Chaos Ethics by Chris Bateman

Author:Chris Bateman [Bateman, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-78279-769-2
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Published: 2014-09-25T16:00:00+00:00

Coming at these issues from a Kantian position related to (but distinct from) Wood’s, Korsgaard (2006) suggests that the fact that our pre-frontal cortex – a part of the brain intimately involved in decision-making – is more developed than other animals gives us access to powers of judgment and rational thought that provide an awareness of the justifications for our actions. It is this capability, she suggests, that separates humanity from other animals, and it is this that we can use to ground our special moral status. Lacking this, other animals cannot participate in moral legislation, although Korsgaard (2004) stresses that this certainly doesn’t mean that we never have reasons to extend moral and legal protections to the other animals.

Korsgaard’s approach offers a version of Kantian dignity grounded in the sciences (something Kant, as staunch supporter of the value of the empirical sciences, would very much have approved of!). But I don’t want to follow this line of reasoning, for a simple reason: it is overly concerned with decision-making. The part of the brain Korsgaard refers to is indeed more developed in humans, and as a result we are capable of making very complex mathematical decisions. But mathematics is not the center of human experience by any stretch of the imagination. Furthermore, the neural structures that are involved in decision-making show dominant usage solely among the most geeky of people – mathematicians, scientists, programmers, and of course, analytic philosophers. Other humans can use this faculty, but they rely much more on other neural structures in their lives.

Placing too much value on the pre-frontal cortex is to make Plato’s mistake of enshrining the Philosopher King on a pedestal above everyone else (Plato, 380 BC). The King of the Nerds is not even capable of ruling other nerds (who anyway would not agree with him sufficiently to grant such impertinent authority!). Whatever kind of world we are trying to make, we men and women of geekdom will make excellent spokespeople for those things that cannot speak without the sciences, and we will make insightful advisors on difficult issues, including moral dilemmas, but you cannot seriously expect us to be in charge. We geeks are just too locked up in our own over-developed imaginations. Other skills, far beyond number crunching, are essential to any conceivable image of a better world.

However, whatever my disagreements with Korsgaard in the context of human brains, I do not disagree with her assessment that, unequal or not, when we treat those beings that are excluded as entirely exempt from moral concern it allows the most terrific injustice to be perpetrated on other animals. As she suggests, you only have to look at what actually happens in factory farms or experimental laboratories to recognize the horrors unleashed by the suggestion that animals have no moral status at all:

So long as there are profits to be made, and the tantalizing prospect of expanding the human lifespan by experiments on the other animals, to tempt us on, there will be people who will do anything – anything at all, no matter how cruel – to a captive animal.

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