expanding our sphere of moral consideration
Linked from How to Save the World's Links for the Week, a Salon interview with "The Way We Eat" author Peter Singer, where he discusses the ethics and efficiency of food production and consumption, drops some startling facts (We have more people in prison in the United States than people whose primary occupation is working on a farm), and explains what he calls speciesism:
Through human history, our sphere of who we consider morally significant has expanded from family to tribe to nation, race, religion.
So the argument is that this is also an arbitrary stopping place; it's also a form of discrimination, which I call "speciesism," that has parallels with racism. [...] but in both cases you have this group that has power over the outsiders, and develops an ideology that says, Those outside our circle don't matter, and therefore we can make use of them for our own convenience.
[...] They're effectively things; they're property that we can own, buy and sell. We use them as is convenient and we keep them in ways that suit us best, producing products we want at the cheapest prices.
-- Peter Singer, in Salon interview, The practical ethicist
comments
It is interesting to see, at least from that interview, how Singer's biases [not saying they are good or bad!] boil down to consciousness and pain as the metrics for fair use. One is humanity's most prized ability, and the other the most feared.
-- Adam Harvey (June 20, 2006 7:50 AM)
yeah... his "engineered brainless chicken" was a strong image.
but to contract that further, what does pain mean without consciousness?
-- jeffschuler (June 21, 2006 11:55 PM)
Yeah, that's a toughy. I'd define consciousness in this context as knowing that pain is what hurts. An organism that knows something hurts, but doesn't know that what hurts is pain, doesn't have consciousness, just instinctual reaction.
There's this vast neutral area between going away from pain and going toward pleasure, like the potatoes I forgot in my cupboard. They probably weren't in any pain, but they sent sprouts toward the cracks of light on the cupboard door instead of staying in the dark.
I suppose Singer's compromise puts consciousness higher than pain. He'd rather not have chickens die, but if they have to, he feels they should be made unconscious first.
-- Adam Harvey (June 22, 2006 8:40 AM)
If you're interested in ethics of food production, check out Michael Pollan's books, The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore's Dilemma, in which he discusses genetic engineering, chemical treatment, monoculture, and the dangers of domestication.
-- Jon Gellin (June 22, 2006 8:54 AM)
Thanks, Jon!
-- jeffschuler (June 24, 2006 8:33 PM)