So I have just finished reading the very interesting work by Tim Crane entitled "The Objects of Thought." For those who are familiar with Crane's work, he is an analytic philosopher operating within the Brentanian tradition. Being a Meinongian myself, this means that he is operating from a very similar framework to the one from which I operate. In this post, I will elaborate my thoughts on the book, along with some initial critiques of the theory advanced.
To begin, Crane is specifically concerned with the problem of non-existence, which he understands as arising from a seeming inconsistency between two allegedly obvious truths. Firstly, there is the notion that many true statements can be made regarding nonexistent objects. Secondly, there is the notion that all truth must be grounded in existence. Now of course, the meinongian would wholeheartedly agree with the first proposition, but he would staunchly disagree with the second, since he allows for many truths to be grounded in what we may call 'unreality'. However, due to his Brentanian proclivities, Crane is forced to ground all truth in existence, leading quite directly to the seeming inconsistency.
The question now is: how to reconcile the seemingly contradictory statements? In a decidedly clever move, Crane advances what we might call a 'Neo-Brentanian' solution to the problem. Quite simply, he manages to achieve this by explaining all the truths regarding nonexistent objects in terms of truths about existent objects. Indeed, as will become evident in due course, Crane's account is a resolutely Noneist account, revealing at once that Noneism can include more than just meinongianism. With all that being said, let us delve deeper into Crane's proposed solution.
As one would expect from a Brentanian, intentionality plays a key role in Crane's theory. And like Brentano, Crane interprets intentionality (also aboutness) in a non-relational way. For rather than being a relation of mind to object, Crane holds that intentionality is a universally immanent property of all mental operations. One primary reason why Crane rejects a relational account of intentionality (such as the Meinongian account) is because he thinks that relations can only ever hold between existent objects. Thus, if intentionality were a relation, then our mental states could only ever be about existent objects, a conclusion which Crane voids at once, since he does not see it as doing justice to the phenomenological data. In contrast to this rather distasteful conclusion, Crane holds it as axiomatic that many of our mental states can be about nonexistent objects.
But quite unlike Brentano, Crane also holds that we can quantify over nonexistent objects. As anyone who is familiar with Brentano's logical theory is surely aware, he interprets his particular quantifiers existentially, whereas Crane interprets them neutrally. Crane also diverges from his master by holding that nonexistent objects can possess a limited range of properties. These two facts, coupled with the further fact of his equating being with existence, is sufficient to make Crane a Noneist.
But whereas most Noneists equate the phrase 'there is' with the phrase 'there exists', Crane holds that 'there is' is not ontologically committing. So Crane is quite happy to say such things as "There are nonexistent objects" while this phrase hurts the ears of most Noneists. Now since Crane rejects the Quinean view of ontological commitment, one would expect him to hold that existence can be formally captured with an existence predicate, and this is precisely what he says. So just like in Meinongian Logics, Crane can define the existentially-loaded quantifiers through the use of both his neutral quantifiers and the existence predicate.
But when are we committed to the existence of a particular item O? Well for Crane, we are only ever ontologically committed to O if we both believe that O exists and if we have a conception of O.
We have already mentioned how Crane allows for nonexistent objects to possess properties in his theory, but he allows this only for a quite limited range of properties, since he takes the vast majority of properties to be existence-entailing. This places his theory much closer to Priest's Noneism, rather than Routley's. But there are 2 radical differences with Priestly Noneism, and that is Crane's rejection of both the Characterization Postulate and worlds-machinery. The Characterization Postulate (CP) is briefly put a principle that allows us to gain epistemological access to nonexistent objects. By appealing to the CP, we can determine just which properties any particular nonexistent object has. (If you would like a more in-depth explanation of the CP, either stay tuned for a future post on the matter, or ask me about it in the comments below).
Now for those who are familiar with Priest's version of the CP, it stipulates that if any existence-entailing properties appear within the characterization of a nonexistent object, then we can infer that that object has those properties not at this world, but at all the worlds that realize the characterization. In this case in particular, that would be all the worlds in which it exists. Of course, since characterizations can be incomplete or inconsistent in various ways, we must allow for these objects to have their properties at impossible worlds of various kinds.
However, Crane rejects all of this theoretical machinery. Again, he still asserts that many properties are existence-entailing (indeed, he thinks that the number of these is far greater number than what Priest thinks), what he does not allow is for nonexistent objects to possess these properties in any sense whatsoever. So if a particular nonexistent object O were to be characterized in such a way that some of the properties in it's characterization were existence-entailing, then Crane thinks that we can infer that O does not possess these properties at all.
Now with this being said, what properties can nonexistent objects possess? For Crane, nonexistent objects can only possess what he calls 'pleonastic properties.' He claims that pleonastic properties are insubstantial and that they are merely properties that follow from truths about an object. So, if we were to say that 'Item a has the property f,' we can infer from this that 'There is a property f that a has.' If there is nothing more to this property than this second-order particular generalization, then we say that f is pleonastic. In addition to this fact, Crane also holds that almost all of the properties that nonexistent objects possess are representation-dependent.
This is a quite striking difference from Meinongianism. For as we know, Meinong held that nonexistent objects possess properties in a quite substantial way, in fact in exactly the same way in which existent objects possess them.
We can see at once how the account Crane provides in this book is a reductionist account, for he thinks that nearly all the truths of nonexistent objects are grounded in certain human representations. Note also that this makes his account an anti-realist one (so long as we are interpreting 'realism' as denoting mind-independence). Thus, he quite naturally construes nonexistent objects as being intentional objects. Crane understands intentional objects to be merely those things which are represented by the human mind. As expected, such objects lack any intrinsic nature.
As a corollary of this fact, Crane also points out that nonexistent objects can never be identical or distinct on his theory. Rather, he claims that nonexistent objects can only ever be more or less similar. If a high enough degree of similarity is reached, then we are justified in saying that they are 'the same', but only as a matter of speaking.
So concludes our presentation of the theory. As we can see, it is a very interesting theory. Indeed, I would be willing to say that it is in many ways much superior to the mainstream theories on offer. But I have some serious misgivings regarding it, which in my opinion make it fall short of Meinongianism. They are as follows:
1. The pleonastic/substantial property distinction seems quite ad-hoc to me. Crane seems to take the distinction as being obvious, but to my eyes, it seems rather hastily put together for the express purpose of stripping away all substantiality from nonexistent objects. We often hear it said by critics that the nuclear/extranuclear extinction is ad-hoc, but I can perfectly well understand that distinction, and I can very easily discern whether any particular property is nuclear or extranuclear. I am not so confident that I could do the same with the pleonastic/substantial distinction.
2. The CP is a powerful epistemological tool that the Meinongian has at his disposal. So as I see it, Crane's refusal to make use of the CP only spells bad news. Instead of having a consistent and rational a priori method for discovering truths about nonexistent objects, Crane is forced to use a posteriori methods of varying reliability in order to discover such truths. Some people might actually see this as a strength, but certainly not me.
3. The theory of identity is sorely lacking. Recall that for Crane, two nonexistent objects can never be said to be identical. This leads to two massively untoward consequences. Firstly, it directly implies that we cannot count all of the nonexistent objects. Thus, we are forced into the strange position of affirming a multiplicity of nonexistent objects, while also recognizing that we cannot ever say how many of them we are giving status to in our theory. Secondly, suppose that we have two nonexistent objects, a and b, which each have exactly the same set of pleonastic properties. Since we do not have worlds-machinery at our disposal, this should be sufficient ground for affirming that a and b are the same object. But not so for Crane, for all we can really say is that a and b are sufficiently similar such that we can take them to be 'the same', in some sort of amorphous way. In my mind, this is a major strike against the theory.
4. Related to the third objection, it also follows from Crane's theory that a single nonexistent object cannot appear in multiple representations. Since we cannot ever make sense of saying that two nonexistent objects are identical (on Crane's theory), we cannot say that, for example, the Cthulhu that appears in the Lovecraft stories is the same being that appears in the August Derleth stories. But of course, we need to be able to say this, in order to make sense of the stories as given.
4. Finally, the logic that Crane founds his theory upon is Positive Free Logic. While this is no doubt an improvement upon Classical Logic, it is wholly inadequate as a tool for reasoning about nonsensical, incomplete, and inconsistent objects (which are legion in fiction).
So concludes my review. All in all, I would highly recommend this work to anybody interesting in our thought about the nonexistent. Unlike many analytical philosophers, Crane takes this challenge head-on and develops an original theory that goes a long way towards answering the central questions. I do not think the theory works in the end, but it will need to be grappled with by anyone who is interested in these issues.
Sunday, August 18, 2019
Tuesday, August 6, 2019
Reflections on Sylvan's Last Man Argument
I would now like to offer my reflections on a classic essay, namely, "Is There a Need for a New, an Environmental Ethic?" by Richard Sylvan. This essay is very short, but it deals with a very deep issue in a profound way. Sylvan begins the essay by pointing out that an increasing number of philosophers have expressed the need for an evaluation of the ethical status of the environment, and particular of humanity's relation to it. This is where the title of the essay comes in, for it is only natural to ask ourselves the following question: Does this new evaluation require merely an extension of existing ethical systems, or does it require a new ethic altogether?
This question actually has a simple enough answer, for if we examine the dominant Western ethical systems, they all place humanity as a despot or tyrant over the rest of the natural world. Thus, if humanity is a despot over the rest of nature, then, a fortiori, humanity does not have any ethical obligations towards the rest of nature. If humanity does not have any obligations toward the rest of nature, the question of an environmental ethic is null and void right from the start. Therefore, it would seem that a true environmental ethic must of necessity be a radically new ethic.
Now that we have that out of the way, what we must consider next is the foundation of the dominant ethic. Sylvan points out that the dominant Western ethical systems have a number of guiding principles (he mentions the Golden Rule as one such example), but one plausible candidate for a 'core' principle of the Western ethic is the Liberal principal that one is free to act as one pleases, so long as one does not harm other human beings and that one is not likely to irreparably harm themselves. Of course, this principle is not as explicitly formulated as we might like, but it gives us a good place to begin our investigation. Sylvan refers to this principle as 'basic (human) chauvinism.' It is easy enough to see why this name fits, since the principle as such includes only human beings within its reach.
After having established basic (human) chauvinism as a plausible ground for the Western ethic, Sylvan continues by bringing forth some counterexamples against the Western ethic, and this is the most interesting part of the essay. He discusses four different counterexamples, but we will focus on the first one; the so-called 'last man' argument. The argument is very simple; we are tasked with imagining that there is only one human left on the planet. The human decides to kill every living plant and animal before he expires. The argument formally laid it is as follows:
PREMISE 1: If basic (human) chauvinism is correct, then what this man does is morally permissible.
PREMISE 2: But what he does is in fact morally impermissible.
CONCLUSION 1: Thus, basic (human) chauvinism is incorrect.
This is a quite simple argument. Indeed, it is just an instance of Modus Tollens and is thus valid Relevantly, Classically, and in many other systems of Logic. In addition, the argument does not crucially depend on the Reference Theory. So we need to see whether it is sound.
The first premise is quite clearly true, since it follows from the guiding principle of basic (human) chauvinism. I believe that it is the second premise that is the crux of the argument. Is it in fact not morally permitted for someone to act in the way the man has in our scenario?
Now, since I am a Vegan, I obviously think it would be impermissible for the man to kill all of the various animals on the Earth. But I believe that the most pressing question concerns whether it is impermissible for the man to kill all of the various plants on the Earth.
If you will recall my post on the variation of the Argument from Marginal Cases, my intuitive sense leads me to think that it would be impermissible for the man to do this. Indeed, the plants in the last man scenario function almost identically to the irreversibly comatose person I mentioned in my post.
Indeed, imagine that we simply changed the scenario to where there is only one last sentient man and a billion irreversibly comatose people on an automated 10 year supply of life support. Now if the 'last man' in this scenario decides to spend the rest of his life killing off all of these comatose humans would he then be acting impermissibly? I still think that he would.
But why is it impermissible, on my view? As I see it, these acts are impermissible precisely both because life has some sort of value on its own, and because the last man lacks a good reason for committing these acts.
Now, it would be unbecoming on me not to discuss the paragraph in which Sylvan suggests that the new environmental ethic can be consistent with mainstream views that couple having rights with having responsibilities. Of course, as Sylvan points out, this would imply that most sentient items would not possess rights, even if right-holding items do have responsibilities towards them. Now I reject wholeheartedly the notion that having rights entails having responsibilities; for some humans are not equipped to have responsibilities (certain mentally challenged humans, or infants, or children). Thus on this view, all of these humans would not be rights-holders. But as I see things, they are rights-holders, so the view that having rights entails having responsibilities must be false.
This question actually has a simple enough answer, for if we examine the dominant Western ethical systems, they all place humanity as a despot or tyrant over the rest of the natural world. Thus, if humanity is a despot over the rest of nature, then, a fortiori, humanity does not have any ethical obligations towards the rest of nature. If humanity does not have any obligations toward the rest of nature, the question of an environmental ethic is null and void right from the start. Therefore, it would seem that a true environmental ethic must of necessity be a radically new ethic.
Now that we have that out of the way, what we must consider next is the foundation of the dominant ethic. Sylvan points out that the dominant Western ethical systems have a number of guiding principles (he mentions the Golden Rule as one such example), but one plausible candidate for a 'core' principle of the Western ethic is the Liberal principal that one is free to act as one pleases, so long as one does not harm other human beings and that one is not likely to irreparably harm themselves. Of course, this principle is not as explicitly formulated as we might like, but it gives us a good place to begin our investigation. Sylvan refers to this principle as 'basic (human) chauvinism.' It is easy enough to see why this name fits, since the principle as such includes only human beings within its reach.
After having established basic (human) chauvinism as a plausible ground for the Western ethic, Sylvan continues by bringing forth some counterexamples against the Western ethic, and this is the most interesting part of the essay. He discusses four different counterexamples, but we will focus on the first one; the so-called 'last man' argument. The argument is very simple; we are tasked with imagining that there is only one human left on the planet. The human decides to kill every living plant and animal before he expires. The argument formally laid it is as follows:
PREMISE 1: If basic (human) chauvinism is correct, then what this man does is morally permissible.
PREMISE 2: But what he does is in fact morally impermissible.
CONCLUSION 1: Thus, basic (human) chauvinism is incorrect.
This is a quite simple argument. Indeed, it is just an instance of Modus Tollens and is thus valid Relevantly, Classically, and in many other systems of Logic. In addition, the argument does not crucially depend on the Reference Theory. So we need to see whether it is sound.
The first premise is quite clearly true, since it follows from the guiding principle of basic (human) chauvinism. I believe that it is the second premise that is the crux of the argument. Is it in fact not morally permitted for someone to act in the way the man has in our scenario?
Now, since I am a Vegan, I obviously think it would be impermissible for the man to kill all of the various animals on the Earth. But I believe that the most pressing question concerns whether it is impermissible for the man to kill all of the various plants on the Earth.
If you will recall my post on the variation of the Argument from Marginal Cases, my intuitive sense leads me to think that it would be impermissible for the man to do this. Indeed, the plants in the last man scenario function almost identically to the irreversibly comatose person I mentioned in my post.
Indeed, imagine that we simply changed the scenario to where there is only one last sentient man and a billion irreversibly comatose people on an automated 10 year supply of life support. Now if the 'last man' in this scenario decides to spend the rest of his life killing off all of these comatose humans would he then be acting impermissibly? I still think that he would.
But why is it impermissible, on my view? As I see it, these acts are impermissible precisely both because life has some sort of value on its own, and because the last man lacks a good reason for committing these acts.
Now, it would be unbecoming on me not to discuss the paragraph in which Sylvan suggests that the new environmental ethic can be consistent with mainstream views that couple having rights with having responsibilities. Of course, as Sylvan points out, this would imply that most sentient items would not possess rights, even if right-holding items do have responsibilities towards them. Now I reject wholeheartedly the notion that having rights entails having responsibilities; for some humans are not equipped to have responsibilities (certain mentally challenged humans, or infants, or children). Thus on this view, all of these humans would not be rights-holders. But as I see things, they are rights-holders, so the view that having rights entails having responsibilities must be false.
Tuesday, July 23, 2019
Variation on the Argument from Marginal Cases
I have recently thought of a puzzling, but potentially revolutionary variation on the Argument from Marginal Cases. I am not exactly at the stage where I can conclusively say that this variation establishes its conclusion, but it has given me great pause.
The standard form of the Argument from Marginal Cases is well known. It runs as follows:
PREMISE 1: Assume that some trait T, such as intelligence, moral agency, the ability to appreciate art, the ability to feel romantic attachment, etc, is the sole determiner of moral status.
PREMISE 2: Some humans as a matter of fact do not possess the aforementioned trait.
CONCLUSION 1: Some humans (i.e. marginal cases) do not have moral status.
PREMISE 3: But, the aforementioned marginal humans actually do have moral status.
PREMISE 4: If the aforementioned marginal humans do have moral status, then trait T is not the sole determiner of moral status.
CONCLUSION 2: Trait T is not the sole determiner of moral status.
The obvious intention of this argument is to demonstrate that many proposed determiners for moral status are insufficient, because there will always be some humans who we intuitively believe to possess moral status who will be classified as not possessing such status as a result of applying this argument.
But, as people who follow debates on Animal Rights are all too aware, those who propound this argument do generally agree that there is in fact a sole determiner for moral status that is not susceptible to the argument. The criteria, of course, is that of sentience. Sentience, i.e. the ability to have subjective experience, is said to be the key that unlocks the gateway to moral status.
The usage of this argument, and the eventual appeal to sentience as the criteria, usually leaves the opponent with one of two options:
1. He can define moral status as being determined solely on the basis of species membership.
2. He can accept the conclusion of the argument and follow the Vegan lifestyle.
Option 1 is obviously recalcitrant, since it is just an example of speciesism, and thus embodies the same sorts of prejudices as racism, sexism, ageism, classism, etc.
Option 2, though indeed the sensible conclusion, is also considered recalcitrant because of the personal sacrifices that the Carnist must make.
This is all standard fare to those deep among the milieu of animal philosophy. But what I want to bring under consideration is the notion of sentience as the criteria for moral status. For, as should be clear enough, not all humans are sentient.
Quite apart from such trivial cases as dead and not-yet-born humans, there are real instances of living humans that lack the property of sentience. The most obvious example is people who are comatose, but certain severe and profoundly disabled humans might also lack sentience. But there is a universal instance where living humans lack sentience, namely, when they are asleep. We will refer to all humans who fall under these instances as "Non-S Humans."
Let us test this criteria by formulating a new version of the Argument from Marginal Cases with it in mind. We might formulate it as follows:
PREMISE 1: Assume that sentience is the criteria for the possession of moral status.
PREMISE 2: Non-S Humans do not possess sentience.
CONCLUSION 1: Non-S Humans do not possess moral status.
PREMISE 3: If Non-S Humans do not possess moral status, then it is morally permissible to treat Non-S Humans in any way we please (for instance, to rape them).
PREMISE 3: But it is not morally permissible to treat Non-S Humans in any way we please.
CONCLUSION 2: Non-S Humans do possess moral status.
PREMISE 5: If Non-S Humans do possess moral status, then sentience is not the criteria for the possession of moral status.
CONCLUSION 6: Sentience is not the criteria for the possession of moral status.
As we can see, this argument operates essentially on the same sort of principle as the standard AMC. We propose a criteria for moral status, but then we note that this criteria does not apply to all humans, and that the humans it does not apply to do seem to really possess moral status.
But just why is this argument so revolutionary? Well, if it is correct, then it would at the very least strongly point us to the notion that all living things have moral status merely by virtue of the fact that they are living. This fact in turn, would imply that the typical sentiocentrist ethic of the Vegan movement is radically mistaken, and that we Vegans need to move toward a biocentric or an ecocentric ethic.
In addition, this would also seem to have implications for the question of abortion. For some fetuses, especially early term fetuses, appear to lack the property of sentience
Now the we have laid the argument out and hinted at some of its possible implications, let us think of how we might respond to it. There is one obvious objection, and that concerns those Non-S Humans who are normal humans that are just currently asleep. In this case, the objection would be that the Non-S Human in question has an Aristotelian potentiality of sentience, in much the same way that a person with their eyes closed has an Aristotelian potentiality for seeing.
So far as I have been able to tell, this objection seems plausible. But we must note that it is not so easy when it comes to the other sorts of Non-S Humans, viz. the extreme cases of severe and profoundly disabled people and the comatose. But even in these cases, we can put forth a modified objection. We would say, not that they possess the Aristotelian potentiality for sentience, but that they possess the potentiality simpliciter for sentience, in much the same way as I possess the potentiality simpliciter to read and understand a graduate-level string theory textbook.
However, we still have a defense. We can posit that the Non-S Humans under consideration do not possess the potentiality simpliciter for sentience. This obviously leads us into a consideration of the different types of modality in order to determine just what sort of potentiality is at issue. I don't think that we can say that it is either logically or metaphysically impossible for these Non-S Humans to possess sentience. Physical impossibility is I think much closer to what we need, but I am not prepared to go quite that far. I think what we are after here is biological impossibility. Thus, we can posit that it is biologically impossible for the Non-S Humans to possess sentience, meaning by this that their possessing sentience is not consistent with the facts of human biology.
Now, we might have a hard time conceiving of how this could apply to a extreme severe and profoundly disabled person, so let us just focus on the case of the comatose person. In other words, what we are dealing with is a human that is irreversibly comatose.
So now that we have that in focus, the real question we must consider is: would it be wrong for someone to mistreat this human in anyway they please? For instance, to rape them?
To avoid some possible objections, we will say that the irreversibly comatose human has no friends or family members and that there is no way that anyone could find out that they had been raped.
Now to me, at least on a first approximation, it appears that it would be a profound moral injustice for someone to rape an irreversibly comatose human. But, and here is the catch, it seems to me that doing so would be to directly wrong the comatose human.
This seems to be the central issue on which the entire argument rests. Now of course, someone very well might respond to my intuition by pointing out that raping an irreversibly comatose human cannot be a direct wrong, because there is no center of experience that can be the object of the wrong. In other words, there is no 'person' as such that can be wronged.
Taking this response into consideration, I think that the ultimate conclusion that we draw from this argument will depend on our answer to a further question, namely: Does the existence of value as such necessarily depend upon the existence of a valuer?
The way I would like to approach this question is by an analogy. Let us suppose for the sake of argument that there is an afterlife. Let us also suppose that you had undergone a terrible accident that left you irreversibly comatose. After some time, you pass away and you enter the afterlife state. Upon entering this state, you are informed that some time after you had become comatose, a person had sexually assaulted your body. How would you react to this shocking information? Would you say that you yourself had been morally wronged? Or would you react with indifference, since you were not subjectively harmed in anyway by this event?
From my point of view, I am sure that I would very definitely find that I myself had been morally wronged, and it is my strong suspicion that many other people would agree with me on this. However, I should say though that it is not at all clear to me that non-sentient living beings should be given the same moral consideration as sentient living beings. Perhaps the sentiocentrist is definitely gesturing at an ultimate truth, namely that sentience, though not the only determiner for moral status, definitely places one higher on the totem pole than a merely living item.
Or perhaps the argument presented above is just mistaken and sentience is in fact the sole determiner. If that is the case, I would love to hear your objections to the argument.
The standard form of the Argument from Marginal Cases is well known. It runs as follows:
PREMISE 1: Assume that some trait T, such as intelligence, moral agency, the ability to appreciate art, the ability to feel romantic attachment, etc, is the sole determiner of moral status.
PREMISE 2: Some humans as a matter of fact do not possess the aforementioned trait.
CONCLUSION 1: Some humans (i.e. marginal cases) do not have moral status.
PREMISE 3: But, the aforementioned marginal humans actually do have moral status.
PREMISE 4: If the aforementioned marginal humans do have moral status, then trait T is not the sole determiner of moral status.
CONCLUSION 2: Trait T is not the sole determiner of moral status.
The obvious intention of this argument is to demonstrate that many proposed determiners for moral status are insufficient, because there will always be some humans who we intuitively believe to possess moral status who will be classified as not possessing such status as a result of applying this argument.
But, as people who follow debates on Animal Rights are all too aware, those who propound this argument do generally agree that there is in fact a sole determiner for moral status that is not susceptible to the argument. The criteria, of course, is that of sentience. Sentience, i.e. the ability to have subjective experience, is said to be the key that unlocks the gateway to moral status.
The usage of this argument, and the eventual appeal to sentience as the criteria, usually leaves the opponent with one of two options:
1. He can define moral status as being determined solely on the basis of species membership.
2. He can accept the conclusion of the argument and follow the Vegan lifestyle.
Option 1 is obviously recalcitrant, since it is just an example of speciesism, and thus embodies the same sorts of prejudices as racism, sexism, ageism, classism, etc.
Option 2, though indeed the sensible conclusion, is also considered recalcitrant because of the personal sacrifices that the Carnist must make.
This is all standard fare to those deep among the milieu of animal philosophy. But what I want to bring under consideration is the notion of sentience as the criteria for moral status. For, as should be clear enough, not all humans are sentient.
Quite apart from such trivial cases as dead and not-yet-born humans, there are real instances of living humans that lack the property of sentience. The most obvious example is people who are comatose, but certain severe and profoundly disabled humans might also lack sentience. But there is a universal instance where living humans lack sentience, namely, when they are asleep. We will refer to all humans who fall under these instances as "Non-S Humans."
Let us test this criteria by formulating a new version of the Argument from Marginal Cases with it in mind. We might formulate it as follows:
PREMISE 1: Assume that sentience is the criteria for the possession of moral status.
PREMISE 2: Non-S Humans do not possess sentience.
CONCLUSION 1: Non-S Humans do not possess moral status.
PREMISE 3: If Non-S Humans do not possess moral status, then it is morally permissible to treat Non-S Humans in any way we please (for instance, to rape them).
PREMISE 3: But it is not morally permissible to treat Non-S Humans in any way we please.
CONCLUSION 2: Non-S Humans do possess moral status.
PREMISE 5: If Non-S Humans do possess moral status, then sentience is not the criteria for the possession of moral status.
CONCLUSION 6: Sentience is not the criteria for the possession of moral status.
As we can see, this argument operates essentially on the same sort of principle as the standard AMC. We propose a criteria for moral status, but then we note that this criteria does not apply to all humans, and that the humans it does not apply to do seem to really possess moral status.
But just why is this argument so revolutionary? Well, if it is correct, then it would at the very least strongly point us to the notion that all living things have moral status merely by virtue of the fact that they are living. This fact in turn, would imply that the typical sentiocentrist ethic of the Vegan movement is radically mistaken, and that we Vegans need to move toward a biocentric or an ecocentric ethic.
In addition, this would also seem to have implications for the question of abortion. For some fetuses, especially early term fetuses, appear to lack the property of sentience
Now the we have laid the argument out and hinted at some of its possible implications, let us think of how we might respond to it. There is one obvious objection, and that concerns those Non-S Humans who are normal humans that are just currently asleep. In this case, the objection would be that the Non-S Human in question has an Aristotelian potentiality of sentience, in much the same way that a person with their eyes closed has an Aristotelian potentiality for seeing.
So far as I have been able to tell, this objection seems plausible. But we must note that it is not so easy when it comes to the other sorts of Non-S Humans, viz. the extreme cases of severe and profoundly disabled people and the comatose. But even in these cases, we can put forth a modified objection. We would say, not that they possess the Aristotelian potentiality for sentience, but that they possess the potentiality simpliciter for sentience, in much the same way as I possess the potentiality simpliciter to read and understand a graduate-level string theory textbook.
However, we still have a defense. We can posit that the Non-S Humans under consideration do not possess the potentiality simpliciter for sentience. This obviously leads us into a consideration of the different types of modality in order to determine just what sort of potentiality is at issue. I don't think that we can say that it is either logically or metaphysically impossible for these Non-S Humans to possess sentience. Physical impossibility is I think much closer to what we need, but I am not prepared to go quite that far. I think what we are after here is biological impossibility. Thus, we can posit that it is biologically impossible for the Non-S Humans to possess sentience, meaning by this that their possessing sentience is not consistent with the facts of human biology.
Now, we might have a hard time conceiving of how this could apply to a extreme severe and profoundly disabled person, so let us just focus on the case of the comatose person. In other words, what we are dealing with is a human that is irreversibly comatose.
So now that we have that in focus, the real question we must consider is: would it be wrong for someone to mistreat this human in anyway they please? For instance, to rape them?
To avoid some possible objections, we will say that the irreversibly comatose human has no friends or family members and that there is no way that anyone could find out that they had been raped.
Now to me, at least on a first approximation, it appears that it would be a profound moral injustice for someone to rape an irreversibly comatose human. But, and here is the catch, it seems to me that doing so would be to directly wrong the comatose human.
This seems to be the central issue on which the entire argument rests. Now of course, someone very well might respond to my intuition by pointing out that raping an irreversibly comatose human cannot be a direct wrong, because there is no center of experience that can be the object of the wrong. In other words, there is no 'person' as such that can be wronged.
Taking this response into consideration, I think that the ultimate conclusion that we draw from this argument will depend on our answer to a further question, namely: Does the existence of value as such necessarily depend upon the existence of a valuer?
The way I would like to approach this question is by an analogy. Let us suppose for the sake of argument that there is an afterlife. Let us also suppose that you had undergone a terrible accident that left you irreversibly comatose. After some time, you pass away and you enter the afterlife state. Upon entering this state, you are informed that some time after you had become comatose, a person had sexually assaulted your body. How would you react to this shocking information? Would you say that you yourself had been morally wronged? Or would you react with indifference, since you were not subjectively harmed in anyway by this event?
From my point of view, I am sure that I would very definitely find that I myself had been morally wronged, and it is my strong suspicion that many other people would agree with me on this. However, I should say though that it is not at all clear to me that non-sentient living beings should be given the same moral consideration as sentient living beings. Perhaps the sentiocentrist is definitely gesturing at an ultimate truth, namely that sentience, though not the only determiner for moral status, definitely places one higher on the totem pole than a merely living item.
Or perhaps the argument presented above is just mistaken and sentience is in fact the sole determiner. If that is the case, I would love to hear your objections to the argument.
Wednesday, July 10, 2019
A Critique of Ecological Animalism
In this post, I would like to offer a critique of Val Plumwood's philosophical theory called ecological animalism, which she formulated in an attempt to address the human relationship to other animals and to the environment. The theory can in many ways be best understood by contrasting it to what Plumwood calls ontological veganism, so we will start our discussion there.
The term 'ontological veganism' really just denotes the common variants of animal rights philosophy. The idea here is that we find some property the possession of which would accord moral standing to any item that possesses that property. In this context, the property in question is usually something like 'sentience' or 'being a subject-of-a-life'. Once we establish this, and once we recognize that all (or nearly all) animals possess this property, we then conclude that animals are not food and are not to be exploited by humans.
But, so Plumwood argues, taking this notion on board actually serves to reproduce the human/animal duality that vegans are trying to avoid. For if animals are not food, and if we condemn humans for consuming them, then why do we not also condemn carnivorous animals for doing the same thing? If we answer this question by saying that such animals are a part of 'nature', and humans are a part of 'culture', then we have quite seemingly just erected another duality between the two.
This is where Plumwood's theory comes into play. ecological animalism, she claims, avoids such dualities by placing humanity right back into the fold of nature. For her, all natural items are deeply interdependent upon one another and must of necessity make use of one another. Just one among many of these uses in that of consumption. In some situations, humans have no choice but to do this. Conversely, other animals must sometimes consume humans. Thus humans are at the same level of importance as the other animals, and like the other animals, they can also be food.
My critique of this view will take the form of a reductio ad absurdum. To begin, let us consider a widespread behavior within the animal kingdom; namely that of sexual coercion. This is a behavior that has been observed in numerous animal species (those who doubt this should check the wikipedia article here for the references). But the interesting thing to note here is that if a human commits an act that would qualify as sexual coercion, then we would say that the human has committed rape, and thus they have committed a moral transgression. The reason we say this is because we consider all sentient beings or all subjects-of-a-life to be not the kind of items that can be sexually assaulted.
But if sentient being/subjects-of-a-life are not the kinds of objects that can be sexually assaulted, and if we condemn humans for committing this act, then why do we not condemn the other animals for doing the same thing? If we answer this question by saying that such animals are a part of 'nature', and humans are a part of 'culture', then we have just erected another duality between them.
Therefore, if we are beholden to ecological animalism, we should just get rid of this otiose duality and place humans right back into the fold of nature. Indeed, we must recognize that there are certain times when species must make use of one another for the purpose of procreation, and this might require them to commit sexual coercion. Thus, we should discontinue punishing rapists and other assorted sex offenders.
If it is not clear at this point, ecological animalism has one key flaw that very well might be fatal: namely, it does not give due consideration to moral agency. Indeed, to say that the Vegan's response to the question concerning why we do not condemn carnivorous animals is merely that they are not a part of culture, the ecological animalist has committed a strawman fallacy. For this is not anywhere near the strongest reply we can give, as any requisite analysis will demonstrate.
In fact, the appropriate response that the vegan should give is to point out that most human beings are moral agents, while all nonhuman animals (so far as we can tell) are not. This is the key difference at issue. For if a being lacks any understanding of right and wrong, and thus is incapable of making moral judgments, then it is analytically true that they cannot be held accountable for their actions. This is precisely why vegans do not condemn carnivorous animals, because to do so would be entirely nonsensical.
But we should also note that this is not a human/animal duality, for some actual humans lack moral agency, and just like the other animals, these humans also cannot be held accountable for their actions. There might be a worry about the harmful effects of a potential moral agent/non moral agent duality, but I think we can avoid this altogether by carefully avoiding any assertions that would entail the superiority of moral agents over nonmoral agents.
The term 'ontological veganism' really just denotes the common variants of animal rights philosophy. The idea here is that we find some property the possession of which would accord moral standing to any item that possesses that property. In this context, the property in question is usually something like 'sentience' or 'being a subject-of-a-life'. Once we establish this, and once we recognize that all (or nearly all) animals possess this property, we then conclude that animals are not food and are not to be exploited by humans.
But, so Plumwood argues, taking this notion on board actually serves to reproduce the human/animal duality that vegans are trying to avoid. For if animals are not food, and if we condemn humans for consuming them, then why do we not also condemn carnivorous animals for doing the same thing? If we answer this question by saying that such animals are a part of 'nature', and humans are a part of 'culture', then we have quite seemingly just erected another duality between the two.
This is where Plumwood's theory comes into play. ecological animalism, she claims, avoids such dualities by placing humanity right back into the fold of nature. For her, all natural items are deeply interdependent upon one another and must of necessity make use of one another. Just one among many of these uses in that of consumption. In some situations, humans have no choice but to do this. Conversely, other animals must sometimes consume humans. Thus humans are at the same level of importance as the other animals, and like the other animals, they can also be food.
My critique of this view will take the form of a reductio ad absurdum. To begin, let us consider a widespread behavior within the animal kingdom; namely that of sexual coercion. This is a behavior that has been observed in numerous animal species (those who doubt this should check the wikipedia article here for the references). But the interesting thing to note here is that if a human commits an act that would qualify as sexual coercion, then we would say that the human has committed rape, and thus they have committed a moral transgression. The reason we say this is because we consider all sentient beings or all subjects-of-a-life to be not the kind of items that can be sexually assaulted.
But if sentient being/subjects-of-a-life are not the kinds of objects that can be sexually assaulted, and if we condemn humans for committing this act, then why do we not condemn the other animals for doing the same thing? If we answer this question by saying that such animals are a part of 'nature', and humans are a part of 'culture', then we have just erected another duality between them.
Therefore, if we are beholden to ecological animalism, we should just get rid of this otiose duality and place humans right back into the fold of nature. Indeed, we must recognize that there are certain times when species must make use of one another for the purpose of procreation, and this might require them to commit sexual coercion. Thus, we should discontinue punishing rapists and other assorted sex offenders.
If it is not clear at this point, ecological animalism has one key flaw that very well might be fatal: namely, it does not give due consideration to moral agency. Indeed, to say that the Vegan's response to the question concerning why we do not condemn carnivorous animals is merely that they are not a part of culture, the ecological animalist has committed a strawman fallacy. For this is not anywhere near the strongest reply we can give, as any requisite analysis will demonstrate.
In fact, the appropriate response that the vegan should give is to point out that most human beings are moral agents, while all nonhuman animals (so far as we can tell) are not. This is the key difference at issue. For if a being lacks any understanding of right and wrong, and thus is incapable of making moral judgments, then it is analytically true that they cannot be held accountable for their actions. This is precisely why vegans do not condemn carnivorous animals, because to do so would be entirely nonsensical.
But we should also note that this is not a human/animal duality, for some actual humans lack moral agency, and just like the other animals, these humans also cannot be held accountable for their actions. There might be a worry about the harmful effects of a potential moral agent/non moral agent duality, but I think we can avoid this altogether by carefully avoiding any assertions that would entail the superiority of moral agents over nonmoral agents.
Sunday, June 30, 2019
Meinongianism and Platonism
I have recently been reflecting on an objection to Meinongianism that I have encountered on occasion (cf. David Lewis 'Noneism or Allism?' for just one example), and that is the notion that the Meinongian is trying to have his cake and eat it too. In effect, the objection here states that the Meinongian is quantifying over and making theoretical use of a plenitude of objects, but avoids the requisite ontological commitment to these objects by holding that they do not exist. In effect, the Meinongian is doing nothing more than playing a word game.
If we wholeheartedly accept the current Quinean dogma in contemporary Meta-Ontology, then this would certainly be a natural objection. But what I would like to do is to turn this objection on its head and demonstrate how we can raise the very same sort of worry with regard to the Platonist.
The Platonist, for those who don't know, believes that, in addition to the singular concrete objects of the everyday world, there exist untold infinities of 'abstract objects' (such objects might include Numbers, Universals, Propositions, States of Affairs, etc.). What distinguishes these abstract objects from the aforementioned concrete objects is that, while concrete objects are always spatio-temporally locatable, abstract objects exist beyond space and time.
This view is certainly well-established within the history of Philosophy, but it does appear rather strange sounding at first glance. For if someone were to inform us that an object such as Bigfoot exists, we might very sensibly want to ask 'Where does Bigfoot exist?' If we were told that Bigfoot does not exist anywhere in the universe, we might feel that our interlocutor was using the word 'exist' to mean 'timeless existence.' Realizing this, we might then ask him 'Well then, at what time does Bigfoot exist?' If he responds by saying that 'Bigfoot does not exist at any point in time, for he is an abstract object!' we would most likely feel that the wool has been pulled over our eyes. Surely to claim that an object exists nowhere and never is the same thing as to say that it does not exist at all. And since the Platonist makes the exact same claim regarding all the endless abstracta, should we not then conclude that the abstracta also do not exist in any way?
(For clarification's sake, let us call the Platonist view of Ontological Commitment the Quantificational View, and let us call the view we have just adumbrated the Spatio-Temporal View, for obvious reasons).
Of course, a standard reply that the Platonist might make at this point is to say that "While abstract objects surely do not exist in our physical universe, they nevertheless do exist in the Realm of the Forms." But this can't be right, for to say that these objects exist 'in' the Realm of the Forms is already to imply that they are spatially located somewhere.
So is it not already apparent how we can apply the same sort of reasoning to attack the Platonist? For at least according to one plausible way of looking at things, the Platonist is doing nothing more than playing a word game. The Platonist has denied both of the factors that are used in determining existence (at least according to the Spatio-Temporal View). So we can very easily say that he has actually denied the existence of abstract objects, but in order to hold on to his pristine Platonic Heaven, he has inexplicably claimed that these abstract objects still somehow exist. Quite literally (to adapt a phrase from David Lewis) he has 'affirmed existence without affirming existence.'
In closing, what I would like to get across with my observations is that the objection that the Meinongian is playing a word game holds no water as of yet, because as has just been demonstrated, the same sort of remark can be made towards the Platonist. What is actually needed is a solid argument in favor of the Quantificational View and also a demonstration that something like the Spatio-Temporal View is incorrect. Modern classics like 'On What There Is' and 'Noneism and Allism' contain only dogmatic assertions, and thus are not fruitful places to look for the requisite arguments.
If we wholeheartedly accept the current Quinean dogma in contemporary Meta-Ontology, then this would certainly be a natural objection. But what I would like to do is to turn this objection on its head and demonstrate how we can raise the very same sort of worry with regard to the Platonist.
The Platonist, for those who don't know, believes that, in addition to the singular concrete objects of the everyday world, there exist untold infinities of 'abstract objects' (such objects might include Numbers, Universals, Propositions, States of Affairs, etc.). What distinguishes these abstract objects from the aforementioned concrete objects is that, while concrete objects are always spatio-temporally locatable, abstract objects exist beyond space and time.
This view is certainly well-established within the history of Philosophy, but it does appear rather strange sounding at first glance. For if someone were to inform us that an object such as Bigfoot exists, we might very sensibly want to ask 'Where does Bigfoot exist?' If we were told that Bigfoot does not exist anywhere in the universe, we might feel that our interlocutor was using the word 'exist' to mean 'timeless existence.' Realizing this, we might then ask him 'Well then, at what time does Bigfoot exist?' If he responds by saying that 'Bigfoot does not exist at any point in time, for he is an abstract object!' we would most likely feel that the wool has been pulled over our eyes. Surely to claim that an object exists nowhere and never is the same thing as to say that it does not exist at all. And since the Platonist makes the exact same claim regarding all the endless abstracta, should we not then conclude that the abstracta also do not exist in any way?
(For clarification's sake, let us call the Platonist view of Ontological Commitment the Quantificational View, and let us call the view we have just adumbrated the Spatio-Temporal View, for obvious reasons).
Of course, a standard reply that the Platonist might make at this point is to say that "While abstract objects surely do not exist in our physical universe, they nevertheless do exist in the Realm of the Forms." But this can't be right, for to say that these objects exist 'in' the Realm of the Forms is already to imply that they are spatially located somewhere.
So is it not already apparent how we can apply the same sort of reasoning to attack the Platonist? For at least according to one plausible way of looking at things, the Platonist is doing nothing more than playing a word game. The Platonist has denied both of the factors that are used in determining existence (at least according to the Spatio-Temporal View). So we can very easily say that he has actually denied the existence of abstract objects, but in order to hold on to his pristine Platonic Heaven, he has inexplicably claimed that these abstract objects still somehow exist. Quite literally (to adapt a phrase from David Lewis) he has 'affirmed existence without affirming existence.'
In closing, what I would like to get across with my observations is that the objection that the Meinongian is playing a word game holds no water as of yet, because as has just been demonstrated, the same sort of remark can be made towards the Platonist. What is actually needed is a solid argument in favor of the Quantificational View and also a demonstration that something like the Spatio-Temporal View is incorrect. Modern classics like 'On What There Is' and 'Noneism and Allism' contain only dogmatic assertions, and thus are not fruitful places to look for the requisite arguments.
Friday, June 21, 2019
Finishing the Fifth Corner of Four
I have now finished reading the Fifth Corner of Four. The final three chapters of the work are particularly interesting because Graham Priest uses the Plurivalent Logical tools he has already adumbrated to provide a formal analysis of the Jinzang Hierarchy, the Net of Indra, and the notion of Enlightenment (especially how it relates to the work of Dogen).
Now these sections of the work started to drift away from my areas of specialization, but it was clear from my reading that Buddhist metaphysical issues can be given a rigorous logical grounding. Take the Jinzang Hierarchy for instance. This concerns the notion of transcending dualities in order to reach Ultimate Reality. Say we have some true description P of Conventional Reality. Since we know that Ultimate Reality is ineffable, we must conclude that ~P is true of Ultimate Reality. But we have already concluded earlier that Ultimate Reality is ineffable, and ~P is just as conceptual as P. Therefore, we must conclude that we are actually also describing conventional reality with the sentence ~P. Thus, the compound proposition P & ~P is true of Conventional Reality.
So to throw off this additional conceptual fetter, it is only natural to conclude that neither conjunct is true of Ultimate Reality, in other words ~(P & ~P) is true of Ultimate Reality. But this is still just another concept, so it too must also describe Conventional Reality. Thus (P & ~P) & ~(P & ~P) is true of Conventional Reality. But then we must negate this new compound proposition in order to reach Ultimate Reality, and so on, ad infinitum.
What Graham Priest concludes from all of this is that the transcendence of all dualities is not a final state that must be reached, but an ever continuing process up the hierarchy. Priest connects this result to the view of enlightenment broached by the Japanese philosopher Dogen. For Dogen, enlightenment is not some ultimate state that must be reached after a long and arduous regime of disciplinary practice, rather, enlightenment is already here, right before our eyes. Indeed, while the notions of samsara and nirvana are useful notions for the practitioner, we can only be enlightened once we see that they are actually one and the same. To borrow a metaphor from Wittgenstein, they are like a ladder which once climbed, must be thrown away.
So to conclude, I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Logic or Metaphysics. I would recommend it in particular to 2 classes of people: Firstly, I would recommend it to those who might not be familiar with Buddhist Metaphysics. Secondly, I would recommend it to those who might be curious regarding the applicative capabilities of Non-Classical Logics.
But one thing that especially shines through in my opinion is the perennial usefulness of First Degree Entailment, which Priest makes quite patent throughout the course of the book. Anyone familiar with Non-Classical Logics is certainly aware that FDE can be a base system for a wide variety of other systems of logic. These systems can be reached either by tweaking the truth values (a la K3, LP, Classical Logic, and FDEe) or by adding on a suitable conditional (a la N4 or the Affixing Relevant Logics). This being the case, I think we might be justified in concluding that FDE provides the true 'basement level' consequence relation (to use a term of JC Beall).
I certainly plan on continuing my study of Buddhist Philosophy, and I am now confident that FDE and FDEe are the perfect tools for logical analysis in this endeavor.
Thursday, June 20, 2019
Continuing on in my reading of the Fifth Corner of Four
I have now gone deeper into my reading of The Fifth Corner of Four. Graham Priest has now touched upon the Paradox of Ineffability. For those who don't know, this arises when we attempt to say that some part of reality cannot be talked about and we give reasons why it cannot be talked about, but in the course of giving those reasons we inevitably talk about that which cannot be talked about. In other words, the ineffable is indeed effable.
Anyone familiar with the history of Philosophy should recognize this dilemma from the works of such gigantic figures like Kant, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. Now the Paradox of Ineffability cannot be adequately dealt with using the system FDEe that I alluded to in the last post. For if a state of affairs is both effable and ineffable, we cannot just give that state of affairs the value e, because even though that does describe one facet of the situation at hand (namely its ineffability), we have to remember that the paradoxical state of affairs is also effable. So perhaps we should just give the state of affairs the value b? That won't work either, for while a state of affairs with such a value is certainly effable, it is not ineffable. Similar reasoning applies to all of the other cotis.
So a natural thought might be to just add a sixth coti, called 'P', that means something like 'both effable and ineffable.' But this solution is inadequate. For suppose that a certain Philosopher was to say something like the following: 'Ultimate Reality is ineffable because it is beyond all conceptual understanding and dualistic thinking.' This obviously leads to the Paradox of Ineffability, and thus it would be correct to say that Ultimate Reality under this picture is both effable and ineffable. But this isn't the end of the story. For what would be the value of the state of affairs described by the following sentence: 'Ultimate Reality is beyond all conceptual understanding?' Obviously, it has the value e (since all states of affairs that include Ultimate Reality are ineffable), but some thought into the matter makes it clear that it also has the value 'b'. The reason for this is that the sentence in question must describe a true state of affairs (since being beyond conceptual understanding is one of the reasons that Ultimate Reality is ineffable), but the state of affairs it describes is also False since we can conceptually understand that Ultimate Reality is beyond all conceptual understanding. So it would appear that the state of affairs in question has both the value e and the value b.
In order to accommodate this insight, Priest makes use of Plurivalent Logic. Plurivalent Logic is unique among Non-Classical Logics because instead of forcing wffs to be assigned only one truth-value, it allows wffs to be assigned more than one truth-value. The main technical trick that allows one to achieve this is making use of a relation between wffs and truth values, rather than the standard functional assignment of wffs to truth values.
When we do this, we can very easily accommodate the fact that sentences describing states of affairs can have more than one truth value, and thus we can solve the Paradox of Ineffability.
As a side note, one quite surprising feature of Plurivalent FDE is that it has exactly the same theorems as the Many-Valued FDE. So this means we can simply bring over all the deductive apparatus of FDE when applying our new semantical modeling.
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