A Message To the “Pro-life” Movement: Keep Your Faith Off My Lawn
Each year the so-called “pro-life” movement further encroaches on what I believe should be an irrefutable right to all women: the right to have an abortion. It's either an egregious attempt to inject faith-based ideology into law which has no place in any nation that takes the separation of church and state seriously, or it’s an exercise in poor
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Well, I was more suggesting the better alternative was to consider then act accordingly, not act then rationalize whatever you did to make yourself feel better. The latter is, as you've said, just as bad as saying one thing and doing another.
I see caring as a choice of the subject, more than a quality of object.
We begin our evolution with a limited capacity to care (inability to empathize). As that capacity grew, we became limited in our ability to care (eg, we have to eat SOMETHING). I tend to see the point of evolving as more to progressively expand our capacity and our ability to care about greater classes of things, rather than pegging down specific markers beyond which permanently we have no obligations. As our capacity and our ability to respect, revere, nurture, and cherish life of any kind (human, animal, plant, microorganisms, planets, biospheres, stars, galaxies, universes) grows, I don't see why the goal posts should not be moved, and the bar raised in proportion.
I am just concerned with morality here - respect/reverence/etc. don't have anything to do whether it is right or wrong to kill, eat, or otherwise harm animals. Revering a beautiful stalactite vs. shattering it with a hammer is not a moral issue, besides depriving future people of the chance to see the beautiful formation, but we'll ignore that for now. The stalactite is not alive, therefore we should not feel compassion for its demise. Morality isn't about feeling good at the end of the day, it's about what's right, what's wrong, and why, strictly concerning how we treat and coexist with others. If you were the only living thing left on this planet morality would cease to matter; there would be no one to harm but yourself, ergo you could commit no immoral acts. The question at hand is do animals "count" enough to enter into this moral equation.
Animals are very much alive, yet we kill, eat, and otherwise harm them in vast numbers every day. Either they are aware enough to make this seriously unethical, or they aren't and it's a non-issue; we really ought to figure out which is the case.
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I also read this article a while back that was a somewhat nice piece as well, though if you're going to read any of this go with Rachels. And on a side note, it seems like he wrote on animal rights philosophy as well. I'm going to have to read up on that.
For a long time I thought I was a moral subjectivist/relativist simply because the idea of saying that something is "objectively wrong" seemed ludicrous and arrogant to me, but I've since realized that there are indeed objective standards to base which actions are moral and immoral on. Those two essays explain why better than I could. I still don't like the language "objectively wrong," but I can't quite come up with a better way to say it. For me though, it helps to redefine morality as not just the set of rules of right and wrong actions, but instead a set of rules of right and wrong actions that promote and guarantee the most happiness and well being for *all* concerned parties. Then the whole problem goes away. Making female "circumcision" illegal, for instance, is obviously more moral than promoting it. (Determining who is part of the concerned parties is my current rub.)
Though, when you get down to it, that isn't much of a redefinition anyway, since morality is not simply a list of rules to follow. Moral theory is just like any other field; a moral theory is only considered to be morally correct if there are good reasons for believing it to be so.
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So in that, I like Jonathan Dolhenty's argument (in your last link), but his examples of applying it horrify me. Like of them evil feminists (as if it's a single "Movement" and their "crazy ideas" - rape is pretty clearly defined as sex without consent, which may further evoke the question of what the range of sexual activity is as well as what it means to "give consent" in a highly skewed power-relationship, hence that Maoist International line "all sex is rape" [in a patriarchal, capitalist society]. And it's easy to condemn Hitler, but how about the genocide in creating "living space" in the American west? And so on, attacking "pro-abortion groups", condemning the WTC attacks (really superficial analysis on his part, I should say). What they need is a good dose of marxism (not Soviet-style Marxismism) to give him a little damn perspective on oppression and his part in playing rhetorical defender of it.
Fucking libertarian fuckers. Ahem.
Anyway, it remains: People act as though there is some objectivity even when they say otherwise, even when it is difficult to (in the strict sense) Absolutely verify facts - so what's this mean? I mean, besides making a good line of rhetoric.
"...but instead a set of rules of right and wrong actions that promote and guarantee the most happiness and well being for *all* concerned parties."
I hold something like this position myself, but one must recognize that it is a very, very difficult question to know just what actions that actually will promote and guarantee the most happiness/well being for all people. Iain Banks' (SF author) solution is to have vast AIs figure this problem out in his effectively anarchist/communist post-scarcity society.
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On a side note, I am still perplexed at how extremely enraged political correctness can make people. What's so damn bad about being *too* tolerant (at least with words)? Better than the alternative, I think. With regards to moral relativism, Rachels touches briefly on what we can learn from it, and why though it is misguided, the intent from its supporters is usually a genuine desire for tolerance.
". . . but one must recognize that it is a very, very difficult question to know just what actions that actually will promote and guarantee the most happiness/well being for all people."
Indeed it is, and for the better! What else would we spend hours debating on LJ entries and crazy political forums? (Oh, right. Why BSG sucks so much, but we can't stop watching!)
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And do read the rest of that website, it's actually pretty hilarious - if you think atrocities committed against reasonable thought are funny.
The political correctness thing is weird. (And I deny the word and concept as a product of right-wing propaganda, kinda like supposed "militant feminists" or, worse, "feminazis"; like the words are anything but slurs.) Perhaps people loaded with privilege (read: white, middle/upperclass men) get really defensive at the suggestion that their privilege exists, then they get started with this whole persecution complex because they're not allowed to call people "niggers" or "faggots". It's like cry me a fuckin' river, jackasses; being called out and scolded for being a disrespectful asshole is nothing like Nazism.
Man, whenever I talk to you it turns into some kind of ranting.
And yeah, I do like the idea that trying to do the right thing is a process that requires much thought and examination. I mean ... yeah, if there's a lesson to be learned from anything, that's it. 'Course it's only the very start of answering the question of how one approaches the process of "doing the right thing". I'm going to leave it at that for now and go to sleep, getting more into this looks like a lot of heavy thinking, and thats what you are gettin' graded to do - I just make art!
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"Man, whenever I talk to you it turns into some kind of ranting."
I choose to take that as a compliment!
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[You guys are never going to let me live this down are you...]
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I find it curious, to say nothing of ironic, to hear you say that I *ought* to stay out of discussions of morality.
I don't see any problems with arbitrarily defining morals as those things which maximize happiness and/or well being, in the same way I don't have any problems with people arbitrarily adopting any definition of morals. There's even a lot we can accomplish by agreeing on it. There are still going to be people with other definitions and foundations.
It's amusing to say that "Well, if people just had my morals, we'd have no problem." Well of course! The problem isn't defining right or wrong - it's agreeing on it!
I will dig into Rachels when I get my broadband back.
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It was really helpful; thank you for pointing me there. You're right that he does a pretty good expository job.
After thinking about this some more, this issue between objective and subjective moralities seems to get heaped onto the same pile as so many other philosophical debates: that of false dichotomy.
Rachels' proposal (and yours) that maximization of well being and happiness serves as the ideal foundation for moral thinking is pretty much the same thing as saying that morally assertive language is an expression of desire, because happiness and well being are essentially the fulfillment of desire.
The centrality of desire, rather than simply emotion, is the reason I wasn't really satisfied with the term "emotivism", because morally assertive language doesn't actually need to involve emotions at all. In contrast, we even use morally assertive language in situations that aren't really about morality ("I should drive if I want to get there"). Nonetheless, even Rachels understands the position well enough to recognize and lay out the fact that desire, and not necessarily exclamatory emotions, are the real point, if only in a few places.
So saying that happiness and well being are the preferred foundations of determining morality is tantamount to saying that emotivism is saying something about desire.
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