Another Tutorial handout 10, 03, 09

10, 03, 09

Hello again.

Just a reminder that the final essay is due after the Easter break, on 21^st April. You just need to make sure that you select an essay title from the SE4101 list if the essay you have recently handed in was from the SE4102 list, and vice-versa. I’ve marked your essays and will hand them back this Friday 13^th March, between 10 o’clock and midday.

This week’s opinion piece

 It’s on speciesism in the moral sphere:

Most of us wish to live morally, conducive to which is that we should either be good or avoid getting caught. What is totally unfair, I think, is that only we humans are expected to show the self-restraint that being good requires, the essence of which is consideration for other people unless they hit you first. When it comes to other species, they can behave as badly as they like without incurring our disapproval, as is graphically illustrated by a very distressing personal experience of mine. I was on a train with a beatitude of nuns – this being the collective term for them – when all at once a gang of chimpanzees burst into our carriage and proceeded to create utter chaos and mayhem. They were as common as could be, excreting and playing with themselves while shrieking and jabbering; some hung upside down from the luggage racks and leered at the sisters or smacked their lips, their own, not the sisters’, and one even sat on the mother superior’s head and snatched her beads away. I was so incensed by this outrageous behaviour that I closed the philosophy book I was reading, but the mother superior just smiled at me and said that God loves all creatures, even the most disruptive of them. Just imagine, I said, if a gang of football hooligans had behaved like that, hanging naked upside down and so on; I don’t think you would have been so tolerant then, I said, and very likely you would have complained to the police and had them arrested.

This only goes to show that there is rampant discrimination against human beings with regard to what counts as acceptable behaviour, other species being given far more latitude than we give ourselves. I well remember how shocked I was when I saw my first TV nature programme; it showed the wildlife of the Serengeti National Park, and it was the first time I had ever seen lions or zebras. I was thinking how pretty they all were when all at once I found myself witnessing the most shocking scenes. One minute the zebras were grazing peacefully and the lions were playing with their cuddly little cubs, and the next minute I could hardly believe my eyes when the mother lions launched a completely unprovoked attack on the zebras and actually jumped on one of them and started biting and scratching it; and then, unbelievably, they ate it.

This crime was watched by millions of people, and the camera crew were witnesses at the scene, as was the presenter, David Attenborough; and yet, not a single one of those lions has been arrested or even brought in for questioning. They are still at large and have not even had their cubs taken away from them and put into care, despite the violent and anti-social behaviour of the parents, which no doubt is being passed on to the next generation. If it is morally wrong for people to kill and eat one another, then surely the same is true for other animals.

This week’s joke:

A linguistics professor was lecturing to his class one day. ‘In English’, he said, ‘a double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language in which a double positive can form a negative.’

A voice from the back of the room piped up, ‘Yeah, right.’

Discussion topic

Here are last week’s notes on Singer’s environmentalism:

Chapter 10 of Practical Ethics is devoted to concern for the environment. Singer considers the different values involved in the debate about whether or not to build a hydro-electric dam in an area of unspoilt wilderness. He says:

In general we can say that those who favour building the dam are valuing employment and a higher per capita income for the state above the preservation of wilderness, of plants and animals…, and of opportunities for outdoor recreational activities. (page 265)

According to Singer the traditional western attitude to nature is anthropocentric, which is to say that nature is valued only for the benefit it confers on our species. Even within this tradition, he says, strong arguments may be deployed in favour of preserving the environment, both with regard to direct benefits and with regard to recreational use and the appreciation of nature. For instance, our concern about global warming and climate change is based on human self-interest, the danger to other species being of secondary importance. And if such interest includes the pleasure we derive from contact with nature – he gives the example of trekking through pristine forest – then a strong case can be made for rejecting the proposal to build a dam.

These arguments gather strength from considering not just our own interests but those of future generations; and this is the case, he says, even if we allow for the possibility that those not yet born will turn away from the appreciation of nature in favour of living in a completely artificial environment. This is to envisage that present trends will continue, for it is already the case that many urban dwellers worldwide have no direct contact with wilderness areas. Indeed, it could be argued that we in Britain (Singer is Australian) have no access to truly wild areas, with the exception of Cardiff City Center on a Saturday night, and that it makes little difference whether we live in town or in the country. The British countryside, after all, is as much a product of human design as is any suburban garden – it’s just bigger. There is a point here that I shall pick up on later; for the moment, we need only remind ourselves that for Singer the lives of future generations will be impoverished if they cease to appreciate the wild places of the world. And he believes, as we have seen, that human self-interest dictates that hydro-electric dams should not be built in wilderness areas, the short-term economic gains being outweighed by the long-term benefit, if future people are considered, of preserving such places in their unspoilt state.

Having made that point, he now asks whether the interests of non-human forms of life should also be placed in the scales when weighing up the factors in favour of preservation. His thesis, as we know, is that sentient creatures have intrinsic value, and for that reason he thinks that we must also consider the interests of the animals who occupy the particular area that it is proposed to develop, if such development would damage or destroy their natural habitat. He draws the line, however, at investing non-sentient forms of life with intrinsic worth, and at this point he parts company with the holistic environmental ethics of those who argue that trees and flowers have intrinsic worth and should be preserved for their own sake. There is even a radical point of view which claims that inanimate nature has intrinsic value, so that the landscape itself should be preserved for its own sake. But Singer can make little sense of this, and perhaps has no need to, for he would argue, I think, that rocks and ravines and rivers and mountains should be preserved in order that we and those who come after us may continue to enjoy them.

Let us turn, very briefly, to an evaluation of Singer’s views. I said that I would pick up on what was said earlier, and it concerned the lack of any truly wild places in Britain. It seems doubtful to me that we are thereby impoverished, as Singer seems to imply that we should be, and the reason, I think, is that the British countryside, tame and manicured as it is, still manages to satisfy out desire for contact with nature. If that desire is partly aesthetic, then many people would say that the British countryside is beautiful, once the chemical sprays have cleared away from the fields, and perhaps they would even go further and say that an ordinary suburban garden can also be a thing of beauty, and that working in a garden fulfils a need for contact with nature. So it may be, I suggest, that we adjust our desires in order to bring them into line with opportunities for satisfying them, and it would then make sense that we satisfy our desire for contact with nature by gardening, or by going for a county ramble rather than trekking through the Australian wilderness –– or even by strolling in the local municipal park, with its greenery and its flower borders. The point here is that people are adaptable, and one wonders whether Singer has overlooked this in his insistence that the appreciation of nature requires the preservation of wilderness.

What is clear from this outline of Singer’s environmentalism is that it owes a great deal to what he sees as our obligation to future generations. And yet, he makes very little attempt to argue in support of our having such an obligation, which instead he seems to take for granted, perhaps because he assumes that we would all agree with him. He may be right, but I still think that a discussion is needed.

 Is there, perhaps, a utilitarian basis for such an obligation? We know, after all, that a utilitarian would consider a person’s future interests, and we also know that for Singer it is essential to being a person that one should be able to take the future into account and expect one’s future desires to be satisfied. But there is a difference between the future interests of a present person and those of future generations, and it may be that this difference is relevant to the question of obligation. To see whether it is, we could perhaps consider an intermediate situation: that in which a person is not yet born but at some time can expect to be, or could expect to be if, as a foetus, it were capable of expectation. We know that Singer is in favour of abortion in certain circumstances, consistent with which is his rejection of the argument that a foetus or embryo has a right to life because it is potentially a person, with all that this implies about its possible future happiness. It would follow from that argument, as he points out in rejecting it, that contraception would be tantamount to abortion, since in both cases one destroys a potential person.

But now, I think we have to ask whether Singer is guilty of inconsistency here, for if the potential for happiness of a foetus is of no account, then why should we consider the potential for happiness inherent in the possibility of there being future generations? Perhaps Singer would argue that it is more to do with unhappiness than happiness. After all, we have a duty to consider the likely future suffering involved in allowing a severely damaged foetus to go to term, and it is very often in order to prevent such suffering that abortions are carried out. Similarly, or so the argument goes, we have a duty with regard to future generations to prevent the suffering that our present actions will cause if we continue to vandalize the planet.

But then, why does he not consider the possibility of terminating the human race? We know that future people, if we allow them to exist, will be sad and miserable because of global warming, which it is very unlikely that we are going to be able to bring under control. We can prevent that suffering by outlawing human procreation, with enforced abortion as the penalty for those who break the law. In that way we can prevent all the suffering which otherwise will cascade down the generations, just as we now prevent individual suffering by killing a damaged foetus.

Another possibility is that of compulsory sterilization of all newborn babies in order to bring about the gradual extinction of the human race. One advantage would be that at least the present generation would experience all the joys of childbirth and nappy-changing, even if their sterilized adult children were themselves unfulfilled as parents. This might seem to be a severe emotional hardship, but keep in mind that if childlessness were universal, then its effects would be mitigated by just this fact of being universally experienced, so that childless couples would not be made unhappy by seeing parents cooing to their babies or smacking their children in supermarket aisles.

Why is it, then, that Singer makes no mention of such possibilities as a solution to the problem of the future unhappiness of humankind? The reason, surely, is that he is also concerned with their happiness, and in fact he writes of saving wilderness areas for the enjoyment of future people.

But these are people who do not yet exist and may never be born, depending on what we now do and on whether, for example, we decide to have children. Similarly, a foetus is only potentially a person and may never be born, depending, for example, on whether the decision is made to abort it. According to Singer this potential is not a reason to decide against abortion, though the likelihood of future suffering is a reason to decide in favour of it. Should not the same apply to our approach to future generations? If so, then we are not duty-bound to ensure their existence, and if it is likely that their lives will be blighted by misery because of global warming, or for some other reason, then perhaps we should consider terminating the human race itself. It would then be left to nature to re-colonize our roads and cities and universities, eventually to obliterate them. And the good news, at least for Singer and the environmentalists, is that the wilderness will flourish, albeit with no-one left alive to appreciate it.

Second discussion topic

The empiricism of John Locke

Locke was one of the founders of empiricism, which is the doctrine that all knowledge of the physical world derives from experience. It is then arguable that this is true of all knowledge, whether of the physical world or not, at least if an exception is made of logic and mathematics. This contrasts with, for instance, the approach of Plato, whose epistemology (theory of knowledge) is bound up with his theory of forms, which is a metaphysical theory far removed from our everyday experience of the world. Empiricism may also be contrasted with the views of Descartes, for whom knowledge of the world, or at least the justification of what we know, is based on principles of reason, as with his appeal to the revelatory force of clear and distinct ideas. Thus, an ontological argument of his is that we have a clear and distinct idea of God as a perfect being, who must therefore exist, since existence is intrinsic to perfection.

Locke was not consistently empiricist, as shown by his acquiescence in revealed religion, in which respect his views coincided with Descartes’. Still, there are important differences, and these are such as to mark out empiricism as a separate school of philosophy, the founders of which were Locke, Berkeley and Hume.

As is well known, Locke distinguishes between primary and secondary qualities with regard to the senses. The primary qualities are those in which the objective physical existence of an object resides; they are solidity, extension, shape and motion. The secondary qualities are colours, sounds, smells, tastes – in other words those features of an object which seem to belong as much to the perceiver as to the object itself. This distinction has been called into question: surely the shape of an object, for instance, is as hard to categorise as being objective or subjective as is its colour. Still, the distinction at least draws attention to a genuine problem of analysis.

Preparation for next week

Some of the remaining Monday lectures are about the philosophy of David Hume, which is likely, therefore, to figure in the exam questions, as well as being one of the essay topics. Let’s start with his theory of mind.

He says that simple ideas are based on the simple impressions which cause them, as when the experience of looking at colours gives rise to fainter ideas in the form of memories of colours or coloured objects; also, to coloured images of imagined objects.

Taking this approach, Hume would say, for instance, that a congenitally blind person cannot picture colours, or that a congenitally deaf person cannot imagine sounds, for instance by having a tune running through his or her head. This would seem to be a factual claim; as such, I do not know whether it is true.

Hume now goes further by tying ‘ideas’ to understanding and meaning, so that he would say, for instance, that a congenitally blind person cannot understand colour words. In order to comment on this, let’s assume that such people are not able to imagine colours, for instance the colour red; does it follow that they cannot understand the word ‘red’? Isn’t such understanding a matter of degree? If so, then a blind person may know that red is a colour, that colour is a property of the physical objects that he or she can detect with other senses, that  ‘red’ is an adjective and ‘redden’ is a verb, that blood and tomatoes and sunsets are red, that the colour red is associated with rage and passion. That seems to be quite a lot of understanding for someone who does not understand ‘red’. What do you think? Or would you say that experience of the actual colour is essential to the concept of red?

Is there really such a thing as a simple impression in Hume’s sense? Well, I could wake up in a world of blue; not a blue wall or blue sky, but just the colour blue all around me and through me. At the same time, perhaps other senses more easily receive simpler impressions than sight does. It is easy to imagine pure smell, not associated with any physical object as its source, or the pure sensation of cool water on hot skin. So, yes, there would seem to be simple impressions; but the world’s furniture is made up of complex physical objects such as chairs. Is one’s concept of a chair derived from simple impressions? But all one’s senses have contributed to that concept – well, perhaps not the sense of taste, unless you find licking a chair easier than flicking around it with a duster.

The point, anyway, is that it is by no means clear that one’s ‘idea’ of a chair is exclusively derived from sense-impressions; on the other hand, it could be argued that if I were congenitally blind, deaf, unable to taste or smell or feel sensations through my skin, then my understanding of the world would be somewhat limited, perhaps to the extent that I would have no concept of a chair or even of a bench.

Answer to last week's puzzle

Here it is again:

The Dollar bills

In a bag are 26 bills. If you take out 20 bills from the bag at random, you have at least one 1-dollar bill, two 2-dollar bills, and five 5-dollar bills. How much money was in the bag?

If you have at least one 1-dollar bill, you would have one if the six bills left in the bag were all 1-dollar bills. So there are seven 1-dollar bills. Do the same for the other denominations. The answer then turns out to be 78 dollars.

This Week's Puzzle

A map of the red planet displays newly discovered cities and waterways. Start at the city T on the south pole.
Travelling along the canals, visiting each city only once and returning to the starting point, can you spell out a sentence in English?

This problem, by the prolific American puzzle inventor Sam Loyd, is more than a hundred years old.
He wrote that ‘when the puzzle originally appeared in a magazine, more than fifty thousand readers reported “There is no possible way.” Yet it is a very simple puzzle.’ You will kick yourself if you read the answer before you work it out.