviously a society in which
-members of the community are permitted to kill each other with
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-impunity would not last long. Conversely, the parental virtues
-of caring for children, and other virtues like honesty, or loyalty
-to the group, would foster a stable and lasting community. Other
-prohibitions may reflect specific conditions: the practice among
-the Eskimo of killing elderly parents no longer able to fend for
-themselves, is often cited as a necessary response to life in a
-very harsh climate. No doubt the slow pace of changing climatic
-conditions, or of migration to different regions, allowed time
-for systems of ethics to make the necessary adjustment.
-Now we face a new threat to our survival. The proliferation
-of human beings, coupled with the by-products of economic
-growth, is just as capable as the old threats of wiping out our
-society - and every other society as well. No ethic has yet developed
-to cope with this threat. Some ethical principles that
-we do have are exactly the opposite of what we need. The
-problem is that, as we have already seen, ethical principles
-change slowly and the time we have left to develop a new
-environmental ethic is short. Such an ethic would regard every
-action that is harmful to the environment as ethically dubious,
-and those that are unnecessarily harmful as plainly wrong. That
-is the serious point behind my remark in the first chapter that
-the moral issues raised by driving a car are more serious than
-those raised by sexnal behaviour. An environmental ethic would
-find virtue in saving and recycling resources, and vice in extravagance
-and unnecessary consumption. To take just one example:
-from the perspective of an environmental ethic, our
-choice of recreation is not ethically neutral. At present we see
-the choice between motor car racing or cycling, between water
-skiing or windsurfing, as merely a matter of taste. Yet there is
-an essential difference: motor car racing and water skiing require
-the consumption of fossil fuels and the discharge of carbon
-dioxide into the atmosphere. Cycling and windsurfing do not.
-Once we take the need to preserve our environment seriously,
-motor racing and water skiing will no more be an acceptable
-form of entertainment than bear-baiting is today.
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-Practical Ethics
-The broad outlines of a truly environmental ethic are easy to
-discern. At its most fundamental level, such an ethic fosters
-consideration for the interests of all sentient creatures, including
-subsequent generations stretching into the far future. It is accompanied
-by an aesthetic of appreciation for wild places and
-unspoiled nature. At a more detailed level, applicable to the
-lives of dwellers in cities and towns, it discourages large families.
-(Here it forms a sharp contrast to some existing ethical beliefs
-that are relics of an age in which the earth was far more lightly
-populated; it also offers a counterweight to the implication of
-the 'total' version of utilitarianism discussed in Chapter 4.) An
-environmental ethic rejects the ideals of a materialist society in
-which success is gauged by the number of consumer goods one
-can accumulate. Instead it judges success in terms of the development
-of one's abilities and the achievement of real fulfilment
-and satisfaction. It promotes frugality, in so far as that is
-necessary for minimising pollution and ensuring that everything
-that can be re-used is re-used. Carelessly to throw out material
-that can be recycled is a form of vandalism or the theft of our
-common property in the resources of the world. Thus the various
-'green consumer' guides and books about things we can
-do to save our planet - recycling what we use and buying the
-most environmentally friendly products available - are part of
-the new ethic that is required. Even they may prove to be only
-an interim solution, a stepping-stone to an ethic in which the
-very idea of consuming unnecessary products is questioned.
-Wind-surfing may be better than water-skiing, but if we keep
-on buying new boards in order to be up to date with the latest
-trends in board and sail designs, the difference is only marginal.
-We must re-assess our notion of extravagance. In a world
-under pressure, this concept is not confined to chauffeured limousines
-and Dom Perignon champagne. Timber that has come
-from a rainforest is extravagant, because the long-term value
-of the rainforest is far greater than the uses to which the timber
-is put. Disposable paper products are extravagant, because an-
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-cient hardwood forests are being converted into wood-chips
-and sold to paper manufacturers. 'Going for a drive in the country'
-is an extravagant use of fossil fuels that contributes to the
-greenhouse effect. During the Second World War, when petrol
-was scarce, posters asked: 'Is your journey really necessary?'
-The appeal to national solidarity against a visible and immediate
-danger was highly effective. The danger to our environment is
-less immediate and much harder to see, but the need to cut out
-unnecessary journeys and other forms of unnecessary consumption
-is just as great.
-As far as food is concerned, the great extravagance is not
-caviar or truffles, but beef, pork, and poultry. Some 38 per cent
-of the world's grain crop is now fed to animals, as well as large
-quantities of soybeans. There are three times as many domestic
-animals on this planet as there are human beings. The combined
-weight of the world's 1.28 billion cattle alone exceeds that of
-the human population. While we look darkly at the number of
-babies being born in poorer parts of the world, we ignore the
-over-population of farm animals, to which we ourselves contribute.
-The prodigious waste of grain that is fed to intensively
-farmed animals has already been mentioned in Chapters 3 and
-8. That, howe~er, is only part of the damage done by the animals
-we deliberately breed. The energy-intensive factory farming
-methods of the industrialised nations are responsible for the
-consumption of huge amounts of fossil fuels. Chemical fertilisers,
-used to grow the feed crops for cattle in feedlots and pigs
-and chickens kept indoors in sheds, produce nitrous oxide, another
-greenhouse gas. Then there is the loss of forests. Everywhere,
-forest dwellers, both human and non-human, are being
-pushed out. Since 1960, 25 per cent of the forests of Central
-America have been cleared for cattle. Once cleared, the poor
-soils will support grazing for a few years; then the graziers must
-move on. Scrub takes over the abandoned pasture, but the forest
-does not return. When the forests are cleared so that cattle can
-graze, billions of tons of carbon dioxide are released into the
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-Pradical Ethics
-atmosphere. Finally, the world's cattle are thought to produce
-about 20 per cent of the methane released into the atmosphere,
-and methane traps twenty-five times as much heat from the
-sun as carbon dioxide. Factory farm manure also produces
-methane because, unlike manured dropped naturally in the
-fields, it does not decompose in the presence of oxygen. All of
-this amounts to a compelling reason, additional to that developed
-in Chapter 3, for a largely plant-based diet.
-The emphasis on frugality and a simple life does not mean
-that an environmental ethic frowns upon pleasure, but that the
-pleasures it values do not come from conspicuous consumption.
-They come, instead, from warm personal and sexual relationships,
-from being close to children and friends, from conversation,
-from sports and recreations that are in harmony with
-our environment instead of being harmful to it; from food that
-is not based on the exploitation of sentient creatures and does
-not cost the earth; from creative activity and work of all kinds;
-and (with due care so as not to ruin precisely what is valued)
-from appreciating the unspoiled places in the world in which
-we live.
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-II
-ENDS AND MEANS
-WE have examined a number of ethical issues. We have
-seen that many accepted practices are open to serious
-objections. What ought we to do about it? This, too, is an ethical
-issue. Here are four actual cases to consider.
-Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist. During the war
-he ran a factory near Cracow, in Poland. At a time when Polish
-Jews were being sent to death camps, he assembled a labour
-force of Jewish inmates from concentration camps and the
-ghetto, considerably larger than his factory needed, and used
-several illegal strategems, including bribing members of the SS
-and other offi~ials, to protect them. He spent his own money
-to buy food on the black market to supplement the inadequate
-official rations he obtained for his workers. By these methods
-he was able to save the lives of about 1,200 people.
-In 1984 Dr Thomas Gennarelli directed a Head Injury
-Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia.
-Members of an underground organisation called the Animal
-Liberation Front knew that Gennarelli inflicted head injuries
-on monkeys there and had been told that the monkeys underwent
-the experiments without being properly anaesthetised.
-They also knew that Gennarelli and his collaborators videotaped
-their experiments, to provide a record of what happened
-during and after the injuries they inflicted. They tried to obtain
-further information through official channels but were unsuccessful.
-In May 1984, they broke into the laboratory at
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-Practical Ethics
-night and found thirty-four videotapes. They then systematically
-destroyed laboratory equipment before leaving with the
-tapes. The tapes clearly showed conscious monkeys struggling
-as they were being strapped to an operating table where head
-injuries were inflicted; they also showed experimenters mocking
-and laughing at frightened animals about to be used in
-experiments. When an edited version of the tapes was released
-to the public, it produced widespread revulsion. Nevertheless,
-it took a further year of protests, culminating in a sitin
-at the headquarters of the government organisation that
-was funding Gennarelli's experiments, before the u.s. Secretary
-of Health and Human Services ordered the experiments
-stopped.
-In 1986 Joan Andrews entered an abortion clinic in Pensacola,
-Florida, and damaged a suction abortion apparatus. She refused
-to be represented in court, on the grounds that 'the true
-defendants, the pre-born children, received none, and were
-killed without due process'. Andrews was a supporter of Operation
-Rescue, an American organisation that takes its name,
-and its authority to act, from the biblical injunction to 'rescue
-those who are drawn toward death and hold back those stumbling
-to the slaughter'. Operation Rescue uses civil disobedience
-to shut down abortion clinics, thus, in its view, 'sparing
-the lives of unborn babies whom the Rescuers are morally
-pledged to defend'. Participants block the doors of the clinics
-to prevent physicians and pregnant women seeking abortion
-from entering. They attempt to dissuade pregnant women from
-approaching the clinic by 'sidewalk counselling' on the nature
-of abortion. Gary Leber, an Operation Rescue director, has
-said that, between 1987 and 1989 alone, as a direct result of
-such 'rescue missions', at least 421 women changed their
-minds about having abortions, and the children of these
-women, who would have been killed, are alive today.
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-Ends and Means
-In 1976 Bob Brown, then a young medical practitioner, rafted
-down the Franklin river, in Tasmania's southwest. The wild
-beauty of the river and the peace of the undisturbed forests
-around it impressed him deeply. Then, around a bend on the
-lower reaches of the river, he came across workers for the
-Hydro-Electric Commission, studying the feasibility of building
-a dam across the river. Brown gave up his medical practice
-and founded the Tasmanian Wilderness Society, with the object
-of protecting the state's remaining wilderness areas. Despite
-vigorous campaigning, the Hydro-Electric Commission recommended
-the building of the dam, and after some vacillation the
-state government, with support both from the business community
-and the labour unions, decided to go ahead. The Tasmanian
-Wilderness Society organized a non-violent blockade
-of the road being built to the dam site. In 1982, Brown, along
-with many others, was arrested and jailed for four days for
-trespassing on land controlled by the Hydro-Electric Commission.
-But the blockade became a focus of national attention,
-and although the Australian federal government was not direcdy
-responsible for the dam, it became an issue in the federal
-election that was then due. The Australian Labor Party, in opposition
-before the election, pledged to explore constitutional
-means of preventing the dam from going ahead. The election
-saw the Labor party elected to office, and legislation passed to
-stop the dam. Though challenged by the Tasmanian government,
-the legislation was upheld by a narrow majority of the
-High Court of Australia on the grounds that the Tasmanian
-southwest was a World Heritage area, and the federal government
-had constitutional powers to uphold the international
-treaty creating the World Heritage Commission. Today the
-Franklin still runs free.
-Do we have an overriding obligation to obey the law? Oskar
-Schindler, the members of the Animal Liberation Front who
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-Practical Ethics
-took Gennarelli's videotapes, Joan Andrews of Operation Rescue,
-and Bob Brown and those who joined him in front of the
-bulldozers in Tasmania's southwest were all breaking the law.
-Were they all acting wrongly?
-The question cannot be dealt with by invoking the simplistic
-formula: 'the end never justifies the means'. For all but the
-strictest adherent of an ethic of rules, the end sometimes does
-justify the means. Most people think that lying is wrong, other
-things being equal, yet think it right to lie in order to avoid
-causing unnecessary offence or embarrassment - for instance,
-when a well-meaning relative gives you a hideous vase for your
-birthday, and then asks if you really like it. If this relatively
-trivial end can justify lying, it is even more obvious that some
-important end - preventing a murder, or saving animals from
-great suffering - can justify lying. Thus the principle that the
-end cannot justify the means is easily breached. The difficult
-issue is not whether the end can ever justify the means, but
-which means are justified by which ends.
-INDIVIDUAL CONSCIENCE AND THE LAW
-There are many people who are opposed to damming wild
-rivers, to the exploitation of animals, or to abortion, but who
-do not break the law in order to stop these activities. No doubt
-some members of the more conventional conservation, animal
-liberation, and anti-abortion organizations do not commit illegal
-acts because they do not wish to be fined or imprisoned; but
-others would be prepared to take the consequences of illegal
-acts. They refrain only because they respect and obey the moral
-authority of the law.
-Who is right in this ethical disagreement? Are we under any
-moral obligation to obey the law, if the law protects and sanctions
-things we hold utterly wrong? A clear-cut answer to this
-question was given by the nineteenth-century American radical,
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-Ends and Means
-Henry Thoreau. In his essay entitled 'Civil Disobedience' - perhaps
-the first use of this now-familiar phrase - he wrote:
-Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign
-his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience,
-then? I think we should be men first and subjects afterwards. It
-is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for
-the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is
-to do at any time what I think right.
-The American philosopher Robert Paul Wolff has written in
-similar vein:
-The defining mark of the state is authority, the right to rule. The
-primary obligation of man is autonomy, the refusal to be ruled,
-It would seem, then, that there can be no resolution of the conflict
-between the autonomy of the individual and the putative authority
-of the state. Insofar as a man fulfills his obligation to
-make himself the author of his decisions, he will resist the state's
-claim to have authority over him.
-Thoreau and Wolff resolve the conflict between individual and
-society in favour of the individual. We should do as our conscience
-dIctates, as we autonomously decide we ought to do:
-not as the law directs. Anything else would be a denial of our
-capacity for ethical choice.
-Thus stated, the issue looks straightforward and the ThoreauWolff
-answer obviously right. So Oskar Schindler, the Animal
-Liberation Front, Joan Andrews, and Bob Brown were fully
-justified in doing what they saw to be right, rather than what
-the state laid down as lawful. But is it that simple? There is a
-sense in which it is undeniable that, as Thoreau says, we ought
-to do what we think right; or, as Wolff puts it, make ourselves
-the authors of our decisions. Faced with a choice between doing
-what we think right and what we think wrong, of course we
-ought to do what we think right. But this, though true, is not
-much help. What we need to know is not whether we should
-do what we decide to be right, but how we should decide what
-is right.
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-Practical Ethics
-Think about the difference of opinion between members of
-groups like the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and more lawabiding
-members of an organization like Britain's Royal Society
-for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA): ALF members
-think inflicting pain on animals is, unless justified by extraordinary
-circumstances, wrong, and if the best way to stop
-it is by breaking the law then they think that breaking the law
-is right. RSPCA members - let us assume - also think that
-inflicting pain on animals is normally wrong, but they think
-breaking the law is wrong, too, and they think that the wrongness
-of breaking the law cannot be justified by the goal of stopping
-the unjustifiable infliction of pain on animals. Now suppose
-there are people opposed to inflicting pain on animals who are
-uncertain whether they should join the militant lawbreakers or
-the more orthodox animal welfare group. How does telling these
-people to do what they think right, or to be the author of their
-own decisions, resolve their uncertainty? The uncertainty is an
-uncertainty about what is the right thing to do, not about
-whether to do what one has decided to be right.
-This point can be obscured by talk of 'following one's conscience'
-irrespective of what the law commands. Some who talk
-of 'following conscience' mean no more than doing what, on
-reflection, one thinks right - and this may, as in the case of our
-imagined RSPCA members, depend on what the law commands.
-Others mean by 'conscience' not something dependent
-on critical reflective judgment, but a kind of internal voice that
-tells us that something is wrong and may continue to tell us
-this despite our careful reflective decision, based on all the relevant
-ethical considerations, that the action is not wrong. In
-this sense of 'conscience' an unmarried woman brought up as
-a strict Roman Catholic to believe that sex outside marriage is
-always wrong may abandon her religion and come to hold that
-there is no sound basis for restricting sex to marriage - yet
-continue to feel guilty when she has sex. She may refer to these
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-Ends and Means
-guilt feelings as her 'conscience' but if that is her conscience,
-should she follow it?
-To say that we should follow our conscience is unobjectionable
-- and unhelpful - when 'following conscience' means
-doing what, on reflection, one thinks right. When 'following
-conscience' means doing as one's 'internal voice' prompts one
-to do, however, to follow one's conscience is to abdicate one's
-responsibility as a rational agent, to fail to take all the relevant
-factors into account and act on one's best judgment of the rights
-and wrongs of the situation. The 'internal voice' is more likely
-to be a product of one's upbringing and education than a source
-of genuine ethical insight.
-Presumably neither Thoreau nor Wolff wish to suggest that
-we should always follow our conscience in the 'internal voice'
-sense. They must mean, if their views are to be at all plausible,
-that we should follow our judgment about what we ought to
-do. In this case the most that can be said for their recommendations
-is that they remind us that decisions about obeying the
-law are'ethical decisions that the law itself cannot settle for us.
-We should not assume, without reflection, that if the law prohibits,
-say, stealing videotapes from laboratories, it is always
-wrong to do so - any more than we should assume that if the
-law prohibits hiding Jews from the Nazis, it is wrong to do so.
-Law and ethics are distinct. At the same time, this does not
-mean that the law carries no moral weight. It does not mean
-that any action that would have been right if it had been legal
-must be right although it is in fact illegal. That an action is illegal
-may be of ethicaL as well as legaL significance. Whether it really
-is ethically significant is a separate question.
-LA W AND ORDER
-If we think that a practice is seriously wrong, and if we have
-the courage and ability to disrupt this practice by breaking the
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-Practical Ethics
-law, how could the illegality of this action provide an ethical
-reason against it? To answer a question as specific as this, we
-should first ask a more general one: why have laws at all?
-Human beings are social in nature, but not so social that we
-do not need to protect ourselves against the risk of being assaulted
-or killed by our fellow humans. We might try to do this
-by forming vigilante organizations to prevent assaults and punish
-those who commit them; but the results would be haphazard
-and liable to grow into gang warfare. Thus it is desirable to
-have, as John Locke said long ago, 'an established, settled,
-known law', interpreted by an authoritative judge and backed
-with sufficient power to carry out the judge's decisions.
-If people voluntarily refrained from assaulting others, or acting
-in other ways inimical to a harmonious and happy social existence,
-we might manage without judges and sanctions. We
-would still need law-like conventions about such matters as
-which side of the road one drives on. Even an anarchist utopia
-would have some settled principles of cooperation. So we would
-have something rather like law. In reality, not everyone is going
-to voluntarily refrain from behaviour, like assaults, that others
-cannot tolerate. Nor is it only the danger of individual acts like
-assaults that make law necessary. In any society there will be disputes:
-about how much water farmers may take from the river to
-irrigate their crops, about the ownership of land, or the custody
-of a child, about the control of pollution, and the level of taxation.
-Some settled decision-procedure is necessary for resolving
-such disputes economically and speedily, or else the parties to the
-dispute are likely to resort to force. Almost any established decision-
-procedure is better than a resort to force, for when force is
-used people get hurt. Moreover, most decision-procedures produce
-results at least as beneficial and just as a resort to force.
-So laws and a settled decision-procedure to generate them
-are a good thing. This gives rise to one important reason for
-obeying the law. By obeying the law, I can contribute to the
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-respect in which the established decision-procedure and the
-laws are held. By disobeying I set an example to others that
-may lead them to disobey too. The effect may multiply and
-contribute to a decline in law and order. In an extreme case it
-may lead to civil war.
-A second reason for obedience follows immediately from this
-first. If law is to be effective - outside the anarchist's utopia -
-there must be some machinery for detecting and penalizing lawbreakers.
-This machinery will cost something to maintain and
-operate, and the cost will have to be met by the community. If
-I break the law the community will be put to the expense of
-enforcement.
-These two reasons for obeying the law are neither universally
-applicable nor conclusive. They are not, for instance, applicable
-to breaches of the law that remain secret. If, late at night when
-the streets are deserted, I cross the road against the red light,
-there is no one to be led into disobedience by my example, and
-no one to enforce the law against so crossing. But this is not
-the kind of illegality we are interested in.
-Where they are applicable, these two reasons for obedience
-are not conclusive, because there are times when the reasons
-against obeying a particular law are more important than the
-risks of encouraging others to disobey or the costs to the community
-of enforcing the law. They are genuine reasons for obeying,
-and in the absence of reasons for disobeying, are sufficient
-to resolve the issue in favour of obedience; but where there are
-conflicting reasons, we must assess each case on its merits in
-order to see if the reasons for disobeying outweigh these reasons
-for obedience. If, for instance, illegal acts were the only way of
-preventing many painful experiments on animals, of saving significant
-areas of wilderness, or of prodding governments into
-increasing overseas aid, the importance of the ends would justify
-running some risk of contributing to a general decline in obedience
-to law.
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-DEMOCRACY
-At this point some will say: the difference between Oskar Schindler's
-heroic deeds and the indefensible illegal actions of the
-Animal Liberation Front, Operation Rescue, and the opponents
-of the Franklin dam is that in Nazi Germany there were no legal
-channels that Schindler could use to bring about change. In a
-democracy there are legal means of ending abuses. The existence
-of legal procedures for changing the law makes the use of illegal
-means unjustifiable.
-It is true that in democratic societies there are legal procedures
-that can be used by those seeking reforms; but this in itself does
-not show that the use of illegal means is wrong. Legal channels
-may exist, but the prospects of using them to bring about change
-in the foreseeable future may be very poor. While one makes
-slow and painful progress - or perhaps no progress at all -
-through these legal channels, the indefensible wrongs one is
-trying to stop will be continuing. Prior to the successful struggle
-to save the Franklin River, an earlier political campaign had
-been fought against another dam proposed by the Tasmanian
-Hydro-Electric Commission. This dam was opposed because it
-would flood a pristine alpine lake, Lake Peddar, situated in a
-national park. This campaign employed more orthodox political
-tactics. It failed, and Lake Peddar disappeared under the waters
-of the dam. Dr Thomas Gennarelli's laboratory had carried out
-experiments for several years before the Animal Liberation Front
-raided it. Without the evidence ofthe stolen videotapes, it would
-probably still be functioning today. Similarly, Operation Rescue
-was founded after fourteen years of more conventional political
-action had failed to reverse the permissive legal situation regarding
-abortion that has existed in the United States since the
-Supreme Court declared restrictive abortion laws unconstitutional
-in 1973. During that period, according to Operation Rescue's
-Gary Leber, 'twenty-five million Americans have been
-"legally" killed'. From this perspective it is easy to see why the
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-Ends and Means
-existence of legal channels for change does not solve the moral
-dilemma. An extremely remote possibility of legal change is not
-a strong reason against using means more likely to succeed. The
-most that can follow from the mere existence oflegitimate channels
-is that, since we cannot know whether they will prove
-successful until we have tried them, their existence is a reason
-for postponing illegal acts until legal means have been tried and
-have failed.
-Here the upholder of democratic laws can try another tack:
-if legal means fail to bring about reform, it shows that the
-proposed reform does not have the approval of the majority of
-the electorate; and to attempt to implement the reform by illegal
-means against the wishes of the majority would be a violation
-of the central principle of democracy, majority rule.
-The militant can challenge this argument on two grounds,
-one factual and the other philosophical. The factual claim in
-the democrat's argument is that a reform that cannot be implemented
-by legal means lacks the approval of the majority of
-the electorate. Perhaps this would hold in a direct democracy,
-in which the whole electorate voted on each issue; but it is
-certainly not always true of modem representative democracies.
-There is no way of ensuring that on any given issue a majority
-of representatives will take the same view as a majority of their
-constituents. One can be reasonably confident that a majority
-of those Americans who saw, on television, excerpts from Gennarelli's
-videotapes would not have supported the experiments.
-But that is not how decisions are made in a democracy. In
-choosing between representatives - or in choosing between political
-parties - voters elect to take one 'package deal' in preference
-to other package deals on offer. It will often happen that
-in order to vote for policies they favour, voters must go along
-with other policies they are not keen on. It will also happen
-that policies voters favour are not offered by any major party.
-In the case of abortion in the United States, the crucial decision
-was not made by a majority of voters, but by the Supreme Court.
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-Practical Ethics
-It cannot be overturned by a simple majority of the electors, but
-only by the Court itself, or by the complicated procedure of a
-constitutional amendment, which can be thwarted by a minority
-of the electorate.
-What if a majority did approve of the wrong that the militants
-wish to stop? Would it then be wrong to use illegal means?
-Here we have the philosophical claim underlying the democratic
-argument for obedience, the claim that we ought to accept the
-majority decision.
-The case for majority rule should not be overstated. No sensible
-democrat would claim that the majority is always right. If
-49 per cent of the population can be wrong, so can 51 per cent.
-Whether the majority supports the views of the Animal Liberation
-Front or of Operation Rescue does not settle the question
-whether these views are morally sound. Perhaps the fact that
-these groups are in a minority - if they are - means that they
-should reconsider their means. With a majority behind them,
-they could claim to be acting with democratic principles on their
-side, using illegal means to overcome flaws in the democratic
-machinery. Without that majority, all the weight of democratic
-tradition is against them and it is they who appear as coercers,
-trying to force the majority into accepting something against its
-will. But how much moral weight should we give to democratic
-principles?
-Thoreau, as we might expect, was not impressed by majority
-decision making. 'All voting: he wrote, 'is a sort of gaming,
-like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a
-playing with right and wrong, with moral questions: In a sense
-Thoreau was right. If we reject, as we must, the doctrine that
-the majority is always right, to submit moral issues to the vote
-is to gamble that what we believe to be right will come out of
-the ballot with more votes behind it than what we believe to
-be wrong; and that is a gamble we will often lose.
-Nevertheless we should not be too contemptuous about voting,
-or gambling either. Cowboys who agree to play poker to
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-decide matters of honour do better than cowboys who continue
-to settle such matters in the traditional Western manner. A
-society that decides its controversial issues by ballots does better
-than one that uses bullets. To some extent this is a point we
-have already encountered, under the heading 'law and order'.
-It applies to any society with an established, peaceful method
-of resolving disputes; but in a democracy there is a subtle difference
-that gives added weight to the outcome of the decisionprocedure.
-A method of settling disputes in which no one has
-greater ultimate power than anyone else is a method that can
-be recommended to all as a fair compromise between competing
-claims to power. Any other method must give greater power to
-some than to others and thereby invites opposition from those
-who have less. That, at least, is true in the egalitarian age in
-which we live. In a feudal society in which people accept as
-natural and proper their status as lord or vassal there is no
-challenge to the feudal lord and no compromise would be
-needed. (I am thinking of an ideal feudal system, as I am thinking
-of an ideal democracy.) Those times, however, seem to be
-gone forever. The breakdown of traditional authority created a
-need for political compromise. Among possible compromises,
-giving one vote to each person is uniquely acceptable to all. As
-such, in the absence of any agreed procedure for deciding on
-some other distribution of power, it offers, in principle, the
-firmest possible basis for a peaceful method of settling disputes.
-To reject majority rule, therefore, is to reject the best possible
-basis for the peaceful ordering of society in an egalitarian age.
-Where else should one tum? To a meritocratic franchise, with
-extra votes for the more intelligent or better educated, as John
-Stuart Mill once proposed? But could we agree on who merits
-extra votes? To a benevolent despot? Many would accept that
-- if they could choose the despot. In practice the likely outcome
-of abandoning majority rule is none of these: it is the rule of
-those who command the greatest force.
-So the principle of majority rule does carry substantial moral
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-weight. Disobedience is easier to justify in a dictatorship like
-Nazi Germany than in a democracy like those of North America,
-Europe, India, Japan, or Australia today. In a democracy we
-should be reluctant to take any action that amounts to an attempt
-to coerce the majority, for such attempts imply the rejection
-of majority rule and there is no acceptable alternative
-to that. There may, of course, be cases where the majority decision
-is so appalling that coercion is justified, whatever the risk.
-The obligation to obey a genuine majority decision is not absolute.
-We show our respect for the principle not by blind obedience
-to the majority, but by regarding ourselves as justified
-in disobeying only in extreme circumstances.
-DISOBEDIENCE, CIVIL OR OTHERWISE
-If we draw together our conclusions on the use of illegal means
-to achieve laudable ends, we shall find that: (1) there are reasons
-why we should normally accept the verdict of an established
-peaceful method of settling disputes; (2) these reasons are particularly
-strong when the decision-procedure is democratic and
-the verdict represents a genuine majority view; but (3) there
-are still situations in which the use of illegal means can be
-justified.
-We have seen that there are two distinct ways in which one
-might try to justify the use of illegal means in a society that is
-democratic (even if imperfectly so, as, to varying degrees, existing
-democracies are). The first is on the grounds that the
-decision one is objecting to is not a genuine expression of majority
-opinion. The second is that although the decision is a
-genuine expression of the majority view, this view is so seriously
-wrong that action against the majority is justified.
-It is disobedience on the first ground that best merits the name
-'civil disobedience'. Here the use of illegal means can be regarded
-as an extension of the use of legal means to secure a
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-genuinely democratic decision. The extension may be necessary
-because the normal channels for securing reform are not working
-properly. On some issues parliamentary representatives are
-overly influenced by skilled and well-paid special interests. On
-others the public is unaware of what is happening. Perhaps the
-abuse requires administrative, rather than legislative change,
-and the bureaucrats of the civil service have refused to be inconvenienced.
-Perhaps the legitimate interests of a minority are
-being ignored by prejudiced officials. In all these cases, the nowstandard
-forms of civil disobedience - passive resistance,
-marches, or sit-ins - are appropriate. The blockade of the HydroElectric
-Commission's road into the site ofthe proposed Franklin
-river dam was a classic case of civil disobedience in this sense.
-In these situations disobeying the law is not an attempt to
-coerce the majority. Instead disobedience attempts to inform the
-majority; or to persuade parliamentarians that large numbers
-of electors feel very strongly about the issue; or to draw national
-attention to an issue previously left to bureaucrats; or to appeal
-for reconsideration of a decision too hastily made. Civil disobedience
-is an appropriate means to these ends when legal
-means have failed, because, although it is illegal. it does not
-threaten the majority or attempt to coerce them (though it will
-usually impose some extra costs on them, for example for law
-enforcement). By not resisting the force ofthe law, by remaining
-non-violent and by accepting the legal penalty for their actions,
-civil disobedients make manifest both the sincerity of their protest
-and their respect for the rule of law and the fundamental
-principles of democracy.
-So conceived, civil disobedience is not difficult to justify. The
-justification does not have to be strong enough to override the
-obligation to obey a democratic decision, since disobedience is
-an attempt to restore, rather than frustrate, the process of democratic
-decision making. Disobedience of this kind could be
-justified by, for instance, the aim of making the public aware
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-Practical Ethics
-of the loss of irreplaceable wilderness caused by the construction
-of a dam, or of how animals are treated in the laboratories and
-factory farms that few people ever see.
-The use of illegal means to prevent action undeniably in accordance
-with the majority view is harder - but not impossible
-- to justify. We may think it unlikely that a Nazi-style policy
-of genocide could ever be approved by a majority vote, but if
-that were to happen it would be carrying respect for majority
-rule to absurd lengths to regard oneself as bound to accept the
-majority decision. To oppose evils of that magnitude, we are
-justified in using virtually any means likely to be effective.
-Genocide is an extreme case. To grant that it justifies the use
-of illegal means even against a majority concedes very little in
-terms of practical political action. Yet admitting even one exception
-to the obligation to abide by democratic decisions raises
-further questions: where is the line to be drawn between evils
-like genocide, where the obligation is clearly overridden, and
-less serious issues, where it is not? And who is to decide on
-which side of this imaginary line a particular issue falls? Gary
-Leber, of Operation Rescue, has written that in the United States
-alone, since 1973, 'We've already destroyed four times the number
-of people that Hitler did: Ronnie Lee, one of the British
-founders of the Animal Liberation Front, has also used the Nazi
-metaphor for what we do to animals, saying: 'Although we are
-only one species among many on earth, we've set up a Reich
-totally dominating the other animals, even enslaving them: It
-is not surprising then, that these activists consider their disobedience
-well justified. But do they have the right to take this
-decision themselves? If not, who is to decide when an issue is
-so serious that, even in a democracy, the obligation to obey the
-law is overridden?
-The only answer this question can have is: we must decide
-for ourselves on which side of the line particular cases fall. There
-is no other way of deciding, since the society's method of settling
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-Ends and Means
-issues has already made its decision. The majority cannot be
-judge in its own case. If we think the majority decision wrong,
-we must make up our own minds about how gravely it is wrong.
-This does not mean that any decision we make on such an
-issue is subjective or arbitrary. In this book, I have offered arguments
-about a number of moral issues. If we apply these
-arguments to the four cases with which this chapter began, they
-lead to specific conclusions. The racist Nazi policy of murdering
-Jews was obviously an atrocity, and Oskar Schindler was entirely
-right to do what he could to save some Jews from falling
-victim to it. (Given the personal risks he ran, he was also morally
-heroic to do so.) On the basis of the arguments put forward in
-Chapter 3 of this book, the experiments that Gennarelli conducted
-on monkeys were wrong, because they treated sentient
-creatures as mere things to be used as research tools. To stop
-such experiments is a desirable goal, and if breaking in to Gennarelli's
-laboratory and stealing his videotapes was the only way
-to achieve it, that seems to me justifiable. Similarly, for reasons
-explored in Chapter 10, to drown the Franklin valley in order
-to generate a relatively small amount of electricity could only
-have been based on values that were unjustifiable both for taking
-a short-term perspective, and for being overly humancentred.
-Civil disobedience was an appropriate means of testifying
-to the importance of the values that had been overlooked
-by those who favoured the dam.
-At the same time, the arguments that lie behind Operation
-Rescue's activities were found to be flawed when they were
-examined in Chapter 6. The human fetus is not entitled to the
-same sort of protection as older human beings, and so those
-who think of abortion as morally equivalent to murder are
-wrong. On this basis, Operation Rescue's campaign of civil disobedience
-against abortion is not justifiable. But it is important
-to realise that the mistake lies in Operation Rescue's moral
-reasoning about abortion, not in their moral reasoning about
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-Practical Ethics
-civil disobedience. If abortion really were morally equivalent to
-murder, we all ought to be out there blocking the doors to the
-abortion clinics.
-This makes life difficult, of course. It is not likely that members
-of Operation Rescue will be convinced by the arguments in this
-book. Their reliance on biblical quotations does not augur well
-for their openness to moral reasoning on non-religious grounds.
-So there is no easy way of convincing them that their civil
-disobedience is unjustified. We may regret this, but there is
-nothing to be done about it. There is no simple moral rule that
-will enable us to declare when disobedience is justifiable and
-when it is not, without going into the rights and wrongs of the
-target of the disobedience.
-When we are convinced that we are trying to stop something
-that really is a serious moral wrong, we still have other moral
-questions to ask ourselves. We must balance the magnitude of
-the evil we are trying to stop against the possibility that our
-actions will lead to a drastic decline in respect for law and for
-democracy. We must also take into account the likelihood that
-our actions will fail in their objective and provoke a reaction
-that will reduce the chances of success by other means. (As, for
-instance, terrorist attacks on an oppressive regime provide the
-government with an ideal excuse to lock up its more moderate
-political opponents, or violent attacks on experimenters enable
-the research establishment to brand all critics of animal experimentation
-as terrorists.)
-One result of a consequentialist approach to this issue that
-may at first seem odd is that the more deeply ingrained the habit
-of obedience to democratic rule, the more easily disobedience
-can be defended. There is no paradox here, however, merely
-another instance of the homely truth that while young plants
-need to be cosseted, well-established specimens can take
-rougher treatment. Thus on a given issue disobedience might
-be justifiable in Britain or the United States but not in Cambodia
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-Ends and Means
-or Russia during the period when these countries seek to establish
-democratic systems of government.
-These issues cannot be settled in general terms. Every case
-differs. When the evils to be stopped are neither utterly horrendous
-(like genocide) nor relatively harmless (like the design
-for a new national flag), reasonable people will differ on the
-justifiability of attempting to thwart the implementation of a
-considered decision democratically reached. Where illegal
-means are used with this aim, an important step has been taken,
-for disobedience then ceases to be 'civil disobedience', if by that
-term is meant disobedience that is justified by an appeal to
-principles that the community itself accepts as the proper way
-of running its affairs. It may still be best for such obedience to
-be civil in the other sense of the term, which makes a contrast
-with the use of violence or the tactics of terrorism.
-VIOLENCE
-As we have seen, civil disobedience intended as a means of
-attracting publicity or persuading the majority to reconsider is
-much easier to justify than disobedience intended to coerce the
-majority. Violence is obviously harder still to defend. Some go
-so far as to say that the use of violence as a means, particularly
-violence against people, is never justified, no matter how good
-the end.
-Opposition to the use of violence can be on the basis of an
-absolute rule, or an assessment of its consequences. Pacifists
-have usually regarded the use of violence as absolutely wrong,
-irrespective of its consequences. This, like other 'no matter what'
-prohibitions, assumes the validity of the distinction between
-acts and omissions. Without this distinction, pacifists who refuse
-to use violence when it is the only means of preventing greater
-violence would be responsible for the greater violence they fail
-to prevent.
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-Practical Ethics
-Suppose we have an opportunity to assassinate a tyrant who
-is systematically murdering his opponents and anyone else he
-dislikes. We know that if the tyrant dies he will be replaced by
-a popular opposition leader, now in exile, who will restore the
-rule of law. If we say that violence is always wrong, and refuse
-to carry out the assassination, mustn't we bear some responsibility
-for the tyrant's future murders?
-If the objections made to the acts and omissions distinction
-in Chapter 7 were sound, those who do not use violence to
-prevent greater violence have to take responsibility for the violence
-they could have prevented, Thus the rejection of the acts
-and omissions distinction makes a crucial difference to the discussion
-of violence, for it opens the door to a plausible argument
-in defence of violence.
-Marxists have often used this argument to rebut attacks on
-their doctrine of the need for violent revolution. In his classic
-indictment of the social effects of nineteenth -century capitalism,
-The Condition of the Working Class in England, Engels wrote:
-If one individual inflicts a bodily injury upon another which
-leads to the death of the person attacked we call it manslaughter;
-on the other hand, if the attacker knows beforehand that the
-blow will be fatal we call it murder. Murder has also been committed
-if society places hundreds of workers in such a position
-that they inevitably come to premature and unnatural ends. Their
-death is as violent as if they had been stabbed or shot .... Murder
-has been committed if thousands of workers have been deprived
-ofthe necessities oflife or if they have been forced into a situation
-in which it is impossible for them to survive .... Murder has been
-committed if society knows perfectly well that thousands of
-workers cannot avoid being sacrificed so long as these conditions
-are allowed to continue. Murder of this sort is just as culpable
-as the murder committed by an individual. At first sight it does
-not appear to be murder at all because responsibility for the death
-ofthe victim cannot be pinned on any individual assailant. Everyone
-is responsible and yet no one is responsible, because it appears
-as if the victim has died from natural causes. If a worker
-dies no one places the responsibility for his death on society,
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-Ends and Means
-though some would realize that society has failed to take steps
-to prevent the victim from dying. But it is murder all the same.
-One might object to Engels's use of the term 'murder'. The
-objection would resemble the arguments discussed in Chapter
-8, when we considered whether our failure to aid the starving
-makes us murderers. We saw that there is no intrinsic significance
-in the distinction between acts and omissions; but from
-the point 'of view of motivation and the appropriateness of
-blame, most cases of failing to prevent death are not equivalent
-to murder. The same would apply to the cases Engels describes.
-Engels tries to pin the blame on 'society', but 'society' is not a
-person or a moral agent, and cannot be held responsible in the
-wayan individual can.
-Still, this is nit-picking. Whether or not 'murder' is the right
-term, whether or not we are prepared to describe as 'violent'
-the deaths of malnourished workers in unhealthy and unsafe
-factories, Engels's fundamental point stands. These deaths are
-a wrong of the same order of magnitude as the deaths of
-hundreds of people in a terrorist bombing would be. It would
-be one-sided to say that violent revolution is always absolutely
-wrong, without taking account of the evils that the revolutionaries
-are trying to stop. If violent means had been the only way
-of changing the conditions Engels describes, those who opposed
-the use of violent means would have been responsible for the
-continuation of those conditions.
-Some of the practices we have been discussing in this book
-are violent, either directly or by omission. In the case of nonhuman
-animals, our treatment is often violent by any description.
-Those who regard the human fetus as a moral subject will
-obviously consider abortion to be a violent act against it. In the
-case of humans at or after birth, what are we to say of an
-avoidable situation in which some countries have infant mortality
-rates eight times higher than others, and a person born
-in one country can expect to live twenty years more than someone
-born in another country? Is this violence? Again, it doesn't
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-Practical Ethics
-really matter whether we call it violence or not. In its effects it
-is as terrible as violence.
-Absolutist condemnations of violence stand or fall with the
-distinction between acts and omissions. Therefore they fall.
-There are, however, strong consequentialist objections to the
-use of violence. We have been premising our discussion on the
-assumption that violence might be the only means of changing
-things for the better. Absolutists have no interest in challenging
-this assumption because they reject violence whether the assumption
-is true or false. Consequentialists must ask whether
-violence ever is the only means to an important end, or, if not
-the only means, the swiftest means. They must also ask about
-the long-term effects of pursuing change by violent means.
-Could one defend, on consequentialist grounds, a condemnation
-of violence that is in practice, if not in principle, as allencompassing
-as that of the absolute pacifist? One might attempt
-to do so by emphasising the hardening effect that the use
-of violence has, how committing one murder, no matter how
-'necessary' or 'justified' it may seem, lessens the resistance to
-committing further murders. Is it likely that people who have
-become inured to acting violently will be able to create a better
-society? This is a question on which the historical record is
-relevant. The course taken by the Russian Revolution must
-shake the belief that a burning desire for social justice provides
-immunity to the corrupting effects of violence. There are, admittedly,
-other examples that may be read the other way; but
-it would take a considerable number of examples to outweigh
-the legacy of Lenin and Stalin.
-The consequentialist pacifist can use another argument - the
-argument I urged against the suggestion that we should allow
-starvation to reduce the populations of the poorest nations to
-the level at which they could feed themselves. Like this policy,
-violence involves certain harm, said to be justified by the prospects
-of future benefits. But the future benefits can never be
-certain, and even in the few cases where violence does bring
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-Ends and Means
-about desirable ends, we can rarely be sure that the ends could
-not have been achieved equally soon by non-violent means.
-What, for instance, has been achieved by the thousands of
-deaths and injuries caused by more than twenty years of the
-Irish Republican Army bombings in Northern Ireland? Only
-counter-terrorism by extremist Protestant groups. Or think of
-the wasted death and suffering caused by the Baader-Meinhoff
-gang in Germany, or the Red Brigade in Italy. What did the
-Palestinian Liberation Organization gain from terrorism, other
-than a less compromising, more ruthless Israel than the one
-against which they began their struggle? One may sympathize
-with the ends some of these groups are fighting for, but the
-means they are using hold no promise of gaining their ends.
-Using these means therefore indicates callous disregard of the
-interests of their victims. These consequentialist arguments add
-up to a strong case against the use of violence as a means,
-particularly when the violence is indiscriminately directed
-against ordinary members of the public, as terrorist violence
-often is. In practical terms, that kind of violence would seem
-never justified.
-There are other kinds of violence that cannot be ruled out so
-convincingly. There is, for instance, the assassination of a murderous
-tyrant. Here, provided the murderous policies are an
-expression of the tyrant's personality rather than part of the
-institutions he commands, the violence is strictly limited, the
-aim is the end of much greater violence, success from a single
-violent act may be highly probable, and there may be no other
-way of ending the tyrant's rule. It would be implausible for a
-consequentialist to maintain that committing violence in these
-circumstances would have a corrupting effect, or that more,
-rather than less, violence would result from the assassination.
-Violence may be limited in a different way. The cases we have
-been considering have involved violence against people. These
-are the standard cases that come to mind when we discuss
-violence, but there are other kinds of violence. Animal Liber-
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-Practical Ethics
-ation Front members have damaged laboratories, cages, and
-equipment used to confine, hurt, or kill animals, but they avoid
-violent acts against any animaL human or non-human. (Other
-organizations claiming to be acting on behalf of animals have,
-however, injured at least two people by explosive devices. These
-actions have been condemned by every well-known animal
-liberation organization, including the Animal Liberation Front.)
-Earth First!, a radical American environmentalist organization,
-advocates 'monkeywrenching' or 'ecotage' - secret acts designed
-to stop or slow down processes that are harmful to the
-environment. Dave Foreman and Bill Haywood of Earth First!
-have co-edited Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching, a
-book that describes techniques for disabling computers, wrecking
-machinery, and blocking sewerage systems. In their view:
-Monkeywrenching is a non-violent resistance to the destruction
-of natural diversity and wildemess. It is not aimed toward harming
-human beings or other forms of life. ft is aimed at inanimate
-machines and tools .... Monkeywrenchers are very conscious of
-the gravity of what they do. They are deliberate about taking
-such a serious step .... They remember that they are engaged in
-the most moral of all actions: protecting life, defending the Earth.
-A more controversial technique is 'spiking' trees in forests that
-are to be logged. Putting metal spikes in a few trees in a forest
-makes it dangerous to saw timber from the forest, because the
-workers at the sawmill can never know when the saw might
-hit a spike, breaking the saw and sending sharp pieces of metal
-flying around the working area. Ecological activists who support
-spiking say that they warn the tiniber companies that trees in
-a certain area have been spiked, and if they go ahead and log
-the forests, any injuries that occur are the responsibility of the
-timber company managers who made that decision. But it is
-the workers who will be hurt, not the managers. Can the activists
-really shed their responsibility in this way? More orthodox
-environmental activists reject such tactics.
-Damage to property is not as serious a matter as injuring or
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-Ends and Means
-killing; hence it may be justified on grounds that would not
-justify anything that caused harm to sentient beings. This does
-not mean that violence to property is of no significance. Property
-means a great deal to some people, and one would need to
-have strong reasons to justify destroying it. But such reasons
-may exist. The justification might not be anything so epochmaking
-as transforming society. As in the case of the raid on
-Gennarelli's laboratory, it might be the specific and short-term
-goal of saving a number of animals from a painful experiment,
-performed on animals only because of society's speciesist bias.
-Again, whether such an action would really be justifiable from
-a consequentialist point of view would depend on the details
-of the actual situation. Someone lacking expertise could easily
-be mistaken about the value of an experiment or the degree of
-suffering it involved. And will not the result of damaging equipment
-and liberating one lot of animals simply be that more
-equipment is bought and more animals are bred? What is to be
-done with the liberated animals? Will illegal acts mean that the
-government will resist moves to reform the law relating to animal
-experiments, arguing that it must not appear to be yielding
-to violence? All these questions would need to be answered
-satisfactorily before one could come to a decision in favour of,
-say, damaging a laboratory. A related set of questions must also
-be answered before one can justify damaging a bulldozer that
-is being used to clear an old-growth forest.
-Violence is not easy to justify, even if it is violence against
-property rather than against sentient beings, or violence against
-a dictator rather than indiscriminate violence against the general
-public. Nevertheless, the differences between kinds of violence
-are important, because only by observing them can we condemn
-one kind of violence - the terrorist kind - in virtually absolute
-terms. The differences are blurred by sweeping condemnations
-of everything that falls under the general heading 'violence'.
-313
-12
-WHY ACT MORALLY?
-PREVIOUS chapters of this book have discussed what we
-ought, morally, to do about several practical issues and what
-means we are justified in adopting to achieve our ethical goals.
-The nature of our conclusions about these issues - the demands
-they make upon us - raises a further, more fundamental question:
-why should we act morally?
-Take our conclusions about the use of animals for food, or
-the aid the rich should give the poor. Some readers may accept
-these conclusions, become vegetarians, and do what they can
-to reduce absolute poverty. Others may disagree with our conclusions,
-maintaining that there is nothing wrong with eating
-animals and that they are under no moral obligation to do
-anything about reducing absolute poverty. There is also, however,
-likely to be a third group, consisting of readers who find
-no fault with the ethical arguments of these chapters, yet do
-not change their diets or their contributions to overseas aid. Of
-this third group, some will just be weak-willed, but others may
-want an answer to a further practical question. If the conclusions
-of ethics require so much of us, they may ask, should we bother
-about ethics at all?
-UNDERSTANDING THE QUESTION
-'Why should I act morally?' is a different type of question from
-those that we have been discussing up to now. Questions like
-'Why should I treat people of different ethnic groups equally?'
-or 'Why is abortion justifiable?' seek ethical reasons for acting
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-Why Act Morally?
-in a certain way. These are questions within ethics. They presuppose
-the ethical point of view. 'Why should I act morally?'
-is on another level. It is not a question within ethics, but a
-question about ethics.
-'Why should I act morally?' is therefore a question aboutsomething
-normally presupposed. Such questions are perplexing.
-Some philosophers have found this particular question so
-perplexing that they have rejected it as logically improper, as
-an attempt to ask something that cannot properly be asked.
-One ground for this rejection is the claim that our ethical
-principles are, by definition, the principles we take as overridingly
-important. This means that whatever principles are
-overriding for a particular person are necessarily that person's
-ethical principles, and a person who accepts as an ethical principle
-that she ought to give her wealth to help the poor must,
-by definition, have actually decided to give away her wealth.
-On this definition of ethics once a person has made an ethical
-decision no further practical question can arise. Hence it is impossible
-to make sense of the question: 'Why should I act
-morally?'
-It might be thought a good reason for accepting the definition
-of ethics as overriding that it allows us to dismiss as meaningless
-an otherwise troublesome question. Adopting this definition
-cannot solve real problems, however, for it leads to correspondingly
-greater difficulties in establishing any ethical conclusion.
-Take, for example, the conclusion that the rich ought to aid the
-poor. We were able to argue for this in Chapter 8 only because
-we assumed that, as suggested in the first two chapters of this
-book, the universalisability of ethical judgments requires us to
-go beyond thinking only about our own interests, and leads us
-to take a point of view from which we must give equal consideration
-to the interests of all affected by our actions. We cannot
-hold that ethical judgments must be universalisable and at the
-same time define a person's ethical principles as whatever principles
-that person takes as overridingly important - for what if
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-Practical Ethics
-I take as overridingly important some non-universalisable principle
-like 'I ought to do whatever benefits me'? If we define
-ethical principles as whatever principles one takes as overriding,
-then anything whatever may count as an ethical principle, for
-one may take any principle whatever as overridingly important.
-Thus what we gain by being able to dismiss the question:'Why
-should I act morally?' we lose by being unable to use the universalisability
-of ethical judgments - or any other feature of
-ethics - to argue for particular conclusions about what is morally
-right. Taking ethics as in some sense necessarily involving a
-universal point of view seems to me a more natural and less
-confusing way of discussing these issues.
-Other philosophers have rejected 'Why should I act morally?'
-for a different reason. They think it must be rejected for the
-same reason that we must reject another question, 'Why should
-I be rational?' which like 'Why should I act morally?' also
-questions something - in this case rationality - normally presupposed.
-'Why should I be rational?' really is logically improper
-because in answering it we would be giving reasons for
-being rational. Thus we would presuppose rationality in our
-attempt to justify rationality. The resulting justification of rationality
-would be circular - which shows, not that rationality
-lacks a necessary justification, but that it needs no justification,
-because it cannot intelligibly be questioned unless it is already
-presupposed.
-Is 'Why should I act morally?' like 'Why should I be rational?'
-in that it presupposes the very point of view it questions? It
-would be, if we interpreted the 'should' as a moral 'should'.
-Then the question would ask for moral reasons for being moral.
-This would be absurd. Once we have decided that an action is
-morally obligatory, there is no further moral question to ask. It
-is redundant to ask why I should, morally, do the action that I
-morally should do.
-There is, however, no need to interpret the question as a
-request for an ethical justification of ethics. 'Should' need not
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-Why Act Morally?
-mean 'should, morally'. It could simply be a way of asking for
-reasons for action, without any specification about the kind of
-reasons wanted. We sometimes want to ask a general practical
-question, from no particular point of view. Faced with a difficult
-choice, we ask a close friend for advice. Morally, he says, we
-ought to do A, but B would be more in our interests, while
-etiquette demands C and only D would display a real sense of
-style. This answer may not satisfy us. We want advice on which
-of these standpoints to adopt. If it is possible to ask such a
-question we must ask it from a position of neutrality between
-all these points of view, not of commitment to anyone of them.
-'Why should I act morally?' is this sort of question. If it is
-not possible to ask practical questions without presupposing a
-point of view, we are unable to say anything intelligible about
-the most ultimate practical choices. Whether to act according
-to considerations of ethics, self-interest, etiquette, or aesthetics
-would be a choice 'beyond reason' - in a sense, an arbitrary
-choice. Before we resign ourselves to this conclusion we should
-at least attempt to interpret the question so that the mere asking
-of it does not commit us to any particular point of view.
-We can now formulate the question more precisely. It is a
-question about the ethical point of view, asked from a position
-outside it. But what is 'the ethical point of view'? I have suggested
-that a distinguishing feature of ethics is that ethical judgments
-are universalisable. Ethics requires us to go beyond our
-own personal point of view to a standpoint like that of the
-impartial spectator who takes a universal point of view.
-Given this conception of ethics, 'Why should I act morally?'
-is a question that may properly be asked by anyone wondering
-whether to act only on grounds that would be acceptable from
-this universal point of view. It is, after all, possible to act - and
-some people do act - without thinking of anything except one's
-own interests. The question asks for reasons for going beyond
-this personal basis of action and acting only on judgments one
-is prepared to prescribe universally.
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-Practical Ethics
-REASON AND ETHICS
-There is an ancient line of philosophical thought that attempts
-to demonstrate that to act rationally is to act ethically. The
-argument is today associated with Kant and is mainly found in
-the writings of modern Kantians, though it goes back as least
-as far as the Stoics. The form in which the argument is presented
-varies, but the common structure is as follows:
-Some requirement of universalisability or impartiality is essential
-to ethics.
-2 Reason is universally or objectively valid. If, for example, itfollows
-from the premises 'All humans are mortal' and 'Socrates
-is human' that Socrates is mortal, then this inference
-must follow universally. It cannot be valid for me and invalid
-for you. This is a general point about reason, whether theoretical
-or practical.
-Therefore:
-3 Only a judgment that satisfies the requirement described in
-( 1) as a necessary condition of an ethical judgment will be an
-objectively rational judgment in accordance with (2). For I
-cannot expect any other rational agents to accept as valid for
-them a judgment that I would not accept if I were in their
-place; and iftwo rational agents could not accept each other's
-judgments, they could not be rational judgments, for the reason
-given in (2). To say that I would accept the judgment I
-make, even if I were in someone else's position and they in
-mine is, however, simply to say that my judgment is one I
-can prescribe from a universal point of view. Ethics and reason
-both require us to rise above our own particular point of view
-and take a perspective from which our own personal identity
-- the role we happen to occupy - is unimportant. Thus reason
-requires us to act on universalisable judgments and, to that
-extent, to act ethically.
-Is this argument valid? I have already indicated that I accept
-the first point, that ethics involves universalisability. The second
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-Why Act Morally?
-point also seems undeniable. Reason must be universal. Does
-the conclusion therefore follow? Here is the flaw in the argument.
-The conclusion appears to follow directly from the premises;
-but this move involves a slide from the limited sense in
-which it is true that a rational judgment must be universally
-valid, to a stronger sense of 'universally valid' that is equivalent
-to universalisability. The difference between these two senses
-can be seen by considering a non-universalisable imperative,
-like the purely egoistic: 'Let everyone do what is in my interests:
-This differs from the imperative of universalisable egoism - 'Let
-everyone do what is in her or his own interests' - because it
-contains an ineliminable reference to a particular person. It
-therefore cannot be an ethical imperative. Does it also lack the
-universality required if it is to be a rational basis for action?
-Surely not. Every rational agent could accept that the purely
-egoistic activity of other rational agents is rationally justifiable.
-Pure egoism could be rationally adopted by everyone.
-Let us look at this more closely. It must be conceded that
-there is a sense in which one purely egoistic rational agent -
-call him Jack - could not accept the practical judgments of
-another purely egoistic rational agent - call her Jill. Assuming
-Jill's interests differ from Jack's, Jill may be acting rationally in
-urging Jack to do A, while Jack is also acting rationally in
-deciding against doing A.
-This disagreement is, however, compatible with all rational
-agents accepting pure egoism. Though they accept pure egoism,
-it points them in different directions because they start from
-different places. When Jack adopts pure egoism, it leads him to
-further his interests and when Jill adopts pure egoism it leads
-her to further her interests. Hence the disagreement over what
-to do. On the other hand - and this is the sense in which pure
-egoism could be accepted as valid by all rational agents - if we
-were to ask Jill (off the record and promising not to tell Jack)
-what she thinks it would be rational for Jack to do, she would,
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-Practical Ethics
-if truthful, have to reply that it would be rational for Jack to
-do what is in his own interests, rather than what is in her
-interests.
-So when purely egoistic rational agents oppose each other's
-acts, it does not indicate disagreement over the rationality of
-pure egoism. Pure egoism, though not a universalisable principle,
-could be accepted as a rational basis of action by all rational
-agents. The sense in which rational judgments must be
-universally acceptable is weaker than the sense in which ethical
-judgements must be. That an action will benefit me rather than
-anyone else could be a valid reason for doing it, though it could
-not be an ethical reason for doing it.
-A consequence of this conclusion is that rational agents may
-rationally try to prevent each other from doing what they admit
-the other is rationally justified in doing. There is, unfortunately,
-nothing paradoxical about this. Two salespeople competing for
-an important sale will accept each other's conduct as rational,
-though each aims to thwart the other. The same holds of two
-soldiers meeting in battle, or two footballers vying for the ball.
-Accordingly, this attempted demonstration of a link between
-reason and ethics fails. There may be other ways of forging this
-link, but it is difficult to see any that hold greater promise of
-success. The chief obstacle to be overcome is the nature of practical
-reason. Long ago David Hume argued that reason in action
-applies only to means, not to ends. The ends must be given by
-our wants and desires. Hume unflinchingly drew out the implications
-of this view:
-'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole
-world to the scratching of my finger. 'Tis not contrary to reason
-for me to choose my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness
-of an Indian or person wholly unknown to me. 'Tis as little
-contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledged lesser
-good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the
-former than the latter.
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-Why Ad Morally?
-Extreme as it is, Hume's view of practical reason has stood up
-to criticism remarkably well. His central claim - that in practical
-reasoning we start from something wanted - is difficult to refute;
-yet it must be refuted if any argument is to succeed in showing
-that it is rational for all of us to act ethically irrespective of what
-we want.
-Nor is the refutation of Hume all that is needed for a demonstration
-of the rational necessity of acting ethically. In The
-Possibility of Altruism, Thomas Nagel has argued forcefully that
-not to take one's own future desires into account in one's practical
-deliberations - irrespective of whether one now happens
-to desire the satisfaction of those future desires - would indicate
-a failure to see oneself as a person existing over time, the present
-being merely one time among others in one's life. So it is my
-conception of myself as a person that makes it rational for me
-to consider my long-term interests. This holds true even ifI have
-'a more ardent affection' for something that I acknowledge is
-not really, all things considered, in my own interest.
-Whether Nagel's argument succeeds in vindicating the rationality
-of prudence is one question: whether a similar argument
-can also be used in favour of a form of altruism based on
-taking the desires of others into account is another question
-altogether. Nagel attempts this analogous argument. The role
-occupied by 'seeing the present as merely one time among others'
-is, in the argument for altruism, taken by 'seeing oneself as
-merely one person among others'. But whereas it would be
-extremely difficult for most of us to cease conceiving of ourselves
-as existing over time, with the present merely one time among
-others that we will live through, the way we see ourselves as
-a person among others is quite different. Henry Sidgwick's observation
-on this point seems to me exactly right:
-It would be contrary to Common Sense to deny that the distinction
-between anyone individual and any other is real and
-fundamental, and that consequently T am concerned with the
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-quality of my existence as an individual in a sense, fundamentally
-important, in which I am not concerned with the quality of the
-existence of other individuals: and this being so, I do not see
-how it can be proved that this distinction is not to be taken as
-fundamental in determining the ultimate end of rational action
-for an individual.
-So it is not only Hume's view of practical reason that stands in
-the way of attempts to show that to act rationally is to act
-ethically; we might succeed in overthrowing that barrier, only
-to find our way blocked by the commonsense distinction between
-self and others. Taken together, these are formidable
-obstacles and I know of no way of overcoming them.
-ETHICS AND SELF-INTEREST
-If practical reasoning begins with something wanted, to show
-that it is rational to act morally would involve showing that in
-acting morally we achieve something we want. If, agreeing with
-Sidgwick rather than Hume, we hold that it is rational to act
-in our long-term interests irrespective of what we happen to
-want at the present moment, we could show that it is rational
-to act morally by showing that it is in our long-term interests
-to do so. There have been many attempts to argue along these
-lines, ever since Plato, in The Republic, portrayed Socrates as
-arguing that to be virtuous is to have the different elements of
-one's personality ordered in a harmonious manner. and this is
-necessary for happiness. We shall look at these arguments
-shortly; but first it is necessary to assess an objection to this
-whole approach to 'Why should I act morally?'
-People often say that to defend morality by appealing to selfinterest
-is to misunderstand what ethics is all about. F. H. Bradley
-stated this eloquently:
-What answer can we give when the question Why should I be
-Moral?, in the sense of What will it advantage Me?, is put to
-us? Here we shall do well, I think, to avoid all praises of the
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-Why Act Morally?
-pleasantness of virtue. We may believe that it transcends all
-possible delights of vice, but it would be well to remember that
-we desert a moral point of view, that we degrade and prostitute
-virtue, when to those who do not love her for herself we bring
-ourselves to recommend her for the sake of her pleasures.
-In other words, we can never get people to act morally by
-providing reasons of self-interest. because if they accept what
-we say and act on the reasons given, they will only be acting
-self-interestedly, not morally.
-One reply to this objection would be that the substance of
-the action, what is actually done, is more important than the
-motive. People might give money to famine relief because their
-friends will think better of them, or they might give the same
-amount because they think it their duty. Those saved from starvation
-by the gift will benefit to the same extent either way.
-This is true but crude. It can be made more sophisticated if
-it is combined with an appropriate account of the nature and
-\ function of ethics. Ethics, though not consciously created, is a
-product of social life that has the function of promoting values
-common to the members of the society. Ethical judgments do
-this by praising and encouraging actions in accordance with
-these values. Ethical judgments are concerned with motives
-because this is a good indication of the tendency of an action
-to promote good or evil, but also because it is here that praise
-and blame may be effective in altering the tendency of a person's
-actions. Conscientiousness (that is, acting for the sake of doing
-what is right) is a particularly useful motive, from the community's
-point of view. People who are conscientious will, if
-they accept the values of their society (and if most people did
-not accept these values they would not be the values of the
-society) always tend to promote what the society values. They
-may have no generous or sympathetic inclinations, but if they
-think it their duty to give famine relief. they will do so. Moreover,
-those motivated by the desire to do what is right can be
-relied upon to act as they think right in all circumstances,
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-Practical Ethics
-whereas those who act from some other motive, like selfinterest,
-will only do what they think right when they believe
-it will also be in their interest. Conscientiousness is thus a kind
-of multipurpose gap-filler that can be used to motivate people
-towards whatever is valued, even if the natural virtues normally
-associated with action in accordance with those values (generosity,
-sympathy, honesty, tolerance, humility, and so on) are
-lacking. (This needs some qualification: a conscientious mother
-may provide as well for her children as a mother who loves
-them, but she cannot love them because it is the right thing to
-do. Sometimes conscientiousness is a poor substitute for the real
-thing.)
-On this view of ethics it is still results, not motives, that really
-matter. Conscientiousness is of value because of its consequences.
-Yet, unlike, say, benevolence, conscientiousness can
-be praised and encouraged only for its own sake. To praise a
-conscientious act for its consequences would be to praise not
-conscientiousn~ss, but something else altogether. If we appeal
-to sympathy or self-interest as a reason for doing one's duty,
-then we are not encouraging people to do their duty for its own
-sake. If conscientiousness is to be encouraged, it must be thought
-of as good for its own sake.
-It is different in the case of an act done from a motive that
-people act upon irrespective of praise and encouragement. The
-use of ethical language is then inappropriate. We do not normally
-say that people ought to do, or that it is their duty to do,
-whatever gives them the greatest pleasure, for most people are
-sufficiently motivated to do this anyway. So, whereas we praise
-good acts done for the sake of doing what is right, we withhold
-our praise when we believe the act was done from some motive
-like self-interest.
-This emphasis on motives and on the moral worth of doing
-right for its own sake is now embedded in our notion of ethics.
-To the extent that it is so embedded, we will feel that to provide
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-Why Act Morally?
-considerations of self-interest for doing what is right is to empty
-the action of its moral worth.
-My suggestion is that our notion of ethics has become misleading
-to the extent that moral worth is attributed only to action
-done because it is right, without any ulterior motive. It is understandable,
-and from the point of view of society perhaps
-even desirable, that this attitude should prevail; nevertheless,
-those who accept this view of ethics, and are led by it to do
-what is right because it is right, without asking for any further
-reason, are falling victim to a kind of confidence trick - though
-not, of course, a consciously perpetrated one.
-That this view of ethics is unjustifiable has already been indicated
-by the failure of the argument discussed earlier in this
-chapter for a rational justification of ethics. In the history of
-Western philosophy, no one has urged more strongly than Kant
-that our ordinary moral consciousness finds moral worth only
-when duty is done for duty'S sake. Yet Kant himself saw that
-without a rational justification this common conception of ethics
-would be 'a mere phantom of the brain'. And this is indeed the
-case. If we reject - as in general terms we have done - the
-Kantian justification of the rationality of ethics, but try to retain
-the Kantian conception of ethics, ethics is left hanging without
-support. It becomes a closed system, a system that cannot be
-questioned because its first premise - that only action done
-because it is right has any moral worth - rules out the only
-remaining possible justification for accepting this very premise.
-Morality is, on this view, no more rational an end than any
-other allegedly self-justifying practice, like etiquette or the kind
-of religious faith that comes only to those who first set aside all
-sceptical doubts.
-Taken as a view of ethics as a whole, we should abandon this
-Kantian notion of ethics. This does not mean, however, that
-we should never do what we see to be right simply because we
-see it to be right, without further reasons. Here we need to
-325
-Practical Ethics
-appeal to the distinction Hare has made between intuitive and
-critical thinking. When I stand back from my day-to-day ethical
-decisions and ask why I should act ethically, I should seek
-reasons in the broadest sense, and not allow Kantian preconceptions
-to deter me from considering self-interested reasons
-for living an ethical life. If my search is successful it will provide
-me with reasons for taking up the ethical point of view as a
-settled policy, a way of living. I would not then ask, in my dayto-
-day ethical decision making, whether each particular right
-action is in my interests. Instead I do it because I see myself as
-an ethical person. In everyday situations, I will simply assume
-that doing what is right is in my interests, and once I have
-decided what is right, I will go ahead and do it, without thinking
-about further reasons for doing what is right. To deliberate over
-the ultimate reasons for doing what is right in each case would
-impossibly complicate my life; it would also be inadvisable because
-in particular situations I might be too greatly influenced
-by strong but temporary desires and inclinations and so make
-decisions I would later regret.
-That, at least, is how a justification of ethics in terms of selfinterest
-might work, without defeating its own aim. We can
-now ask if such a justification exists. There is a daunting list of
-those who, following Plato's lead, have offered one: Aristotle,
-Aquinas, Spinoza, Butler, Hegel, even - for all his strictures
-against prostituting virtue - Bradley. Like Plato, these philosophers
-made broad claims about human nature and the conditions
-under which human beings can be happy. Some were
-also able to fall back on a belief that virtue will be rewarded
-and wicketlness punished in a life after our bodily death. Philosophers
-cannot use this argument if they want to carry conviction
-nowadays; nor can they adopt sweeping psychological
-theories on the basis of their own general experience of their
-fellows, as philosophers used to do when psychology was a
-branch of philosophy.
-It might be said that since philosophers are not empirical
-326
-Why Act Morally?
-scientists, discussion of the connection between acting ethically
-and living a fulfilled and happy life should be left to psychologists,
-sociologists, and other appropriate experts. The question
-is not, however, dealt with by any other single discipline and
-its relevance to practical ethics is reason enough for our looking
-into it.
-What facts about human nature could show that ethics and
-self- interest coincide? One theory is that we all have benevolent
-or sympathetic inclinations that make us concerned about the
-welfare of others. Another relies on a natural conscience that
-gives rise to guilt feelings when we do what we know to be
-wrong. But how strong are these benevolent desires or feelings
-of guilt? Is it possible to suppress them? If so, isn't it possible
-that in a world in which humans and other animals are suffering
-in great numbers, suppressing one's conscience and sympathy
-for others is the surest way to happiness?
-To meet this objection those who would link ethics and happiness
-must assert that we cannot be happy if these elements
-of our nature are suppressed. Benevolence and sympathy, they
-might argue, are tied up with the capacity to take part in friendly
-or loving relations with others, and there can be no real happiness
-without such relationships. For the same reason it is
-necessary to take at least some ethical standards seriously, and
-to be open and honest in living by them - for a life of deception
-and dishonesty is a furtive life, in which the possibility of discovery
-always clouds the horizon. Genuine acceptance of ethica~
-standards is likely to mean that we feel some gUilt - or at least
-that we are less pleased with ourselves than we otherwise would
-be - when we do not live up to them.
-These claims about the connection between our character and
-our prospects of happiness are no more than hypotheses. Attempts
-to confirm them by detailed research are sparse and
-inadequate. A. H. Maslow, an American psychologist, asserted
-that human beings have a need for self-actualisation that involves
-growing towards courage, kindness, knowledge, love,
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-Practical Ethics
-honesty, and unselfishness. When we fulfil this need, we feel
-serene, joyful, filled with zest, sometimes euphoric, and generally
-happy. When we act contrary to our need for selfactualisation,
-we experience anxiety, despair, boredom, shame,
-emptiness and are generally unable to enjoy ourselves. It would
-be nice if Maslow should tum out to be right; unfortunately,
-the data Maslow produced in support of his theory consisted of
-limited studies of selected people and cannot be considered
-anything more than suggestive.
-Human nature is so diverse that one may doubt if any generalisation
-about the kind of character that leads to happiness
-could hold for all human beings. What, for instance, of those
-we call 'psychopaths'? Psychiatrists use this term as a label for
-a person who is asocial, impulsive, egocentric, unemotional,
-lacking in feelings of remorse, shame, or guilt, and apparently
-unable to form deep and enduring personal relationships. Psychopaths
-are certainly abnormal, but whether it is proper to say
-that they are mentally ill is another matter. At least on the
-surface, they do not suffer from their condition, and it is not
-obvious that it is in their interest to be 'cured'. Hervey Cleckley,
-the author of a classic study of psychopathy entitled The Mask
-of Sanity, notes that since his book was first published he has
-received countless letters from people desperate for help - but
-they are from the parents, spouses, and other relatives of psychopaths,
-almost never from the psychopaths themselves. This
-is not surprising, for while psychopaths are asocial and indifferent
-to the welfare of others, they seem to enjoy life. Psychopaths
-often appear to be charming, intelligent people, with no
-delusions or other signs of irrational thinking. When interviewed
-they say things like: 'A lot has happened to me, a lot
-more will happen. But I enjoy living and I am always looking
-forward to each day. I like laughing and I've done a lot. I am
-essentially a clown at heart - but a happy one. I always take
-the bad with the good.' There is no effective therapy for psychopathy,
-which may be explained by the fact that psychopaths
-328
-Why Act Morally?
-see nothing wrong with their behaviour and often find it extremely
-rewarding, at least in the short term. Of course their
-impulsive nature and lack of a sense of shame or guilt means
-that some psychopaths end up in prison, though it is hard to
-tell how many do not, since those who avoid prison are also
-more likely to avoid contact with psychiatrists. Studies have
-shown that a surprisingly large number of psychopaths are able
-to avoid prison despite grossly antisocial behaviour, probably
-because of their well-known ability to convince others that they
-are truly repentant, that it will never happen again, that they
-deserve another chance, and so forth.
-The existence of psychopathic people counts against the contention
-that benevolence, sympathy, and feelings of guilt are
-present in everyone. It also appears to count against attempts
-to link happiness with the possession of these inclinations. But
-let us pause before we accept this latter conclusion. Must we
-accept psychopaths' own evaluations of their happiness? They
-are, after all, notoriously persuasive liars. Moreover, even if they
-are telling the truth as they see it, are they qualified to say that
-they are really happy, when they seem unable to experience
-the emotional states that play such a large part in the happiness
-and fulfilment of more normal people? Admittedly, a psychopath
-could use the same argument against us: how can we say
-that we are truly happy when we have not experienced the
-excitement and freedom that comes from complete irresponsibility?
-Since we cannot enter into the subjective states of psychopathic
-people, nor they into ours, the dispute is not easy to
-resolve.
-Cleckley suggests that the psychopaths' behaviour can be explained
-as a response to the meaninglessness of their lives. It is
-characteristic of psychopaths to work for a while at a job and
-then just when their ability and charm have taken them to the
-crest of success, commit some petty and easily detectable crime.
-A similar pattern occurs in their personal relationships. (There
-is support to be found here for Thomas Nagel's account of im-
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-Practical Ethics
-prudence as rational only if one fails to see oneself as a person
-existing over time, with the present merely one among other
-times one will live through. Certainly psychopathic people live
-largely in the present and lack any coherent life plan.)
-Cleckley explains this erratic and to us inadequately motivated
-behaviour by likening the psychopath's life to that of
-children forced to sit through a performance of King Lear. Children
-are restless and misbehave under these conditions because
-they cannot enjoy the playas adults do. They act to relieve
-boredom. Similarly, Cleckley says, psychopaths are bored because
-their emotional poverty means that they cannot take interest
-in, or gain satisfaction from, what for others are the most
-important things in life: love, family, success in business or
-professional life, and the like. These things simply do not matter
-to them. Their unpredictable and antisocial behaviour is an
-attempt to relieve what would otherwise be a tedious existence.
-These claims are speculative and Cleckley admits that they may
-not be possible to establish scientifically. They do suggest, however,
-an aspect of the psychopath's life that undermines the
-otherwise attractive nature of the psychopath's free-wheeling
-life. Most reflective people, at some time or other, want their
-life to have some kind of meaning. Few of us could deliberately
-choose a way of life that we regarded as utterly meaningless.
-For this reason most of us would not choose to live a psychopathic
-life, however enjoyable it might be.
-Yet there is something paradoxical about criticising the psychopath's
-life for its meaninglessness. Don't we have to accept,
-in the absence of religious belief, that life really is meaningless,
-not just for the psychopath but for all of us? And if this is so,
-why should we not choose - if it were in our power to choose
-our personality - the life of a psychopath? But is it true that,
-religion aside, life is meaningless? Now our pursuit of reasons
-for acting morally has led us to what is often regarded as the
-ultimate philosophical question.
-330
-Why Act Morally?
-HAS LIFE A MEANING?
-In what sense does rejection of belief in a god imply rejection
-of the view that life has any meaning? If this world had been
-created by some divine being with a particular goal in mind, it
-could be said to have a meaning, at least for that divine being.
-If we could know what the divine being's purpose in creating
-us was, we could then know what the meaning of our life was
-for our creator. If we accepted our creator's purpose (though
-why we should do that would need to be explained) we could
-claim to know the meaning of life.
-When we reject belief in a god we must give up the idea that
-life on this planet has some preordained meaning. Life as a whole
-has no meaning. Life began, as the best available theories tell
-us, in a chance combination of molecules; it then evolved
-through random mutations and natural selection. All this just
-happened; it did not happen for any overall purpose. Now that
-it has resulted in the existence of beings who prefer some states
-of affairs to others, however, it may be possible for particular
-lives to be meaningful. In this sense atheists can find meaning
-in life.
-Let us return to the comparison between the life of a psychopath
-and that of a more normal person. Why should the
-psychopath's life not be meaningful? We have seen that psychopaths
-are egocentric to an extreme: neither other people,
-nor worldly success, nor anything else really matters to them.
-But why is their own enjoyment of life not sufficient to give
-meaning to their lives?
-Most of us would not be able to find happiness by deliberately
-setting out to enjoy ourselves without caring about anyone or
-anything else. The pleasures we obtained in that way would
-seem empty and would soon pall. We seek a meaning for our
-lives beyond our own pleasures and find fulfilment and happiness
-in doing what we see to be meaningful. If our life has
-331
-Practical Ethics
-no meaning other than our own happiness, we are likely to find
-that when we have obtained what we think we need to be
-happy, happiness itself still eludes us.
-That those who aim at happiness for happiness's sake often
-fail to find it, while others find happiness in pursuing altogether
-different goals, has been called 'the paradox of hedonism'. It is
-not, of course, a logical paradox but a claim about the way in
-which we come to be happy. Like other generalisations on this
-subject, it lacks empirical confirmation. Yet it matches our everyday
-observations and is consistent with our nature as evolved,
-purposive beings. Human beings survive and reproduce themselves
-through purposive action. We obtain happiness and fulfilment
-by working towards and achieving our goals. In
-evolutionary terms we could say that happiness functions as an
-internal reward for our achievements. Subjectively, we regard
-achieving the goal (or progressing towards it) as a reason for
-happiness. Our own happiness, therefore, is a by-product of
-aiming at something else, and not to be obtained by setting our
-sights on happiness alone.
-The psychopath's life can now be seen to be meaningless in
-a way that a normal life is not. It is meaningless because it looks
-inward to the pleasures of the present moment and not outward
-to anything more long-term or far-reaching. More normal lives
-have meaning because they are lived to some larger purpose.
-All this is speculative. You may accept or reject it to the extent
-that it agrees with your own observation and introspection. My
-next - and final - suggestion is more speculative still. It is that
-to find an enduring meaning in our lives it is not enough to go
-beyond psychopaths who have no long-term commitments or
-life plans; we must also go beyond more prudent egoists who
-have long term plans concerned only with their own interests.
-The prudent egoists may find meaning in their lives for a time,
-for they have the purpose of furthering their own interests; but
-what, in the end, does that amount to? When everything in
-our interests has been achieved, do we just sit back and be
-332
-Why Act Morally?
-happy? Could we be happy in this way? Or would we decide
-that we had still not quite reached our target, that there was
-something else we needed before we could sit back and enjoy
-it all? Most materially successful egoists take the latter route,
-thus escaping the necessity of admitting that they cannot find
-happiness in permanent holidaying. People who slaved to establish
-small businesses, telling themselves they would do it
-only until they had made enough to live comfortably, keep
-working long after they have passed their original target. Their
-material 'needs' expand just fast enough to keep ahead of their
-income.
-The 1980s, the' decade of greed', provided plenty of examples
-of the insatiable nature of the desire for wealth. In 1985 Dennis
-Levine was a highly successful Wall Street banker with the
-fastest-growing and most talked-about Wall Street firm, Drexel
-Burnham Lambert. But Levine was not satisfied:
-When I was earning $20,000 a year, I thought, I can make
-$100,000. When I was eaming $100,000 a year, I thought, I can
-make $200,000. When I was making $1 million, I thought, I can
-make $3 million. There was always somebody one rung higher
-on the ladder, and I could never stop wondering: Is he really
-twice as good as I am.
-Levine decided to take matters into his own hands and arranged
-with friends at other Wall Street firms to exchange confidential
-information that would allow them to profit by buying shares
-in companies that were about to become takeover targets. By
-this method Levine made an additional $11 million, on top of
-what he earned in salary and bonuses. He also ended up bringing
-about his own ruin, and spending time in prison. That, however,
-is not the relevant point here. No doubt some who use inside
-information to make millions of dollars do not get caught. What
-is less certain, however, is that they really find satisfaction and
-fulfilment in having more money.
-Now we begin to see where ethics comes into the problem
-of living a meaningful life. If we are looking for a purpose
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-Practical Ethics
-broader than our own interests, something that will allow us
-to see our lives as possessing significance beyond the narrow
-confines of our own conscious states, one obvious solution is
-to take up the ethical point of view. The ethical point of view
-does, as we have seen, require us to go beyond a personal point
-of view to the standpoint of an impartial spectator. Thus looking
-at things ethically is a way of transcending our inward-looking
-concerns and identifying ourselves with the most objective point
-of view possible - with, as Sidgwick put it, 'the point of view
-of the universe'.
-The point of view of the universe is a lofty standpoint. In the
-rarefied air that surrounds it we may get carried away into
-talking, as Kant does, of the moral point of view, 'inevitably'
-humbling all who compare their own limited nature with it. I
-do not want to suggest anything as sweeping as this. Earlier in
-this chapter, in rejecting Thomas Nagel's argument for the rationality
-of altruism, I said that there is nothing irrational about
-being concerned with the quality of one's own existence in a
-way that one is not concerned with the quality of existence of
-other individuals. Without going back on this, I am now suggesting
-that rationality, in the broad sense that includes selfawareness
-and reflection on the nature and point of our own
-existence, may push us towards concerns broader than the quality
-of our own existence; but the process is not a necessary one
-and those who do not take part in it - or, who in taking part,
-do not follow it all the way to the ethical point of view - are
-neither irrational nor in error. Psychopaths, for all I know, may
-simply be unable to obtain as much happiness through caring
-about others as they obtain by antisocial acts. Other people find
-collecting stamps an entirely adequate way of giving purpose
-to their lives. There is nothing irrational about that; but others
-again grow out of stamp collecting as they become more aware
-of their situation in the world and more reflective about their
-purposes. To this third group the ethical point of view offers a
-meaning and purpose in life that one does not grow out of.
-334
-Why Act Morally?
-(At least, one cannot grow out of the ethical point of view
-until all ethical tasks have been accomplished. If that utopia
-were ever achieved, our purposive nature might well leave us
-dissatisfied, much as egoists might be dissatisfied when they
-have everything they need to be happy. There is nothing paradoxical
-about this, for we should not expect evolution to have
-equipped us, in advance, with the ability to enjoy a situation
-that has never previously occurred. Nor is this going to be a
-practical problem in the near future.)
-'Why act morally?' cannot be given an answer that will provide
-everyone with overwhelming reasons for acting morally.
-Ethically indefensible behaviour is not always irrational. We
-will probably always need the sanctions of the law and social
-pressure to provide additional reasons against serious violations
-of ethical standards. At the same time, those reflective enough
-to ask the question we have been discussing in this chapter are
-also those most likely to appreciate the reasons that can be
-offered for taking the ethical point of view.
-335
-APPENDIX: ON BEING SILENCED
-IN GERMANY
-Some scenes from academic life in Germany and Austria today:
-For the 1989/1990 winter semester, Dr. Hartmut Kliemt. a professor
-of philosophy at the University of Duisburg, a small town
-in the north of Germany, offered a course in which my book
-Practical Ethics was the principal text assigned to the class. First
-published in English in 1979, this book has been widely used
-in philosophy courses in North America, the United Kingdom,
-and Australia and has been translated into German, Italian,
-Spanish, and Swedish. I Until Kliemt announced his course, it
-had never evoked anything more than lively discussion. Kliemt's
-course, however, was subjected to organized and repeated disruption
-by protesters objecting to the use of the book on the
-grounds that in one of its ten chapters it advocates active euthanasia
-for severely disabled newborn infants. When after several
-weeks the disruptions showed no sign of abating, Kliemt
-was compelled to abandon the course.
-The European society for the Philosophy of Medicine and
-Health Care is a learned society that does just what one would
-expect an organization with that name to do: it promotes the
-study of the philosophy of medicine and health care. In 1990
-it planned its fourth annual conference, to be held in Bochum,
-Reprinted with Permission from the New York Review of Books, August 15. 1991.
-1 Cambridge University Press. 1979; German translation. Praktische Ethik
-(Stuttgart: Reclam. 1984); Spanish translation. Etica Practica (Barcelona: Ariel.
-1984); Italian translation, Etica Pratica (Naples: Liguori. 1989); Swedish
-translation, Praktisk Ethik (Stockholm: Thales. 1990).
-337
-Appendix
-Germany, in June. The intended theme of the conference was
-'Consensus Formation and Moral Judgment in Health Care'.
-During the days leading up to the conference, literature was
-distributed in Bochum and elsewhere in Germany by the 'AntiEuthanasia
-Forum', stating that 'under the cover of tolerance
-and the cry of democracy and liberalism, extermination strategies
-will be discussed. On these grounds we will attempt to
-prevent the Bochum Congress taking place: On June 5, scholars
-who were about to attend the conference received a letter from
-the secretary of the society notifying them that it was being
-moved to Maastricht, in the Netherlands, because the German
-organizers (two professors from the Center for Medical Ethics
-at the Ruhr University in Bochum) had been confronted with
-'anti-bioethics agitation, threats and intimidation', and could
-not guarantee the safety of the participants.
-In October 1990, Dr. Helga Kuhse, senior research fellow at
-the Centre for Human Bioethics at Monash University in Australia
-and author of The Sanctity-ofLife Doctrine in Medicine: A
-Critique,2 was invited to give a lecture at the Institute for Anatomy
-of the University of Vienna. A group calling itself the
-'Forum of Groups for the Crippled and Disabled' announced
-that it would protest against the lecture, stating that 'academic
-freedom has ethical limits, and we expect the medical faculty
-to declare that human life is inviolable'. The lecture was then
-canceled by the faculty of medicine. The dean of the faculty,
-referring to Dr. Kuhse, told the press, 'We didn't know at all
-who that was:3
-The Institute for Philosophy at the University of Hamburg
-decided, with the agreement of faculty members and a student
-representative, to appoint a professor in the field of applied
-ethics. The list of candidates was narrowed down to six. At this
-point in selecting a professor in Germany, the standard proce-
-2 Oxford University Press/Clarendon Press, 1987.
-3 Der Standard (Vienna), October 10, 1990.
-338
-Appendix
-dure is to invite each of the candidates to give a lecture. The
-lectures were announced but did not take place. Students and
-protesters from outside the university objected to the advertising
-of a chair in applied ethics on the grounds that this field raised
-questions about whether some human lives were worth living.
-The protesters blocked the entrances to the lecture theaters and
-blew whistles to drown out any attempts by the speakers to
-lecture. The university canceled the lectures. A few weeks later,
-a new list of candidates was announced. Two philosophers active
-in the field of applied ethics were no longer in consideration;
-they were replaced by philosophers who have done relatively
-little work in applied ethics; one, for example, is best known
-for his work in aesthetics. One of those dropped from the short
-list was Dr. Anton Leist, author of a book that offers ethical
-arguments in defense ofthe right to abortion,4 and also a coeditor
-of Analyse & Kritik; one of the few German journals publishing
-philosophy in the mode practiced in English-speaking
-countries. Ironically, a recent special issue of the journal was
-devoted to Practical Ethics and the issue of academic freedom in
-Germany. 5
-In February 1991 around-table discussion was to be held in
-Frankfurt, organized jointly by the adult education sections of
-both the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches. The theme
-was 'Aid in Dying: and among the participants was Norbert
-Hoerster, a highly respected German professor of jurisprudence,
-who has written in support of the principle of euthanasia. As
-the meeting was about to get underway, a group of people
-challenged the organizers, accusing them of giving a platform
-to a 'fascist' and an 'advocate of modem mass extermination'.
-They distributed leaflets headed 'No Discussion about Life and
-Death'. The meeting had to be abandoned.
-4 Eine Frage des Lebens: Ethik der Abtreibung and Kunstlichen Befruchtung (Frankfurt:
-Campus, 1990).
-5 Analyse & Kritik, December 12, 1990.
-339
-Appendix
-The International Wittgenstein Symposium, held annually at
-Kirchberg, in Austria, has established itself as one of the principal
-philosophical conferences on the continent of Europe. The
-fifteenth International Wittgenstein Conference was to have
-been held in August 1991, on the theme' Applied Ethics'. Arrangements
-for the program were made by philosophers from
-the Institute for Philosophy at the University of Salzburg. Among
-those invited to speak were Professor Georg Meggle, of the
-University of Saarbriicken, Professor R. M. Hare, former White's
-Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and
-now a professor of philosophy at the University of Florida,
-Gainesville, and myself. When the names of those invited became
-known, threats were made to the president of the Austrian
-Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, Dr. Adolf Hubner, that the symposium
-would be disrupted unless the invitations to Professor
-Meggle and me were withdrawn. In other public discussions
-with opponents of the program, the boycott threat was extended
-to include several other invited professors: Hare, Kliemt, Hoerster,
-and Professor Dietrich Birnbacher of the department of
-philosophy at the Gesamthochschule in Essen.6
-Dr. Hubner is not a philosopher; he is a retired agricultural
-veterinarian, so he read Practical Ethics only after the protest
-arose. On reading it, however, he formed the opinion that-as
-he wrote in an Austrian newspaper-the protests were 'entirely
-justified,.7 In a long letter to the board of directors of the Austrian
-Ludwig Wittgenstein Society he wrote that 'as a result of the
-invitations to philosophers who hold the view that ethics can
-be grounded and carried out in the manner of an objective
-critical science, an existential crisis has arisen for the Austrian
-6 During the period when opposition to the Wittgenstein Symposium was being
-stirred up, these philosophers were all described, in terms calculated to arouse
-a hostile response, in a special 'euthanasia issue' of the Austrian journal
-erziehung heute (education today) (Innsbruck, 1991), p. 37.
-7 Adolf Hubner, 'Euthanasie diskussion im Geiste Ludwig Wittgenstein?' Der
-Standard (Vienna), May 21, 1991.
-340
-Appendix
-Wittgenstein Symposium and the Wittgenstein Society'. 8 The
-reference to the 'objective critical science' is striking, since Hare,
-in particular, has devoted much of his life to insisting on the
-differences between ethical judgments and statements to which
-notions of objective truth or falsity are standardly applied.
-According to some reports, opposition groups threatened to
-stage a display on 'Kirchberg under the Nazis' if the invitations
-were not withdrawn. This threat proved so potent that innkeepers
-in Kirchberg were said to have stated that they would
-refuse to serve philosophers during the symposium.9 To its considerable
-credit, the organizing committee resisted Dr. Hubner's
-proposal to withdraw the invitations from those philosophers
-against whom the protests were directed. Instead, it recommended
-that the entire symposium be canceled, since Dr. Hubner's
-public intervention in the debate had made it unlikely that
-it could be held without disruption. This recommendation was
-accepted by the committee ofthe Austrian Wittgenstein Society,
-against the will of Dr. Hubner himself. There will be no Wittgenstein
-Symposium in 1991.
-For those who believe that there is a strong consensus throughout
-Western Europe supporting freedom of thought and discussion
-in general. and academic freedom in particular, these
-scenes come as a shock. How they have come about, however,
-is not so difficult to explain. The story has its beginnings in
-events in which I was directly involved. It stems from an invitation
-I received to speak, in June 1989, at a European Symposium
-on 'Bioengineering, Ethics, and Mental Disability',
-organized jointly by Lebenshilfe, the major German organization
-for parents of intellectually disabled infants, and the Bishop
-8 'Die krisenhafte Situation der Osterreichischen Ludwig Wittgenstein Gesellschaft,
-ausgelost durch die Einladungspraxis zum Thema "Angewandte
-Ethik" , (unpublished typescript).
-9 Martin Sturzinger, 'Ein Totungshelfer mit faschistischem Gedankengut?' Die
-Weltwoche (Zurich), May 23, 1991, p. 83.
-341
-Appendix
-Bekkers Institute, a Dutch organization in the same field. The
-symposium was to be held in Marburg, a German university
-town, under the auspices of the International League of Societies
-for Persons with Mental Handicap, and the International Association
-for the Scientific Study of Mental Deficiency. The program
-looked impressive; after an opening speec,h from the
-German minister of family affairs, the conference was to be
-addressed by leading geneticists, bioethicists, theologians, and
-health-care lawyers from the United States, Canada, the Netherlands,
-England, France, and, of course, Germany. I accepted
-the invitation; and since I was going to be in Germany anyway,
-I also accepted an invitation from Professor Christoph Anst6tz,
-professor of special education at the University of Dortmund,
-to give a lecture a few days later on the subject 'Do severely
-disabled newborn infants have a right to life?'
-My intention in these lectures was to defend a view for which
-I have argued in several previously published works: that the
-parents of severely disabled newborn infants should be able to
-decide, together with their physician, whether their infant
-should live or die. If the parents and their medical adviser are
-in agreement that the infant's life will be so miserable or so
-devoid of minimal satisfactions that it would be inhumane or
-futile to prolong life, then they should be allowed to ensure that
-death comes about speedily and without suffering. Such a decision
-might reasonably be reached, if, for instance, an infant
-was born with anencephaly (the term means 'no brain' and
-infants with this condition have no prospect of ever gaining
-consciousness); or with a major chromosomal disorder such as
-trisomy 18, in which there are abnormalities of the nervous
-system, internal organs, and external features, and death always
-occurs within a few months, or at most two years; or in very
-severe forms of spina bifida where an exposed spinal cord leads
-to paralysis from the waist down, incontinence of bladder and
-bowel, a build-up of fluid on the brain, and, often, mental
-342
-Appendix
-retardation. (Were these conditions to be detected in prenatal
-examinations, many mothers would choose to have abortions
-and their decisions would be widely seen as understandable.)
-Parents may not always be able to make an unbiased decision
-concerning the future of their infant, and their decisions may
-not be defensible. In some cases - Down's syndrome perhaps
-- the outlook for the child might be for a life without suffering,
-but the child would need much more care and attention, over
-a longer period, than a normal child would require. Some couples,
-feeling that they were not in a position to provide the care
-required, or that it would be harmful for their already existing
-family for them to try to do so, might oppose sustaining the
-infant's life. There may, however, be other couples willing to
-give the child an adequate home; or the community may be in
-a position to take over the responsibility of providing medical
-care and for ensuring that the child has reasonably good conditions
-for living a satisfying life and developing his or her potential.
-In these circumstances, given that the child will not be
-living a life of unredeemed misery, and the parents will not be
-coerced into rearing that child, they can no longer insist upon
-having the major role in life or death decisions for their child. 10
-This position is, of course, at odds with the conventional
-doctrine of the sanctity of human life; but there are well-known
-difficulties in defending that doctrine in secular terms, without
-its traditional religious underpinnings. (Why, for example, if
-not because human beings are made in the image of God, should
-the boundary of sacrosanct life match the boundary of our species?)
-Among philosophers and bioethicists, the view that I was
-to defend is by no means extraordinary; if it has not quite
-10 There is a brief account of my reasons for holding this position in Practical
-Ethics, Chapter 7; and a much more detailed one in Helga Kuhse and Peter
-Singer, Should the Baby Live? (Oxford University Press, 1985). See also Peter
-Singer and Helga Kuhse, 'The Future of Baby Doe', The New York Review
-(March l, 1984), pp. l7-22.
-343
-Appendix
-reached the level of orthodoxy, it, or at least something akin to
-it, is widely held, and by some of the most respected scholars
-in the fields of both bioethics and applied ethics. II
-Just a day or two before I was due to leave for Germany, my
-invitation to speak at the Marburg conference was abruptly
-withdrawn. The reason given was that, by agreeing to lecture
-at the University of Dortmund, I had allowed opponents of my
-views to argue that Lebenshilfe was providing the means for
-me to promote my views on euthanasia in Germany. The letter
-withdrawing the invitation drew a distinction between my discussing
-these views 'behind closed doors with critical scientists
-who want to convince you that your attitude infringes human
-rights' and my promoting my position 'in public'. A postscript
-added that several organizations of handicapped persons were
-planning protest demonstrations in Marburg and Dortmund
-against me, and against Lebenshilfe for having invited me. (Although
-organizations for the disabled were prominent among
-the protesters, these groups were strongly supported and encouraged
-by various coalitions against genetic engineering and
-reproductive technology, and also by organizations on the left
-that had, apparently, nothing to do with the issue of euthanasia.
-The 'Anti-Atom Bureau', for instance, joined the protests, presumably
-neither knowing nor caring about my opposition to
-uranium mining and nuclear power.)
-The protests soon found their way into the popular press. Der
-Spiegel, which has a position in Germany not unlike that of Time
-11 Here is a selection; many more could be added: H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.,
-The Foundations of Bioethics (Oxford University Press, 1986); R. G. Frey,
-Rights, Killing and SUffering (Blackwell, 1983); Jonathan Glover, Causing
-Deaths and Saving Lives (Penguin, 1977); John Harris, The Value of Life
-(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1985); James Rachels, The End of Life
-(Oxford University Press, 1986); and Created from Animals (Oxford University
-Press, 1991); Michael Tooley, Abortion and Infantidde (Oxford University
-Press, 1983); and the book by Helga Kuhse to which I have already referred,
-The Sanctity·ofLife Doctrine in Medidne: A Critique.
-344
-Appendix
-and Newsweek in the United States, published a vehement attack
-on me written by Franz Christoph, the leader of the self-styled
-'Cripples Movement', a militant organization of disabled people.
-12 The article was illustrated with photographs of the transportation
-of 'euthanasia victims' in the Third Reich, and of
-Hitler's 'Euthanasia Order'. The article gave readers no idea at
-all of the ethical basis on which I advocated euthanasia, and it
-quoted spokespeople for groups of the disabled who appeared
-to believe that I questioned their right to life. I sent a brief reply
-in which I pointed out that I was advocating euthanasia not for
-anyone like themselves, but for severely disabled newborn infants,
-and that it was crucial to my defense of euthanasia that
-these infants would never have been capable of grasping that
-they are living beings with a past and a future. Hence my views
-cannot be a threat to anyone who is capable of wanting to go
-on living, or even of understanding that his or her life might
-be threatened. After a long delay, I received a letter from Der
-Spiegel telling me that, for reasons of space, they had been unable
-to publish my reply. Shortly afterward, however, Der Spiegel
-found space for a further highly critical account of my position
-on euthanasia, together with an interview, spread over four
-pages, with one of my leading opponents - and again, the same
-photograph of the Nazi transport vehicles. 13
-If Lebenshilfe had thought that they could pacify their critics
-by withdrawing my invitation to speak at Marburg, they had
-underestimated the storm that had broken loose. The protesters
-continued their opposition to what they were now calling the
-'Euthanasia Congress'. Shortly before the symposium was due
-to open, Lebenshilfe and the Bishop Bekkers Institute canceled
-the entire event. Soon after the Faculty of Special Education at
-12 Franz Christoph, '(K)ein Diskurs iiber "lebensunwertes Leben" " Der Spie·
-gel, No. 23/1989 (June 5, 1989).
-13 'Bizarre Verquickung' and 'Wenn Mitleid tOdlich wird', Der Spiegel, No. 341
-1989 (August 21, 1989), pp. 171-6.
-345
-Appendix
-the University of Dortmund decided not to proceed with my
-scheduled lecture there.
-This was not quite the end of my experiences in Germany that
-summer. Dr. Georg Meggle, professor of philosophy at the University
-of Saarbriicken, invited me to lecture at his university
-in order to show that it was possible to discuss the ethics of
-euthanasia rationally in Germany. I hoped to use this opportunity
-to say that, while I understood and strongly supported
-every effort to prevent the resurgence of Nazi ideas, my own
-views about euthanasia had nothing whatsoever to do with
-what the Nazis did. In contrast to the Nazi ideology that the
-state should decide who was worthy of life, my view was designed
-to reduce the power of the state and allow parents to
-make crucial life and death decisions, both for themselves and,
-in consultation with their doctors, for their newborn infants.
-Those who argued that it is always wrong to decide that a
-human life is not worth living would, to be consistent, have to
-say that we should use all the techniques of modern medical
-care in order to extend to the greatest possible extent the life
-of every infant, no matter how hopeless the infant's prospects
-might be and no matter how painful his or her existence. This
-was surely too cruel for any humane person to support.
-Making this obvious point proved more difficult than I had
-expected. When I rose to speak in Saarbriicken I was greeted
-by a chorus of whistles and shouts from a minority of the audience
-determined to prevent me from speaking. Professor Meggle
-offered the protesters the opportunity to state why they
-thought I should not speak. This showed how completely they
-had misunderstood my position. Many obviously believed that
-I was politically on the far right. Another suggested that I lacked
-the experience with Nazism that Germans had had; he and
-others in the audience were taken aback when I told them that
-I was the child of Austrian-Jewish refugees, and that three of
-my grandparents had died in Nazi concentration camps. Some
-346
-Appendix
-seemed to think that I was opposed to all measures that would
-advance the position of the disabled in society, whereas in fact,
-while I hold that some lives are so severely blighted from the
-beginning that they are better not continued, I also believe that
-once a life has been allowed to develop, then in every case
-everything should be done to make that life as satisfying and
-rich as possible. This should include the best possible education,
-adjusted to the needs of the child, to bring out to the maximum
-the particular abilities of the disabled person.
-Another chance comment revealed a still deeper ignorance
-about my position. One protester quoted from a passage in
-which I compare the capacities of intellectually disabled humans
-and nonhuman animals. The way in which he left the quotation
-hanging, as if it were in itself enough to condemn me, made
-me realize that he thought that I was urging that we should
-treat disabled humans in the way we now treat nonhuman
-animals. He had no idea that my views about how we should
-treat animals are utterly different from those conventionally
-accepted in Western society. When I replied that, for me, to
-compare a human being to a nonhuman animal was not to say
-that the human being should be treated with less consideration,
-but that the animal should be treated with more, this person
-asked why I did not use my talents to write about the morality
-of our treatment of animals, rather than about euthanasia. Naturally
-I replied that I had done that, and that it was, indeed,
-precisely for my views about the suffering of animals raised on
-commercial farms, and used in medical and psychological research,
-and the need for animal liberation that I was best known
-in English-speaking countries; but I could see that a large part
-of the audience simply did not believe that I could be known
-anywhere as anything other than an advocate of euthanasia. 14
-14 My Animal Liberation (Random House, 1975; second revised edition, New
-York ReviewlRandom House, 1990) had been published in Germany under
-the title Befreiung der Tiere (Munich: F. Hinhammer, 1982) but it is not
-widely known. Nevenheless, Practical Ethics contains two chapters sum-
-347
-Appendix
-Allowing these misconceptions to be stated did, at least, provide
-an opportunity for reply. Someone else came to the platform
-and said that he agreed that it was not necessary to use
-intensive care medicine to prolong every life, but allowing an
-infant to die was different from taking active steps to end the
-infant's life. That led to further discussion, and so in the end
-we had a long and not entirely fruitless debate. Some of that
-audience, at least, went away better informed than they had
-been when they arrived. 15
-The events of the summer of 1989 have had continuing repercussions
-on German intellectual life. On the positive side, those
-who had sought to stifle the controversy over euthanasia soon
-found that, as so often happens, the attempt to suppress ideas
-only ensures that the ideas gain a wider audience. Germany's
-leading liberal weekly newspaper, Die Zeit, published two articles
-that gave a fair account of the arguments for euthanasia,
-and also discussed the taboo that had prevented open discussion
-of the topic in Germany. For this courageous piece of journalism,
-Die Zeit also became the target of protests, with Franz Christoph,
-the leader of the 'Cripples Movement', chaining his wheelchair
-to the door of the newspaper's editorial offices. The editors of
-Die Zeit then invited Christoph to take part in a tape-recorded
-discussion with the editors of the newspaper and one or two
-others about whether the paper was right to discuss the topic
-of euthanasia. Christoph accepted, and the transcript was published
-in a further extensive article. Predictably, as in Saarbriicken,
-what began as a conversation about whether or not
-marising my views on animals, so the response did indicate that most of
-the protesters had not read the book on which they based their opposition
-to my invitation to speak.
-15 For this reason one of the protesters, reporting on the events in a student
-publication, made it clear that to enter into the discussion with me was a
-tactical error. See Holger Dorff, 'Singer in Saarbriicken: Unirevue (Wintersemester,
-1989/90), p. 47.
-348
-Appendix
-euthanasia should be discussed very soon turned into a debate
-on euthanasia itself.
-From this point the euthanasia debate was picked up by both
-German and Austrian television. The outcome was that instead
-of a few hundred people hearing my views at lectures in Marburg
-and Dortmund, several million read about them or listened
-to them on television. The Deutsche Arzteblatt - the major German
-medical journal - published an article by Helga Kuhse
-entitled 'Why the discussion of euthanasia is unavoidable in
-Germany too', which led to an extensive debate in subsequent
-issues. 16 In philosophical circles the discussion of applied ethics
-in general, and euthanasia in particular, is much livelier now
-than it was before 1989 - as is indicated by the special issue of
-Analyse & Kritik to which I have already referred. In journals of
-special education, as well, ethical issues are now being discussed
-far more frequently than they were two years ago.
-The protest also revived the flagging sales of the German
-edition of Practical Ethics. The book sold more copies in the year
-after June 1989 than it had in all the five years it had previously
-been available in Germany. Now everyone involved in the debate
-in Germany seems to be rushing to publish a book on
-euthanasia. With the exception of two books by Anstotz and
-Leist, which contain genuine ethical arguments, those published
-so far are of some interest for those wishing to study the thinking
-of Germans opposed to free speech, but not for any other
-reason. 17 For the most part each of the books appears to have
-been written to a formula that goes something like this:
-16 Helga Kuhse, 'Warum Fragen der Euthanasie auch in Deutschland unvermeidlich
-sind'. Deutsche iirz(eblatt, No. 16 (April 19, 1990), pp. 1243-9;
-readers' letters, and a response by Kuhse, are to be found in No. 37 (September
-13, 1990), pp.2696-704 and No. 38 (September 20, 1990),
-pp.2792-6.
-17 The list of books published between January 1990 and June 1991 devoted
-to this theme includes: C. Anstotz, Ethik und Behinderung (Berlin: Edition
-Marhold, 1990); T. Bastian, editor, Denken, Schreiben, Toten (Stuttgart: HirzeL
-1990); T. Bruns, U. Panselin, and U. Sierck, TOdliche Ethik (Hamburg:
-349
-Appendix
-Quote a few passages from Practical Ethics selected so as to
-distort the book's meaning.
-2 Express horror that anyone can say such things.
-3 Make a sneering jibe at the idea that this could pass for
-philosophy.
-4 Draw a parallel between what has been quoted and what the
-Nazis thought or did.
-But it is also essential to observe one negative aspect of the
-formula:
-5 Avoid discussing any of the following dangerous questions:
-Is human life to be preserved to the maximum extent possible?
-If not, in cases in which the patient cannot and never has
-been able to express a preference, how are decisions to discontinue
-treatment to be made, without an evaluation of the
-patient's quality of life? What is the moral significance of the
-distinction between bringing about a patient's death by withdrawing
-treatment necessary to prolong life and bringing it
-about by active intervention? Why is advocacy of euthanasia
-for severely disabled infants so much worse than advocacy of
-abortion on request that the same people can oppose the right
-even to discuss the former, while themselves advocating the
-latter?
-The irony about the recent pUblications, of course, is that
-even those who are highly critical of my own position do, by
-publishing their books and articles, foster a climate of debate
-about the topic. Even Franz Christoph, despite chaining his
-wheelchair to the offices of Die Zeit because they published
-reports of my views on euthanasia, has now published his
-own book on the topic. At the outset he protests vigorously
-Verlag Libertare Assoziation, 1990); Franz Christoph, Todlicher Zeitgeist (Cologne:
-Kiepenheuer und Witsch, 1990); E. Klee, Durch Zyankali Erlost (Frankfurt:
-Fischer, 1990); A. Leist, editor, Urn Leben und Tod (Frankfurt:
-Suhrkamp, 1990); and o. Tolmein, Geschiitzles Leben (Hamburg: Konkret
-Literatur Verlag, 1990). They will soon be joined by what is likely to be the
-best book on the current German debate: R. Hegselmann and R. Merkel,
-editors, Zur Debatte uber Euthanasie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, expected September
-1991).
-350
-Appendix
-that his book is not a contribution to the debate about euthanasia,
-but a book against this debate; it is self-evident,
-though, that one cannot publish a book on whether or not
-to have a debate on euthanasia without stimulating thought
-among one's readers and reviewers about the issue of euthanasia
-itself. 18
-The negative aspects ofthese events are, unfortunately, probably
-more weighty. Most threatening of all are the incidents described
-at the beginning of this essay, and the atmosphere of
-repression and intimidation that they have evoked. Anyone who
-offers a course based on Practical Ethics in Germany now risks
-the same protests and personal attacks that Professor Kliemt
-faced in Duisburg. One Berlin philosopher told me recently that
-it is not possible to offer a course in applied ethics in that city
-- whether or not it makes reference to my book - because such
-a course would be bound to be disrupted.
-A sinister aspect of this atmosphere is a kind of self-censorship
-among German publishers. It has proven extraordinarily difficult
-to find a publisher to undertake a German edition of Should
-the Baby Live? the updated and more comprehensive account of
-my views (and those of my co-author Helga Kuhse) on the
-treatment of severely disabled newborn infants. In view of the
-current controversy, there seems no doubt that a German edition
-of the book would have good commercial prospects. Yet one
-after another, German publishers have declined to publish it,
-18 See, for instance, the way in which Rudi Tarneden, a reviewer from an
-association for the disabled, and very sympathetic to Christoph's position,
-is drawn in the course of his review to raise such questions as: 'Aren't there
-in fact extreme situations of human suffering, limits to what is bearable?
-Am I really guilty of contempt for humanity ['Menschenverachtung: a term
-often used in Germany to describe what I am supposed to be guilty ofPSI
-if I try to take this into account?' Rudi Tarneden, 'Wo alles richtig ist,
-kann es auch keine Schuld mehr geben' (a review of Franz Christoph,
-Todlicher Zeitgeist and Christoph Anstotz, Ethik und Behinderung), Zeitschrift
-fur Heilpiidagogik Vol. 42, No.4 (1991), p. 246.
-351
-Appendix
-even after it had been recommended by editors whose advice
-they normally accept without hesitation.
-For those interested in studying or teaching bioethics or applied
-ethics in Germany, the consequences are much more serious
-still. Because he had invited me to lecture at the University
-of Dortmund, Professor Christoph Anstotz became the target of
-a hostile campaign aimed at having him dismissed from his
-teaching duties. Petitions were circulated and letters written to
-the minister of science and research for the state of NordrheinWestfalen,
-in which Dortmund is situated. These letters were
-signed by both teachers and students in special education. Although
-Professor Anstotz has a tenured position from which it
-would scarcely be possible for him to be dismissed, the government
-took the complaints seriously enough to ask him to explain
-why he had invited me, and what implications he drew from
-my ethical position for his work in special education.
-Throughout this campaign, the rector of the University of
-Dortmund and his office remained silent. The highest officers
-of the university took no action to indicate their concern that
-threats of protest had forced an academic lecture to be canceled;
-nor did they come to the defense of one of their professors when
-he was under attack for inviting a colleague to give a lecture
-on the campus ofthe university. That was typical ofthe reaction
-of German professors. There was no strong reaction among them
-on behalf of academic freedom. With a handful of exceptions,
-Anstotz's colleagues in special education either joined the campaign
-against him, or remained silent. A number of philosophers
-signed declarations of support for the principle of free debate,
-and one of these was published in the Berlin newspaper taz. 19
-At Professor Meggle's instigation, 180 members ofthe German
-Philosophical Association signed a similar declaration, but the
-association has since failed to publish the list of the signers,
-despite giving an undertaking to do so.
-19 taz (Berlin), January 10. 1990.
-352
-Appendix
-All this does not augur well for the future of rational discussion
-of controversial new ethical issues in Germany and Austria.
-Outside the German-speaking nations, study and discussion of
-bioethics is expanding rapidly, in response to the recognition
-of the need for ethical consideration of the many new issues
-raised by developments in medicine and the biological sciences.
-Other fields of applied ethics, such as the status of animals,
-questions of global justice and resource distribution, environmental
-ethics and business ethics, are also getting much attention.
-In Germany and Austria, however, it now takes real
-courage to do work in applied ethics, and even more courage
-to publish something that is likely to come under the hostile
-scrutiny of those who want to stop debate. Academics who do
-not have a permanent university position must fear not merely
-personal attack, but also the diminished opportunity to pursue
-an academic career. The events in Hamburg cast a cloud over
-the prospects of university posts opening up in these fields. If
-there are no posts to be obtained, graduate students will avoid
-working on questions of applied ethics, for there is no sense in
-studying matters that offer no prospect of employment. There
-is even a danger that in order to avoid controversy, analytic
-philosophy as a whole will suffer a setback. At the present time,
-a large number of new university positions are being created in
-the universities of the former German Democratic Republic.
-Philosophers interested in analytic philosophy are concerned
-that these positions may all go to philosophers working on less
-sensitive subjects, for example, to those who concentrate on
-historical studies, or to followers of Habermas who have generally
-kept quiet about these sensitive ethical issues and about
-the obstacles to debating them in Germany today.
-Germans of course are still struggling to deal with their past,
-and the German past is one which comes close to defying rational
-understanding. There is, however, a peculiar tone of fanaticism
-about some sections of the German debate over
-353
-Appendix
-euthanasia that goes beyond normal opposition to Nazism, and
-instead begins to seem like the very mentality that made Nazism
-possible. To see this attitude at work, let us look not at euthanasia,
-but at an issue that is, for the Germans, closely related
-to it and just as firmly taboo: the issue of eugenics. Because the
-Nazis practiced eugenics, anything in any way related to genetic
-engineering in Germany is now smeared with Nazi associations.
-This attack embraces the rejection of prenatal diagnosis, when
-followed by selective abortion of fetuses with Down's syndrome,
-spina bifida, or other defects, and even leads to criticism of
-genetic counseling designed to avoid the conception of children
-with genetic defects. It has also led to the German parliament
-unanimously passing a law that prohibits all non-therapeutic
-experimentation on the human embryo. The British parliament,
-by contrast, recently passed by substantial majorities in both
-chambers a law that allows nontherapeutic embryo experimentation
-up to fourteen days after fertilization.
-To understand how bizarre this situation is, readers in
-English-speaking countries must remind themselves that this
-opposition comes not, as it would in our countries, from rightwing
-conservative and religious groups, but from the left. Since
-women's organizations are prominent among the opposition to
-anything that smacks of eugenics, and also are in the forefront
-of the movement to defend the right to abortion, the issue of
-prenatal diagnosis gives rise to an obvious problem in German
-feminist circles. The accepted solution seems to be that a woman
-should have the right to an abortion, but not to an abortion
-based on accurate information about the future life-prospects
-of the fetus she is carrying. 20
-20 Gennan feminists who read Franz Christoph's recent book (see note 17,
-above) may reconsider their support for his position; for he leaves no doubt
-that he is opposed to granting women a right to decide about abortion. For
-Christoph, 'Abortion decisions are always decisions about whether a life is
-worthy of being lived; the child does not fit into the woman's present life-
-354
-Appendix
-The rationale for this view is, at least, consistent with the
-rationale for opposition to euthanasia: it is the idea that no one
-should ever judge one life to be less worth living than another.
-To accept prenatal diagnosis and selective abortion, or even to
-select genetic counseling aimed at avoiding the conception of
-infants with extreme genetic abnormalities, is seen as judging
-that some lives are less worth living than others. To this the
-more militant groups of disabled people take offense; it suggests,
-they maintain, that they should not have been allowed to come
-into existence, and thus denies their right to life.
-This is, of course, a fallacy. It is one thing to hold that we
-may justifiably take steps to ensure that 'the children we bring
-into the world do not face appalling obstacles to living a minimally
-decent life, and a quite different thing to deny to a living
-person who wants to go on living the right to do just that. If
-the suggestion, on the other hand, is that whenever we seek to
-avoid having severely disabled children, we are improperly
-judging one kind of life to be worse than another, we can reply
-that such judgments are both necessary and proper. To argue
-otherwise would seem to suggest that if we break a leg, we
-should not get it mended, because in doing so we judge the
-plans. Or: the social situation is unsatisfactory. Or: the woman holds that
-she is only able to bear a healthy child. Whether one likes it or not: with
-the last example, the woman who wants an abortion confinns an objectively
-negative social value judgment against the handicapped' (p. 13), There is
-more along these lines, all in a style well-suited for quotation in the pamphlets
-of the anti· abortion movement.
-This is, at least, more honest than the evasive maneuvering of Oliver
-Tolmein, who states in the foreword to his Geschiitztes Leben that to discuss
-the significance of the feminist concept of self-detennination in the context
-of prenatal diagnosis and abortion would take him 'by far' beyond the
-bounds of his theme (p. 9). Odd, since the crux of his vitriolic attack on all
-who advocate euthanasia (an attack that includes, on the very first page of
-the book, a statement that it is necessary to disrupt seminars on the issue)
-is that those who advocate euthanasia are committed to valuing some human
-lives as not worth living,
-355
-Appendix
-lives of those with crippled legs to be less worth living than our
-own.21 For people to believe such a fallacious argument is bad
-enough; what is really frightening, however, is that people believe
-in it with such fanaticism that they are prepared to use
-force to suppress any attempt to discuss it.
-If this is the case with attempts to discuss practices like genetic
-counseling and prenatal diagnosis, which are today very widely
-accepted in most developed countries, it is easy to imagine that
-the shadow of Nazism prevents any rational discussion of anything
-that relates to euthanasia. It avails little to point out that
-what the Nazis called 'euthanasia' had nothing to do with compassion
-or concern for those who were killed, but was simply
-the murder of people considered unworthy of living from the
-racist viewpoint of the German Valko Such distinctions are altogether
-too subtle for those who are convinced that they alone
-know what will prevent a revival of Nazi-like barbarism.
-Can anything be done? In May this year, in Zurich, I had one
-of the most unpleasant experiences yet in this unhappy story;
-but it gave, at the same time, a glimmer of hope that there may
-be a remedy.
-I was invited by the Zoological Institute of the University of
-Zurich to give a lecture on 'Animal Rights'. On the following
-day, the philosophy department had organized a colloquium
-for twenty-five invited philosophers, theologians, special educationalists,
-zoologists, and other academics to discuss the implications
-for both humans and animals of an ethic that would
-reject the view that the boundary of our species marks a moral
-boundary of great intrinsic significance, and holds that nonhuman
-animals have no rights.
-The lecture on animal rights did not take place. Before it
-began, a group of disabled people in wheelchairs, who had been
-21 R. M. Hare makes a similar point in a letter published in Die Zeit. August
-11, 1989.
-356
-Appendix
-admitted to the flat area at the front of the lecture theater, staged
-a brief protest in which they said that, while it was all the same
-to them whether or not I lectured on the topic of animal rights,
-they objected to the fact that the University of Zurich had invited
-such a notorious advocate of euthanasia to discuss ethical issues
-that also concerned the disabled. At the end of this protest,
-when I rose to speak, a section of the audience - perhaps a
-quarter or a third - began to chant: "Singer raus! Singer raus!"
-As I heard this chanted, in German, by people so lacking in
-respect for the tradition of reasoned debate that they were unwilling
-even to allow me to make a response to what had just
-been said about me, I had an overwhelming feeling that this
-was what it must have been like to attempt to reason against
-the rising tide of Nazism in the declining days of the Weimar
-Republic. The difference was that the chant would have been,
-not 'Singer raus', but 'Juden raus'. An overhead projector was
-still functioning, and I began to write on it, to point out this
-parallel that I was feeling so strongly. At that point one of the
-protesters came up behind me and tore my glasses from my
-face, throwing them on the floor and breaking them.
-My host wisely decided to abandon the lecture; there was
-nothing else that could be done. But from this distressing affair
-came one good sign; it was clear that the disabled people who
-had made the initial protest were distressed with what had
-happened afterward. Several said that they had not intended
-that the lecture should be disrupted; they had, in fact, prepared
-questions to ask during the discussion period that would have
-followed the lecture. Even while the chanting was going on,
-some attempted to begin a discussion with me; at which point
-some of the able-bodied demonstrators (presumably well aware
-of the way in which in Saarbriicken a discussion had broken
-through the initial hostility toward me) urgently remonstrated
-with them not to talk to me. The disabled, however, clearly had
-no power to do anything about the chanting.
-As already noted, my views in no way threaten anyone who
-357
-Appendix
-is, or ever has been, even minimally aware of the fact that he
-or she has a possible future life that could be threatened. But
-there are some who have a political interest in preventing this
-elementary fact from becoming known. These people are now
-playing on the anxieties of the disabled in order to use them as
-a political front for different purposes. In Zurich, for instance,
-prominent among the nondisabled people chanting 'Singer raus'
-were the Autonomen, or 'Autonomists', a group that affects an
-anarchist, style but disdains any interest in anarchist theory. For
-these nondisabled political groups, preventing Singer from
-speaking, no matter what the topic, has become an end in itself,
-a way of rallying the faithful and striking at the entire system
-in which rational debate takes place. Disabled people have nothing
-to gain, and much to lose, by allowing themselves to be
-used by such nihilistic groups. If they can be brought to see that
-their interests are better served by an open discussion with those
-whose views they oppose, it may be possible to begin a process
-in which both bioethicists and the disabled address the proper
-concerns of the other side, and move to a dialogue that is constructive
-rather than destructive.
-Such a dialogue would be only a beginning. To heal the damage
-done to bioethics and applied ethics in Germany will take much
-longer. There is a real danger that the atmosphere of intimidation
-and intolerance which has spread from the issue of euthanasia
-to all of bioethics, and with the events in Hamburg, to
-applied ethics in general, will continue to broaden. It is essential
-that the minority that is actively opposing the free discussion
-of academic ideas be isolated. Here too, what happened in Zurich
-may serve as an example for other German-speaking countries
-to follow. In sharp contrast to the silence of the rector of
-the University of Dortmund, or the fatuous claim that "We
-didn't know at all who that was" of the dean of medicine at
-the University of Vienna, Professor H. H. Schmid, rector of the
-University of Zurich, issued a statement expressing the univer-
-358
-Appendix
-sity's 'outrage over this grave violation of academic freedom of
-speech,.22 The professors of the Zoological Institute and the dean
-of the Faculty of Science have also unequivocally condemned
-the disruption, and the major German-language newspapers in
-Zurich gave objective coverage to the events and to my views.23
-Meanwhile Germans and Austrians, both in academic life and
-in the press, have shown themselves sadly lacking in the commitment
-exemplified by the celebrated utterance attributed to
-Voltaire: 'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the
-death your right to say it'. No one has, as yet, been asked to
-risk death in order to defend my right to discuss euthanasia in
-Germany, but it is important that many more should be prepared
-to risk a little hostility from the minority that is trying to silence
-a debate on central ethical questions.
-22 'Zur Sprengung einer Vortragsveranstaltung an der Universitat', Unipresse
-Dienst, Universitat Zurich, May 31, 1991.
-23 See, for example, 'Mit Trillerpfeifen gegen einen Philosophen', and 'Diese
-Probleme kann and soil man besprechen', both in Tages-Anzeiger, May 29,
-1991; 'Niedergeschrien', Neue Zurcher Zeitung, May 27, 1991; and (despite
-the pejorative headline) 'Ein Totungshelfer mit faschistischem Gedankengut?'
-Die Weltwoche, May 23, 1991.
-359
-Preface
-NOTES, REFERENCES, AND
-FURTHER READING
-The quotation on comparing humans and animals is from Ethische
-Grundaussagen (Ethical foundational statements) by the Board of the
-Federal Association Lebenshilfe fiir geistig Behinderte e.V., published
-in the journal of the association, Geistige Behinderung, vol. 29 no. 4
-(1990): 256.
-Chapter 1: About ethics
-The issues discussed in the first section - relativism, subjectivism, and
-the alleged dependence of ethics on religion - are dealt with in several
-textbooks. R. B. Brandt's Ethical Theory (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1959)
-is more thorough than most. See also the articles on these topics by
-David Wong, James Rachels, and Jonathan Berg, respectively, in P.
-Singer (ed.), A Companion to Ethics (Oxford, 1991). Plato's argument
-against defining 'good' as 'what the gods approve' is in his Euthyphro.
-Engels's discussion of the Marxist view of morality, and his reference
-to a 'really human morality' is in his Herr Eugen Diihring's Revolution
-in Science, chap. 9. For a discussion of Marx's critique of morality, see
-Allen Wood, 'Marx against Morality' in P. Singer (ed.), A Companion
-to Ethics. C. L. Stevenson's emotivist theory is most fully expounded
-in his Ethics and Language (New Haven, 1944). R. M. Hare's basic
-position is to be found in The Language of Morals (Oxford, 1952); Freedom
-and Reason (Oxford, 1963), and Moral Thinking (Oxford, 1981).
-For a summary statement, see Hare's essay 'Universal Prescriptivism'
-in P. Singer (ed.), A Companion to Ethics. J. L. Mackie's Ethics: Inventing
-Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1977) defends a version
-of subjectivism.
-The more important formulations of the universalisability principle
-referred to in the second section are in I. Kant, Groundwork of the
-360
-Notes and References
-Metaphysic of Morals, Section II (various translations and editions); R.
-M. ,Hare, Freedom and Reason and Moral Thinking; R. Firth, 'Ethical
-Absolutism and the Ideal Observer', Philosophy and Phenomenological
-Research, vol. 12 (1951-2); J. J. C. Smart and B. Williams, Utilitarianism,
-For and Against (Cambridge, 1973); John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
-(Oxford, 1972); J. P. Sartre, 'Existentialism Is a Humanism', in W.
-Kaufmann (ed.), Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, 2d ed. (New
-York, 1975); and Jiirgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (trans. T.
-McCarthy, London 1976), pt. Ill, chaps. 2-4.
-The tentative argument for a utilitarianism based on interests or
-preferences owes most to Hare, although it does not go as far as the
-argument to be found in Moral Thinking.
-Chapter 2: Equality and its implications
-Rawls's argument that equality can be based on the natural characteristics
-of human beings is to be found in sec. 77 of A Theory of Justice.
-The principal arguments in favour of a link between IQ and race
-can be found in A. R. Jensen, Genetics and Education (London, 1972)
-and Educability and Group Differences (London, 1973); and in H. J.
-Eysenck's Race, Intelligence and Education (London, 1971). A variety of
-objections are collected in K. Richardson and D. Spears (eds.), Race,
-Culture and Intelligence (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1972). See also
-N. J. Block and G. Dworkin, The IQ Controversy (New York, 1976).
-Thomas Jefferson's comment on the irrelevance of intelligence to the
-issue of rights was made in a letter to Henri Gregoire, 25 February
-1809.
-The debate over the nature and origin of psychological differences
-between the sexes is soberly and comprehensively surveyed in E. Maccoby
-and C. Jacklin, The Psychology of Sex Differences (Stanford, 1974).
-Corinne Hutt, in Males and Females (Harmondsworth, Middlesex,
-1972), states the case for a biological basis for sex differences. Steven
-Goldberg's The Inevitability of Patriarchy (New York, 1973) is a polemic
-against feminist views like those in Kate Millett's Sexual Politics (New
-York, 1971) or Juliet Mitchell's Women's Estate (Harmondsworth, Middlesex,
-1971). A different view is presented in A. H. Eagly, Sex Differences
-in Social Behavior: A Social Role Interpretation (Hillsdale, N.J., 1987). For
-recent confirmation of the existence of sex differences, see Eleanor E.
-Maccoby, 'Gender and Relationships: A Developmental Account',
-American Psychologist, 1990, pp. 513-20; and for a popular report,
-361
-Notes and References
-Christine Gorman 'Sizing Up the Sexes', Time, 20 January 1992,
-pp.30-7.
-For a typical defence of equality of opportunity as the only justifiable
-form of equality, see Daniel Bell, 'A "Just" Equality', Dialogue (Washington,
-D.C.), vol. 8, no. 2 (1975). The quotation on pp. 38-9 is from
-Jeffrey Gray, 'Why Should Society Reward Intelligence?' The Times
-(London), 8 September 1972. For an acute statement of the dilemmas
-raised by equal opportunity, see J. Fishkin, Justice, Equal Opportunity
-and the Family (New Haven, 1983).
-The leading case on reverse discrimination in the United States,
-Regents of the University of California v Allan Bakke, was decided by the
-U.S. Supreme Court on 5 July 1978. M. Cohen, T. Nagel, and T. Scanlon
-have brought together some relevant essays on this topic in their anthology,
-Equality and Preferential Treatment (Princeton, 1976). See also
-Bernard Boxill, 'Equality, Discrimination and Preferential Treatment',
-in P. Singer (ed.), A Companion to Ethics and the same author's Blacks
-and Social Justice (Totowa, N.J., 1983).
-Chapter 3: Equality for animals
-My views on animals first appeared in The New York Review of Books,
-S April 1973, under the title 'Animal Liberation'. This article was a
-review of R. and S. Godlovitch and J. Harris (eds.), Animals, Men and
-Morals (London,_ 1972). A more complete statement was published as
-Animal Liberation, 2d ed. (New York, 1990). Richard Ryder charts the
-history of changing attitudes towards speciesism in Animal Revolution
-(Oxford, 1989).
-Among other works arguing for a drastic revision in our present
-attitudes to animals are Stephen Clark, The Moral Status of Animals
-(Oxford, 1977); and Tom Regan The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley,
-1983). Animal Rights and Human Obligations, 2d ed., edited by T. Regan
-and P. Singer (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1989) is a collection of essays,
-old and new, both for and against attributing rights to animals or duties
-to humans in respect of animals. P. Singer (ed.), In Defence of Animals
-(Oxford, 1985), collects essays by both activists and theorists involved
-with the animal liberation movement. Steve Sapontzis, Morals, Reason
-and Animals (Philadelphia, 1987), is a detailed and sympathetic philosophical
-analysis of arguments about animal liberation, while R. G.
-Frey, Rights, Killing and Suffering (Oxford, 1983), and Michael Leahy,
-Against Liberation (London, 1991), offer philosophical critiques of the
-animal liberation position. Mary Midgley, Animals and Why They Matter
-362
-Notes and References
-(Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1983), is a readable and often penetrating
-account of these issues. James Rachels, Created from Animals (Oxford,
-1990), draws the moral implications of the Darwinian revolution
-in our thinking about our place among the animals. Finally, Lori
-Gruen's 'Animals' in P. Singer (ed.), A Companion to Ethics, explores
-the predominant recent approaches to the issue.
-Bentham's defence of animals, quoted in the section 'Racism and
-Speciesism' is from his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation,
-chap. 18, sec. I, n.
-A more detailed description of modem farming conditions can be
-found in Animal Liberation, chap. 3; and in James Mason and Peter
-Singer, Animal Factories, 2d ed. (New York, 1990). Similarly, Animal
-Liberation, chap. 2, contains a fuller discussion of the use of animals
-in research than is possible in this book, but see also Richard Ryder,
-Victims of Science, 2d ed. (Fontwell, Sussex, 1983). Publication details
-of the experiment on rhesus monkeys carried out at the U.S. Armed
-Forces Radiobiology Institute are: Carol Frantz, 'Effects of Mixed Neutron-
-gamma Total-body Irradiation on Physical Activity Performance
-of Rhesus Monkeys', Radiation Research, vol. lOl (1985): 434-41. The
-experiments at Princeton University on starving rats, and those by H.
-F. Harlow on isolating monkeys, referred to in the sub-section 'Experimenting
-on Animals', were originally published in Journal of Comparative
-and Physiological Psychology, vol. 78 (1972): 202, Proceedings of
-the National Academy of Science, vol. 54 (1965): 90, and Engineering and
-Science, vol. 33, no. 6 (April 1970) : 8. On the continuation of Harlow's
-work, see Animal Liberation, 2d ed., pp. 34-5.
-Among the objections, the claim that animals are incapable of feeling
-pain has standardly been associated with Descartes. But Descartes' view
-is less clear (and less consistent) than most have assumed. See John
-Cottingham, 'A Brute to the Brutes?: Descartes' Treatment of Animals',
-Philosophy, vol. 53 (1978): 551. In The Unheeded Cry (Oxford, 1989),
-Bernard Rollin describes and criticises more recent ideologies that have
-denied the reality of animal pain.
-The source for the anecdote about Benjamin Franklin is his Autobiography
-(New York, 1950), p. 41. The same objection has been more
-seriously considered by John Benson in 'Duty and the Beast', Philosophy,
-vol. 53 (1978): 545-7.
-Jane Goodall's observations of chimpanzees are engagingly recounted
-in In the Shadow of Man (Boston, 1971) and Through a Window
-(London, 1990); her own more scholarly account is The Chimpanzees
-of Gombe (Cambridge, Mass., 1986). For more information on the ca-
-363
-Notes and References
-pacities of the great apes, see Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer (eds.),
-Toward a New Equality: The Great Ape Project (forthcoming). The 'argument
-from marginal cases' was thus christened by Jan Narveson,
-'Animal Rights', Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 7 (1977). Of the
-objections to this argument discussed in the sub-section 'Differences
-between Humans and Animals', the first was made by Stanley Benn,
-'Egalitarianism and Equal Consideration of Interests', in J. Pennock
-and J. Chapman (eds.), Nomos IX: Equality (New York, 1967), pp. 62ff.;
-the second by John Benson, 'Duty and the Beast', Philosophy, vol. 53
-(the quotation from 'one reviewer of Animal Liberation' is from p. 536
-of this article) and related points are made by Bonnie Steinbock, 'Speciesism
-and the Idea of Equality', Philosophy, vol. 53 (1978): 255-6,
-and at greater length by Leslie Pickering Francis and Richard Norman,
-'Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others', Philosophy, vol. 53
-(1978): 518-27. The third objection can be found in Philip Devine,
-'The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism', Philosophy, vol. 53 (19): 496-8.
-The quotation from Plato's Republic in the section 'Ethics and Reciprocity'
-is from Book 2, pp. 358-9. Later statements of a similar view
-include John Rawls, A Theory of Justice; J. L. Mackie, Ethics chap. 5;
-and David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement (Oxford, 1986). They exclude
-animals from the centre of morality, although they soften the impact
-of this exclusion in various ways (see, for example, A Theory of Justice,
-p. 512, and Ethics, pp. 193-5). Narveson also considers the reciprocity
-notion of ethics in 'Animal Rights'. My discussion of the looser version
-of the reciprocity view draws on Edward Johnson, Species and Morality,
-Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, 1976, University Microfilms International.
-Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1981, p. 145.
-Chapter 4: What's wrong with killing?
-Andrew Stinson's treatment is described by Robert and Peggy Stinson
-in The Long Dying of Baby Andrew (Boston, 1983).
-Joseph Fletcher'S article 'Indicators of Humanhood: A Tentative Profile
-of Man' appeared in The Hastings Center Report, vol. 2, no. 5 (1972).
-John Locke's definition of 'person' is taken from his Essay Concerning
-Human Understanding, bk. 1. chap. 9, par. 29. Aristotle's views on
-infanticide are in his Politics, bk. 7, p. 1335b; Plato's are in the Republic,
-bk. 5, p.460. Support for the claim that our present attitudes to infanticide
-are largely the effect of the influence of Christianity on our
-thought can be found in the historical material on infanticide cited in
-the notes on chap. 6, below. (See especially the article by W. L. Langer,
-364
-Notes and References
-pp. 353-5.) For Aquinas's statement that killing a human being offends
-against God as killing a slave offends against the master of the slave,
-see Summa Theologica, 2, ii, Question 64, article 5.
-Hare propounds and defends his two-level view of moral reasoning
-in Moral Thinking (Oxford, 1981).
-Michael Tooley's 'Abortion and Infanticide' was first published in
-Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 2 (1972) The passage quoted here is
-from a revised version in J. Feinberg (ed.), The Problem of Abortion
-(Belmont. 1973), p. 60. His book Abortion and Infanticide was published
-in Oxford in 1983.
-For further discussion of respect for autonomy as an objection to
-killing, see Jonathan Glover, Causing Death and Saving Lives (Harmondsworth,
-Middlesex, 1977), chap. 5. and H. J. McCloskey, 'The
-Right to Life', Mind, vol. 84 (1975).
-My discussion of the 'total' and 'prior existence' versions of utilitarianism
-owes much to Derek Parfit. I originally tried to defend the
-prior existence view in 'A Utilitarian Population Principle', in M. Bayles
-(ed.), Ethics and Population (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), but Parfit's reply,
-'On Doing the Best for Our Children', in the same volume, persuaded
-me to change my mind. Parfit's Reasons and Persons (Oxford, 1984) is
-required reading for anyone wishing to pursue this topic in depth. See
-also his short account of some of the issues in 'Overpopulation and
-the Quality of Life', in P. Singer (ed.), Applied Ethics (Oxford, 1986).
-Parfit uses the term 'person-affecting' where I use 'prior existence'. The
-reason for the change is that the view has no special reference to
-persons, as distinct from other sentient creatures.
-The distinction between the two versions of utilitarianism appears
-to have been first noticed by Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics
-(London, 1907), pp. 414-16. Later discussions include, in addition to
-those cited above, J. Narveson, 'Moral Problems of Population', The
-Monist, vol. 57 (1973); T. G. Roupas, The Value of Life', Philosophy
-and Public Affairs, vol. 7 (1978); and R.1. Sikora, 'Is It Wrong to Prevent
-the Existence of Future Generations', in B. Barry and R. Sikora (eds.),
-Obligations to Future Generations (Philadelphia, 1978).
-Mill's famous passage comparing Socrates and the fool appeared in
-his Utilitarianism (London, 1960; first published 1863), pp. 8-9.
-Chapter 5: Taking life: animals
-The break-through in talking to other species was first announced in
-R. and B. Gardner, 'Teaching Sign Language to a Chimpanzee', Science,
-365
-Notes and References
-vol. 165 (1969): 664-72. Since then the literature has multiplied rapidly.
-The information on language use in chimpanzees, gorillas and an
-orangutan in the section 'Can a Non-human Animal Be a Person?' is
-drawn from the articles by Roger and Deborah Fouts, Francine Patterson
-and Wendy Gordon, and H. Lyn Miles, in Paola Cavalieri and
-Peter Singer (eds.), Toward a New Equality: The Great Ape Project (forthcoming).
-Erik Eckholm, 'Language Acquisition in Nonhuman Primates',
-in T. Regan and P. Singer (eds.), Animal Rights and Human
-Obligations, 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1989), provides a brief popular
-account.
-The quotation in the same section from Stuart Hampshire is to be
-found in his Thought and Action (London, 1959), pp. 98-9. Others
-who have held related views are Anthony Kenny, in Will, Freedom and
-Power (Oxford, 1975); Donald Davidson, 'Thought and Talk', in S.
-Guttenplan (ed.), Mind and Language (Oxford, 1975); and Michael
-Leahy, Against Liberation (London, 1991).
-Julia's problem-solving abilities were demonstrated by J. Dohl and
-B. Rensch; their work is described in Jane Goodall, The Chimpanzees
-ofGombe, p. 31. Frans de Waal reports his observations of chimpanzees
-in Chimpanzee Politics (New York, 1983). Goodall's account of Figan's
-thoughtful manner of obtaining his banana is taken from p. 107 of In
-the Shadow of Man. Robert Mitchell assesses the evidence for selfconsciousness
-in apes in 'Humans, Nonhumans and Personhood', in
-Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer (eds.), Toward a New Equality: The
-Great Ape Project. The anecdotal evidence of a sense of time in a guide
-dog comes from Sheila Hocken, Emma and I (London, 1978), p. 63;
-and the story of the feral cats is from the chapter on intelligence in
-Muriel Beadle, The Cat: History, Biology and Behaviour (London, 1977).
-lowe these last two references to Mary Midgley, Animals and Why They
-Matter (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1983), p. 58.
-Goodall's estimate of the number of chimpanzees who die for every
-one to reach our shores alive is on p. 257 of In the Shadow of Man. See
-also Geza Teleki's account of the chimpanzee trade in Paola Cavalieri
-and Peter Singer (eds.), Toward a New Equality: The Great Ape Project.
-Leslie Stephen's claim that eating bacon is kind to pigs comes from
-his Social Rights and Duties (London, 1896) and is quoted by Henry Salt
-in 'The Logic of the Larder', which appeared in Salt's The Humanities
-of Diet (Manchester, 1914) and has been reprinted in the first edition
-of T. Regan and P. Singer (eds.), Animal Rights and Human Obligations
-(Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1976). Salt's reply is in the same article. My
-own earlier discussion of this issue is in Chapter 6 of the first edition
-366
-Notes and References
-of Animal Liberation (New York, 1975). For the example of the two
-women, see Derek Parfir, 'Rights, Interests and Possible People', in S.
-Gorovitz et al. (eds.), Moral Problems in Medicine (Englewood Cliffs,
-N.J., 1976); a variation expressed in terms of a choice between two
-different medical programs can be found in Parfir s Reasons and Persons
-(Oxford, 1984), p. 367. James Rachels's distinction between a biological
-and a biographical life comes from his The End of Life (Oxford,
-1987). Hart's discussion of this topic in his review of the first edition
-of this book was entitled 'Death and Utility' and appeared in The New
-York Review of Books, 15 May 1980. My initial response appeared as a
-letter in the same publication, 14 August 1980. I develop the metaphor
-of life as a journey in 'Life's Uncertain Voyage', in P. Pettit, R. Sylvan,
-and J. Norman (eds.), Metaphysics and Morality: Essays in Honour of J.
-J. C. Smart (Oxford, 1987).
-Chapter 6: Taking life: The embryo and fetus
-The most important sections of the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court
-in Roe v. Wade are reprinted in J.Feinberg (ed.), The Problem of Abortion.
-Robert Edwards's speculations about taking stem cells from embryos
-at around seventeen days after fertilisation are from his essay 'The case
-for studying human embryos and their constituent tissues in vitro', in
-R. G. Edwards and J. M. Purdy (eds.), Human Conception in Vitro (London,
-1982). The government committee referred to in the sub-section
-'Not the Law's Business?' - the Wolfenden Committee - issued the
-Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, Command
-Paper 247 (London, 1957). The quotation is from p. 24. J. S. Mill's
-'very simple principle' is stated in the introductory chapter of On Liberty,
-3d ed. (London, 1864). Edwin Schur's Crimes without Victims was published
-in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., in 1965. Judith Jarvis Thomson's 'A
-Defense of Abortion' appeared in Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. I
-(1971) and has been reprinted in P. Singer (ed.), Applied Ethics.
-Paul Ramsey uses the genetic uniqueness ofthe fetus as an argument
-against abortion in 'The Morality of Abortion', in D. H. Labby (ed.),
-Life or Death: Ethics and Options (London, 1968) and reprinted in J.
-Rachels (ed.), Moral Problems, 2d ed. (New York, 1975), p. 40.
-On scientific, ethical and legal aspects of embryo experimentation,
-see P. Singer, H. Kuhse, S. Buckle, K. Dawson, and P. Kasimba (eds.),
-Embryo Experimentation (Cambridge, England, 1990). lowe my speculations
-about the identity of the splitting embryo to Helga Kuhse, with
-whom I co-authored 'Individuals, Humans and Persons: The Issue of
-367
-Notes and References
-Moral Status', in that volume. We were both indebted to a remarkable
-book by a Roman Catholic theologian that challenges the view that
-conception marks the beginning of the human individual: Norman
-Ford, When Did I Begin? (Cambridge, 1988). The argument about potentiality
-in the context of IVF was first published in P. Singer and K.
-Dawson, :IVF T~chnology and the Argument from Potential', Philosophy
-and Publzc AffaIrs, vol. 17 (1988) and is reprinted in Embryo Experimentation.
-Stephen Buckle takes a different approach in 'Arguing from
-Potential', Bioethics, vol. 2 (1988) and reprinted in Embryo Experimentation.
-The quotation from John Noonan in the section 'The Status of
-the Embryo in the Laboratory' is from his 'An Almost Absolute Value
-in History', in John Noonan (ed.), The Morality of Abortion (Cambridge,
-Mass., 1970) pp. 56-7. On the feminist argument about IVF, see Beth
-Gaze and Karen Dawson, 'Who Is the Subject of Research?' and Mary
-Anne Warren, 'Is IVF Research a Threat to Women's Autonomy?' both
-in Embryo Experimentation.
-On the use of fetuses in research and potential clinical uses, see
-Karen Dawson 'Overview of Fetal Tissue Transplantation', in Lynn
-Gillam (ed.), The Fetus as Tissue Donor: Use or Abuse (Clayton, Victoria,
-1990). My account of the development of fetal sentience draws on
-research carried out by Susan Taiwa at the Centre for Human Bioethics,
-Monash University, and published as 'When Is the Capacity for Sentience
-Acquired during Human Fetal Development?' Journal of Maternal-
-Fetal Medicine, vol. 1 (1992). An earlier expert opinion came from
-the British government advisory group on fetal research, chaired by
-Sir John Peel, published as The Use of Fetuses and Fetal Materials for
-Research (London, 1972). See also Clifford Grobstein, Science and the
-Unborn (New York 1988).
-Bentham's reassuring comment on infanticide, quoted in the section
-:Abortion and Infanticide' is from his Theory of Legislation, p. 264, and
-IS quoted by E. Westermarck, The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas
-(London, 1924), vol. 1, p. 413n. In the final part of Abortion and Infanticide
-Michael Tooley discusses the available evidence on the development
-in the infant of the sense of being a continuing self.
-For historical material on the prevalence of infanticide see Maria
-Piers, Infanticide (New York, 1978); and W. L. Langer, 'Infanticide: A
-Historical Survey', History of Childhood Quarterly, vol. 1 (1974). An
-older, but still valuable survey is in Edward Westennarck, The Origin
-and Development of Moral Ideas, vol. 1, pp. 394-413. An interesting study
-of the use of infanticide as a form of family planning is Nakahara:
-Family Farming and Population in a Japanese Village, 1717-1830, by
-368
-Notes and References
-Thomas C. Smith (Palo Alto, Calif., 1977). References for Plato and
-Aristotle were given in the notes to Chapter 4. For Seneca, see De Ira,
-1, 15, cited by Westermarck, The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas,
-vol. 1, p. 419. Marvin Kohl (ed.), Infanticide and the Value of Life (Buffalo,
-N.Y., 1978) is a collection of essays on infanticide. A powerful
-argument on public policy grounds for birth as the place to draw the
-line, can be found (by readers of German) in Norbert Hoerster,
-'Kindstotung und das Lebensrecht von Personen', Analyse & Kritik, vol.
-12 (1990): 226-44.
-Further articles on abortion are collected in J. Feinberg (ed.), The
-Problem of Abortion, and in Robert Perkins (ed.), Abortion, Pro and Con
-(Cambridge, Mass., 1974). Articles with some affinity with the position
-I have taken include R. M. Hare, 'Abortion and the Golden Rule',
-Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 4 (1975); and Mary Anne Warren,
-'The Moral and Legal Status of Abortion', The Monist, vol. 57 (1973).
-Don Marquis restates the conservative position in 'Why Abortion Is
-Immoral', Journal of Philosophy, vol. 86 (1989); but see also Alistair
-Norcross, 'Killing, Abortion and Contraception: A Reply to Marquis',
-Journal of Philosophy, vol. 87 (1990). A useful summary of the abortion
-issue is Mary Anne Warren's' Abortion' in P. Singer (ed.), A Companion
-to Ethics.
-Chapter 7: Taking life: Humans
-Derek Humphry's account of his wife's death, Jean's Way, was published
-in London in 1978. On the death of Janet Adkins, see New York
-Times, 14 December 1990; for Jack Kevorkian's own account, see J.
-Kevorkian, Prescription: Medicide (Buffalo, N.Y., 1991). For details of
-the Zygmaniak case, see Paige Mitchell, Act of Love (New York, 1976),
-or the New York Times,!, 3, and 6 November 1973. Louis Repouille's
-killing of his son was reported in the New York Times, 13 October 1939,
-and is cited by Yale Kamisar, 'Some Non-religious Views against Proposed
-Mercy Killing Legislation', Minnesota Law Review, vol. 42 (1958):
-1,021. Details of the Linares case are from the New York Times, 27 April
-1989 and the Hastings Center Report, July/August 1989.
-Robert Reid, My Children, My Children, is a fine introduction to the
-nature of some birth defects, including spina bifida and haemophilia.
-For evidence of high rates of divorce and severe marital difficulties
-among parents of spina bifida children, see p. 127. See also Helga Kuhse
-and Peter Singer, Should the Baby Live? (Oxford, 1985), for more de-
-369
-Notes and References
-tailed infonnation and references regarding the entire topic of life and
-death decisions for infants.
-The numbers of patients in a persistent vegetative state and the
-duration of these states is reported in 'USA: Right to Live, or Right to
-Die?' Lancet, vol. 337 (12 January 1991).
-On euthanasia in the Netherlands, see J. K. Gevers, 'Legal Developments
-Concerning Active Euthanasia on Request in the Netherlands,
-Bioethics, vol. 1 (1987). The annual number of cases is given in 'Dutch
-Doctors Call for Legal Euthanasia', New Scientist, 12 October 1991,
-p. 17. Paul J. van der Maas et aI., 'Euthanasia and Other Medical
-Decisions Concerning the End of Life', Lancet, vol. 338 (14 September
-1991): 669-74, at 673, gives a figure of 1900 deaths due to euthanasia
-each year, but this is limited to reports from doctors in general practice.
-The quotation in the section 'Justifying Voluntary Euthanasia' about
-patients' desire for reassurance comes from this article, p. 673. The case
-of Diane is cited from Timothy E. Quill, 'Death and Dignity: A Case
-of Individualized Decision Making', New England Journal of Medicine,
-vol. 324, no. 10 (7 March 1991): 691-4, while Betty Rollins describes
-the death of her mother in Betty Rollins, Last Wish (Penguin, 1987).
-The passage quoted is from pp. 149-50. See also Betty Rollins's
-foreword to Derek Humphry, Final Exit: The Pradicalities of SelfDeliverance
-and Assisted Suicide (Eugene, Oreg., 1991), pp. 12-13.
-Yale Kamisar argues against voluntary as well as nonvoluntary euthanasia
-in the article cited above; he is answered by Robert Young,
-'Voluntary and Nonvoluntary Euthanasia', The Monist, vol. 59 (1976).
-The view of the Roman Catholic church was presented in Declaration
-on Euthanasia published by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine
-of the Faith, Vatican City, 1980. Other useful discussions are Jonathan
-Glover, Causing Death and Saving Lives, chaps. 14 and 15; D. Humphry
-and A. Wickett, The Right to Die: Understanding Euthanasia (New York,
-1986); and H. Kuhse, 'Euthanasia', in P. Singer (ed.), A Companion to
-Ethics.
-The distinction between active and passive euthanasia is succinctly
-criticized by James Rachels, 'Active and Passive Euthanasia', New England
-Journal of Medicine, vol. 292 (1975): pp. 78-80, reprinted in P.
-Singer (ed.), Applied Ethics. See also Rachels's The End of Life; Kuhse
-and Singer, Should the Baby Live?, chap. 4; and for the most thorough
-and rigorous philosophical discussion, Helga Kuhse, The Sandity-ofLife
-Doctrine in Medicine - A Critique (Oxford, 1987), chap. 2. An account
-of the Baby Doe case is given in Chapter 1 of the same book. The
-survey of American paediatricians was published as Loretta M. Ko-
-370
-Notes and References
-pelman, Thomas G. Irons, and Arthur E. Kopelman, 'Neonatologists
-Judge the "Baby Doe" Regulations', New England Journal of Medicine,
-vol. 318, no. 11 (17 March 1988): 677-83. The British legal cases
-concerning such decisions are described in Derek Morgan, 'Letting
-Babies Die Legally', Institute of Medical Ethics Bulletin (May 1989),
-pp. 13-18; and in 'Withholding of Life-saving Treatment', Lancet, vol.
-336 (1991): 1121. A representative example of the pious misinterpretation
-of Arthur Clough's lines occurs in G. K. and E. D. Smith, 'Selection
-for Treatment in Spina Bifida Cystica', British Medical Journal,
-27 October 1973, at p. 197. The entire poem is included in Helen
-Gardner (ed.), The New Oxford Book of English Verse (Oxford, 1978).
-Sir Gustav Nossal's essay cited in the section 'Active and Passive
-Euthanasia' is 'The Right to Die: Do We Need New Legislation?' in
-Parliament of Victoria, Social Development Committee, First Report on
-Inquiry into Options for Dying with Dignity, p. 104. On the doctrine of
-double effect and the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary
-means of treatment, see Helga Kuhse, 'Euthanasia', in P. Singer (ed.),
-A Companion to Ethics; and for a fuller account, H. Kuhse, The Sanctityof
-Life Doctrine in Medicine - A Critique, chaps. 3-4.
-The survey of Australian pediatricians and obstetricians referred to
-in the section 'Active and Passive Euthanasia' was published as P.
-Singer, H. Kuhse, and C. Singer, 'The Treatment of Newborn Infants
-with Major Handicaps', Medical Journal of Australia, 17 September 1983.
-The testimony of the Roman Catholic bishop, Lawrence Casey, in the
-Quinlan case is cited in the judgment, 'In the Matter of Karen Quinlan,
-An Alleged Incompetent', reprinted in B. Steinbock (ed.), Killing and
-Letting Die (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1980). John Lorber describes his
-practice of passive euthanasia for selected cases of spina bifida in 'Early
-Results of Selective Treatment of Spina Bifida Cystica', British Medical
-Journal, 27 October 1973, pp. 201-4. The statistics for survival of untreated
-spina bifida infants come from the articles by Lorber and G. K.
-and E. D. Smith, cited above. Different doctors report different figures.
-For further discussion of the treatment of infants with spina bifida, see
-Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer, Should the Baby Live?, chap. 3.
-Lorber's objection to active euthanasia quoted at the start of the
-section 'The Slippery Slope' is from p. 204 of his British Medical Journal
-article cited above. The argument that Nazi crimes developed out of
-the euthanasia programme is quoted from Leo Alexander, 'Medical
-Science under Dictatorship', New England Journal of Medicine, vo1.241
-(14 July 1949): 39-47. Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: From Mercy
-Killing to Mass Murder (London, 1974) makes a similar claim in tracing
-371
-Notes and References
-the career of Franz Stangl from the euthanasia centres to the death
-camp at Treblinka; but in so doing she reveals how different the Nazi
-'euthanasia' programme was from what is now advocated (see especially
-pp. 51-5). For an example of a survey showing that people
-regularly evaluate some health states as worse than death, see G. W.
-Torrance, 'Utility Approach to Measuring Health-Related Quality of
-Life', Journal of Chronic Diseases, vol. 40 (1987): 6.
-On euthanasia among the Eskimo (and the rarity of homicide outside
-such special circumstances), see E. Westermarck, The Origin and
-Development of Moral Ideas, vol. 1, pp. 329-34, 387, n.l, and 392, nn.
-1-3.
-Chapter 8: Rich and poor
-The summary of world poverty was compiled from a number of sources,
-including Alan B. Durning, 'Ending Poverty' in the Worldwatch Institute
-report edited by Lester Brown et aI., State of the World 1990
-(Washington D.C., 1990); the United Nations Development Programme's
-Human Development Report 1991; and the report of the World
-Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future
-(Oxford, 1987). The first quotation from Robert McNamara in the
-section 'Some Facts about Poverty' is from the Summary Proceedings of
-the 1976 Annual Meeting of the World BankiIFCIIDA, p. 14; the following
-quotation is from the World Bank's World Development Report,
-1978 (New York 1978), p. iii.
-For the wastage involved in feeding crops to animals instead of
-directly to humans, see Francis Moore Lappe, Diet for a Small Planet
-(New York, 1971; 10th anniversary ed., 1982); A. Durning and H.
-Brough, Taking Stock, Worldwatch Paper 103 (Washington, D.C. 1991);
-and J. Rifkin, Beyond Beef (New York, 1991), chap. 23.
-On the difference - or lack of it - between killing and allowing to
-die, see (in addition to the previous references to active and passive
-euthanasia) Jonathan Glover, Causing Death and Saving Lives, chap. 7;
-Richard Trammel, 'Saving Life and Taking Life', Journal of Philosophy,
-vol. 72 (1975); John Harris, 'The Marxist Conception of Violence',
-Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 3 (1974); John Harris, Violence and
-Responsibility (London, 1980); and S. Kagan, The Limits of Morality
-(Oxford, 1989).
-John Locke's view of rights is developed in his Second Treatise on Civil
-Government, and Robert Nozick's in Anarchy, State and Utopia (New
-372
-Notes and References
-York, 1974). Thomas Aquinas's quite different view is quoted from
-Summa Theologica, 2, ii, Question 66, article 7.
-Garrett Hardin proposed his 'lifeboat ethic' in 'Living on a Lifeboat',
-Bioscience, October 1974, another version of which has been reprinted
-in W. Aiken and H. La Follette (eds.), World Hunger and Moral Obligation
-(Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1977). Hardin elaborates on the argument in
-The Limits of Altruism (Bloomington, Indiana, 1977). An earlier argument
-against aid was voiced by W. and P. Paddock in their mistitled
-Famine 19751 (Boston 1967) but pride of place in the history of this
-view must go to Thomas Malthus for An Essay on the Principle of Population
-(London, 1798).
-Opposition to the view that the world is over-populated comes from
-Susan George, How the Other Half Dies, rev. ed. (Harmondsworth, Middlesex,
-1977), chap. 2. See also T. Hayter The Creation of World Poverty
-(London, 1981). The estimates of population in various countries by the
-year 2000 are taken from the Human Development Report, 1991. For evidence
-that more equal distribution of income, better education, and better
-health facilities can reduce population growth, see John W. Ratcliffe,
-'Poverty, Politics and Fertility: The Anomaly of Kerala', Hastings Center
-Report, vol. 7 (1977); for a more general discussion of the idea of demographic
-transition, see William Rich, Smaller Families through Social and
-Economic Progress, Overseas Development Council Monograph no. 7
-(1973); and Julian Simon, The Effects of Income on Fertility, Carolina Population
-Center Monograph (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1974). On ethical issues
-relating to population control, see Robert Young, 'Population Policies,
-Coercion and Morality', in D. Mannison, R. Routley, and M. McRobbie
-(eds.), Environmental Philosophy (Canberra, 1979).
-The objection that a position such as mine poses too high a standard
-is put by Susan Wolf, 'Moral Saints', Journal of Philosophy, vol. 79
-(1982): 419-39. See also the 'Symposium on Impartiality and Ethical
-Theory', Ethics, vol. 10 1 (July 1991): 4. For a forceful defence of impartialist
-ethics see S. Kagan, The Limits of Morality (Oxford, 1989).
-For a summary of the issues, see Nigel Dower, 'World Poverty', in
-P. Singer (ed.), A Companion to Ethics. A fuller account by the same
-author is World Poverty: Challenge and Response (York, 1983). For a
-rights approach, see H. Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence and U.S.
-Policy (Princeton, 1980); and for a Kantian approach, Onora O'Neill,
-Faces of Hunger (London, 1986). A useful general collection is W. Aiken
-and H. La Follette (eds.), World Hunger and MoralObligation (Englewood
-Cliffs, N.J., 1977). On the efficacy of overseas aid, see R. Riddell, Foreign
-Aid Reconsidered (Baltimore, 1987).
-373
-Notes and References
-Chapter 9: Insiders and outsiders
-Figures on refugee numbers are taken from New Internationalist, September
-1991, pp. 18-19. The United Nations High Commission for
-Refugees also publishes estimates of refugee numbers, in terms of its
-own narrow definition of a refugee, and of numbers resettled.
-Michael Walzer's views are presented in his Spheres of Justice (New
-York, 1983), pp. 9-22.
-The account of the visit to the refugee camp in the section 'The
-Fallacy of the Current Approach' comes from Rossi van der Borch,
-'Impressions of a Refugee Camp', quoted in Asia Bureau Australia Newsletter,
-no. 85 (October-December 1986).
-Michael Gibney (ed.), Open Borders? Closed Societies? (New York
-1988), is a valuable collection of essays on ethical and political aspects
-of the refugee issue.
-Chapter 10: The environment
-On the proposal to dam the Franklin River in southwest Tasmania,
-see James McQueen, The Franklin: Not Just a River (Ringwood, Victoria,
-1983).
-The first quotation in 'The Western Tradition' is from Genesis 1 :24-
-8 and the second from Genesis 9: 1-3. For attempts to soften the message
-of these passages, see, for instance, Robin Attfield, The Ethics of
-Environmental Concern (Oxford, 1983); and Andrew Linzey Christianity
-and the Rights of Animals (London 1987). The quotation from Paul
-comes from Corinthians 9:9-10, and that from Augustine is from his
-The Catholic and Manichean Ways of Life, trans. D. A. Gallagher and I.
-J. Gallagher (Boston, 1966), p. 102. For the cursing of the fig tree, see
-Mark 11:12-22, and for the drowning of the pigs, Mark 5:1-13. The
-passage from Aristotle is to be found in Politics (London, 1916), p. 16;
-for the views of Aquinas, see Summa Theologica, 1, ii, Question 64,
-article 1; 1, ii, Question 72, article 4.
-For details on the alternative Christian thinkers, see Keith Thomas,
-Man and the Natural World (London, 1983), pp. 152-3; and Attfield,
-The Ethics of Environmental Concern.
-For further information on the effects of global warming, see Lester
-Brown and others, State of the World 1990, Worldwatch Institute (Washington,
-D.C., 1990). The information on the effects of rising sea levels
-comes from Jodi 1. Jacobson's 'Holding Back the Sea' in that volume;
-she in tum draws on John D. Milliman and others, 'Environmental
-374
-Notes and References
-and Economic Implications of Rising Sea Level and Subsiding Deltas:
-The Nile and Bengal Examples', Ambio, vol. 18 (1989): 6; and United
-Nations Environment Program, Criteria for Assessing Vulnerability to SeaLevel
-Rise: A Global Inventory to High Risk Areas (Delft, Netherlands,
-1989). The quotations from Bill McKibben's The End of Nature (New
-York, 1989) are from pp. 58 and 60 of that book.
-Albert Schweitzer's most complete statement of his ethical stance is
-Civilisation and Ethics (Part 2 of The Philosophy of Civilisation), 2d ed.,
-trans. C. T. Campion (London, 1929). The quotation is from pp. 246-
-7. The quotations from Paul Taylor's Respectfor Nature (Princeton, 1986)
-are from pp. 45 and 128. For a critique of Taylor, see Gerald Paske:
-'The Life Principle: A (Metaethical) Rejection', Journal of Applied Philosophy,
-vol. 6 (1989).
-A. Leopold's proposal for a 'land ethic' can be found in his A Sand
-County Almanac, with Essays on Conservation from Round River (New York,
-1970; first published 1949,1953); the passages quoted are from pp. 238
-and 262. The classic text for the distinction between shallow and deep
-ecology is very brief: A. Naess, 'The Shallow and the Deep, LongRange
-Ecology Movement', Inquiry, vol. 16 (1973): 95-100. For later
-works on deep ecology, see, for example, A. Naess and G. Sessions,
-'Basic Principles of Deep Ecology', Ecophilosophy, vol. 6 (1984) (I first
-read the quoted passage in D. Bennet and R. Sylvan, 'Australian Perspectives
-on Environmental Ethics: A UNESCO Project' [unpublished,
-1989]); W. Devall and G. Sessions, Deep Ecology: Living As If Nature
-Mattered (Salt Lake City, 1985) (The passage quoted is from p. 67); 1.
-Johnson, A Morally Deep World (Cambrldge, 1990), F. Mathews, The
-Ecological Self (London, 1991); V. Plumwood, 'Ecofeminism: An Overview
-and Discussion of Positions and Arguments: Critical Review',
-Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 64 (1986): suppl.; and R. Sylvan,
-'Three Essays upon Deeper Environmental Ethics', Discussion Papers in
-Environmental Philosophy, vol. 13 (1986) (published by the Australian
-National University, Canberra). James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at
-Life on Earth, was published in Oxford in 1979. Christopher Stone's
-Earth and Other Ethics (New York, 1987) is a tentative exploration of
-ways in which nonsentient beings might be included in an ethical
-framework.
-The original Green Consumer Guide was by John Elkington and Julia
-Hailes (London 1988). Adaptations have since been published in several
-other countries, as have many similar guides. On the extravagance
-of animal production, see the references given in Chapter 8, above.
-Rifkin's Beyond Beef and Durning and Brough's Taking Stock both also
-375
-Notes and References
-contain information on the clearing of the rainforest and other environmental
-impacts of the animals we raise for food.
-Roderick Nash, The Rights of Nature (Madison, Wis., 1989) is a useful,
-but not always reliable, historical account of the development of environmental
-ethics. Some collections of essays on this topic are R. Elliot
-and A. Gare (eds.), Environmental Philosophy: A Collection of Readings
-(S1. Lucia, Queensland, 1983); T. Regan, Earthbound: New Introductory
-Essays in Environmental Ethics (New York, 1984); and D. VandeVeer
-and C. Pierce (eds.), People, Penguins and Plastic Trees: Basic Issues in
-Environmental Ethics (Belmont, Calif., 1986). Robert Elliot summarizes
-the issues in 'Environmental Ethics', in P. Singer (ed.), A Companion
-to Ethics.
-Chapter II: Ends and means
-The story of Oskar Schindler is brilliantly told by Thomas Kenneally
-in Schindler's Ark (London, 1982). The case of Joan Andrews and
-the work of Operation Rescue is described by Bernard Nathanson,
-'Operation Rescue: Domestic Terrorism or Legitimate Civil Rights
-Protest?' Hastings Center Report, NovemberlDecember 1989, pp. 28-
-32. The biblical passage quoted is from Proverbs 24: 11. The claim
-by Gary Leber about the number of children saved is in his essay
-'We Must Rescue Them', Hastings Center Report, NovemberlDecember
-1989, pp.26-7. On Gennarelli's experiments and the events surrounding
-them, see Lori Gruen and Peter Singer, Animal Liberation:
-A Graphic Guide (London, 1987). On the Animal Liberation Front,
-see also Philip Windeatt, 'They Clearly Now See the Link: Militant
-Voices', in P. Singer (ed.), In Defence of Animals (Oxford, 1985). The
-blockade of the Franklin River is vividly described by a participant
-in James McQueen, The Franklin: Not Just a River (Ringwood, Victoria,
-1983); on the unsuccessful earlier campaign to save Lake Peddar,
-see Kevin Kiernan, 'I Saw My Temple Ransacked', in Cassandra
-Pybus and Richard Flanagan (eds.), The Rest of the World Is Watching
-(Sydney, 1990).
-Henry Thoreau's 'Civil Disobedience' has been reprinted in several
-places, among them H. A. Bedau (ed.), Civil Disobedience: Theory and
-Practice (New York, 1969); the passage quoted is on p. 28 of this collection.
-The immediately following quotation is from p. 18 of R. P.
-Wolff's In Defense of Anarchism (New York, 1970). On the nature of
-conscience, see A. Campbell Garnett, 'Conscience and Conscientiousness',
-in J. Feinberg (ed.), Moral Concepts (Oxford, 1969).
-376
-Notes and References
-John Locke argued for the importance of settled law in his Second
-Treatise on Civil Government, especially sections 124-6.
-On the sorry history of attempts to reform the law on animal experimentation,
-see Richard Ryder, Victims of Science.
-Mill's proposal for multiple votes for the better educated occurs in
-Chapter 8 of his Representative Government. The quotation from Engels's
-Condition of the Working Class in England, trans. and ed. Henderson and
-Chaloner (Oxford, 1958), p. 108, lowe to John Harris, 'The Marxist
-Conception of Violence', Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 3 (1974),
-which argues persuasively for regarding passive violence as a genuine
-form of violence. See also Harris's book, Violence and Responsibility (London,
-1980); and Ted Honderich, Three Essays on Political Violence (Oxford,
-1976). The quotation from Dave Foreman and Bill Haywood,
-Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching (Tucson, Ariz., 1987),
-appears on pp. 14 and 17.
-The issues dealt with in the first three sections of this chapter are
-more fully treated in my Democracy and Disobedience (Oxford, 1973).
-Probably the best collection of essays in this area is still J. G. Murphy
-(ed.), Civil Disobedience and Violence (Belmont, 1971), although the
-anthology edited by H. A. Bedau, referred to above, is valuable for its
-emphasis on the writings ofthose who practice civil disobedience rather
-than theorise about it from afar.
-Chapter 12: Why act morally?
-For attempts to reject the title question of this chapter as an improper
-question, see S. Toulmin, The Place of Reason in Ethics (Cambridge,
-1961), p. 162; J. Hospers, Human Conduct (London, 1963), p. 194; and
-M. G. Singer, Generalization in Ethics (London, 1963), pp. 319-27. D.
-H. Monro defines ethical judgments as overriding in Empiricism and
-Ethics (Cambridge, 1967); see, for instance, p. 127. R. M. Hare's prescriptivist
-view of ethics implies that a commitment to act is involved
-in accepting a moral jUdgment, but since only universalisable judgments
-count as moral judgments, this view does not have the consequence
-that whatever judgment we take to be overriding is necessarily
-our moral judgment. Hare's view therefore allows us to give sense to
-our question. On this general issue of the definition of moral terms
-and the consequences of different definitions, see my 'The Triviality of
-the Debate over "Is-Ought" and the Definition of "Moral"', American
-Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 10 (1973).
-The argument discussed in the second section is a distillation of such
-377
-Notes and References
-sources as Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, bk. 4, par. 4; I. Kant. Groundwork
-of the Metaphysic of Morals; H. J. Paton, The Categorical Imperative
-(London, 1963), pp.245-6; J. Hospers, Human Conduct (London,
-1963), pp. 584-93; and D. Gauthier, Practical Reasoning (Oxford, 1963),
-p.118.
-G. Carlson, 'Ethical Egoism Reconsidered', American Philosophical
-Quarterly, vol. 10 (1973), argues that egoism is irrational because the
-individual egoist cannot defend it publicly without inconsistency; but
-it is not clear why this should be a test ofrationality, since the egoist
-can still defend it to himself.
-Hume defends his view of practical reason in A Treatise of Human
-Nature, bk. 1, pt. iii, sec. 3. T. Nagel's objections to it are in The Possibility
-of Altruism (Oxford, 1970). For a more recent statement of Nagel's
-position, see his The View from Nowhere (New York, 1986). Sidgwick's
-observation on the rationality of egoism is on p. 498 of The Methods of
-Ethics, 7th ed. (London, 1907).
-Bradley's insistence on loving virtue for its own sake comes from
-his Ethical Studies (Oxford, 1876; repr. 1962), pp. 61-3. The same
-position can be found in Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals,
-chap. 1, and in D. Z. Phillips, 'Does It Pay to Be Good?' Proceedings of
-the Aristotelian Society, vol. 64 (1964-5). Bradley and Kant are expounding
-what they take to be 'the common moral consciousness'
-rather than their own views. Kant himself adheres to the view of the
-common moral consciousness, but later in Ethical Studies Bradley supports
-a view of morality in which the subjective satisfaction involved
-in the moral life plays a prominent role.
-My account of why we believe that only actions done for the sake
-of morality have moral worth is similar to Hume's view in his Enquiry
-Concerning the Principles of Morals. See also P. H. Nowell-Smith, Ethics,
-pt. 3.
-Maslow presents some sketchy data in support of his theory of personality
-in 'Psychological Data and Value Theory', in A. H. Maslow
-(ed.), New Knowledge in Human Values (New York, 1959); see also A.
-H. Maslow, Motivation and Personality (New York, 1954). Charles
-Hampden-Turner, Radical Man (New York, 1971) contains a hotchpotch
-of surveys and research linking certain humanistic values with
-an outlook on life that is subjectively rewarding; but the data are often
-only tangentially relevant to the conclusions drawn from them.
-On psychopaths, see H. Cleckley, The Mask of Sanity, 5th ed. (St.
-Louis, 1976). The remark about requests for help coming from relatives,
-not the psychopaths themselves, is on p. viii. The quotation from a
-378
-Notes and References
-happy psychopath is from W. and J. McCord, Psychopathy and Delinquency
-(New York, 1956), p. 6. On the ability of psychopaths to avoid
-prison, see R. D. Hare, Psychopathy (New York, 1970), pp. 111-12.
-The 'paradox of hedonism' is discussed by F. H. Bradley in the third
-essay of his Ethical Studies; for a psychotherapist's account. see V.
-Frankl. The Will to Meaning (London, 1971), pp. 33-4.
-On the relation between self-interest and ethics, see the concluding
-chapter of Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics; and for a useful anthology, D.
-Gauthier (ed.), Morality and Rational Self-Interest (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,
-1970). On the more general issue of the nature of practical reasoning,
-see J. Raz (ed.), Practical Reasoning (Oxford, 1978).
-The quotation from Dennis Levine is from his Inside Out (New York,
-1991), p. 391.