My question is: Is the focus that Jamieson's and the Defence of Zoos articles place on benefits (as they outweigh, or fail to outweigh, the harms) of
zoos the right path to take in this discussion, or would a focus on the level
of harm be more productive? How much
harm do zoo animals sustain from captivity independent of any other factors
(such as abuse or obviously improper facilities)?
I think that such a focus would be much more productive. Both articles seem to be assuming, right from the start, that they know that amount of harm caused by confining animals in zoos - and I think that they assume different levels of harm. This makes it difficult to set them directly against one another, since they are actually working off of different baselines. Before one can begin to determine whether it is just to hold animals in zoos, one must determine how much harm doing so causes, since that determines, in turn, how much justification, if any, is necessary. If imprisoning animals in zoos causes severe and irreparable harm to them, then I think it is extremely likely that no justifications for the existence of zoos exist. If, however, zoos cause relatively little harm, or no harm at all, to their animal occupants, then little if any justification is necessary.
As for the second portion of my question, I think that it varies extremely widely depending on the animal. Jellyfish, crickets, and beta fish probably sustain essentially no harm from being confined. In fact, the latter two may benefit from it. They are protected from predators, and their environments, while smaller, are still more than big enough for the range of movement they usually prefer. I do not know if I can legitimately say that jellyfish benefit from confinement, since I am not sure that jellyfish are sentient at all, and as such whether they can benefit from anything.
Humpback whales, caribou, and geese, on the other hand, may be seriously harmed by confinement. These animals are migratory, and as such have a very large range in their natural environments. I am not sure how much the limiting of range affects them (geese, for example, may migrate purely out of practicality and as such derive no harm from the removal of the ability and necessity to migrate, although I am far from certain of that. Humpback whales are quite a different story. They usually travel in groups, and many aquariums and zoos deprive them of that state, since whales are very large and a full group might not fit in any tanks the institutions possess. Furthermore, I would guess that they do, to at least some extent, value their ability to migrate and move about over a great area. Thus, confining them probably causes them great harm, and so is almost definitely unjustified.
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Dangers of Assumption and Indiscretion
In response to Sean Edwards' post 'Losing Touch?' (4/5/2013):
Sean brings up an interesting point in his post - the idea that sometimes, hypothetical situations in philosophical discussions become so absurd that they both cause debaters to lose touch with reality, and draw criticism to the entire discipline of philosophy. Such hypotheticals may attempt to chase pure logic so far that they toss aside instinct, emotion, and social norms quite heedlessly.
I think that Sean makes a good point, but I do not think we should cease investigating a subject when it begins to appear bizarre. Instead, perhaps more discretion is wise when discussing very controversial issues, at least until philosophers reach a firm conclusion. It is certainly true that, if many people heard many of the strange and fantastic debates that some philosophers engage in, their faith in philosophy (assuming they had any) would be shaken, and might disappear. However, while this might be cause for discretion, it is not at all cause for cessation of the debates! In fact, ceasing the debates would be at least as dangerous as indiscretion.
This is because, often, even strongly held social norms are wrong. Sean presents an example of a bizarre-sounding hypothetical discussion in his post: that of a case wherein one must either kill a wolf to save a child that the wolf is about to eat, or let the wolf devour the child. He states that any decent person would certainly take the first option, and that the second is repugnant regardless of what logic might say. While I will not disagree with this first statement (especially since I was not present for the aforementioned discussion, and so am not aware of its fine points), I vehemently reject the second. Logic is, I firmly believe, more relevant to moral discussion than social norms or emotion. What if this discussion had occurred one hundred and fifty years ago, and the question was whether it was right to kill a dark-skinned person to save a light-skinned one. Setting aside other factors, such as whether one of the people in question was attempting to harm the other, or whether they were of different ages or familial relation to the debater, I think that many (if not most) light-skinned people would have said it was ridiculous to even consider letting the light-skinned person die. After all, dark-skinned people might have some rights, perhaps, but the suggestion that they might be as valuable as light-skinned people was utterly fantastical (note: I am being sarcastic here, of course; I don't actually agree with the above statement). Yet now, one hundred and fifty years later, most people (regardless of skin colour) take it without question that a person's skin colour has absolutely nothing to do with their moral value. I am not suggesting that the two arguments are at all identical, or that racism and speciesism are the same thing - they are not - but I do think that addressing even topics which at first seem to utterly contradict common sense, emotion, or social norms is both justifiable and necessary.
Sean brings up an interesting point in his post - the idea that sometimes, hypothetical situations in philosophical discussions become so absurd that they both cause debaters to lose touch with reality, and draw criticism to the entire discipline of philosophy. Such hypotheticals may attempt to chase pure logic so far that they toss aside instinct, emotion, and social norms quite heedlessly.
I think that Sean makes a good point, but I do not think we should cease investigating a subject when it begins to appear bizarre. Instead, perhaps more discretion is wise when discussing very controversial issues, at least until philosophers reach a firm conclusion. It is certainly true that, if many people heard many of the strange and fantastic debates that some philosophers engage in, their faith in philosophy (assuming they had any) would be shaken, and might disappear. However, while this might be cause for discretion, it is not at all cause for cessation of the debates! In fact, ceasing the debates would be at least as dangerous as indiscretion.
This is because, often, even strongly held social norms are wrong. Sean presents an example of a bizarre-sounding hypothetical discussion in his post: that of a case wherein one must either kill a wolf to save a child that the wolf is about to eat, or let the wolf devour the child. He states that any decent person would certainly take the first option, and that the second is repugnant regardless of what logic might say. While I will not disagree with this first statement (especially since I was not present for the aforementioned discussion, and so am not aware of its fine points), I vehemently reject the second. Logic is, I firmly believe, more relevant to moral discussion than social norms or emotion. What if this discussion had occurred one hundred and fifty years ago, and the question was whether it was right to kill a dark-skinned person to save a light-skinned one. Setting aside other factors, such as whether one of the people in question was attempting to harm the other, or whether they were of different ages or familial relation to the debater, I think that many (if not most) light-skinned people would have said it was ridiculous to even consider letting the light-skinned person die. After all, dark-skinned people might have some rights, perhaps, but the suggestion that they might be as valuable as light-skinned people was utterly fantastical (note: I am being sarcastic here, of course; I don't actually agree with the above statement). Yet now, one hundred and fifty years later, most people (regardless of skin colour) take it without question that a person's skin colour has absolutely nothing to do with their moral value. I am not suggesting that the two arguments are at all identical, or that racism and speciesism are the same thing - they are not - but I do think that addressing even topics which at first seem to utterly contradict common sense, emotion, or social norms is both justifiable and necessary.
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