Honest Ethics

Like anyone else, I become exercised about countless matters, from the global to the personal:  the horrors of war, noise in the neighborhood; climate change and nuisance calls; injustices, inconveniences -- the gamut of human concerns, whether of vital significance or relative trivialities. Yet, as a philosopher, I also have a part of me that puts all of these things into perspective, not only with regard to one another, but to two in particular that seem to me to outweigh all of the others, namely animal ethics and planetary defense.[1]

            By animal ethics I refer to the way humans treat other animals, although I have no great objection to including human animals within this purview. The point is that we humans use sentient beings of all kinds with far less regard for their (and our) well being and interests than compassion and respect would move us to do.[2] And if one does focus only on the nonhuman animals, their (mis)treatment eclipses by orders of magnitude the horrors (not to mention impositions of lesser magnitude) we inflict on other humans. So I sometimes find it very difficult to take seriously the expressions of umbrage and outrage about mistreatment of humans voiced by people who think nothing at all of indulging in the consumption of animal flesh and animal products (dairy and eggs) and otherwise exploiting other animals as if they were put here solely for our benefit.

            By planetary defense[3] I refer to the threat to human civilization and even species survival posed by asteroids and comets. The stark facts are that a single space rock, roughly the size of Mount Everest, could wipe us out (and even most life on Earth)[4] … and this could happen at any time. And yet, aside from enjoying blockbuster science fiction movies, the general public and the powers that be show little concern or even awareness of these facts.

            Both of these issues rise to prominence for me not only because of what is at stake – most sentient life and just about everything that matters to us – but also because they are widely ignored despite being practical matters that could be remedied with far less effort and cost than we are accustomed to expend on many things of far lesser value.

            And they matter to me as a philosopher because, it seems to me, our failure to deal with them adequately is due largely to conceptual confusions. So I am speaking as a so-called analytic philosopher, whose bailiwick is concepts. But my philosophical reflexes are engaged as well by the ethics and logic of our reasoning about nonhuman animals and cosmic impactors.

            With regard to animals: The chief problem lies, I think, in how we understand the very meaning of ethics. There are actually several confusions afoot. I will focus on those that center on the idea of ethics as having to do with the consequences of our actions. It is natural to suppose that the right thing to do is that which would have the best consequences. This is in fact what the philosophy of utilitarianism holds. And yet, as intuitively appealing as this idea is, it quite falls apart as soon as one begins to examine it closely.

            Here again there are many confusions. But I will focus on the one that I find especially relevant to our (mis)treatment of other animals, namely, the assumption that the consequences that matter are only those that affect human beings. Once we recognize – well, we all recognize it, so I will say take seriously -- that other animals have feelings and an interest in going on living just as we do, then the entire presumption of human precedence over the rest of sentient life explodes. Yes, we have the power to do as we please with other animals, whether it be to eat them or experiment on them or strip them of their skin so that we can wear it. But to justify doing these things as morally permissible (at least under most normal circumstances) is patently fraudulent.

            And once one realizes this, the antidote to this most enormous of enormities (for animal suffering and slaughter at human hands is, by a plausible reckoning, the greatest atrocity ever committed … by far) pretty straightforward and just a matter of taking only moderately onerous practical steps, namely: Stop eating (and otherwise using) animals!

            With regard to asteroids and comets: The chief problem here, I submit, is confusion about risk and probability. Among the facts that lull people into complacency about the impact threat is that the likelihood of a dinosaur-killer asteroid or comet hitting the Earth is exceedingly slim. But this overlooks the nature of risk as involving not only probability but also the magnitude of what is “at risk,” which in this case is, in a sense, everything (i.e., that matters to us). So it is one thing to ignore the risk of losing a dollar when you play the lottery, even though you have such a slim chance of winning, because very little is at stake, but quite another thing to risk “losing” the continued existence of our species, even though the chances of this happening are so small.[5]

            In addition the concept of probability is misconceived when it is taken to be predictive, as in, for example, “There is only a one in one million chance of our colliding with a dinosaur-killer object in the next 100 years, so we are safe over the next century.” But the probability was just as unlikely that the object that did wipe out the dinosaurs would collide with the Earth in the century in which that event occurred. Yet it happened. Just so, its “unlikely” recurrence could be in the present century … even today.

            So when I read about or encounter people getting all exercised about some typical moral outrage or some initiative or great project to help humanity, I think to myself: But they quite overlook the greatest and on-going atrocity ever perpetrated in human history, in which they themselves are blithely complicit, and also the ever-present risk of total annihilation by one measly space rock. Therefore I just can't take most human emoting about human concerns and projects seriously if it is grounded in morals or prudence, since, it seems clear to me, most human beings are not really orienting their feelings towards what strike me as of paramount moral and prudential concern.[6] I am much more prepared to respect the concerns of others (and of course my own) if they are couched in terms simply of a person’s desires or beliefs, rather than as something asserted to be right or wrong or true.[7] And of course I take it to be my personal and philosophical project to convince people of my own priorities, while at the same time engaging them in genuine dialogue whose purpose is mutual persuasion.[8]


[1] I see a third item as equally paramount, namely, moralism, which strikes me as a scourge that intensifies all other scourges. However, unlike the two others, I see no straightforward practical fix for it, so I won’t discuss it here, although alluding to it at the end. I have certainly, however, discussed it, and its possible remedy, at length elsewhere, to wit: https://www.toastworks.com/moralmoments/amorality.htm .

[2] Using a sentient being is not in itself something that need be avoided, if that were even possible. For example, my students use me to learn about philosophy or to get a degree, and I use my students to earn a living. But a certain kind of using is the essence of what would normally be considered wrong-doing, such as a student using a teacher to get a degree by cheating in the course, or a teacher using the students to earn a living by paying minimal attention to helping them learn anything.

[3] A term that, admittedly, could apply to many different phenomena, but has become attached to one in particular.

[4] As one did 66 million years.

[5] Actually the “chance” is very high, indeed, practically a certainty if we do nothing to prevent it; but usually the probability is put in terms of a specific duration, such as “in the next century.”

[6] Or more precisely, of what would be of paramount moral or prudential concern to me if I believed in such a thing as objective value, which I don’t.

[7] For beliefs and desires are real phenomena, whereas right and wrong and even truth are mythical, it seems to me.

[8] And, as an objectivist might put it, mutual enlightenment.

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