Abstract
In Sweden there was an investigation carried out in 1986-7, led by Anders Jeffner, which attracted rather a great deal of attention. The investigation concerned, among other things, what I have called SA, i.e. whether people think there is a moral difference between human and non-human beings.
[Most] of those who say they believe in the sanctity of life are not vegetarians.
Helga Kuhse & Peter Singer Should the Baby Live?
[It] might be more reliable to accept what they actually practised as indicating less than complete confidence in what they preached.
Michael P. T. Leahy Against Liberation
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Notes
See Jeffner (1988). A question has been raised concerning the scientific value of the study, and therefore concerning whether any reliable conclusions can be based on it (see Birgitta Forsman, 1996: 53-71). I do not share this opinion. For one thing, I am not capable of determining the scientific value of the investigation, but I believe it records a spontaneous reaction that is fairly widespread. In that sense it is interesting as a take-off for further reflections concerning, for instance, the content and seriousness of a moral opinion. It is true that the investigation does not say very much about why people answer the way they do. But that is not a fatal flaw in this context.
We have no reason not to believe that we would get a similar picture if the investigation was carried out in another (Western) country. If nothing else is said I confine the discussion to what is the case in our own part of the world—so “universal”, when I talk of a universal Standard Attitude (SA), means “universal in the Western countries”. My hypothesis is that SA actually is universally embraced, which does not necessarily mean that I expect to find it literally in all subjects, but rather in the overwhelming majority.
Part of the explanation why we continue with these habits may of course be suppression and ignorance (cf. John Robbins, 1987: esp. Ch. 5). But I do not think this is the whole truth.
No doubt, the word “attitude” is vague enough to be able to apply to both beliefs and wants. See, for instance, Gilbert Harman (1977: 48), G. E. Moore (1966: 116), L. W. Sumner (1995: 776) and Alfred R. Mele who writes that “attitudes are at least partially constituted by a psychological orientation toward a representational content” (1996: 740). However, see also Anne Maclean, who makes a distinction between a belief or opinion and an attitude—”the sort of attitude that is a matter of the way we instinctively behave” (1993: 35-36). A moral intuition— for instance the one saying that it is generally wrong to kill babies—seems to be more like an attitude than an opinion in her eyes.
For the moment I disregard the relation between these emotions and the other aspects of a moral intuition. But compare Samuel Scheffler who talks of “the range of powerful human emotions and attitudes that seem both to be capable of spurring us to action and, in their central forms at least, to presuppose moral beliefs, in the sense that they could not be experienced by someone who had no such beliefs. Guilt, remorse, indignation, resentment, conscientiousness, and a sense of indebtedness all seem to fall into this category, for example” (1992: 68).
Furthermore, cf. Adrian M. S. Piper who points to the fact that “sometimes there really are no words adequate to express our gratitude for another’s support, nothing we can do to demonstrate the depth of our affection, no way to express our heartfelt appreciation—and simply saying this, or doing nothing, doesn’t do the trick, either. This doesn’t mean that we do not have those attitudes” (1996: 530).
The fundamental idea lying behind this proposal is shared also by William Lyons: “we do look upon behaviour as an ‘external’ or public indicator of ‘inner’ or private states, the beliefs, evaluations, and in particular the wants involved in emotions. If no behaviour that could be interpreted as stemming from, say, love is ever present in a putative love relationship, and the person is rational, then there is good reason to believe that the desires which make up part of the very concept of love, and which usually lead to appropriate actions or behaviour, are not present” (1980: 155). Notice, however, that there is a problem here, which comes from the fact that Lyons wants to tie the emotion of love to desire. If the concept of a desire should be analysed as a disposition to act in certain ways, then we will of course get the kind of close connection between emotion and behaviour if we accept what Lyons says. So if you want to argue for the strong thesis that there is no conceptual connection between emotion and behaviour, you will either have to deny that desire is ever part of any emotion or choose an analysis of the concept of desire in which behaviour plays a less salient role. Another alternative is to claim that there does not necessarily exist a close conceptual connection between emotion and actual behaviour although there does exist such a connection between emotion and a disposition to behave in certain ways, at least for some emotions. This is perhaps what Lyons wants to say. And if you are disposed to act in certain ways, then actual behaviour will of course be a sign that you have this kind of disposition. But notice that we have been considering an even stronger thesis, namely that there does not even exist a conceptual connection between having an emotion and being disposed to act in certain ways.
Peter Carruthers has a similar idea. He says: “Our common-sense, pre-theoretical, view is that it would be very wrong to place the lives of many dogs over the life of a single (albeit old and friendless) human. This belief is probably too firmly held, in the case of most of us, to be shaken by theoretical argument. (Recall from Chapter 1, indeed, that it is a belief shared even by those philosophers who have been most vociferous in defence of animals, namely Regan and Singer.)” (1992: 96) However, what Singer says is not that the life of a human being is more valuable per se, only that it would be judged more valuable from an impartial standpoint, and “In general it does seem that the more highly developed the conscious life of the being, the greater the degree of self-awareness and rationality, the more one would prefer that kind of life, if one were choosing between it and a being at a lower level of awareness” (1979: 90). Singer certainly does not in this passage support the idea that there is something intrinsically special in being a member of the species Homo sapiens, only that there is something special about having the mental capacities that human beings commonly have. We will return to Singer’s argument in a coming chapter. Turning to Regan, 1 also believe that he would protest against Carruthers’ accusation, since what Regan says is that a belief that the life of a human being should be placed before the life of a dog is justified by appeal to the worse-off principle, i.e. killing the human would cause that individual a greater harm than the harm that would be done to the dog if we killed it instead (cf. 1984: 324). On the other hand, what Carruthers says about the content of the common-sense intuition is the following: “our common-sense intuition in the case of Saul, the sadist, is not simply that it would be wrong to rescue an animal before the human […], but that it is wrong to weight the suffering of an animal equally with the equal suffering of a human being” (1992: 72, my emphasis). Surely this is not what Regan says in the passage referred to by Carruthers. However, my idea, which I have expressed several times in this study, is that it may be true that a person somehow embraces SA, although she would declare something else when asked.
Compare Ted Honderich: “Morality-dependent harm, as we can call it, is typified by the distress of the Sabbatarians, or by the state of feeling of the ordinary families which has to do with the homosexual commune being established in, as they say, their block of flats. […] If it really were true that the distress to be caused by a contemplated action was of great magnitude although via moral beliefs, it would surely be absurd not to take this into account” (1982: 504, 508). Cf. also Anthony Ellis (1995), who believes we have no right not to be caused moral indignation. This does not mean, however, that we have no right not to be caused any kind of belief-mediated distress (which J. J. Thomson has claimed, 1990).
For some reason, which is not apparent to me, Warnock calls the result of excluding these kinds of harms “Strict Utilitarianism”, and she ascribes it to John Harris (1983).
Notice that this quotation is taken from an earlier article. But since she discusses the same subject and even brings forward the same argument in the two articles referred to, I can see no reason not to compare them in this way.
Hare has directed a similar argument against Warnock’s proposal that normal people’s sentiments have to be taken into account and that utilitarianism will become a mixed theory if they are. He says: “The main point, however, is that, although we ought to have regard to the fact that people think what they do think, it does not for a moment follow that what they think ought to be given any weight in our moral reasoning, in the sense of providing premisses for our arguments. We may, indeed, argue ‘All those people think it wrong, so they will be shocked if you don’t stop it, and you shouldn’t cause them that distress’. But we cannot cogently argue ‘All those people think it wrong; so it must be wrong; so it ought to be stopped’” (1987: 177). This is a more elegant way of expressing the same idea as I tried to explain above. According to Hare there is an ambiguity between these two ways of reasoning, and actually Warnock seems to reason in the second way. That would be a kind of intuitionism which of course Hare will reject.
This objection is formulated by, among others, Helga Kuhse (1987: 212-3). assumes that God has chosen one people to function as the selected instrument of His will, and that this people will inherit the earth. In this doctrine, the law of historical development is laid down by the Will of God (1966: 8).
I owe this objection to Ingmar Persson.
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Egonsson, D. (1998). SA Examined. In: Dimensions of Dignity. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4974-7_5
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