The Brock "Miracle"

I am referring to the blossoming of critical animal studies at Brock University, which is located in southern Ontario, Canada, in the city of St. Catharines. Although the language of miracles is a superlative, it may still be thought to sell short what is actually occurring there. It did not just appear spontaneously, but due to years of effort primarily on the part of my mentor and senior colleague, John Sorenson, Professor of Sociology at Brock. For years he has pioneered new courses in Animals and Human Society, Animals and the Law, and has recently had approved other courses in critical animal studies, as it is called, including one for animals in cross-cultural perspective, and another for students who seek a Master’s in Social Justice and Equity Studies. Recently approved too has been a Minor in Critical Animal Studies.

The success of these efforts is mainly, but not solely, due to Professor Sorenson. His colleagues also deserve credit, paradoxically, for extending to animals what is perhaps only their just due. However, in unjust times, when animal oppression is so widespread and acute, it takes a certain generosity, if you will, to rise to justice when injustice is the norm. It is a kind of breaking of the mold, and even a setting of new molds. There are a total of seven courses in Critical Animal Studies which have been approved by the Department of Sociology at Brock. Of course, these offerings are not literally molds meant to turn out robots to prefabricated specifications, like widgets in a factory. Rather, freedom of inquiry in the area of critical animal studies is being opened up at Brock: a mold for a large and ongoing intellectual conference, metaphorically speaking, leaving students free to learn and come to their own conclusions. Freedom of inquiry requires structures and resources, after all. Are there conclusions that everyone should arrive at, such as universal rights? Authors may argue this in earnest with respect to animal rights, even as many already do with universal human rights. However, it is up to every individual scholar to arrive at his or her own conclusions. Indeed, it is futile to say that someone simply “must” think a certain way. Minds and spirits always contain their own precious freedom. Dogma is an insult to intellectual freedom, although reasoning is not. In any case, the miracle is due not only to Sorenson’s colleagues, but also to students, who demonstrate a strong interest in this area of study by their strong enrollments in these courses. Those are the people who are coming to their own conclusions in this visionary program. And helping them are a stream of dedicated and hard-working teaching assistants and still others crucial to the success of this academic program.

One T.A. in particular is exceptional and therefore deserves note: Jillian DiTillio. She has TAed critical animal studies for 4 years now and has been noted for her valuable contributions in terms of facilitating discussion, grading, and learning. The unusual thing about her is that she hopes to continue in this role, unlike most TAs, just because it reflects her passion for educating others about animal issues. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, this passion manifests itself in a marked pursuit of excellence in this educational field.

The Brock Miracle is not just a small blip on the academic map. It might even be called a leader in critical animal studies in North America. I have been in correspondence with Dr. Kenneth Shapiro, of the Animals and Society Institute. He is in the business of publishing in critical animal studies, long been chief of Psychologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and editor of the journal, Society and Animals. He also promotes critical animal studies programs and majors throughout North America. According to him, the only place that compares with Brock is Notre Dame de Namur University in California. Now this program offers a Major in Critical Animal Studies, which I believe is on its way at Brock given the slew of new course offerings. Indeed Brock has approved 7 courses, which compares with the 6 now in the program in California. On the basis of such reflections one can safely conclude that Brock is a leader in North America in Critical Animal Studies. It is one of the top two such programs, and perhaps even the top one, depending on which criteria are used.

I have been pleased and honored to participate in “the Brock Miracle” this past term in the Fall Term of 2007, during which time I have been given the opportunity to teach a course in Animals and the Law. I am teaching three more courses this current Winter Term 2008. I had full enrollments, and many of my students either became animal liberationist, or came to have a stronger intellectual respect for the position. Many students felt obliged to surrender their personal investment in animal slaughter as a result of the course. It is not something the course pushes, but rather what the data and the arguments draw many compassionate and just students towards, as plants growing towards sunlight. The arguments can be laid out impartially as possible, but I do not think that speciesism can really be made any more attractive, intellectually speaking, than racism or sexism in the end. There are many more critical animal studies at Brock than most universities, which do not have any sociology courses devoted to animals. At most, a philosophy department might have a course in “environmental ethics” which examines animal ethics as a supposedly subsidiary issue (really it is not, since animals are no more merely part of the human “environment” than humans are merely part of other animals’ “environment”). An exception was Queen’s University’s Philosophy Department, which offered a course in Animal Ethics as well as Environmental Ethics.

I am grateful for the Brock Miracle also at a personal level since I had a five-year unchosen hiatus from university teaching. I do not take it for granted that I have access to such job opportunities, and I have no reason to. I was earlier planning to write a much more sombre blog entry on being an animal rights scholar “in exile.” Let me explain this. When I graduated with my Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Toronto, the professor who was in charge of helping graduates market themselves took a look at my c.v., and although I had more publications and international conference presentations than most of my fellow graduates, he said, “You know David, hiring committees are going to take one look at your c.v. and toss it in the garbage. They’re going to say, ‘He’s just an animal guy.’ I don’t mean to discourage you by saying this.” He said this even though I had instructed a few courses in philosophy at the University of Toronto, Canada’s most prestigious university, with excellent reviews, and I was given the chance to run the Philosophy Essay Clinic in the U of T for my year after graduation.

I think he was right about how people would narrowly view my c.v. though—until the Brock Miracle, that is. I was in telephone communication with the Philosophy Chair at McMaster University at one time, and I asked if I could help fulfill their teaching needs. He had received my c.v. electronically, and intoned snobbishly over the phone, “We don’t do your kind of philosophy here.” He was really saying that I am an animal guy. I am fully qualified to teach ethics, and indeed I outlined a new ethical theory in my dissertation, but since I am so much “about animals,” suddenly my other abilities were papered over or tossed into mental garbage cans. That, of course, is garbage thinking, since any Philosophy Department does “my” kind of philosophy, and should care about it, if they are against prejudicial discrimination, inequity and injustice, and are in favor of rigorous philosophical argumentation and open-mindedness, as well as academic freedom to specialize in any area that one pleases. I “do” ethics, the most popular of the subdisciplines in Philosophy. The Chair’s statement was just a reflection of prejudice. I “do” the justification of ethical theory as much as other moral philosophers. In no other area of study would one be criticized for academically presenting and publishing in one’s area of specialization. On the contrary, that is usually praised as “the right path” and encouraged. This kind of secondary speciesist prejudice (applied to animal advocates rather than the nonhuman animals themselves) was also evident in Unleashing Rights: Law, Meaning, and the Animal Rights Movement (University of Michigan Press, 1996, p. ix), in which the author, Helena Silverstein, offers a study of the animal rights movement but is quick to add in a preface that she "was hesitant to study [the animal rights] movement out of fear that [she] would be labeled and animal rights activist masquerading as a scholar." Can you imagine a human rights supporter and academic being dismissed as “an activist masquerading as a scholar”? We see speciesism rearing its unattractive head once more.

I managed to win a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Queen’s University with a research proposal to study anti-vivisection ethics. I was shocked, as were others, that an animal rights idea won out over post-doc applications to all other Departments at Queen’s, which is a top research university in Canada. It was a great year there, with my own corner office and supervision of graduate students, but I could not so much as get an interview after that. This, even though I was credited by many experts as developing the strongest (devil’s advocate) case for anthropocentrism in ethics. In any other area of study, any recent graduate who came up with the best version of any given argument would get interviews at the very least. I am not trying to brag, by the way, but merely to illuminate that merit does not necessarily figure into a supposed meritocracy when speciesism rules.

This brings us back to Kenneth Shapiro, and the journal he edits. In 2002 Society and Animals: Journal of Human-Animal Studies did a special issue on their tenth anniversary. It features 15 articles profiling the marginalized status of human-animal studies. The latter is roughly defined as any kind of academic study that takes animals seriously as more than just objects or resources, and it could occur in any discipline such as anthropology, sociology, literature, psychology, political science, economics, law, etc. In any event, this study which was breath-takingly sweeping (in both time and space) found that over a twenty-year period in countries such as the United States, Canada, Great Britain, South Africa, among other nations, people who graduated with a doctorate degree in human-animal studies were not found—ever—to go on to supervise other such doctoral candidates. In other words, doctors of human-animal studies never, quite unlike their colleagues, landed prestigious professorial jobs which involve the supervision of graduate students, in particular, doctoral students. There are indeed professors who profess animal rights, but they all got their credentials in other areas of study that are not regarded prejudicially as animal rights is. For instance, Peter Singer did a doctorate on Marxism. Tom Regan studied the philosophy of G. E. Moore. They did not encounter the furry ceiling because they were not then associated with anti-fur campaigns and the like. This wall of prejudice was referred to by the authors as “the furry ceiling” as an analogy to “the glass ceiling” concept which is used to refer to the fact that women tend to be invisibly limited in the opportunities that they may rise to.

At a recent conference at, yes, Brock University in June 2005 many scholars complained that their human-animal studies have been marginalized, and that many such scholars lack an academic home. I was among the homeless, so to speak. I was trying to land a job, any job without much success. I would gladly sell books, or usher people into movie theatres. I was jealous of anyone who had any job at times. I was judged overqualified or inexperienced, and in any case had oodles of competition from any number of other seekers in a rather desperately competitive job market. In the last three years I retrained as a high school teacher. I now work part-time as a substitute teacher in the Board (Durham) to the east of Toronto as a second job besides Brock. I was picturing myself teaching high school up till retirement until I got caught up with the sweep of the Brock Miracle. I was appointed as Fellow with the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, but it seemed that no one in academia who is a “gate-keeper” cared how much I accomplished as an “animal guy.” I had many fellow graduate students who found jobs, and it seemed to me that these people did not write particularly important theses or articles (if they had any publications, which many of them didn’t). Toeing the speciesist line has an unspoken premium value in academics, it would seem.

I had actually applied to teach Brock courses on animals before, but could not make the interview stage, a pattern I was getting resigned to. One can only go through so many years of rejection in university teaching before changing careers becomes a practical necessity to attempt. In any case, I was not prepared to give up easily. My publication record is already stronger than many tenured professors, and I was happy that writing is one area of opportunity that the speciesists could not deny me, which is more valued by me than the capacity to teach at any university.

Then Brock advertised a Canada Research Chair in Social Justice. I applied. I put a lot of effort into the app. I did not make the interview, but Professors of Sociology there were so impressed by my arguments that my background is relevant in an interdisciplinary way that they were convinced I could teach their “animal sociology” courses. This turned out to be crucial, as I was granted the opportunity to teach these courses without even needing an interview. This is because I am a known quantity to Sorenson, as I have presented at each of his three interdisciplinary conferences in Critical Animal Studies. These were great conferences that were part of the miracle at Brock. Negative discrimination on the basis that I am an “animal guy” turned into positive discrimination where I was actually sought for my academic interests, abilities, achievements, and experiences.

Did I say that referring to a “miracle” at Brock does not do justice to the honest real-world efforts of John Sorenson? Not necessarily. Him I call “the miracle worker,” although he would be roundly embarrassed by any such talk. Just as Helen Keller's teacher earned that name helping a child struggling in her own world of blindness and deafness, so Sorenson persevered through peoples' blindness and deafness in relation to conscious beings of other species, and effected startling change that many would have thought improbable or even impossible. To him we owe the Brock Miracle, and I especially am much indebted to him both professionally and personally.

Is "Futilitarianism" an Insult?

I have criticized the futilitarians in the past for engaging in insulting behaviors. For example, calling anyone such as me a “new welfarist” is an insult since it is not descriptive and is evidently just intended to upset people. However, futility is a key theme descriptively and truly associated with Francione’s anti-“welfarism.” It is even more descriptive than “animal rights fundamentalism,” which only examines one aspect of the futilitarian position. It is not ad hominem, or directed against anyone’s personal characteristics, but rather impersonal exposition. It is not even an exaggeration. Is it satire in the sense that it is intended to make us laugh at the foibles of people who are lost in ways of error and causing harm? I have to agree with that assessment, but satire is not insult, but rather a civilized substitute for insult. Satirists invite deserved ridicule of a position that involves vice or folly. Futility deserves to be highlighted as a fault if it is indeed a shortcoming as it extensively is with the futilitarians. It may be insulting to subject someone to an indignity. It is indeed undignified to carry on with futile behaviour. However, I am not “subjecting” the futilitarians to that. They are engaging in existential absurdity of their own accord, however unwittingly. I apologize in advance if anyone feels insulted by the label. “Futilitarianism” is intended to be purely descriptive and satirical, or to highlight an irony in a certain movement that purports to be full of activist and noble purpose. Few would consent to be satirized, but few would consent to abolishing satire itself. For satire is a valuable tool for social criticism and social change.

FURTHER READING ON ANIMAL RIGHTS INCREMENTALISM

A Selection of Related Articles

Sztybel, David. "Animal Rights Law: Fundamentalism versus Pragmatism". Journal for Critical Animal Studies 5 (1) (2007): 1-37.

go there

Short version of "Animal Rights Law".

go there

Sztybel, David. "Incrementalist Animal Law: Welcome to the Real World".

go there

Sztybel, David. "Sztybelian Pragmatism versus Francionist Pseudo-Pragmatism".

go there

A Selection of Related Blog Entries

Anti-Cruelty Laws and Non-Violent Approximation

Use Not Treatment: Francione’s Cracked Nutshell

Francione Flees Debate with Me Again, Runs into the “Animal Jury”

The False Dilemma: Veganizing versus Legalizing

Veganism as a Baseline for Animal Rights: Two Different Senses

Francione's Three Feeble Critiques of My Views

Startling Decline in Meat Consumption Proves Francionists Are Wrong Once Again!

The Greatness of the Great Ape Project under Attack!

Francione Totally Misinterprets Singer

Francione's Animal Rights Theory

Francione on Unnecessary Suffering

My Appearance on AR Zone

D-Day for Francionists

Sztybel versus Francione on Animals' Property Status

The Red Carpet

Playing into the Hands of Animal Exploiters

The Abolitionist ApproachES

Francione's Mighty Boomerang

Dr. David Sztybel Home Page

Francione's Futilitarianism

Francione and his followers oppose animal “welfarist” legislation for two main types of reason: that it is ineffective and unethical. I interpret that his main point is not ethical. At least I hope not. After all, I point out in “Animal Rights Law” that although he would not support a law giving water to desperately thirsty cows on their way to slaughter because that would condone slavery and exploitation, his own proposed measures (e.g., a plain example is his proposal to ban dehorning and castration of bulls) would form a part of speciesist laws condoning slavery/exploitation as well, just as the “welfarist” watering measures equally would. In his Rain without Thunder p. 2, he writes: “rights theory…rejects completely the institutionalized exploitation of animals,” and, Ibid.: “Just as the theory of animal rights is fundamentally different from that of animal welfare, so, regrettably, is the theory of animal rights fundamentally different from its realization in the social phenomenon called the animal rights movement.” At the same time, he would approve of protecting one whole interest 100% but not others (e.g., liberty of movement absolutely, but bodily integrity not at all). That is also quite a bit short of realizing animal rights theory in the animal rights movement, or is well short of “completely” rejecting exploitation even as “welfarist” measures are also far short of animal rights. Now he states that his proposed acceptable legal changes are "imperfect," but presumably the acceptance of imperfection (of others?) should not alter his basic principles of what he sees as right: completely rejecting animal exploitation and having the animal rights movement reflect the idea of animal rights. To suggest otherwise would be akin to someone who advocates ridding an organization of racist segregation, and then later conceding that any end result will be imperfect (perhaps because of unspoken racism), and therefore only partial de-segregation will be the goal. Imperfection of the world is no excuse for altogether abandoning one's principles. I have argued elsewhere that he should have more sophisticated principles, but a vague allusion to "imperfection" is never a sufficient justification for abandoning one's own principles. Francione means the ethical criticisms seriously but they cannot be taken quite as seriously for these criticisms are self-mutilating, like proud Oedipus the King clawing his eyes out. Here we have a profession to vision lost in blindness. His ethical critique, then, carries the futility of being practically self-defeating. However, Francione does not so obviously fall short on the effectiveness front. At least, the problem is not so glaringly self-evident as a doctrine suffering from the very same key deficiencies that it decries.

However, I say that his approach is more generally futilitarianism, or unwittingly promoting futility. It does this in at least eight ways.

(1) Its ethical critique is futilely self-defeating as pointed out above;

(2) It is futile to demand that anyone believe that any form of acceptance of animal "welfarist" laws makes any profession to animal rights inconsistent (see "Animal Rights Law").

(3) Only in futility does he insist that animal rights pragmatists such as myself are not "abolitionists" like he is.

(4) It is futile to try to apply the label "new welfarist" to animal rights pragmatists since they are not "new" and also none of the 5 characteristics of new welfarists apply to people like me as they are meant to (see Ibid.).

(5) It is futile for the futilitarians to point out that we would not demand that child abuse be done more "kindly," when (a) animal rights pragmatists also totally and publicly denounce animal abuse; (b) calling for any laws against child abuse is immediately feasible whereas it could take centuries for comprehensive laws against animal abuse to be feasible; and (c) the futilitarians themselves say it is OK for now to outlaw castration/dehorning of bulls and nothing else, or to secure freedom completely while other interests are utterly neglected--that is not comparable to totally outlawing child abuse by any means, making the futilitarian rhetoric hollow, i.e., futilely self-contradictory, once again.

(6) Futilitarians declare all animal “welfarist” initiatives to be futile (sometimes saying they won't be attained; other times saying if they are attained they will be "meaningless," and that such laws cannot one day lead to animal rights), and so the futilitarians would cut off that potentially useful legislative path. It is weird to say that cruel laws are more likely to lead to animal rights law and that kind laws are unlikely or less likely to lead to animal rights law. I have defended the usefulness of “welfarist” legislation in reducing suffering in the short-term and cultivating a "kindness culture" that is conducive to animal rights in the long-term; a cruel culture by contrast is less useful because it is positively not conducive to animal rights. (See Ibid.) A side-note: If enough people believe the futilitarians, then seeking "welfarist" reforms may indeed be futile as a self-fulfilling prophesy.

(7) Francione recommends proposals, such as securing 100% protection of interests (e.g., liberty of movement in fully generous animal quarters), which really are futile to seek in the legislative short-term. Remember that when he demands 100% protection of an interest, it would have to satisfy the interest just as if animals were liberated or not considered property. That would have to mean that “money is no object,” or funds-outlays would have to match generous fundraising by an animal liberationist society to secure the fulfillment of the interest. These generous funds would have to come mainly from profiteering animal exploiters together with a subsidizing government which shares the same corporate-elitist bed, on the one hand, and from widely cynical and often impoverished customers of animal exploiters, on the other hand. Oh, and animal advocates and their groups can be counted on to throw in a couple of drops in the rather large bucket of necessary billions as well. In any event, the money to pay for such provisions needs to come from somewhere. So on this theory pro-animal funding in a deeply and pervasively speciesist society must equal funding in a far-flung (though not impossible in the long term!!!) animal liberationist society. Hmmm...now what could be wrong with this picture? Welcome back to reality, folks. In the short-term, this is a ludicrous dream for all of its futility. It is as absurd as expecting an abysmally sexist club to suddenly break out in song and dance championing equality for women.

(8) Although Francione would accept "proto-rights" reforms discussed above, he generally believes that animal rights activists, for the time-being and evidently some time to come, should be "outsiders" to the legislative process, or be abstainers, and focus on animal rights campaigns with the general public instead. Their reason for this move, which he seems to advocate over proto-rights (that doctrine is just for those who wish to try their hand at legislative reform against Francione's advice) is the apparent belief that it is futile to seek "insider status" since it allegedly would only dilute radicalism to the vanishing point, as it were. This aspect of animal rights futilitarianism is discussed in my paper, "Animal Rights Law," where I illustrate, contrary to Francione, the potent possibilities of animal law reform in the legislative short-term. It is also eminently possible for advocates to put their cards on the table that they are aiming for animal liberation in the long-term, but they would, with reservations of course, accept "welfarist" measures in the short-term.

So the term “futilitarianism” seems fitting. Francione’s “conceptual rallying position” as he terms futilitarianism in Rain without Thunder illusorily paints one useful path as futile and promotes another path as useful which is really futile. It is hard to see how a more successful promotion of futility could be had than doing one’s level best to make the useful seem useless and pretending that the useless is useful. However, as a legislative outsider, he thinks it is useless even to advocate "proto-rights," the supposedly useful, for now and the foreseeable future, i.e., who knows how long. Therefore the name “futilitarianism” applies: creating futility on the short-term legislative front. Ironically, his "conceptual rallying position" would, if allowed to take hold, make "ghost events" out of any attempts to mount rallies in support of progressive animal law. Let us do better than that, shall we?

FURTHER READING ON ANIMAL RIGHTS INCREMENTALISM

A Selection of Related Articles

Sztybel, David. "Animal Rights Law: Fundamentalism versus Pragmatism". Journal for Critical Animal Studies 5 (1) (2007): 1-37.

go there

Short version of "Animal Rights Law".

go there

Sztybel, David. "Incrementalist Animal Law: Welcome to the Real World".

go there

Sztybel, David. "Sztybelian Pragmatism versus Francionist Pseudo-Pragmatism".

go there

A Selection of Related Blog Entries

Anti-Cruelty Laws and Non-Violent Approximation

Use Not Treatment: Francione’s Cracked Nutshell

Francione Flees Debate with Me Again, Runs into the “Animal Jury”

The False Dilemma: Veganizing versus Legalizing

Veganism as a Baseline for Animal Rights: Two Different Senses

Francione's Three Feeble Critiques of My Views

Startling Decline in Meat Consumption Proves Francionists Are Wrong Once Again!

The Greatness of the Great Ape Project under Attack!

Francione Totally Misinterprets Singer

Francione's Animal Rights Theory

Francione on Unnecessary Suffering

My Appearance on AR Zone

D-Day for Francionists

Sztybel versus Francione on Animals' Property Status

The Red Carpet

Playing into the Hands of Animal Exploiters

The Abolitionist ApproachES

Francione's Mighty Boomerang

Dr. David Sztybel Home Page

A Quickly Passing Storm: Steven Wise's "Thunder without Rain"

Lawyer and legal theorist Steven Wise offered a commentary on Gary L. Francione’s book, Rain without Thunder (1996). I myself have written a response to that same book’s line of argument that all animal “welfare”[1] laws are unethical and ineffective. I argued the contrary, presenting a unified theory which justifies animal rights laws for the long-term, and “welfarist” reduction of suffering as the best that we can manage for animals in the legislative short-term (although individuals of course can simply adopt a vegan way of life right now). In writing my earlier paper, “Animal Rights Law,” I did not have access to Wise’s commentary. However, none of my arguments would have been altered in light of Wise’s reasoning. In fact, although Wise offers one of the very few essays (there are no books, although Dunayer 2004 discusses this issue in a way that is broadly though not absolutely sympathetic with Francione’s own approach) with a sustained critique of Francione’s approach to animal “welfare” laws, I will now extensively take issue with Wise’s own critique. Let me add that I have immense respect for the work of Steven Wise. His Rattling the Cage is quite brilliant, with truly mind-opening research. I love to assign it to my students. I think everyone should read Wise's book. Wise's book review I do not think is up to the same standard, but it is still important and worth considering. When it comes to reviewing Rain, I agree with Wise in two key claims that:

(1) Philosopher Tom Regan (1983) got it right to assert that the respect principle is at the heart of rights theory[2]; and

(2) if “welfarist” laws can “help alleviate the suffering of nonhuman animals,” (Wise 1997, 54) then that “is an entirely laudable goal.” (Ibid.)

Actually, I would backpedal a bit on the second claim. I would not applaud the injustice of speciesist “welfarist” laws. However, overall I might praise such legislation as progressive, depending on the particular law. Apart from these brief moments of agreement, I find myself unmoved by most of Wise’s arguments by far, even though I largely concur with his conclusion in favor of some “welfarist” laws. In the remainder of this entry I will briefly reconstruct Wise’s eleven key arguments, in the order that he presents them, and offer my critical responses:

(1) Wise begins by noting Francione’s claim that there is a “structural defect” in New Welfarism which is twofold:

(A) animal interests never prevail so long as animals are property; and

(B) if animals have rights now, then it is wrong to compromise them now.

I myself critique both (A) (Sztybel 2007, 8-11) and (B) (Ibid., 14-18) respectively. Wise reproduces Francione’s five criteria for acceptable animal “welfarist” reforms, and I will do likewise: (i) an incremental change must constitute a prohibition; (ii) the prohibited activity must be constitutive of the exploitive institution; (iii) the prohibition must recognize and respect a noninstitutional animal interest; (iv) animal interests cannot be tradable; and (v) the prohibition shall not substitute an alternative, and supposedly more “humane” form of exploitation. (Wise 1997, 46) I myself criticize Francione’s platform for incremental reform in “Animal Rights Law.”

Now for Wise’s response:

I argue that New Welfarism does not contain a ‘structural defect,’ but a ‘structural inconsistency’ that is necessary to achieve Francione’s goal of abolishing the property status of nonhuman animals in a manner consistent with the moral rights of animals. (Ibid.)

I take issue with the “New Welfarist” terminology rather than assuming it without comment as Wise does.[3] Also, I think that Wise concedes too much in agreeing to a “structural inconsistency” in animal rights pragmatism (which means, for my present purposes, sometimes supporting “welfarist” laws). The theory that I present offers a perfectly consistent way of justifying animal rights laws for the long-term as well as animal “welfarist” laws for the short-term. To acknowledge inconsistency is to indicate a flaw that need not exist, although it is granted that short-term “welfarist” laws are different from and incompatible with animal rights laws. Briefly, without the full nuances of my arguments, I show that both types of law may be viewed as consistent with a higher principle of promoting the best that is really possible for sentient beings at any given time. I make it clear that this argument is not utilitarian, by the way, but poses a clear case against utilitarian abuses such as vivisection. (Sztybel 2006)

(2) Wise objects that Francione “assumes that his arguments for the moral rights of nonhuman animals apply to their legal rights as well.” (Wise 1997, 47) Regan is noted, by Wise, as maintaining that arguments for and against moral and legal personhood may be irrelevant to each other. (Ibid.) Francione himself, as noted by Wise from Francione’s Animals, Property, and the Law (1995), has professed a positivist theory of law which denies that the validity of legal rules is dependent on conformity with some moral standard. (Wise 1997, 47) Wise tries to correct Francione by stating that the property status of animals will change when legal as opposed to moral arguments are given. (Ibid.) Well, let us seek to clarify different senses of legal validity. In my view, some types of “validity” for law do not directly depend on ethics:

(i) laws being considered “valid” because democratically approved or

(ii) laws being valid since they are de facto indications of what is the law of the land, i.e., legally valid in an of themselves.

However, why make a law rule the land? Why democratically approve of a given law? I believe these questions do lead us back to ethics in the end. Surely laws are meant to be a part of what we call “the justice system.” Ideally, laws should reflect justice—an ethical notion (problematic though it may be). To argue otherwise is perhaps to be either unconcerned with laws being just, or to be positively opposed to justice. In short, I do not share Wise’s objection to moral rights as a basis for legal rights—as they ideally ought to be formulated at any rate.

(3) Wise claims that legal rights are awarded to beings who have complex cognition that is sufficient for autonomy and self-determination (in keeping with Wise’s own cause of advocating the extension of such autonomy rights to chimpanzees and bonobos). (Wise 2000) Francione and I would agree that this is a speciesist basis for legal rights, designed to privilege those who are human(-like). Even Wise himself, in another work later than his book review, acknowledges: “If I were Chief Justice of the Universe, I might make the simpler capacity to suffer…sufficient for personhood,” (Wise 2002, 34) however, he notes that the capacity to suffer “appears irrelevant to common-law judges.” (Ibid.) Yet although such rights for, say, chimpanzees may be speciesist, they can be defended as logical extensions of human rights in the short-term and as the best of limited dilemma choices open to legislatures. Non-speciesist rights may still be advocated in the long-term. In any event, we cannot take it for granted that rights are to be organized around autonomy as Wise seems to assume. Other models include rights based in welfare (Sumner 1987—a source Wise himself considers in his review) or a combination of both rights to autonomy and to welfare (Gewirth 1978; Pluhar 1995; Sztybel 2006) As an additional note, Francione used to support the Great Ape Project (GAP), which partly overlaps with Wise's initiative, but Francione has since changed to opposition against GAP on the grounds that it is speciesist.

(4) Wise objects to Francione’s use of the term “animal” firstly, because it excludes humans and reinforces the idea that humans are not animals, (Wise 1997, 49) and this supposedly “endangers the prospect of achieving any legal rights for nonhuman animals, as it permits opponents to characterize humans and nonhuman animals improperly as different in kind rather than degree.” (Ibid.) Wise has a point here, formally speaking. But in substantive terms, “animals” as a short-hand is used by speciesists and anti-speciesists alike. “Humans” is a short-term for referring to “human animals” or “human beings.” Using “animals” in a similarly abbreviating way avoids tedium, not any truth that of course humans are animals too. I do not know if those who deny humans are animals are a politically significant faction (perhaps the upsurge of fundamentalist Christianity in the United States means that they are), but it is not a theoretically significant issue. Moreover, deniers that humans are animals will never be convinced by a use of terminology, or swayed either way, if in doubt, by a choice of words. Perhaps, though, some such people can be moved by arguments which use the abbreviation “animals” in some passages.

(5) Wise objects to Francione’s definition of “animal,” secondly, since Francione follows Regan’s definition of “animal” as a subject of a life, (Ibid.) which Regan identifies with the class of mammals aged at least one year. But Wise points out that Animalia has more than a million species, and only 4,000 of them are mammals. (Ibid.) Wise unwisely claims though that there is no evidence that mammals other than chimpanzees and bonobos have a sense of the future, an emotional life, or a psychophysical identity over time. (Ibid., 50) Take a pig by way of counter-example. Of course they evidently have feelings and anticipate feeding time! (I will not even tread on the well-trod terrain of evidence in this field.) Pigs do not bandy about phrases such as “psychophysical identity over time,” but they are inherently aware of their minds (i.e., everyone is conscious of their consciousness ipso facto from being conscious in the first place) and bodies, and their memories and anticipations do not mysteriously exclude these core aspects of pigs’ lives. Wise writes that Animalia is too broad at the same time. True rights for chimpanzees might be endangered if they are equated with rights for mosquitoes, (Ibid.) but I will not deal with this point here, worthy of attention though it be. Francione himself does not evidently use “animals” in an overly broad sense that would give equal rights to mosquitoes compared to humans in dilemmas, and rights to nonsentient animals such as amoebas perhaps are.

(6) Next, Wise disputes Francione’s model of rights as involving prohibitions and claims that are correlated with duties. (Ibid.) Rather, Wise observes that the most fundamental human rights involve immunity rights. Immunity rights do not merely forbid or negatively command, but impose disabilities which “legally incapacitate or deprive entirely of power.” (Ibid., 51) Is this, however, a distinction of much import? Laws do not mentally or physically “incapacitate” those who might do wrong: they merely order people not to do things just as prohibitions do, and create duties of a legal nature. Suppose claims are used. Wise fails to account for the fact that society can claim rights for all sentient beings in principle (presumably in the far future), and guardians or trustees can claim rights for animals (and mentally disabled humans, for example) in practice. So animal rights law that relies on claims is not obviously so problematic. In any case, when immunity rights are infringed, does not a claim need to be made in court?

(7) Wise writes on Francione’s assertion that he’d give a drink to a thirsty cow at a slaughter facility but would not approve a law providing that all such cows be given water. I criticize Francione on this point as well. (Sztybel 2007, 21-22) Wise declares that it is “nonsense to characterize the passage of legislation requiring cows be given sufficient water on the way to the slaughterhouse as violating the rights of cows.” (Wise 1997, 53) I think Wise misses the point here, that laws approving of slaughter are at variance with animal rights. However, Wise is credible in claiming that if he were given insufficient water as a slave, he would pray for a law granting him water rations. Also, I show that such a water-for-cows law may be consistent with a philosophy that advocates what is really best for sentient beings at every single juncture, a philosophy that also justifies strong animal rights that may be adopted by individuals in the short-term and by societies in the long-term.

(8) Wise admits that reinforcing the property status of animals “certainly is a ‘structural defect’ in the New Welfarist position, as Francione complains. However, that does not mean that the New Welfarist position is structurally defective.” (Ibid., 54) Is this incoherent? Anything that has a structural defect is structurally defective. A vase that has a crack is cracked. Wise presses on: “New Welfarism is not structurally defective; it is structurally inconsistent. But this is how it must be structured to avoid violating Kant’s Categorical Imperative [sic—a modified version of that Imperative, extended to animals, as in Franklin 2005—DS] and Regan’s respect principle.” (Wise 1997, 54) It plays into Francione’s hands to concede inconsistency, or at least I try to show how that charge does not apply to a sophisticated animal rights pragmatist position. It is a very serious structural defect indeed for a view to suffer from logical inconsistency. Also, I think it needs to be acknowledged that “welfarist” laws are not fully respectful of animals to the extent of animal rights, although they might still win as much respect as can now be won.

(9) Wise grants that “welfare” laws might delay animal rights, but pleads that “future generations have no legal rights and it is extremely controversial whether they have moral rights either.” (Ibid., 55) Yet we must have regard for future beings, and favor rights for them as much as possible. Typically polluters and the like resort to these sorts of arguments discounting future beings and the world they inherit. This is a dodge on Wise’s part.

(10) Wise argues that rights cannot be incrementally assembled, and that they will “occur all at once” (Ibid., 57) in a “quantum” leap (Ibid., 56) based on the “intuition, judgment, and sense of what is both right and appropriate” of judges. (Ibid., 57) They will not come by logic alone, he warns. (Ibid.) I fear this account does not do justice to the role of logic, and places too much emphasis on intuitionism, which I argue elsewhere is a logically bankrupt route for moral theory. (Sztybel 2006, 8-9) However, in any case, we are mainly discussing legislators who make new laws in this context, not judges who interpret existing laws. Perhaps Wise thinks of judges since it is they that he hopes to persuade by extending rights to chimpanzees and bonobos, based on criteria for rights now judicially applied to children, for example.

(11) Wise wonders why judges would create a new legal norm of a “proto-right” that “duplicates the existing norm of legal rights?” (Wise 1997, 58) Here I do not think that Wise reflects Francione’s own thinking, which itself could be rendered far more clearly by Francione himself. Francione is not speaking of legislatively passing proto-rights into law in a way that would duplicate rights. Rather, Francione is advocating prohibiting specific practices that would be banned if animals’ interests were wholly respected. Such bans are consistent with a principle we can call a “proto-right.” Or at least, that is how I interpret Francione. Such a view does not merely duplicate rights, but advocates measures that self-consciously fall short of full rights.

I think Wise’s response overall is largely a wrong execution of the right idea, for as I argue, Francione himself (1996) is wrong in opposing all animal “welfarist” laws. “Logic plays no favorites,” though, as Regan penned. (Regan 1983, 183-184) We require not only the right conclusions or opinions. We also need right reasoning, using the classical rules of logic (bringing to light validly entailed implications of what is evident and ruling out all fallacies), without which we cannot be confident in coming to any conclusions. Francione, though, I have argued does worse: he urges both the wrong conclusion and also relies on flawed reasoning. I hope, however, that I have provided a case in favor of limited forms of animal “welfare” laws where Wise’s arguments have seemingly failed.

Endnotes

[1] Joan Dunayer (2004) puts “welfare” in quotation marks when referring to animal welfare. In Sztybel 2006, 1-6, I show further that speciesist forms of animal “welfare” are perhaps better conceived of as animal illfare in nonspeciesist terms. Hence I will put “welfare” in quotation marks when referring to speciesist so-called forms of animal “welfare.”

[2] Francione used to favorably cite Regan, till the two had a falling-out; more recently Francione (2000) defends a basic right not to be considered property—which I will argue on another occasion is surely a move for the worse compared to Regan’s insistence on a most fundamental right to be respected.

[3] I have since added to this critique that “new welfarism” is also inappropriate in its “new” designation, since Henry S. Salt (1980), the late Victorian animal rights commentator also advocated a hybrid advocacy of animal rights in the long-term and “welfarist” reforms in the short-term. This means that animal rights pragmatism, as I call it, is hardly anything “new.”

Works Cited

Dunayer, Joan. 2004. Speciesism. Derwood: Ryce Publishing.

Francione, Gary L. 1995. Animals, Property, and the Law. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

———. Rain without Thunder: the Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

———. 2000. Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Franklin, Julian H. 2005. Animal Rights and Moral Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press.

Gewirth, Alan. 1978. Reason and Morality. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Regan, Tom. 1983. The Case for Animal Rights. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Salt, Henry S. 1980. Animals’ Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress. Clarks Summit, PA: Society for Animal Rights. Originally published in 1892, with revised editions in 1905 and 1922.

Sumner, L. W. 1987. The Moral Foundation of Rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Sztybel, David. 2006. “The Rights of Animal Persons.” Animal Liberation Philosophy and Policy Journal 4 (1) (2006): 1-37.

———. 2007. “Animal Rights Law: Fundamentalism versus Pragmatism.” Journal for Critical Animal Studies 5 (1): 1-35.

Wise, Steven. 1997. “Thunder without Rain: A Review/Commentary of Gary L. Francione’s Rain without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement.” Animal Law 3: 45-59.

———. 2000. Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books.

———. 2002. Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights. Cambridge: Perseus Books.

FURTHER READING ON ANIMAL RIGHTS INCREMENTALISM

A Selection of Related Articles

Sztybel, David. "Animal Rights Law: Fundamentalism versus Pragmatism". Journal for Critical Animal Studies 5 (1) (2007): 1-37.

go there

Short version of "Animal Rights Law".

go there

Sztybel, David. "Incrementalist Animal Law: Welcome to the Real World".

go there

Sztybel, David. "Sztybelian Pragmatism versus Francionist Pseudo-Pragmatism".

go there

A Selection of Related Blog Entries

Anti-Cruelty Laws and Non-Violent Approximation

Use Not Treatment: Francione’s Cracked Nutshell

Francione Flees Debate with Me Again, Runs into the “Animal Jury”

The False Dilemma: Veganizing versus Legalizing

Veganism as a Baseline for Animal Rights: Two Different Senses

Francione's Three Feeble Critiques of My Views

Startling Decline in Meat Consumption Proves Francionists Are Wrong Once Again!

The Greatness of the Great Ape Project under Attack!

Francione Totally Misinterprets Singer

Francione's Animal Rights Theory

Francione on Unnecessary Suffering

My Appearance on AR Zone

D-Day for Francionists

Sztybel versus Francione on Animals' Property Status

The Red Carpet

Playing into the Hands of Animal Exploiters

The Abolitionist ApproachES

Francione's Mighty Boomerang

Dr. David Sztybel Home Page

Insults and Illusions: the Case of Francione and His Followers

I would like to report on having participated in an on-line discussion forum, called Animal Rights Community On-line (ARCO). Overall, it was a mixed experience. I made a few friends, and got some great feedback on my work. But I did not make friends amongst the supports of Francione’s anti-welfarism ideology who clearly dominated the forum! Not all of them were vicious, but frankly, most of them were, stooping to outright ad hominem attacks. These culprits made the title of the forum doubly ironic since they refer to people such as myself as not being real defenders of “animal rights,” and also they undermine any useful conception of community. They called me “ignorant,” “a fool,” demonstrating “a depressingly low level of intellect” or showing “sheer intellectual deficiency,” “paranoid,” “nefarious,” “hypocritical,” “arrogant,” and as I will illustrate below, one even called a piece of writing I posted “creepy.” None of it of course was rationally defended, but then, people who use insults like this do so as a substitute for reasoning in the first place. In what follows I will show how the “creepy” charge by David Langlois is completely without objective basis. Now animal rightists are supposed to defend animals against bullies, but these animal rightists are the opposite: they try to bully other animals who happen to be human.

The term “Francionist” is regularly used on these lists by people who disagree with Francione. I’m tempted to do likewise, myself, but what holds me back is that I organized a debate on the Toronto Animal Rights Society list-serve on the prominent issue in animal law: is it ethical or efficacious ever to support so-called “welfarist” legislation? Francione himself responded to my invitation and joined that discussion briefly, and he made it plain he did not like the term “Francionist,” thinking it makes him seem like a cult leader, or that people are more concerned with him as a person rather than the ideas. I deferred to his preference, out of respect, but made it clear that the way I used the term had no such overtones: it was like using the term “Marxist.” I originally used “Francionism” purely descriptively, referring to the unique body of ideas that Francione has authored. Although others will continue to use the term "Francionism" I will not do so out of respect. Instead the term “animal rights fundamentalist,” which I have adapted in my paper, “Animal Rights Law,” will do instead.

It is ironic though that Francione should specially plead for sensitivity to him about terms used (especially when the term in question need not be read as offensive in the slightest). Not only do his supporters resort to extensive name-calling, but Francione himself launches very powerful and unmistakable ad hominem attacks not only against individuals, but whole sweeping classes of people who adhere to certain ideas, by his use of offensive terms. He calls people such as myself "new welfarists." First consider the “new” part of “new welfarism.” Animal rights pragmatism, which tolerates animal welfare legislation as the lesser of evils in the short-term, is not “new welfarist” in any coherent sense of “new.” Consider the forerunner of modern animal rights writing, Henry S. Salt, who influenced Mohandas Gandhi to become an ethical vegetarian when the latter was studying to become a lawyer in England, in late Victorian times. Salt advocated so-called “welfarist” reforms as well as animal rights just as others do today. So it is not “new” unless Francione and his defenders want to start insisting that the Victorian times are somehow “new.” Now consider the “welfarist” label that Francione wishes to wrap around the pragmatists. He calls animal rights pragmatists “new welfarists,” even though such people ultimately seek anti-speciesism, animal liberation, or the abolition of animal exploitation, and to eventually abolish all "welfarist" laws in favor of animal rights laws. How can one essentially be a “welfarist” if one seeks ultimately to destroy all mere "welfarism" (in the speciesist sense of the term)? In sum, neither "new" nor "welfarist" is truly applicable in this context. This is merely insulting, and Francione’s 5 supposed characteristics of new welfarists do not even apply to clear-thinking animal rights pragmatists, as I show in “Animal Rights Law.”

Francione and his followers reserve the term “abolitionist” for themselves and refuse to call animal rights pragmatists “abolitionists.” This the fundamentalists do even though they are confusing the grammar of the situation. Any “-ist” as a suffix in this sort of context indicates advocacy, and animal rights pragmatists not only are in favor of abolition, but believe they have a better way of getting there than the fundamentalists. So another insult is clearly to imply that the pragmatists are “nonabolitionists.” It is purely an insult, and does not communicate truth, avoid confusion, use conventional language, promote the animal rights movement as a whole, or avoid arousing ill feeling in these debates. Pure insult.

But Francione does not rest there. The two major sectors of his adversaries are the animal rights pragmatists, on the one hand, but also the speciesists, on the other hand. These last he also insults by saying that since most animal suffering is caused for passing human amusement or pleasure (e.g., meat-eating, wearing leather, etc.—true enough), and since sadists get pleasure or amusement out of processes that involve suffering, Francione asserts (see his Introduction to Animal Rights) that most people are no different from psychopathic Simon the Sadist, who blow-torches dogs for fun. In a previous blog entry I showed that ordinary people are not psychopathic and violent sadists: they do not enjoy suffering but are often ignorant of it, or tolerate it as a side-effect of getting what they really want: meat, clothng, etc. That is why people often change when confronted with animal cruelty. Again, the inappropriate equation with sadists does not communicate truth, avoid confusion, use conventional language, promote the animal rights movement as a whole, or avoid arousing ill feeling in these debates. Pure insult. So I am not surprised that those whom some call “Francionists” use extensive insults of other kinds on these public discussion boards. They feel victorious, I suppose, but only succeed in unwittingly embarrassing themselves in an international forum.

I have already explored how Francione insulted the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics by calling it the “Oxford” Centre for Animal Welfare (see my blog entry on this topic). Francione himself alerted me to his blog-based tirade against the Centre. I replied, pointing out he was resorting to insults. But his reply did not comment on this point, instead making other points, indicating to me that he knows very well that he is engaging in insulting behaviour but would not consider changing, because, based on his track record, he seems to prefer and enjoy that form of “engagement.”

Although some Francione defenders on ARCO—only a few really—showed themselves to be respectful and articulate on the forum in question, most were not only insulting, but jeering, and showing contempt for rational discourse. Even the moderators of the forum wrote that I should not publicly challenge the approval (by the moderators) of insults on the forum, and that I should write to them privately on the issue at most, even though it is a general issue that should be democratically addressed and openly discussed by anyone who is concerned about it. The moderators used weak excuses for tolerating insults: that it occurs on all sides (not always true—but even so two wrongs don’t make a right), that they would have to delete most posts (moderating does not require this but only warning or booting people as needed), and that if insults were removed, the content of posts would not be left intact (even though personal put-downs are always gratuitous and like all ad hominem fallacies, adding nothing of value to any argument). These moderators are really just saying in effect, it seems to me, that they like the ad hominem style. It seems a raw expression of preference, boiled down, because they haven’t a leg to stand on rationally, unless you think “everyone is doing it” works—which is not only untrue, but is also rejected as a form of argument when it is used by speciesists.

The Francione supporters also said that intellectual work of the sort that I do is irrelevant to animal rights, and that we need to move people, not impress them with concepts. However, the only hope our movement has is to convince people by reasoning and also appealing to their hearts. That is what I’m in the business of doing, and people have at times been persuaded by my arguments. Simplistic propaganda will gain many converts, and is valuable, but it will not convert all of society, let alone its leaders, nor change the laws or it already would have worked, since it has already been widely used.

Perhaps the Francione supporters may be refuted logically by the arguments in “Animal Rights Law,” but use too much bogus reasoning, insults, and distortion of their opponents’ arguments to even realize that they have been refuted. I don’t think their distortions are created just to throw others off the trail, but reflect confusions in their own minds. I may be wrong about that, but the Francione supporters have not offered any logical refutation of what I have done. That was one of the really cheering aspects of my participation in the forum. Personally, it felt like being lowered into a piranha tank at times, but at an impersonal level, no one lodged any serious criticism against my arguments, although Karin for example certainly tried (as we will see below), and they would have taken a shot at my arguments if they felt able to do so.

Francione himself has stated that he is not interested in responding to my extensive arguments, and is delegating some other(s) to respond. I was told of this by two of his close followers, who happen to be Canadians like me, but who are presently living abroad: Jeff Perz and David Langlois. We will have to see what kind of response is given. David Langlois, now a doctoral candidate at Harvard University, has indicated that he will respond. Perz, who is still my friend, does not currently have the time to respond. Now also on ARCO Langlois, for reasons best known to himself, gestured that he would not wish to publish his reply in the journal in which my "Animal Rights Law" was published. He is a junior scholar, though, and can be forgiven for not realizing that no scholarly journal will publish a response to an article that appeared in some other journal. Perhaps that means there will be no response after all. Who knows?

Langlois himself called a piece of writing that I offered on ARCO “creepy.” Now this sort of unethical mudslinging should be challenged. It was done in a public forum, and although I responded to the issue on the spot, Langlois went on to defend his behaviour, and this sort of slander richly deserves to be confronted in a blog on a site that logs several tens of thousands of readers per year, based on my web page reports. What was the writing that was found “creepy”? The objective facts (which anyone is free to verify by logging onto the site in question):

(1) A German woman, Karin, posted a critique of “Animal Rights Law,” my essay published in The Journal for Critical Animal Studies (current issue); I responded to her critique, carefully pointing out how she used various fallacies or errors in reasoning: the straw man fallacy (distorting my view, e.g., claiming I am a closet utilitarian, although I refute that ethical theory in “The Rights of Animal Persons”) no less than 17 times, and many other fallacies such as begging the question (declaring dogmatically), special pleading (falsely asserting that the fundamentalists promote veganism while implying that others such as myself do not), among others; but she is also a mudslinger, stating that my essay is associated with “sheer intellectual deficiency” and shows a “depressingly low level of intellect”; Karin was not embarrassed at all by her own fallacies, nor apologetic in the slightest about her incredibly extensive misrepresentations, but merely rejoined later with more jeering, baiting, and insults. My own real views were left untouched;

(2) Later on, Karin responded with a message inviting me to participate in a podcast debate on Vegan Freaks at the next opportunity, and claimed her message was also in the voice of Francione himself;

(3) I am advised that this poster, Karin, actually works with Francione, so I had reason to think it was quite possible that the message was partly from him as she stated;

(4) I made it clear to the list that I would not necessarily respond to mudslinging messages, so logically enough, I decided I would respond to the Francione-seeming part of the message alone and ignore Karin’s part; I addressed the letter so that it was a response to the invitation IF indeed Francione had a hand in the message, but that the message was addressed “to oblivion” if he did not; it seemed harmless and worth a try since other list members say that Francione monitors this particular forum, occasionally responding to participants, and also has correspondents who regularly email him with updates; as well, he is now actively participating in an ARCO forum meant only for his followers (it amuses me to consider that he has probably seen all or most of the dialogues I was participating in);

(5) The moderator on the list responded appropriately in the respect of warning me against emailing people who are not on the list; I was unaware of this rule, and it is simply a matter of policy, so I was content to be corrected on this simple matter of protocol;

(6) Then Langlois barged in and called my “possible reply” to Francione “creepy” and explicitly mischaracterized the situation as me pretending to be in a “dialogue” with Francione, although I was merely sending a “possible message” to him, depending on whether or not he is on the receiving end (and prepared to acknowledge that fact!) as Karin implied. Langlois mixed together insult and mischaracterization in the same manner as Karin and others on the list. He was pitching low, below the belt in fact. Although apart from the insult he otherwise seemed civil on the surface, the insult not least of all indicates that he buzzes with aggressive intensity below skin-deep.

Now let’s think carefully…what aspect of my message could have been “creepy”? Was it responding to an invitation? That’s not creepy. Was it presuming that Francione would get my message? The letter explicitly stated that I was not presuming that Karin was accurately representing that Francione had a hand in her message. Why is it that no one on the forum focused on the fact that Karin was claiming to speak for Francione on this list? Surely it is more presumptuous to claim to speak for someone else on a forum in which they are not actively participating than merely to send a possible, throw-away message to someone in a conditional fashion. Was it “creepy” to break a rule of which I was unaware? I merely broke it and then responsibly accepted the correction not to do that sort of thing again.

When called by me on his “creepy” charge, Langlois responded that it is simply “true” and he is sorry that he offended me, but at the same time, he wrote further on, he would not mind if I am offended by his statement. The claim to “truth” is really just a continuation of the smear, with Langlois trying to make himself appear respectable. What could be wrong with stating the “truth”? (However I have shown there is no basis in “truth” for such an insult.) The second part is simply a self-contradiction, an odd fallacy for a philosophy candidate at Harvard to commit. No one is “sorry” for offending someone if they do not mind that this someone is offended! His insincerity is manifest, and only furthered by the fact that he defended his pugnacious behaviour as perfectly justified. In earlier emails, Langlois was posturing as though he was my personal friend. But in this recent activity he has revealed himself more truly to be a mudslinger, trying to elevate himself by putting others down in the manner of a bully. Right-minded people can see through such tactics, although others might be misled, but meanwhile he deserves a reminder that he is advancing neither his own reputation nor his anti-welfarist cause by resorting to such tactics: he merely gains some smug self-satisfaction in the moment of firing off such insults, only to pay for them later. Will Langlois’ promised formal response to “Animal Rights Law” contain more of what I found in his comments on the same discussion list, namely insults, misinterpretation, misrepresentation and illogical reasoning? Only time will tell.

I noted how Langlois, Karin, and others resort to the straw man fallacy. However, as in the use of ad hominem attacks, as I show in “Animal Rights Law,” Francione himself unwittingly uses the straw man fallacy in arguing his two main points: (1) that all animal “welfare” laws are ineffective (which he tries to show using his straw man argument that “new welfarists,” in his terms, are saying that animal welfare laws will “cause” abolition; instead it is far more appropriate to state that some animal “welfare” laws are conducive to abolition (as I argue in detail) rather than solely “causing” it) and (2) that such “welfare” laws are immoral because inconsistent with animal rights theory (although I show how such laws can be perfectly consistent with my own animal rights theory that—like his own—uses dilemma reasoning).

Many movement leaders and others have written to me expressing agreement with my legal arguments in “Animal Rights Law,” and I have received several reports of people who have crossed the floor. Once they agreed with Francione on this matter and now accord with the view for which I argue. I will not name these people since they never indicated that they wished their names to be published, and I do not wish them to suffer any possible harassment by Francione followers. These converts used to be ardent supporters of Francione’s fundamentalism, quoting him left and right. But the converts prove that not all of these fundamentalists are alike: some are open-minded, respectful, and open to genuine reasoning. I assume there might well be others persuaded out there (perhaps who were previously undecided in some cases) who have not taken the trouble to write to me, as well as more to come.

Francione himself refusing to respond to my arguments suggests perhaps that he does not feel up to doing so, or perhaps his refraining is just another childish insult. After all, there can be no question as to whether it is intellectually and objectively worthwhile for him to respond to me (on the face of it) since my arguments are winning converts. Anyone who advocates a position would objectively find it worthwhile to: (a) convert newbies to one’s cause who might encounter others’ arguments first; (b) convert the undecided to one’s cause who might be swayed by effective arguments by an adversary; and (c) prevent one’s own followers from being converted. His “same old lines” will not do, since these are carefully considered and refuted in my essay. Now he can very well continue in this manner if he likes, so far as I am concerned. Is it perhaps better for my arguments to stand unchallenged when considering the cause that I share with a majority of animal rightists? Some might think so. Many animal rights pragmatists agree that his anti-welfarist stance is divisive and destructive of real chances for dramatically improving the lot of animals. I think it is better for everyone if he responds in the interest of people being accountable for what they say to masses of people and being open to reasonable discussion, thus furthering the cause of democracy. It would also be better if I refute any reply he might make using the same classical methods of reasoning that I employ in "Animal Rights Law" and other places. I believe that those who employ illogical arguments in the first place cannot in principle find logical ways to defend them at some later time (unless it is a case of an incomplete argument that just needs to be "filled in" with more justification, or more premises to entail the conclusion--but I suspect that is not the case here). Illogical arguers are, for the most part, doomed to carry on with more fallacies unless they come up with a completely new strategy of justification, or perhaps change their position even more fundamentally. There is something timeless about logic. Arguments put forward now or thousands of years ago or to come will still be subject to the same laws of good thinking, and validity or invalidity of conclusions drawn for example will hold regardless of when the inferences are iterated.

The fundamentalists on this list-serve, in any case, remind me of the tactics of many speciesists: dogmatically begging the question, distorting views, ridiculing and insulting others. I pray that society in general evolves towards more civilized critical reasoning, as I believe that such a transmutation constitutes our most serious hope for the animals.

FURTHER READING ON ANIMAL RIGHTS INCREMENTALISM

A Selection of Related Articles

Sztybel, David. "Animal Rights Law: Fundamentalism versus Pragmatism". Journal for Critical Animal Studies 5 (1) (2007): 1-37.

go there

Short version of "Animal Rights Law".

go there

Sztybel, David. "Incrementalist Animal Law: Welcome to the Real World".

go there

Sztybel, David. "Sztybelian Pragmatism versus Francionist Pseudo-Pragmatism".

go there

A Selection of Related Blog Entries

Anti-Cruelty Laws and Non-Violent Approximation

Use Not Treatment: Francione’s Cracked Nutshell

Francione Flees Debate with Me Again, Runs into the “Animal Jury”

The False Dilemma: Veganizing versus Legalizing

Veganism as a Baseline for Animal Rights: Two Different Senses

Francione's Three Feeble Critiques of My Views

Startling Decline in Meat Consumption Proves Francionists Are Wrong Once Again!

The Greatness of the Great Ape Project under Attack!

Francione Totally Misinterprets Singer

Francione's Animal Rights Theory

Francione on Unnecessary Suffering

My Appearance on AR Zone

D-Day for Francionists

Sztybel versus Francione on Animals' Property Status

The Red Carpet

Playing into the Hands of Animal Exploiters

The Abolitionist ApproachES

Francione's Mighty Boomerang

Dr. David Sztybel Home Page

A New Offering: Book Reviews

My website features a number of scholarly and public-oriented materials, and now for the first time I am going to offer book reviews. Many of my publications are fairly wide-ranging and forbid, for reasons of length, a detailed discussion of many philosophical views. Book reviews afford an ideal chance for such a discussion. My first book review is of David Brink, Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 1989). Warning: it is academic, and especially likely to be clear to those who have completed advanced studies in ethical theory, metaethics in particular. That said, clarity is still my first rule of style, and a determined lay person could conceivably make sense of it. This particular review focuses on one of the key questions of ethics: which is correct, moral realism or moral anti-realism? Anti-realism is the view that nothing is really right or wrong, good or bad, and the like. Realism is just the opposite. As well, the review examines one of the finest articulations of "indirect utilitarianism," any theory that claims it maximizes utility for people not to deliberate in a utilitarian manner. This claim sounds paradoxical on the surface, and in fact I find reason to claim that the direct approach of my own theory, best caring ethics, is preferable (see best caring ethics as an ethical theory sketched in my article, featured on this website, "The Rights of Animal Persons"). I look forward to doing future book reviews on books that I regard to be particularly significant and substantive.

Francione on "Unnecessary Suffering": Not Necessarily So!

(A side-note: I will be up-front.  This blog was started directly in response to Gary Francione's blog and its attack on the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics.  Coincidentally, I have recently been writing a critique of Francione's anti-"welfarist" stance which has just been published in the Journal for Critical Animal Studies online, so my blog dwells a lot on Francione's work...for now.)

Traditional animal welfare has subscribed to the idea that in order to be humane, we should avoid “unnecessary suffering.”  This sounds like a noble ideal—why not negate something that seems intrinsically bad?

Gary L. Francione, Professor of Law at Rutgers University, claims to offer a “simplified” account of animal rights on his website. (retrieved in April 2007)  This reminds us of his statement in his Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000), p. xxxiv: “I argue that the basic right not to be treated as property may be derived directly from the principle of equal consideration and does not require the complicated rights theory upon which Regan relies.”  Francione points out that we do not “need” to make animals suffer when we use them for food, clothing, or entertainment.  These are merely for amusement and Professor Francione cannot see how any such pleasure-seeking is “necessary.”  He notes that some insist that medical research on animals is “necessary,” but correctly points out that it is difficult to extrapolate predictions for human health treatment based on results for animals of different species.  I will not digress about such experimentation here, since I address this issue elsewhere.  (See, for example, “The Rights of Animal Persons”). 

What I wish to focus on presently is one of Francione’s “simplified” arguments for animal rights as I paraphrase it in standard form here:

1. Most people in society are animal welfarists who reject “unnecessary suffering.”
2. Standard animal usage involves unnecessary suffering.
3. Therefore animal welfarists should reject standard animal usage.

Of course, rejecting standard animal usage is in keeping with animal rights.  He seeks to reinforce this argument by baldly declaring: "most of the suffering that we impose on animals is completely unnecessary however we interpret that notion," (see Introduction to Animal Rights, p. xxiv) and by "that notion," he plainly means "unnecessary."

Francione’s argument is very like that of philosopher Mark Bernstein, in his book, Without a Tear: Our Tragic Relationship with Animals (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004).  Let us critically appraise this argument.  It is indeed worth realizing that we have a choice about whether to use animals, and that it is not necessary to use them in that sense, and also that many people interfere with animals’ needs often merely for human pleasure.  However, I argue that our thoughts cannot rest content with such insights.  We cannot rely on Francione’s argument as a way of justifying one’s own animal rights beliefs or as a means of convincing those who disagree with animal rights.

To simplify matters, the two opposing views here are traditional animal “welfare” (“humane” animal usage) and animal rights (again oversimplifying: not exploiting animals at all).  Francione again claims that animal welfarists cannot say using animals for pleasure is necessary in any sense.   This argument can be refuted if welfarists can show that using animals for pleasure does involve “necessary suffering” in some sense that is consistent with their position.  I believe there is such a sense or indeed more than one sense.

In general, what is “necessary” can mean very different things:

1. What we are compelled to do or we have no choice about.
2. What we have a choice about but is concerned with needs such as health needs, legal requirements, etc., as opposed to things that are not required for our needs, such as frivolities or amusements.
3. What is necessary as a means to an end, e.g., water is needed to grow melons.

Recall that Francione claims that standard animal usages are not “necessary” in any sense.  This is false.  An animal welfarist will say that a certain amount of animal suffering is unavoidable (sense 1.) as a part of eating animals, and also that using animals is necessary as a means to human ends such as meat-eating. (sense 3.)  Actually, it is primarily sense 3. that is at issue since the suffering is unavoidable only as part of a means to an end.  The end itself is avoidable, but that does not affect sense 3. of what is necessarily part of a certain means to an end.  We should not confuse the different senses together.  It is not unavoidable to grow melons, but it is still “necessary” to use water if we do so.  These are what Kant called “hypothetical imperatives,” that is, if, hypothetically you want a certain end, it may be imperative to do X.  E.g., If you want to be well liked, you will have to treat people decently that you wish to like you.

Ironically, Francione claims there is no sense in which necessary suffering is involved in animal welfare, but in fact there are two.  He is quite right that none of it is necessary in sense 2., but that is not the only sense.

Part of the animal welfare view is that animals have no rights, including no right not to be used, even harmfully, by humans.  This yields:

1. Humans alone have rights, and two of the key ends for human life are freedom and happiness.
2. Animals do not have rights, so we are not restricted against using them.
3. Humans are entitled in their freedom and pursuit of happiness to eat meat, since animals do not have a right not to be used.
4. Therefore humans have a right to cause animals any suffering that is necessary (unavoidably as part of the means involved) as a part of meat-eating.

This yields the sense of “(un)necessary suffering” that the welfarist means.  Is the welfarist right that animals have no rights?  I do not think so, but we cannot settle that animals do have rights by trying to play on the logical implications of “unnecessary suffering.”  To try this begs the question, and also commits the fallacy of equivocation, or confusing together different senses of a key term (in this case “necessary”) in order illicitly to argue in favour of a conclusion.

I do indeed argue elsewhere that animal usage is contrary to moral necessity, as reflected in moral rights and duties, but we need better arguments than this one used by Francione.  We cannot make animal rights true by stipulating one meaning of “unnecessary suffering” and then dogmatically (and mistakenly) denying that there is any other sense.

It will be objected that this analysis assumes that the rejection of animal rights is part of animal welfare, and we cannot assume that animal rights is to be ruled out.  This objection though confuses the analysis of animal welfare (the rejection of animal rights is indeed a part of that) with the justification of animal welfare (I agree that animal exploitation cannot ultimately be justified).  Francione claims that standard practice does not conform with an analysis of animal welfare, which includes avoiding unnecessary suffering, but I have shown this inference is a simple case of jumping to conclusions based on an incomplete analysis.  He is trying to employ a “reductio,” or a case that the position that welfarists already embrace logically leads to animal rights.  This is not the case.

I am not operating in philosophical dreamland here.  It is rather Francione who is in the clouds with his "sole" sense of "necessity."  In the real world, many legal experts would be able to see through Francione's argument in less than a second, because it would be immediately contrary to how they already use the concept of necessity.  Take, for example, a case in which the Pacific Meat Company was charged for inflicting "unnecessary pain."  In the case in question, pigs in a slaughterhouse were shackled by the hind leg, swung against a metal wall "with some force," and then a knife was thrust into their throats whether they were conscious or not.  Such cruel treatment of conscious beings is surely unconscionable.  Yet in the case the judge ruled as follows:

Hogs fulfil a purpose of providing food for human beings.  Before the hog can be eaten by mankind they must of necessity be killed, so that the fatal injury that is administered to each hog by the 'sticker' is a necessity and therefore not 'unnecessary'.

This is cited from Regina v. Pacific Meat Company, 1957, BC County Court, which I found in "Anything Goes: An Overview of Canada's Legal Approach to Animals on Factory Farms" by Lesli Bisgould et al, available on the web site of Animal Alliance of Canada.  The judge is using necessity in sense 3., above, or what is necessary as a means to an end.  Now the judge erred.  It is by no means necessary to treat hogs so callously as a part of the practice of meat-eating.  However, animal "welfarists" can argue that many indignities of the slaughterhouse, such as being forced through and being killed, are necessary as a means to the end of meat-eating.

Francione does not rely on this illusory "necessity" argument alone.  For example he claims that the right not to be considered property follows from the principle of equal consideration alone.  But in both his Introduction to Animal Rights and his website he does rely on the “unnecessary suffering” argument, claiming to “simplify” making a case for animal rights.

Simplicity of formulation is a worthy goal in thinking, embodied in the principle of parsimony.  So what approach to simplicity should we take?  Should we strive for simplicity at any cost?  I recommend we aim for the Golden Mean, which is a standard articulated by Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher.  The Golden Mean just means: avoiding the dual extremes of excess and deficiency.  In the case of simplicity, we wish to avoid the extremes of :

(i) Excess: oversimplification (leads to neglecting important considerations, confusion, overgeneralizations, jumping to conclusions, superficiality, a lack of sophistication and a credibility gap, etc.); and

(ii)  Deficiency: overcomplication (leads to confusion, uncertainty, lack of clarity, difficulty in communication, having a harder time interesting people, getting bogged down in irrelevancy or repetition, etc.)

Now addressing different senses of “necessary” is not an overcomplicated model but is the only coherent way of assessing Francione’s claim that animal usage is not necessary in any sense.  By contrast, his reliance on avoiding “unnecessary suffering” is a clear-cut case of oversimplification.  The animal rightist’s sense of unnecessary suffering may one day triumph over the animal welfarist sense of that phrase.  So how can animal rights be justified and animal welfare overturned?  Only by systematically justifying animal rights and refuting the many views in philosophy that permit animal usage.  I seek to provide such arguments in my forthcoming book, since Francione and others, I find, fail to provide crucially needed, convincing arguments.

FURTHER READING ON ANIMAL RIGHTS INCREMENTALISM

A Selection of Related Articles

Sztybel, David. "Animal Rights Law: Fundamentalism versus Pragmatism". Journal for Critical Animal Studies 5 (1) (2007): 1-37.

go there

Short version of "Animal Rights Law".

go there

Sztybel, David. "Incrementalist Animal Law: Welcome to the Real World".

go there

Sztybel, David. "Sztybelian Pragmatism versus Francionist Pseudo-Pragmatism".

go there

A Selection of Related Blog Entries

Anti-Cruelty Laws and Non-Violent Approximation

Use Not Treatment: Francione’s Cracked Nutshell

Francione Flees Debate with Me Again, Runs into the “Animal Jury”

The False Dilemma: Veganizing versus Legalizing

Veganism as a Baseline for Animal Rights: Two Different Senses

Francione's Three Feeble Critiques of My Views

Startling Decline in Meat Consumption Proves Francionists Are Wrong Once Again!

The Greatness of the Great Ape Project under Attack!

Francione Totally Misinterprets Singer

Francione's Animal Rights Theory

Francione on Unnecessary Suffering

My Appearance on AR Zone

D-Day for Francionists

Sztybel versus Francione on Animals' Property Status

The Red Carpet

Playing into the Hands of Animal Exploiters

The Abolitionist ApproachES

Francione's Mighty Boomerang

Dr. David Sztybel Home Page