Strategy posts
Anti-vivisection strategy: a suggestion
Victory over vivisection on medical grounds will advance the ethical case
UK McDonald’s in crisis
Animal equality may be a better name
Animal-movement political parties
Animals Count party for animals
Green Party and animal issues
Green Party and ritual slaughter
Friday, April 28, 2006
Strategy
UK McDonald’s in crisis
The Sunday Times of 23th April 2006 reports about McDonald’s being in crisis in Britain.
“McDonald’s faces a tough battle in the UK, having to fight declining sales, an increasingly vociferous anti-obesity lobby and intense competition” writes the London newspaper.
From our viewpoint as animal activists campaigning to spread vegetarianism, it teaches us 2 lessons in strategy:
1) Publicity campaigns carried out in major media do produce massive results. McDonald’s in the UK has been hit by all the furore surrounding the ‘health fad’, as The Sunday Times puts it, promoted in recent months by various high-profile forms of advertising. Examples of these are celebrity chefs criticizing current school meals and launching healthier alternatives to them, and the bombardment to which British TV viewers have been submitted over the Christmas holiday period with program after program highlighting the health risks of fat-rich diets, condemning a long list of foods and drinks for contributing to diseases, showing shocking or disgusting pictures of abnormally obese people (and of their body products too), and so on.
In fact, McDonald’s has not been the only commercial victim of this: fizzy, sugary drinks’ sales have been affected too.
True, McDonald’s has seen its popularity decline over a period of time for other adverse publicity reasons, but nothing has hit them as much as the recent ‘health fad’.
2) There is probably a market for a vegetarian fast food restaurants chain, a vegetarian McDonald’s. If somebody invested money, time and effort in it, it would likely be a succes. I think of it as a number of diners, American-style, sort of 50s, with juke-boxes. They should also have internet points, magazines, videos; they should become a place in which young people meet, not just to have a meal but also for social purposes, to find old friends and to make new ones. They should be aimed at youngsters, perhaps teenagers, and be perceived by them as cool and hip places.
Why? Because this is the group we want to target. Young people are already more vegetarian, on average, than the rest of the population. We want to encourage that, because they are obviously the future. Youngsters like fast food joints: there’s nothing wrong with that, per se. Our aim is to create an association in their minds between vegetarianism and places which are fun and cool, places where their friends choose to hang around, places which have nothing to do with the past but are evocative of the future, new and fresh.
This is the sort of ‘campaigning’ on which I believe we should focus more: not just on the negative, but on the positive too, and not just using reason and logic or even appeals to compassion, but also taking into consideration and acting on people’s needs, desires and psychological make-up.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Heuristic value of animal intelligence
The common idea that non-human animals are guided mostly or exclusively by ‘instinct’ or conditioned reflexes has never convinced me.
Granted, when we say ‘animals’ we use an extremely broad concept, that obviously comprises species hugely different from each other.
So, we must make distinctions here.
One of the reasons most usually given to deny that animal intelligence can be comparable to ours is to point to the animals’ not having created a visible, tangible form of it, some products.
They have not constructed buildings or written poems.
But think of dolphins, for example.
We know that dolphins are highly intelligent. Yet, how could they possibly have produced things like buildings or works of art?
The medium in which they live, primarily, and their lack of suitable limbs, a consequence of it, would have made it impossible.
Dolphins make me think of the situation in which a very intelligent human with physical disabilities might have been, possibly, in the past, when technology was not there to help. Such a person’s high intellect may have never been discovered.
I think that the best position to take on the question of the intelligence of other species is that we still do not know enough about it, in a general sense, to make a judgement. The jury is still out.
However, given this uncertainty, it is better to believe that, generally speaking, non-human animals are much more intelligent and self-aware than is commonly thought.
Why?
Because this work hypothesis has a higher heuristic value, that is it is more fertile in terms of the scientific theories and discoveries that it may lead to, than its alternative, the belief that there is nothing there to discover.
In science, when two hypotheses compete, then, coeteris paribus, ie if there is no clear reason to prefer one over the other, we should choose the hypothesis with greater heuristic potential.
Granted, when we say ‘animals’ we use an extremely broad concept, that obviously comprises species hugely different from each other.
So, we must make distinctions here.
One of the reasons most usually given to deny that animal intelligence can be comparable to ours is to point to the animals’ not having created a visible, tangible form of it, some products.
They have not constructed buildings or written poems.
But think of dolphins, for example.
We know that dolphins are highly intelligent. Yet, how could they possibly have produced things like buildings or works of art?
The medium in which they live, primarily, and their lack of suitable limbs, a consequence of it, would have made it impossible.
Dolphins make me think of the situation in which a very intelligent human with physical disabilities might have been, possibly, in the past, when technology was not there to help. Such a person’s high intellect may have never been discovered.
I think that the best position to take on the question of the intelligence of other species is that we still do not know enough about it, in a general sense, to make a judgement. The jury is still out.
However, given this uncertainty, it is better to believe that, generally speaking, non-human animals are much more intelligent and self-aware than is commonly thought.
Why?
Because this work hypothesis has a higher heuristic value, that is it is more fertile in terms of the scientific theories and discoveries that it may lead to, than its alternative, the belief that there is nothing there to discover.
In science, when two hypotheses compete, then, coeteris paribus, ie if there is no clear reason to prefer one over the other, we should choose the hypothesis with greater heuristic potential.
Is absence of emotions always rational?
We tend to define ‘emotive’ or ‘emotional’, especially as opposed to ‘rational’, as a state, or reason (in the sense of motive) characterized by the presence of emotions.
But a reason for doing something can be ‘emotional’ if it is characterized by the absence of emotions as well.
Suppose that some-one fully understands the rational ethical arguments for vegetarianism and knows that they are valid because s/he cannot find any fault with them, rationally.
But suppose that this person, nevertheless, continues eating meat because s/he emotionally does not care about the issue and likes the taste of meat.
Then, this behaviour is not dictated by reason (reason commands the opposite), but rather by emotion (lack of it).
In this case, it’s the lack of emotion that leads to a behaviour that goes against reason.
But a reason for doing something can be ‘emotional’ if it is characterized by the absence of emotions as well.
Suppose that some-one fully understands the rational ethical arguments for vegetarianism and knows that they are valid because s/he cannot find any fault with them, rationally.
But suppose that this person, nevertheless, continues eating meat because s/he emotionally does not care about the issue and likes the taste of meat.
Then, this behaviour is not dictated by reason (reason commands the opposite), but rather by emotion (lack of it).
In this case, it’s the lack of emotion that leads to a behaviour that goes against reason.
Casino, poker, gambling
Whether we want to gamble or like to gamble or not, life is a gigantic casino that forces us to constantly play a metaphorical poker.
There lies the appeal of the Deal or No Deal show on British and other TVs.
The game consists of 22 identical, sealed boxes containing varying sums of money, from 1p to £250,000 (we are now talking about British pounds). From these boxes the player, the contestant in the ‘hot seat’, has to choose which ones to open progressively. The sums which are uncovered are lost to the player who, in order to win, should keep the largest sums of money undisclosed for as long as possible.
The reason for this is that the so-called banker, a mysterious figure behind the scenes playing a sort of poker game complete with bluff and high stakes with the player, will make the player offers of money that reflect the situation of the game at different, pre-determined moments of the game.
So, for instance, if the big sums of £250,000, £100,000, £75,000 and £50,000 are still to be disclosed, the banker will make a higher offer than if these sums are revealed.
Why? Because if they are unrevealed, one of the large sums might be contained in the sealed box that the player has in front of him or her, picked up at random at the beginning of the game. Whatever sum of money is in that box the player will have won at the end of the game, unless s/he deals with the banker by accepting his offer before.
It is in the banker’s interest to make a high offer of cash if the development of the game allows the possibility of a great sum of money to be won by the player.
Remember that in the box there could be 1 penny, or there could be a quarter of a million. Real wealth, lots of cash, what they call life-changing money can be easily won and just as easily lost. There is so much at stake.
What is fascinating about this gambling TV show is exactly that: it is an entire gamble. The player has no idea how much money each of the boxes contains.
And this is the situation we are in many times in real life.
Like the players, we don’t know what’s in the boxes that we encounter in our lives, yet we must make decisions about them, about things that we have not enough knowledge about. Informed decisions are a luxury in the big casino of life; more often than not, we have to play poker, we have to download an existential game and gamble.
There lies the appeal of the Deal or No Deal show on British and other TVs.
The game consists of 22 identical, sealed boxes containing varying sums of money, from 1p to £250,000 (we are now talking about British pounds). From these boxes the player, the contestant in the ‘hot seat’, has to choose which ones to open progressively. The sums which are uncovered are lost to the player who, in order to win, should keep the largest sums of money undisclosed for as long as possible.
The reason for this is that the so-called banker, a mysterious figure behind the scenes playing a sort of poker game complete with bluff and high stakes with the player, will make the player offers of money that reflect the situation of the game at different, pre-determined moments of the game.
So, for instance, if the big sums of £250,000, £100,000, £75,000 and £50,000 are still to be disclosed, the banker will make a higher offer than if these sums are revealed.
Why? Because if they are unrevealed, one of the large sums might be contained in the sealed box that the player has in front of him or her, picked up at random at the beginning of the game. Whatever sum of money is in that box the player will have won at the end of the game, unless s/he deals with the banker by accepting his offer before.
It is in the banker’s interest to make a high offer of cash if the development of the game allows the possibility of a great sum of money to be won by the player.
Remember that in the box there could be 1 penny, or there could be a quarter of a million. Real wealth, lots of cash, what they call life-changing money can be easily won and just as easily lost. There is so much at stake.
What is fascinating about this gambling TV show is exactly that: it is an entire gamble. The player has no idea how much money each of the boxes contains.
And this is the situation we are in many times in real life.
Like the players, we don’t know what’s in the boxes that we encounter in our lives, yet we must make decisions about them, about things that we have not enough knowledge about. Informed decisions are a luxury in the big casino of life; more often than not, we have to play poker, we have to download an existential game and gamble.
Vegetarianism
Vegetarianism and animal farming posts
The Immorality of Eating Meat: Reflections on Engel's essay
Health benefits of vegetarian diet
Vegetarian dogs
Vegetarian cats
UK McDonald’s in crisis
Green Party and animal issues
Green Party and ritual slaughter
The half vegan monks who are the world's healthiest people
Carcinogens, food poisoning and meat
Eating bacon and sausages every day increases cancer risk by 20%, new authoritative report says
Growth in animal farming increases disease risks for humans, says FAO
Big changes for free-range hens & chickens in EU law & UK consumers demand
This week's Observer article on broiler chickens
RSPCA Freedom Food under scrutiny
Junk food diet is killing UK's pets, say vets of leading charity
Meat workers health problems
Thursday, April 13, 2006
The Immorality of Eating Meat: Reflections on Engel's essay
I have read, as suggested by Animal Ethics, Mylan Engel's essay "The Immorality of Eating Meat".
This is what it made me think.
Often, when one argues for vegetarianism, one hears a reply by somebody who claims s/he has no duty to be vegetarian because ‘plants feel pain too’. Therefore, so the claim goes, since we must eat something and anything we may eat was alive and sentient, we may as well eat whatever we like.
When we demonstrate to the person who made that claim that s/he is actually causing the death of, on average, 10 times as many plants by eating meat as s/he would if vegetarian, due to the waste of nutrients along the food chain, what happens? Does that person realize that, in virtue of the claim that himself/herself has made, s/he should, if consistent, become vegetarian?
Never.
What does all this tell you?
It tells you that the alleged reason for continuing meat-eating (in this case sentience of plants) was not a reason at all, but rather an excuse that that person, albeit misguidedly and naively, found convenient for the purpose.
When I read Mylan Engel's essay "The Immorality of Eating Meat", I was reminded of that type of occurrence.
As Engels himself at one point admits, philosophers who reject the ethical argument for vegetarianism are relying on excuses, not reasons.
All of which begs the question: what is the point of trying to convince them by re-formulating the argument in a different way?
His argument, with his stress on avoiding unnecessary suffering, on performing calculations balancing pleasure and pain of all involved, and on animals' sentient nature, seems to me a re-formulation of the utilitarian argument.
His quotation from the philosopher Bonnie Steinbock in her Speciesism And The Idea Of Equality is particularly interesting. In that paper she writes:
‘I doubt that anyone will be able to come up with a concrete and morally relevant difference that would justify, say, using a chimpanzee in an experiment rather than a human being with less capacity for reasoning, moral responsibility, etc. Should we then experiment on the severely retarded? Utilitarian considerations aside (the difficulty of comparing intelligence between species, for example), we feel a special obligation to care for the handicapped members of our own species, who cannot survive in this world without such care. Nonhuman animals manage very well, despite their "lower intelligence" and lesser capacities; most of them do not require special care from us. This does not, of course, justify experimenting on them. However, to subject to experimentation those people who depend on us seems even worse than subjecting members of other species to it. In addition, when we consider the severely retarded, we think, "That could be me." It makes sense to think that one might have been born retarded, but not to think that one might have been born a monkey. And so, although one can imagine oneself in the monkey's place, one feels a closer identification with the severely retarded human being. Here we are getting away from such things as "morally relevant differences" and are talking about something much more difficult to articulate, namely, the role of feelings and sentiment in moral thinking.’
Funny. I thought that the role of philosophy, since the time of Socratic dialogue, was to challenge what we feel to be true and analyze if it stands up to the scrutiny of reason and logic, and not to use our feelings as the basis of our theories.
This is what it made me think.
Often, when one argues for vegetarianism, one hears a reply by somebody who claims s/he has no duty to be vegetarian because ‘plants feel pain too’. Therefore, so the claim goes, since we must eat something and anything we may eat was alive and sentient, we may as well eat whatever we like.
When we demonstrate to the person who made that claim that s/he is actually causing the death of, on average, 10 times as many plants by eating meat as s/he would if vegetarian, due to the waste of nutrients along the food chain, what happens? Does that person realize that, in virtue of the claim that himself/herself has made, s/he should, if consistent, become vegetarian?
Never.
What does all this tell you?
It tells you that the alleged reason for continuing meat-eating (in this case sentience of plants) was not a reason at all, but rather an excuse that that person, albeit misguidedly and naively, found convenient for the purpose.
When I read Mylan Engel's essay "The Immorality of Eating Meat", I was reminded of that type of occurrence.
As Engels himself at one point admits, philosophers who reject the ethical argument for vegetarianism are relying on excuses, not reasons.
All of which begs the question: what is the point of trying to convince them by re-formulating the argument in a different way?
His argument, with his stress on avoiding unnecessary suffering, on performing calculations balancing pleasure and pain of all involved, and on animals' sentient nature, seems to me a re-formulation of the utilitarian argument.
His quotation from the philosopher Bonnie Steinbock in her Speciesism And The Idea Of Equality is particularly interesting. In that paper she writes:
‘I doubt that anyone will be able to come up with a concrete and morally relevant difference that would justify, say, using a chimpanzee in an experiment rather than a human being with less capacity for reasoning, moral responsibility, etc. Should we then experiment on the severely retarded? Utilitarian considerations aside (the difficulty of comparing intelligence between species, for example), we feel a special obligation to care for the handicapped members of our own species, who cannot survive in this world without such care. Nonhuman animals manage very well, despite their "lower intelligence" and lesser capacities; most of them do not require special care from us. This does not, of course, justify experimenting on them. However, to subject to experimentation those people who depend on us seems even worse than subjecting members of other species to it. In addition, when we consider the severely retarded, we think, "That could be me." It makes sense to think that one might have been born retarded, but not to think that one might have been born a monkey. And so, although one can imagine oneself in the monkey's place, one feels a closer identification with the severely retarded human being. Here we are getting away from such things as "morally relevant differences" and are talking about something much more difficult to articulate, namely, the role of feelings and sentiment in moral thinking.’
Funny. I thought that the role of philosophy, since the time of Socratic dialogue, was to challenge what we feel to be true and analyze if it stands up to the scrutiny of reason and logic, and not to use our feelings as the basis of our theories.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
A point of view is inevitable. And desirable too
The idea that one should not have a point of view when writing is fallacious.
This is an idea frequently encountered in the old and new media alike.
For example, Wikipedia, an online community site which, nonetheless, carries many interesting and useful articles, says:
‘Our Wikipedia community has by experience developed an informal hierarchy of core principles — the most important being that articles be written with a neutral point of view.’
A neutral point of view for a writer is just as possible as a neutral point of view for a camera. That is: totally impossible.
Imagine a photograph taken by a camera.
The camera has to be placed somewhere. The picture taken will be different from the picture of the same subject taken from a different spot. The angle will be different, and will give a dissimilar view of this particular piece of reality.
But it is simply inevitable.
The camera needs a place to stand. It would be impossible to shoot a photo from a place which covers all space, or that, even better, does not exist in space, although either could certainly be called neutral.
Exactly the same thing happens when someone writes.
Even if the writer did not have a point of view on a subject prior to writing on it, s/he must have a point of view once s/he has started writing, which is to say has started thinking about it (unless of course someone copies or otherwise writes unthinkingly, which would be worthless).
If you think about it carefully, neutral point of view is a contradiction in terms and, since language corresponds to thought, this shows that a neutral point of view is an absurd concept.
So, the best practice in writing is not to strive for a neutrality or independence which are not only impossible but perhaps not even desirable, because a thought (a point of view) is what gives spice and interest to a piece of writing.
The best practice, I think, is not to hide one’s opinions under a screen, to declare them and to make them explicit.
This, I believe, is less deceitful than to fake impartiality.
And, following the example of science and philosophy, by confronting many subjective points of view we are more likely to arrive, if not at objectivity, at least at an inter-subjective result.
Let’s take pictures of the same thing from different angles.
Science and philosophy, the most rational human activities, encourage debate and controversy by asking the participants to give reasons (arguments, logic, empirical evidence, satistics) that support their point of view, and not to deny it.
This is an idea frequently encountered in the old and new media alike.
For example, Wikipedia, an online community site which, nonetheless, carries many interesting and useful articles, says:
‘Our Wikipedia community has by experience developed an informal hierarchy of core principles — the most important being that articles be written with a neutral point of view.’
A neutral point of view for a writer is just as possible as a neutral point of view for a camera. That is: totally impossible.
Imagine a photograph taken by a camera.
The camera has to be placed somewhere. The picture taken will be different from the picture of the same subject taken from a different spot. The angle will be different, and will give a dissimilar view of this particular piece of reality.
But it is simply inevitable.
The camera needs a place to stand. It would be impossible to shoot a photo from a place which covers all space, or that, even better, does not exist in space, although either could certainly be called neutral.
Exactly the same thing happens when someone writes.
Even if the writer did not have a point of view on a subject prior to writing on it, s/he must have a point of view once s/he has started writing, which is to say has started thinking about it (unless of course someone copies or otherwise writes unthinkingly, which would be worthless).
If you think about it carefully, neutral point of view is a contradiction in terms and, since language corresponds to thought, this shows that a neutral point of view is an absurd concept.
So, the best practice in writing is not to strive for a neutrality or independence which are not only impossible but perhaps not even desirable, because a thought (a point of view) is what gives spice and interest to a piece of writing.
The best practice, I think, is not to hide one’s opinions under a screen, to declare them and to make them explicit.
This, I believe, is less deceitful than to fake impartiality.
And, following the example of science and philosophy, by confronting many subjective points of view we are more likely to arrive, if not at objectivity, at least at an inter-subjective result.
Let’s take pictures of the same thing from different angles.
Science and philosophy, the most rational human activities, encourage debate and controversy by asking the participants to give reasons (arguments, logic, empirical evidence, satistics) that support their point of view, and not to deny it.
Contractarianism
Contractarianism is a moral theory saying that moral rules are a sort of a contract, and therefore only beings who can understand the terms of the contract are bound by it.So, strictly speaking, moral rules should apply only to behaviour among normal adult human beings, but they could be extended to also cover beings that the people who entered the ‘contract’ care about, like their children for example, for reasons of indirect duty.
Other groups who could be protected by the moral rules of the contract in this indirect way are, shall we say, the groups protected by ‘political correctness’, that is whoever the majority of the human population cares enough about or anyway whoever it is considered a duty to care about by what happens to be the current ideological orthodoxy.One problem with contractarianism is that it betrays the very purpose of philosophy.
Since its beginning in ancient Greece, philosophy has always had the role of challenging the ideas currently held by the majority.
A moral theory that, in principle, simply justifies and accepts whatever the majority happens to believe is more than a philosophical failure: it is a complete redundancy. People do what they like to do and what they’ve always found it easy to do anyway, there is no need for philosophers to pat them on the back and say: ‘Well done!’.
Monday, April 10, 2006
Other
Other posts
Animal-movement political parties
A point of view is inevitable. And desirable too
Casino, poker, gambling
Theory of cheap ideas
Animals victims of road traffic
Buddhism
Online poll on the circus' treatment of elephants
Are pesticides saving animals' lives?
Christmas Anti-Fur Week at Harrods
Ethical wool
New Global Network Against the Fur Industry
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