Addendum to Earlier Post Regarding Great Ape Project

On June 10, 2008, I parried Francione's thrusts against the Great Ape Project. Today I added the following (plus a few minor addendums elsewhere needed for continuity, that are not featured in the followng except):

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The Great Ape Project itself is as positive as it can be expected to be towards rights for all sentient beings. Here I quote from "A Declaration on Great Apes", which prefaces the Great Ape Project collection of essays:

Our request [for great ape rights - DS] comes at a special moment in history. Never before has our dominion over other animals been so pervasive and systematic. Yet this is also a moment when, within that very Western civilisation that has so inexorably extended this dominion, a rational ethic has emerged challenging the moral significance of membership of our own species. This challenge seeks equal consideration for the interests of all animals, human and nonhuman. It has given rise to a political movement, still fluid but growing. The slow but steady widening of the scope of the golden rule - 'treat others as you would have them treat you' - has now resumed its course. The notion of 'us' as opposed to 'the other', which, like a more and more abstract silhouette, assumed in the course of centuries the contours of the boundaries of the tribe, of the nations, of the race, of the human species, and which for a time the species barrier had congealed and stiffened, has again become something alive, ready for further change.

The Great Ape Project aims at taking just one step in this process of extending the community of equals. We shall provide ethical argument, based on scientific evidence about the capacities of chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans, for taking this step. Whether this step should also be the first of many others is not for The Great Ape Project to say. No doubt some of us, speaking individually, would want to extend the community of equals to many other animals as well; others may consider that extending the community to include all great apes is as far as we should go at present. We leave the consideration of that question for another occasion.

Let us comment on this statement of the Great Ape Project on rights for animals in general:

1. it acknowledges utter dominion over all animals, not just great apes
2. it calls considering "equal consideration for the interests of all animals" a "rational ethic", which is surely praise
3. it challenges species-membership as a legitimate grounds for discrimination
4. it envisions the Great Ape Project as "just one step in this process of extending the community of equals." Clearly that leaves other steps as possible, and are praised by the project as according with "a rational ethic", as noted, and as extending the golden rule, perhaps leading to many steps for extending the community of equals, perhaps to other animals as well
5. it cites the golden rule, treat others as you would have them treat you, which justifies rights for more animals than great apes
6. it acknowledges that many people will want to extend animal equality more generally
7. it suggests some "other occasion" for considering animal rights more generally, which is perfectly appropriate, as this must come outside an alliance for great ape rights, given that not all allies - indeed most - are not animal rightists

There is a lot that is praiseworthy here. It comes across as positive about animal rights more generally, indicating it is "rational". Yet not all signatories to the Great Ape Project - indeed probably most supporters - will not agree with animal rights in general. So it cannot, as a political alliance, outright endorse animal rights. Yet it comes close to doing so.

Another factor that is key here is that the GAP, in the Declaration just cited, declares that great apes "have mental capacities and an emotional life sufficient to justify their inclusion within the community of equals." It is vital to distinguish logically between necessary and sufficient. This sufficiency, anyway, is the basis for great ape rights. It is actually not speciesist and is morally unexceptionable. It is true that great apes have sufficient minds to be awarded rights. It is a good place to start in fully moral argumentation - when asking who deserve rights - to begin first with those whom we agree have sufficient characteristics for rights, and then to investigate from there what is needed to have rights. The statement leaves it open that other kinds of nonhumans also have sufficient minds - say, in the form of sentience - to be awarded rights. The only speciesist ethic would be to assert that it is necessary for beings to have humanlike cognitive characteristics to be awarded rights. The GAP never endorses this speciesist, exclusive doctrine. So it asserts part of animal rights that is unexceptionable. True, it emphasizes human-like qualities. But again, why not pull a lever that will deliver uncounted thousands of animals from violence?

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Thank you, and have a great day!

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

The Abolitionist ApproachES

Professor Gary Francione maintains a website called "the Abolitionist Approach". The definite article, "the", is very telling here. It implies there is only one abolitionist approach: his. Others either do not exist or are not worth taking seriously - the latter of course is completely at odds with non-violent discourse. And yet there are many approaches to what I would call the abolition of speciesism, and what he might prefer to call abolishing the property status of animals:

1. The hyperegalitarian abolitionist approaches of Joan Dunayer and Paola Cavalieri, which passionately argue for equal rights across the board for insects
2. The radical ethic of care abolitionist approaches. This feminist type of ethic may reject rights in favour of getting rid of speciesism on the basis of compassion, empathy, or sympathy
3. The incrementalist non-violence abolitionist approach that I advocate
4. The violentist abolitionist approaches urged by those who accept violence to humans as a part of animal liberation activism (which I am known to condemn)
5. The Francionist abolitionist approach
6. The Marxist abolitionist approaches
7. The anarchist abolitionist approaches
8. The virtue ethics abolitionist approaches which, like the ethic of care, may eschew rights
9. Deep ecology approaches to abolishing speciesism
10. Post-modernist ideologies that are critical of speciesism and conclude it should be entirely avoided

There are many other conceivable approaches, and note how the above are generally families of views that themselves permit a variety of stances.

In the past I have indicated that Francione's approach to property status of simply negating it is short-sighted, and long before we can free animals from being property, we ought to make the best of the property status they have. Francione, as those familiar with his ideas know, argues unsuccessfully that if animals are property they cannot enjoy any substantial protection. Sweden, of course, is a real-world refutation of that wrongful assertion. I have argued that before we can bring animal rights about, it would be wise to promote ideas of "responsible ownership", rather than passing up any chance to make animals be subject to less violence. There is no doubt that revising ownership has a contribution to make. Indeed, it is crucial, since animal law revolves around nonhuman status as property, so unless we can affect that status it would be very difficult to affect the legal status of animals in society. We must not throw out the Swedish - among other places - babies of constructive property status along with speciesist bathwater. So far from his being the only abolitionist approach, by speaking only of abolishing property status, his is one of the least tenable or helpful among our options.

In the past I have characterized as egotistical Francione's calling his approach alone "the" abolitionist approach. I can think of no other, more apt term. It is certainly not humble for him to declare in this manner. Nor is it even average or middle-of-the-road in terms of egocentricity. I mean, who else would dare do such a foolish and wrongful thing? No, it is singularly arrogant. This is no insult directed at him but fair comment based on the evidence. Someone could call me egotistical and arrogant if I started a website called "the Non-Violence Approach". It would be equally silly, vain, and baseless. I do not use ad hominem argumentation, though. An example would be: Francione seems arrogant and egotistical because of the name of his website, therefore his approach must be wrong. No, any person merely having disagreeable traits such as egotism does not logically entail that anything they say is false. I think it is ground for suspicion that a good deal more than ordinary scholarship is occurring here...but nothing more. Let us fairly consider all approaches before deciding - in all fairness - our own take on the matter.

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

Francionist Means Are Inconsistent with the End of Maximally Negating Violence

Gary Francione states, in a blog entry on "Means and Ends" for October 6, 2012, that some activists indicate that there is no real difference between:

1. Those who say we ought to abolish animal use, rejecting "happy" exploitation but campaigning for veganism, and
2. Ones who say that they wish to abolish animal use and the means is "happy" exploitation and animal welfare regulation.

(Notice how, quite ridiculously, he does not include the promotion of veganism in the second option, as if only he does that.) Of course there is a difference. But the biggest difference of all that he never touches on is the difference between how he characterizes incrementalism versus what I would argue is its best version. The best version:

• does not agree that exploitation could ever be fully “happy”
• does not say that the means to abolishing animal exploitation is animal welfare laws.

I have repeated the latter point so often and it is spelled out so clearly in “Animal Rights Law” that I will not much repeat myself here. Anti-cruelty laws contain no abolitionist language, so how could they “cause” abolition? And no one says they do. Francione is boxing with his own shadow here. Now what do you think of someone who always misrepresents the other side, even though he has been corrected ad nauseum only because he persists in this misrepresentation or straw man argument? (A straw man argument attacks a false and weak version of what an opponent says, leaving their best arguments untouched.) What do you think of such outrageous behaviour that goes totally against non-violent discussion, seemingly deliberately distorting the opponents' arguments as a matter of routine?

In addition, my side is not less – but far more - implementing of vegan, abolitionist, anti-exploitation education as our own means to abolishing speciesism. Millions or perhaps billions of people have been exposed to PETA’s vegan campaigns, or their slogan that animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or exploit for entertainment. But let’s face reality here, hardly anyone has heard of Francione and his crowd by comparison. He is marginal in contrast to PETA. Yet he acts as if he is the only one advocating an end to speciesism. He tries to create this impression by not giving our side any credit at all for that kind of campaigning. Even though we do far more of it. Gee, now, what should we make of that? As I have explained before too, veganism is a moral baseline for my side, and we also are far more successful in ridding the world of animal product consumption through our incrementalist approach.

Then Francione switches gears from misrepresenting the incrementalists. Oh, sorry. He switches gears as to the particular way in which he misrepresents the incrementalists. He says that there is a difference between someone who advocates world peace and non-violent dealings as a way of getting to peace, and someone who says they want world peace but advocates the use of war to get to the state of peace. Yes, there is a difference there too. Please wait just a little bit to see how Francione abuses this distinction that everyone agrees to.

He asserts that we are not here contemplating questions of “mere strategy” but that moral questions are involved too. He enjoins us to agree that our means must be consistent with our ends. I could not agree more with the last two statements. If our end is non-violence, then it is wholly consistent with that end either to see that absolute non-violence is realized if that is possible, or if violence is inevitable, then to negate violence as much as possible. I have shown how the incrementalist strategy uses this principle of non-violent approximation – approximating non-violence as much as can be when its absolute form is unattainable. That is because effective anti-cruelty laws clearly lessen violence in the world, whereas the Francionist do-nothing approach to legislation allows far more violence to persist and proliferate. So my means are consistent with my end: they negate violence. It is the Francionists who are not consistent with this end of non-violence, because they allow far more of it to exist.

The comparison of animal rights incrementalists to those who are willing to go to war to get to peace implies that people such as myself advocate violence. That is totally insulting, false, and misleading. How is it “violent” to ask for a reduction in violence? The Francionists not only permit more violence – which could be a passive allowance - but actively campaign to leave factory farming legislatively intact as one example. Now that is exercising violent agency in the name of so-called “non-violence”. It is violent to block effective and radical reduction in violence. Similarly, it is violent of "enablers" of domestic abuse of children to turn a blind eye or to defend the abuser. Francionists are "abuse enablers" of a different sort, enabling animal cruelty by trying to stall or negate the fight against it. And getting rid of factory farming like Sweden did negates monstrously cruel – Holocaustian - forms of violence. Make no mistake about it.

Why would Francione think that incrementalists are “violent”? Does he think that anti-cruelty laws “reinforce” speciesism, as he has often said in the past? How does it make speciesism more powerful if we remove key components of it such as gross cruelty? Francionists leaving this cruelty intact is rather what reinforces actual speciesism, empowering it more than ever. And leaving factory farming alone conduces towards a more cruel society that is less inclined to take animals’ interests seriously, and therefore will not treat animal rights respect for interests with full gravity.

Does he think that incrementalists “approve” of speciesism by advocating anti-cruelty laws? That is again false. Animal rights incrementalists approve of anti-cruelty laws relieving speciesism. But they disapprove of the ongoing speciesism of, say, animal agriculture that is obviously not abolished due to anti-cruelty laws. And the latter persists only in spite of incrementalist demands which PETA overtly makes, not because of anything that PETA advocates. It is other people who effectively insist on speciesist practices. So parts of anti-cruelty laws I approve, and other parts I disapprove. Do the Francionists think that one cannot both approve and disapprove different aspects of the same thing at the same time? Has there never been a political party one approves of in some respects but not others? Should child discipline be approached with the simplistic attitude that one either entirely approves or entirely diapproves of a given child’s conduct? This is nonsense. When we minimize violence, we approve of the reduction in violence, not the part that remains due to others who are violent. Still, animal laws may be overall accepted by incrementalists just because they have the approvable overall goal of minimizing violence. They are not permanently approved but only as a temporary solution, until full anti-speciesism can be enacted.

Rather, one could argue that doing nothing by way of law reform constitutes tacit approval for what is going on, or rather that there is no difference in behaviour between those who tacitly approve and the Francionists. I do not say the Francionists approve of speciesism though, only that again they defend the cruel status quo in effect, which is what those who approve of all animal exploitation want. (And that the anti-incrementalists approve of speciesism perhaps if we use the Francionist nonsensical standards for deciding who approves of what.) Oh, no, I stand corrected by myself. They not only resemble those who happen to approve of speciesism in terms of what results, but go out of their way to preserve the legislative status quo by aggressively defending against these vital anti-cruelty changes.

The Francionists crow about means to ends, but they in effect defend the speciesist means of factory farming against anti-cruelty initiatives, thus vigorously helping the “animal industrialists” to keep going some of the most cruel means ever devised. And as I indicated last blog entry, I honour all sentient beings as "ends in themselves" (to use Immanuel Kant's immortal phrase), whereas the Francionists treat contemporary animals under the law as mere means. They ask: "What good is my helping you going to do for my goal of total abolition of animals' property status?" As I illuminated last time, that is a utilitarian regard for animals more than a truly animal rights respect for them. It also uses animals as a mere means to say, as he does, that animal welfare laws promote complacency among citizens. This claim clearly implies that keeping conditions legally cruel would prevent complacency. Such a contention constitutes treating animals as a mere means to the end of anti-complacency as well, not just as means to the end of abolishing speciesism as noted previously. Animal rights dignifies all individuals as much as possible, contrary to his indignant defence of indignity for the billions of satanically tormented animals. To understand Francionism is to see clearly what is wrong with it. To think it is "all right" is to fail to grasp either it or its implications. Fully to refute Francionist pro-cruelty - in effect - is to expose its hyperbolic hypocrisy. Francione has said his Abolitionist Approach website is the go-to place for information about his approach. Actually, my own site not only outlines a better abolitionist strategy, but shows how his relies on falsehoods, fallacies, and is morally destructive.

Yet despite the fact that the incrementalists do not deal in violence, Francione goes on to compare people who just want anti-cruelty laws – and anti-speciesism and non-violence as much as possible - to Joseph Stalin and his waging of wars of imperial aggression. That is just an ugly smear on Francione’s part. But if he is saying that he is a pacifist like Gandhi, then I will indeed gladly part company with Francione once again. It did not negate violence as much as possible when American Quakers did not physically resist attacks by some natives who developed a hatred for so-called “white” people in vicious and genocidal wars over lands. (The aboriginals’ fury against so-termed “caucasian” people was at least understandable.) It would not have minimized - but rather entrenched - violence if the Nazis were not physically fought. Yet Gandhi explicitly demanded that the Nazis not be physically resisted in a famous letter to the Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber, written during the Second World War. Francione is a Jain, but a great many Jains agree, in principle, not only to forceful defence of the innocent, but also defensive wars. They – Jain householders and not monks that is - even enlist to fight in defensive wars as common practice. The Jains also use a variation of the “lesser of evils” argument. If people did not fight the Nazis, then Francione would not have the freedom to type away, trying desperately to protect animals from – yes – anti-cruelty laws.

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 False Dilemma: Veganizing vs. Legalizing

In his latest blog entry of October 3, 2012, Francione rehearses another old argument that might seem philosophically compelling – if you don’t think about it, especially from an individual rights perspective. He suggests we can either spend time legislating or engage in vegan education. He does not hesitate to repeat falsehoods that aiming for legislation results in insignificant changes (even though Sweden completely disproves that among other examples); will be phased out anyway (unlike Sweden’s 24 years plus); will not be enforced (even though that is just what Swedes do). See my last blog entry for more details. Now I wonder: what do you make of someone who knowingly repeats proven falsehoods over and over again? What do you make of a side in a debate that feels obliged to lean on falsehood as a best friend? I responded in my last blog entry to his false claims that such laws do nothing to change thinking about animals in an animal rights way. Kinder culture is more receptive to animal rights, and he misrepresents myself and my comrades as if we don’t promote animal rights at every opportunity. He says we will ask people to support industry but that’s another falsehood: we promote veganism. I dealt with the complacency objection last blog entry and Francione appears inept because he will not answer my arguments that are way advanced over his repetitive, throw-away remarks about “complacency”.

Now a false dilemma occurs when some slick arguer says that you have to choose one thing or the other but not both, when in fact both may be not only possible, but also desirable. You end up destructively pitting one thing versus the other rather than considering the strength of both together. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) models how you can promote veganism (millions of times more effectively than the Francionists, who spend most of their time mercilessly attacking other vegans) and legislative activity at the same time.

Let me utterly refute, philosophically, this endlessly repeated argument of the Francionists. We need to repeat the rebuttals just as frequently until these dangerous dogmas are driven into the ground. It is not only possible to choose both, but obligatory from an animal rights perspective, as opposed to an animal utilitarian perspective. Francione, on the surface, rejects utilitarianism. But he makes a number of moves that are far more in accord with utilitarianism than individual rights.

For a bit of philosophical background here, individual rights as an ethic attends to each individual animal as being infinitely valuable, or at least we cannot place a limit on it. The dignity of everyone must be attended to as much as possible, no matter what. No matter if it is time-consuming. No matter if it takes precious resources. No matter if it costs money. That’s what rights are and what they do in the lives of those who are totally committed to them. The utilitarian philosophy, by contrast, promotes “the greatest good for the greatest number”. It is content with promoting a “great good” for many animals, even if not all are benefitted, but perhaps only the majority. An example is the common thinking with medical vivisection: animals are harmed in experiments, but this is supposedly “outweighed” by the allegedly greater harm prevented through treatments and cures that will result. By contrast, an individual rights perspective says that each and every animal has a right to non-violence, and therefore is immune to medical vivisection. They are not “outweighed”. Nothing is more weighty than the collectivity of all rights holders.

In the past I have introduced the principle of non-violent approximation. Whenever we can realize animals’ rights to non-violence, we should - simply. But when we cannot protect animals against violence, we need to look at all the animals involved and try to choose the lesser violence for each and every animal involved. Because they all have a right to non-violence. Because each and every one of the animals have a dignity. We only do not help some of the animals if there is no other option, as in the burning building scenario in which you can only save one animal, but not both, say. The animal rights movement, though, is in no such situation. We can work to help all animals as true animal rights supporters strive to do as much as possible.

Francione is quite right to say that approximating animal rights is not animal rights - simply - as he in effect did in his feeble critique of my views. As I pointed out, though, his was a straw man argument, or critiquing an argument that I never made. I can add that non-violent approximation is not non-violence - simply. It is merely approximating non-violence to the highest degree, which is the usual with legal rights. As I show elsewhere, the history of legal rights in the U.S. shows nothing but approximations of rights, incrementally. Nobody has full rights over there, even though it is still a rights approach, approaching rights themselves only gradually, through often painful evolution. Tom Regan introduced the notion of proto-rights. These are not full rights, but are parts of rights. (That said, Regan is an anti-incrementalist like Francione, but his concept may still be pressed into the service of animal rights law incrementalism.) But if animals are stuck in violent conditions, it is still a matter of rights - of non-violence - that they be dignified with as much non-violent protection as possible. It is their right. It still pursues non-violence to try to reach that state of affairs as much as possible. That is no "weak" analysis of proto-rights, because it advocates the strongest possible realization of the right to non-violence. No, non-violent approximation is not the same as non-violence - simply - but we certainly need the former when we cannot obtain the latter.

Now let me tell you what a utilitarian approach to campaign strategy would be like. It would not be committed to helping each and every animal from the clutches of violators as much as possible. It would feel free only to help some animals while abandoning others. A classic example are utilitarians who say that we should only help animals in agriculture, because 95% of animals who die at human hands are murdered for food. PETA, by contrast, takes a rights approach in this respect by affirming, in effect: “We leave no animal behind.” This is in contrast to the Francionists, who take on the trust of rights for animals, but then treacherously betray that trust. PETA not only educates about a vegan diet, but also focuses on animals in laboratories, on the traplines, in the woods that hunters invade, at the pathetic zoos, aquaria, and circuses, and so on. This problem we are discussing is as invalid a false dilemma as a parent being told only to care for one child of two, and then the person who obediently goes along with this suggestion starts asking which child is easiest to look after in terms of time, resources, and money, and so on. It becomes a perverse sort of competition. The animal neglect in this case is tellingly analogous.

Francione can call himself an animal rights supporter. But this false dilemma is inconsistent with rights philosophy. His “abolitionist approach” (in contrast to ones such as mine) has rightly been called the “abandonitionist approach” by some witty person whose name I cannot recall. It is a fact that whatever success we have with vegan campaigning, it cannot reach the animals still stuck in “agriculture” (read: murder for flesh-foods). As I pointed out last blog entry of mine, they are the ones vegan campaigning fails to reach. If they have rights, they need help too, to have violence towards them minimized as much as possible. PETA does this. Francione does not. “Animal rights” is not just a phrase. It is a philosophy. Francionists can use the words as much as they like, but they cannot make their strategy consistent with rights ethics because as I have clearly indicated it is contrary to genuine rights thinking. Unless they want to go way out onto the branch of the claim that rights advocates do not affirm the dignity of everyone. The branch will break and they will fall.

They also exercise utilitarian thinking in a related vein (as I have commented on elsewhere) because they hold out for rights for animals in the future, and are prepared to ignore the rights of animals today. In fact, they dismiss contemporary and nearer-future animals’ rights by saying, “What good is my helping you going to do for realizing the long-term goal of abolition?” (That should be the abolition of speciesism, instead he misguidedly and confusedly spins rhetoric about the abolition of “property status”. ) In other words, animals today are regarded as a “mere means” to the goal of abolition. Their instrumental value for the long-term goal of abolition alone is considered, and they suffer violence as part of this exploitation. They evidently don’t matter enough - to the Francionists - to merit such protection as we can muster now. No. As if the fact that we cannot award them full rights means it is not worth our trouble to help them. In fact, these animals under Holocaustian conditions more desperately need some relief more than practically anybody. That said, we should still avoid utilitarian thinking and try to dignify everybody.

This question of veganizing versus legalizing is treated as a purely empirical question. We supposedly need to determine which path is better in terms of resources. That is, if we cooperate with the false dilemma. Now leaving animals unaided legislatively is an evil. And Gandhi urged what he termed "noncooperation with evil". (Notice I am calling certain practices an evil, and not saying the Francionists are evil.) Abandonitionists do not mean to be violent - but they are. Being violent means doing actions or omissions to act that directly or indirectly lead to the violation of sentient beings. These empirical factors are virtually irrelevant if we are not driven (with our own consent, mind you) to such thinking.

It's like a young student being told he can only use one of two pencils resorting to measuring them by placing them side-by-side, when really, he could use one or the other without feeling compelled to indulge in such foolishness. In rhetorical terms this is called being "railroaded". In real terms, we can metaphorically compare insistent advocacy of leaving animals in Holocaustian conditions of factory farming to the death camp railway of Fortress Europe under the Third Reich. The metaphor works because we have extreme violence in both cases. What is usually missed in answering the Francionists' tired argument here is that the problem is not fundamentally empirical. It is philosophical. I don't see anyone much looking to the ethical - or perhaps unethical - assumptions at work here. Let alone do they enunciate the critique that is needed from a genuine rights perspective. Yet they need to. Most every time. This false dilemma is an influential line of unreasoning, and so its confutation needs to get out there. Do help to get it out there, please.

There should be no doubts about supporting animal rights for the animal rights movement. We should not slide into a form of utilitarian thinking that corrupts not only our ideals, but neglects the very real animals who are the ones who matter in the end. But not to the Francionists. Not all the animals at any rate. Otherwise, you see, they would treat the animals languishing under factory farming as if they matter. Which they don’t on the Francionist worldview, for all that their actions - theoretical and practical - demonstrate. Abandonitionists even go so far as dismissing nonhuman animal suffering as “insignificant”, as I documented from Francione’s blog in my last blog entry.

True, he says it is reformism that is insignificant, but again, he has been proven wrong. Francionists ignore what we can do, like the Swedes. It is not just welfarism that is deemed insufficiently significant. Remember, Francione says abolishing measures of factory farming is "insignificant" anyway. But we know hot-iron branding without anesthetics - to take just one of dozens of examples - is highly significant to nonhumans if like torture to humans is significant. So Francione dismissing relief of such torture as "insignificant" implies that torture to animals is not "significant", which in effect treats animals as if they matter not. As I say, each animal is of infinite value. The false dilemma posed here by Francione is also false to animal rights, whereas I have clearly demonstrated that my own approach is true to the spirit - anyway - of such rights. Let nobody tell us that animal rights is about neglecting billions of animals suffering under avoidably bad laws, rather than attending to their needs as universally as possible. Animal rightists, support animal rights. Period.

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

Use Not Treatment: Francione's Cracked Nutshell

On April 21, 2011, Gary Francione wrote a blog entry entitled, "The Abolitionist Approach in a Nutshell." A nutshell statement for a position that is right you would expect to be rock-solid or impregnable. This is what he wrote:

As long as we think the issue is the treatment of animals, we will seek to make that treatment more “humane.” But because animals are property, that goal is unreachable as a practical matter. The treatment of animals will always constitute torture under the most “humane” circumstances. And the “treatment” (or welfarist) approach ignores that it is morally wrong to kill animals even if we treat them “humanely,” which we cannot do anyway. Welfare “reforms” not only fail to provide any significant protection for animals; such reforms actually make matters worse because they encourage the public to feel more comfortable about animal exploitation and to continue to consume animals and animal products. The problem is use, not treatment. The goal is to abolish animal use, not to regulate treatment. The means to the goal? Go vegan and educate others about veganism.

It is possible to disprove every single statement here:

1. Since animals are property, we can never make the treatment of animals "more humane". In Sweden, where they have abolished factory farming - although animals absolutely remain property there - the treatment there is much more humane by any sane standard. Perhaps Francione wants us to accept "the Swede Principle". That is, if the Swedes pull it off, we can't in other Western nations. The nutshell has a line on it. Is it a crack?
2. Animals will always be tortured "under the most 'humane' circumstances". The Swedish animals are not tortured most of their lives, or if they are it is illegal. I am against killing the animals too so that point cannot be used against my sort of "abolitionist approach". Wait - that hairline is a crack.
3. The welfarist - that is to say anti-cruelty-law - approach "ignores that it is morally wrong to kill animals even if we treat them 'humanely'..." This is a straw man argument, addressed to non-existent arguers. Only traditionalist welfarists ignore that it is wrong to kill animals. My silent majority fellow supporters of anti-cruelty laws campaign against killing animals individually and as a society, and are eager to adopt laws against the murder of animals a.s.a.p. How is such a well-developed position against killing "ignoring" the issue of killing? There's more than one definite crack in the nutshell.
4. Anti-cruelty laws do not provide "any significant protection for animals". So Francione would consider it "insignificant" if he were forced to eat cancerous carcasses, cement dust, shit, and other things instead of his usual good food? He would say "it does not matter" if he were confined in a tiny space for the rest of his life? If he were never again allowed outdoors? Or he would say it is a matter of no weight if he is required to shit and piss where he lives, without so much as straw? Or if he were denied any medical treatment? What's that, Gary, I can't hear you? Oh, you're saying these things matter to you after all and you don't want anyone to mess with you in these respects? These are all examples of treatments provided to Swedish pigs, unlike American pigs. If you can't say it's true for humans, you often can't say it is right for nonhumans. It would be downright speciesist to count the same considerations as highly significant for a human but as what he terms "insignificant" for a nonhuman sentient being. These fissures in the nutshell are slowly widening.
5. Complacency means more animal consumption. The complacency argument is treated at length in my article, "Animal Rights Law", pp. 19-21. I show that kinder culture as in Sweden is more conducive to taking animal rights seriously than crueler culture as in the States. But apart from his failure to show how anti-cruelty-laws would retard animal rights laws in the future, I have shown that even if there is a temporary spike in animal consumption once animals are treated less cruelly, animals would still be subject to less suffering and death in the big scheme of things. See my carefully articulated and defended model that shows Francione is wrong yet again. Indeed, given the pervasive dominance of the incrementalist approach to animal law, it has been conclusively been shown that this very approach is saving hundreds - over many years thousands - of millions of nonhuman animal lives which the anti-incrementalist approach, universalized, would have meant killing by failing to save. The nutshell is starting to fall apart.
6. Then Francione tells us the nutshell of his nutshell: "The problem is use, not treatment." The largest animal rights group in the world is called People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). If Francione had his way, I suppose they would have to be renamed as "People for the Ethical Non-Use of Animals". (As if that is going to happen.) But animals are being used even now as part of discourse. Not just concepts of animals, which would have no point if they did not refer to real beings. Animals are used as subjects of photographs, a wonderful alternative to hunting and confining them. Francione himself implicitly uses many animals as photo-subjects on his website that supposedly advocates the abolition of animal-use. Animals are used to study how amazing their abilities are in non-invasive wilderness studies. They are used by ecosystems to help promote natural vitality. They are used at the post office, where the nice human animals will try to help you out if you can pay for it. To say the issue is "use" is silly. It gets away from the more fundamental Kantian notion that we should not treat rights-holders as "mere means", and postal workers if they are respected are not mere means.

   The issue is violent use, not use per se. Violent usage is in fact an excellent definition of exploitation. It is wonderful when we can be non-violently useful. The question is not use but abuse. If animal use is one day finally abolished - at least for some legal realm - but we do not feel the need, on account of Francionist urgings, to legislate that remaining animals be treated well on sanctuaries...we could have Holocaustian treatment of these sensitive beings instead. Experience shows that harsh treatment tends to result - at least in many cases - when such practices are not legislatively and explicitly ruled out. Additionally: use is not separable from treatment. Little is the glimmering within him that use is indeed an ASPECT of treatment. Use = instrumental treatment. Indeed, Francione himself, in Rain without Thunder (1996) wrote on p. 194 that animals have a "claim against instrumental treatment." (my emphasis) But that would be "treatment", would it not? Someone can be treated as a means - or not. Rather than his slogan, "use not treatment", this would be a case of "use and treatment." So would eventual laws not only abolishing use but ensuring good treatment. Utter incoherence, I tell you.

   Not only is use not something we should "abolish" if we are sane, but to say "treatment" does not matter is speciesist. Even when humans used as slaves is no longer an issue, we still say their treatment matters when we legislate:

   • unemployment insurance
   • the minimum wage
   • welfare assistance
   • disability pensions
   • retirement pensions
   • labour laws for conditions of work
   • job security
   • state-sponsored medical care

   None of these programs is about protecting humans from being "used". Even the minimum wage and labour laws only are meant to eliminate exploitation, but not the usefulness of labour.

   So "use not treatment" is both incoherent and speciesist. The nut itself is shrivelled and inedible. Hmmm. It even stinks a little bit.

7. The means to abolishing the enslavement - let us say instead of use - of animals is going vegan and persuading others to do the same. This is part of our means. But abolishing speciesism means abolishing speciesist cruelty whenver possible too, and vegan education cannot address that at all the way the Swedes have, since the vegan population for a long time to come will leave animals in agriculture still as a matter of fact. Anyone who argues we should not address speciesist cruelty when we can do so might as well say someone should be allowed - legally - to beat a dog since interfering with that would not abolish the "use" of animals. "Use not treatment", so might argue a lawyer for the animal abuser? The issue is not just abolishing use as Francione proclaims. And again, not just straight vegan education, but also much more highly publicized anti-cruelty laws and campaigns are helping people to take animals more seriously. And many individuals are going vegan as a direct or indirect result of such campaigns. This is easy enough to explain. Once you crack the shell of speciesism, thorough anti-speciesism can result in many people's minds. Francione's "nut" - the core of his view - is cracked too. Vegan education as a panacea is part of the essence of his simplistic approach.

He now indicates that his fundamental approach is non-violence. But look at his "theory" of non-violence in action! We are asked to conclude with him that how you treat someone has nothing to do with a non-violence approach. That is one of the most ludicrous things you will ever read. It would be hard even to make up a more wildly deficient non-violence theory. If I wrote in a fictional story that someone embraced and promoted a non-violence theory according to which treatment does not matter, I would be accused of violating my artistic license, because the suspension of disbelief would have been destroyed. But with respect to Francione: believe it, folks! Imagine a "non-violence" specialist going around to schools and telling students it does not matter how they treat each other, but only whether they use each other - such as for learning! Yet he says his approach is based in non-violence, and is entitled to ignore treatment, instead looking to use. So this must be his view by force of logic, or illogic in his case. His only other option is to say that non-violence does include treatment, but that his approach to animal law is not thoroughly based in non-violence for some mysterious reason. Every insult of factory farming is a separate piece of violence working together in infernal concert. His "new" theory of non-violence seems to be that merely "using" someone is violence - or the only "significant" form of violence - and that is not only nonsense, but dangerous nonsense. Its adoption will and does result in countless multitudes of animals failing to be meaningfully protected from the violence of ill-treatment.

Francione says he is Jain, but I think no Jain could agree that how you treat someone is irrelevant to non-violence. Countless examples - such as using civil speech - are given about the non-violent treatment of others. Also, they absolutely revere the use-value of persons. There is a distinction, in Jainism, between the monks and the "householders" as they are termed. The monks live supported by the laity, and this using of the rest of the community is considered extremely honorable on both sides. Jains would wonder about any person asserting the contrary about treatment being irrelevant and use of persons unacceptable. I say nothing in particular about any individuals, but I am prepared to make the generalization that anyone for whom how animals are treated is not an issue is offering a study in cruelty. It is hard for me to imagine anyone discounting "treatment" with a straight face. And yet, if someone does so, I can only evision it as being a very cold face.

Perhaps he thinks the only way to end cruelty is to end use, but such a view is scarcely tenable. The Swedes made huge inroads against cruelty for over twenty-four years in an arena veganism never touched: their ban of factory farming in 1988. Whatever animals remain in agriculture are literally the animals that the vegans could not save. Now if a Francione-type had defeated their anti-cruelty campaign, billions of animals would have lived hellish - Holocaustian - rather than more bucolic lives.

It can conclusively be proven that the new, self-so-called "nutshell" for Francione's abolitionist approach is seriously and fundamentally cracked. We will not indicate that it is "nuts", let us say - it is not insane people necessarily who adhere to this doctrine. Nevertheless the "nutshell" is just as intellectually and morally untenable as the more elaborated version.

Francione has the unenviable trait of being on the wrong side of the debate. In such a case, arguments on the wrong side can usually be refuted in clear enough terms to be embarrassing for normal people. And even to cause them to switch sides. But some people prefer to shield themselves with a cracked nutshell from facts, logic, and compassion. It is not a strategy that is destined to survive in the evolution of ideas. Ignoring disproving facts and arguments is already a dead-end in ideological discourse - because that will always be the case. The most useful treatment for Francionist, indirectly violent dogmas is to discard them. Sometimes a nutshell just needs a good nutcracker.

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

My Personal Influences towards Non-Violence

I have commented a little on this question on AR Zone. Here we have something a good bit more thorough:

1. I had known about Jainism - an ancient religion that essentially originated the non-violence principle - since the 1980s. I knew a number of Jains back then, in my hometown of Toronto, Canada, including an aspiring monk, a so-called "white guy" named Bruce Costain, who was also writing a doctoral thesis on non-violence ethics. As well, I knew his mentor: Irena Upenieks. Another "white" person as that odd and unscientific term is used. Irena was also the biggest early influence on Gary Francione towards Jainism I was told by Irena herself, who had gone to a conference Gary attended. I was not there myself. I was also friends with another disciple of Irena's who was Jain, another so-termed "white" guy named Michael Proudfoot, who was not a scholar but just very nice and lucidly intelligent. You could just see the insightfulness sparkling from his eyes with that guy. I additionally, through these people, met other more traditionally ethnic Jain adults and youth. I hung out with the Jain Youth Group that existed at the time. This familiarity with Jainism gave me the basic principle of non-violence as a structure, although the Jains never convinced me to emphasize non-violence as the central principle.
2. I had researched Jainism, including writing the article on that religion for the Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare (1998), and so I have elaborated my knowledge of Jainism and non-violence over the years.
3. Tom Regan's The Case for Animal Rights was highly influential on me, and he posited the harm principle, which of course is stringent about avoiding harm. (Never liked the name for that idea though: nonharming or something of that nature - indeed non-violence - would have been better.) Regan confessed in certain writings such as his autobiography in The Struggle for Animal Rights that he was heavily influenced by one of the #1 writers and proponents concerning non-violence, namely Mohandas Gandhi.
4. I wrote about non-violence (using that term explicitly), such as in the flyer I composed for the University of Toronto Students for the Ethical Treatment of Animals group I was active with starting from the late 80s, and led for a time. My own ethical theory of best caring has long had a right to non-violence (in those words) too. Anyway, the most key practical principle of my theory was non-harming, or minimizing harm in dilemmas, so the theory was very key to my thinking, though it still was not the central ethical principle at the same time. The best caring principle was. And I did not always use the label, "non-violence".
5. I was generally convinced by arguments that I myself came up with to make non-violence overarching, but there was a personal experience pertaining to an animal rights activist that I did find influential. I listened to Gary Yourofsky's much-touted "Best Speech Ever", on January 7, 2011, as my personal diary records. It was indeed very powerful and really highlighted to me the violence to which animals are routinely subjected. It got me all freshly fired up, beyond my usual strong motivation for animal rights and so on. However, I also noted a video in which he said he agreed with killing "the direct abusers of animals". Sounds a lot like murdering vivisectors, doesn't it? A type of tactic I find disturbing, repellent and wrong, although the publicizing of my case for this conclusion will have to wait. I respect that this other Gary wishes to defend the innocent and I agree with him that violence such as self-defence is sometimes justified, but I believe he goes too far and that this sort of thing is highly detrimental to the animal rights cause.
6. Given fresh activation somehow by GY's first talk mentioned, I started seeing how nonharming could account for more than I previously thought. Then a good friend of mine, Michael Schwab - over dinner at his apartment with his wife, JoAnne - told me I should use the term "non-violence" . I resisted with many objections and counter-arguments. I thought minimizing harm was better. I thought about it deeply and extensively and then got back to him and agreed he was right in the end, for reasons I cannot go into here. Michael was also, obviously, a key influence here. The Schwabs first inducted me into animal rights activism with their group, Canadian Vegans for Animal Rights (C-VAR). Bruce Costain, the Jain (gee, I never noticed that rhymes perfectly before!), was a founding member along with the Schwabs and some others. They organized protests around the city; attracted a lot of print, TV, and radio media, including appearances on various talk shows; ran a radio show on University of Toronto radio called "The Extended Circle" (after Albert Schweitzer's saying about humans expanding the circle of their compassion); led campus activism; did a lot of talks such as at universities and elsewhere; brought a ton of speakers up here, including Tom Regan; prepared a very detailed and interesting newsletter called Conscience; ran ad campaigns; pushed for legislation such as banning the veal crate in Ontario; and so on. Wow, right? I am honoured and privileged to have been influenced by Michael Schwab again in this recent case. I recall how, way back in the 1980s, I began with reservations about so-called "medical" vivisection, one of Michael's keen specialties besides factory farming. I first became an anti-vivisectionist right in their presence, as it suddenly dawned on me at one of the social gatherings they had organized. This is parallel to Regan, who defended some medical vivisection in a published paper that later became completely overridden by The Case.

Those I suppose were my big influences, besides more amorphous ones such as my parents and teachers.

"Kaufman", whoever that is, wondered in a comment on my blog entry for September 10, 2012, if I "leaned on" Francione as an inspiration for non-violence. I don't believe so, and I can clearly explain how and why. As I noted earlier, I was not as conversant with Francione on non-violence as was "Kaufman", but that is not really the point here. I knew when I made the principle my central emphasis in 2011 that Gary was a Jain and that he, as any Jain must, considers the non-violence principle to be central to his thinking, as I have said all along, although I continue to wonder where it is in his technical writing.

There are only two ways Francione could have been an influence on me towards non-violence:

1. A personal influence, such as Tom Regan and, somewhat indirectly, Gary Yourofsky were on me
2. An intellectual influence, such as again Regan provided with The Case for Animal Rights

In order: I used to look up to Gary Francione and admire him a great deal before he fled that debate with me rather than clarify his stance in relation to my essay, "Animal Rights Law". Thus he failed to provide me with the academic assistance he said he would in that on-line debate - which involved that essay in draft. And he went from being extremely positive about my academic work - and I mean "first-rate" positive quite literally - to being so negative that he describes me as "committing literally insane acts", "incoherent", completely out of touch with reality, dishonest, and so on. From these descriptions by Gary, you would think that I am a morally decrepit, mentally disabled person who cannot even string together coherent speech. That is highly insulting, unobjective, and completely different from the appraisals of other leading scholars in this movement - including Gary himself in the early years when he read a book draft of mine plus my doctoral thesis. I utterly document all of the abuses mentioned in my blog entry that secretly peeked into his private Abolitionist Approach Forum. There, both myself and my work were extensively abused by himself and his cronies. That blog entry links to the telling proof of a transcript, complete with participant photos and so forth, leaked by a friend. As I've mentioned before, too, Francionism became less appealing to me when a very prominent Francionist wrote to various officials at Brock University in an unsuccessful bid to block my being rehired - I blocked that move myself when I caught wind of it, including with the support of some very powerful allies in the animal rights scholarly movement. There was a lot more garbage, frankly, that I will not enter into here.

So no, just because Gary embraces a view, I have zero inclination to agree with him, since I do not trust his judgment and have posted ever so many critiques where I try to show how his critical thinking goes astray. What about what he gets right, such as respect for sentient beings, animal rights, anti-speciesism, and so forth? Fine and well, but I had all of these assets quite independently of Francione. Regan influenced me in all of these respects except for the matter of sentient beings, which other people emphasized such as Peter Singer and others. Come to think of it, Singer first got me going as an anti-speciesist too, and credit must go where it is due.

What about subconscious influences? Well, how can anyone know about their subconscious without the subconscious bit disappearing and being replaced with consciousness? Suffice it to say I do not dream about GF leading rallies and swooning over his words, obsessively following his march to that different drum. But seriously now, deep down, why would I regard him as a personal influence towards non-violence when he baselessly insults my intelligence, integrity, and even sanity, not honouring his offer to clarify his view against the "Animal Rights Law" paper I wrote, suddenly cuts off a debate with me, villifies my work, and more? I do not regard any of this, nor much besides that I have witnessed or heard about, as consistent with non-violence. So how could he, personally, stand as a credible model of non-violence to me? So much for GF as a personal influence.

Did you know that the ad hominem fallacy, meaning looking to the person rather than the evidence in general, actually has not only the negative, attacking form, but also a positive, potentially flattering form? This is an obscure but very interesting tidbit of philosophy trivia, in the areas of logic and rhetoric. Just because Hitler can be put down as a person in various ways, does not logically entail that anything he says is false. The positive version is: just because someone is admirable does not logically entail that their view is correct. Interesting, isn't it? Nevertheless, there are people whose judgment we might trust in the sense that we can be confident they are authoritative about some things, and that we would do well to pay attention to their judgments in other matters, although we must always rely on our own powers of critical thinking as well. To me, GF is not one of those trusted souls. Few people are, to me.

As for the matter of any possible intellectual influence from Gary Francione, that is zero too. Unless you count my writing against his theories as exhibiting an intellectual influence, which is fair. However, I am not writing here about overall intellectual influence. I'm reflecting on whether he influenced my positive views in general, and my favoring of non-violence in particular. Now Regan had a great influence on me, and I will always be indebted to him. The Case for Animal Rights was a masterpiece that influenced a lot of people, including GF. I will be honoured to give an invited talk at the University of Vienna next year at a conference reflecting on Regan's classic thirty years later. I'm ever so glad that they are paying my way, because I am something of a pauper. Regan and Francione were bosom buddies for many years, co-organizers of a conference called A New Generation for Animal Rights at Francione's academic home base of Rutger's University in 1993 (myself and some friends/comrades attended this), and so on.

However, GF and TR fell out over a March for the Animals, in the summer of 1996, because Regan was going to join in, even though - horror of horrors! - animal welfarists also participated. You see, Regan had a change of heart, as he was originally going to boycott the walk along with Francione. Then Francione turned on Regan. Rather like I described he turned on me, a far cry from when he wrote "with affection and respect" in my copy of his Introduction to Animal Rights. Gary went from touting Regan very powerfully and extensively in GF's early talks I attended, to considering Regan's work rather rudely and crudely (e.g., dismissing it as too "complicated"), as in the latter book. I really didn't like that. It seemed clear that Gary's personal feelings were very likely interfering with his professional judgment. I was not influenced at all by the arguments in Gary's aforementioned book, except unequivocally to reject them as a specious case against speciesism. (Other animal rights theorists such as Evelyn B. Pluhar, did have a positive influence on my animal rights views to some extent though, such as her emphasis on individual rights to liberty and welfare, after Alan Gewirth.)

I do not know that Francione has ever convinced me of anything important through argumentation, except that he was wrong. I thought his arguments were generally so poor that I found it hard to look up to him intellectually. I tried to be open-minded, but I started to see that he had very questionable judgment, and that if he came out with an argument, it was probably errant, and I should be able to use standard academic critical thinking tools such as fallacies to show the errors for those who have the training to perceive them - and many lack this. But of course you cannot prejudge, and you have to admit that someone could be right until shown to be wrong. In any event, I found that Francione was not normally receptive to these sorts of critiques. He did not learn or admit mistakes like other people I have known. I attribute that to an impairment of his objectivity in some way - as his hostile floundering about with Regan and myself seemed to me to exhibit - although I will not venture to speculate on this matter.

Certainly I was not convinced by Gary Francione, nor indeed Jainism, to embrace non-violence as an overarching principle. Their arguments for this conclusion, to the extent that they exist (in Jainism, but nothing that Gary has produced to my knowledge), failed to convince me. I had to come up with those particular arguments on my own, although clearly, I was also deeply influenced by the people and works that I have acknowledged above. In the end, it is always arguments that influence or indeed determine what I will conclude on any intellectual matter, although people and other factors do orient me, as they do other people, in ways that are not always easy to trace out. Such are the sources for this river of non-violence I am now riding in my little boat, still endeavouring to make my way to open sea.

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

P.S. Re Francione's Talks

I said I've seen a number of talks by Francione and he did not mention non-violence. Perfectly true. But I have not heard him speak in the last decade. These were early days, before he was banned from certain venues apparently. Perhaps "Kaufman" heard Gary more recently and might assume that I would have heard like talks. Alas, that is not the case. If I had had "Kaufman's" knowledge-base then what is obvious to him would have obviated my own wondering in this case. But it should never be assumed that others share the same knowledge-base.

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.

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Short version of "Animal Rights Law".

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

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

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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