Rick Bogle, co-founder of the Primate Freedom Project, which fights to ban primate research (and, sadly, the life-saving research that goes with it), has decided to join the ranks of extremists such as Jerry Vlasak in condoning the murder of researchers. Sorry Rick, researchers are primates too!!
On the Primate Freedom blog, Mr. Bogle has this to say:
Trauma surgeon Jerry Vlasik [sic] has suggested, and I think he’s right, that if just a few vivisectors were murdered that millions of animals might be spared much suffering. Many vivisectors would simply quit. I don’t see how this isn’t likely to be true. [emphasis added]
You can read more about Jerry Vlasak from our previous posting about him. Note Bogle’s agreement with Vlasak’s stance. Bogle continues:
Extending this line of thought, if one were to start killing vivisectors in order to terrorize other vivisectors into stopping their diabolical investigations, should the murders be secret? sanitary? neat? Maybe not. It makes a certain sort of dark sense that one very sensational murder could have a greater impact than many hidden murders. There is an equation of sorts suggested by this. If it’s true that a series of murders might slow the attack on animals in the labs, wouldn’t lives be saved if the smallest number of murders possible were employed? What might be done to make one murder more noteworthy or a more efficient tool than another? [emphasis added]
At least he’s more or less admitting such extremism is terrorism. Nonetheless re-read the bolded part. Despite Bogle suggesting a few public, grizzly murders instead of a lot of “secret” and “neat” ones, it is still clear that more grizzly murders would be more “effective” (more researchers quitting, thus less animals used) than fewer grizzly murders. From that basis then we must assume that the lives being saved from the “smallest number of murders” is referring to the lives of researchers. Let me thus paraphrase:
Wouldn’t researchers be saved if we murdered only a small number of them?
Some of you will already be screaming “NO, if you want to save researchers then don’t murder any of them!” For those of you not screaming yet let me show you an analogous scenario of a murderer caught by the police:
Murderer: But Sir, I saved lives as well
Policeman: And how did you do that?
Murderer: Well I was going to murder 5 people, but I decided to just kill just 3 people, thus saving 2 people’s lives!!
Policeman: You can’t claim you saved someone because you didn’t kill them
Well at least the policeman realises the flaw in the argument, even if Rick Bogle doesn’t.
In conclusion all I can say is that Rick Bogle can join the ranks of absolute nutter, alongside Vlasak – and dangerous nutters at that.
Cheers
Tom
Hi Tom,
Jerry Vlasak and Rick Bogle are operating within moral frameworks in which the interests of nonhuman animals are given the same weight as the interests of humans. Given such a foundational belief, Bogle’s assertion that killing a smaller number of researchers in order to prevent the killing of some number of animals would save more lives than killing a larger number of researchers to prevent the killing of the same number of animals is plainly valid. Presumably you disagree with that foundational belief, but then your task is to show it false, not to falsely characterize the conclusions of someone operating on that belief as inconsistent.
Ari
Ari,
I haven’t accused either individual of being morally inconsistent with their own beliefs. I have attacked their moral framework as being ridiculous by showing how they use it. I needn’t even take it to “the logical extreme” – they seem happy to do it for me.
Any moral framework which results in disgusting conclusions is a digusting moral framework.
Tom,
The analogy you drew to the imaginary police scenario seemed to (poorly) target the structure of their arguments, not their premises. Anyway, now you’re clearly question-begging. You can’t argue against the morality of weighing the interests of nonhuman animals with equal consideration to those of human beings by pointing out that it will sometimes lead to the interests of nonhuman animals being weighed with equal consideration to those of human beings. Nor can you appeal to reductio ad absurdum, because the conclusion is a claim whose absurdity is the very thing being disputed.
Ari
“wouldn’t lives be saved if the smallest number of murders possible were employed?” is self contradictory (assuming lives being saved is a good thing) – I simply pointed this out.
Their moral framework is used to justify murder – most people would find this disgusting. I pointed this out. I’m not criticising them for being morally inconsistent, I’m criticising the disgusting conclusions – and yes, this (my) conclusion is one which is based on my own framework – fortunately most people would agree with me.
Many popular ethical frameworks justify murder. Many people believe ending some number of lives is permissible when necessary to save a larger number of lives; the only difference between this ubiquitous ethical framework and that of Vlasak and Bogle is what species’ lives count. The salient issue is why the lives of human beings and not other primates should count in this way – a question you ignore completely. Unless your entire point is one about the semantics of the concepts of ‘murder’ and ‘saving lives,’ I don’t see how you’ve contributed anything to the discussion.
As Tom indicated nobody claims they are inconsistent. If you truly believe there should be no difference between our moral concern for animals and humans, then you must conclude that a chicken in a farm is no different than a Jew in a concentration camp.
PeTA has arrived at that conclusion. So have Bogle and Vlasak. There is no surprise then that they justify violent action, as they see no difference whatsoever between the two situations.
Most people, however, would disagree with the premise that we owe equal moral consideration to all living beings and, therefore, with their conclusion.
Furthermore, at stake here is the issue of what is the best way to resolve moral disputes in a democratic society. If you accept animal activists have the right to use violence based on their moral theories, so you must also accept anti-abortion activists killing doctors, and KKK members killing black people. Is this what you have in mind?
Tom posted about the invalidity of the notion that one could save lives by killing fewer people, asserting that an analogous scenario revealed a ‘flaw in the argument.’ That is a claim about consistency.
You’re describing a crude construction of species equality. Typical animal activists, including many who justify direct action against researchers, assert that all animals have the right to equal consideration of interests – not to equal actual treatment. In this framework, a self-aware being with plans for its future, like most Jews and other humans, could be said to have a stronger interest in living than a being which has happy and painful experiences only on a moment-to-moment basis, like most chickens; and thus while we treat the interests of all the animals with equal consideration, we see that it is the human animal we should have more concern for, because he or she has a stronger interest in life.
I don’t know why the premise that we owe equal moral consideration to all living beings is relevant – that would put us all in a very difficult position when it came to the consumption of plants or sterilization of germs. It isn’t that animals are alive, but that they have experiences, including suffering and pleasure, that is the basis for moral argument on their behalf.
As for the best way to resolve disputes in a democratic society, nothing in Bogle or Vlasak’s arguments – or for that matter, the arguments of anti-abortion extremists – conflicts with common ideas on the matter. Typical people believe proportional violence can be justifiably used to end moral atrocities. That’s evident in the lack of retrospective guilt over the use of violence to end things like slavery in America and the Holocaust in Europe. It is the notion of whose lives count, morally, that is inconsistent with common thinking, and that is where the conversation should be.
To categorically address your examples, everything I’ve said about animal activists – that if their moral theories were true, then their violence would be legitimate – holds true of anti-abortion activists, which should be obvious. If abortion is indeed the murder of a child, then killing a small number of people complicit in abortions to prevent a large number of abortion deaths is plainly moral. Neither of those conclusions is inconsistent with common ideas on how we should resolve moral disputes in a democratic society; it’s their premises about what lives are morally valuable that conflict with common moral ideas. It’s because typical fetuses are not like children in important respects that violence on their behalf is illegitimate, and in a conversation with someone who believed in anti-abortion violence, I would expand this claim. You should be doing the same concerning the moral differences between human and non-human animals in your conversations with advocates of violence on behalf of the latter. Hopefully you can see how your KKK example isn’t really appropriate, in that typical KKK members don’t believe black people pose direct and imminent threats to the lives of others in the the same way that anti-abortion activists believe abortion doctors do and animal activists believe researchers do.
“…we see that it is the human animal we should have more concern for, because he or she has a stronger interest in life.”
We agree on this point then.
Now, suppose you suffer from a leaky heart valve that will cause your death within a year if left untreated. Would it be morally justifiable to use the heart of a pig to make a replacement valve and save your life? The above recognition that human and non-human animals have different interest in life seems to suggest you should. If so, how is that different from using monkeys to eradicate polio from the face of the earth exactly?
Moreover, you seem ready to accept violence against a few humans with the goal of saving many human lives. If so, how is that you fail to accept violence against non-human animals (which how animal rights activists see in animal research) with the same goal?
You’re conflating two different types of violence on behalf of others. The first is the one justified by animal activists, anti-abortion activists and most other people, and that’s violence used against the perpetrators of violence, in order to stop them from harming innocent moral persons – though as we’ve seen, people have different ideas about who exactly is a moral person. The second type of violence, which you’re now appealing to to justify animal research, is a very different one: violence used against innocent third parties, in order to prevent some harm to others. Here the recipients of violence have done nothing to cause the harm the violence is alleged to relieve. The types of violence I’ve discussed and referred to all fall under the first category, and it’s not at all obvious that accepting that type of violence implies accepting the second kind.
There’s a common thought experiment in ethics used to reveal the moral complexity of this second type of violence you’re appealing to, in which you are asked to imagine that you are an organ transplant surgeon treating five people who are dying of the failures of different organs. Suppose a healthy traveler passes through your hospital and no one would suspect you in his disappearance. Are you permitted to kill him and distribute his organs amongst the five? This is an example of that second type of violence, in which a small number of people is sacrificed for the benefit of a larger number of others, but in which the people who are sacrificed did nothing to cause the harm the others faced; and people are typically unconvinced that doing so is permissible. Animal advocates would say that the animal subjects of medical research are like the hypothetical traveler – they are the recipients of violence meant to alleviate unrelated harms faced by others. So the debate converges on the same fundamental question, which is why we should treat members of other species who enjoy their lives and suffer when harmed in ways that we wouldn’t treat members of our own species.
(You should also realize that even accepting that kind of violence wouldn’t immediately justify all or even most medical research on animals, in which the number of animals sacrificed is often not trivial compared to the number of people the research benefits, though there are obvious examples in which the reverse is true.)
You make some good points, but I think you are too quick as to who you declare are “innocent” beings. To me, such word can only be applied to a being capable of playing by the rules of a moral society. Innocence can only be applied to full moral agents that respect the golden rule. Animals cannot do that.
You did not answer my question.
You stated the interest in life being different for a pig and a human. Would you accept life-saving, heart-valve transplant as morally permissible? If not why not? Or will you declare this violence against the “innocent” as a way to declare it morally wrong despite the differences?
I haven’t declared anyone an innocent being, just talked about the ethical consequences of different interpretations on the matter. I should point out that your notion of innocence is inapplicable to human children too young to understand and play by moral rules, so you should have trouble with the notion of an ‘innocent baby.’ The same is true of people with mental handicaps that preclude them from understanding moral rules. Animal advocates ask us to see non-human animals in a similar way – that is, as moral patients who are not moral agents but demand our concern in light of the fact that they can suffer and enjoy their lives.
I meant to address the issues underlying your question by discussing the morality of different types of violence, but if you’re having trouble extrapolating the implications of what I said to your example, I can explicitly lay them out for you.
The issue is more than just which being has a stronger interest in life – that would answer some more straightforward questions, like whose life we should save if both were in a dangerous situation. Here the question isn’t just which being has a stronger interest in life – it’s whether it’s just to kill beings with weaker interests in life to save beings with stronger interests in life. Your conclusions on the matter should follow from your views on the types of violence I discussed in my previous post. If your view is a strictly consequentialist one, in which we are permitted to do whatever brings about a favorable outcome, then accepting the valve is permissible. But if your view isn’t strictly consequentialist, and you believe it isn’t automatically permissible to use others as means to your ends, even when doing so would bring about a favorable outcome, then accepting the valve is not permissible.
To avoid circular reasoning on the question of what role species membership should play in our calculations, you might mentally substitute a human being with an atypical interest in life for the pig – say an elderly man or woman who can’t enjoy life as fully as an adult or child, or who has less time to live ahead of them. That might play into our calculations on who to save between them and someone with more time to enjoy ahead of them, were both in a dangerous situation. But most people, including myself, favor non-consequentialist perspectives on the issue of killing them in order to distribute useful parts of their bodies to people with stronger interests in life. Without an explanation of why the species of the being with the weaker interest in life is important, I don’t see a good reason to treat non-human animals differently.
Animals are neither innocent nor guilty. They are amoral. Animal rights activists, instead, as you correctly point out, wrongly support violence by arguing that the animals are “innocent victims” that must be defended in exactly the same as if a human was in their place.
As for marginal scenarios — I do not agree that our moral concern for an individual must be based exclusively on intrinsic properties of that being.
Do you?
Consider our treatment of human remains. They obviously have no interest whatsoever, yet deserve moral consideration above that of other inanimate objects because other members of society (such as their relatives) care for how we treat them.
Nearly all of the patients you mention have a family (of moral agents) that will suffer tremendously if harm came to them. I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to say that humankind, as a whole, cares about each human life.
You seem to be arguing that in life-boat scenarios you would not see any reason to pick the human over the mouse. If so, we disagree. I am not sure why their different interest in life, which you already acknowledged, is morally irrelevant to you.
To respond to each paragraph of your post in order:
Again, I never made an assertion about whether animals were or could be innocent, just discussed the implications of different interpretations of the issue. With the possible exception of some non-human primates, I’m inclined to agree that non-human animals are not moral agents, so cannot be guilty of anything. While I think your belief that beings who are not moral agents can’t be either innocent or guilty is one valid construction of the notion of innocence, I’d remind you that the New Oxford American Dictionary’s definition if innocent is ‘not guilty of a crime or offense,’ which is clearly applicable to animals and other non-moral-agents. In any case, this has become a pretty pedantic issue, and I’m not sure why you’re so focused on it, since the notion of innocence doesn’t feature prominently in stronger arguments for animal liberation.
I do believe our moral concern for individuals should be based on the properties of individuals, and I think most people agree, though there’s obviously a pluralism of views on this issue. On the specific issue of remains, I would say that in addition to the comfort of family members, it is comforting to people while alive to know that their remains will be treated according to their wishes. In either case, we need not have moral concern for the remains themselves, just for the family members and living people, based on their actual properties.
There are obviously moral agents who are distressed tremendously when harm comes to non-human animals in the way you describe. It’s also obvious to most people that there are better reasons to be concerned for infants, the elderly and people with disabilities than that it would upset others if they were mistreated. Do you believe it would be permissible to mistreat such humans if it didn’t upset others?
I’m particularly disappointed by the final paragraph of your post. If I seem to have argued any of those things, you should reread what I said and ask for clarification on the parts you think imply those things. I specifically stated that the difference in interests in life between humans and non-human animals would come into play in our calculations in a lifeboat type scenario. Maybe you were tired when you wrote this or something.
My mistake; I didn’t format that to correspond exactly with your paragraphs. If you’re confused about which parts apply to which things you said, let me know.
I focused on the notion of innocence because that’s how you explained to me how others justify the violence — they are acting to prevent an immoral act against an “innocent” being.
I focused on your justification of violence because we have experienced it first hand. Bombs under our cars, in front of our homes, death threats, and so on.
The Oxford dictionary ought to be amended to say “a moral agent not guilty of a crime or offense.” The notion clearly does not apply to non-human animals. The dictionary was not intended for them. Again, you cannot find a dog that, for no apparent reason, attacked your child, guilty in any meaningful sense. Nor can you find guilty of murder a mentally insane human.
If you accept the decision to save a human in life boat scenarios then our differences resides in the fact that you must not see research as a comparable situation.
We do.
To appreciate why it may take some knowledge of science and a tour of the hospital to see the dying patients and their families. Today, scientists do not see any other way in which the information we need to generate new cures can be obtained using non-invasive methods in humans.
Tomorrow’s cures are today’s research.
Acting against research is thus acting against the many, truly innocent lives that will not be able to be saved because of our work.
Would you consider that a justification for violence too?
Yes. I used that word according to its definition. Since this seems to be a tough point for you, substitute this phrase: “moral persons who are not guilty of a crime or offense.” The latter part of your writing on the matter merely echoes what I already said. Actually, it echoes what I said animal activists said. That animals are moral patients who are not moral agents in the same way as children and some of the mentally disabled.
You’re correct that I think research is not analogous to a lifeboat situation, and I’m surprised you didn’t understand it from my post. Did you not read it, or was my writing unclear? As I said, research is not analogous to the lifeboat situation because you are not merely choosing between humans and non-humans when both are affected by some danger. You are actively taking non-humans and violating their interests, often in very profound ways, when they would not have come to harm were it not for your actions. This is a different type of harm than the harm that comes to a being who is not chosen in a lifeboat scenario, according to the moral intuitions of most people, as revealed by the mental substitution of human beings with atypical interests in life for the non-human animals, as I wrote above. So you’re still left with explaining why we should find the species of non-human animals a convincing excuse for treating them in ways we wouldn’t treat humans with comparable interests in life in similar situations.
To clarify the last line of the first paragraph, I mean that animals are moral patients who are not moral agents, in the same way that children and some of the mentally disabled are moral patients who are not moral agents.
You can also omit the word ‘innocent’ entirely from my earlier statement if it makes it easier for you to understand – it’s not an important part of the statement.
Hopefully you can answer your final question based on what I said about the legitimacy of the kind of harm animals undergo in research, but let me know if you want me to explicitly synthesize the implications of our discussion into a response.
It seems we have taken this discussion as far as it can go.
The exchange was at times confusing because you constantly shift between describing your own views and those of other animal rights extremists. This made it difficult to know if you shared their views or not.
Nevertheless, I think it is safe to say we disagree in important ways.
As you said, you favor non-consequentialist theories on the issue of harming other living beings. You consider any harm to sentient beings to be morally wrong. To you, a teenager microwaving a mouse for no other purpose than his own amusement is equally wrong to a scientist using a mouse with the goal of curing cancer, the consequence of their actions being irrelevant.
It is only under such non-consequentialist views that PeTA and other animal activists (you?) equate scientists to murderers, and equation whose only goal is to promote violence:
http://www.peta.org/b/thepetafiles/archive/2011/04/20/new-peta-ads-show-cruel-reality-of-vivisection.aspx
It is only under such views, that medical heroes like Dr. Albert Sabin, who helped rid the world of Polio, are equated to a serial killer.
The conclusion is absurd and the premise behind such a position must be rejected. You are simply wrong.
You also accept that interests in life are different among species, but you reject the notion that our moral judgments can be guided by this difference other than in extreme cases that match exactly a life boat scenario. In other words, for all practical purposes, the difference between species is really morally irrelevant to you.
In the case of the heart valve replacement scenario the pig is not under any danger and, therefore, it is not exactly a life boat scenario. To me it is effectively the same. We have two possible actions: we can either use the pig to save a human life or not. To me the different interest in life and the resulting suffering justifies the decision to save the human. You are asking us to let the human die. I wonder if you ever had the courage to go around our hospitals explaining your view to the patients and their families.
More generally, I see something like the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa as a life boat scenario as well, where we are seeing million of deaths and over 15 million orphans due to the disease:
http://www.avert.org/africa-hiv-aids-statistics.htm
I think that if we stand a chance to find cures using mice we should certainly try to save these people. You think such work is morally wrong.
You appear to think our moral concern for a living being must be based exclusively on intrinsic properties. To you, if a mentally disabled human has the same cognitive capabilities as a monkey they should be treated equally. Here your thinking is confused, as you also recognize our treatment of even human remains with no interest whatsoever must be different than that of other inanimate matter.
So yes, we disagree in profound ways.
Dario,
I’ve barely described my own views on these issues except when you specifically asked for them. I phrased most of my comments in terms of what animal activists commonly think.
Your conclusions about how I would view harming animals for pleasure and harming animals in research don’t follow from anything we’ve discussed; there is room for consequences and intentions to matter within non-consequentialist views, which broadly stipulate only that consequences are not the only measures of right action.
You’re incorrect that it’s only within non-consequentialist frameworks that scientists who engage in lethal research on animals can be seen as murderers. Consequentialist thinkers who value human and non-human animals’ lives equally could believe such a conclusion, because many scientists’ research does not save as many lives as it takes. You also started by acknowledging that you didn’t know whether I held such a view, and then called me simply wrong on the matter three sentences later.
I never rejected the notion that a difference in the interests in life between human and non-human animals could guide some moral judgements outside lifeboat scenarios, only pointed out that such a conclusion did not automatically follow from acknowledging the difference in interests, as you presumed. I understand that you take an approximately consequentialist approach to the issue of animal research, and don’t acknowledge a moral difference between taking lives in research and choosing in lifeboat type scenarios; I was just pointing out that your comments seemed to take such a framework for granted in the thinking of others.
Your assumption that I (or anyone who opposes medical research on animals or supports direct action against scientists who engage in it) must be unfamiliar with the suffering caused by the diseases the research targets is presumptuous. The implicit assertion that if everyone had seen all sides of the issue, they would think like you do, betrays a reluctance or inability to grasp the ethical complexity of the issues involved.
I understand that you think it’s justifiable to cure AIDS using mice in research, but you’ll have to explain how that’s a lifeboat scenario. By definition, it doesn’t seem to be.
You must not have read what I said on human remains; I argued that we should be concerned about their treatment only based on the intrinsic properties of beings who are affected by their treatment (relatives of the deceased, and living people who are comforted while alive by the knowledge that their remains will be treated according to their wishes). It doesn’t follow from the principle that we should be concerned about beings based on their intrinsic properties that we should not have concern for remains, and other inanimate objects whose treatment affects beings whose intrinsic properties justify moral concern on their behalf. Here and elsewhere, your thinking is confused.
Ari,
I think I misunderstood your point about inconsistency before. Equally I think you misunderstood both my analogy and Bogle’s point.
Bogle essentially suggests that HUMAN (researcher’s) lives would be saved if extremists killed fewer HUMANS (researchers). This was the claim is found to be ridiculous. Thus the analogy. The point required no standing on human-great-ape equality.
This was not the whole point of the original post – but was one that I brought up.
Ari,
As I said, an obvious obstacle in this exchange is that you prefer to discuss what others think instead of your own views. I certainly acknowledge the ethical complexities of the work. It is the views of those that hold animals to have the same basic “rights” to life and freedom as those of humans that don’t. If you would like to articulate your own position clearly I’d be happy to respond.
That’s different from the obstacle you described before, and shouldn’t have been an obstacle in our conversation at all. I merely pointed out shortcomings I saw in your thinking on the thinking of some animal activists, and then in your thinking on some of the broader ethical issues you brought up; it seems you didn’t realize I wasn’t interested in a personal debate on the content of the issues. I’m happy to share my personal views on the issues if you’re interested in them for some reason, but I didn’t intend to discuss them, and don’t think they interact with yours in ways we could learn from through discussion.
And again, it’s presumptuous to assert that people who believe animals should not be experimented on for the benefit of human beings (a notion they may or may not relate to the concept of “rights”) are any less familiar with the ethical complexities and dimensions of the issue than people who take the opposite perspective. Doing so presupposes the validity of your argument.
Yes, I am interested in your position. If animal extremists that support violence want to explain their views you should let them speak for themselves. I don’t think they need your representation here.