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

Gary Francione Attacks the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics!

I was quite surprised that Gary Francione personally referred me to his latest blog entry which slams the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics (OCAE), newly established last year.  I was appointed as a Fellow to the Centre recently, and I think this may have prompted him to forward his mini-essay.

The OCAE is an animal-rights-friendly organization whose Director is a known animal rights philosopher and theologian: the Reverend Doctor Andrew Linzey.  Linzey is also the world’s first appointed Animal Ethics Professor as of last year, which is quite a leap forward for the discipline as a whole.  The Centre will host international conferences, a journal, a resource centre, an on-line resource, and among other things, facilitate courses and contact among animal ethics people.  All of this is great for animal rights, and the Centre’s members more than its “Oxford” name will lend ever greater prestige to animal ethics as an area of serious study and concern. 

However, there are some animal rights proponents who attack other animal rights proponents.  The #1 such attacker, to my reckoning , is Gary L. Francione, a Professor of Law at Rutgers University who is known to slam PETA, laws that make animals suffer less but that are not “abolitionist” in his sense, and more recently, he has attacked supporters of the Great Ape Project.  Now he is attacking a Centre that is promising to further animal ethics scholarship exponentially. 

First, let us carefully consider all of the charges that Francione lays against the Centre.
 

1. He calls it the “Oxford” Centre for Animal Welfare, with the Oxford part in quotation marks, as if it has no legitimate claim to be so-called.  Yet the Director of OCAE lives in the town of Oxford, teaches at Oxford University, is hosting the series of international conferences at Oxford University with the institution’s knowledge and permission, and Dr. Linzey is also forthright that the new think tank is not an official part of Oxford University.  Francione did not need to consult the “Assistant to the Director of Public Affairs at Oxford University,” as he puts it, to learn this fact.  He need only explore the website or ask the Director personally.  It is no secret.  It is an advantage that the Centre is not an arm of the University since then its animal rights component would be less likely to encounter flack, such as from the vivisectors on campus.  That the University hosts OCAE’s conferences implies that the older institution does not resent but actively supports the newer one.
2. Francione calls it the “Oxford” Centre for Animal Welfare in his blog headline, although it is the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics.  This is a deliberate additional insult, since the Centre considers animal rights most favorably, more so than mere animal "welfarism" judging by its affiliates who tend to promote animal liberation.  This sort of insult is not new for Francione since historically he has tried, in futility and rancor, to reserve the term “animal rights supporter” or “abolitionist” only for those who agree with his particular views.
3. Most significantly, Francione charges that the Centre’s conference on the link between violence to animals and violence to humans is a throwback to pre-19th-century views of animals as mere things that are at best of instrumental value, wherein harm to animals is only considered insofar as it might affect human beings.  He cites correctly Thomas Aquinas, Immanuel Kant, and John Locke who held this view.  But he is in dreamland when he characterizes the whole Centre this way.  As said, its affiliates are primarily animal liberationists.  Do they view animals merely in terms of how humans are affected?  Not at all.  Does the Centre or the conference promote such a view?  Not at all, and again the opposite view is urged by friends of the Centre.  Is it not odd to try to tar and feather an organization with a view it never states and that it implicitly opposes?  Absolutely.  This is pure mud-slinging unworthy of any scholar or activist.
4. He suggests the conference says nothing about animals beyond their being useful to detect harm for human beings.  First, if there are signs that animals are being abused, does Professor Francione suggest that we should ignore this as a sign that humans are also being abused when this was not suspected otherwise?  No one with any concern for humans would object to such an inference.  Second, is there any suggestion that the animals themselves are not of concern as well?  Indeed, warning signs work two ways: establishing the link in question does a number of things for animals: it emphasizes the intrinsic similarities between harming humans and other animals, and we can at a more practical level use warning signs such as people harming humans as an indication that sociopaths should also be banned for life from owning or closely interacting with animals.  Nothing in what the Centre says or does suggests that animals are mere objects or instruments as Francione states.  Francione commits the fallacy of the straw man argument: falsely ascribing a view to someone and then criticizing that someone for holding that view!
5. Not least bizarrely, Francione accuses the Centre and the conference of perpetuating the idea that there is a difference between people who eat meat, dairy or eggs and extreme sadists, since, as he argues in his Introduction to Animal Rights, there is no such difference.  Actually, the difference stares us in the face.  Sadists wish to harm animals and enjoy the harm.  He is correct that eating animal products is primarily motivated by pleasure, but it is not pleasure at hurting animals.  Sadists are a menace because they will harm for its own sake.  Meat-eaters are a menace to animals too, and may harm animals just as much, but the mind-set is different.  Most meat-eaters probably do not even know that animals suffer so much for the sake of making food.  That explains why when many people are educated about the suffering in, say, factory farming, they want to have nothing to do with it.  If they were sadists, they would not care or perhaps would even enjoy the idea!  But they are not sadists, and that is why people are being won over to animal rights more and more every year.  However, it is not a very winning approach to go around accusing ordinary people of being like Jeffrey Dahmer or sadistic, as Francione openly argues in his book and blog site.

That is all there is to his charges, nothing more or less so far as I can tell.  This is such a bizarre attack there is some issue as to whether it be given serious attention, but unfortunately, Francione is highly influential, mostly due to arguments that are much more plausible than his latest rant on his blog.  I deal with these more credible arguments in my forthcoming paper in the Journal for Critical Animal Studies, called “Animal Rights Law: Fundamentalism versus Pragmatism.”

Welcome!

Welcome to my sector of the blogosphere!  I hope that fellow animal liberationists will find it to be one more oasis in a world replete with speciesism, and that non-animal-liberationists will find it a place to find some inspiration, a different point of view, and perhaps even an opportunity to think differently. 

John Stuart Mill said that to every great movement—and in spite of the voices of its detractors, the animal rights movement I believe has proved its greatness—there are three stages:

1. ridicule,
   
2. discussion, and
   
3. adoption.

There is some adoption of the animal rights ethic, but it is scattered at best.  There is more discussion.  A lot more discussion—since animal ethics pioneers such as Peter Singer and Tom Regan came on the scene and helped history to unfold in such a way as to see this great movement come to birth.  And it is not just any movement, out of “left field” (although in fact a leaning towards taking care of all vulnerable members of society is, I think, a logical implication of any sound animal rights ethic!).  The animal rights movement is a further step in traditional anti-oppression—or expressed more positively, pro-liberation—movements such as black liberation and women’s liberation.  Indeed, I hold that one cannot fully or successfully justify human rights without nonspeciesist thinking, as I will further explain in my book, and have hinted at, with some reasoning, in "The Rights of Animal Persons" (on my website; originally published in The Animal Liberation Philosophy and Policy Journal 4 (1) (2006): 1-37).  (I add that Singer does not support animal rights, although he does favor animal liberation; in Ibid. I argue that he would not liberate all animals, that is, from vivisection.  It is problematic to say that he is part of the same movement as animal rights people.  In truth, it only overlaps to a large extent.)

However, we are not fully over the ridicule phase of the movement.  Some people still ask: “What about insects?”  Trouble is, although these people are often dismissed like “bugs” themselves, they have a legitimate point.  Think about it logically: if animals have rights, even equal rights in some sense, and insects are animals, do not insects have equal rights too?  If that does not seem right, and insects are not due benefits or protections as much as humans, does that not refute the animal rights ethic by implication?  My forthcoming book will be the first to try systematically to account for such a preference without compromising strong rights for sentient beings, including a careful and respectful consideration of beings such as insects and other invertebrates.   

I called the animal rights movement a great movement.  Is it great in terms of numbers?  In terms of numbers of adherents, yes.  Millions of souls are enough to boggle anyone’s mind, although I am not aware of any formal tally.  In terms of percentage of the population, it does not yet compare to historically great movements such as biblically based religion.  Is it great in terms of its ideals?  Yes: it advocates that spectacularly more good be done in the world, and greatly more bad avoided, and that what is truly best be affirmed—at least in my version of animal rights ethics.  There is nothing greater, indeed, than what is best.  And this is best in a distinctively non-utilitarian sense (see “The Rights of Animal Persons” ).

But this greatness is not just in the abstract: it is great to behold animals in largely idyllic settings of animal sanctuaries, and great to meet fellow animal rights supporters who are really wonderful people.  They are the ones in my experience who most embody the things that people most admire: compassion, rationality, morality, doing good and avoiding bad, human excellence, a concern for truth, and non-violence.  They embody the Golden Rule, basic to all the great religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Taoism and Zorastrianism.  That rule (in one of its more prominent versions) states: Treat others as you would be treated.  I am not “getting religious” here but making a point about human greatness in general.  Non-religious people try for the same great ideals I have listed—at least the ones I find most truly inspiring.

I firmly believe that we need to move from discussion towards adoption, but that is a gradual process, and frankly I do not expect non-animal-liberationists automatically to agree with me.  They need convincing reasons to agree or disagree.  In the process of the twenty-years I have been doing animal rights philosophy, however, I have laboured to provide reasons for agreement not just with animal rights, but whatever seems to me most right and good. 

This first entry is a welcome message, and you do indeed come to greater wellness the more you come to animal rights: not just more wellness for yourself because veganism, sensibly practiced, is demonstrably healthier.  This is a topic widely discussed in many places since meat-eating leads to more cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, senile dementia, arthritis, kidney and gall stones, impotence obesity, osteoporosis, and many other degenerative diseases.  I encourage people to pick up Diet for a New America by John Robbins. 

I also know that animal liberation is associated with greater wellness because animal agriculture is perhaps the greatest environmental disaster of our time.  Animal agriculture is the number one contributor—even considerably greater than cars—of greenhouse gases, believe it or not, due to farm animals farting and thus emitting carbon dioxide; the factory farms have large pools of excrement that contaminate delicate water tables and local rivers, streams and lakes; such practices use enormous amounts of water and raw materials; more than half of North America’s antibiotics to unbelievably stressed-out and ill intensively “farmed” animals; and eating animals creates ever-more pesticides directly by raining them down on animal feed crops, and indirectly when we absorb pesticides stored in the fatty cells of dead animals.  Indeed, most crops go to feed animals rather than, say starving people, e.g., about 90% of soybeans are grown for animal feed, thus depleting our topsoil…and so the list goes on. 

It is well to come to the place of animal liberation for these reasons, but also because, not least of all, it goes well or at least better for animals if one does.  People who practice traditional “kindness” towards animals say they practice “animal welfare,” and that sounds well enough, does it not?  However, in “The Rights of Animal Persons” I argue that in nonspeciesist terms (and speciesisim is a lot like racism and sexism in its morally arbitrary and harmful discrimination) killing animals for food, experiments, hunting, clothing, and exploiting them for entertainment is more like an ill fate for these animals rather than ensuring their “wellness” or good as “animal welfare” above all seems to imply.  At least we would not say humans were treated “well” if they were exploited in these ways.  “Animal welfare” truly practiced would indeed try to do good and avoid bad whenever possible, for all beings to whom good and bad are significant: sentient beings.  Speciesist animal welfare issues something of a false welcome to its adherents in the sense I am developing here, since as indicated above traditional animal usage undermines both human and especially nonhuman animal wellness.  If I am right that animal rights is a great movement then my welcome is even more in earnest, as something great is even better than what is merely “well,” or is exemplary in its goodness.