As someone who believes that bacon should be one of the four food groups, I am certainly sympathetic to your argument, David. However, I think the case you made has the unfortunate unintended effect of undercutting a key argument against abortion.
The abortion debate often hinges on the question of whether a fetus is a person. But what if the key issue that should be considered isn’t necessarily personhood, but the morality of killing? What if the immorality of abortion can be established irrespective of the question of personhood?
Philosopher Donald Marquis makes such an argument by circumventing the question of personhood and examining the question of what makes killing wrong. This, according to Marquis, is the question that needs to be addressed from the start:
After all, if we merely believe, but do not understand, why killing adult human beings such as ourselves is wrong, how could we conceivably show that abortion is either immoral or permissible.
Marquis concludes that what makes killing inherently wrong is that it deprives a victim of all the “experiences, activities, projects, and enjoyments that would otherwise have constituted ones future.” It is not the change in the biological state that makes killing wrong, says Marquis, but the loss of all experiences, activities, projects, and enjoyments that would otherwise have constituted one’s future (hereafter we will refer to these as EAPE). We are killing not only the being but also its future self.
These EAPE are either intrinsically valuable or lead to something else that is valuable for its own sake. When a victim is killed, they are deprived not only of all that they value but all that they will value in the future. Therefore, what makes the prima facie killing of any adult human being wrong is this loss of future EAPE.
This has obvious implications for abortion. Marquis concludes that:
The future of a standard fetus includes a set of experiences, projects, activities, and such which are identical with the futures of adult human beings and are identical with the futures of young children. Since the reason that is sufficient to explain why it is wrong to kill human beings after the time of birth is a reason that also applies to fetuses, it follows that abortion is prima facie morally wrong.
Because Marquis defends the argument in detail, I won’t rehash the points he makes in response to objections. I recommend that anyone who finds fault with the conclusion read the paper in its entirety. Personally, I can’t imagine how the conclusion could be denied. Nevertheless, the power of rationalization is almost infinitely flexible so I’m sure some creative thinkers will attempt to find a loophole.
Because I believe that both life and personhood begin at fertilization, I consider it obvious that the killing of a human being at the embryonic stage of development is seriously immoral. But even if I were to agree with Cullin that the question of when life and personhood being are undecided, the conclusion that abortion is wrong would remain unchanged. There simply are no morally justifiable reasons for arbitrarily aborting a human being.
But does this same moral reasoning apply to the killing of animals? I believe the TLS reviewer intends something along that line when he writes:
Even if painlessly euthanized at that age, the brevity of its life precludes that life from having been a good one (at best, it was “promising”).
In response you asked, “since they have no real consciousness or memory, how can they know, much less care, that their life is shorter than it might have been?” You seem to believe that animals are not self-conscious (which I likely agree with, though it is a debatable proposition) and that the they have no memory (an even more debatable contention).
You make another claim that that, “Animals don’t live in time as man does, and therefore being deprived of time is not an injustice.” Because the same could be said for human embryos and fetuses (if not infants), I’m not sure we should fully rely on that premise for our conclusion.
The problem, as I see it, is that while Cullin’s argument is persuasive in prohibiting the killing of creatures that will have a “future self”, those of us who are sympathetic to human exceptionalism may need a firmer foundation to make the argument for killing and eating animals. For me, it is sufficient to rely on the argument from scripture: The Bible says that man is created in the image of God and that animals are given to us for food. In my opinion, that is a higher form of reasoning than appeals to pure reason. The fact that some people cannot understand or be persuaded by such thinking is akin to the fact that some six-year-old cannot understand the theory of special relativity: The fact that they are no capable of comprehension has no bearing on its truth.
While it is often necessary to use appeals to natural reasoning—if for no other reason than to persuade wholly secular thinkers—I do not believe it is necessary. Nor do I think that there are always parallel arguments for every argument that can be made from scripture. Indeed, it may be the case that there is no convincing arguments that can be made from pure reason for human exceptionalism. If so, then we are unlikely to persuade some people that killing animals for food is morally licit. That may be unfortunate outcome but it does have one positive benefit: It means there is more steak and bacon for the rest us.
March 18th, 2010 | 5:40 pm
I disagree with the premise that deprivation of future experiences, activities, projects, and enjoyments is sufficient to classify killing of a human as “wrongful murder.”
If it were sufficient, God himself would be guilty of murder, as he has many times directly intervened in normal events (especially as seen in the Old Testament) to cut short someone’s future EAPE. Furthermore, this definition would classify a prison sentence as murder.
It seems a more compelling (or at least more correct) argument to say that murder is wrong because it usurps God’s authority. It takes from a person only that which God can give. It puts a human in the seat of judgment.
I get that Marquis is making the “secular” argument, but all his assumptions of right and wrong are moot if they can’t be attributed to the ultimate standard of God’s character. It seems there could be better ways of bolstering the self-evidently rightness of the anti-abortionist position; perhaps we could “settle” for the God-said-so argument—foolishness to the world, and all that. It also seems that to argue in terms of subtle philosophic points is to give undue credibility to an argument, so laughably asinine on its face, aiming to justify the slaughter of unborn people.
@jeeds
March 18th, 2010 | 9:17 pm
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by ROFTERS: The Future Killing of Animals, Embryos, and Infants http://bit.ly/cxGz7Y…
March 19th, 2010 | 10:09 am
Joe,
Thank you for a thoughtful engagement. But 1) I did go on to explain with examples what I meant by “real consciousness”. That they don’t have self-consciousness or memory is not very debatable in the sense I explained it. (And note that all I was saying there was that the reviewer’s argument wasn’t sufficient to defend animal rights as he conceived them.)
More importantly, 2) I don’t think my argument undercuts the argument against abortion you offer. I had actually thought about this objection before posting the item. For embryonic human beings *are* the kinds of beings “who live in time as man does,” and will become obviously so if they are allowed to proceed to birth, because they are man. This is not true of animals. One doesn’t have to go through difficult philosophical exercises to avoid confusing the unborn human being with the beef cow, on this point.
March 19th, 2010 | 1:51 pm
One obvious problem with deprival of EAPE as a ground for moral distinctions; what about persons unlikely to have significant EAPE, or only EAP (no enjoyment) in their life? Distinguishing valuable life on the basis of future utility (even if only to the individual and subjectively defined) is a much weaker foundation than one recognizing human dignity grounded on our created nature and the moral order.
March 19th, 2010 | 7:07 pm
What is interesting (and I think right) about Mills’ position is that it involves two steps where most settle for one. That is, he argues that 1.) human beings have certain characteristics lacking in other animals, and that 2.) all individuals of the human kind must be treated in accordance with what those characteristics demand. It’s the second part that’s crucial for a “natural reason” argument on these issues. The difficulty, when it comes to persuading secular opponents, is that they don’t think that moral status attaches to biological kinds – so whatever the characteristics of a fully-functioning adult human demand, they are morally relevant only when those characteristics are actually present. Whereas those who are still living on the patrimony of Aristotelian-Thomistic natural philosophy think this is ridiculous. The failure to recognize this is responsible for a lot of mutual incomprehension between the two camps.
Here’s an example: In Michael Tooley’s famous paper “Abortion and Infanticide” (which is in favor of allowing both), he first sets out some personhood criteria, observes that fetuses and young infants don’t meet them, and concludes that abortion and infanticide are permissible (at least as permissible as killing animals of comparable cognitive abilities). To the objection that the unborn baby is potentially a person, he responds with a thought experiment: suppose we find a way to inject kittens with something that will make them grow into persons (capable of self-consciousness of a certain kind, etc.) – does it follow that kittens have a substantive right to life? No, it doesn’t, so the objection fails (says Tooley). Now, to a Thomist or anyone who breaths the same air as a Thomist, this is totally ludicrous. The sense in which an unborn child is potentially an adult human (and hence a person) differs toto caelo from the sense in which this science fiction kitten is potentially a person. But if you’ve already decided that nothing about the natural kind and the natural, biological potentialities of an individual are relevant in this discussion, then the difference disappears.
March 19th, 2010 | 8:44 pm
I would have to reply to Cullin that murder was immoral even before the emergence of the phenomenological zeitgeist, believe it or not.
March 19th, 2010 | 10:27 pm
In his second treatise, Locke, certainly no Catholic, presented an answer to this, though not explicitly, which few Catholics would disagree with: “…for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by HIS ORDER, and about HIS BUSINESS; they are HIS PROPERTY, whose workmanship they are, made to last during HIS NOT ONE OTHER’S PLEASURE… there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for our’s. “
March 20th, 2010 | 9:13 am
I have been trying (and failing) to work out a way of seeing the evil of abortion by addressing what is in the mind of one who has an abortion. I’ve always felt that there was a paradox involved but had trouble defining what it was. In a round about way it involves what you call EAPE. Simply put my idea is that what those who have abortions are killing is not what is in the womb. They are projecting, it is the idea of a future child that they are eliminating. So regardless of what they call the being inside them( a clump of cells is my favorite) they are engaged in homocide.For them it is murder in their hearts, bypassing the reality that is within them, it is the future child that must not be. For us who believe in the continuum of life the act of abortion is no projection, it is murder in the moment.We see the man in the fetus and so do they. We say yes and they say no.
March 21st, 2010 | 6:50 am
I think many to most women who have abortions are not thinking of all that, at least not on a conscience level. What I’m about to say is a bit off too, but from what I can tell by studies they’re either thinking of what’s best for “their needs” or they’re thinking that certain kinds of life just aren’t worth living. The ones who are most concerned with their needs may literally just see pregnancy as a kind of illness or a physical ailment of some kind. On the other when I was younger the Pro-Choice camp was more overt in saying that being born poor, disabled, to a lousy mom, etc are fates so hard that death or non-existence might be preferable. You still hear a bit of this.
I was going to say something on the main topic of meat, but I’m not sure what to add.
March 22nd, 2010 | 10:03 pm
In my view, one of the best defenses against killing fetuses, and at least higher mammals, is their possession of consciousness, or the potential for consiousness. The fetus belongs in the latter category, higher mammals, in the former. Higher mammals, for example, chimps, monkeys, dogs, cats, pigs, possess, as a result of the activity of their cerebral cortex, consciousness. That means they can feel pleasure, pain, contentment, and so forth. This ”primary consciousness”, to be distinguished from ”secondary consciousness” that only humans have, is entirely sufficient to give these animals the right to life.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact