Species Do Not “Exist”: Evolution, Sand Dunes and the Sorites Paradox

Last updated on: January 6, 2017 at 12:59 am By Jonathan MS Pearce

I am going to explain to you why species do not exist and in some sense there is no such thing as speciation in evolutionary biology. This will involve philosophy, sand dunes, voting, colours and fossils. Amongst other things.

The Sorites Paradox

My favourite philosophical thought experiment, if you can call it that, and as many of my readers might know of me, is the Sorites Paradox. It can be defined as follows:

The sorites paradox^[1] (sometimes known as the paradox of the heap) is a paradox that arises from vague predicates.^[2] A typical formulation involves a heap of sand, from which grains are individually removed. Under the assumption that removing a single grain does not turn a heap into a non-heap, the paradox is to consider what happens when the process is repeated enough times: is a single remaining grain still a heap? If not, when did it change from a heap to a non-heap?^[3]

The paradox arises in this way:

The word “sorites” derives from the Greek word for heap.^[4] The paradox is so named because of its original characterization, attributed to Eubulides of Miletus.^[5] The paradox goes as follows: consider a heap of sand from which grains are individually removed. One might construct the argument, using premises, as follows:^[3]

1000000 grains of sand is a heap of sand (Premise 1)

A heap of sand minus one grain is still a heap. (Premise 2)

Repeated applications of Premise 2 (each time starting with one fewer grain) eventually forces one to accept the conclusion that a heap may be composed of just one grain of sand.^[6]). Read (1995) observes that “the argument is itself a heap, or sorites, of steps of modus ponens“:^[7]

1000000 grains is a heap.

If 1000000 grains is a heap then 999999 grains is a heap.

So 999999 grains is a heap.

If 999999 grains is a heap then 999998 grains is a heap.

So 999998 grains is a heap.

If …

… So 1 grain is a heap.

This is crucial for my larger point.

What creationists claim

Creationists very often demand silly things like evidence that dogs give birth to non-dogs. Indeed, in a recent thread, a creationist stated these indicative remarks:

Lots of redheads coming out of Ireland isn’t evolution. Redheads coming (eventually) out of “Rhubarb”, now THAT’s evolution.

and

You’re the one who’s confused. Evolutionists claim “evolution” happens right before our eyes when bacteria “evolve” *RESISTANCE* to antibiotics. (I say NO evolution. The antibiotic-susceptible bacteria and the antibiotic- resistant bacteria are …
BOTH BACTERIA, one is no less a bacteria than the other.)

But the same scientists demur, I guess for political correctness, that the mutation that causes some human beings to have *RESISTANCE* to malaria (via the sickle cell mutation) is NOT evolution. You know, because they do NOT want to say those blacks with sickle-cell are NOT humans anymore. (And they’re right to not say that, but they’re right for the wrong reason.)

and

Well, if scientists think that evolution does *not* mean new species AND evolution does *not* mean common ancestry, then I guess I believe in evolution.

What you should be able to see here is that such a position demands of evolution clear speciation and particular points. A dog must give birth to a non-dog.

The problem is, this doesn’t happen and evolutionary scientists will be the first people to tell you this. If you are demanding this of evolution, and never get it, it is no wonder you deny evolution because it is nothing but a shoddy straw man of properly defined evolution.

Categorising stuff

We love to use categories. That’s a blue flower, that’s a red car, that’s an adult, that’s a child. It’s how we navigate reality in a practical sense – it provides our conceptual map. However, you shouldn’t confse the map with the terrain. Essentially (good word choice), we make up labels to represent a number of different properties. A cat has these properties, a dog these. Red has these properties, blue these. Often we agree on this labelling, but sometimes we don’t. What constitutes a hero? A chair? Is a tree stump a chair?

The problem occurs when we move between categories. It is at these times that we realise the simplicity of the categories shows weakness in the system.

You reach eighteen years of age. You are able to vote. You are now classed as an adult. You are allowed to buy alcoholic drinks (in the UK). But there is barely any discernible difference in you, as a person, physically and mentally, from 17 years, 364 days, 11 hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds, and you 1 second later.

However, we decide to define that second change at midnight as differentiating the two yous and seeing you move from child (adolescent) to adult. These categories are arbitrary in where we exactly draw the line. Some countries choose sixteen, some younger, some older. These are conceptual constructs that allow us to navigate about a continuum of time. You can look at a five-year-old and the same person at twenty-eight and clearly see a difference. But that five-year-old and the same person one second later? There is no discernible difference.

And yet it is pragmatically useful for us to categorise, otherwise things like underage sex and drinking would take place with wild abandon, perhaps. Sixteen for the age of consent is, though, rather arbitrary. Why not five seconds later? Four days? Three and a half years?

Speciation is exactly the same. There is no real time where a population of organisms actually transforms into a new species. Because species is a human conceptual construct that does not exist objectively. We name things homo sapiens sapiens but cannot define exactly where speciation occurred. In one sense, it does not occur. In another, if you look at vastly different places on the continuum, it does (at least in our minds).

This is a version of the Sorites Paradox.

As I have shared several times, this image sums it up with aplomb:

Examples with recent human ancestry

We know this happens very clearly because there have been skulls found that have aspects and properties of what we think one (sub)species has, and other properties of another species. It is not different enough from either to be a new species, and thus it really is truly transitional. As all fossils are. The whole continuum of any branch is transitional right the way along. There are no category markers. As Dawkins states in The Greatest Show on Earth (but without images – it’s a long quote, but nails it):

Now for my next important point about allegedly missing links and the arbitrariness of names. Obviously, when Mrs Ples’s name was changed from Plesianthropus to Australopithecus, nothing changed in the real world at all. Presumably nobody would be tempted to think anything else. But consider a similar case where a fossil is re-examined and moved, for anatomical reasons, from one genus to another. Or where its generic status is disputed – and this very frequently happens – by rival anthropologists. It is, after all, essential to the logic of evolution that there must have existed individuals sitting exactly on the borderline between two genera, say Australopithecus and Homo. It is easy to look at Mrs Ples and a modern Homo sapiens skull and say, yes, there is no doubt these two skulls belong in different genera. If we assume, as almost every anthropologist today accepts, that all members of the genus Homo are descended from ancestors belonging to the genus we call Australopithecus, it necessarily follows that, somewhere along the chain of descent from one species to the other, there must have been at least one individual who sat exactly on the borderline. This is an important point, so let me stay with it a little longer.

Bearing in mind the shape of Mrs Ples’s skull as a representative of Australopithecus africanus 2.6 million years ago, have a look at the top skull opposite, called KNM ER 1813. Then look at the one underneath it, called KNM ER 1470. Both are dated at approximately 1.9 million years ago, and both are placed by most authorities in the genus Homo. Today, 1813 is classified as Homo habilis, but it wasn’t always. Until recently, 1470 was too, but there is now a move afoot to reclassify it as Homo rudolfensis. Once again, see how fickle and transitory our names are. But no matter: both have an apparently agreed foothold in the genus Homo. The obvious difference from Mrs Ples and her kind is that she had a more forward-protruding face and a smaller brain-case. In both respects, 1813 and 1470 seem more human, Mrs Ples more ‘ape-like’.

Now look at the skull below, called ‘Twiggy’. Twiggy is also normally classified nowadays as Homo habilis. But her forward-pointing muzzle has more of a suggestion of Mrs Ples about it than of 1470 or 1813. You will perhaps not be surprised to be told that Twiggy has been placed by some anthropologists in the genus Australopithecus and by other anthropologists in Homo. In fact, each of these three fossils has been, at various times, classified as Homo habilis and as Australopithecus habilis. As I have already noted, some authorities at some times have given 1470 a different specific name, changing habilis to rudolfensis. And, to cap it all, the specific name rudolfensis has been fastened to both generic names, Australopithecus and Homo. In summary, these three fossils have been variously called, by different authorities at different times, the following range of names:

KNM ER 1813: Australopithecus habilis, Homo habilis

KNM ER 1470: Australopithecus habilis, Homo habilis, Australopithecus rudolfensis, Homo rudolfensis

OH 24 (‘Twiggy’): Australopithecus habilis, Homo habilis

Should such a confusion of names shake our confidence in evolutionary science? Quite the contrary. It is exactly what we should expect, given that these creatures are all evolutionary intermediates, links that were formerly missing but are missing no longer. We should be positively worried if there were no intermediates so close to borderlines as to be difficult to classify. Indeed, on the evolutionary view, the conferring of discrete names should actually become impossible if only the fossil record were more complete. In one way, it is fortunate that fossils are so rare. If we had a continuous and unbroken fossil record, the granting of distinct names to species and genera would become impossible, or at least very problematical. It is a fair conclusion that the predominant source of discord among palaeoanthropologists – whether such and such a fossil belongs in this species/genus or that – is deeply and interestingly futile.

Hold in your head the hypothetical notion that we might, by some fluke, have been blessed with a continuous fossil record of all evolutionary change, with no links missing at all. Now look at the four Latin names that have been applied to 1470. On the face of it, the change from habilis to rudolfensis would seem to be a smaller change than the one from Australopithecus to Homo. Two species within a genus are more like each other than two genera. Aren’t they? Isn’t that the whole basis for the distinction between the genus level (say Homo or Pan as alternative genera of African apes) and the species level (say troglodytes or paniscus within the chimpanzees) in the hierarchy of classification? Well, yes, that is right when we are classifying modern animals, which can be thought of as the tips of the twigs on the evolutionary tree, with their antecedents on the inside of the tree’s crown all comfortably dead and out of the way. Naturally, those twigs that join each other further back (further into the interior of the tree’s crown) will tend to be less alike than those whose junction (more recent common ancestor) is nearer the tips. The system works, as long as we don’t try to classify the dead antecedents. But as soon as we include our hypothetically complete fossil record, all the neat separations break down. Discrete names become, as a general rule, impossible to apply. [Chapter 7]

In philosophy, there is a position called (conceptual) nominalism, which is set against (Platonic) realism. This conceptual nominalism, as I adhere to, denies in some (or all) cases the existence of abstracts. These categories we invent don’t exist (a word that itself needs clear defining), at least not outside of our heads. Thus species do not exist as objective categories. We invent them, but if all people who knew about species suddenly died and information about them was lost, then so too would be lost the concept and categorisation.

When we look at two very different parts of a continuum we find it easy to say those things are different and are of different categories, but when we look in finer detail, this falls apart. There is a fuzzy logic at play.

Species do not exist. Well, they do in our heads. When we agree about them. And only then so we can nicely label pictures in books, or in our heads.

Some quotes

Wikipedia has some nice quotes on the subject. Follow the links for sources and references:

“No term is more difficult to define than “species,” and on no point are zoologists more divided than as to what should be understood by this word.” Nicholson (1872, p. 20).^[54]

“Of late, the futility of attempts to find a universally valid criterion for distinguishing species has come to be fairly generally, if reluctantly, recognized” Dobzhansky (1937, p. 310).^[13]

“The concept of a species is a concession to our linguistic habits and neurological mechanisms” Haldane (1956).^[46]

“The species problem is the long-standing failure of biologists to agree on how we should identify species and how we should define the word ‘species’.” Hey (2001).^[49]

“First, the species problem is not primarily an empirical one, but it is rather fraught with philosophical questions that require — but cannot be settled by — empirical evidence.” Pigliucci (2003).^[17]

“An important aspect of any species definition whether in neontology or palaeontology is that any statement that particular individuals (or fragmentary specimens) belong to a certain species is an hypothesis (not a fact)” Bonde (1977).^[55]

Quote of the Day: NathairNimheil on Abortion and Personhood

Last updated on: January 5, 2017 at 12:21 pm By Jonathan MS Pearce

In a rapidly expanding comment thread on SJWs and the regressive left, a debate with a religious type has developed concerning abortion. Here is a great comment by NathairNimheil:

Like you holding an *arbitrary* position of what constitutes “personhood”.

So my definition of personhood, which you have never even heard, is arbitrary? You reading minds now?

Neither does the newborn.

True enough, and in some legal contexts newborns and toddlers are not considered legally persons. However, you do have to draw the line somewhere and, as they do have significant things like a functioning nervous system and are independent rather than existing as a parasite on an (often unwilling) host, live born human children are usually granted some of the rights of personhood. An egg cell, on the other hand…

And is the quadriplegic less a person than you?

I was not referring to motor function but to mental function. The complete lack of a brain does, yes, pretty much rule out personhood. Personally, I’m pretty broad and liberal with my personhood ideas. I’m fully behind granting (or at least discussing) legal personhood to varying degrees for great apes, cetaceans and perhaps even elephants. A blob of partially differentiated cells, on the other hand, not so much. However, even if I were as dogmatic and certain as you seem to be about the human being status of an embryo, the fact remains that there is still no justification in forcing a woman to play host to the parasitic “person”. My body is still my body. My choice. Nobody else gets to violate my personhood and co-opt my body for their own needs.

I then chipped in with a connection to another thread in which the same commenter (See Noevo) is making similar naive claims about evolution:

Interestingly, See Noevo is showing here an exact replica of the issues he is exhibiting on another thread about evolution; namely, that he does not understand nominalism vs realism and the problem of abstracta in the realm of categorisation.

Thus species and personhood are “arbitrary” conceptual constructs that we use to navigate life and reality. They are our maps, not the terrain.

We may also disagree (and often do) on exactly what constitutes personhood or speciation. What exist are the individual properties of these given objects. We then assign, subjectively, these properties to a label. This does not, though, bring that label and associated abstract ideas into objective reality. They remain being conceptual entities.

Hilariously, See Noevo replied to Nathair’s previous comment with this utter cop-out:

I’ll put you on my No-Fly list.

Farewell.

As if Nathair had said something outrageous and not worthy f reply. In reality, he had utterly pwned See Noevo, and See Noevo ran away, proclaiming Danth’s Law by implication.

Gah.

Sean Carroll’s Poetic Naturalism

Last updated on: December 16, 2016 at 2:11 pm By Jonathan MS Pearce

I have just started reading Sean Carroll’s The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself, which is shaping up to be a great book. I would like to just talk about this excerpt (Location 345, Kindle):

The strategy I’m advocating here can be called poetic naturalism. The poet Muriel Rukeyser once wrote, “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” The world is what exists and what happens, but we gain enormous insight by talking about it—telling its story—in different ways.

Naturalism comes down to three things:

There is only one world, the natural world.

The world evolves according to unbroken patterns, the laws of nature.

The only reliable way of learning about the world is by observing it.

Essentially, naturalism is the idea that the world revealed to us by scientific investigation is the one true world. The poetic aspect comes to the fore when we start talking about that world. It can also be summarized in three points:

There are many ways of talking about the world.

All good ways of talking must be consistent with one another and with the world.

Our purposes in the moment determine the best way of talking.

A poetic naturalist will agree that both Captain Kirk and the Ship of Theseus are simply ways of talking about certain collections of atoms stretching through space and time. The difference is that an eliminativist will say “and therefore they are just illusions,” while the poetic naturalist says “but they are no less real for all of that.”

Philosopher Wilfrid Sellars coined the term manifest image to refer to the folk ontology suggested by our everyday experience, and scientific image for the new, unified view of the world established by science. The manifest image and the scientific image use different concepts and vocabularies, but ultimately they should fit together as compatible ways of talking about the world. Poetic naturalism accepts the usefulness of each way of talking in its appropriate circumstances, and works to show how they can be reconciled with one another.

Within poetic naturalism we can distinguish among three different kinds of stories we can tell about the world. There is the deepest, most fundamental description we can imagine—the whole universe, exactly described in every microscopic detail. Modern science doesn’t know what that description actually is right now, but we presume that there at least is such an underlying reality. Then there are “emergent” or “effective” descriptions, valid within some limited domain. That’s where we talk about ships and people, macroscopic collections of stuff that we group into individual entities as part of this higher-level vocabulary. Finally, there are values: concepts of right and wrong, purpose and duty, or beauty and ugliness. Unlike higher-level scientific descriptions, these are not determined by the scientific goal of fitting the data. We have other goals: we want to be good people, get along with others, and find meaning in our lives. Figuring out the best way to talk about the world is an important part of working toward those goals.

Poetic naturalism is a philosophy of freedom and responsibility. The raw materials of life are given to us by the natural world, and we must work to understand them and accept the consequences. The move from description to prescription, from saying what happens to passing judgment on what should happen, is a creative one, a fundamentally human act. The world is just the world, unfolding according to the patterns of nature, free of any judgmental attributes. The world exists; beauty and goodness are things that we bring to it.

Carroll has a very good sense for describing and explaining dry philosophical ideas in an easy-to-understand and almost artistically readable way.

What he is talking about here is ontological realism against (conceptual) nominalism. In other words, what really exists? In one sense, and Carroll accepts this, only atoms and fundamental stuff really exist. This, he calls a “sparse ontology”. All other things, like tables and love and persons, don’t really exist; or, they are conceptual add-ons. This is where my thinking lies. It’s a sort of eliminativism of abstract ideas. Carroll accepts this in a manner of speaking, but goes on to say that a “rich ontology”, where all those other things are a way we have of describing reality (and they are useful), is in a meaningful way of seeing reality. These ideas and abstracts really exist, conceptually, and pragmatically.

I like this term “poetic naturalism”, since it appeals to those anti-reductionists, those humanities people, who hate the idea of stripping away those human (yes, “poetic”) ways of interpreting the sparse ontology of existence.

I look forward to reading more of this book.

So, Have I Killed Someone?

Last updated on: November 14, 2016 at 10:43 pm By Jonathan MS Pearce

Causality. It is a funny thing. Or not so funny.

A number of years back now, I took my class, as a teacher, on a trip to the Historic Dockyard in the naval city of Portsmouth, UK. My school was some 45 minutes walk and a short ferry ride from there. With the cost of coaches, it is important to be able to walk to such places to keep the costs down for parents.

We scotted it there on the way, and we were running a little behind, so the walk back at the end of the day was quicker still. One of our parents, helping with the trip, was a heavy smoker who had to stop off at strategic times throughout the day for a crafty kids-can’t-see-me smoke. Many of the children were moaning on the way back because they simply were not used to walking any such length of time. This certainly applied to some of the parent helpers too.

Anyway, we made it back for the end of the school day, so good effort.

Except, that night, we heard that the aforementioned parent helper had died. He had had a heart attack.

Ever since that moment, I have felt partly responsible for that outcome, of that man’s death. In a naive, folk understanding sort of way, that is.

In writing my book on free will, and in researching the Kalam Cosmological Argument, I have come to understand that causality is much more complex than one might imagine. A does not cause B which causes C in such a simplistic manner. At best, things are only ever contributory causes (see JL Mackie’s INUS notion of causality [1]); but even then, this assumes one can quantise time, and arbitrarily assign discrete units of existence to both events and entities.

Let’s look at the event of the class trip. Did it start when we arrived at the dockyard, when we got off the ferry, when we left, when I started organising it, or, indeed, were elements of the trip in place when I started planning the unit, given the job, got my teacher’s qualifications etc?

Of course, there is no objective answer to that. These abstract labels are subjectively assigned such that we can all disagree on them. That is, simplistically speaking, an element of conceptual nominalism. Likewise, there were necessary conditions in the parent’s life which contributed to his death: anything from his smoking, to his lack of general health, from deciding to come on the school trip, to deciding to get married and have kids. And so on.

An event happens in time and arbitrarily ascribing a beginning and an end to that event is an abstract pastime, and thus fails to be (imho) objectively and (Platonically) real.

Causality works through people, and harnessing it so that any one individual can claim themselves (morally) responsible for future effects which themselves are caused by effects preceding the individual makes for tricky philosophy. This is the battleground for the free will debate, for sure. Arbitrarily cutting causality up in such a way is problematic.

As I have set out in my analyses of the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA), which I hope to turn into a book (based on a university thesis I did on it), causality is not a linear affair which can be sliced and diced, It is a unitary matrix which derives from either a single beginning (like the Big Bang), something I find problematic, or eternally backward, or reaching some time commencement which could itself be a reboot. Either way, the idea of causality cannot be seen, and should not therefore be seen, in a discrete manner of units which can be attributed to equally problematic notions of events or unities. We are one big family of causality, this here universe.

So, in answer to the question, no. No, I didn’t kill anyone. Perhaps we could say that the universe did. And whatever notion “I” am, and whatever “I” am represented by, sat on or, better still, was part of the threads which cross and recross intricately and almost infinitely over each other in a mazy web of interconnected causality.

By Felipe Schenone (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

NOTES

[1] Cause as INUS-condition. The most sophisticated version of the necessary and/or sufficient conditions approach is probably John Mackie’s analysis of causes in terms of so-called INUS conditions. Mackie suggested that a cause of some particular event is “an insufficient but non-redundant part of a condition which is itself unnecessary but sufficient for the result” (Mackie 1974: 62). Mackie called a condition of this kind an INUS condition, after the initial letters of the main words used in the definition. Thus, when experts declare a short-circuit to be the cause of fire, they “are saying in effect that the short-circuit is a condition of this sort, that it occurred, that the other conditions which, conjoined with it, form a sufficient condition were also present, and that no other sufficient condition of the house’s catching fire was present on this occasion” (Mackie [1965] 1993: 34). Thus, Mackie’s view may be expressed roughly in the following definition of ‘cause:’ an event A is the cause of an event B if A is a non-redundant part of a complex condition C, which, though sufficient, is not necessary for the effect (B). Source.

My New Book on the Kalam Available on Ebook

Last updated on: October 14, 2016 at 10:27 am By Jonathan MS Pearce

My new book is available on ebook (Amazon [US, UK etc.], Kobo and Nook) for your reading pleasure. Please check it out! It concerns the Kalam Cosmological Argument and is called: Did God Create the Universe from Nothing? Countering William Lane Craig’s Kalam Cosmological Argument.

The paperback version should be released in a few weeks. Please spread the word! The book features a foreword by Jeffrey Jay Lowder, and chapters by Dr. James East and Counter Apologist (still annoying that in this day and age, in the States, people have to write under pseudonyms when writing about atheism!).

Let me know if you have any questions. The contents are below:

Contents

Foreword… 1

PART ONE: The Background… 3

1.1 The History… 3

1.2 William Lane Craig… 4

PART TWO: The Argument… 7

2.1 The Form… 8

PART THREE: Premise 1… 17

3.1 Causality making it a circular argument… 17

3.2 Nominalism and “everything” being “the universe”… 23

3.3 Establishing a non-realist position… 31

3.4 The Kalam Cosmological Argument and Libertarian Free Will are incompatible… 39

3.5 Quantum physics… 46

PART FOUR: Premise 2… 53

4.1.1 Can the universe have existed infinitely into the past?… 53

4.1.2 Infinity Minus Infinity, by James East… 59

4.2 The premise as inductive… 66

4.3 Creation of the universe ex nihilo… 67

4.4 Scientific theories to explain the universe and everything… 72

4.5 The call for cosmological agnosticism… 83

4.6 Naturalism as a good bet… 86

PART FIVE: The Syllogism’s Conclusion… 89

5.1 Causality and time… 90

5.3 Intentionality and time… 94

5.4 The Argument of Non-God Objects… 98

5.5 Simultaneity as a temporal notion… 101

5.6 On time: Craig’s inconsistent appeals to science, by Counter Apologist… 102

PART SIX: Potential Objections… 125

6.1 The Form… 127

6.2 Premise 1… 128

6.3 Premise 2… 133

6.4 Such views on causality undercut scientific inquiry… 136

PART SEVEN: Conclusion… 141

NOTES… 143

APPENDIX… 153

BIBLIOGRAPHY… 163

Philosophy 101: Existentialism

Last updated on: September 1, 2016 at 10:41 am By Jonathan MS Pearce

Last night we had a Tippling Philosophers session in a lovely pub in Portsmouth, and covered existentialism. I thought it would be a good time to continue my philosophy 101 series which has so far covered:

The philpapers results

Socrates

Plato

Existentialism is a term that pops up a lot, even in the news these days (in the guise of an “existential threat” or “crisis”), but is often assumed as being understood when perhaps it is not. So this is for you budding philosophers starting out on your journey.

Kierkegaard

Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, and Christian, who is often seen as the one of the forefathers of existentialism. Although such ideas of his were largely rejected by his contemporaries, he influenced later thinkers a great deal, particularly those in the twentieth century. He was concerned with freedom, as well as meaning and purpose, in existence, and these are the core tenets of existentialism. Kierkegaard understood the importance of self-consciousness, and claimed that absolute freedom of the agent led to a sort of fear or dizziness. This was very relevant to those later thinkers. This freedom was wrapped up with morality – our moral choices are absolutely free and subjective. Though a critic of the Danish church, unlike most existentialists, he held on to the belief in God.

Satre

Jean-Paul Sartre took on these considerations about what makes us human beings. Previously, essentialism held. This is the idea that entities have an essence. In Plato’s world, there would be an ideal form of a cat to which all cats “aspired”, but were poor versions thereof. Every cat has a catness essence. In this way, humans have human essences, men have the essence of manness, women of womanness. We still see this prevailing today, particularly in religious thought (there are some religious commenters on this blog who hold to forms of essentialism).

Sartre saw this is fundamentally constraining what it is to be human – our freedom. Essentialism appears to be, in some sense, prescriptive. He used a paper-knife as an example. It has been designed for a function, and to succeed as a paper knife, it needs to be sharp, but not too sharp, made of a hard substance, but easy to wield. Metal, bone or wood work, but butter and feathers would fail in enabling it to be a paper knife, to have that essence. It would not make sense for a paper knife to exist without its creator knowing what it was to be used for. It is functional and designed as such. Its essence comes from before its existence, in any individual form.

Humans, Sartre claimed, are wholly difference. Our existence precedes our essence. Our essences are derived from our lives. This is very much wrapped up with atheism. There is no God because, in some manner, that would constrain our meaning, purpose and essence: our freedom. In the same way a craftsman makes a paper knife and decrees its purpose and essence, God would create and define humans.

Human nature, he claimed, is not fixed; there is no god to decree it as such. There is no place for such teleology.

On the other hand, we are the sorts of entities to define our own meaning and purpose (indeed, I wrote about this here), and this is a very human process. Without a god, we must define ourselves.

What differentiates ourselves from other entities is that we can define ourselves.

Now, he would admit some natural constraints, sometimes called facticity, whereby we cannot do anything we please. I cannot grow wings; I am somewhat constrained by the society I was born into and brought up in. But this facticity goes only so far.

My criticism of this is that there is a seemingly arbitrary cut-off that Sartre and others assign to where facticity ends. I would say it goes right up to choices, and includes vast causal variables of biology, genetics and environment. Indeed, Sartre has to make free will an assumption.

Sarte’s freedom is vital for his notions of moral responsibility, but it also connects humanity. Our choices, vastly free, affect the rest of humankind, he would claim, and this burdens us with a huge responsibility. Think back to Kierkegaard’s “dizziness” in considering such freedom. Sartre claimed we were, as such, “condemned to be free”. We have no excuses (those variables I mentioned) to hide behind – our freedom exposes us as the sole, responsible authors of our free actions.

This philosophy led him to become engaged in (socialist) politics, and emboldened young people at the time to those revolutionary ideals of the self defining itself, rather than traditional political forces constraining the individual. He had a significant relationship with Simone de Beauvoir, influencing her own writing in an existentialist manner.

Simone De Beauvoir

One of the earlier feminist thinkers, De Beauvoir threw out the essentialist rulebook after declaring that the self or “I” was ostensibly male, and that female was “Other” than male – passive, voiceless and powerless. Equality was seen in terms of how alike to men women were. Being born without purpose, we have to carve out “authentic” meaning for ourselves (this notion of authenticity is very important in existentialism). She sought to separate the bodily form of the female from the socially constructed femininity. Such constructs are variable and subject to change, so there are many ways of being a female. “One is not born but becomes a woman”. Women must existentially free themselves from the constrains of society. It is riskier and harder to be authentic, but it is the way to equality and freedom.

Camus

Albert Camus felt that because we have consciousness, we feel we have meaning, but since the universe is absurdly meaningless, there is a contradiction here. In order to overcome this contradiction, we have to fully embrace this meaningless of existence. The endless struggle (like Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill) and drudgery of life is a reflection of its ultimate meaningless. There is a strong undercurrent of nominalism here. Meaning and purpose, as abstract ideas, do not exist “out there” in the universe, but are conceptually constructed in our minds. This is, like Sartre claimed, what makes us human. Recognising the ultimate meaningless is what allows us to live fully.

Hopefully, this gives some basic introduction to existentialism, and some of its proponents. Of course, there are others, and there is arguably much to disagree with as well as to agree with. Comments more than welcome!

Should We License Parenting?

Last updated on: July 24, 2016 at 9:07 am By Jonathan MS Pearce

In reading the brilliant book The Anatomy of Violence by Adrian Raine, the subject of licensing parenting is brought up near the end. It’s a good old debating topic that often provokes strong opinions. Some claim that giving birth is a fundamental human right and everyone is entitled to it.

Of course, this is not so obvious:

What are human rights and in what way do they exist? You see, human rights are abstract objects, and, as a conceptual nominalist, I would argue that they only exist in the human mind. Thus, in any real sense, human rights only exist in a mind independent manner when codified into a law or laws. And these will vary throughout the world. So, really, human rights are simply moral codes derived from moral philosophy, and the application of logical argument. Not only are human rights not ontically real, but if you argue that they conceptually or even objectively exist, there is a lot of work to be done in asserting which ones are valid, and which ones aren’t.
Things get complicated when vying for rights. Let’s imagine I live in a community where all resources are allocated – there is no spare capacity for any more humans. Surely I could argue that your right to give birth to a child impinges on my right (or my already existing children’s rights) to life (clean water, food etc.)? What about when there are spare resources? Your child still takes away resources form my family. Rights are tricky.
Nature already denies many people the ability to have children. How does this interact with the notion of human rights?
We already strictly regulate parenting in the fostering and adoption spheres. So for those people in (3) who cannot have children (or choose adoption), we make them jump through hoops to actually parent. This is the adoption assessment section from the UK government website:

3. Adoption assessment

Once the agency gets your application it will do the following:

Invite you to a series of preparation classes – these are normally held locally and give advice on the effect adoption may have on you.

Arrange for a social worker to visit you on several occasions to carry out an assessment – this is to check you’re suitable to become an adoptive parent.

Arrange a police check – you will not be allowed to adopt if you, or an  adult member of your family, have been convicted of a serious offence, eg  against a child.

Ask you to provide the names of 3 referees who will give you a personal reference. One of your referees can be a relative.

Arrange for you to have a full medical examination.

Your assessment

The social worker will send the assessment report to an independent adoption panel. This is a group of people who are experienced in adoption.

The panel will make a recommendation to the adoption agency based on your assessment.

You can go along to ask questions and answer any questions the panel has.

The adoption panel will send their recommendation to the agency, which will then decide whether you’re suitable to adopt a child.

If you can adopt a child

Once your agency decides you can adopt, they’ll begin the process of finding a child for you to adopt.

Your agency will refer you to either the:

Adoption Register for England

National Adoption Service for Wales

They’ll do this immediately or 3 months after you’ve been approved to adopt if they’re not actively considering a local match with a child.

The registers hold details of children across England and Wales who need adopting.

Let me dwell on this fourth point a little. There are strict guidelines, and regulatory structures and processes in place to ensure that the child gets the best, most secure parenting they can, or at least a high minimum requirement. This appears to be a rather obvious example of double standards, certainly if one agrees to this practice, and yet argues that regular childbirth and parenting should be an unregulated human right.

We know that the biosocial jigsaw, as Raine would say, is a complex interaction of genes, biology and environment. The adoption process tries to mitigate the known risk factors through regulation (read licensing). This, then, lessens the damage done to children that, in turn, lessens the damage and cost to society.

Now, I am not saying we should license parenting here, per se. But I am questioning whether it is not a bad idea, especially since we already do this to people who are unfortunate enough not to be able to have children, or who want to help others, and choose or have to go through the adoption process in order to have children.

For more information on the massive array of damage you can do to children in the long and short term, please read Raine’s excellent book.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/ Chris Pirillo, flickr

No True Scotsmen, Religion and Criminality

Last updated on: June 10, 2016 at 8:38 am By Jonathan MS Pearce

This old chestnut. It rears its ugly head every so often when a believer is found to do some terrible crime. I think the last time I talked about it in this context was when Anders Breivik went and shot up a group of young political people in Norway. Let’s first remind ourselves of the No True Scotsman (NTS) fallacy:

As wiki defines:

No true Scotsman is an informal fallacy, an ad hoc attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion.^[1] When faced with a counterexample to a universal claim, rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original universal claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric, without reference to any specific objective rule.

…

The use of the term was advanced by British philosopher Antony Flew:

Imagine Hamish McDonald, a Scotsman, sitting down with his Glasgow Morning Herald and seeing an article about how the “Brighton Sex Maniac Strikes Again”. Hamish is shocked and declares that “No Scotsman would do such a thing”. The next day he sits down to read his Glasgow Morning Herald again; and, this time, finds an article about anAberdeen man whose brutal actions make the Brighton sex maniac seem almost gentlemanly. This fact shows that Hamish was wrong in his opinion but is he going to admit this? Not likely. This time he says, “No true Scotsman would do such a thing”.^[2]

When the statement “all A are B” is qualified like this to exclude those A which are not B, this is a form of begging the question; the conclusion is assumed by the definition of “true A“.

The defence of accusations against Christians for X, Y and Z is often “well, that person cannot really be called a Christian”. Which leads on to calls for a usable definition of Christianity, which then entails Christianity being defined (in arguably an obvious manner) with precisely the denomination or worldview that is held by the person you are arguing with. In my previous piece on this, I talked about how Christian commentators in the States often claimed that people like Breivik weren’t real Christians, but were not nearly so careful in their definitions when evaluating the crimes or horrors of apparent Muslims. There is some serious double standardry going on here!

Why bring this up again? Well, in the UK, we have been hit with a terrible example of criminality. As the BBC reported:

A British man has been given 22 life sentences after admitting 71 charges of sex abuse against children in Malaysia aged from six months to 12 years old.

Police believe Richard Huckle, 30, from Ashford, Kent, abused up to 200 children from mainly poor communities.

The Old Bailey judge described a 60-page paedophile manual Huckle wrote as a “truly evil document” and said he must serve at least 23 years in jail.

A woman in the public gallery shouted: “1,000 deaths is too good for you”.

In online posts, Huckle had bragged: “Impoverished kids are definitely much easier to seduce than middle-class Western kids.”

Commenting on one of his victims, he boasted: “I’d hit the jackpot, a 3yo girl as loyal to me as my dog and nobody seemed to care.”

Huckle used the dark web to communicate with and coordinate other paedophiles:

He presented himself as a practising Christian and first visited Malaysia on a teaching gap year when he was 18 or 19. He then went on to groom children while doing voluntary work….

Investigators found more than 20,000 indecent pictures and videos of his assaults on children, which were shared with paedophiles worldwide through a website hidden in the so-called dark web.

He even tried to make a business out of his abuse by crowd-funding the release of the images and was compiling a paedophile’s manual at the time of his arrest by the NCA in December 2014.

It his Christianity that has caused some debate in some quarters. Alistair McBay of the National Secular Society has written a very interesting piece:

A spate of media reports have suggested that criminals convicted of sex abuse feigned their religion. NSS Vice-President Alistair McBay argues that the media shouldn’t seek to protect religion from criticism by misrepresenting these cases.

A disturbing new trend is developing in the field of reporting on child sex abuse cases involving the religious, whether clergy or ordinary worshippers. It infers these criminals were not, perhaps even could not have been religious, because if they had been then obviously they would not have committed the crimes. Their faith is therefore not relevant to their criminality.

The most recent example involved the vile Richard Huckle, sentenced in London for a catalogue of horrific child sex offences in Malaysia. The Press Association report widely used around the globe referred to Huckle as “posing as a respectable Christian English teacher and philanthropist.” The Times chose to say “Huckle posed as a Christian”, adding that he then “used his religion to infiltrate an impoverished Malaysian community. The BBC ran with “He presented himself as a practising Christian”, while the Daily Mail said “Huckle masqueraded as a devout Christian.”

Huckle ‘posed as a Christian’? He ‘presented himself‘ and ‘masqueraded‘ as one?

We know Huckle was a church-going Christian, brought up in a comfortable middle class Christian household, and stood ‘hands clasped in prayer’ in the dock as the life sentences, all 22 of them, were handed down. Once you have been caught, tried, found guilty and sent down, it hardly seems worthwhile to keep up any ‘posing’ as something you’re not! The same inference, that a devout Christian faith was nothing more than a sham to conceal paedophilia, was also apparent in the sentencing of Anglican bishop Peter Ball, with the phrase that he used ‘religion as a cloak’ cropping up in court, although prosecuting counsel also said Ball was “highly regarded as a Godly man”.

It is perhaps understandable that Christians may want to play down Huckle’s Christian belief or its place in his criminality. But should we now conclude that all the Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, Seventh Day Adventist and Anglican clergy who have been found guilty of sexually abusing children were only ‘posing’ as vicars and priests, and their devoutness was just play-acting? Was Bishop Ball only ‘masquerading’ as a Godly man?

We have seen these inferences before. In May 2014, a Scotsman article headed “Religion mustn’t cause violence” claimed religion could not be the cause of violence or abuse otherwise there would be no accounting for the millions of religious believers who were peaceful, tolerant and inclusive of those of all faiths and none. It’s not too difficult to turn that statement around – religion can’t be the cause of people doing good things, otherwise there would be no accounting for believers who commit crimes against humanity and justify their actions on the basis of their God’s demands!

That “religion mustn’t cause violence” was refreshed later that year, in an interview with Nazir Afzal who at that time led the Crown Prosecution Service action against child abuse and violence against women and young girls. Afzal said religion couldn’t have been a factor because the Rotherham men were not religious and in any case substance abuse and rape were forbidden in Islam. Forbidden they may be, but that didn’t stop two of those convicted of similar crimes in Derby in 2010, both devout Muslims and family men with children of their own, becoming “vodka-swilling, cocaine-binging paedophiles who spent every available moment randomly targeting young girls on the street, befriending them, and then horrifically abusing them.”

I have always wondered about this concerning paedophile Catholic priests. Are they religious? Are they really religious and do they hold genuine beliefs? Because that must cause some serious cognitive dissonance or insanely complex cognitive contortions if they are. Or are they lying, and covering up a lack of belief in order to access their prey? And this problem of the NTS invariably comes up. Does simply self-identification as X means that one is X? Or is this defined by the success in exhibiting all the properties understood as defining X, by objective third parties? What if you had 95% of those properties? 73%?

And so on.

Indeed, we get back to my good ole favourite notion: that abstract labels do not exist. As a conceptual nominalist, explained at length in a number of previous posts, I deny the existence, outside of our conceiving brains, of abstract objects. As such, properties exist, but ascribing labels to properties and grouping properties into other labelled categories (Christian, Muslim) is a conceptual pastime; those categories do not exist in an ontic sense.

What this then means is that there literally is no true Scotsman, Muslim or Christian. Just like any defined word, it’s whatever we agree (or even disagree) as defining these terms. We could all successfully agree that Huckle can be defined as a Christian. More likely, we will vary and disagree. And there simply is no right answer. Perhaps, then, it is about whether that term, “Christian”, is successfully understood by a majority of people, and whether Huckle embodies these properties, as agreed by a majority. So, we need a survey…

Which is why this debate consistently comes to the fore.

Vegetarians and vegans – a philosophical look into whether they can rightfully adopt a moral high-ground.

Last updated on: August 1, 2016 at 11:26 pm By Jonathan MS Pearce

I wrote this years back and have not looked at it since. A few week ago, I was approached by “Philosophical Vegan” (PV) who told me that when you search for veganism an philosophy on Google, my essay is one of the first search results. That’s pretty cool, unless, of course, the essay has problems. PV seems to think it has many, and that it may. You see, it was written pretty hastily and a long time ago, and I may well have refined my views since writing it. It was more of a psychological reaction to what I perceived was a pretty psychological position. Anyway, what I want to do is post my original article, with those caveats, and then post PV’s rebuttal to it, before writing a rejoinder to sum it all up.

I think this sort of thing is important. Doing philosophy, for me at least, is rather like the scientific method: you put your views out there to be challenged and attacked, and in so doing find out whether they are lacking. If they are, you adapt them accordingly. As time goes by, your views become more refined and more robust.

Anyway, here is my original piece. Criticise it as appropriate and I will post PV’s tomorrow:

Kelly Garbato, Carbs & Rec Cookbook Pile (0006) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/ — Kelly Garbato,
Carbs & Rec Cookbook Pile (0006) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/

By Jonathan M.S. Pearce, August 2011

I recently had a conversation with my partner’s daughter about her sudden decision, as a university student, to become a vegetarian and then, quickly afterwards, to take up veganism. I found the whole situation quite intellectually stimulating for philosophical reasons that I had never fully thought about before. For the point of this article I will not use my partner’s daughter’s name, not because she would not want it, but because I will at times be using examples and hypothetical quotes and positions that she has not given or does not necessarily hold. Thus, Judy is the newly veganised person.

So what is the reason that Judy became a vegetarian? Like many similar people, vegetarianism is an ethical standpoint, a mode of living that is more ethically beneficent and compassionate than being a meat-eater. The cruelty involved in eating meat, not to mention the extra water consumed in producing equivalent nutritional values of meat (though this is not often the primary concern), mean that vegetarianism is a fairly obvious ethical ideal.

The movement to veganism is a little more complex. The use of wool, eggs and milk, for example, do not necessarily involve the death, or even the suffering of animals. And this is where I find there is much interesting philosophical debate. Vegetarianism is fairly obvious and a relatively easy decision to make. It is ethically beneficial on several levels, and most people choose not to be vegetarian out of the love of meat, the variety of food this enables you to have and most prevalently, the laziness of the meat-eater. It takes a large effort to change one’s entrenched behaviours. I am one of these people: I ethically approve and would like to be a vegetarian, but am honest enough to say that I am a meat-eater still. There are many environmentally sound things that I do, even to the point of co-chairing a local green activist group, buying organic etc., but I confess to being guilty of eating meat. I applaud Judy for her decision, though.

Point 1

Firstly, we have the issue of where to draw the line. This is a case of the slippery slope. You see, to claim the ethical high ground in being a vegetarian, it begs the question of why stop at this ethical decision, why not go further? Why not think about where every single product that you buy is bought and change your shopping habits accordingly? Why not ensure that your electricity provider gives you green tariffs, or that you bank with the Co-Op Bank? However, the logical conclusion of this is to end up something like a Jain who sweeps the road in front of them so as not to tread on an ant. This, though, is where a vegetarian should end up unless they draw an arbitrary line somewhere in their decision making. Yet this is an entirely subjective and effectively random line if not followed through to its logical Jainist conclusion. Why should a meat-eater take the extra step on the request of a vegetarian if the vegetarian themselves refuses to take the next step in their ethical progression, and the next step and so on ad infinitum?

Point 2

Secondly, a similar notion of the slippery slope can be applied to the value of an animal life. As above, a Jain takes into account the value of life right down to an ant. But even then, what is to separate an ant (philosophically) from an amoeba or a bacterium? And a plant? The destruction of an animal such as a cow can more clearly be seen as problematic when put up against an amoeba, but where do you draw the line over what animals demand compassion and what ones don’t? Again, we return to an arbitrary line drawn to separate one animal as deserving compassion from the next down the line (presumably of complexity) that doesn’t deserve compassion. A meat-eater draws their arbitrary line much higher than a vegetarian. For example, most meat-eaters would not endorse the killing and eating of polar bears, but accept chickens. Vegetarians draw the line much lower down at around the micro-organism level. There can be a separation here of killing animals to eat, and accidental or collateral death of animals, of course. Driving along the road in a car in the Summer months, the vegetarian accepts collateral deaths of hundreds of flies and insects hitting the car and windscreen as par for the course. If they killed hundreds of cows driving down the road every day, then they would likely not drive. So there is definite and varied value attached to different animal life-forms which is often intuitively established and not specifically and explicitly so.

Point 3

Let us look philosophically at this process of moving away from a given behaviour to a newly adopted one of ethical ‘superiority’. There is a common occurrence of evangelisation when people take up a new ideological position. I know this from experience, from when I first became a green consumer and activist. The evangelising that you do to those around you about your newfound belief is always powerful. Whether it be with religion, atheism, political ideology or green issues, the behaviour is the same, and those closest to you get the full force of that evangelising persuasiveness that pervades all conversations. This manifests itself in ways such as this:

Judy: I can’t believe you eat meat. Do you know how cruel that is to animals?! You should stop eating meat like I have done. It is clearly better for the animal kingdom and for society as a whole.

Bill: Sure. But I already live ethically by only buying organic produce. I spend more money on these products to ensure farms operate ethically, promoting animal welfare, biodiversity, complementary ecosystems, and so they don’t use animal-killing pesticides. What gives you the right to demand that I stop eating meat when you don’t buy exclusively organic produce like I do?

Judy: Vegetarianism is better than buying organic!

Bill: Is it? Based on what value system?

And this is the problem. Bill has a really valid point. Judy may assume the moral high-ground, but they are both on moral high-grounds. There is no way of valuing two such different behaviours – it is akin to comparing the value of flying a kite with eating an orange – the two are complex and not mutually comparable. Ethics isn’t just about animal death and suffering, and even then, organic farming actually promotes more life and biodiversity than standard arable farming which would kill many animals and destroy many ecosystems through pesticide use and such factors as utrophication. If we understand that we are all on a continuum of ethical living, we sit somewhere on a line starting at the world’s most unethical and selfish consumer to the most pious and angelic ethical consumer. Each decision, if we could assign a universal ethical value would add certain units of ethical value to your life and would push you along that continuum. Therefore, a vegetarian wouldn’t have the right to say what Judy says unless they did everything ethically possible in their own lives (and we return here to my first point made above). And decisions can’t be easily compared on a universal system, so Bill would be within his rights, arguably, to claim that he was actually being more ethical than Judy, and that she should get down off her high horse.

I remember going to a debate on what was better: organic, seasonal or local produce. The end result was that nobody knew. Each had their pros and cons that were different and not mutually comparable. This is the same for vegetarianism against any other ethical choice. Now, Judy could demand that someone who does absolutely nothing ethical in their lives (Kelly) adopt vegetarianism. But even then, Kelly could still demand why Judy hasn’t followed through on every aspect of ethical living, and ask why they had to simply adopt the one ethical choice that Judy had adopted. This would seem to Kelly like Judy just wanted everybody to be like her, doing everything that she does – “I do it, and therefore, so should you!” We are on almost identical grounds to Point 1 here. But Judy would be within her rights to at least try to make Kelly somewhat more ethical. But with Bill, Judy has a much harder logical battle. She cannot adopt a moral high ground because she arguably does not hold one over organic Bill. Bill can simply turn around and either say, “I’ll become vegetarian if you become organic” or he can say, “Why should I follow your demands, if you have not considered going organic.”

Interestingly, this is not an argument about vegetarianism. Vegetarianism is simply the example in the debate. Any ethical decision or position here is at stake. You could swap vegetarianism and organic consumption around here, or you could choose two other options entirely. The philosophical point being made is that you cannot adopt a moral high ground over any ethical decision with someone else who has a different ethical behaviour if one is not clearly more ethical than the other. This would necessitate a universal ethical value system.

I must also reiterate that vegetarianism is beneficial, in my opinion, to society as a whole. What I should not do (if I was one) is to automatically assume the moral high-ground over those who were not vegetarians without knowing their ethical repertoire, if you will. I would also have to accept an arbitrary line draw for purposes of practicability, whilst also understanding that this may logically undermine (to some extent) such a position.

Veganism

It gets a bit trickier now. There are two types of vegan, the dietary vegan and the ethical vegan. The ethical vegan is one who removes all animal products from their diet and any other purpose, arguing that animals should not be seen as a commodity. I will be assuming the stricter definition whilst at the same time acknowledging that it might be a straw man for some people.

Let us look at chicken eggs, and more specifically, free range chicken eggs. I have kept chickens myself, and eaten their eggs. I know that my chickens, while they lived, had a good life. About as good as it gets for a chicken. They had the run of the garden, a hutch, a fantastic diet that far exceeded anything they could have got in the wild, and safety. Compared to a chicken existing in the wild, they had life that was unarguably better. They provided eggs, but this was at no suffering from them. If I was not using their eggs, I would not have obtained the chickens. They would not even have existed, since the demand for them would not have been there. This gets into the realms of Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein here, since we start having to talk about the value of existence. Is it better that a chicken doesn’t exist, or exists happily in a free ranging comfortable environment whilst laying unfertilised eggs to be consumed by a random bloke who occasionally picks them up and strokes them?

Perhaps there is no answer to this. No value can be assigned to non-existence. So let’s compare a free range chicken in my possession with a wild chicken in the jungles of Asia where they are native. The constant threat of predation, a less comfortable roost, no veterinary support if they become ill, no separation if there is unnecessarily vicious henpecking must surely mean that a free range chicken leads a more comfortable and happy life than a wild one. Maslow’s hierarchy would imply a happier chicken is a free range chicken. Chickens do not understand notions of possession such that I own them and they are not free or wild, and as such this is perhaps irrelevant to the discussion.

In this case, it seems obvious that it is better to have free range chickens than to have wild ones.

Cows are a different ballgame. On a subsistence level, I would suggest that milking your own cow or several cows is probably beneficial. However, most cows are intensively farmed, and so milk is potentially more complex than eggs. That being said, the discussion becomes whether a farmed cow is better than a non-existent cow. If this is unanswerable, then what would happen to cows if they were wild? Is it a relevant question, would cows simply die out and would we be back to our first question?

With sheep, and wool, we are at a potentially different discussion too. Is there any harm in rearing sheep, who live exceptionally free range lives, for their wool? Is there any suffering? Would the sheep live easier or harder lives if they weren’t farmed, in the wild, suffering hardships of predation and no medicine? A difficult question, but I would be inclined to argue that it is beneficial for sheep to be farmed. The welfare of the animals is important to the farmer to ensure good revenue from quality wool. With high farming standards in Britain, and the push for more compassionate farming, then there is, in my opinion, nothing wrong with the harvesting of wool from sheep.

What we start to get into is the notion of rights. Does one animal have a right over another animal? Does one animal have a right not to get eaten by another, and not to have any of its products not to be used by another animal? Vegans here deny any kind of speciesism. As others have investigated, vegans adopt a deontonlogical approach, that of objective moral rights, as opposed to a utilitarian or a consequentialist approach. There is utility to humanity that we consume animal products that is higher than the utility for not doing so; therefore, there are beneficial consequences to such a consumption.

Vegan philosophers will argue that the moral rights of the animals override any argument that suggests that the eating of animals is useful in any way. It gets easier to debate this same argument over animal products that do not require the death or suffering of the animal. However, there is scope for a really deep philosophical conversation here about whether rights exist at all, and the more fundamental point as to whether objective ideas or abstracts exist (objectively) at all.

What is a right, and what does it mean? As Andrew Brown has pointed out in the Guardian[1], it is hard to argue that human rights actually exist. The implications here are that it is hard to argue for the objective existence of human or animal rights. This comes down to the debate over whether abstract ideas exist at all other than in people’s minds, whether the position of realism is tenable. I am a conceptualist and this means that I do not believe that objective ideas exist anywhere but in the individual brains of each thinker. I set out a case against objectivism briefly here: http://atipplingphilosopher.yolasite.com/a-tps-blog/objective-ideas-don-t-exist-.

It sounds nice and compassionate to say things like “What about the rights of animals? They have rights too, you know!”, but in order for this to be a truthful statement, it needs to be philosophically substantiated. The only way of doing this is to set up a subjective framework of rights and bills and laws which must be undergirded by a law set out by a consensus within humanity, or for it to simply be a subjective and personal belief. For example, if we set out the goal ‘There will be as little animal suffering in this society as possible’, then you can go about setting up a framework to achieve that goal, which might include the implementation of rights. But that goal is itself a subjective ideal, almost arbitrary. It will usually boil down, after asking countless whys as to the existence of the goal, to human happiness or utility. Therefore, in my opinion, we are back to treating animal ethics on a consequentialist footing.

The ubiquitous Peter Singer has written widely on bioethics. He adopts the consequentialist view that killing animals is not wrong in and of itself in an inherent manner, but that it should be rejected unless necessary for survival on such a basis. This would be the viewpoint I would adopt. At the risk of having to investigate the huge topic of morality here, it is important not to get sidetracked. Thus, improving farm conditions as well as endorsing veganism is the order of the day. He does support what is often known as the ‘Paris exemption’ which broadly states: if you find yourself in a fine restaurant, allow yourself to eat what you want; and if you’re in a strange place without access to vegan food, going vegetarian instead is acceptable[2].

Veganism is not a religion and making the occasional compromise will not commit you to an eternal hell, especially if you can master your guilt.

In reality, it all becomes an entanglement of competing philosophical ideas and ideals. Do objective ideas exist? Do rights exist? Do species exist? (I actually argue they don’t as can be seen here [link to old, old blog removed – suffice to say I often write about conceptual nominalism] and this renders the separation of ‘humans’ from other animals difficult.) Which animals have sentience and which don’t? So on and so forth. I suppose the conclusion, if any such a thing can be drawn from a subject with so many contentious and arguable points, would be that simple throw-away ethical judgements do not stand on their own intrinsic merit. “You shouldn’t eat meat” and “You should be a vegan” more often than not rely on unsubstantiated philosophy. The whys need to be asked until you get down to that which grounds your position, and this usually means talking about objectivism and subjectivism; talking about moral philosophy and where it is derived; and whether there is such a thing as (moral) duty. Sweeping generalisations and dogmatic statements (nay, all statements) are never easy in the world of philosophy.

Notes

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2010/oct/20/human-rights-exist (14/4/2011)

[2] Singer, Peter and Mason, Jim. The Way We Eat. Rodale, 2006, pp. 282–283. The term “Paris exemption” was coined in 2004 by Daren Firestone, a Chicago law student, in Paulson, Amanda. “One woman’s quest to enjoy her dinner without guilt”, Christian Science Monitor, October 27, 2004, p. 2

The Philosophy 101 Factfile – Plato

Last updated on: April 17, 2016 at 11:47 pm By Jonathan MS Pearce

In doing the philpapers inspired Philosophy 101 series (most recent one found here), touching on the questions asked in the largest ever survey of philosophers, I thought I would give some nice, basic factfiles explaining what some of the key philosophers have brought to the philosophical table. We hear so much about Aristotle, Plato, Hume and Descartes, but who the hell are they and what did they think (in a really short, easy-to-digest manner)?

Having already covered Socrates here, I am moving on to his protege, a certain Mr Plato.

Name: Plato

Location: Athens

Era: 427-347 BCE

Main area of philosophy: Epistemology (what is knowledge and how do we come by it?), rationalism (using reason as opposed to empirical evidence to ground knowledge)

How do we know: Apology (about Socrates), dialogues (thirty-six dialogues and thirteen letters have been ascribed to him), Republic, Symposium and other writing

Bio: Belonged to aristocratic family, well educated it seems, and a protege of Socrates. Founded one of the earliest known organised schools in Western world later in his life – the Academy which existed in one form or another until 529 CE when the Christians closed it down, seeing it as a threat. Go figure. Got into politics. Got sold into slavery. Got bought out by an admirer. He either died in his sleep, at a wedding, or in bed whilst a young girl played the flute. Who knows, could be a euphemism. If so, way to go! He was a massive influence on his pupil, Mr Aristotle.

Philosophy stuff:

Plato is known for his claims of Ideal Forms, which goes something like this:

1) The real world is the world of IDEAS, which contains IDEAL FORMS of everything

2) We live in an illusory world, the world of our SENSES, which contains imperfect copies of the Ideal Forms

3) However, we are born with the concepts of these Ideal Forms in our minds

4) When we recognise things in the world it is because we see them as imperfect copies of the Ideal Forms in our minds.

5) Everything in this world is a SHADOW of the REAL WORLD of IDEAL FORMS

Socrates claim of the concept that virtue is knowledge was seen by Plato as raising the question as to what a concept was. Whether it be a physical thing or a concept like a moral concept, there must be a perfect version of it. Every object around us is recognisable because it has a ‘-ness’ to it. Dogs have in common a ‘doginess’, chairs a ‘chairness’ and so on. These are universal properties, or universals.

Reason, so Plato thinks, is how we find out about the world, such as with mathematical knowledge, using logical steps and imagining conclusions. We do not find this TRUE KNOWLEDGE, if you like, through our senses. It is this reason which allows the conclusion that the world of Ideal Forms must exist – that we are in a cave, facing a wall with a fire burning behind us. Other people hold up objects, but we cannot turn around (if we do, we will likely be confused and turn back to our comfort zone) and see only the shadows of these objects. We are prisoners in our shadow world. This “Allegory of the Cave” illustrates the way Plato saw the world.

Because much of our ‘knowledge’ only comes from these imperfect representations, the only way to access true knowledge is to studying the Ideas. The material world is subject to change, but this world of Forms is immutable. And this is not merely the case for concrete objects, but for abstract ideas like love and courage, moral goodness and so on.

Our conception of these Ideal Forms must be innate, he argues, to be able to access them through reason. As such, humans are divided into body (senses) and soul (reason) which is immortal and eternal. This soul inhabited the world of the Ideas before our birth and will return there after our deaths. Thus the recognising of these shadows in the sensory world is recollection of when our souls were in the world of Ideas.

It is the job of philosophers to discover this world of Ideal Forms and Ideas (and these should be the people in the ruling class).

So Plato wasn’t just about arguing about true knowledge itself, as others before him, but HOW one could and should get there.

Platonic philosophy influenced later Christian and Islamic scholars, such as St Augustine.

And crucially, Plato was a massive influence on the 17th century Rationalists, who axiomatically placed reason as the grounding of knowledge, and not evidence or observation, as opposed to the Empiricists.

How does this affect your life and philosophy?

Well, these days the debate is over what everything is made up of, or more accurately, what the existence properties are of concrete objects, natural kinds and abstract objects and universals. This has been explained a little by myself in Philosophy 101 (philpapers induced) #2 – Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism. Plato believed there was an extra realm where abstract ideas and universals existed. These days, this is less adhered to, and yet many are still realists believing that these abstracta are really real, in some way. As I asked God in The Little Book of Unholy Questions:

Many argue that there is no such thing as objective morality, because any idea is subjective, as I will set out. Abstract ideas (such as objective morality) do not and cannot exist objectively. It is anthropocentric to imagine they do. Imagine a more intelligent alien life-form comes to earth and sees a table. They have somehow not invented tables. This table is not a table to them. In other words, a table only has properties that make it a table within the intellectual confines of humanity. These consensus-agreed properties are human derived properties, even if there may be common properties between concrete items – i.e. tableness. Without humans existing on earth, for example, ‘tables’ would not exist. Thus the label of ‘table’ is a result of ‘subjectively human’ evolution. If you argue that objective ideas do exist, then it is also the case that the range of all possible entities must also exist objectively, even if they don’t exist materially. For example, a ‘forqwibllex’ is a fork with a bent handle and a button on the end (that has never been created and I have ‘made-up’). This did not exist before now, either objectively or subjectively. Now it does – have I created it objectively? This is what happens whenever humans make up a label for anything to which they assign function etc. Also, things that other animals use that don’t even have names, but to which they have assigned ‘mental labels’, for want of better words, must also exist objectively under this logic. For example, the backrubby bit of bark on which a family of sloths scratch their backs on a particular tree exists materially. They have no language, so it has no label (it can be argued that abstracts are a function of language). Yet even though it only has properties to a sloth, and not to any other animal, objectivists should claim it must exist objectively. Furthermore, there are items that have multiple abstract properties which create more headaches for the objectivist. A table, to me, might well be a territory marker to the school cat. Surely they same object cannot embody both objective existences: the table and the marker. Therefore, the question, God, is: do abstract ideas exist outside of the subjective mind of the thinking entity?

Establishing the properties of everything that we can conceive is, to me, the most foundational philosophy that we can do.