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There are some who think that, just because I am critical of some silly notions held by some so-called “leaders” in the animal rights movement, I am out to destroy the animal rights movement itself. That’s silliness on top of silliness. I can’t help it that it’s just silly to think that bees “own” honey, or that elephants are vegans who think about justice. Such ideas are just silly and they don’t need my help to be silly.
If other people wish to believe that we’re going to change the world by spouting nonsense, I say they should knock themselves out. I happen to have more faith in the common man, and think that he can and will see through silliness when it’s in view.
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You are making lots of sense. Everyone should be willing to accept criticism. That’s a great (though sometimes painful) way to learn new things.
Wait Tim, you aren’t the devil incarnate? I always thought you were.
I see your points above but I do take issue with some of them, or at least with the examples you cite. With respect to bees and honey, you dismiss the notion that bees “own” honey as silly. But that depends. What do you mean by “own”? Sure, bees don’t own their honey the same way I may own a car or a house, with a deed or other documents that are recognized legally. But that doesn’t address the fact that bees gather and produce honey for humans. The simple truth is that they do it for themselves, and we disrupt, if not destroy, their homes and take their food when we take their honey.
With respect to your elephant example, I think you are being uncharacteristically disingenuous. I don’t know anyone who says that elephants think about justice as we know it (if someone has said that, I stand corrected, but please let me know who). But that doesn’t mean elephants can’t think about, in some way we humans can’t yet understand, some sort of fairness. And in any case, that doesn’t mean that humans can’t consider what happens to elephants to be an injustice from the elephants’ perspective. And if elephants only eat plants, sure they’re herbivores, but why can’t they be called vegans? I might actually see your point about calling animals vegan i.e., they don’t understand the concepts behind veganism so it doesn’t make sense to call them vegan, as veganism has thoughts behind it, whereas the term “herbivore” is more of an objective, descriptive, scientific term (is that your reasoning?)
I curse ye, animal rights movement-destroying devil!
Hi Pranav,
Bees don’t own the honey they produce any more than apple trees own the apples they produce. Bees make honey, because that’s what bees do. They don’t want to do it, they don’t choose to do it, they cannot help but to do it. They haven’t any relevant concepts of ownership, they don’t think in terms of property, they don’t have any expectations about the present of future status of the honey they produce. Having said all that, it’s good for bees to be able to what bees do and it’s bad for bees when they are negatively interfered with. Whether such interference can ever be justified is a good question. I think that the answer is yes. Sometimes that things that are bad for bees will be justified or excused by the goods for others that are at stake.
Francione said on Facebook that anyone who claims that elephants don’t understand justice makes a claim they can’t support (because we just can’t know whether elephants understand justice); he said that making such a claim was silly, if I recall correctly. (He said something else as well, that I may not be recalling correctly, but I believe it was to the effect that for humans to think that other animals haven’t the relevant cognitive capacities for moral reasoning must be a result of speciesism or human supremicism.) Francione’s views on this are silly and the idea that we can’t know whether elephants understand justice is absurd. It may be difficult to determine how we can know whether another creature has and employs a concept of justice, but it’s not impossible and it certainly isn’t speciesism or human supremicism to withhold ascribing capacities that they may not have to other animals. Questions about whether some animals exhibit some forms of rudimentary moral behaviors are difficult to answer, but it seems to me that in order to actually be motivated by a sense of justice or fairness a being must possess 1) a theory of mind and 2) the ability to think in the way that only language enables one to think (two things which may be inseparable). We’ve no evidence of which I’m aware that establishes either of those things in any other animal, so until we do have such evidence, it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that no other animal thinks or acts out of a sense of justice or fairness.
Yes, I believe that you have given a reasonable summary of my thoughts about what makes one vegan. Veganism, as I understand it, is a practice that is a matter of rational choice, not a matter of biology, so it makes no sense to call others vegan who make no choice one way or the other whether to eat or otherwise consume animals.
Thanks, as always, for your comments!!
I am trying to get better at accepting criticism. I’ll admit that doing so has not been my strongest suit.
Tim, at first I agreed about your point about bees just making honey, as something they do. But it seems that the way you characterize bees is like automatons. Maybe there is some rudimentary thought, in a very basic sense, associated with it. We can’t know for certain what goes on in any animal’s mind, but considering that humans are animals, maybe we can observe our own minds and get an idea.
Let’s look at sex (or hunger, or thirst, or feelings of cold, for instance), a very emotional act. For humans, when arousal (or hunger) occurs, the human acts in a way to satiate that desire. Now, the human is acting on emotion, but the human still needs to know what actions will allow him to get what he wants, so there is some reasoning going on. Considering that all animals, including bees, need to be able to know how to get what they want, they also need to know what CAN’T get them what they want, and that needs a certain level of thought. So I can’t fully believe your characterization of bees.
And I’m sure you know this, but your view that interference in other animals’ lives is sometimes justified raises a whole host of issues, which I’m sure others have argued with you over Just sayin’.
Hi Pranav,
As human beings, there is a sense in which we cannot help but to eat. I’m not sure that this is the result of ‘emotions’; perhaps either ‘affects’ or ‘drives’ would be a better word? Anyway, in that sense, we are like automatons when it comes to eating. To those who may object to this idea, I think that if we think about conditions of abject hunger, and what humans will do to satisfy such hunger, then we can see that in a real way, we could be said to have no real choice in the matter. However, this also shows how we are not like bees and lots of other animals. I suppose that it’s not the case that other animals are capable of starving themselves to death on a hunger strike for a moral cause. Now, that we have no choice (in some sense) but to eat, that doesn’t mean that we also have no choice what to eat, or when to eat, or how often to eat, etc. So, as humans eat and do other things simply because those things are part of the nature of us being alive, bees make honey and do other things as part of the nature of them being alive. Do bees, even though they have no choice but to make honey, have the sort of choices that we have in eating? I’ll have to re-read all that I’ve read about bees, but I think the answer is “not really”, at least not at all in the same way or to the same degree that we have choices in eating.
My view that harmful interference in the lives of others will sometimes be justified or excusable doesn’t hinge solely on whether those others have the same ability to make choices in life as we think we do. I don’t think that any life has inherent of absolute value, so I don’t accept that there can never be instances in which some lives will be justifiably sacrificed for some good reason.
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