Plant-Thinking and Plant-Eating

I'm working this week on a talk and paper about animal welfare and genetic engineering--specifically, on the idea that perhaps we ought to "disenhance" livestock so as to prevent unnecessary pain and suffering--that I will be presenting next week at EKU's Animal Studies conference, Living with Animals.

In the process, I've been thinking and reading about the range of sentience among the animals that people eat, particularly at the "lower" end--shrimp, molluscs, and so forth. Then I receive an e-mail ad promoting Michael Marder's recent book, Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life. There's plenty to read on Marder's website, and I just had to see what "Is it ethical to eat plants?" was all about. It's a (willfully?) odd title, given that most readers will think that the answer had better be "yes!" (or what's left?). And although I like the spirit of what Marder is doing--fundamentally, he's reminding us that plants are more than a mass of tissue to eat--I found myself at times wondering who exactly he's reminding of this. Perhaps vegans and vegetarians, insofar as he wants to appeal to recent studies on plant intelligence to get us into a sense of wonder about plants, a sense of wonder which may lead to some discomfort with the idea that we will now rip from the ground and ingest this wonderful being. Marder's main idea is that the ethics of eating must take into account not only what we eat, but also how:

If there were a single recipe for respectful eating practices, it would have prescribed the following: to remember at all times that the beings we eat or experience are much more than storehouses of calories or of information and that they have a whole range of other potentialities irreducible to providing us with nourishment, including everything that falls under the category of ‘food for thought’. (33)

I am reminded here of the discussion of dietary prohibitions in Romans 14, in which Paul suggests that although in his view "all food is clean" (contra, presumably, Jewish law), we should respect the dietary restrictions others impose on themselves, and more importantly, that we must not "destroy the work of God for the sake of food." Again, how we eat is as important--if not more important--than what. Animal rights advocates may bristle at this, and argue that "Eating animals the nice way" is still less nice than Michael Pollan and Joel Salatin want to believe it is. But I'm not so sure I agree, and I'm certainly less inclined to make trouble for people who try to live close to the land and to eat locally, etc.

Marder wants to leave the "is it...?" question open. It is to stand as a never-wholly-resolved point of "food for thought":

Ethical concerns are never problems to be resolved once and for all; they make us uncomfortable and sometimes, when the sting of conscience is overwhelming, prevent us from sleeping. Being disconcerted by a single pea to the point of unrest is a metonymy for ethics as such, for the obsession that it is, inexpressible in the language of moral axioms and principles of righteousness. (36)

I agree with the implicit idea that we should be suspicious of the idea that we have sorted everything out, have solved all of our ethical problems, and may now rest. But I wonder about "obsession." To be "obsessed" with ethics, or the pea, seems problematic, unhealthy, unless what one has in mind is the kind of "obsession" Socrates exhibits in always wanting to discuss piety, courage, justice, and so forth. I guess what I'm thinking is that it would be bad if this ethical sensitivity caused one to be unable ever to feel at home and to enjoy a meal. We see, I think, where this can lead in Coetzee's The Lives of Animals.

Radical Hope & Ecological Humility

I've (finally) been reading Jonathan Lear's Radical Hope about the last principal chief of the Crow, Plenty Coups. The main question of the book is roughly: how can one go on with one's way of life in the face of circumstances which basically render that way of life obsolete? One point Lear makes that's worth restating:

...a culture does not tend to train the young to endure its own breakdown....inability to conceive of its own devastation will tend to be the blind spot of any culture. By and large a culture will not teach its young: "These are the ways in which you can succeed, and these are the ways in which you will fail; these are the dangers you might face, and here are opportunities; these acts are shameful, and these are worthy of honor--and, oh yes, one more thing, this entire structure of evaluating the world might cease to make sense." (83)

As Lear goes on to note, that final remark simply undercuts (it seems) everything that precedes it, and even though the remark is true, what can one do about it?

I've been thinking about similar questions about radical moral uncertainty in relation to ecological questions. The breakdown of current ecosystems could conceivably lead to such a point of uncertainty, which leaves old ways of life unsustained (and not simply unsustainable--the crucial point would be, as it were, the point at which things had broken down). And I've been thinking about--in light of an upcoming workshop on this issue (to which, alas, my proposal did not make the cut)--how the virtue of humility might provide some kind of answer, or how cultivating humility might be, as it were, a "preparatory virtue" of sorts (the value of which is not, however, simply limited to preparing for the collapse of one's way of life). This is part of what I said in my proposal (which I think is still worth working on):

The humble person recognizes that not every problem has a technological solution--that sometimes the solution requires changing oneself (or, by the by, one’s community). At the same time, humility does not reject technology as a viable part of our adaptation to changing environments or human needs. (It is not a luddite’s virtue either.) The humble person rather sees that no use of resources is justified if it unnecessarily diminishes diversity--human or non-human--within the world precisely because the humble person acknowledges a plurality of values and goods, and sees each as warranting as much respect as possible. As Keekok Lee points out, the humble person is also mindful of the fact that the natural world as a whole system needs our respect far less than our survival depends upon our respecting the fact of our own dependence upon a natural world that is, and continues to be, hospitable for us.* If we fail to live humbly, “the results could be that the last laugh, so to speak, would be on us, humans.”

The basic idea is that there is a kind of flexibility within humility (in contrast with the rigidity of the arrogant). Notably, Lear alludes to the relevance of humility in his discussion of Plenty Coups' need to reconceive of courage in order to lead his tribe with something recognizable as courage (and honor), when the old ways of acting with courage are no longer available.

(It's worth noting that Allen Thompson has written about applying Lear's notion of "radical hope" to the darker possibilities of climate change (here).)

* Keekok Lee, “Awe and Humility: Intrinsic Value in Nature. Beyond an Earthbound Environmental Ethics,” in Robin Attfield and Andrew Belsey, Philosophy and the Natural Environment (Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 89-101

Deep Down

In my draft essay "Ethics Beyond Sentience," I discuss mountaintop removal in Appalachia. The new film Deep Down does a very nice job getting into the complexities of the issue for the people who live in Appalachia, and the film actually has a happy ending, insofar as the people in the town/holler targeted for mining got a legal decision that de facto made mining there economically unfeasible. I also just caught wind of an article in Science highly critical of MTR. Another good piece is here. In a way, it's too bad that we need the article in Science magazine to make the practical case against MTR, since although the ecological impact surely matters to the people in those hollers, too, that doesn't seem to be the deeper (or deepest) reason to leave the mountains alone.

Ethics Beyond Sentience

I've mentioned EKU's Chautauqua Lecture Series before. The new director of the series, my colleague Minh Nguyen, is launching a journal, to appear annually, that will complement the theme of each year's series, and contain articles by many or most of the (often big name) speakers and other invited essays, fiction, photography and art on the theme. This year's theme is "Nature's Humans," and I was asked to contribute a piece. With that preface, and with some trepidation, I post here a draft of my essay, "Ethics Beyond Sentience." I've worked through this a few times, enough to have hidden all its most unacceptable flaws from my own view.

In it, I work out, mainly by example, rather than systematically, a critique of the idea that sentience is the foundation of ethics--a claim most obviously associated with Peter Singer (one of this fall's speakers) and reiterated (multiple times) by another speaker in this year's series (science writer Jonathan Balcombe). I focus on two cases where respect and consideration often already are, and where it makes good sense that they are (or should be), extended beyond the limits of sentience: the dead and the mountains.

Part of my trepidation is the concern that my inner hippie gets too much free rein at the end. (And is the distance between the beginning and the end insufferable?) Thoughts about that or other aspects of the essay are much appreciated.

Ethics Beyond Sentience

Trophy-Hunting vs. Food-Hunting

The proposal of a “right to hunt, fish, and harvest non-threatened species using traditional methods” in Kentucky—and in several other states—is aimed primarily at ensuring that hunting and fishing can never be completely outlawed (e.g. by incremental steps). To declare that hunting and fishing are rights seems to imply that these activities constitute basic goods which, for that reason, should not be deprived from those who wish to partake in the activities. (Thus, this seems to be a negative right, a right not to be impinged upon, rather than a positive right, such that everyone should be provided with proper gear and licenses.)

A right to hunt, fish, and harvest non-threatened species using traditional methods would—depending upon the meaning and scope of “traditional methods”—provide a blanket protection for all current forms of legal hunting. At any rate, that seems to be the aim: not to make more hunting and fishing legal, but to protect the forms that are currently legal from future prohibition. As I understand it, that means that pure sport hunting, i.e. trophy hunting, would be fully protected as long as the species is non-threatened.

There’s a big issue here. Even many hunters oppose trophy-hunting, and will only hunt animals they intend to eat and use in other ways. If there is any kind of hunting that can be legitimately and fairly characterized as “killing for fun,” trophy-hunting is the best candidate. (Enjoying the hunt is not sufficient to make the whole business a matter of killing for fun, in my view, and contra the naïve sort of stuff you might see elsewhere on animal rights websites. Jean Kazez has recently discussed this.)

Practical defenses of trophy-hunting take (at least) two forms: ecological and economic. Taking the latter first: hunting and fishing are big money (I’ll let you hunt down the numbers, [Addition: though try here for a hunting-sympathetic overview]). Indeed, I have it on a hunter friend’s testimony that the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife receives exactly zero government dollars: all of its operating revenue is generated from hunting and fishing licenses, etc. This is important since it’s these departments which are out there in the wild monitoring wildlife populations, assisting in their study, providing public education, and so on. And this isn’t to mention the money generated in the private sector.

The ecological argument is that hunting and fishing are obvious ways of managing wildlife populations and (pardon the expression) killing two birds with one stone: animal populations are controlled, and hunters get their sport. Thus, even trophy-hunters can offer some justification for what they do. Many, however, question whether this or the economic argument can be a justification rather than merely an excuse for trophy-hunting. For many sport hunters (I’m guessing), it’s just fun.

Now, there’s another possible justification here, which is that hunters, to be good hunters, generally have to learn a lot about nature and animals in order to hunt well, so there’s a sense in which hunting can foster greater understanding and appreciation of nature. Of course, an obvious objection is that this is a red herring: you can become an educated naturalist without needing to hunt. One might suggest that there is a certain set of skills cultivated, and perhaps even a primal instinct satisfied, by hunting, even just for sport. But should all instincts be satisfied? Does the value of a skillset justify any means of cultivating it? (One could shoot skeet, targets, etc.) Does trophy-hunting (and fishing) deserve the legal protection these general rights to hunt and fish would seem to afford it?

Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control

An anonymous reader writes to ask what I think of the recent egg recall. I think I'm glad my family has been buying eggs at the local farmer's market, which at $2.50 a dozen are cheaper than the various admixtures of cage free, free range, and organic eggs on offer at the local supermarkets--and I really know where they came from. I also think the circumstances leading up to the recall are an object lesson in what happens when you take animals--as well as the workers in these large operations--and treat them as mere resources. (See here for related discussion.)

I've sometimes heard representatives of industrial food producers play the "safety" card, claiming that industrial food chains are safer than small operations because they are regulated. I guess not! However, in other related (and encouraging) news, the New York Times has a piece on recent changes in California and Ohio to start phasing out various forms of "factory farming."

P.S. Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control is an excellent documentary by Errol Morris which has nothing but its title in common with this post.

Lawncare Interventions

As you know if you stop by the HEP Spot regularly, I recently bought a house. We finally moved in over the weekend (after an exhausting week of improvements--if you ever want to lay laminate flooring, ask me for advice!). I haven't been responsible for a lawn since I was a kid--though I did some mowing with a push mower as a grad student. I grew up in the country on about an acre, and we had a riding lawnmower. (However, my dad did push mow the acre for some time before he could afford the tractor.) Since the good ol' days, apparently riding lawnmowers have become the status quo even in residential neighborhoods. My house is somewhat in the country, but we live in a small single-loop division of houses just outside of the city limits. Our backyard meets up with a pasture with a nice line of trees along the fence. The lot is just under a half-acre. We have two beautiful mature trees in the backyard (perhaps I'll post pictures soon) and thus tons of shade.

Anyhow, a riding lawnmower was just out of the question for me, both because of the cost, and because my country frame of reference led me to conclude that a riding mower simply wasn't necessary. I assumed I'd buy a gas-powered push mower. Then I started looking into reel mowers (which is what the Scotts Classic 20" pictured above is called). I was concerned about whether this gadget would do the job, but after reading many  reviews and watching some videos of it in action, I decided to go for it. It weighs thirty pounds (much less than a push mower, and much less than your grandpa's old school reel mower), makes a delightful, comparatively quiet sound when cutting, and if you overlap your rows appropriately does a fine job cutting--unless you aspire to practice putting on your lawn. The Scotts Classic has a 20" cutting width, which is just an inch less than standard gas-powered push mowers--it's the widest one you can get, which was important for me given the size of our lot. It's also the best for thicker grass because it's heavier than some of the smaller reel mowers. It requires minimal adjustment, and just a squirt of WD-40 to keep the blades clean and sharp. We've used it twice, and the second time, it took my wife about 30 minutes to do the front yard (which is smaller but has thicker grass), and about an hour to do the back (which is bigger, but the trees keep the grass lower). It's decent exercise, too, which is something my wife and I could both use. I bought a Black & Decker cordless electric trimmer--on sale at ACE for $50--which has just enough life to do all the trimming  (and again, no gas, oil, etc.).

Anyhow, here's the funny part. In just shy of a week, we've already had two "interventions." The day we pulled out the reel mower to give it a first spin, one of our next door neighbors offered (to my wife--poor woman, I guess) to mow our lawn, on the grounds that it would "take forever" to do it with the reel mower. That was last week. Yesterday, a different neighbor, a few houses down, rode his mower to our house, parked it in the driveway, and said (I paraphrase), "have at it." I thanked him many times over, and said I'd just bought the reel mower and wanted to figure it out, give it a shot. When I finished mowing (with the reel mower), I rode his back over to his house. (Noting to myself that I could push the reel mower about as fast as the rider could go.) I'm sure it looked bizarre to have the rider parked in the driveway while I buzzed along with the reel mower.

What I'm trying to figure out is whether our neighbors think we're terribly foolish, or if they feel threatened by the reel mower. Perhaps they can't figure out how to square the sound of the table saw that blared from my garage for two days with the sight of the reel mower? Do I contradict myself? Very well then.

(Another aspect of the impetus to try the reel mower was reading an excellent paper by one of my environmental ethics students on just how much CO2 pollution is caused by lawncare. Gas mowers and trimmers emit something like 8-10 times as much CO2 per gallon of gas than cars, and there's also the nitrogen fertilizer and other chemicals used to create that "perfect" lawn to take into consideration.)

So if you have a push mower and it breaks, buy a reel mower. Or just buy a reel mower, and save the gas mower for the times when you go on vacation and the grass goes out of control while you're gone. You'll love it, I promise.

The Value of Dirt

"Earth is all dirt, we humans too rise up from the humus, and we find revealed what dirt can do when it is self-organizing under suitable conditions. This is pretty spectacular dirt."

Holmes Rolston III, "Value in Nature and the Nature of Value" (1993)

An Ecological Paradox of Happiness

This is something I've been thinking about, as a new way of framing the intersection of my interests in well-being and environmental ethics. I'm calling it "An Ecological Paradox of Happiness," although it isn't, strictly speaking, a paradox. (Perhaps I should instead call it the tragedy of happiness, pace Hardin's "tragedy of the commons.")

Consider, for example, the "American Dream" of living comfortably, middle-class, free to move (and fly) where your dreams take you, settling down, having nice things, and so on. (Suppose something like that is the American Dream.) The carbon footprint of the average American is very high; if everyone on the planet lived like the average American, the result would be environmentally unsustainable. Now if more and more people pursue something like the American Dream--read: American happiness--and if more and more countries (e.g. India and China) are industrializing in ways like Western nations (including the United States), then it's obvious we're headed toward insustainability. The more people who pursue and acquire happiness [important caveat: of a certain sort], the more unsustainable global happiness becomes, and the closer we get to ecological disaster, which, of course, will be a cause of great unhappiness for many (future generations).

This leads to something that looks like the traditional paradox of happiness, which says that in order to be happy one must pursue something other than happiness. The ecological version is that it looks like in order to make the happiness of future generations possible, we should pursue something other than (American) happiness, i.e. if we want it to remain possible for future others (as well as others in other parts of the world now!) to live happily, we should give up our own pursuit of happiness.

Now, it seems to me that, to the extent that there is something that seems paradoxical here, it's actually a false paradox, and that, briefly, we don't have to give up happiness (or its pursuit), but instead certain aspects of the "American" part. In connection with this, I just finished a paper by Judith Licthenberg on "Consuming Because Others Consume," which provides some interesting insights on why people consume other than simple greed, particularly in order to maintain a sense of equality to those around them, which for most people, is (according to JL) necessary for self-respect. This is something worth bearing in mind, insofar as her argument makes it clear that the path to sustainable change is going to involve collective action (and policy) rather than exhortations to personal virtue (although that isn't particularly because not enough people are personally virtuous).

Environmental Vegetarianism

EKU (Eastern Kentucky University) hosts a series of lectures called the Chautauqua Lectures, and I attended the first of the season on Tuesday, given by marine biologist Sylvia Earle.

In addition to bearing witness to the enormity and beauty of what's below the surface of the oceans (and hammering home the mantra that the earth is really blue, not green!), Earle touched on the problems of commercial fishing and how it is depleting populations of various (edible) sea critters, and pointing out how these practices have numerous negative impacts on these ecosystems. (And since ocean life generates a significant amount of the oxygen we breathe, it's not just a problem for the fish, etc.)

This got me thinking again about something I've been thinking about already: the ecological considerations supporting vegetarianism. I located a nice paper which states the issue clearly: "An Ecological Argument for Vegetarianism," by Peter Wenz.

Peter Singer's arguments for vegetarianism have never quite worked for me, not because animal suffering isn't bad, but precisely because there's nothing wrong with eating an animal that lived a decent animal life. (Of course, he would say that most of the meat that's readily available isn't from animals that enjoyed such privilege.) I'm still mulling over Cora Diamond's very different approach, which, roughly, involves the thought that seeing other animals as our kin should lead to the further insight that we shouldn't eat them: we don't eat our kin (see "Eating Meat and Eating People," Philosophy, Vol. 53, No. 206 (Oct., 1978)). I've yet to read a recent essay by Stanley Cavell that engages Diamond's ideas (as well as John McDowell's response), but it's on the shelf, waiting.

Nevertheless, I tend to find the ecological considerations most compelling. Waste not, want not, or something to that effect.