Biotechnology and the Integrity of Life (Ashgate Studies in Applied Ethics)

BIOTECHNOLOGY AND THE INTEGRITY OF LIFE There are things that can be done and are done to life on earth (whether it be human, animal or plant life) which, even if they do not involve or produce any suffering, are still considered morally wrong by a large proportion of the public. Such things include changing the nature of living beings by means of genetic engineering in order to enhance their health, or, more likely with animals and plants, their utility, or impairing their ability to live autonomously, or unduly instrumentalizing them. Yet many scientists are puzzled about the unwillingness of the public to feel much enthusiasm about a technology that, in their view, promises great benefits to humans and does not seem to cause more harm to animals than other practices which most of us do not question at all. In this book Michael Hauskeller takes public fears seriously and offers the idea of ‘biological integrity’ as a clarifying principle which can then be analyzed to show that seemingly irrational public concerns about genetic engineering are not so irrational after all and that a philosophically sound justification of those concerns can indeed be given.

ASHGATE STUDIES IN APPLIED ETHICS Scandals in medical research and practice; physicians unsure how to manage new powers to postpone death and reshape life; business people operating in a world with few borders; damage to the environment; concern with animal welfare – all have prompted an international demand for ethical standards which go beyond matters of personal taste and opinion. The Ashgate Studies in Applied Ethics series presents leading international research on the most topical areas of applied and professional ethics. Focusing on professional, business, environmental, medical and bio-ethics, the series draws from many diverse interdisciplinary perspectives including: philosophical, historical, legal, medical, environmental and sociological. Exploring the intersection of theory and practice, books in this series will prove of particular value to researchers, students, and practitioners worldwide.

Series Editors: Ruth Chadwick, Cardiff Law School, Cardiff University, UK Dr David Lamb, Honorary Reader in Bioethics, University of Birmingham, UK Professor Michael Davis, Illinois Institute of Technology, USA

Other titles in the series include: Stan van Hooft Caring About Health Nikolaus Knoepffler, Dagmar Schipanski and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner Humanbiotechnology as Social Challenge An Interdisciplinary Introduction to Bioethics Michael W. Austin Conceptions of Parenthood Ethics and The Family

Biotechnology and the Integrity of Life Taking Public Fears Seriously

MICHAEL HAUSKELLER University of Exeter, UK

© Michael Hauskeller 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Michael Hauskeller has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Gower House Croft Road Aldershot Hampshire GU11 3HR England

Ashgate Publishing Company Suite 420 101 Cherry Street Burlington, VT 05401-4405 USA

Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Hauskeller, Michael Biotechnology and the integrity of life : taking public fears seriously. - (Ashgate studies in applied ethics) 1. Bioethics 2. Biotechnology - Moral and ethical aspects 3. Biotechnology - Public opinion I. Title 179.1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hauskeller, Michael. Biotechnology and the integrity of life : taking public fears seriously / Michael Hauskeller. p. cm. -- (Ashgate studies in applied ethics) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-7546-6044-6 (hardcover) 1. Biotechnology--Moral and ethical aspects. 2. Genetic engineering--Moral and ethical aspects. I. Title. TP248.23.H38 2007 303.48’3--dc22 2007007966

ISBN-13: 9780754660446

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire.

Contents Acknowledgements

vii

1

Introduction

1

2

Tampering with Nature

7

3

Integrity and Dignity

19

4

Types and Forms of Integrity

29

5

Platonic Justice and Aristotelian Virtue

41

6

Telos

49

7

Integrity as Bonitas

61

8

Faith and Morality

77

9

Integrity and the Reification of Life

91

10

Genetic Essentialism

103

11

Moral and Aesthetic Concerns

117

12

Moral Disgust

129

Bibliography Index

151 163

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Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Christine Hauskeller, Nigel Pleasants and John Dupre for reading and commenting on some of the chapters. John Dupre has also generously supported my application for a Wellcome Trust Fellowship in Biomedical Ethics and encouraged me to develop my ideas on biological integrity at the thriving ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society whose director he is. Thanks, John! I am also grateful to the Wellcome Trust for funding the project which has led to this book for the past two years. Earlier versions of some chapters were previously published: Chapter 3 as ‘Dignity and Integrity: Is There a Difference?’ in Revista Romana de Bioetica, 1/4 (2003): 81–8; Chapter 6 as ‘Telos: The Revival of an Aristotelian Notion in Present Day Ethics’ in Inquiry, 48/1 (2005): 62–75; Chapter 11 as ‘Being Queasy about Reconstructing Animals’ in The Australian Journal of Professional and Applied Ethics, 7/1 (2005): 11–21; and Chapter 12 as ‘Moral Disgust’ in Ethical Perspectives, 13/4 (2006): 571–602.

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Chapter One

Introduction Thirteen years ago, in his book The Unnatural Nature of Science, Lewis Wolpert expressed his astonishment at ‘how concerned people are about genetic engineering, which has so far damaged no one’.1 This concern has not diminished in the meantime. Today many people are still worried about genetic engineering and biotechnology in general and would rather have nothing to do with it. Some of these worries can certainly, as Wolpert assumed, be traced back to a general distrust in science and technology and the fear of unpredicted and unexpected disastrous consequences. There is considerable doubt that biotechnology is really as safe as those who are engaged in it (and those who profit from it) maintain.2 And rightly so, since in most cases we can still only guess how a particular gene-transfer will affect the receiving organism. The occurrence of unpredicted and unpredictable side effects – which, logically, must be excluded from scientific risk assessments – cannot be ruled out, and the fact that this is hardly ever openly acknowledged does not exactly encourage people to have faith in solemn declarations of the scientific establishment that the new technologies are quite safe and that everything is under control and only in the interest of the public.3 And even if it were true that genetic engineering had so far damaged no one we may just have been lucky.4 Moreover, we cannot be sure that it will not damage anyone in future. Yet the possible hazards for humans are not all people seem to be worried about. Safety is important but apparently it is not everything. Rather, it is also the intentional manipulation and modification of living beings that makes many people

1 Lewis Wolpert, The Unnatural Nature of Science (London, 1992), p. 168. 2 Sylvie Bonny, ‘Why Are Most Europeans Opposed to GMO’s? Factors Explaining Rejection in France and Europe’, Electronic Journal of Biotechnology, 6/1 (2003). 3 See Brian Wynne, ‘Creating Public Alienation: Expert Cultures of Risk and Ethics on GMO’s’, Science as Culture, 10/4 (2001): 445–81. 4 In 2000 an Australian research team working on the production of a mouse contraceptive vaccine for pest control accidentally created a genetically modified virus that kills every one of its victims by wiping out their immune systems. No one knows what would have happened if that virus had left the laboratory and spread (Rachel Nowak, ‘Killer Virus. An Engineered Mouse Virus Leaves Us One Step Away from the Ultimate Bioweapon’, New Scientist Online News, 10 January 2001). Some years earlier a European genetic engineering company had intended to commercialize a modified soil bacterium called Klebsiella planticola, which then turned out to be absolutely deadly to the wheat plants the decomposition of whose residues it was meant to support (Elaine Ingham, ‘Ecological Balance and Biological Integrity’, Synthesis/Regeneration, 18 [1999]).

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feel uneasy about biotechnology.5 At least this is the case when it comes to the genetic modification of animals, whereas with plants and micro-organisms the attention tends to remain almost exclusively focused on potential dangers to consumers and the environment.6 So the genetic manipulation of animals seems to raise a special moral problem that is commonly not perceived in relation to plants. However, humans have always manipulated and exploited nature, which, as such, seems unobjectionable and does not differ much from what other organisms do to survive. After all, it is simply a matter of survival to learn about the many ways in which the environment can be put to use, and to act accordingly.7 With the rise of genetic engineering it has apparently become even easier to create exactly the world we want and need for our survival and well-being. Thanks to this comparatively new technology we can now do more than merely exploit living organisms as we happen to find them, or at best adapt them slowly and patiently to our needs by conventional breeding. Instead we are able, or about to be able, literally to redesign them in a very short time in such a way that they serve our various needs more effectively. Thus genetic engineering is applied – or its application is urged – in order to, for instance, enhance the productivity of farm animals to a hitherto unknown extent (for example genetically modified (GM) super salmon, pigs implanted with the gene for human growth hormone), or to deliberately create animals that produce medically important proteins for use as ‘pharmaceutical factories’. Others serve as experimental ‘models’ for specific human diseases, or are meant to produce organs for xenotransplantation (so called ‘spare parts factories’).8 It is clear that in all these cases we are not primarily concerned with the good of the animals we are using. We do not think about what is good for them but rather what they are, or might become, good for. Even in those cases where the immediate goal seems to be to increase the welfare of animals, the modification is usually such that it also serves economic interests, for instance when genetically blind chickens are created to solve the problem of free range hens harming each other by pecking weaker members of the flock.9 This does, of course, by itself not necessarily mean that the animals’ own good is impaired. Yet often the application of biotechnology does in fact involve the subjection of animals to procedures that are painful and/or damaging to their health. Some people find that morally objectionable. However, animal welfare considerations cannot explain the general opposition to animal genetic engineering. Animal welfare is not an issue that is specifically raised by biotechnology. If the welfare of animals is considered morally relevant at all, and 5 Phil Macnaghten, ‘Animals in Their Nature: A Case Study on Public Attitudes to Animals, Genetic Modification and “Nature”’, Sociology, 38/3 (2004): 533–51. 6 Lynn J. Frewer, Chaya Howard and Richard Shepherd, ‘Public Concerns in the United Kingdom about General and Specific Applications of Genetic Engineering: Risk, Benefit, and Ethics’, Science, Technology, & Human Values, 22/1 (1997): 98–124, pp. 111, 117. 7 See Mark Rowlands, The Environmental Crisis: Understanding the Value of Nature (London, 2000), pp. 101–18. 8 Finn Bowring, Science, Seeds and Cyborgs: Biotechnology and the Appropriation of Life (London, 2003), pp. 119–22. 9 A. Ali and K.M. Cheng, ‘Early Egg Production in Genetically Blind (rc/rc) Chickens in Comparison with Sighted (Rc+/rc) Controls’, Poultry Science, 64/5 (1985): 789–94.

Introduction

3

if that is all that is morally relevant as far as animals are concerned, then genetic engineering is morally on a par with many other forms of using and exploiting animals. In this respect, biotechnology does not pose any additional moral problem. Moreover, animal genetic engineering by no means needs to have any negative effects on the animals’ well-being. In theory it could even improve it. There is no technical reason why we should not use genetic engineering to actually help animals, for instance to cure them from genetic diseases or to enhance their disease resistance. We might even help them to suffer less or, ideally, not at all from the conditions human society forces upon them. Thus animal welfare considerations do not seem to justify a general objection to genetic engineering as such. Yet many scientists and philosophers tend to believe that biotechnological manipulations of living beings can only be wrong if there is some kind of suffering involved. Some would even say that it is only the suffering of human beings that is morally relevant. The suffering of animals, then, simply does not count. But even if it does count, how is it possible that there are things that can be done and are done to living beings, including humans, which, even if they do not involve or produce any suffering, are still considered morally wrong by a large proportion of the public? Among them are, for instance, changing the nature of living beings by means of genetic engineering in order to enhance their health, or, more likely with animals and plants, their utility, or impairing their ability to live autonomously, or unduly instrumentalizing them. Often when such concerns are expressed, they are rejected on the grounds that there is no rational basis for them. They are claimed to be irrational, to ‘make no sense’.10 This is why many scientists are so puzzled about the unwillingness of the public to feel much enthusiasm about a technology that, in their view, promises great benefits to humans and does not seem to cause more harm to animals than other practices which most of us do not at all question. It just does not seem reasonable to oppose the genetic manipulation of living organisms on principle, that is, regardless of whether or not there are serious risks for humans involved, and whether or not it is in any clear, definable sense harmful for the organisms that are being manipulated. In spite of this apparent irrationality and in spite of the fact that they usually find it hard to explain what exactly is wrong with it, a large number of people continue to be concerned about the technological manipulation of animals. When asked on which moral grounds such a manipulation (or what forms of manipulation) can be reasonably opposed they are at a loss for an answer. They just feel that it is wrong but cannot say why. Often that feeling is so intense that it cannot be expressed other than in terms of outright disgust. If an attempt is made to give reasons for this intense feeling of wrongness, those reasons tend to be of a kind that is hard to reconcile with a secular and supposedly rational ethic. Thus it seems only fair to ask what we are to make of explanations that describe genetic engineering of animals as ‘blasphemous’, as ‘playing God’, or as violating the natural order or simply being ‘unnatural’?11 Is the former not just another way of saying ‘I don’t like it and, although I have no means to find out, I can’t imagine that God would approve of it’? It seems that we could just 10 See Alan Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Oxford, 1990). 11 Macnaghten, ‘Animals in Their Nature’.

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as well maintain that God wants us to make good use of our environment and to use our God-given brains to create exactly the world that best meets our needs. Genetic engineering can then be seen as a very welcome answer to our prayers, a gift of God. Thus both parties, the advocates and the opponents of animal genetic engineering, can appeal to God’s presumed will in order to justify their view. The appeal to nature fares no better. The term ‘nature’ seems to be just as elusive as the term ‘God’. To begin with, what can be unnatural about a technology that is clearly possible and based on natural laws and relations just as any other technology? Everything we do, in fact everything that happens, is clearly natural in the sense that it is in accordance with the laws of nature. If the term ‘nature’ is taken in a purely descriptive sense, it is hard to see how we could meaningfully distinguish between practices that are natural and others that are not. Moreover, even if we could, it would not help us determine what we ought to do from a moral point of view. If we, for instance, defined as unnatural every human activity that changes the appearance or internal structure of living beings, then we would still have to explain what is wrong about that. And if we understood the terms ‘nature’ and ‘natural’ in a normative sense, as seems to be the case when genetic engineering is opposed on the grounds that it is ‘unnatural’, then we could just as well maintain that it is the most natural thing for us to manipulate our environment and that therefore we have every right to do it. So it seems that although the genetic modification of living beings is something that many people object to, and often with great vehemence and determination, this does not seem justified on purely scientific grounds.12 For in the main these objections do not arise from a more or less rational risk assessment, nor from a sober, interest-based ethical assessment, but rather from an unrefined, deep-seated aversion to our ‘tampering with nature’. Since ‘nature’ is such a notoriously vague and covertly normative term, it is easy to see why this aversion is rarely taken very seriously by the scientists working in the field, and why objections based on any notion of ‘nature’ tend to be brushed aside as irrational and not as proper moral concerns at all. But if they are not proper moral concerns, what are they? One answer often heard is that they are in fact mere aesthetic concerns. This means that they are a matter of mere taste and can therefore be justly disregarded.13 But is the exclusion of such concerns from the realm of the moral really justified? In this book I will attempt to show that this exclusion is based on a particular conception of harm that is far too narrow and that, as a consequence, it is possible to give a philosophically sound explanation for why certain practices are justly considered harmful and therefore in need of moral justification. If this attempt turns out to be convincing, then policy makers and scientists working in the field will no longer be forced either to succumb to the apparently irrational or to push through decisions that are objected to by a considerable part of the public. There will hopefully still be room to distinguish between morally justified and morally

12 See T.R. Lee, C. Cody and E. Plastow, Consumer Attitudes towards Technological Innovations in Food Processing (Guildford, 1985). 13 As, for instance, Bernard Rollin argues in The Frankenstein Syndrome: Ethical and Social Issues in the Genetic Engineering of Animals (Cambridge, MA, 1995).

Introduction

5

unjustified concerns, but no need anymore to draw the line in such a way that common intuitions are totally disregarded. I will argue that moral concerns are in fact often based and dependent on perceptional experiences and in so far are aesthetically grounded. Since certain concerns which are universally acknowledged as proper moral concerns are no less ‘aesthetic’ than the allegedly aesthetic concerns, the distinction between purely aesthetic concerns and purely moral concerns is, as I will try to show, untenable. This holds true even for ethically suspicious feelings such as disgust that are even easier to dismiss as morally irrelevant than those seemingly incoherent rationalizations in terms of God or nature. There are situations where disgust functions as the expression of a very strong moral disapproval that cannot fully be captured by argument. I call this kind of disgust moral disgust. Although it is always in principle possible to justify our moral disgust by explaining what it is in a given situation or action that disgusts us, the feeling of disgust often comes first and either draws our attention to the fact that there is something wrong in the first place or makes us aware that the kind of wrongness we are dealing with surpasses what can be accounted for by moral theory. In both cases moral disgust serves an important purpose for an adequate moral evaluation of diverse situations and the actions from which they result. However, this does not mean that we should not make the attempt to find out what exactly is wrong with a situation or practice. Concepts are required that help us understand what it is that people are worried about, indeed, that even help us understand our own worries. Concepts are tools: they facilitate communication, make it easier to grasp and convey meaning and to hold fast to it. Moral concepts create and bind together a moral community. The concepts of human dignity and human rights are examples for such binding concepts. Of course, concepts can be more or less clear. As yet, when people object to genetic engineering on the grounds that it involves ‘tampering with nature’, there is little conceptual clarity. That is why not only most scientists but also many philosophers do not take this notion seriously. However, some do. Those who do, tend to understand nature in an Aristotelian sense, as the essence or form which is the final end or telos for the sake of which individual organisms live, and which also explains why they are as they are. The underlying idea that there is something like a natural state of living organisms, a way they, by their very nature, ought to be, is an idea that can be expressed, and often is expressed, also in terms of integrity. In fact, the notion of integrity seems to be the common focus of all recent attempts to give a philosophically satisfactory justification to the moral unease many people feel about genetic engineering and all practices that make use of it. The notion of integrity has long acquired a fairly secure place in environmental ethics where it is, following a suggestion of Aldo Leopold,14 successfully applied to ecosystems. Laura Westra15 in particular has put integrity at the centre of her approach to environmental ethics. It is not quite clear, though, when 14 Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanach and Sketches Here and There (Oxford, 1949). 15 Laura Westra, An Environmental Proposal for Ethics: The Principle of Integrity (Lanham, MD, 1994); Laura Westra, Living in Integrity: Global Ethic to Restore a Fragmented Earth (Lanham, MD, 1998).

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and why the term was transferred to the level of the individual animal and whether it works there equally well. It still remains to be seen what integrity on the level of an individual organism means and whether there really is such a thing as the integrity of living beings. Although the term is frequently used in the context of animal genetic engineering, many questions have not yet been answered conclusively, for instance: Is there such a thing as genetic integrity? And if there is, why should we respect it? Does integrity imply intrinsic value? And what does intrinsic value mean? Do species have integrity (an essence, a basic nature)? Is conventional breeding less of a danger to a creature’s integrity than genetic engineering? Can the concept of integrity be transferred to humans (which seems promising for the ethical evaluation of, for instance, organ donation)? How can we balance opposing intrinsic values: humans vs animals, animals vs micro-organisms, etc? What does respecting an organism’s integrity exactly consist in? I will not try to answer all of these questions in this book but I will try to give a coherent account of integrity and its significance for an adequate understanding of the ethical concerns many people have about the biotechnological manipulation of living beings, especially animals. In order to do so, I will also look into related terms such as dignity, intrinsic nature, intrinsic value, telos and essence, as well as ethical guiding ideas like respect for nature16 and non-instrumentalization,17 to see how all these, and the issues they are meant to address, are connected to the notion of integrity.

16 Paul W. Taylor, Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics (Princeton, NJ, 1986). 17 Alan Holland, ‘The Biotic Community: A Philosophical Critique of Genetic Engineering’, in Peter Wheale and Ruth McNally (eds), The Bio-Revolution: Cornucopia or Pandora’s Box (London, 1990).

Chapter Two

Tampering with Nature The nature-strikes-back concern In Dean Koontz’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the evil, psychopathic scientist Victor Frankenstein has, by occasionally renewing his body, managed to survive until today. And, not very surprisingly, he is up to no good. Biotechnology, in which he excels, gives him the opportunity eventually to fulfil his old dream of engineering a New Race of obedient supermen and women which he can use as tools that will help him conquer the world.1 Unfortunately – for Frankenstein, that is – things do not work out as he planned. The members of the New Race develop serious defects, and violated nature strikes back at him. Although the novel itself is not particularly sophisticated and does not have much literary merit, it not only captures and expresses extremely well the deep distrust many people feel about the technological manipulation of life and towards those that engage in it, but also explicitly connects this distrust to an alleged ‘assault on nature’. When it comes to the use of humans and animals (and to a much lesser extent the use of plants and micro-organisms) the natural/unnatural dichotomy is often invoked to distinguish between supposedly legitimate and supposedly illegitimate uses.2 Thus the genetic modification of animals for various purposes such as the gain of pharmaceuticals, organs for xenotransplantation or animal models for research is often intuitively rejected. However, when a justification for this intuitive rejection is attempted, people tend to express their unease in terms of nature. They claim that it is ‘not natural’ or ‘so unnatural’, that it is ‘taking away nature’ and that it involves ‘too much interference with nature’ or ‘too much messing with nature’.3 Since the terms ‘nature’ and ‘natural’ are extremely vague and hard to pin down, the fact that those terms are nonetheless so often invoked in this context is in itself a good reason for not passing it by as a mere coincidence and instead inquiring further into the meaning of the natural/unnatural distinction. Part of what is meant when, for instance, genetic engineering of humans and animals is called unnatural is that it so disturbs the equilibrium in nature that we will most likely suffer unpleasant consequences. Biotechnology is generally considered a highly dangerous and threatening enterprise, and to call it an assault on, or a violation of, nature often amounts to a warning that we will not get away with it, 1 Dean Koontz and Ed Gorman, Frankenstein. Book Two: City of Night (London, 2005). 2 Phil Macnaghten, ‘Animals in Their Nature: A Case Study on Public Attitudes to Animals, Genetic Modification and “Nature”’, Sociology, 38/3 (2004): 533–51, p. 543. 3 Ibid., p. 545.

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that something terrible is going to happen if we do not restrain ourselves. So we call ‘unnatural’ a practice that touches what had better be, for our own sake, left untouched. Thus when we are warned not to ‘tamper’ or to ‘meddle’ with nature the supposition behind it is usually that if we do, nature will almost certainly come back at us with a vengeance. The idea that we should not meddle too much with nature, that there are some limits to how much we should try to manipulate it unless we want to risk catastrophic consequences is, of course, not new. We find it vividly expressed in Goethe’s wellknown poem ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’, in which said apprentice, being left alone by his master, decides to try out the spells he has heard and to perform miracles just like the old sorcerer himself. Unfortunately, though he manages to let the magic powers loose – by getting a broom to fetch water from a well to prepare a bath for him – he finds that he does not know how to call them back: ‘Die ich rief, die Geister,/ werd’ ich nun nicht los.’ The situation gets out of control and all attempts to cancel the consequences of his original decision to circumvent the sometimes inconvenient laws of nature by magic only make matters worse. In the nick of time, just before he is swallowed by the flood he has conjured up, he is saved by the old wizard who orders the broom back into the closet and lets the water disappear, reminding both broom and water (as well as the apprentice) that he alone, the ‘old Master’, is meant to perform magic, and only in order to serve his ends. Quite clearly, for Goethe the wizard’s apprentice is representative of humankind. The old master who is temporarily absent might be God, or perhaps Nature herself. In any case, what comes across is the danger that is associated with any attempt at suspending natural laws, or even evading the normal, natural course of things. By professional scientists, the apprehension of such a danger is often considered irrational. However, Brian Wynne4 has worked out the rational core behind this kind of thinking. According to Wynne, it expresses an insight in the inherent deficiencies of scientific risk assessment. Per definition, a risk is something that can be assessed. In order to be assessed it must be known. Yet this means that all those possible negative consequences whose possibility we have not yet discovered or at least suspected will simply be ignored and will not appear in the equation. It is not the known risks but rather the unanticipated side effects which are most feared. And history has taught us that often there are such unanticipated effects which cause great trouble. So why should it be different in this case? We call ‘unnatural’ what we fear or suspect might open a Pandora’s box of evils. The box is closed so we do not know precisely what evils it contains before it is opened. Perhaps there are no evils at all or there is not even such a box. But the whole point is that we do not know. The over-confident claim that there simply are no such evils in the box is an expression of the ‘self-delusions of institutional science that it can adequately and definitively test for all the risks and knows all the uncertainties in its own knowledge’.5 The fact that this uncertainty is habitually denied and the limits of predictability are often grossly misrepresented does not exactly help to build trust. In truth, people 4 Brian Wynne, ‘Creating Public Alienation: Expert Cultures of Risk and Ethics on GMO’s’, Science as Culture, 10/4 (2001): 445–81. 5 Ibid., p. 457.

Tampering with Nature

9

are perfectly justified not to be satisfied with a scientific risk assessment and to distrust solemn declarations that a new technology is perfectly safe. And once the basic uncertainty is admitted, the path is clear to settle on the more important question of whether we really need that kind of technology, what it is good for and whether it is in our interest at all. Of course, when we call a practice unnatural we do not usually assume that it will do us much good. But that is a question that is hardly ever openly addressed, let alone seriously discussed. Instead, it is usually assumed without further discussion that what we can gain by the use of biotechnology is worth all the hazards that we may possibly bring upon ourselves. In fact, the anticipated gain is believed to be so considerable that the precautionary principle must not stand in the way of progress. The American philosopher Nicholas Agar, for example, in his recent elaborate defence of what he calls ‘liberal eugenics’, frankly admits that we do not really know what will happen when we try to genetically engineer our children in order to make sure that they will be what we want them to be, and that we cannot be certain that the whole enterprise will not end in disaster. Yet in spite of this, Agar does not think that we should act according to the precautionary principle and not take the risk. The objection is considered but eventually rejected because enhancement technologies ‘actually do present potential benefits of a magnitude comparable with the nearly infinite potential penalties imagined by opponents’.6 They do because many generations would profit so that the initially slight benefits would gradually increase. So the reason why we should allow parents to ‘realize their procreative visions’ is not so much our respect for their autonomy, which commits us to let them make their own individual choices and preferences, but rather the benefits for later generations that are believed to result from it. What Agar fails to clarify, though, is wherein exactly these alleged benefits are supposed to consist. But even if we could specify such benefits and also agreed that they really are benefits, we would still have to decide whether we want those benefits so much that we are willing to take our chances with a new and possibly hazardous technology. Intrinsic concerns: What is unnatural? However, apart from pointing to the unpredictable dangers that might result from the application of a new technology – dangers that by definition escape any scientific risk assessment – the claim that a particular practice is ‘unnatural’ often has a further meaning. It not only very frequently expresses extrinsic concerns about the possible negative consequences for ourselves and others, but also intrinsic concerns about the moral justifiability of a technology whose immediate objective seems to be to manipulate life itself.7 The first kind of concern is what we may call the naturestrikes-back concern. It can be expressed by saying:

6 Nicholas Agar, Liberal Eugenics (Oxford, 2004), p. 163. 7 For the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic concerns see Michael J. Reiss and Roger Straughan, Improving Nature? The Science and Ethics of Genetic Engineering (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 49–68.

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(a) Don’t do anything unnatural, or else! The second kind of concern is based on a more or less conscious recognition that nature ought to be respected, not because of any negative consequences that might result from disrespecting it, but for its own sake. It can be expressed by saying: (b) Don’t do anything unnatural! There is no ‘or else’ in the second case. It is this second, ‘else’-less sense of ‘unnatural’ that is relevant for our present discussion of the integrity of living beings. This is not to say that there is no connection between the extrinsic and the intrinsic concerns that are expressed by calling certain practices unnatural. On the contrary, I would suspect that often there is a connection. When people are afraid of the disastrous consequences a new technology might bring about, the reason is not merely the impossibility of knowing in advance everything that possibly could go wrong with it. Rather, people have the vague yet strong feeling that manipulating life itself is morally precarious, that it is, in fact, a crime against the proper, natural order of the world as it has always been and as it is meant to be, and that there is some cosmic principle of justice that will eventually punish those who commit that crime. Because of that, disastrous consequences are not only possible but rather probable (if not certain) since a wrong on such a scale must be and will be atoned for if there is any justice in the universe. Nature will strike back at us precisely because nature has a good moral reason to do so. Goethe’s wizard’s apprentice not only let loose a power he could not control, he also did something he was not authorized to do and had no right to do. As a consequence, he only got what he deserved when he nearly drowned. This intuition may explain why many people seem to be so obsessed with the possible negative consequences of a technology which is, after all, designed to enhance human well-being. If it is plausible to attribute that metaphysical idea of cosmic retribution to those focusing on the possible negative consequences of genetically manipulating living beings, then extrinsic concerns about genetic engineering are in fact based on intrinsic concerns. Let us now have a closer look at these. We need to ask, first, what exactly is meant when a practice is called ‘unnatural’ in the intrinsic sense, and second, why this should be morally relevant, that is, a good reason not to engage in that practice. In their discussion of what they call the ‘Unnatural is unethical argument’, D.R. Cooley and G.A. Goreham distinguish between five possible meanings in which the term ‘unnatural’ may be used in that argument, and all seem to lead to absurdities.8 ‘Unnatural’ obviously cannot mean (1) violating the laws of nature, simply because it is physically quite impossible to do so. Clearly, everything that can possibly happen is, in that sense, natural. Even if we granted the possibility of miracles performed by God (in violation of the laws of nature), it is surely not a miracle that is claimed to occur when a practice is said to be unnatural. (Besides, why should performing 8 D. Cooley and G. Goreham, ‘Are Transgenic Organisms Unnatural?’, Ethics and the Environment, 9/1 (2004): 46–55.

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miracles be unethical?) Neither can ‘unnatural’ mean (2) artificial in the sense of being different from what it would be without human interference, since in that case everything that humans make and do would have to count as unnatural and hence as unethical. Again, this is not what people mean when they call the genetic manipulation of living beings unnatural, for the whole purpose of calling some human practices unnatural is to distinguish them in a relevant way from other human practices that are not (in the same sense) unnatural. Nor do people merely want to say that it is (3) uncommon – since, firstly, applying those technologies could one day become quite common indeed, which presumably would not render them any more natural, and, secondly, there are many things equally uncommon which do not strike us as equally unnatural. Nor does ‘unnatural’ simply mean (4) unethical because then there would not be an argument at all but merely a tautology, so that the alleged unnaturalness would no longer provide a reason for objecting to a practice on moral grounds. Rather, it would only be a confirmation of this objection. The last possibility considered by Cooley and Goreham is the most promising since it is, as they readily admit, ‘the most commonly used in the debate’:9 an action is called unnatural when (5) it is thought to imply the use of ‘an organ or instrument contrary to its principal purpose or function’.10 This is definitely much closer to what people actually mean – when they call things like animal genetic engineering unnatural – than any of the first three possibilities, although, as I will explain shortly, not close enough and in fact quite misleading. The way it is stated here, this fifth interpretation is not very likely to convince many people that what is unnatural is also unethical. One reason is that is has obvious applications that few people today find acceptable. What immediately springs to mind when one hears about ‘using’ organs contrary to their principal function is the use of the sexual organs which, according to some Catholic dogmatists, should be reserved exclusively for the purpose of reproduction. Any other use, especially for mere pleasure, such as masturbation, intercourse with contraceptives and, of course, homosexual intercourse, is ‘unnatural’ and morally condemnable. If we do not agree with that, then we are obviously not convinced by the ‘Unnatural is unethical argument’, in which ‘unnatural’ means something like contrary to principal function. Moreover, as Cooley and Goreham point out, in order to be used ‘contrary to its principal purpose or function’, there must first be such a principal purpose or function to living organisms and it is not clear that there is one. Even when a thing does have a principal function, there does not seem to be anything wrong with using it contrary to this function. When I, for instance, use a hammer as a door stopper – which is definitely not its principal function – then I am not doing anything morally wrong. ‘Hence’, Cooley and Goreham continue, ‘transgenic organisms could have whatever function the person using them assigns to them at a given time. If the person gives them the function that they currently serve, then transgenics are morally good and creating them is morally right.’11 Having thus refuted all five possible meanings of the term ‘unnatural’, they conclude that the 9 Ibid., p. 52. 10 Ibid., p. 48. 11 Ibid., p. 53.

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‘Unnatural is unethical argument’ is, to put it mildly, not very helpful and should better be dropped for good in favour of better (for example Utilitarian or Kantian) arguments. However, Cooley and Goreham may have been too hasty in their refutation of the fifth meaning. It is far from obvious that the comparison between a hammer and a transgenic organism is adequate. In fact, this is precisely what the argument is about: whether a transgenic organism should be regarded and treated as a mere tool which we are free to use in any way it pleases us, or rather as an autonomous living being that has its own agenda which we ought to respect. Only in the former case can a transgenic organism be adequately compared to a hammer. Therefore, we can well agree that there is nothing wrong with using a hammer as a doorstopper, even if its ‘primary function’ is different, and still, without contradiction, maintain that it is morally wrong to use a transgenic organism contrary to its primary function – whatever that may be – even if it is used in accordance with the function it has been designed to fulfil. The comparison is only plausible if it is already agreed that living organisms are in every relevant respect just like human-made tools, which means that they have no purposes other than those assigned to them by us. This, however, is still an open question. It is certainly not unnatural to use a hammer as a doorstopper because a hammer, being an artefact, has no nature that can be violated. A living organism, on the other hand, may indeed have such a nature, that is, an internal purpose that a hammer lacks. The very definition of the ‘unnatural’ that Cooley and Goreham use tends to blur this important difference between tools and living organisms: it is supposed to be unnatural, they claim, to use an ‘organ or instrument’ contrary to its principal purpose or function. But a living organism, although it consists of organs, is not itself an organ or instrument. It uses its organs to sustain its life, but it does not exist in order to be used in a certain way. So the unnatural that is meant by those who object to animal genetic engineering on the grounds that it is unnatural do not refer at all to using an organ or instrument contrary to its principal function but rather to using a living organism contrary to what is perceived to be its own nature. The underlying idea seems to be that there are certain conditions we can inflict on animals that are natural for them and others that are not, and, accordingly, conditions that take animals away from their nature and conditions that do not. As a participant in a group discussion put it: ‘We can’t be assisting nature if we want to breed a cat that doesn’t catch birds or mice. The whole essence of a cat being put on the Earth and not by God is to catch birds and mice.’12 Whether it makes sense to grant living beings such an essence without presuming the existence of a God who assigns that essence to them will be discussed in a later chapter. For the moment, let us ask what we would have gained from the ‘Unnatural is unethical argument’ if living beings in fact had a basic nature, an essence (physis in the sense of ousia).

12 Macnaghten, ‘Animals in Their Nature’, p. 546.

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Natural lives and animal welfare A practice is deemed to be unnatural if it violates the basic nature of an animal. Violating this basic nature can mean two different things. It can either mean that a practice changes the basic nature of an animal or that, while the basic nature remains untouched, it somehow opposes it. Yet how do we know that its basic nature has been either changed or opposed? One possibility would be to regard an animal’s nature as violated if it can no longer live the life natural to it. Not being able to live the life natural to it would then be a clear indication of its violated nature. Thus, a cat that, due to human interference, can no longer catch birds or mice, is forced to live in a state unnatural to it, and any human action that causes it to live in such a state is unnatural or against nature and therefore morally wrong. Several questions arise: How, for instance, do we determine what kind of life is natural to an animal and what is not? What exactly does it mean for a particular animal to lead a natural life? Is that always so obvious and does the whole idea of a particular life being natural to an animal not ignore the animal’s fundamental adaptability to various situations and its capability to have a good life nonetheless? And, most importantly, should animals be left to lead natural lives even if a non-natural life seems clearly better for them? Let us say that an animal leads a ‘natural life’ when its life is as it would normally be when human beings do not interfere or shape its environment to a degree that forces it to develop different modes of behaviour. Now it is a fact that with the increasing destruction of natural habitats many animals become accustomed to and adapt their behaviour to new environments that are to a large degree shaped by humans and are in this sense artificial. If we interpret the phrase ‘leading a natural life’ narrowly, then we will say that animals in a human environment do not lead natural lives. However, there is reason to believe that sometimes technology can enrich the lives of animals by ‘providing challenges and opportunities for achievement’.13 Even in non-natural, artificial environments animals can flourish, and sometimes even better than in natural environments. So apparently welfare concerns and concerns about the naturalness of an environment do not always go together: ‘What matters to the (subjective) welfare of animals is the presence of sufficient opportunities to employ their natural capabilities, not the naturalness of the environment that offers such opportunities.’14 If that is so then it is hard to see what moral reason there could be to demand that a natural environment for animals be preserved. This means that, for the well-being of a cat, it is less important that there are birds and mice to chase and catch than that there are sufficient opportunities for it to practice the skills cats employ when catching birds and mice. Living a natural life for the cat would then mean not that it lives in an environment in which there are birds and mice to chase and catch but rather that it lives in an environment in which there is something to chase and catch, or some opportunities for chasing and catching. Now, as indicated above, this can be prevented by either of two ways: either the cat will not lead a natural life because in its environment, be it natural or artificial, there are no opportunities 13 Albert W. Musschenga, ‘Naturalness: Beyond Animal Welfare’, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 15 (2002): 171–86, p. 177. 14 Ibid., p. 179.

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for chasing and catching so that its natural inclination to chasing and catching is opposed, or because it does no longer have this inclination so it has been changed. It is plausible to assume that when a natural inclination that an animal actually has is opposed, then as a result the animal will suffer in one way or other. It is hard to imagine that the life of an animal that feels the urge to do something but is constantly denied the opportunity to do it is subjectively as good and fulfilling as the life of an animal that is allowed to satisfy its urge. This gives some intuitive plausibility to the claim that subjecting animals to an environment that is opposed to their nature is, at least prima facie, morally wrong. If that is so, however, then the reason for insisting that animals have a natural life seems to be not so much the unnaturalness of their situation than the suffering that results from it. In that case, there seems to be no more need to use the term ‘unnatural’ and to convince others that a certain kind of life is indeed unnatural for the animals in question. It would suffice to show that there is suffering involved. But then, if it could be shown that there are cases where an animal, although it cannot fulfil its natural inclinations, does not suffer in any way and hence does not seem to be worse off for the lack of fulfilment, then it would immediately become unclear why we nonetheless should care for the naturalness of its life. As long as an unnatural life goes together with a detraction from wellbeing we do not have to face the problem of deciding whether ‘unnaturalness’ can be morally relevant even in the absence of suffering. However, we can no longer avoid this decision when we consider a situation in which an animal’s nature is not opposed but instead radically changed in such a way that its natural inclinations and needs do not remain the same and where, as a consequence, its well-being is not impaired but, on the contrary, improved. If we had such a situation at hand we would apparently have no moral reason to disapprove of the change. Consider, for instance, a situation in which we know that there is an ice age coming and we know that certain species will become extinct unless something is done to save them. Suppose that, through genetic engineering, we are able to prevent the extinction of the species by making its members better able to cope with the colder conditions while leaving them otherwise genetically unchanged. It is hard to see how anyone in favour of conservation of species could regard this as anything other than a good thing.15

If an animal is worse off because of having its basic nature manipulated we may have reason to raise moral concerns about it. But in that case it does not seem to matter whether the action was natural or unnatural: being harmful is sufficient to disqualify it, and if it were not harmful, then the alleged unnaturalness would be irrelevant. ‘If the animals created are better off than those that would otherwise have existed, how can it be perverse?’16 This objection seems reasonable enough. Note, however, that the example chosen is one in which genetic modification appears to be the only way to save a species from extinction. This is surely not the situation we currently have. It is amazing 15 J.A. Burgess and Adrian J. Walsh, ‘Is Genetic Engineering Wrong, Per Se?’, The Journal of Value Enquiry, 32 (1998): 393–406, p. 402. 16 Ibid.

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how often those who do not share the concerns about animal genetic engineering emphasize that genetic modification can just as well be used to cure animals from diseases and improve their situation in other respects, almost as if the technology were developed and applied primarily for the sake of animals. Yet we all know that this is not so. Nonetheless, when intrinsic concerns are raised they are often countered by farfetched scenarios in which animals benefit immensely from their being manipulated. But this is almost always an emergency situation. We could provide for such emergency situations by conceding that the genetic modification of animals is morally permissible if it is the only way to save their lives or to protect them from great harm. In all other cases, not only in those in which animals are harmed, but also in those in which they do not clearly benefit, it should be avoided. This proviso, of course, is already based on the two-fold assumption that, first, changing the nature of an animal is morally wrong per se, and, second, that changing the nature of an animal is not the worst one can do to it, so that under certain circumstances it can be morally justified. However, we have not yet found any good reason for believing that changing an animal’s nature is in fact morally wrong per se and should thus be avoided whenever possible. The unnatural as a special case of the unethical There is a normative component implicit in the distinction between the natural and the unnatural so that we cannot have a strict argument from the descriptive (= unnatural) to the prescriptive (= morally wrong). To call something unnatural already implies that it is wrong. Its wrongness is not something that is concluded from its unnaturalness but part of its very meaning.17 When people call a practice unnatural, they appear not to have thought much about what they mean. It is primarily a certain way to express their intuition that ‘something like that’ (whatever ‘that’ is) is morally reprehensible and ought not to be done by anybody. Apparently the negative moral judgement is here inseparable from the meaning of the term ‘unnatural’. We do not usually recommend an action as unnatural. We do not say, for instance, ‘This is so unnatural, you should try it yourself some time!’ Thus if we call something unnatural we usually imply its wrongness and do not really provide a reason for our moral disapproval. We do not, even though we may give precisely this impression by pointing out the unnaturalness of a certain practice in response to the question ‘Why do you think we should not do this?’ We may answer ‘We should not do this because it is unnatural’, and thereby even mislead ourselves into believing that we have given a reason while what we have in fact done is specify what kind of unethical we are dealing with. The unnatural is a subspecies of the unethical. All unnatural actions are unethical, but not all unethical actions are unnatural. But what kind of unethical actions are also unnatural ones? Apparently the specification is not related to the grade of wrongness that an action is thought to exhibit. An act of murder can be regarded as a terrible wrong but is not

17 See Henk Verhoog, ‘Naturalness and the Genetic Modification of Animals’, Trends in Biotechnology, 21/7 (2003): 289–323, p. 294.

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very likely to be perceived as unnatural, unless perhaps it is particularly gruesome. Homosexual relations, on the other hand, may be deemed unnatural and at the same time a minor offence. An unnatural act is an act that violates a certain kind of order, which we may call the natural order, and is for that reason considered morally wrong, while other acts are morally wrong because they violate the social order, that is, the system of basic rules without which communal life would not be possible. The natural and the social order do, of course, overlap. There are some actions that violate both the natural order and the social order, some that only violate the social but not the natural, and some that only violate the natural but not the social. If the genetic modification of living creatures is assumed to be morally wrong, then it clearly falls into the latter category. An act can be said to violate the natural order if either the act itself is not ‘meant to be’, or it has consequences that are not ‘meant to be’. The underlying assumption is that nature is fundamentally good, that things are best left as they are, at least in their general features and relations to each other. This does not mean that we are not allowed to fight nature in so far as it is dangerous to us, but it does mean that we are not allowed to correct it. For instance, to cure diseases would not be unnatural, but to seek immortality of the flesh would be (since mortality belongs to our nature, to the essence of what we are, but being diseased is not part of our essence). Neither would it be unnatural to use animals, but it would be unnatural to change what they are in order to render them more suitable to our purposes, that is, to make them even more useful than they already are. And, as it is argued, because it is unnatural it is morally wrong. However, there is an obvious counter-argument that rests on the very same premises as the argument from nature. The basic assumption that what is unnatural is also unethical is accepted and turned against those who meant to use it in order to protect animals and life in general from human manipulation and exploitation. The counter-argument runs as follows: if animals have a basic nature and if it is morally relevant that they do, so that we ought not to change or oppose this basic nature if we can avoid it, then we must also take into account our own nature and see what it requires and obliges us to do. Now, if we look at our own human nature it is hard to deny that in every relevant sense it is most natural for us to do science and to inquire into nature. We have the inclination to do it and the necessary organs and abilities to do it well. Moreover, gaining knowledge is arguably what gives meaning to our existence. If there is any purpose to our lives at all then this is surely part of it. Theoria is, according to Aristotle, the highest, most valuable and most human practice of human beings, and the desire for knowledge is common to us all, as he assures us in the very first sentence of his Metaphysics: ‘All men, by nature, desire to know.’ If there is any essence to humanity, it is this. But certain kinds of knowledge cannot be gained without research, and research cannot be done without actively manipulating our environment. The best way to learn how genes work is to subject gene carriers to different situations. So if that is our nature and if the nature of other living beings should be respected, should we then not respect our own as well? Should we thwart our own nature in order to protect the nature of other organisms? Why? On the basis of what we are, we can infer, using the argument from nature, that we are meant to do research. So let us do it.

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But even though striving for knowledge might be natural for humans, so that preventing someone from gaining knowledge might be a violation of their nature and, by implication, against the order of nature, it does not follow that we are morally justified in doing whatever we think may help us increase our knowledge. There may still be moral restrictions. Think of all the useful experiments we could perform if we could only use human subjects: how much faster our knowledge would progress! However, we do not want to do that because we feel that no human should be used that way. To use a human being without consent for a scientific experiment which is not performed for their own benefit is considered to be a violation of their dignity. The knowledge we might gain through this is therefore irrelevant. We think that humans, by virtue of what they are, are entitled to some respect that severely restricts what anyone is allowed to do to them. Animals, however, are not commonly thought to possess dignity. But perhaps they do, or at least some equivalent. We may then find reasons for respecting the basic nature of animals and condemning as unnatural (that is, morally wrong independently of any detrimental effects on communal life) any practice that is bound to change that nature. If we do, the creation of GMOs will also be found to be, at least prima facie, morally objectionable. It is sometimes argued that there is no clear and definite dividing line between traditional breeding methods and the genetic modification of animals for the same purposes. From this, however, it would not necessarily follow that the latter is unproblematic. We could equally well infer that traditional breeding methods are wrong too, although not necessarily to the same degree.18 The moral distinction between what is natural and what is unnatural need not be understood as a strict dichotomy, so that a practice is either natural or unnatural. Perhaps it is a grading concept, so that a practice may be more or less natural depending on how extensive the interference with an animal’s nature is.19 There is certainly a difference between merely using an animal to our purposes and changing its very nature so that it blends seamlessly into those purposes. The latter is not only an instance of instrumentalization but introduces an entirely different quality or dimension of instrumentalization. A living creature is not only being used as a means but literally turned into one. It is the transformation of an end into a means. We will later analyse this crucial difference in more detail, but first we need to look at the notions of integrity and dignity and how they are related to what I have called an animal’s basic nature.

18 Ibid., p. 296. 19 Ibid., p. 295.

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Chapter Three

Integrity and Dignity Integrity is a concept that is increasingly being used in ethical debates about genetic engineering in the non-human field. So, however, is the concept of animal dignity (or more precisely: the dignity of all living beings), which is often employed in a very similar way. Both terms have even been introduced into national legislations, the former into that of the Netherlands, the latter into that of Switzerland. However, the meaning and, consequently, the applicability of these two concepts is far from clear. They are not even clearly distinguished. This chapter will compare these concepts, point out some of the difficulties that have so far prevented them from being consistently and efficiently employed, and thus establish the need for further clarification. The Swiss discussion on the ‘dignity of creation’ In 1992 the Swiss parliament approved an amendment to the Federal Constitution of Switzerland (article 24novies) which was later included as Article 120 in the revised version of the Constitution. The new version came into force on 1 January 2000. Article 120 bears the caption: ‘Gene Technology in the Non-Human Field’. It contains the following text: 1. Persons and their environment shall be protected against abuse of gene technology. 2. The Confederation shall legislate on the use of the reproductive and genetic material of animals, plants, and other organisms. In doing so, it shall take into account the dignity of creation and the security of man, animal and environment, and shall protect the genetic multiplicity of animal and vegetal species.

As yet there is no other national constitution demanding that the ‘dignity of creation’ be taken into account when it comes to legally regulating our use of non-human life forms. Of course it is not immediately clear what it means exactly to take the dignity of creation into account, and in what way and to what extent taking it into account will restrict our use of living beings which are not human. We will return to this question later. For the time being I would like to draw attention to the rather curious fact that, although the meaning of the phrase ‘dignity of creation’ is by no means clear, an apparent change of wording in the French version of Article 120 gave rise to a serious amount of irritation and anger. Whereas the wording of both the German and the Italian version correspond roughly to the English translation – speaking of ‘Würde der Kreatur’ and ‘dignità della creatura’, respectively – the French version

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is different in that it does not mention any ‘dignité de la creature’ at all but instead speaks of ‘l’integrité des organismes vivants’. Art. 120. Gene Technology in the Non-Human Field (Génie génétique dans le domaine non humain) 1. Persons and their environment shall be protected against abuse of gene technology. (L’etre humain et son environnement doivent etre protégés contre les abus en matière de génie génétique.) 2. The Confederation shall legislate on the use of the reproductive and genetic material of animals, plants, and other organisms. / In doing so, it shall take into account the dignity of creation and the security of man, animal and Environment, and shall protect the genetic multiplicity of animal vegetal species. (La Conféderation légifère sur l’utilisation du patrimoine germinal et génétique des animaux, des végétaux et des autres organismes. / Ce faisant, elle respecte l’intégrité des organismes vivants et la securité de l’etre humain, de l’animal et de l’environnement et protège la diversité génétique des espèces animales et végétales.1

Thus, following the French version, it is not the dignity, but rather the integrity of living organisms that is to be respected. But what is the difference between dignity and integrity? Indeed, is there any difference?2 Critics argued that by substituting integrity for dignity an essential change both of meaning and scope of reference had taken place.3 According to these critics, taking the dignity of an organism into account means more than just respecting its integrity. Thus we can violate the dignity of a creature without at the same time violating its integrity, but not the other way round: if we violate a creature’s integrity then we will also, by implication, have violated its dignity. However, the Vice-Director of the Swiss Federal Ministry of Justice, Lucius Mader, answered the charge of those critics4 by pointing out that the divergence of the French text had been due to purely linguistic considerations, which is to say that the expression ‘dignité de la creature’ just does not sound right in French, presumably because it somehow prescribes that the term ‘dignité’ be used exclusively in respect to human beings. Of course, Mader had a point here. After all, to talk about the dignity of plants or the dignity of micro-organisms is quite unusual. In fact, it is not even very common to talk about the dignity of dogs or other ‘higher’ animals. In contrast, the term integrity can

1 My italics. 2 For an overview of the discussion that took place in Switzerland over these issues see Hanspeter Schmidt, ‘The Dignity of Man and the Intrinsic Value of Creature (Würde der Kreatur): Conflicting or Interdependent Legal Concepts in Legal Reality?’, in David Heaf and Johannes Wirz (eds), Intrinsic Value and Integrity of Plants in the Context of Genetic Engineering. Proceedings of an Ifgene Workshop on 9–11 May 2001 at the Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland (Hafan, Llanystumdwy, 2001), pp. 251–81. 3 See Beat Sitter-Liver, ‘Verfassung ohne “dignite de la creature”. Unkorrekte Äenderung im Nachfüehrungsprozess’, Neue Züercher Zeitung, 26 July 1999: 9. 4 Luzius Mader, ‘Keine “dignite de la creature” in der Verfassung. Redaktionelle Äenderung im Franzöesischen gerechtfertigt’, Neue Züercher Zeitung, 7 January 2000: 13.

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apparently be used in relation to all organisms without offending our sense of what is linguistically proper. So using the term integrity here, in this context, instead of the term dignity seems to be just a very adequate concession to the difference between humans and animals. Mader considered this to be an advantage. Yet this emphasis on the alleged difference between humans and animals might be precisely what the critics were worried about. Speaking of the dignity of animals may be unusual, and not quite in accordance with our linguistic intuitions. Just as some philosophers argue that animals cannot really be said to have ‘desires’ or ‘interests’,5 we may insist that they cannot have any sort of ‘dignity’ either. Yet of course, where there are such linguistic intuitions, that is feelings about what can properly be said in relation to a specific kind of thing, underlying those intuitions is usually also a (however vague) belief about that thing’s nature. When some philosophers argue at length that animals cannot have desires or interests or emotions and so on, they do not simply demand a strict observation of linguistic conventions. Rather, they do so in order to convince us and themselves that animals do not possess those qualities which in their eyes are necessary for the attribution of (full) moral status. When it comes to animals and our treatment of them, denying the adequacy of a word is tantamount to denying the specific kind of moral considerability that is generally associated with that word. So there is good reason to be suspicious about the substitution of the term ‘dignity’ by the term ‘integrity’. However, Mader claimed that what matters is that the basic idea is the same in both concepts, dignity and integrity, namely that living beings are thought to possess some kind of intrinsic value which means, according to Mader, that they are ‘to be respected for their own sake’. Thus, in Mader’s view, the content of both concepts is primarily prescriptive and normative. In fact, in the absence of any clue of what descriptive content these terms might have, it is not unreasonable to suppose that their content is entirely prescriptive. While this seems to be very much in accordance with Mader’s intention of defending the French version of Article 120 as having basically the same meaning as the corresponding passages in the other official languages, it is odd that his opponents, although they insist that the terms in question are by no means equivalent, did not have much to say about the descriptive content of those terms either. This is odd because as long as it is unclear what integrity and dignity are supposed to mean, it is hard to see how one can be sure that the one is different from the other. A striking example of this apparent incoherence can be found in a statement called The Dignity of Animals issued in February 2001 by the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Gene Technology and the Federal Commission on Animal Research.6 Although the statement is entirely a comment on Article 120 there is only one short passage in it dealing with the controversial French version, saying that a 5 See, for instance, R.G. Frey, Interests and Rights: The Case against Animals (Oxford, 1980) or Michael Leahy, Against Liberation: Putting Animals in Perspective (London, 1994). 6 Eidgenöessische Ethikkommission füer die Gentechnik im ausserhumanen Bereich (EKAH) und Eidgenöessische Kommission füer Tierversuch (EKTV) (eds), Die Wüerde des Tieres (2001), <www.ekah.ch>.

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Biotechnology and the Integrity of Life difficulty in the Swiss discussion is that for the French translation of the Constitution the term l’integrité des organismes vivants was chosen. From an ethical point of view it is unclear what the expression integrity is supposed to mean. It is, however, by no means identical with the concept of the dignity of the creature.

Here again the question arises how we can be sure that a concept is ‘by no means identical’ to another if the meaning of that other concept is admittedly totally unclear. Although later in the statement an attempt is made to clarify the concept of dignity, this, again, is done indirectly. That is, it is not explained what dignity is or how we can decide whether an organism has this peculiar property or not, but only what kind of actions are supposed to impair a creature’s dignity. And even this is only specified for vertebrate animals, since, as the authors of the statement frankly admit, it is much harder to say what it means to take the dignity of a plant or a ‘lower’ animal into account. But at least for vertebrates the authors believe themselves to be in a position to state what kind of actions would violate their dignity, namely: Violations of an animal’s dignity 1. to inflict unjustified suffering, pain, and harm on them, and also to frighten them without justification 2. to change their appearance 3. to humiliate them, and finally, 4. to unduly instrumentalize them

Note that the Commission does not think that the Swiss Constitution requires us never to violate a creature’s dignity. Rather, we are only asked to ‘take it into account’, and this means that we should in each case consider carefully if a violation of dignity can be justified or not, that is, if our human interests outweigh those of the animals in question. Hence we are morally (and legally) justified to inflict harm on them, change their appearance, humiliate them, and instrumentalize them, as long as we have a good reason to do so, and that means as long as human interests seem more important. So the protection that animals are officially granted here is rather limited. Moreover, since no attempt is made to define the term dignity directly and in a non-prescriptive way, it seems rather arbitrary which actions are said to constitute at least prima facie a violation of a creature’s dignity. Why, for instance, should the dignity of an animal be impaired if we changed its appearance? Say we were whimsical enough to genetically engineer a green swan or a pink dog just to amuse ourselves and without in any way diminishing the animal’s well-being (assuming, perhaps counterfactually, other swans or dogs would not mind their appearance), would we have damaged their dignity? If so, why? And what prevents us from randomly declaring all sorts of other actions as dignity-violating? Do I, for instance, also violate the dignity of my cat by talking to her (even though I know she does not understand me) or by stroking her back (as if she were something cuddly and cute which she plainly is not)? Of course not, most people will probably say, but the question is, if not, why not? Is it not entirely arbitrary to say that changing an

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animal’s appearance violates its dignity but talking to it or stroking its back does not? Some have argued that the dignity of plants can also be violated by changing their appearance. Examples given are, among others, the creation of blue roses (not the proper, ‘natural’, colour) or bonsai trees (not the proper, ‘natural’, size).7 Granted that blue roses look a little weird (and is that not mainly because we are not used to it?), what does this fact have to do with the dignity of the rose? In conclusion, the main problem for the dignity approach seems to be that virtually anything can be said to violate the dignity of an organism. Because, for all we know, what this means is simply that we do not think it should be done, at least not without a good reason (whatever that is). But if the term is descriptively empty and functions, so to speak, as a coat-hanger for anything we happen to dislike, then why not use the term integrity instead (or any other term)? Anyhow, the formula of the dignity of creation raises questions which need to be answered before it can be applied as a meaningful ethical concept: What exactly is dignity and how can we decide whether a being has dignity or not? Do only humans possess dignity, or can animals and even plants and micro-organisms have dignity as well? And, most important of all, if we accept that a living organism x has dignity, what follows from this in terms of moral requirements, especially in the context of genetic engineering? The Dutch discussion on ‘animal integrity’ In 1992, the same year as the Swiss approved the amendment to their Constitution that has just been discussed, the Dutch passed a new law, the Animal Health and Welfare Act. This law states that making transgenic animals is forbidden, unless it can be shown ‘that there is no unacceptable violation of animal well-being and animal integrity connected with it’. This is known as the no-unless policy. Of course the formulation implies that some violations of animal well-being and animal integrity might very well be acceptable. The term ‘integrity’ that is used here is obviously meant to complement ‘well-being’ as something which goes beyond it. Hence it must be possible that the well-being of an animal remains undiminished while its integrity is seriously impaired. Now, just as the term ‘dignity’ in the Swiss Constitution, the term ‘integrity’ is here treated as virtually synonymous with intrinsic value. And just as the Swiss had a committee whose task it was to clarify what taking the dignity of creation into account requires us to do or not to do, the Dutch had a Committee on Animal Biotechnology that tried to find out what a violation of an animal’s integrity might consist in. This is what they have agreed on:8

7 Christop Rehmann-Sutter, ‘Dignity of Plants and Perception’, in Heaf and Wirz, Intrinsic Value and Integrity of Plants in the Context of Genetic Engineering, pp. 4–8. 8 Henk Verhoog, ‘The Intrinsic Value of Animals: Its Implementation in Governmental Regulations in the Netherlands and Its Implication for Plants’, in Heaf and Wirz, Intrinsic Value and Integrity of Plants in the Context of Genetic Engineering, pp. 15–18.

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Violation of an animal’s integrity 1.

to change the genome

2.

to change the appearance

3.

to change the species specific behaviour

4.

to impair the ability to live autonomously

If we now compare what the Swiss Committee considered a violation of an animal’s dignity with what the Dutch considered a violation of its integrity, we find that the two lists are rather similar, though there are some important differences too. We can see that the first item mentioned in the dignity list, namely inflicting on the animal unjustified suffering and so on, is not to be found in the integrity list, but only because it falls under the heading of welfare considerations which are treated separately. The second item, changing the appearance of an animal, is mentioned in both accounts, which, since the emphasis is put on something that can hardly have any relevance for the animal in question, is quite remarkable in itself. But as it is, presumably manufacturing a green swan or a pink dog would not only violate their dignity but also their integrity. In contrast, the third and fourth item in the dignity list, humiliation and undue instrumentalization, do not appear in the integrity list. Why not? What is special about them? For one thing, both humiliation and instrumentalization describe not so much actions but rather attitudes which are merely expressed in actions. The terms seem to refer not to something we do to an animal but rather to the spirit in which we do it. This is less obvious in respect to humiliation than it is in respect to instrumentalization. However, humiliating an animal is mentioned as a separate item on the list in addition to inflicting on it unjustified suffering, so we have to assume that humiliation does not count as (cause for) unjustified suffering. Yet if that is so, then humiliating an animal cannot be understood as making an animal feel humiliated, for surely feeling humiliated is a kind of suffering. But if an animal does not have to feel humiliated in order to be humiliated, how then are we supposed to know when it is in fact humiliated? This problem seems less pressing in respect to instrumentalization. Obviously, one does not have to be aware that one is being instrumentalized in order to be instrumentalized. However, we have a fairly good idea of what instrumentalizing someone (or something) means, so that our judgement whether or not an act involves some entity’s instrumentalization can be made without any reference to that entity’s being aware of it. If I am used for a certain purpose that does not at least partly recognize and incorporate my interests, then I am being instrumentalized whether or not I know of it. Likewise, if an animal is used in, for instance, a scientific experiment for the sake of gaining knowledge, or if it is genetically manipulated in order to increase its utility, in both cases it is clearly and without doubt instrumentalized. However, it is not the instrumentalization of animals as such that, according to the Federal Ethics Committee, the Swiss Constitution intends to prohibit but merely their ‘undue’ instrumentalization. By making this important qualification the committee, whose task it was to clarify what taking

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the dignity of creation into account demands in terms of our concrete treatment of animals, implicitly admits to having failed in their attempt to throw light on the matter. For, although it is, at least in principle, clear what kind of action (or rather, what kind of attitude motivating an action) constitutes an act of instrumentalization, it is not at all clear what constitutes an undue instrumentalization. Therefore neither the purported requirement not to humiliate animals nor the requirement not to unduly instrumentalize them is very illuminating. How exactly are we supposed to determine whether or not an action constitutes or implies either the humiliation or an undue instrumentalization of an animal? Do we, for instance, humiliate an animal by cloning it? Or is this rather an undue instrumentalization? Or neither? Or both? In comparison, the items mentioned in the integrity list are much more definite in terms of what kind of action is considered to be a violation of the basic principle. Changing an animal’s genome, changing its appearance, changing its species specific behaviour and impairing its ability to live autonomously are quite clearly applicable to certain actions. Only the second kind of action is addressed in the list that attempts to explicate what respecting the dignity of creation requires, and this is also the one that appears to be the most arbitrary. Of the four actions mentioned in the dignity list the last two are practically useless as they stand, the second seems completely arbitrary and the first only repeats what is almost generally accepted anyway, namely that inflicting suffering and pain on a living being is, if not clearly morally wrong, at least in need of moral justification. The integrity list, on the other hand, is much easier to translate into action, which suggests that the term integrity is actually more concrete, more capable of factual description than the term dignity. But how do we get from the concept to the items on the list? What exactly does the integrity of an animal consist in so that we can infer from it that, for instance, changing its genome is morally wrong or at least in need of justification? Jan Vorstenbosch, in his seminal article on ‘The concept of integrity’,9 published in 1993, defines integrity as ‘“wholeness”, “intactness”, and “unharmed or undamaged” state of something, presumably a living being’. In passing he mentions another, earlier definition by M.G. Hansson who, in 1991, defined integrity as ‘dignity and inviolability’. However, Vorstenbosch rejects this definition on the grounds that it bring in ‘the normative aspect too soon and too strong’. ‘Integrity’, writes Vorstenbosch, ‘seems to be a value to be respected, but first we want to know more exactly what it is.’ That is surely a good start. Vorstenbosch then distinguishes ‘several dimensions of integrity, for instance physical, mental, genetic and moral integrity’. Note that the formulation implies that there might be more dimensions than just those four. Vorstenbosch also suggests a specification of the subject of integrity, for instance the individual animal, a species, an eco-system or human beings. ‘In biotechnology’, he then adds, ‘the genetic integrity of the individual animal and of the species is central.’ The genetic integrity of the animal is defined ‘as the genome being left intact’. But why, we may ask, should in biotechnology the genetic integrity be central? Why not the physical and mental integrity of an animal? After all, if the genome is 9 Jan Vorstenbosch, ‘The Concept of Integrity: Its Significance for the Ethical Discussion on Biotechnology and Animals’, Livestock Production Science, 36 (1993): 109–12.

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all that is changed, so that this change does not have any effect whatsoever on the appearance or behaviour of the animal, why should it be wrong? And is genetic integrity a meaningful concept at all? We will return to these questions later. Vorstenbosch rightly points out that the concept of integrity is important for ethics mainly because integrity is not logically related to the subjective experience of the animal itself: ‘The integrity of the animal can be affected without the animal’s “being aware” of it.’ It is also important because it has nothing to do with welfare and is not a grading concept allowing an assessment in terms of more or less (suffering, pain, harm). Rather, integrity is ‘more of a yes-or-no criterion (like the concept of being a virgin or not being it)’. The latter claim, of course, is debatable. Certainly one cannot be more or less a virgin, but there are other kinds of integrity for which the question of whether there can or can not be a partial loss is not so clear. Other authors (for example Henk Verhoog, Bernard Rollin, Paul Taylor, or Michael Fox10) have referred to concepts like the basic nature or the telos of an animal to clarify further the meaning of the term integrity and to bridge the gap from the descriptive to the normative level. According to these ethicists, integrity is not just a quality that a creature does or does not have, but something it ought to have: it is that state or condition which it is meant to have or what is normal for it to have. Donald Bruce, director of the Society, Religion and Technology Project, Church of Scotland, writes: ‘The integrity of the animal is violated only if something fundamental about the animal is upset, which is eliminating a vital function or impairing its normal activity, or causing significant harm.’11 A more descriptive level is kept when Craig Holdrege explains: ‘You begin to see the integrity of the animal when you see how the whole informs every part.’12 Could one also say that one begins to see the dignity of the animal when one sees how the whole informs every part? And if one could, would it mean the same? In any case, at least some writers treat the terms dignity and integrity as if they were interchangeable, for example Jochen Bockemühl: ‘In general, the integrity or dignity of something … is the state of being united as a whole.’13 10 Henk Verhoog, ‘Biotechnologie und die Integritäet des Lebens’, in Michael Hauskeller (ed.), Die Kunst der Wahrnehmung (Kusterdingen, 2003), pp. 130–56; Henk Verhoog, ‘Naturalness and the Genetic Modification of Animals’, Trends in Biotechnology, 21/7 (2003): 289–323; Bernard Rollin, The Frankenstein Syndrome: Ethical and Social Issues in the Genetic Engineering of Animals (Cambridge, MA, 1995); Paul W. Taylor, Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics (Princeton, NJ, 1986); Michael W. Fox, Superpigs and Wondercorn: The Brave New World of Biotechnology and Where It All May Lead (New York, 1992). 11 Donald Bruce, ‘Engineering Genesis: Pioneering Genetic Engineering and Ethics in Scotland’, in David Heaf and Johannes Wirz (eds), Genetic Engineering and the Intrinsic Value and Integrity of Animals and Plants. Proceedings of a Workshop at the Royal Botanical Garden, Edinburgh (Hafan, Llanystumdwy, 2002), pp. 11–16. 12 Craig Holdrege, ‘Seeing the Integrity and Intrinsic Value of Animals: Developing Appreciative Modes of Understanding’, in Heaf and Wirz, Genetic Engineering and the Intrinsic Value and Integrity of Animals and Plants, pp. 18–23. 13 Jochen Bockemühl, ‘A Goethean View of Plants: Unconventional Approaches’, in Heaf and Wirz, Intrinsic Value and Integrity of Plants in the Context of Genetic Engineering, pp. 29–32.

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Conclusion Even though integrity and dignity are not always distinguished, the concept of integrity seems to have some advantages over the concept of dignity: first it can much easier be applied not only to all animals, but also to plants and micro-organisms. Second, it has a certain, fairly definite descriptive content, namely wholeness and intactness. Even so, a conference organized by the International Forum for Genetic Engineering (Ifgene), which took place in Dornach, Switzerland, in 2001, ended not very surprisingly with the organizers’ admission that the ‘many meanings (levels) of the concept of integrity made consensus at the workshop impossible’.14 This is mainly because the basic problem remains the same, whether we want to employ the term ‘dignity’ or the term ‘integrity’. If we say that the dignity of an organism is not to be violated we say something which is necessarily true, because it belongs to the very definition of dignity that it ought not to be violated. Our problem then is the lack of descriptive content. There is no need to explain why dignity should be respected but then we cannot say for sure what kind of action actually involves a violation of dignity, or even if there is something like dignity at all. The notion of integrity, on the other hand, can be given a descriptive content, so we can also say what would be a violation of it, but then we are bound to give a reason why it should not be violated and it is uncertain if we can give such a reason. Furthermore, what, in each case, we call integrity is likely to be something we think ought to be protected, so our moral intuitions determine what is to be considered a relevant property of an organism and what is not. Hence, both the dignity approach and the integrity approach suffer from a certain arbitrariness, or at least from what, at this stage, seems to be arbitrary. However, it should not be forgotten that both terms fulfil an important function in giving a name to something many people feel to be there, that is, something in the being or nature of living organisms that puts us under a certain moral obligation and restricts our behaviour towards them. Many people share the moral intuition that there is something deeply wrong with the attempt to change the very nature of a living being by means of genetic engineering, and it is not only understandable but also desirable to have concepts that enable us to link these intuitions to features that living organisms actually possess. But precisely because this is so desirable it is even more important to develop and clarify those concepts, so that they can be consistently and plausibly applied. Since, as far as I can see, this has not yet been sufficiently done, I will try to do so in the course of the next four chapters.

14 Heaf and Wirz, Intrinsic Value and Integrity of Plants in the Context of Genetic Engineering, p. 55.

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Chapter Four

Types and Forms of Integrity What the word ‘integrity’ means In the most general sense, integrity is a concept that can be used in relation to anything that can be damaged. The Latin ‘integritas’, from which the English word ‘integrity’ derives, generally denotes ‘the undiminished or unimpaired condition of a thing’.1 It was used mostly in respect to undiminished strength of body and mind, purity (for instance of food, but also in the sense of chastity and virginity) and a virtuous, unblemished character. But according to Glare’s Oxford Latin Dictionary,2 the term ‘integer’ could refer to a whole range of different properties: ‘whole, complete’, ‘not previously touched, tried, used, etc.’, ‘not exhausted by previous activity, fresh’, ‘not impaired by physical injury, undamaged, entire’, ‘virgin, not violated’, ‘unimpaired by ill health or disease’, ‘unimpaired by age, youthful’, ‘mentally sound, unaffected by passion’, ‘morally unblemished’, (of abstract things:) ‘unimpaired, undiminished’, (of resources:) ‘not reduced or diminished’, (of persons, places and so on:) ‘not affected by war, depredation, or other losses’, (of armed forces:) ‘having suffered no losses’. Obviously the core meaning of the term is broader than any of its traditional applications. It seems that anything can be said to possess integrity as long as it is ‘entire’, ‘intact’, ‘unharmed’, ‘untouched’, ‘unspoilt’ or ‘inviolate’. Anything that is still in full possession of its powers and natural (or artificial) faculties, in other words: anything that is still as it should be, has kept its integrity. On the other hand, anything that has lost part of its powers, that is weaker or in any way worse than it is supposed to be or that it could possibly be in this particular phase of its existence or stage of development, has, to that extent, lost its integrity. Hence, if we take as a starting point the original meaning of the term, then clearly the concept of integrity is anything but purely descriptive. Rather, it has a strong normative content since it presupposes an ideal condition (or possibly more than one ideal condition) from which any divergence is not simply a change but an aberration and deterioration, that is, a change for the worse. A thing that has integrity is as good as it can be and cannot be improved. This explains why the Latin term ‘integer’ meant both the inviolate and the inviolable: that which has not been violated yet is also that which ought not to be violated. Since, per definition, the worse is to be avoided and the better (let alone the best) to be preferred, the state of full integrity (provided there is 1 This is the general definition found in Lewis’s and Short’s classic Latin–English dictionary: A Latin Dictionary. Founded on Andrew’s edition of Freund’s Latin Dictionary. Revised, enlarged, and in great part rewritten by Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (Oxford, 1879). 2 Oxford Latin Dictionary, (ed.) P.G. Glare (Oxford, 1982), pp. 934–5.

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such a state which may not always – that is, in respect to all objects – be the case) is a state that ought to be preserved whenever possible, that is, when there is no good reason for not preserving it. In other words, if all other things are equal, integrity is preferable to non-integrity. Thus any action that leads to a loss of integrity is in need of justification. However, it is not always, for any particular object, clear what constitutes damage and consequently a loss of integrity, and not even whether it can be damaged at all. Not every change is necessarily a change for the worse, not every loss (or gain) a violation of integrity. Some changes do not endanger integrity. If this were not so then no living thing could have integrity, for there is no life without change. There must be some sort of a borderline that separates changes that are integrity-violating from those that are not. Where exactly this borderline runs will depend upon the nature of the object whose integrity is at stake and upon this object’s ideal condition. In theory, there are two possibilities as to how to determine an object’s ideal condition. I say ‘in theory’ because it remains to be seen whether both possibilities are actually realized. In practice, there may be only one viable way of determining an object’s ideal condition. Again, whether or not this is so, is something that must prove itself during the course of this book. These are the two theoretical possibilities: either the nature of the object is such that in order to find out about its ideal condition we do not need any external reference point, or it is such that we do. In the present context, a reference point is whatever provides the ground for marking out a certain condition as ideal. Without a reference point it would be impossible to say in what respect a certain condition stood out as ‘ideal’. Now, in the first possible case, it only depends on the thing itself, that is, its intrinsic properties, whether it is to be considered whole or not whole, damaged or undamaged. Here the reference point, which is needed to determine whether the object is still in a state of integrity or not, is imposed on us (that is, by anyone who contemplates it) by the object itself. In other words, we are not free to choose our own reference point. As soon as we know what kind of thing we are dealing with we can in principle also know when its integrity is impaired and when not. For lack of a better word, I will call this form of integrity autonomous integrity or auto-integrity. In the second possible case, the required reference point is not already given with the nature of the object, so it is up to us to choose and/or accept one. As long as we have not done this, there is no way to tell whether the object’s integrity is damaged or intact. And we do not have to make a decision at all. If we do not choose, there will be no reference point and therefore no integrity that could be damaged or remain intact. I will call this second form of integrity heteronomous integrity or hetero-integrity. Let us first look at an example for hetero-integrity. Take, for instance, an inanimate object like a stone. Does a stone have integrity? It seems not, for in order to have integrity an object must be capable of being damaged, and it is hard to see how one should be able to damage a stone. Of course you can do all sorts of things to a stone, like, for instance, cut it in half or pulverize it, but this is not in any way damaging to the stone. The stone has just changed its appearance. It is different than before, and that is all. So by its own nature, a stone does not seem to possess integrity. However, even a stone may gain integrity if there is someone around who contributes an external point of reference by, for instance, adopting an aesthetic

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point of view. The stone may then be perceived – by virtue of, for example, its form, surface structure or colour – as beautiful (or in other ways aesthetically pleasing or interesting) and, in so far, as being in an ideal condition, so that any change in the appearance of the stone will either destroy or diminish its beauty or at least not enhance it (so that changing it will have posed at best an unnecessary risk). Or the stone may be perceived as ugly and hence as being far removed from the ideal condition, or as somewhere in between beauty and ugliness and more or less far removed from the ideal. If beauty or a desire for beauty is our reference point, then the stone can be said to have, or to lack, integrity in so far as it is beautiful or ugly respectively, or more precisely in so far as it is in a state conducive to the perception of it as beautiful or ugly. From an aesthetic standpoint anything that causes a loss of beauty (or, more generally, of aesthetic appeal) counts as damage, and whatever can be damaged has, in that particular respect, integrity. That is to say, if the nature of the damage is aesthetic then the integrity is aesthetic in kind too. And since, as stated above, integrity is generally preferable to non-integrity, here too we should preserve integrity if we have no good reason for sacrificing it – provided, that is, we adopt the aesthetic point of view or at least accept it as relevant. Given the endorsement of the aesthetic perspective, the beautiful stone should be left alone or, if we have to change it for whatever reason, to take parts away from it or add new parts, this should be done in a way that aesthetic integrity is preserved. The parts should still fit together and be in harmony with each other. This is what ‘integration’ means: the creation or recreation of integrity. It is the adaptation of a new part in such a way that the integrity of the object is preserved. Disintegration, on the other hand, is the process of dissolving an object’s integrity: of changing, subtracting or adding parts in a way that is not in accordance with its integrity. Let us look at another example for hetero-integrity. Does a simple tool like a hammer have integrity? Or a much more complex tool such as a personal computer? Again, as inanimate objects, they have no integrity by themselves. Accordingly, neither can they be damaged, for it makes no difference to the hammer or the computer what happens to them. But of course, if we consider them not merely as inanimate objects (which they are whether we consider them so or not) but instead as tools (which they are only in so far as we consider them so or use them accordingly), then both hammer and computer can be damaged. And in so far as they can be damaged they have integrity. By considering the hammer or the computer as tools we provide them with an external reference point just as we did with the stone when we considered it an aesthetically pleasing or displeasing object. We could, of course, also consider the hammer or the computer from an aesthetic point of view, but then the reference point would be different from what it is when we consider them as tools. Both perspectives provide the object with an external reference point, which in its turn lends it integrity. Yet it is not the same point of reference and consequently not the same type of integrity. The first is what we might call ‘aesthetic’ integrity and the second what we might call ‘functional’ or ‘instrumental’ integrity (in the following, I will use the term ‘functional integrity’). An object possesses functional integrity in so far as it is meant to be used in a certain way for a certain purpose. The required reference point is the function it is meant to fulfil. Thus the hammer has definitely lost its functional integrity when it can no longer be used as a hammer and at least

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partly when it does not fulfil its function as well as it used to or as can reasonably be expected from a hammer. Likewise, the computer has lost its functional integrity entirely when it can no longer be used as a computer and at least partly when it does not fulfil its functions as well as it used to or as can reasonably be expected from a computer of that make and year. Since for both aesthetic and functional integrity the point of reference is external, what constitutes damage in respect to aesthetic integrity does not necessarily constitute damage in respect to functional integrity, and vice versa. A tool can have lost its beauty but still work fine, or can be broken and useless and (possibly for that very reason) be more beautiful than ever before, so that restoring its functional integrity would mean destroying its aesthetic integrity. As we have seen, both aesthetic and functional integrity require an external reference point. That is what I mean when I call them instances of hetero-integrity. Many other types of hetero-integrity exist, for instance the integrity of a political system, a state or a nation; or the integrity of a vintage book for the book-lover. The heteronomous character of the book’s integrity (by which I do not mean the moral integrity of its contents but its integrity as a special kind of material object) shows clearly in the fact that for a bibliophile a vintage book has lost some of its integrity when it was signed by a former owner (unless that owner was very distinguished), but has not lost any of it when it was signed by the author. We can imagine an unlimited number of even more idiosyncratic integrities. However, not all types of integrity need to be heteronomous. As indicated above, there may be some that do not require an external point of reference at all since there already is a point of reference before anyone can bring one in. The point of reference would then be given with the nature of the object, so that the resulting integrity would be autonomous and not heteronomous. We do not know yet, though, whether there really is such a thing as auto-integrity. Yet if there is, then the element of arbitrariness that attaches to all types of hetero-integrity would be eliminated and possibly with it the accompanying character of non-obligation. Now, there are at least three different types of integrity that are, prima vista, plausible candidates for auto-integrity. The first is the moral integrity of persons, the second the integrity of ecosystems, and the third, and for the purposes of this book the most important, the integrity of life, or, more precisely, of living beings. I will call these types, respectively, personal integrity, ecological integrity (or in short eco-integrity) and biological integrity (or bio-integrity). Although the latter type of integrity will be the focus of this book, we will be better equipped to understand what bio-integrity – the integrity of living beings as living beings – is and what its ethical relevance may be by looking briefly first at personal integrity and (even more briefly) at eco-integrity. Personal integrity In everyday life the term integrity is most commonly used in the sense of personal integrity. Persons are said to have integrity or not, or to have more or less integrity. A person possessing integrity cannot be bribed, is honest, truthful, that is, says what she believes and acts in accordance with what she says. A person possessing integrity

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is trustworthy; she does not fall apart in a real self and an apparent self. Rather, being and appearance are properly (that is, truthfully) related. We generally consider this to be a good thing: when we say that someone has integrity, we usually mean it as a compliment, and only rarely as a reproach. To have integrity, therefore, is generally supposed to be a good thing. Of course, circumstances may arise in which we detest someone for their integrity. The integrity of another person can be quite a nuisance, when, for instance, we want to bribe that person. But then so can another’s honesty, courage, benevolence or whatever else we may normally consider a good trait in people. Sometimes those traits might be in our way, might cross our interests. But we can still recognize them as fundamentally good and desirable in people, and in principle qualities worth striving for. They are admirable and to be respected. Such qualities are traditionally called virtues.3 However, it is not quite clear what that particular virtue that we call integrity consists in. How does it differ from other virtues such as honesty, reliability or truthfulness? And what exactly is a virtue? Numerous philosophers have tried to give a coherent and plausible account of personal integrity.4 For some, personal integrity consists in organizing one’s desires, volitions, commitments, values and actions in such a way that there is no conflict between them. Thus a person possesses integrity if the various aspects that constitute their ‘self’ are fully integrated. Whatever they do they do, as Harry Frankfurt puts it, ‘wholeheartedly’.5 In this manner, Gabriele Taylor thinks that to have integrity means to keep one’s ‘inmost self intact’, to have a life that is ‘of a piece’ and a self that is ‘whole and integrated’.6 In order to achieve this, Taylor maintains, one has to be rational in a number of related ways. One has to be consistent in one’s behaviour, must not ignore relevant evidence and not act on insufficient reasons. Unfortunately, if that is what personal integrity means (or at least if that is all it means) then it seems that a person can possess integrity and yet be thoroughly self-oriented and anti-social or even positively evil at the same time. There seems to be no contradiction in imagining a person who is ‘fully integrated but evil’.7 On the self-integration account of integrity, even mass-murderers could be said to have integrity as long as they pursue their gruesome business ‘wholeheartedly’ and thus keep their selves intact. Yet if that is no contradiction then it seems that integrity is wrongly considered a virtue. Taylor is aware of this but does not think it invalidates 3 Cheshire Calhoun, ‘Standing for Something’, The Journal of Philosophy, 92/5 (1995): 235–260, p. 235. 4 For an excellent concise overview on the subject see Damian Cox, Marguerite La Caze and Michael Levine, ‘Integrity’, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2005 edition), . For a more detailed treatment see Damian Cox, Marguerite La Caze and Michael P. Levine, Integrity and the Fragile Self (Aldershot, 2003). 5 Harry Frankfurt, ‘Identification and Wholeheartedness’, in Ferdinand Schoeman (ed.), Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions: New Essays in Moral Psychology (New York, 1987), pp. 27–45. 6 Gabriele Taylor, ‘Integrity’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. 55 (1981): 143–59. For a detailed critique of Taylor’s approach see Raimond Gaita, ‘Integrity’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. 55 (1981): 161–76. 7 Cox et al., Integrity and the Fragile Self, p. 32.

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her account. Integrity might, contrary what people tend to think, not be a virtue after all.8 Another view, which is mostly associated with Bernard Williams, puts emphasis not on successful self-integration but on the maintenance of identity. A person possesses integrity when they have some commitments that they consider so important and so entwined with what they are that they always act in accordance with them, even in the most adverse circumstances. For giving those commitments up would be tantamount to giving themselves up.9 According to Lynne McFall, personal integrity requires ‘that an agent (1) subscribe to some consistent set of principles or commitments and (2), in the face of temptation or challenge, (3) uphold these principles or commitments, (4) for what the agent takes to be the right reasons’.10 Like Taylor, McFall recognizes that someone who has integrity in this sense may still be able to do things that most of us would find abhorrent. Her solution to this is to distinguish between personal integrity and moral integrity: although one cannot have moral integrity without personal integrity, it is well possible to have personal integrity without moral integrity. The reason for this is that moral integrity requires an unconditional and unwavering commitment to some or other moral principles and hence an unconditional and unwavering commitment. But having unconditional and unwavering commitments (to whatever one identifies with most) is what personal integrity means. Since, however, one can have strong commitments without having strong moral commitments, there obviously can be personal integrity without moral integrity. To make further distinctions within the category of personal integrity is certainly helpful. It releases us from the need to give a straightforward answer to the question of whether a person possesses integrity or not. Because the answer depends on what type or sub-type of integrity is being asked for. One could, for instance, commit oneself to be ‘the baddest man (or woman) in town’ and uphold this commitment even when one feels tempted or under the social pressure to do good. In that case, one could perhaps claim (some sort of) personal integrity but not of the kind we call moral integrity. Or one could, for instance, have strong artistic commitments that override any moral concerns that oneself or others may happen to have. Such a person would then dedicate their life completely to the creation, promotion and 8 For a defence of this view see Nancy Schauber, ‘Integrity, Commitment and the Concept of a Person’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 33/1 (1996): 119–29. Schauber argues that if the possession of integrity is understood as ‘being true to our passive commitments’ – that is those commitments that, since they are involuntary, constitute our real self – then it is ‘virtually unavoidable’ (p. 122). ‘Since action ultimately presupposes passive commitments on the part of the person who acts, one who acts possesses integrity. This is to say that integrity is built into any adequate conception of a person.’ (p. 126) 9 See Bernard Williams, ‘Persons, Character and Morality’, in Bernard Williams, Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980 (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 1–19. 10 Lynne McFall, ‘Integrity’, Ethics, 98 (1987): 5–20. A problem for this approach is the apparent assumption that, instead of being in permanent flux, the self remains the same throughout its history. As Cox et al. (Integrity and the Fragile Self, p. 104) point out, the self is not fixed, but instead ‘an unfolding narrative, or rather set of narratives, embedded in a complex network of relationships’.

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refinement of art and would even kill11 if that seemed necessary in the light of their commitment. They would not hesitate to betray people but would never ever betray art. In that case one might be said to have artistic integrity, but certainly not moral integrity. Both artistic integrity and moral integrity could be understood as particular sub-types of personal integrity. However, along the lines of the integrated-self and the identity picture of integrity, personal integrity (be it moral or artistic or some other sub-type) is essentially a relation that one has to (aspects of) oneself and not a relation one has to others. In contrast, Cheshire Calhoun has emphasized that integrity is essentially a social virtue.12 Even though it might be necessary for a person possessing integrity to have a properly integrated self and strong commitments with which she identifies, this is not the whole picture, for in order to possess integrity she must also ‘stand for something’, namely for ‘what, in her best judgment, is worth persons’ doing’. In other words, she not only speaks for herself but also for others. She has a proper regard for her own judgement but also knows that it is limited and she might learn from others. She understands herself as a ‘deliberator among deliberators’ and thus acknowledges others ‘as deliberators who must themselves abide by their best judgment’ and who must be listened to.13 A person possessing integrity keeps herself open to criticism. Hence, on Calhoun’s view, a fanatic who, because he feels that he simply cannot be wrong, sticks to his principles no matter what others might say against it does not have integrity. Neither, of course, does someone who changes her opinions as soon as opposition arises. Where integrity ends and fanatic zeal begins is therefore not always easy to determine.14 I do not wish to argue for or against any of these or other accounts of personal integrity. In vain would we ask which of these accounts was correct, for there is no such thing as a correct account of a word unless the word has been coined in a specific, for instance scientific, context and been introduced with a precise definition. And ‘personal integrity’ is not one of these words. Therefore it is rather unlikely that we all speak of personal integrity always in the same way and with the same meaning attached to it. Since its meaning is determined by the way it is being used, it is hopeless to try and find only one correct meaning and discard all others as false. So why do philosophers bother to argue about the meaning of the word ‘integrity’? And 11 The ‘wholehearted’ artist or art-lover will most likely regard such a killing as a necessary ‘sacrifice’, just as the dedicated scientist will see herself justified and even obligated to ‘sacrifice’ research animals in the interest of a progression of knowledge. In doing so she will remain true to her identity as a scientist and in that sense preserve her scientific integrity against possible moral demands arising from the animals’ evident will to life. 12 Calhoun, ‘Standing for Something’. Similarly, in Integrity and the Fragile Self, Cox et al. point out the distinction between authenticity and integrity, and explicitly demand that the latter include moral considerations: ‘An authentic individual may be a moral monster, but a person of integrity may not.’ (p. 12). If that is so, integrity must mean more than just authenticity. For Cox et al. this additional component is the willingness to take one’s own life and the life of others seriously (p. 72). 13 Calhoun, ‘Standing for Something’, p. 260. 14 Which may be considered a weakness in Calhoun’s account. See Cox et al., ‘Integrity’, p. 5.

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why philosophers in the first place? Would not sociologists do a much better job by conducting qualitative interviews and simply asking people what they mean when they use the word? It seems to me that philosophers argue about integrity for the same reasons Socrates argued about the meaning of the words ‘courage’, ‘piety’ or ‘temperance’. Not in order to find out what these words ‘really’ meant but rather to find out what people should be like, what personal properties they should cultivate, what is worth doing, worth striving for in ourselves, and worth admiring or at least respecting in others. Thus the whole discussion about integrity is only partly about what we mean when we say that someone possesses integrity. Mostly it is about what makes a good human being, or what is to be counted as an ideal condition in humans. For ‘integrity’ is not only a normative concept in the objective sense described above, namely in the sense that it presupposes a reference point setting the norm without which a violation of integrity can not meaningfully be stated. ‘Integrity’ is also a normative concept in the subjective sense that we cannot attribute it to something without bringing in our own values and recommending it as an ideal condition. Accordingly, whether we grant someone integrity who has artistic or some other type of personal integrity but no moral integrity, strong commitments but no moral commitments, an integrated self but few moral scruples (or moral scruples but not the right ones) depends on whether we are willing to admire someone for their steadfastness and unity and recognize those qualities as ideal conditions of some sort,15 or we think that without moral integrity (and what we imagine moral integrity requires) no other kind of integrity is of any value and hence should not be given the honorary title ‘integrity’ at all. It is likely that in terms of its actual usage ‘integrity’ is indeed, as Cox et al. argue, a ‘cluster-concept’, ‘tying together different overlapping qualities of character under the one term’.16 Yet in order to avoid confusion we are well advised to distinguish those qualities and find suitable subheadings such as artistic integrity, intellectual integrity, professional integrity and so on. Each type of integrity relates to a different reference point that marks a specific condition as ideal. Each ideal condition is related to a specific way of being good. We can, for instance, be good persons, not in the moral sense, but in the restricted sense of being good as persons where ‘person’ is understood in John Locke’s sense of being ‘a thinking intelligent Being, that has Reason and Reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking Thing in different Times and Places’.17 Or we can be good social agents who always act in a way that is conducive to the smooth flow and continuity of society. Or we can be good politicians or good teachers or good nurses. In each case we embody a particular kind of ideal condition or state of distinction. In each case there are things

15 This is recognized by Calhoun (‘Standing for Something’, p. 255) when she describes self-integration as a valuable character trait. To seek the meaning of the word ‘integrity’ in the integration of the self is to emphasize the value of autonomy. The ability of self-determination makes one a better person than a proneness to let oneself be guided by contingent desires. 16 Cox et al., ‘Integrity’, p. 9. 17 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (London, 1753), vol. 2, ch. 27 (Of Identity and Diversity), § 9.

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that we cannot do without departing from this ideal condition and thus losing our (or part of our) specific integrity. Now, in most of these cases, the required reference point will without doubt be judged to be external rather than internal. The specific integrity of the politician, the artist or any other professional is tied to a set of tasks they are supposed to fulfil, a role they are supposed to play and which they have, to a certain degree, voluntarily chosen. It is in the light of this role and the associated expectations that integrity is attributed or denied here. But also the integrity one can have as a social agent or as a person in Locke’s sense of the word might be argued to depend on a certain set of expectations, on ends that are deemed important and worthy of pursuit. In the absence of such external evaluations we would not be able to recognize a specific condition as ideal because such recognition does not seem to be imposed on us by the nature of the object, which in this case is a human being. Even moral integrity may be thought external and quite alien to the nature of a human being if it is regarded as nothing but a certain character disposition that agrees most with what we expect from others in terms of their general actions and obedience to rules of behaviour. If we did not expect others to behave morally, that is, to act in accordance with certain moral rules, then there might not be a basis for judging a lack of moral concern in a person as something that is damaging to them. However, moral integrity and also personal integrity in the widest sense, understood as the possession of a fully integrated self and the firm will and ability to remain true to oneself, need not be regarded as external at all. The next chapter will discuss Plato’s concept of justice, which is a good example for an internal conception of personal and moral integrity and which will provide a bridge between personal integrity and biological integrity. But first we need to consider ecological integrity. Ecological integrity The by now firmly established use of the term ‘integrity’ in environmental ethics goes back to a remark that the American forester Aldo Leopold made at the end of his influential Sand County Almanach: ‘A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.’18 When American philosophers discovered the environment as a subject of moral concern in the early 1970s, thereby creating a whole new subject area in philosophy, they derived much of their inspiration from Leopold and his call for an extension of traditional ethic to a ‘land ethic’ that would recognize and promote the intrinsic value of the non-human environment. However, Leopold, who was not a philosopher, did not explain what he meant when he used the term ‘integrity’ in respect to what he called the ‘biotic community’ or ‘the land’. Apparently, he assumed that its meaning was fairly clear. However, there is one other passage in the book where he uses the term, and there we at least get a clue. In this passage, Leopold draws attention to the fact that most members of a biotic community

18 Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanach and Sketches Here and There (London, Oxford and New York, 1949), p. 225.

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have no recognizable economic value, so that a conservation policy that is solely economically motivated does not cover them. Yet according to Leopold, each of these many economically useless species should be protected so that they continue to exist, not least because the stability of the biotic community ‘depends on its integrity’.19 Integrity is important because the land’s stability, that is, its healthy functioning, depends on the interplay of the economic with the uneconomic parts (that is, species) and therefore on the continuing existence of all parts.20 Thus it seems that, according to Leopold, the integrity of a biotic community is impaired when a species that is part of it is eliminated, or, presumably, a species that has not belonged to that particular community before is brought into it. But does an ecological system’s stability necessarily suffer when one of its members is gone or a new member joins in? What does stability mean anyway, or health? There will certainly be changes in the interaction between members of the community when its composition changes. But why should there not be changes? What makes the given composition so special that it should whenever possible be preserved? Is it because the consequences are unpredictable so that negative economic results cannot be ruled out? In that case the reference point would be economic utility and hence external. Or the reference point could be aesthetic in such a way that each change would be regarded as a loss of beauty. However, there seems to be no reason why a change in the composition of a biotic community should not enhance rather than diminish beauty. In spite of its lack of clarity the concept of ‘ecological’ or ‘ecosystem’ integrity has since appeared in various legal documents, especially in the United States and Canada,21 and is now one of the cornerstones of the celebrated Earth Charter.22 Again, the core idea of the term ‘integrity’ is also present in the notion of ecological integrity. Here, too, integrity has something to do with intactness and wholeness. However, both of these latter terms share the normative implications of the former (just as health and stability). That is to say, it is fairly unclear what counts as intact and whole as long as the reference point is obscure. To identify integrity with intactness and wholeness is all very well, but it does not bring us one step further if we do not know in respect to what intactness and wholeness are maintained. Laura Westra, who has put integrity at the centre of her approach to environmental ethics, seems almost surprised to realize that, despite her efforts to nail down the notion of integrity, the term remains elusive. She even goes so far as to say that integrity 19 Ibid., p. 210. 20 Ibid., p. 214. 21 See Laura Westra, An Environmental Proposal for Ethics: The Principle of Integrity (Lanham, MD, 1994). 22 The Earth Charter is the result of a collaboration of various NGOs and is a ‘declaration of fundamental ethical principles for building a just, sustainable and peaceful global society for the 21st century’. Meant to be globally accepted as international law, it has as yet not been ratified by any country in the world. From sixteen principles four are grouped under the heading ‘Ecological Integrity’ and one explicitly demands to ‘protect and restore the integrity of Earth’s ecological systems, with special concern for biological diversity and the natural processes that sustain life.’ <www.earthcharter.org>. For a discussion of the Earth Charter’s principles see Peter Miller and Laura Westra (eds), Just Ecological Integrity: The Ethics of Maintaining Planetary Life (Lanham, MD and Oxford, 2002).

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‘can mean anything you choose it to mean’.23 However, she does not take this to be a sufficient reason to drop the term ‘integrity’ entirely because she is convinced that it represents an important value. Whatever it is, it is ‘first of all, a desirable state of affairs’.24 The term suggests that ‘that which is naturally one should not be interfered with or torn asunder’.25 According to Westra, ‘integrity’ is an umbrella concept which covers among other things ecosystem health and well-being and the ‘ability to deal with outside interference, and, if necessary, regenerate itself following upon it’.26 However, integrity goes beyond health: ‘Substitution of one species for another would be a clear case of interference with the integrity of an ecosystem, while its health or even its stability would not necessarily be diminished.’27 This distinction between health and integrity is certainly helpful, especially since Westra illustrates her point very nicely by comparing the ecosystem to a single living body. If we, for instance, cut off a finger from one of our hands, we need not be less healthy as a result. When the wound is healed we can be as healthy as before. Yet we lack a finger and that constitutes an impairment of our physical integrity. Likewise, if we have a kidney removed from our body we do not necessarily damage our health. But whether or not our health has been damaged, our physical integrity definitely has.28 Now, if applied to individual organisms it is quite plausible to distinguish between health and integrity. However, there are two problems. The first is that if a thing’s integrity can be impaired without its health being damaged, then it is not quite clear why we should seek to preserve integrity at all. If we can live with one kidney just as well as with two, why should we not dispose of it if we feel like it (or if we make some profit from selling it)? And, more important, why should not others, or the state on behalf of these others, make us part with a kidney if it is needed by others and can be put to good use? The common reply would probably be that such an intrusion would violate our autonomy. But, of course, our autonomy is often overridden for the sake of a greater good or common interest. Why not in this case when we can just as well live with only one kidney? (Or when we are in the process of dying and do not need any kidneys at all?) Perhaps the reason is that it belongs to us? But people will unnecessarily die when we refuse to part with our surplus organs. This is surely more important than a mere property right. Or is it? At least we care for our property, and even more for our autonomy. The question is why we should care for our integrity. Of course, as argued above, the very term ‘integrity’ implies that we should take an interest in it. If we accept that to make us part with one of our organs, even if we can live without it and do not experience a loss of health as a result, is a violation of our physical integrity, then we have also implicitly accepted that what we call our physical integrity ought not to be violated. However, as yet it is unclear why we should accept that there is a physical integrity in the first place.

23 24 25 26 27 28

Ibid., p. xii. Ibid., p. 22. Ibid. Ibid., p. 25. Ibid., p. 40. Ibid., p. 26.

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The second problem with Westra’s comparison is that whereas it makes sense to speak of the unity of a body and to distinguish between its health and its integrity, it is not so clear whether it makes sense to speak of the unity of an ecosystem. We understand what it means when it is said that an individual living body is ‘naturally one’, but can any ecosystem or, to use Leopold’s phrase, any biotic community be ‘naturally one’? What does that mean? A living body has definite borderlines, that is to say, it is quite clear what belongs to it and what not: my hands and feet are part of my body but the gloves I wear on my hands and the shoes I wear on my feet are not. My fingernails and my hair, though growing out of my body, are not quite part of my body since they are constantly in the process of separating themselves from it. A biotic community, on the other hand, or an ecological system (which is constituted by such a community and the environment with which it interacts), have no clear beginning or end. You can, at least in theory, count the number of individual living beings, but you cannot count the number of biotic communities or ecosystems on the planet because they blend seamlessly into one another. The only exception might be the planet Earth itself which can be regarded as one huge ecosystem and perhaps the only ecosystem that truly deserves to be called ‘naturally one’.29 But generally, in order to analyse a particular ecosystem one must first define its borders, that is, make an artificial separation between entities that belong to the system and others that do not. In other words, the unity of an ecological system or a biotic community is not natural but artificial in the sense of being the product of human decisions. This makes it difficult to understand how the integrity of an ecological system should be a ‘desirable state of affairs’, unless we hinge its desirability on certain human interests. However, this is precisely what Westra does not want. Rather, a certain state of affairs is meant to be regarded as intrinsically desirable, and thus ecological integrity is a type of auto-integrity rather than hetero-integrity. In order to make this claim plausible Westra needs to treat ecological systems as individuals that can, just like individual living beings, fare better or worse. In other words, they need to have some sort of objective well-being. The concept of objective well-being is borrowed from Aristotle who claimed that every living being has a certain ergon: a function it is meant to fulfil and which defines what it is. Well-being is achieved when a being does what it is meant to do. If it could be shown that ecological systems have such an ergon too, the notion of ecological integrity (understood as a type of auto-integrity) would become more convincing. This is why Westra proposes to rephrase the question of the meaning of (ecological) integrity as: ‘What is the ergon of an ecosystem?’30 In contrast to Westra, I do not think there is such an ergon to ecosystems, but I do think that the question is indeed the right one in the sense that it leads us where we must look in order to find a plausible example for auto-integrity. The next chapter presents and discusses two such examples which will take us an important step closer to that type of integrity which this book is mainly about, namely biological integrity. The two examples are Plato’s concept of justice and Aristotle’s concept of virtue.

29 See James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford, 1979). 30 Westra, An Environmental Proposal to Ethics, p. 45.

Chapter Five

Platonic Justice and Aristotelian Virtue Plato’s defence of justice as the only safe way to happiness Many features of the philosophical concepts of personal integrity that were briefly discussed in the last chapter are captured in the concept of justice as developed by Plato in his chief work, the Politeia or Republic.1 In this dialogue, Socrates is asked to defend his bold claim that only the just are truly happy and that it can never be in the interest of anybody not to be just. In the subsequent discussion, Socrates basically argues that injustice is in essence a serious disruption of the soul that incidentally but not necessarily expresses itself in a certain kind of behaviour characterized by a neglect of what others can rightfully claim for themselves. Injustice is thus primarily a serious disease of the soul, a state of disorder or disintegration that is more than anything else bad for the one who suffers from it. So even though being just is something that others expect and demand from us, it is not because of this that injustice is bad. It is no expectation of any kind that makes it bad. The way Plato understands justice and injustice is such that even if we all thought, in unison with Socrates’s opponent Thrasymachos, that justice was only for the weak and injustice was the distinguishing mark of a superior character, and if we all admired and praised the unjust for their contempt of conventions, injustice would still be bad and undesirable, and justice still be good and desirable. An external reference point is not required. Rather, it is the nature of that particular kind of being which we call human that makes justice an ideal condition for it and injustice damage. It is by virtue of our own human nature that we are best off when we are just. For Plato, just as there is a right order to the body there is also a right order to the soul. When the body is in right order, when all its parts are in proper relation to each other, then the person is healthy and strong. When the mind or, as Plato prefers to say, the soul is in right order, then by definition the person is just and self-controlled. Justice (dikaiosyne) and selfcontrol (sophrosyne) are to the mind what health and strength is to the body.2 Just like the body, the soul is divided into parts. There are three of them, a rational part (logistikon), a pleasure-seeking part that urges the satisfaction of carnal desires (epithymetikon), and finally a part that Plato calls thymos, which means something like spiritedness. In another dialogue, the Phaidros, Plato compares these three parts to a chariot that is pulled by two horses, one of them good and compliant and the other wild and obstinate. Because of the wild horse, the charioteer has trouble to

1 For a more detailed discussion of Plato’s view see Michael Hauskeller, Geschichte der Ethik: Antike (Munich, 1997), pp. 54–71. 2 Plato, Gorgias, 504.

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keep control, and he can only succeed if he obtains support from the good horse.3 Just like this charioteer, the rational part of the soul has to struggle in order to control the carnal desires. On its own it would be powerless, but with the help of thymos it can rule, and rule is precisely what it is meant to do. A person is just when the rule of reason is firmly established. When reason leads with the help of thymos over the carnal desires the soul has reached its ideal condition, and this condition is what is properly called justice. All other virtues spring from it, for those who have achieved the proper balance of the soul know that they have nothing to fear except injustice, that is, to lose this balance, and nothing to gain by acting contrary to what virtue requires. Hence for Plato, justice is something like a ‘master virtue’, just as personal integrity is for Calhoun.4 However, this is not the only similarity between Platonic justice and the concept of personal integrity as discussed above. Platonic justice is the accomplishment of self-integration and identity as a human being. Just like justice in the state is the binding force that holds everything together, justice in the soul creates unity.5 Since the rational part is the one part that is exclusively human (while the other two parts are present in animals too) we only become fully human when we manage to let reason rule over the other parts. By creating the proper balance of power between the parts of the soul – that is, the balance of power that is proper for human beings – we become what we have always meant to be: a true human being. The wild beast in us – that is, the carnal desires – is tamed, and thus everything is as it should be. We achieve identity as human beings by bringing our parts into the right order. But if we ask what makes it the ‘right’ order we will find no external reference point. That particular order is right by reason of what we are. But how do we know that it is the right order? For one thing, because it is the only way we can be truly happy. The just, Plato maintains, are always happy even (perhaps) if they are in the worst imaginable circumstances so that everyone would consider them miserable. Conversely, a person that is not just can appear (even to themselves) as happy as they will, but they are still not happy. They may live in a permanent state of pleasure, but will still lack what marks true happiness, namely being in a state of harmony, being as one is meant to be. Thus a distinction is drawn between a happiness that is nothing but a positive, pleasurable experience, and a happiness that is more than that. Let us call the former subjective happiness and the latter objective happiness. Now, as we saw in Chapter 3, the concept of bio-integrity gains its ethical significance in contexts where people have moral concerns about certain biotechnological practices even if they do not increase pain or suffering. Integrity concerns go beyond welfare concerns. Bearing this in mind, the distinction between subjective and objective happiness can become very useful, provided we can make sense of it. For Plato, subjective happiness need not be a good, whereas objective happiness always is. Whereas subjective happiness is merely the feeling of pleasure 3 Plato, Phaidros, 246–53. 4 Cheshire Calhoun, ‘Standing for Something’, The Journal of Philosophy, 92/5 (1995): 235–60, p. 260. 5 Plato, Politeia, 462b.

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and may, for this reason, be completely detached from reality, objective happiness on the other hand is definitely not merely the feeling of pleasure and possibly even entirely independent of subjective recognition in the form of pleasure. This may seem strange because we are so used to understanding happiness as something purely subjective, that is, as something that is felt and apart from being felt does not exist. It seems that, to put it with Bishop Berkeley, its being is its being perceived. But the Greek word ‘eudaimonia’, which is usually translated as happiness, definitely means more than pleasant experiences. It connotes well-being or, perhaps even better, a flourishing existence. Let me try to illustrate the difference between (subjective) happiness and a flourishing existence and the importance most of us attach to the latter. The experience machine When we ask ourselves what life is all about and what we want to achieve in life we will probably answer that although people want different things, in the long run we all want the same, namely, a good life. A good life, however, is commonly thought to be nothing but a happy life, and a happy life is one that includes many pleasant, and few unpleasant, experiences. Although what makes you happy need not make me happy, happiness seems to be what we are both after. So, in so far as we want different things, we want them as means, not as ends. We just happen to disagree about the best way to gain what we all want to gain. Accordingly, it seems irrelevant whereby we achieve happiness as long as we do achieve it. But if it is really only happiness that for each of us finally matters – happiness understood as subjective wellbeing or positive (pleasant) experiences – we should, it seems, also orientate our moral concerns exclusively towards happiness. From a moral point of view, we are then obliged to increase the happiness of all beings capable of being happy (which includes many animals) or at least not to diminish it. This is the central idea of classic Utilitarianism, which, however, is plausible only if we accept the assumption that happiness, or rather, feeling happy, is all that matters in life. For if what mattered to us were not alone, and perhaps not even primarily, feeling happy, if there were other things which were as important to us or even more important than this, it would be hard to see why those other things should be irrelevant in respect to our duties towards other living beings. But what could be more important than being happy? Let us try to answer this question with the help of a thought experiment developed by the American philosopher Robert Nozick.6 Imagine ingenious neuropsychologists built an ‘experience machine’ which enables its users to have any experience they wished for. If we wanted we could spend the rest of our lives plugged into this machine. Of course, we would then not know that we are connected to a machine, because everything we experienced in the machine would appear to be real and we would not remember the life we had before we plugged in. However, while we would not sense any difference we would be protected from making experiences 6

Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (London, 1974), pp. 42–5.

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we would rather avoid. Our love affairs would all be happy, we would achieve all our goals and have everything we desired. In other words, we could, in terms of our subjective experience, lead any life we wanted. Now, would we, without hesitating, seize this opportunity and thus secure our happiness for a lifetime? Or, rather, would we refuse the offer? Of course, it is hard to say what we would do in this case, but this is not the point. What is important is rather whether, when we imagine the situation, we are really convinced that getting plugged in would be a good thing to do, that it would be reasonable to do it. If happiness really is everything that matters and the experience machine is actually able to make us happy, then there is no good reason not to use it. On the other hand, if many people are in fact not attracted but, instead, rather abhorred by the prospect of having their life ready-made from a machine instead of actually living it themselves, then the question arises whether this reaction is due to a confused, irrational fear or, rather, is an indication that we expect more from life (and that there actually is more to be expected) than merely pleasant experiences. But again: what else could there be? Nozick makes three suggestions: first, we do not want to have only the experience of doing something but we also want to do it. Secondly, we want to be a certain kind of person and not only imagine being one. We want to be, for instance, clever, courageous or loving, and only imagining ourselves to be that way is simply not enough. Finally, we want our experiences to be causally connected to the world as it really is; we want to be, as it were, rooted in reality. This is not to say that we do not want to be happy too. If being asked whether we would rather be happy than unhappy we would say that we would, of course, rather be happy, but from this it does not follow that we are indifferent to the grounds of our happiness. What we want, besides being happy, are reasons for being happy – real reasons, not imaginary reasons. What we want is that whatever we are happy about really exists, and in the same way we imagine it to be. Thus we may prefer an unhappy life which we actually live ourselves to a happy life which in fact is lived for us by a machine. We do not want to live in a dream, not even if we have no idea that this is in fact our actual state. But imagine the decision has already been made and translated into action, so that we already are plugged into the experience machine. While we still had the choice whether to use the machine or not, we could well see that, once connected, we would not really be what we would believe ourselves to be, and not really be doing what we believe ourselves to be doing. Now, though, after having made the decision to plug into the machine, and actually using the machine, we are not in the least aware that the world we experience is not the real world. To us, it seems as if we really do what we believe we do (for instance read this book), and we also have reasons to be happy (and sometimes reasons to be unhappy), and so on. This means that, in a certain sense, we have exactly what we insisted we wanted to have. Now, if the programme we had chosen for ourselves would present us with a second experience machine (generated by the first, real, experience machine) and we had to choose again whether to use it or not, would we not express the same reservations, and would these reservations then not be irrational after all? Perhaps our reservations are due to some confusion similar to the one underlying, according to Schopenhauer, our fear of death. For our fear of death seems to depend on the confused idea that

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we would, after having died, somehow be aware of our own non-existence (thus imagining ourselves both as existent and non-existent at the same time).7 In a similar way, we seem to imagine ourselves being plugged into the experience machine and at the same time being aware of this (which, according to the assumptions, we are not). So perhaps what we do not like about the idea of being plugged into the experience machine is less the fact that we would then live in an illusionary world (which may already be the case), but, rather, that our lives would be predetermined to be a series of happy events. For why else should we use the machine? A life, however, that is exclusively happy can hardly be considered a happy life at all. It would seem that such a life is rather a life of mere fun, because it lacks the depth of experience belonging to true happiness. Happiness requires unhappiness or at least the possibility of being unhappy because some forms of happiness – like the happiness that springs from loving somebody – presuppose receptiveness and therefore vulnerability. Love is hardly imaginable without pain, without worry, without the tragedy of loss. There is often pain involved in the experience of great beauty, in such a way that those who do not experience the pain are also blind towards the beauty and hence to the happiness linked to the experience of it. Happiness, it seems, can only be found if we open ourselves and thereby take the risk of being hurt, of becoming unhappy. That is why happiness cannot be preconditioned. We can, perhaps, render ourselves receptive to happiness but we cannot enforce it. Happiness overcomes us unexpectedly, and it is exactly this quality of being unexpected, its gift-like nature, that is one of the core features of happiness. That is why we would hesitate to call people happy who, although not feeling at all unhappy, lived under what we would consider inhuman conditions in so far as their lives lacked certain valuable experiences. They may be subjectively happy but they are not objectively happy. Of course, we cannot be sure whether we only hesitate to consider them happy because we cannot imagine that we ourselves would be happy in their situation. But if the situation itself cannot be objectively judged as a happy or an unhappy one, so that the only remaining fact which we can rely on is the subjectively perceived pleasure or absence of displeasure, then from a moral point of view it makes no difference if we improve or change the situation which makes someone unhappy or, instead, change those who suffer from the situation, so that they do not suffer from it anymore. Thus we can imagine genetically engineering animals or human beings that do not mind being enslaved and exploited. Some biotechnologists even hope for the day when they will be able to create research animals that are entirely incapable of feeling pain, in the conviction that with such creatures they could do whatever they wanted without having to worry about moral constraints. Why do ideas like these seem so alarming to many people if not because the loss of the very ability to feel pain (and pleasure) is an evil more terrible than the pain itself?

7 41.

Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, vol. 1, § 54; vol. 2, ch.

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Aristotle’s concept of virtue: arete Justice, as Plato conceived it, can be regarded as an autonomous form of personal and moral integrity. This kind of integrity is a prerequisite to the good life, which is accompanied by objective (we might also say true or deep as opposed to shallow) happiness, that is, a happiness that is adequately grounded in reality. This kind of integrity is not only a necessary but also a sufficient condition of a good, flourishing life. Now, for Plato as for the ancient Greeks in general, ethical reasoning was less about what we are morally obliged to do, but rather about what kind of life is the best for us – the best life being the one that secures true happiness, for true happiness (eudaimonia) is the highest possible good or, rather, it is the expression of a successful achievement of good. Plato’s student Aristotle took the same view (although he did not seem to have believed that the just could not possibly be unhappy), but while Plato was almost exclusively interested in human life and its specific forms of excellence, Aristotle extended the basic idea to all forms of life. This extension provides the link between personal integrity and what I call biological integrity. Aristotle’s answer to the question what kind of life is good for us was that our lives will be good if we do what we are meant to do or what is natural for us to do. We will have a good life and achieve eudaimonia when we live in accordance with what we are meant to be by virtue of our essence, or telos. So in doing what is natural to us, in being a good human (in the same sense as a hammer can be called a good hammer if it does well what it is meant to do), we are achieving what is good for us. For Aristotle, it is absurd to think that it could be bad for a being to be a good example of its kind. The frequently used phrase ‘eu pratto’ means both ‘I am doing well’ and ‘I am doing good’. According to Aristotle, everything has its own particular good, depending on what it is and does. ‘Good’ meaning good in a certain respect: you can be a good thinker, but a bad runner, meaning that as a thinker you are good, and as a runner you are not so good. If you are good in a certain context and in respect to a certain function then you possess what Aristotle calls ‘virtue’ (arete). Hence you can have virtue as a thinker, or virtue as a runner, or virtue in some other respect. A thing (be it living or non-living) is good and accordingly has virtue, if it performs the work (ergon) that is proper to its end (telos). A good axe is hard and sharp, and a good dining table is level and solid (so you can eat at it). A house is good if it efficiently protects you from wind, rain, heat, cold and so on. The better those things fulfil their end, the better they are. The same holds for people who take over or are assigned to a particular job or task. The better the table, the better the carpenter who made it. By making a good table – a table that has, as it were, satisfactory table-virtue – the carpenter proves himself to be a good carpenter, that is, good in what he is doing. Thus he is good as a carpenter, not as a, say, philosopher, or a human being. However, one can also be a good human being. As before, the term ‘good’ is used here in an attributive sense and not in a predicative sense, which means that the phrase ‘he is a good human being’ is not analysable in ‘he is a human being and he is good’. Rather, being a good human being means being good as a human being. Likewise, an animal can be good as the particular kind of animal it is or good in

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respect to the role it is meant to play. In the first case the reference point is external, in the second internal. If a particular breed of rat is considered a good research animal or a particular breed of cow a good farm animal (milk-producing animal), then their goodness and, in Aristotle’s terminology, their virtue is related to the end that is imposed on them by humans. Hence the reference point is external and the relevant integrity heteronomous. But perhaps they can also be good as the particular animals they are, not in respect to some external end but in respect to their internal structure and being, in the same way as, in Plato’s view, humans are good (namely as humans) when they are just. In that case the reference point would be internal and the relevant integrity autonomous. Now, according to Aristotle, all living beings as living beings, humans and animals alike, have certain ends natural to them, the most general description of which is the performance of life. Our organs each play their role within this performance. Thus we have eyes in order to see. In using them the way they are meant to, we fulfil one of our natural ends. We have a brain in order to think. We have reason in order to use it, and use it in accordance with its natural end, namely to guide and discipline the passions. To use all of our organs the way they are meant to is good for us, and it is enjoyable. In using them according to their natural end we realize our speciesspecific good. And this is what virtue is: arete, which literally means ‘bestness’. In this sense, everything has its own particular virtue. An axe has a virtue, a table, a computer, all things we make for a certain use. But all living things, too, have their specific virtues. There are good trees and flowers (which are good as trees and good as flowers). There are good pigs and good cows and not so good pigs and cows, but not in the instrumental sense. They are not good in so far as they serve our interests but insofar as they do very well what, according to what they are, they are meant to do. If they cannot do what they are meant to do, if they are prevented from realizing their species-specific good, they are harmed whether or not they are subjectively aware of it. We can say that from the perspective of their own natural ends their biological integrity is damaged, that is, their integrity as the particular kind of living beings they are. Biological integrity consists in the ability to live according to one’s natural ends. But is there really such a thing as a natural end, a ‘telos’, in living beings? That question will be tackled in the next chapter.

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Chapter Six

Telos Genetic engineering and the teleological perspective In 1995 the Banner Report of the Committee to Consider the Ethical Implications of Emerging Technologies in the Breeding of Farm Animals, which had been appointed by the UK Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, was issued. The committee, while seeing no principle objections to the genetic modification of living beings, nonetheless set a remarkable example by acknowledging that there are some uses which are intrinsically objectionable, namely genetic modification of a type that ‘can be thought to constitute an attack on the animal’s essential nature’.1 The report does not tell us, though, how we should decide in which cases an animal’s nature is being attacked and in which cases not.2 Instead, an example of what is believed to be such an attack is given, namely using genetic engineering in order to decrease the sentience and responsiveness of pigs, so that they will move less and accordingly acquire weight more quickly. It is obvious that the committee did not think that the pigs in this case would suffer as a result of the operation performed in creating them. Rather, the rationale here is that the pigs now cannot do what they are, by their very nature, meant to do, that they cannot live the way they are, as pigs, meant to live. There is, in other words, a purpose somewhere, not in the individual pigs, that is, not consciously entertained by them, but notwithstanding in them, as part of their biological constitution which they share with other pigs. This constitution is conceived, not as something given, or static, but rather as a process directed to specific ends. When these ends are thwarted then the nature of the organism whose ends they are is said to be attacked. One could equally well say that the organism is forced to live in a way that is not appropriate to it, or a way that it, by its own intrinsic standards, should not live. The view of the committee thus corresponds to a biocentric outlook on nature, which, according to Paul Taylor, makes us regard each organism as a ‘teleological (goal-oriented) center of life, pursuing its own good in its own unique way’. This is not to say that the organism’s pursuit of its own good is necessarily conscious or intentional, but rather that ‘a living thing is conceived as a unified system of organized activity, the constant tendency of which is to preserve its existence by protecting and

1 Michael Banner, Report of the Committee to Consider the Ethical Implications of Emerging Technologies in the Breeding of Farm Animals, UK Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (1995). 2 See M. Gott, ‘Ethical Issues Relating to Transgenic Animal Production’, ANZCCART News, 15/1 (2002).

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promoting its well-being.’3 Of course, the argument here – if we assume that there is any – seems to be blatantly circular: the only reason that can be given for the claim that each organism pursues its own good is that it pursues something. Whatever it is towards which the tendency is directed must be good because, if it were not, there would not be a tendency towards it. The same intuitive reasoning lies behind Bernard Rollin’s claim that an animal’s well-being involves ‘both control of pain and suffering and allowing the animals to live their lives in a way that suits their biological natures’.4 That there is such a biological nature is a fact that Rollin thinks can hardly be denied. Rather, the belief that each organism has a nature that defines what it is and what it does is held to be common sense: As ordinary people know well, animals too have natures, genetically based, physically and psychologically expressed which determine how they live in their environments. Following Aristotle, I call this the telos of an animal, the pigness of the pig, the dogness of the dog – ‘fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly’. … Social animals need to be with others of their kind; animals built to run need to run; these interests are species specific. Others are ubiquitous in all species with brains and nervous systems – the interest in avoiding pain, in food and water, and so forth.5

Curiously, this passage already indicates that Rollin, after having thrown the old Aristotelian notion of telos into the debate, is not really willing to let anything depend on it. Instead, he immediately draws back from his original claim that an animal’s well-being involves something besides the control of suffering and pain, and translates telos back into the usual talk of ‘needs’ and ‘interests’. If the notion of telos – the pigness of the pig, the dogness of the dog – really were the basic ethical concept as it is introduced by Rollin, then it would have been better, at any rate more to the point, if he had written that ‘animals built to run are meant to run’, regardless of whether they actually need to run or have an interest in running. Instead, for Rollin, the notion of telos is clearly rather a heuristic device than a genuine ethical principle. This becomes fairly obvious when, for instance, he remarks that common sense identifies sources of suffering by comparing the life we allow the animal to live with the sort of life it was evolved (or selected) to lead. When we know that an animal is social in nature and roams over large territories, we consider keeping it alone and in a small cage as inflicting suffering upon it, albeit not necessarily physical pain. On the positive side, common sense sees an animal that is ‘doing its thing’ – fulfilling its nature – as a ‘happy’ animal.6

Taking an animal’s telos into account thus helps us to identify possible ‘sources of suffering’. Apart from that, its only other ethical function, for Rollin, is to serve as 3 Paul W. Taylor, Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics (Princeton, NJ, 1986), p. 45. Cf. especially pp. 119–29. 4 Bernard Rollin, The Frankenstein Syndrome: Ethical and Social Issues in the Genetic Engineering of Animals (Cambridge, MA, 1995), p. 157. 5 Ibid., p. 159. 6 Ibid., pp. 168–9.

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a convenient hook on which to hang the claim that we actually have some moral obligations to other living beings. To say that each animal has a telos is to recognize ‘that animals are “ends in themselves”, as Kant said of humans, not just means to our ends. What we do to animals matters to them, not just to us. In this fundamental moral respect, animals are like human persons, not like tools.’7 From this Rollin draws the debatable ethical conclusion that, for instance, ‘research animals are entitled to a living environment that suits their natures’8 (my italics). This, however, apparently does not mean anything more than that their environment ought to agree with their basic interests. The ‘nature’ of an animal is not conceived as something that transcends the individual animal and which ought to be protected as such. Telos is defined in terms of what needs and interests an animal actually has,9 rather than in terms of what needs and interests it should have in the first place, in virtue of being a pig or a dog. Hence Rollin sees no good reason to hold that all genetic engineering is wrong, but only that which violates basic interests. Moreover, he believes that an animal’s telos can well be altered without being violated. Given the telos, one should not violate the interests constitutive thereof, but that does not entail that the telos itself could or should not be changed:10 ‘Telos is not sacred; what is sacred are the interests that follow from it.’11 So if we, for example, were able to identify the gene sequence that codes the drive to nest in chickens, and remove it, thereby creating a new kind of chicken which ‘achieves satisfaction by laying an egg in a cage’, there would, in Rollin’s view, be nothing wrong with that. Neither would there be anything wrong with decreasing the sentience and responsiveness of pigs by means of genetic engineering.12 On the contrary, if this was the only realistic way of making them suffer less – the last resort, so to speak – it would rather be our moral duty to use this device. This, of course, is a result that is contrary to that of the Banner Committee. A more radical position than the one Rollin is willing to argue for, is adopted by Michael W. Fox who likewise seeks argumentative support from the notion of telos. Fox refers to what he calls the ‘ethical principle of the inviolability of an animal’s telos’13 in order to justify his opposition to certain forms of genetic engineering and especially all forms that involve the creation of transgenic animals. Again, the telos of an animal is defined as ‘its nature or “beingness”. In other words, the “birdness” 7 Ibid., 160. 8 Ibid., 164. 9 See Robert Heeger and Frans W.A. Brom, ‘Intrinsic Value and Direct Duties: From Animal Ethics towards Environmental Ethics’, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 14 (2001): 241–52, p. 248. 10 Rollin, The Frankenstein Syndrome, 171. 11 Ibid., 172. 12 In his earlier book, Animal Rights and Human Morality (Buffalo, 1981), p. 60, Rollin seems to at least consider a different view. ‘We … do not wish to prolong a life that is in gross and hideous violation of the creature’s telos, even if the creature is conscious and not suffering.’ This passage suggests that an animal’s telos ought to be respected even if violating it does not make the animal suffer. 13 Michael W. Fox, ‘Transgenic Animals: Ethical and Animal Welfare Concerns’, in Peter Wheale and Ruth McNally (eds), The Bio-Revolution: Cornucopia or Pandora’s Box (London, 1990), pp. 31–54, p. 38.

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and unique qualities of a canary or eagle, the “wolfness” of a wolf and the “pigness” of a pig.’14 Fox, however, is prepared to go all the way and to defend the telos itself against any kind of manipulation. Since telos is not confined to the level of the individual as the source of his interests and needs, but rather has its proper place on the level of the species, Rollin’s suggestion to change an animal’s individual nature in order to minimize the sources of suffering, is, in Fox’s view, ‘totally to disregard the telos of an animal: its intrinsic nature and beingness’.15 Fox accuses Rollin of letting himself be taken in by a false dualism between the animal and its environment: The telos or ‘beingness’ of an animal is its intrinsic nature coupled with the environment in which it is able to develop and experience life. We can harm the telos in many ways, for example through environmental, genetic, surgical and pharmacological manipulation. To contend that we can enhance the natural telos of an animal – and thus by extension believe that we can improve upon nature – is hubris.16

More than anything else, transgenic manipulation constitutes in each and every case a violation of an animal’s telos, because it entails crossing the natural biological boundaries between animal species. This is something that Fox professes has not been done before. Introducing cattle growth genes into pigs, or elephant growth genes into cattle ‘could so disrupt the animals’ telos (intrinsic nature) biophysically, metabolically, and developmentally as to create a host of health and welfare problems.’17 This host of problems, however, is not the actual reason why it is wrong to cross the boundaries between species. The actual reason is that, in doing this, we are ‘tampering with nature’, ‘violating the telos’. This is thought to be a sufficient reason to abstain from it. At the same time, Fox knows very well that the idea that each living organism has an intrinsic nature, or telos, is very much an absurdity to many scientists. He himself quotes statements issued by members of the National Institutes of Health Genetic Engineering Committee in 1985. There the microbiologist Prof. M.J. Osborn claims that the ‘idea that a species has a “telos” is contrary to any evidence provided by biology and belongs rather in the realm of mysticism. That mysticism is a poor basis for sound public policy is amply confirmed by history.’ In the same vein, Dr Maxine Singer declares: ‘The notion that a species has a telos (a purpose) contravenes everything we know about biology. Species can have, and many in the past have had, a telos (an end), namely, extinction. That is the only telos known to exist.’18 Especially this latter statement is interesting. It seems cynical, but only if one reads the term telos in the same sense as Fox, namely as natural purpose. In that case, saying that a living organism’s telos is extinction means that it only exists in order to die. Hence, killing an animal presumably helps it realize its telos. On the other hand, if there really is no telos in that sense, in the sense of natural 14 Ibid., pp. 31–54. 15 Ibid., p. 34. 16 Ibid., p. 32. 17 Michael W. Fox, Superpigs and Wondercorn: The Brave New World of Biotechnology and Where It All May Lead (New York, 1992), p. 26. 18 Both quoted by Fox, Superpigs and Wondercorn, p. 23.

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purpose, then the term is merely a synonym for the final state of an organism, or a species, and this is indeed extinction. But are Osborn and Singer right to take it for granted that there is no such thing as a telos in the proper, purpose-including sense? Does it really contravene ‘everything we know about biology’, so that the notion of telos may in the end be nothing else but just another of those ‘opportunistic flights of fancy’ that are invented, as Michael Leahy once claimed with reference to Tom Regan’s use of the notion of ‘inherent value’, with the sole purpose of putting ‘powerful weapons of rhetoric and persuasion in the hands of the converted’?19 In principle, there are actually two questions that need to be answered here. First, is there, or is there not, a telos to each living being? And second, if there is, what ethical significance does it have? In order to answer these questions it is expedient to go back to the original notion of telos which was introduced into biology and systematically developed by Aristotle. Telos and natural good in Aristotle The starting point for Aristotle’s teleological account of living organisms is a simple, undeniable empirical fact which, come to think about it, is nonetheless quite astonishing.20 It is the fact that each living being produces offspring that resembles them in kind. Thus human beings always generate human beings, pigs always pigs, dogs always dogs, and so on. It never happens that a woman gives birth to a cat, or the other way round. But although we usually take this for granted, it is actually very much in need of explanation. Aristotle, knowing nothing about genetics and genomics, nonetheless thought that this curious regularity could only be accounted for if one assumed that right from the very beginning of the process during which a certain organism is formed, the outcome must somehow be anticipated. In each stage of this process, what a thing is has to be connected to, and has to depend on, what it is going to be. Thus the whole process of formation must be understood as being guided by the future, that is, by something which is not yet, but which will be, provided the process is not disturbed or prematurely terminated. A human embryo, for instance, is what it is and develops the way it does precisely because of what it is going to be, namely a human being. In other words, there must be some sort of a final cause at work, which Aristotle defines as ‘that for the sake of which’ (to hou heneka) a particular living organism is formed.21 This final cause, which Aristotle also calls telos (meaning final end, or completion)22 explains why everything has become and indeed must have become as it is. In biology, when we ask why an animal has this particular form and structure, why it has these organs and not others, and why they are combined and connected with other organs the way they are, we will not be satisfied if someone gives us all 19 Michael P.T. Leahy, Against Liberation: Putting Animals in Perspective (London, 1991), pp. 220, 74. 20 See Kurt von Fritz, ‘Teleologie bei Aristoteles’, in G.A. Seeck (ed.), Die Naturphilosophie des Aristoteles (Darmstadt, 1975), pp. 243–50. 21 Aristotle, De Partibus Animalium, I.1, 639b. 22 Aristotle, Physica, II.3, 195a.

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the efficient causes that have played a role in the process. When, in reference to the form and structure of living beings, we ask ‘Why?’, what we really want to know is what this particular form and structure is for – we might as well say: what it is good for. In Aristotle’s view, the logos of living organisms, that is, the real reason why they are what they are, is their telos.23 Accordingly, every single part of an animal has to be explained with regard to its telos, or, which is the same, to its ‘nature’ (physis).24 This is definitely not meant to be just a heuristic device. Rather, the telos has ontological priority. It is that which sets the whole process in motion. So every part is actually formed with regard to the whole of which it is meant to be part. There are different levels of organization: the uniform parts (for example bones, sinews, flesh, blood) are made for the sake of the non-uniform parts (the face as a whole, a hand, a finger).25 But likewise is the body as a whole made as it is for some purpose (heneka tinos).26 For instance, the human mouth with its soft, flexible lips is made for talking. Generally, the whole point of an organism’s physical construction is to enable it to perform those actions which are natural to it.27 This is why Aristotle opposes Anaxagoras who argued – in line with modern evolutionary theory – that man is the most intelligent of all animals because of his hands. Instead, says Aristotle, it would be more reasonable to assume the contrary, namely that humans have been given hands because they are the most intelligent of all animals.28 The underlying idea, of course, is that our peculiar kind of intelligence belongs to our nature as human beings. It is one of the things that make us human. This particular nature itself, however, is not subject to change. It is not thought to have evolved over time, but rather to be fixed and to precede every single instance of humanness. If this premise is granted, then it is indeed not very reasonable to assume that we are as intelligent as we are because of our hands, since this would make our nature seem a mere product of chance, as if hands and all the other particulars of our body appeared at some stage in time for no good reason at all (as Empedocles seems to have believed). But at least on the level of the individual, that is, the ontogenetic level, we can hardly avoid the impression that hands are made for being used as hands. Now, for Aristotle, because every part of an organism’s body is what it is in virtue of the whole whose part it is and for the sake of which it exists, it loses its identity when separated from that whole. Its identity depends completely on its function. This means that, for instance, blood is blood only in the living body, not in the dead one (in contrast to, for instance, water, which is water wherever one finds it).29 Here the integration is essential to that which is integrated. Therefore the hand of a dead man is, properly speaking, not a hand. At any rate, it is no more a hand than the picture of a hand is a hand. Neither is a dead man, properly speaking, still a man. He has become something else because he has lost his defining ‘form’ (eidos) or ‘soul’ 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

De Partibus Animalium, I.1, 640a. See also Physica, II.8, 199b. Physica, II.8, 199b. De Partibus Animalium, II.1, 646b. Ibid., I.1, 642a. Ibid., I.5, 645b. Ibid., IV.10, 687a. Ibid., I.1, 641a.

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(psyche) which, again, is nothing but the telos, the final cause, that for whose sake the matter was organized the way it is.30 Form, or soul, is to the body as the cutting of an axe is to the axe, that is, as the function is to the structure. Only when the potential (dynamis) of the axe receives a realization (energeia) in the actual cutting, is the axe truly, completely and wholly an axe. Likewise, only when the eyes are actually seeing are they completely and wholly eyes. When not seeing they are not really eyes at all. The same holds for the body as a whole. It loses its identity when being separated from the actions for whose sake it exists. From this it follows that an organism which is prevented from performing those actions that are natural for it to perform is robbed of its identity, or defining form, and this means nothing less than that it has been destroyed as this particular organism. Thus we can infer that, say, a chicken which is prevented from nesting is, properly speaking, not a chicken anymore, and a sheep that is prevented from grazing is, properly speaking, not a sheep anymore. In a certain sense both the chicken and the sheep have ceased to exist existing. Admittedly this is a strange thing to say: since neither the chicken nor the sheep is dead, they surely do still exist. But Aristotle’s point is that their existence has lost its purpose (or one of its purposes) so that its whole intricate organization, the subtle interaction of its parts, has become futile. In other words, one important aspect of what it means to be this particular organism has been taken away from it, and this is, at any rate from the perspective of the organism itself, always an evil. But why and in what sense is it an evil? In Aristotle’s view, the organization of every living thing is directed towards an end. However, this end is internal, not external.31 This is to say that living beings do not exist for the sake of other living beings, but only for themselves. Their parts are organized to serve their own purposes and nobody else’s. Since the whole organization of a living being, though, is directed towards the realization of these purposes, towards the achievement of the ends which are natural to it, these purposes and ends cannot be regarded as other than good. For how could that for the sake of which everything else in the formation of an organism happens not be good from the point of view of that organism? ‘That for the sake of which’ is necessarily a good (agathon), because, Aristotle says, it is the telos of all genesis and movement.32 And this good is, for each organism, nothing other than, in the words of J.M. Cooper, ‘the full and active life characteristic of its kind’.33 One should keep in mind here that this meaning of good is entirely independent of any subjective experience the organism might or might not have. Whether the 30 Physica, II.8, 199a. Cf. Aristotle, De Anima, II.4, 415b. 31 There are in Aristotle’s writings only two very short passages that might be taken to indicate such an external finality, namely De Partibus Animalium, IV.13, 696b 26 and Politics, 1256b 16, but they are good reasons not to take them at face value. See D.M. Balme, ‘Teleology and Necessity’, p. 279, in A. Gotthelf and J.G. Lennox (eds), Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 275–85; Wolfgang Kullmann, ‘Different Concepts of the Final Cause in Aristotle’, in A. Gotthelf (ed.), Aristotle on Nature and Living Things (Bristol, 1985), pp. 169–175. 32 Metaphysics, A.3, 983a. See also De Partibus Animalium, I.5, 645a. This argument is, of course, no less circular than Fox’s. 33 J.M. Cooper, ‘Hypothetical Necessity and Natural Theology’, in Gotthelf and Lennox, Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology, pp. 243–74, p. 272.

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organism suffers when being prevented from performing those actions which, by its physical nature, it is meant to perform, is simply irrelevant to the question of whether performing those actions is a good for it and being prevented from performing them an evil. Thus we can not only say that birds are made the way they are so they are able to fly, and fish are made the way they are so they are able to swim, but also, that flying is a good for birds, and swimming is a good for fish, and accordingly, that not being able to fly is an evil for birds, and not being able to swim is an evil for fish. The general rule is that an organism’s life is a good one when it achieves its goal or finds the good at which it aims.34 For human beings this good life might be (among other things) a life of reason (that is, a life that incorporates the exercise of reason), for birds (among other things) a life of flying, for sheep and cattle (among other things) a life of grazing, and so on. Although this notion of what it means to have a good life and what it means to have a bad life does not rest on the experience of it as good, it is, as argued in the last chapter, nonetheless an intuitively plausible notion. We pity a human being who is mentally deficient even if she does not seem to be any unhappier than we are. We pity somebody who leads a dull life full of trivial pursuits even though he does not seem to mind at all. Somehow this makes it even sadder. It seems to us that this life is somewhat deficient: that there is a good missing from this life, a good which we think ought to be there, for if it is not, this life does not deserve to be called fully human. We usually have no problems with a pig that lives like a pig, but if a human being lives like a pig, we feel that something is wrong here, that this is simply not the way a human being is meant to live. And if somebody suggested that we genetically engineer a race of mentally deficient human beings who would not mind being enslaved and being mistreated by us, most of us would certainly find the very idea abhorrent and morally detestable. Now why should not the same reaction be appropriate with regard to animals? Take, for instance, the situation when a bird is kept in a small cage where it cannot fly. Maybe it suffers, we imagine it probably does. But the point is that even if it did not suffer, and we knew it did not, we could still feel the wrongness of keeping it in a cage. And again, it would somehow make the whole thing even worse if we had found a way to manipulate the bird so that it did not even want to fly anymore. We would then have killed the bird in it. But what would we have created instead? Teleology and common sense Today we have come to believe that modern science has ruled out final causes, that there is no place for them, or, at least, no need for them. Aristotle’s biological principles are obsolete, since we have learned to explain the world and the genesis of living organisms in it without recourse to natural teleology. Efficient causes will do the job just as well. Or so we think. Each of us acts, though, as if final causes were real. In fact, we tend to define our humanity by the ability to act for reasons, and not just simply as a consequence of the preceding conditions. An action that was 34 See F.J.E. Woodbridge, Aristotle’s Vision of Nature (New York, 1965), p. 79.

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due exclusively to efficient causes, would not be an action at all. Rather, it would be something that happened to us, or with us. Asking somebody why she has done something is to ask her for what reason, or with what purpose, she has done it – with Aristotle we could say: for the sake of which she has done it. I get into my car in order to drive to the university, that is, because I want to go there, and I drive to the university in order to get some work done, that is, because it is my intention to do so. An action, qua action, always has a telos. Of course, my wants and intentions are present now and function as efficient causes, but they are nonetheless directed to the future, to certain ends in the future. This future aspect is important for understanding the very efficacy of my present wants and intentions. Moreover, it is an essential part of our experience of ourselves and therefore also an essential part of what, for us, it means to be a human being. However, it is still quite common to adopt a convenient dualism which neatly separates what human beings do from what happens within the rest of nature. That means, in short, final causes for humans, and efficient causes for everything else. When Francis Bacon dismissed final causes as ‘idols of the tribe’ he argued that human nature is such that it sees final causes everywhere although they evidently belong only to human nature, and not to the nature of the universe.35 But do humans then defy the nature of the universe? Are they not part of it themselves? Surely we must admit that they are, that we are. And it would be very curious indeed if with the rise of mankind a whole new, hitherto unknown kind of causation had come into the world. Further, it would be very hard to reconcile this with the idea of natural evolution. The charge of anthropomorphism is empty as long as the only alternative is an unjustified anthropocentrism. Whitehead was right to point out that any doctrine which refuses to place human experience outside nature, must find in descriptions of human experience factors which also enter into the descriptions of less specialized natural occurrences. If there be no such factors, then the doctrine of human experience as a fact within nature is mere bluff, founded upon vague phrases whose sole merit is comforting familiarity.36

Of course, this is exactly what some modern biologists and philosophers who favour a mechanistic model of human nature profess to believe: if we think that we act for some future end, we only think we do. But in fact we are wrong. In so far as we regard ourselves as free agents capable of acting for good reasons, we are entangled in an illusion. This is probably consistent if one takes it for granted that there are no final ends in non-human nature. However, as Hans Jonas correctly remarked, the exclusion of teleology from biology is not a result of induction but an a priori decree of modern science.37 It has not been proven yet that living organisms can be explained entirely in terms of efficient causes: it is simply presupposed. Neither is there a real conflict between efficient causes and final causes such that there can only

35 Francis Bacon, Novum Organon, I.48. 36 Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York, 1933), p. 237. 37 Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life: Towards a Philosophical Biology (New York, 1963), ch. II.II.1.

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be efficient causes at work or final causes but not both at the same time. Rather, final and efficient causes can be viewed as two aspects of the same process of causation. It may seem, though, that the Aristotelian notion of telos depends very much on the idea that species are eternal forms which are not subject to change. In contrast to Aristotle we know today – or think we know – that species are not natural kinds. Rather, the notion of species is a convenient classification, and not a biological reality.38 It helps us to bring some order into the world of living organisms, but the ‘real world consists only of individuals who are more or less closely related to each other by virtue of descent from one or more common ancestors’.39 Species change and evolve, with the effect that neither diachronically nor synchronically can we always determine to which species a certain individual belongs. Nor is reproduction only possible between individuals which are said to belong to the same species. Does that mean that Aristotle’s account of telos and natural good is simply out of date? That is what Stephen Clark seems to think: A further difficulty for moralists is the rejection of norms in nature. If there is no one way of life and character which best suits all or most members of a particular kind, such that we may detect deformity, disease or deviance by comparison with that ideal type, can there be ‘a good human life’? Can we truthfully suggest that battery chickens are deprived by being denied ‘the’ life that chickens would live ‘in nature’? If species are only genealogical groups, such that members need not especially resemble each other, we have no right to suppose that there is one way only (however vaguely defined) for any particular species. 40

However, even if species do not have a particular nature, the individuals which they consist of certainly do. Maybe it is not natural for all fish to swim, and not natural for all birds to fly, but it is still natural for most individual fishes to swim, and for most individual birds to fly, in the sense that they are, and not accidentally, constructed in a way that enables them to swim and fly, respectively. A normal fish is made to swim, and a normal bird is made to fly, no less than boats are made to swim and aeroplanes are made to fly. The only, if decisive, difference is that the ends to which boats and aeroplanes are directed are external to them, in the sense that we build them with these ends in view, whereas the ends of living organisms are internal to them, in the sense that they build themselves towards their end.41 Aristotle was not so much concerned with species but with the genesis of individual organisms,42 a genesis that is evidently directed to a certain goal: a state of completion in which the becoming finds its destination. This goal has something to do with this particular 38 See John Dupré, ‘In Defense of Classification’, Studies in the History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 32 (2001): 203–19. 39 See I.M. Dunbar, ‘What’s in a Classification?’, in Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri (eds), The Great Ape Project (New York, 1993), pp. 109–12. 40 Stephen R.L. Clark, ‘Apes and the Idea of Kindred’, in Singer and Cavalieri, The Great Ape Project, pp. 113–25. 41 Taylor, Respect for Nature, p. 124. 42 See D.M. Balme, ‘Aristotle’s Biology was not Essentialist’ and especially ‘Note on the aporia in Metaphysics Z’, both in Gotthelf and Lennox, Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology.

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organism’s origin, with its line of ancestors, but it does not really matter whether this line consists in multiple realizations of the same eidos, or rather in realizations of a changing eidos, or of various closely related eidous.43 At any rate, the good Aristotle talks about is not the good of the species, but the good of an individual. Stephen Clark doubts that we can still, after having learned that the concept of species is flawed (if taken as an absolute concept), truthfully suggest that we can deprive battery chickens by denying them ‘the’ life that chickens would live ‘in nature’. But the Aristotelian idea of nature and telos is something quite different. It is not about how chickens would live ‘in nature’ and what ‘the’ life of chickens is like, but rather what this particular chicken is, towards which particular end it is directed, and what, in consequence, its own particular good is. Now, a chicken that is forced to live in a battery clearly does not live the life to which it is directed. And should the chicken have been genetically manipulated so that its drive to nest is gone, it would in its whole structure still be directed to a life that is denied to it when kept in a battery. One cannot change the telos of an organism (in an Aristotelian sense) by just removing or transferring a few genes in order to get rid of a particular trait. Aristotle’s whole point was that the organism is just that: an organism. This means that it needs this particular trait in order to be complete, because no organ is what it is independent of the others and independent of the purposes it is meant to serve. If we could genetically design human beings that lack the possibility to live a fully human life (to use their hands as humans do, to use their lips as humans do, and so on) and, simultaneously, of all desire to live such a life – so that there would be nothing they would miss – we could still deplore their state and say that harm has been done to them,44 because we perceive the gap between what they now are and what, judging by the way their bodies are constructed (human hands, human lips), they are meant to be. And exactly the same holds for animals. It is sad to see a tiger confined to a small cage when we have the impression that he would much prefer to roam in the wild, but it might be considered even sadder to see it there and to have the impression that he does not even mind anymore and is, for all we know, rather content with his lot. This impression is justified as long as we are prepared to accept, with Aristotle, that there can be evils for living beings which they themselves are not aware of. Certainly there is no conceptual difficulty here. There is no logical necessity to think that the only possible evil is suffering, so that where there is no suffering there can be no evil. That suffering is an evil might be thought to be true in most, if not in all cases. However, we usually do not doubt that there can be other evils as well, death for instance, or permanent anaesthesia. Aristotle thought, in unison with some contemporary ethicists,45 that every organism has its own kind 43 See D.M. Balme, Aristotle’s De Partibus Animalium I and De Generatione Animalium I (with excerpts from GA II.1–3) (Oxford, 1972), p. 97. 44 That we can harm somebody without causing any suffering or pain is a common notion in legislation and in common morality. See Joel Feinberg, Harm to Others: The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law (New York and Oxford, 1984). 45 Apart from those already mentioned, for instance Henk Verhoog, ‘The Concept of Intrinsic Value and Transgenic Animals’, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 5/2 (1992): 147–60; Holmes Rolston III, Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural Environment (Philadelphia, PA, 1988).

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of good, and although he could give no reason for this, apart from the intuition that whatever it is ‘for the sake of which’ all the parts that make up a particular organism are made and conjoined must be good, the intuition itself is as plausible as it is possible for any intuition about what is good, or bad. Of course we can, even if we accept the idea that each organism has a good of its own, always claim that this particular notion of good is in no way relevant to our concept of moral good. Thus we can admit that pigs have a good of their own and without contradiction deny that this puts us under the moral obligation to take this good into account whenever we deal with pigs. After all, why should a good for them be a good for us? This question, though, can always be raised. It is the same as asking, why be moral? For the whole point of morality is to take the good of others seriously and to take it into account. There is, admittedly, no logical need to make somebody else’s good our own. It is entirely a moral need. Accordingly, whether we should grant all living organisms a telos and whether we should respect this telos, is less a matter of fact than a matter of value. It is part of a certain way of looking at the world. And looking at the world through the eyes of Aristotelian biology may, after all, be itself a moral decision, something which we feel we owe the living beings that happen to share our world.

Chapter Seven

Integrity as Bonitas Personal and non-personal dignity In Chapter 3 we looked at the notions of integrity and animal dignity as they were used in Article 120 of the revised Swiss Constitution and in the Dutch Animal Health and Welfare Act. We saw similarities and differences in the interpretation of these two notions. We have also seen, though, that integrity is a normative term, just like dignity, and that the notion of biological integrity rests on the assumption that every living being has a good of its own (though it does not logically follow from it). Not only are there, by virtue of what each of these organisms is, certain actions they are meant to perform and thus a certain kind of life they are meant to live. This life and the biological conditions that make it possible are also good for that living being. ‘Good’ is here to be understood in a basic sense that cannot be translated into positive subjective experience or even an absence of negative subjective experience, that is, pain and other forms of unhappiness or suffering. Note again that it is not conceptually required to link what is good for an organism to any form of subjective experience of it as being good. Assuming otherwise would be committing a Moorean naturalistic fallacy. Since, as G.E. Moore1 has demonstrated, the meaning of the term ‘good’ cannot be identified with any natural quality (such as pleasant), it is always theoretically possible that something possesses this quality without being good, or lacks this quality and yet is good. This might not in fact be the case but whether or not it is cannot be decided purely on the grounds of a conceptual analysis. Since this basic goodness is also assumed and emphasized in the notion of animal dignity, biological integrity and the dignity of creation – which we can understand as the dignity of living organisms as living organisms – may be, in respect to their meaning and rhetoric function, not so different after all. Some ethicists regard animal dignity as an extension of human dignity.2 Yet in what respect it is an extension is not clear. When we talk about human dignity in everyday discourse, what we usually have in mind is something like a basic, ‘unalienable’ right not to be degraded or humiliated, and it is fairly obvious that animal dignity (or, more generally, the ‘dignity of creation’) must be something quite different from a right not to be degraded, for such a right seems to presuppose a certain emotional ability, namely self-respect.3 If there is no self-respect there can 1 George Edward Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge, 1903), ch. II. 2 This is the position developed by Ina Praetorius and Peter Saladin in their influential commentary Die Würde der Kreatur (Art. 24novies Abs. 3 BV) (Bern, 1996). 3 See Philipp Balzer, Klaus Peter Rippe and Peter Schaber, ‘Two Concepts of Dignity for Humans and Non-Human Organisms in the Context of Genetic Engineering’, Journal of

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be no degradation, and hence no dignity. Dignity in that sense cannot exist without self-awareness and an evaluation of the situation one is in to the effect that that situation is not proper for a being such as oneself. Since (most) animals are not capable of doing that (nor are some humans), animal dignity, if we assume that it means anything at all, cannot mean the right not to be degraded. What else could it mean? It would seem that animal dignity must also be different from human dignity if the latter is understood in a Kantian way. For Kant, dignity was a result of autonomy, and autonomy something that only rational beings can possess, who are capable and willing to subject themselves as empirical beings to, the law which they themselves set up as rational (or noumenal) beings.4 In Kant’s view, this law is the moral law. By recognizing it and by acting out of respect for it we become, or prove ourselves to be, ‘persons’. Only a person in this sense can have dignity. Note that rationality as such, understood as the ability for discursive reasoning, is expressly depreciated by Kant and does, in his view, not lend dignity to humans.5 It is the moral law and only the moral law in obedience to which a human being becomes an ‘end in itself’ and thereby gains intrinsic value. Since animals lack rationality, or at least this particular kind of rationality, they cannot be autonomous and hence, it seems, can have no dignity in the Kantian sense. Therefore, since the term ‘dignity of creation’ is meant to apply also to animals that, for all we know, lack self-awareness, and even to plants, it must significantly differ from human dignity in the Kantian sense. Or so it might seem, because this is not quite right. Although Kant thought that nothing could possess dignity that was not autonomous (or at least capable of being autonomous), autonomy was not part of Kant’s concept of dignity. Rather, autonomy was thought to be the only possible (or legitimate) source or ground for dignity. What dignity means for Kant is intrinsic value, that is, the quality of being not merely a means to other ends but an end in itself. His explicit definition of dignity is absolute or intrinsic value,6 and this is certainly a meaning that is also intended by the defendants of animal dignity. That the only possible way to gain intrinsic value is through moral autonomy was Kant’s personal conviction. However, the close link that Kant intended to establish between moral autonomy and intrinsic value is far from compelling, and it is by no means clear why there should not be other grounds for intrinsic value beside moral autonomy. Such a ground could be the existence of a good of one’s own. If there is a particular kind of dignity (that is, intrinsic value) that does not arise from moral autonomy but from having a good of one’s own, then this dignity is something that humans and (other) animals have in common. Since in that case humans can have both Kantian and this other kind of dignity, it would be misleading to call the former

Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 13 (2000): 7–27, pp. 12–14. In contrast, Dunja Jaber (‘Human Dignity and the Dignity of Creatures’, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 13 [2000]: 29–42), has argued that degradation or humiliation does not conceptually require any awareness that one is being degraded, so that even a being that is not capable of feeling degraded can in fact be degraded. 4 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, B 12/13. 5 Immanuel Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten, A 93. 6 Immanuel Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, B 77.

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human dignity and the latter animal dignity. I shall therefore call Kantian dignity, that is, a dignity that arises from moral autonomy, ‘personal dignity’ and that other kind of dignity that humans share with animals, ‘non-personal dignity’. Accordingly, human persons can have both personal and non-personal dignity. The German philosopher and theologian Heike Baranzke has convincingly shown that in the history of Western civilization two different traditions of dignity have prevailed, namely a dignitas tradition and a bonitas tradition.7 Much confusion arises today because these two traditions are not clearly distinguished and, at least in German, the same word, namely ‘Würde’ – which is usually translated as dignity – is used indiscriminately for quite different ideas. Now, what I have called personal dignity is to be understood in the context of the dignitas tradition while non-personal dignity is firmly grounded in the bonitas tradition. The dignitas tradition derives from the biblical self-understanding of humans as being created in the image of God – imago dei. This tradition emphasizes the difference between humans and animals and focuses on the distinction and importance humans have in the whole of creation. It can also be found in the Stoic deification of (human) reason and much later became a strong motif in the philosophy of enlightenment. While it is generally the difference between humans and animals that is emphasized in this tradition, it is not always the same thing that is supposed to make us different. Sometimes it is discursive reason, sometimes the assumed immortality of the human soul (as opposed to the mortality of animals that have no soul at all or at least no immortal soul and are therefore excluded from eternal life), and sometimes – as in Kant but also, though theoretically less sophisticated, in Cicero – the capacity for moral autonomy. The other tradition conceived dignity as bonitas, which perhaps had better be translated into English as ‘worth’ instead of dignity. Interestingly, in order to avoid confusion Baranzke recommends that the term be dropped entirely and the term ‘integrity’ be used instead. Thus Baranzke identifies biological integrity and dignity of creation. The bonitas idea derives from the Old Testament too, but not from the idea of human distinction but rather from the idea that everything created by God is good. There is nothing in the whole of creation that is, by its very nature, bad. The same idea is present in the Greek (neo-Platonic) identification of being with good: nothing that is is bad in so far as it is, and if there is evil in the world it is a privation: an effect or expression of nothingness. We will in the next chapter see how St Augustine developed this idea in a Christian context. The bonitas tradition does not emphasize the difference between humans and animals, that is, what we do not share, but, on the contrary, what we do share. It emphasizes the community: the common needs, the vulnerability and mortality of everything that is alive. In modern times Pietism became the principal representative of this idea, which also motivated the formation of the first animal protection movements in the first half of the nineteenth century. The Danish philosopher Lauritz Smith (1754–94) made explicit what the bonitas tradition implied: that animals were not made in order to be used by humans, but 7 Heike Baranzke, Würde der Kreatur? Die Idee der Würde im Horizont der Bioethik (Stuttgart, 2002).

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for their own sake, in order to be happy.8 Smith talks about the ‘absolute Würde’ (absolute dignity, or rather worth)9 of all living beings and declared this worth to consist in the fact that animals are living, sentient and intellectual beings that by being brought into existence are meant to experience joy and happiness.10 That is the very reason for their existence. Because God himself intended them to enjoy their existence, it is our duty to pay heed to their well-being. The same reasoning, only in respect to humans, lay behind the American and French declarations of human rights. The belief in a natural, god-given law was the fundament in which those rights were thought to be safely grounded. Accordingly, when this belief was shattered those rights lost their ground. Because Jeremy Bentham and the Utilitarians in general lack this theological fundament, although they draw from the same tradition in that they focus on suffering, which is the common fate of humans and animals, there is a gap in the argument that has not yet been closed. According to Baranzke, the term ‘dignity of creation’ evokes the lost tradition and is best understood as an attempt – not to close that gap but – to call back to mind that there is such a gap. Intrinsic value The concept of integrity or, more precisely, bio-integrity, as it is being used in contemporary debates about the ethics of biotechnology, is to be understood not in terms of the dignitas tradition, but in terms of the bonitas tradition. Now, what personal dignity, dignitas or simply dignity on the one hand, and non-personal dignity, bonitas or simply integrity, have in common is the notion of intrinsic value, which is supposed to be the value a thing has in its own right and not by reason of its being valued by others. (Some ethicists use the term ‘inherent value’ instead, and some distinguish between inherent and intrinsic value. However, since there is no consistency in the literature in respect to the usage of these terms, for the time being I will use both terms interchangeably.) In their Swiss expert report on the concept of ‘dignity of creation’, Balzer, Rippe and Schaber claim that the ‘conception of an inherent value corresponds with what the constitution intended through the use of the idea of “the dignity of organisms”’.11 They also claim that the inherent value of all living organisms is the reason why we are morally accountable for what we do to them (and one thing we ought not to do to them is manipulate them in a way that they are no longer capable of doing what members of their species normally do). Although it does not logically follow, it is implied here that if living organisms had no intrinsic (inherent) value we would not be morally accountable for them. Without intrinsic value there is no moral accountability.

8 Lauritz Smith, Versuch eines vollständigen Lehrgebäudes der Natur und Bestimmung der Thiere und der Pflichten des Menschen gegen die Thiere (2nd edn, Copenhagen, 1793), p. 328. 9 Note that Kant defined Würde (dignity) as ‘absolute or intrinsic value’. 10 Smith, Versuch eines vollständigen Lehrgebäudes der Natur und Bestimmung der Thiere und der Pflichten des Menschen gegen die Thiere, pp. 331–2. 11 Balzer et al., ‘Two Concepts of Dignity’, p. 18.

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But why should we say that all animals and plants not only may have a value for us (given certain circumstances, desires and needs) but do always have a value even if nobody has any use for them or cares for them in any way? Balzer, Rippe and Schaber propose that every living being be granted inherent value on the grounds that they all have their own good which is independent of self-awareness or even sensation: a plant can be said to have its own good even though it has no awareness of either good or bad. If they had no good of their own, we would have no reason to ascribe inherent value to them. Balzer and his colleagues do not, however, believe that all living organisms have the same inherent value. In their view, inherent value is a grading concept so that living organisms can have more or less of it, for instance a chimpanzee more than a blade of grass.12 This, they claim, is more in accordance with our intuitions, as indeed it is. It seems to be morally more serious to hurt or kill a chimpanzee than to cut a blade of grass or pluck a flower. However, the question is whether the concept of inherent value really agrees with intuitions that suggest a hierarchy of values. It is, after all, assumed that living organisms have inherent value by virtue of their having a good of their own. But this means they have their own particular good, which means that, for instance, what (kind of life) is good for a pig need not be (the kind of life that is) good for a human being and vice versa. If that is so, however, then it seems that all these different particular goods are incomparable in respect to their being goods. One good does not seem to be better or worse than any other for the simple reason that they are only goods in the first place in respect to a specific form of life and therefore cannot be evaluated in abstraction from it. The claim that in spite of the species-specific character of the good in question some animals’ good is better than that of certain other (‘lower’) animals is reminiscent of the famous paradoxical statement from Orwell’s Animal Farm: ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’ If every single organism has its own particular good and their inherent value is based on this good, then we should accept that all living beings possess the same inherent value.13 The fact that we are usually rather hesitant to accept this consequence is partly due to our intuitions (which insist that, in spite of all, a chimpanzee’s life is, not only instrumentally but inherently, more valuable than the life of, say, a cockroach), and partly due to the severe difficulties we would encounter if we tried to live in observation of an ethical doctrine that assigns equal value to all life and holds us to be under the moral obligation to respect all life equally and, of course, to act accordingly.14

12 Ibid., p. 19. 13 This point is made by Robert Heeger, ‘Genetic Engineering and the Dignity of Creatures’, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 13 (2000): 53–63. 14 See Robert Heeger and Frans W.A. Brom, ‘Intrinsic Value and Direct Duties: From Animal Ethics towards Environmental Ethics’, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 14 (2001): 241–52, pp. 246–8.

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Schweitzer’s value egalitarianism One of the few philosophers who explicitly taught such a doctrine was Albert Schweitzer.15 In Schweitzer’s view, ethics is nothing but reverence for life, that is, for life in all its forms in equal measure. This general and impartial reverence for life generates an unrestricted moral responsibility for everything alive, including plants and micro-organisms, and requires that we adhere to the fundamental moral principle according to which it is always good to preserve and support life, and always bad to destroy and inhibit life.16 Now, since it is obviously impossible to live without destroying and inhibiting other life, Schweitzer’s ethic of reverence for life has been frequently shrugged off as hopelessly impractical and quixotic. In order to be plausible, critics insist, an ethic must be feasible and must not indulge in excessive demands that nobody can possibly meet. Schweitzer, however, points out that the question of what is morally right and wrong is quite different from the question of what is doable. First we must find out what kind of actions are good and which are bad, and then we can think about how far it is possible to live accordingly. And if we then find that it is impossible always to do right and never wrong then this may be considered unfortunate but we are still free to do right as often as we can and wrong only if we cannot avoid it. In respect to the fundamental moral principle that Schweitzer proposed, this means that we ought to preserve and support life whenever it is possible and destroy and inhibit it only if absolutely necessary. The fact that the good cannot always be realized does not mean that it cannot be the good. Of course this means that often there are genuine ethical dilemmas, that is, situations in which everything we can possibly do is to a certain extent or in a certain respect wrong, situations in which there is no right decision or no decision that we can take without, as it were, getting our hands dirty. But why should it not be so? The only reason seems to be that it would be much more comfortable if we could go through life telling ourselves that we never did anything wrong. Yet this is hardly a good reason for rejecting the doctrine that all living beings possess intrinsic value in equal measure.17 However, even if the argument from impracticality is thought to be inconclusive, there still remains the fact that it is not in accordance with most people’s moral intuitions that, say, killing a human being is not worse than killing a dog, and killing a dog not worse than killing a mosquito. Yet if we give up the idea that all organisms have the same intrinsic value, we seem to need some other (additional) criterion for assigning intrinsic value to an organism apart from its having a good of its own. It has also been argued that by giving up egalitarianism the concept of intrinsic 15 A more recent proponent of the equal value thesis is Paul W. Taylor, Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics (Princeton, NJ, 1986). He calls it the ‘principle of species impartiality’ (p. 45): ‘No bias in favour of some over others is acceptable. This impartiality applies to the human species just as it does to nonhuman species.’ 16 Albert Schweitzer, Civilization and Ethics (1923), passim. 17 For a more detailed discussion of Schweitzer’s ethic of reverence for life and the allegation that it is incoherent see Michael Hauskeller, ‘Verantwortung für alles Leben? Schweitzers Dilemma’, in Michael Hauskeller (ed.), Ethik des Lebens. Albert Schweitzer als Philosoph (Kusterdingen, 2006), pp. 210–36.

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value acquires a different meaning from which no moral obligation follows.18 This argument, however, is rather weak, not because, contrary to what is claimed, moral obligations would follow even if intrinsic values were not distributed equally, but rather because moral obligations would not necessarily follow from an egalitarian concept of intrinsic value either. In both cases it depends on what we mean by ‘intrinsic value’ and whether or not we regard moral obligations as part of this meaning. The problem is that if we take moral obligations as part of the meaning of intrinsic value, then we cannot infer from the fact that an organism has a good of its own that it possesses intrinsic value because, as pointed out before, it is not clear why what has value for another organism (its own life and well-being) should be valued by us as well. Yet if we do take the existence of intrinsic value to be implied in an organism having a good of its own, then the acknowledgement of this intrinsic value in an organism seems to entail no moral obligations. Intrinsic vs instrumental value Generally, it is quite a task to make sense of the claim that a thing possesses intrinsic value if, as is usually the case, it is tied to the claim that because of this value we are somehow obliged to care for its good. We can of course distinguish intrinsic value from extrinsic or instrumental value and it not only makes good sense to do so, but it is even logically necessary in order to avoid an infinite regress. It is incoherent to maintain that the only value a thing can possibly possess is an instrumental one, for that would mean that everything could be good only insofar as it is good for something else. But if nothing were good in itself then nothing could be good for anything else either. A can be good for B, and B can be good for C and so on, but in order to make sense of the claim that A, B and C are good, somewhere along the line this series of instrumental goods must come to an end, and the end can only be something that is good in itself or, to be more precise, something that is perceived as good in itself. There are things we value for their utility, that is, because they help us to achieve or get something else we desire, and there are things we value for their own sake. Because of the latter we value the former and consider them good. Money for instance is an instrumental good par excellence which we (normally) do not value for its own sake but for what it enables us to obtain. Yet if there were nothing considered worth obtaining, or nothing worth obtaining that money can buy or help us to achieve, then money would have no value at all. And of course what money can buy is normally also something we only value instrumentally, that is, because it gives us a pleasant or in other ways good life, a life worth living. And that is something we value for its own sake, which has not instrumental but intrinsic value. Subjective and objective values Although this meaning of intrinsic value is uncontroversial, unfortunately it also appears to be quite useless for the purpose of supporting the claim that there are moral 18 Heeger, ‘Genetic Engineering and the Dignity of Creatures’, p. 48.

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obligations towards living beings, let alone obligations that go beyond traditional welfare considerations. It is useless because if intrinsic value means no more than that, then for a thing to possess intrinsic value only means that someone values it for its own sake. As Callicott, who subscribes to what he calls a ‘postmodern’ theory of intrinsic value, writes: Something … ‘has’ intrinsic value if it is valued intrinsically. And what does it mean to value things intrinsically? To value them for their own sakes, as ends in themselves. So what, from a Modern point of view, does it mean to claim that nature has intrinsic value? Nature has intrinsic value when it is valued (verb transitive) for its own sake, as an end in itself.19

So intrinsic value, in this postmodern sense, is person-relative or subjective, which means that it is possible for a thing to have intrinsic value for you but not for me and vice versa.20 Yet if it has intrinsic value for me but not for you, because I happen to value it for its own sake and you do not, then its intrinsic value does not put you under any moral obligation at all whereas I, although I do feel a moral obligation towards it, do not feel that obligation because of its intrinsic value. Rather, for me to value it for its own sake is the same as feeling morally obliged with respect to its existence. The concept of intrinsic value must therefore mean something different if it is to provide us with a reason for valuing non-human living organisms in the sense of respecting and protecting their good. Intrinsic value must be conceived as some quality a living being can possess independently of its being valued or its being perceived as intrinsically valuable. What it must mean in the discussions about animal dignity and integrity is something like objective value.21 When it is claimed that every living being has intrinsic value this is not meant to be a factual statement, or at least not merely a factual statement. Neither is it entirely a normative statement. Rather, it is a curious mixture of both. It is normative in so far as it is not claimed that, in fact, everybody values living beings for their own sake (and not merely instrumentally, for the sake of something else), and not even that (in fact) those who make or endorse the claim value living beings for their own sake. What is claimed instead is that everybody ought to value living beings for their own sake. However, when we ask why we ought to value them for their own sake, we are not 19 J. Baird Callicott, Beyond the Land Ethic: More Essays in Environmental Philosophy (Albany, NY, 1999), p. 248. 20 This is why some authors would rather call this kind of intrinsic value extrinsic value instead, precisely because it is not intrinsic to the object but rather dependent in its existence on its being valued. See Karen Green, ‘Two Distinctions in Environmental Goodness’, Environmental Values, 5 (1996): 31–46, p. 32. 21 See John O’Neill, ‘The Varieties of Intrinsic Value’, The Monist, 75 (1992): 119–37. Byran G. Norton (Towards Unity among Environmentalists [New York and Oxford, 1991]) distinguishes between ‘intrinsic value’ on the one hand and ‘inherent value’ on the other. The term ‘intrinsic value’ denotes a value that exists independently both of human values and human consciousness, whereas ‘inherent’ value is only independent of human values but not of human consciousness (that is, it is not valued instrumentally yet exists only when it is acknowledged).

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referred to a property which they undeniably possess but instead to that mysterious quality of intrinsic value: apparently we are asked to value living beings not merely instrumentally but for their own sake precisely because of their intrinsic value. We ought to value them for their own sake because they are (in fact) valuable for their own sake. So the intrinsic value that is found in an object is claimed to be truly in the object and thus distinguishable and separable from the act of valuing. The value is a fact to be acknowledged. It is not something that exists only in virtue of the act, such as a thought whose entire existence is in the act of thinking. ‘I am thinking a thought’ is a tautology because having thoughts is what I do when I am thinking. When I assert that I am thinking a thought (what else should I be thinking?), I do not claim to do more than, or something different from, that which I am doing when I say that I am thinking. Those who want to base our moral obligations towards living organisms upon their presumed intrinsic value have to deny that values are in the same way tied to the act of valuing as thoughts are tied to the act of thinking. Values are rather like objects in the external world which can somehow be perceived and known but exist independently of their being perceived or known. The problem with this objective conception of intrinsic value is, of course, that there seems to be no other way to know about the existence of intrinsic value in an object than by valuing it for its own sake. It would be very strange if someone, on the one hand, wanted to claim that X is valuable for its own sake and yet, on the other, denied that they themselves valued X in this way. For if one does not value an object for its own sake then the claim that it nonetheless is intrinsically valuable seems to lack any epistemological basis. Imagine a thing that nobody ever valued for its own sake and then somebody claiming that this very thing, although not even by them valued for its own sake, still had intrinsic value. It seems that in that case such a claim would be completely incomprehensible. Or imagine two objects which you and I both valued (or both not valued) for their own sake but only one of which is (objectively) intrinsically valuable while the other is not. What would then distinguish the one object from the other so that one can plausibly be said to have intrinsic value and the other not? How should we ever know that there is intrinsic value only in the one and not in the other? Compare this to a situation in which someone claimed that of two leaves, both of which appear green to our eyes, only one is truly green or green-in-itself while the other is not. Or imagine the same claim made in a world in which all humans are blind and not even the one who makes the claim is capable of perceiving the alleged greenness in the one leaf and the alleged absence of green in the other. Would we not be at a loss to understand the claim that there is a difference between the two leaves in respect to their colour? A Moorean account of intrinsic value Despite this difficulty of fully understanding the claim, Holmes Rolston has defended the idea of objective values in nature with the argument that although admittedly we cannot possibly learn about values in the world except by experiencing them, it does

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not follow that the value is just the experience.22 We do, after all, only know about the facts of the world by experiencing those facts, and do not normally (unless, of course, we happen to be followers of Berkeley) conclude from this that facts are nothing but experiences. Value experiences are experiences of values just as fact experiences are experiences of facts. The relation between the act of experiencing a value and the value that is experienced is rather like the relation between a camera that takes a picture of a birthday party and the party itself, or between a clock and the time it measures.23 Rolston acknowledges, however, that it is impossible by argument to demonstrate that there truly are objective values.24 One would at least expect, though, a serious attempt at making sense of the claim that there are such values. So far as Rolston does not simply assume that the concept of objective values makes sense he seems to rely on reflections that run along the same lines as G.E. Moore’s famous argument in favour of the objective existence of colours. Moore’s argument Moore thought he could refute idealism by showing that even the so-called secondary qualities such as colours or sounds – which traditionally were not held to be intrinsic properties of the physical objects in which they were perceived – existed independently of their being perceived, or at least that the arguments henceforth brought forward in favour of their dependence are deeply flawed.25 He argued that a colour, such as yellow, could not be identical with the sensation or awareness of yellow. For the latter consisted of two elements, namely the element sensation (awareness) and the element yellow. The sensation of yellow is different from the sensation of blue, yet they are both sensations. But if yellow were identical with the sensation of yellow and blue identical with the sensation of blue then it would be inexplicable that they also have something in common, which they do. They are alike in one respect, namely in so far as both are sensations, and different in another, since the one is a sensation of yellow and the other of blue. It follows that yellow is not the same as the sensation of yellow. But if the two elements – sensation and yellow – are clearly distinguishable, then there is no reason why they should not also be able to exist separately. Thus, just as there can clearly be acts of sensation which are not sensations of yellow, it is conceivable and therefore theoretically possible that there are instances of yellow (or blue, or any other colour) that are not perceived at all. Sensation is for Moore an act of cognition, just as valuing is for Rolston. Every sensation has an object that is perceived exactly as it was before it was perceived. If this object changed (or came into existence) due to its being sensed, then sensation would not be a kind of cognition, that is, it would not tell us anything about the world as it is. However, if we take sensation not to be a kind of cognition – as the idealists do – then not only the existence of the material world becomes doubtful but also the 22 Holmes Rolston III, Environmental Ethics (Philadelphia, PA, 1988), p. 28. 23 Ibid., p. 115. 24 Ibid., p. 215. 25 George Edward Moore, ‘The Refutation of Idealism’, in G.E. Moore, Philosophical Studies (London, 1922), pp. 1–30.

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existence of a mental world. For feelings and thoughts and doubts and everything that occurs in our minds are, just as material things, objects of some kind of perception. Then there would be nothing left whose objective existence was certain. Since this is, Moore believes, an absurd conclusion, we must assume that sensation is indeed a kind of cognition, and if it is, then colours are, as objects of sensation (as a certain class of things which sensations can be of), mind-independent realities. A similar argument could be construed in respect to the independent existence of intrinsic values. An environmentally inclined Moore might argue that those who deny the existence of objective values (such as Caldecott) must assume that there is no difference between the awareness of something as intrinsically valuable and the intrinsic value itself. For the subjectivist, intrinsic values only exist insofar as they are perceived. Their esse is their percipi. But this cannot be true (the objectivist would argue) because there are two clearly distinguishable elements in the perception of something as intrinsically valuable, that is, as valuable for its own sake: the one is the element of awareness, the other the element of value (which one becomes aware of). If this were not so, it would be impossible to explain how two different value experiences (the presence vs the absence of intrinsic value, or intrinsic value vs instrumental value) could be different and still alike, namely as value experiences. This can only be explained if we take the value to be the content or the object of the experience. Yet if the experience of value can and must be distinguished from the value itself, then it is at least conceivable that they can occur independently of each other, so that there is no reason why there should not exist intrinsic values that are not in any way perceived or as such acknowledged. This argument, however, perplexing as it may be, largely ignores the difference between conceptual and real (ontological) distinctions and quickly runs into absurdities when applied to other distinctions. For instance, one could argue in the same manner that yellow is not the same as the colour yellow, since there are also other colours which differ from yellow but are nonetheless colours. Yet if yellow is not the same as the colour yellow then it is not only conceivable that there are other colours than yellow but also that there is a yellow which is not a colour. But this conclusion is in fact not conceivable because we do not have the slightest idea how there should be a yellow which is not a colour. Various other examples could be found: a cube which is not a three-dimensional body, a piece of silk which is not a fabric, and so on. It should be clear from this that one cannot infer existential independence from conceptual distinctions. Of course, Moore takes colours to be cognitive objects of perception, and Rolston does the same with intrinsic values. Yet we would not say that yellow is an object of colour, or silk an object of fabric, and perhaps this is the crucial difference which justifies the inference in the one case but not in the other. It is, after all, quite plausible to understand perception as a kind of cognitive appropriation of an (independently existing) object. When we look at, say, a table we do not seem to perceive the mental image of a table but, rather, the table itself. Equally, when there is a blue spot on the table, we do not seem to perceive a mental image of a blue spot but the blue spot itself, out there, on the table, in the external world, just like the table. But is the blue itself really, in the same way as the table, an object of our perception? Does it not rather describe a certain manner in which we become aware of the table and the

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spot on it? It would then be misleading to say that we perceive, sense or experience (the object) blue, and more correct to say that we perceive (an object) bluely, as C.J. Ducasse argued in response to Moore.26 Similarly, the experience of intrinsic values in nature, or more specifically in living organisms, can be understood as a certain mode of experiencing living organisms rather than as the experience of a certain class of objects, called intrinsic values, in living organisms. This mode of experience could be described as ‘appreciatively’ or even ‘lovingly’. Auto-integrity, the good and moral obligations The claim that there are objective intrinsic values in nature (that is, intrinsic values that exist even when nobody is there to acknowledge them as values), which somehow put us under the moral obligation to treat, for instance, living beings in accordance with their own good, has turned out to be hardly more comprehensible than the similar Moorean claim that there are sense-data that exist independently of their being sensed. Yet if there really are no objective intrinsic values and we nonetheless value certain things for their own sake, then it might seem completely arbitrary which things we value in this way. However, when we look at our value experience we see that part of that experience is the objectivity of value. What we experience is the object itself as intrinsically valuable. It seems to us that we find the value in the object and that it deserves to be valued for its own sake. If that were not so then we would have no reason to value it in the first place. Is this objectivity just an illusion? Again, let us compare the experience of intrinsic values to the experience of colours. When we look at the green leaves of a tree in summer it seems to us that the leaves themselves are green. Of course we know that the leaves are not really green, meaning that there would not be any green without living beings able to perceive it. But even though the existence of colours as colours depends on the structure of our perceptive faculties, colours are not completely subjective. Rather, colour is a specific manner in which things make themselves known to us. Although we do not see the leaves of the tree as green because they are green, green is what emerges when beings like us look at certain objects such as summer leaves. So colours are neither (completely) subjective nor (completely) objective. They are relative. Put paradoxically, the leaves really are green, but only for us. That they are green is a fact for us. It is not a matter of decision and therefore not arbitrary. In this respect, values are like colours. It is not arbitrary what we value and what not. We find ourselves in a world full of values. Life for instance, our life at least, has always been valuable to us. We have not made the decision to value it. To live means, in normal circumstances, to value one’s life for its own sake. Yet at the same time the value of life depends on our valuing it. That is why life can lose its value to us. And if we stop valuing it, then it also loses its intrinsic value, at least for us (just like the colour green would in effect cease to exist for us if we lost our eyesight). The act of valuing and

26 Cf. C.J. Ducasse, Nature, Mind, and Death (Evanston, IL, 1952), ch. 13: ‘The Relation of Sensa to Sensing’.

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the existence of values go together. Neither is the cause of the other. It is one single event. When Berkeley declared that trees exist only insofar as they are perceived, he was right. Trees are objects of human perception and conceptualization. There are no trees for the woodpecker. In this respect values are as real or unreal as trees. They exist for us, objectively, just like material objects. And just as there are no trees in themselves, independent of our perception of them – trees not perceived as trees are not trees – there are no values in themselves. The existence of trees depends on our perceptive and cognitive faculties, just as the existence of values depends on our human nature. And if not even material things exist independently of our perceiving them, we should not be surprised that values do not either. Consequently, if we happen to find certain things intrinsically valuable, that is, if we happen to find ourselves valuing them for their own sake, the fact that the value we perceive is not independent of our perception should not be taken as a sufficient reason for discarding that value as having no relevance for our actions. If we perceive the life of an animal as intrinsically valuable, we have a good and indeed sufficient reason to honour and protect this life as well as we can. If we do not, however, there is no way to show conclusively that we ought to. The only message we get when someone tries to persuade us that an entity we fail to value for its own sake is in fact intrinsically valuable is that they want to limit our freedom of action and prevent us from doing what they think is wrong. Yet although this is unfortunate, no moral relativism follows from it. When it seems to us that the life of an animal has intrinsic value, it still seems to us that it has intrinsic value, objectively. If certain actions strike us as wrong, they still strike us as wrong, objectively. We will then feel ourselves (and all others) obliged to act in a certain way, will feel a duty being imposed on us. And there is no good reason not to act accordingly. It is important to realize that although the claim that an entity has intrinsic value cannot be proven, it cannot be disputed either. It cannot truly be said that the life, the welfare or the good of animals are not among the things that are intrinsically valuable. They can be, and it makes no sense to say that in fact they are not. However, it is still hard to see how it should ever be possible to justify the moral claim that an entity that is in fact not valued for its own sake ought to be valued just the same. It seems that all we can say is that there are some things we value for their own sake (so we have a reason to protect them and demand that they be protected) and others that we do not (so we have no such reason), and also some things that some of us value for their own sake and others do not (so only some of us have a reason to protect them and demand that they be protected). Yet we have seen that it is very plausible to accept that all living organisms have a good of their own. We have also seen that the term integrity generally denotes the ideal condition of an object. Auto-integrity is what we speak of if that ideal condition requires no external reference point. It turned out that the most likely candidate for a case of auto-integrity is biological integrity, that is, the integrity that living beings possess by virtue of what they are as particular kinds of being with a specific good of their own. Now it would seem that while the state of hetero-integrity must be regarded as having only instrumental value, auto-integrity can be said to signify intrinsic value not only in the sense that it is valued for its own sake but also in the sense that it ought to be valued for its own sake. The term auto-integrity refers to a kind of ideal

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condition which is marked as ideal not by any contingent external reference but internally, by its very own nature. This ideal condition is, from the standpoint of the organism, a good which to achieve and sustain is intrinsically desirable. However, as John O’Neill has pointed out – correctly I think – there is no inconsistency in admitting that an organism has a good of its own and at the same time believing that this organism ought to be destroyed.27 His example is the gardener and her knowledge about the good of those insects she considers as vermin and accordingly seeks to destroy. Although the gardener knows perfectly well that there are things that are good for greenflies and also which things are good for them, she does not feel the least obliged to care for their good. On the contrary, it is her job to use her knowledge of what makes greenflies flourish precisely in such a way that they are prevented from flourishing. One can recognize that something has its own goods, and quite consistently be morally indifferent to these goods or believe one has a moral duty to inhibit their development. That Y is a good of X does not entail that Y should be realized unless we have a prior reason for believing that X is the sort of thing whose good ought to be promoted.28

Even Paul Taylor, who, after all, proclaims the objectivity of intrinsic values, acknowledges, ‘an entity may be recognized correctly as having a good of its own, but at the same time it may not be regarded as possessing inherent worth; this is perfectly consistent.’29 In order to feel morally obliged to treat a living organism in such a way that its good is taken into account, it is not sufficient to recognize this good. What needs to be recognized in addition to its good is its intrinsic value, or what Taylor calls its inherent worth: If the fact that an entity has a good of its own does not logically entail that moral agents ought or ought not to treat it in a certain way, the problem arises: What relationship holds (if any) between an entity’s having a good and the claim its good makes upon moral agents? I shall argue that, if a moral agent is to recognize or acknowledge such a claim, the entity in question must not only be thought of as having a good of its own, it must also be regarded as having inherent worth. When so regarded, the entity is considered to be worthy of respect on the part of all moral agents.30

This, of course, does not answer the question why it should be regarded as having inherent worth. If its having a good of its own is not a sufficient reason for valuing it for its own sake, what then? There seems to be no other property that is more suitable for lending support to claims of intrinsic value. Holmes Rolston makes a useful distinction between biological organisms and moral agents that might help to strengthen the link between an organism’s specific good and the intrinsic value that is assigned to it.31 A moral agent, Rolston argues, can be good-of-its-kind but at the

27 28 29 30 31

O’Neill, ‘The Varieties of Intrinsic Value’, p. 131. Ibid., pp. 131–2. Taylor, Respect for Nature, p. 60. Ibid., p. 72. Rolston, Environmental Ethics, p. 101.

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same time not be a good kind. Persons can be very good in doing evil, which does not make them good persons. Non-human living organisms, on the other hand, are amoral normative systems, and there are no cases where an organism seeks a good of its own that is morally reprehensible. Neither wolves nor nettles are bad because they defend their kinds of good. In organisms, the distinction between having a good-of-its-kind and being a good kind vanishes, so far as any faulting of the organism is concerned. To this extent, everything with a good-of-its-kind is a good kind and thereby has value.

For instance, a poisonous snake, a crocodile, a tick, a virus: they all remain true to their character. Yet in seeking and defending their own good they can become a danger to humans. Surely there cannot be anything wrong with us trying to eliminate this danger. Since poisonous snakes are definitely bad, why should we not kill them or at least remove their poisonous fangs? Well, perhaps we are justified in doing this, but even if we are, we ought to remember that not even those animals which are a danger (or merely a nuisance) to us are intrinsically bad. If they are bad they are only so in relation to our needs and wants. If we regard them in abstraction from our needs and wants, only as they are in themselves, if we achieve what Paul Taylor called a ‘wholeness of vision’,32 what is bad about them disappears, so that even their lives can be seen as intrinsically valuable and worthy of being protected whenever possible. Conclusion We must, I think, admit that there is no rational basis for the claim that living organisms have an objective intrinsic value. Even though we can hardly deny that they have a good of their own, we are not logically compelled to assign an intrinsic value to them, that is, to agree that their existence is good in itself and is therefore morally considerable. We can consistently deny that there actually is a non-personal dignity, bonitas, or biological integrity in living beings. However, as indicated before, this is a general problem of all moral claims and not a specific problem of the claim that living organisms by virtue of their having a good of their own ought to be treated with some respect for what they are and what they are meant to be. If we want to deny that what is good for other living beings is of moral relevance to us, we can just as well deny that ultimately nothing really matters and all moral concerns rest on an illusion: the illusion that some things have a value independent of our interest in them. With reason alone we can never substantiate genuine moral claims. In order to believe that the things we do – to other human beings but also to living beings in general – matter morally, we need not reason but faith. This is the subject of the next chapter.

32 Taylor, Respect for Nature, p. 127.

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Chapter Eight

Faith and Morality One major field of genetic engineering is the manipulation of animals in such a way that their ability to serve our needs is enhanced. This, however, is often objected to because of what seems to be an extreme way of instrumentalizing our environment. It is argued that in literally redesigning animals in order to improve their utility we treat them ‘as though they have been created primarily for our own exclusive use’,1 and that there is thus a certain belief underlying this particular application of genetic engineering, namely the belief that the whole non-human world is somehow meant to be used by us, that it is our rightful property with which we are permitted to do whatever we want. Genetic engineering (of animals for human benefit), writes Andrew Linzey, ‘represents the concretization of the absolute claim that animals belong to us and exist for us’.2 Although humans have always used and selectively bred animals, genetic engineering is thought to be special in the extent to which it allows us to make other living beings our own: ‘What is new is that we are now employing the technological means of absolutely subjugating the nature of animals so that they become totally and completely human property.’3 Whether these claims are actually justified or not shall not be the concern of this chapter. Here I do not want to discuss whether selective breeding is really so much different from genetic engineering in terms of animal instrumentalization, as critics such as Fox or Linzey have argued. This may or may not be so. Neither will I discuss the different forms of genetic engineering and the question of whether some of these forms might actually be less an instrumentalization and therefore less objectionable than others. I do not even want to defend the claim that genetically engineering animals in order to enhance their value for us is morally wrong per se. Rather, what I shall do is discuss the claim that the alleged absolute appropriation by means of genetic engineering is, according to Linzey, only the natural consequence of a theology for whose propagation the ‘Christian tradition, fed by powerful Aristotelian notions, has been largely responsible’.4 This theology holds that the whole of creation is made by God exclusively for the use of us humans. We are therefore licensed to treat it as we choose.

1 Michael J. Fox, Superpigs and Wondercorn: The Brave New World of Biotechnology and Where It All May Lead (New York, 1992), p. 114. 2 Andrew Linzey, ‘Human and Animal Slavery: A Theological Critique of Genetic Engineering’, in Peter Wheale and Ruth McNally (eds), The Bio-Revolution: Cornucopia or Pandora’s Box? (London, 1990), pp. 175–88, p. 180. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., p. 181.

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The questions this chapter attempts to answer are whether there is such a theology, where its origins are most likely to be found, whether such a theology is really needed in order to justify animal exploitation in general and animal genetic engineering (with the purpose of intensifying the utilization of animals) in particular, and finally whether it is not rather the opposition to the exploitation of our nonhuman environment (by means of genetic engineering or otherwise) that requires some sort of theology or at least religious or quasi-religious faith as a background. Linzey, of course, is not the first to charge Christianity, or a certain interpretation of Christian doctrines, with the burden of responsibility for the unscrupulous exploitation of animals that characterizes our civilization. Lynn White famously brought forward the same charge almost forty years ago and predicted that the ecological crisis would continue to worsen until ‘we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man’.5 Naturally, White’s view did not remain unchallenged. It has often and rightly been pointed out that there are other passages in the Bible which suggest a different view, encouraging at least a stewardship model.6 Moreover, Peter Harrison has convincingly shown that the biblical imperative ‘Have dominion’ has only been interpreted as licensing a despotic rule of humankind over the entire rest of nature since the rise of modern science in the seventeenth century and that this new interpretation was partly due to the fact that the medieval faith in the centrality of the human being in the world was rapidly disappearing.7 However, it is doubtlessly true that both the Bible and the views of many of the foremost Christian writers provide some support for the idea that the natural world is given into our hands and that we have no moral obligations towards it.8 There is, though, nothing distinctively Christian about this kind of thinking. If we are looking for the clearest and most consistent theoretical grounding in history of the claim that humans have a right to use their environment as much and as thoroughly as they possibly can, we are more likely to find it in the teachings of the Greek and Roman Stoics than in the Bible (or in the writings of Aristotle).9

5 Lynn White, ‘The Historic Roots of Our Ecological Crisis’, Science, 55 (1967): 1203–7. 6 John Black, The Dominion of Man (Edinburgh, 1970); John Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature: Ecological Problems and Western Traditions (London, 1974); Robin Attfield, The Ethics of Environmental Concern (Oxford, 1983), pp. 20–33; Robin Attfield, ‘Christian Attitudes to Nature’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 44/3 (1983); Robin Attfield, Environmental Ethics (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 32–4. 7 Peter Harrison, ‘Subduing the Earth: Genesis 1, Early Modern Science, and the Exploitation of Nature’, The Journal of Religion, 79/1 (1999). 8 See Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (2nd edn, London, 1990), ch. 5; Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500–1800 (London, 1983), ch. 1. 9 Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, pp. 14–18; Attfield, The Ethics of Environment, p. 26.

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The Stoic view Of course, the Stoics believed in the existence of a god too, and tried to prove it in various ways. Their favourite and most influential proof was what since Kant has been called the physico-theological proof and is otherwise known as the argument from design. This argument has the advantage that, if conclusive, it not only proves the existence of a god but also reveals some of that god’s properties, namely intelligence, wisdom and goodness. If we look at the world, the argument goes, we cannot but recognize the astonishing order and harmony we find there. This order cannot be the result of pure chance or the random movement of material atoms (as Epicurus had argued). The only plausible explanation for the complexity of order exhibited in the universe is that it has all been designed and wisely put together by an extremely powerful and most intelligent creator. Anybody, says the Stoic Balbus in Cicero’s De Natura Deorum, who has ever seen the ‘admirabilem caeli ornatum’10 – the sky’s admirable splendour – has to appreciate the perfection of this world and, consequently, that it cannot be conceived to be without reason, rationality and forward planning (‘non possum intellegere sine mente, ratione, consilio’11). Almost everywhere we can observe the divine providence (pronoia). The whole universe is literally beautifully arranged, which means that its beauty is a natural expression of the underlying order. The beauty of this world had never before been so emphatically praised as it was by the Stoics.12 However, for the Stoics beauty always hinges on utility. A thing is beautiful only as far as it is useful, that is, fulfils some purpose in the universe. The kosmos as a whole is beautiful because everything in it has its proper place and fits with everything else. The animals have been so well contrived that there is no part of their bodies and no ability which does not serve a certain purpose, and their environment provides them with everything they need to live their lives.13 Moreover, the various species can exist together and live on each other without danger of extinction. Everything is in perfect harmony with everything else. And this means that nothing is there only for itself but always serves other beings as well. According to Cicero, the early Stoic Chrysippus taught that everything was created for purposes other than its own, namely the products and fruits of the earth for the use of animals and the animals for the use of man, for instance the horse so that man can ride it, cattle so that man can plough with them, and the dog to help man with his hunting.14 Alan Holland, in an attempt to explore the prospects of a Stoic environmentalism, has pointed out that what is attributed to Chrysippus here is not the view that the world was created for the sake of humans.15 On the contrary, he is quoted to have said that ‘everything except the world’ was created for the sake of some other thing, 10 Cicero, De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods), II.94. 11 Ibid., II.43. 12 Ibid., II.98–101. 13 Ibid., II.121. 14 Ibid., II.37. 15 Alan Holland, ‘Fortitude and Tragedy: The Prospects for a Stoic Environmentalism’, in T. Robinson and Laura Westra (eds), The Greeks and the Environment (Lanham, MD, 1997), pp. 151–66, pp. 154–6.

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and humans are no exception. They, too, serve a certain purpose. However, although this is true, it does not change the overall picture. The world as a whole is exempted from the general utility claim quite simply because it is identified with God. God, for the Stoics, does not exist outside the world. Rather, he is the active, creative principle which permeates all matter.16 He is the mind (dianoia) and reason (logos) which inheres in every single part of the world.17 Zenon, the school’s founder, praised God as creative and thinking fire,18 as fiery world spirit (nous cosmou pyrinos) and the soul of the whole universe.19 Given this identification of world and God, it is not surprising that the world is not thought to be made for the sake of something else. But apart from God, everything in the world is made to serve humankind since humans, being the only creatures capable of reason, come closest to God. Certainly, humans are said to have a purpose too, but they are not supposed to serve any other beings’ interests. Their purpose is the contemplation and imitation of the universe,20 that is, the realization of their rational nature. Although reason permeates all matter, it is only in the mind of man that reason exists in its proper, pure form. As the parts of the human body serve (or ought to serve) the faculty of reason, so all the animate and inanimate creation serves (or ought to serve) that kind of being which alone among all finite beings possesses reason in its pure form. All finite beings, except humans, are, as the late Stoic Epictetus wrote, ‘not of primary importance. Take the ass, for instance, is it born to be of primary importance? No; it is born because we had need of a back able to bear burdens. Nay, more, we had need that it should walk.’21 The reason why animals are so well-fitted to their environment and can sustain themselves so easily is that they are meant to serve human needs. Were they not so well-fitted, they would be useless for us: ‘For it would not have been a good thing that these creatures, born not for themselves but for service, should have been created liable to wants.’ So ‘nature has made the creatures that are born for service ready and prepared and able to dispense with any attention.’22 Since they are born for service they lack ‘intelligence, knowledge, and right reason’. Because of that, they do not have a good of their own, nor are they capable of happiness or unhappiness.23 Although they too are God’s work, they are not his principal works, nor are they ‘parts of the Divine’. Humans, however, are different: each one of us is of ‘primary importance’, a principal work of God and, indeed, ‘a fragment of God himself’. None of us is born for service and we all have a good of our own.24

16 Diogenes Laertius, De Vitis Philosophorum (Lives of Eminent Philosophers). With an English translation by R.D. Hicks (London, 1925), VII.134–48. 17 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VII.19. 18 Johannes von Arnim, Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, (4 vols, Leipzig, 1903–24), II.1027; 1031. 19 Ibid., II.532 20 Cicero, De Natura Deorum, II.37. 21 Epictetus, The Discourses and Manual. Together with fragments from his writings. Translated with Introduction and Notes by P.E. Matheson, (2 vols, Oxford, 1916), II.8. 22 Ibid., I.16. 23 Ibid., II.8. 24 Ibid.

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The Stoic idea that all things have a purpose is, of course, reminiscent of Aristotle’s doctrine of oikeia arete, which roughly means: that which makes a thing good, or the kind of goodness which is proper to it. As we saw before, Aristotle thought that every living being and every material thing has its own special good, some property which is essential to it and which, in being used or practised, makes it the kind of thing it is meant to be. Thus a ‘good’ knife is a sharp knife, that is, a knife that is good for cutting. On the other hand, a human being is a good human being if and only if she uses her reason properly, for it is reason and reason alone that makes us human. So if we want to realize what we are (or what we are meant to be), we have to act according to reason. But although, for Aristotle, both knife and man each have their own proper good, their oikeia aretai are not of the same kind. A knife is a thing made by humans for a certain purpose. It is the product of human techne and therefore its end, its telos, is properly speaking not its end at all but instead an entirely human end. Neither the knife nor any other material object strives after the realization of its end, whereas humans do or at least can do. That is because humans are living beings, not a product of techne but of physis, of nature, and therefore their telos is not alien to themselves. Man is his own telos, which means that one cannot say what a human is good for. What is often overlooked, however, is that, according to Aristotle, the same holds in fact for all living beings. Thus the oikeia arete of an animal does not consist in the specific way it can be put to use. They are not made to serve human needs. Animals, like men, have their own intrinsic good. This interpretation of Aristotle may come as a surprise because we are so used to hearing that Aristotle’s opinion was rather the contrary, namely that plants are made to be consumed by animals, and animals to be consumed and used by humans. But in fact there is only one short passage in Aristotle’s work that supports this view and which is quoted over and over again: In like manner we may infer that, after the birth of animals, plants exist for their sake, and that the other animals exist for the sake of man, the tame for use and food, the wild, if not all at least the greater part of them, for food, and for the provision of clothing and various instruments. Now if nature makes nothing incomplete, and nothing in vain, the inference must be that she has made all animals for the sake of man.25

It is obvious, though, that this passage is very much at odds with Aristotle’s general ontology and therefore ought to be treated accordingly.26 The Stoics abandon Aristotle’s strict ontological distinction between natural beings and human artefacts. Products of nature are now conceived as if they were products of human techne. In the same way as a knife is made for cutting, horses are now thought to be made for riding, cattle for ploughing, dogs for hunting. Living beings have become tools which differ from ordinary tools only in so far as ordinary tools are made by humans, whereas these natural tools are made by nature, or God, for the use of human. It is true that there are also things that were made for the use 25 Aristotle, Politics, 1256b. 26 How this passage can be reconciled with Aristotle’s general ontology is shown by Wolfgang Kullmann, ‘Different Concepts of the Final Cause in Aristotle’, in A. Gotthelf (ed.), Aristotle on Nature and Living Things (Bristol, 1985), pp. 169–75.

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of animals, like the ‘products and fruits of the earth’, but in the same sense oil can be said to be made for the use of machines. After all, animals have to be fed in order to enable them to do what they are supposed to do: namely to serve humans.27 There is no reciprocity: a clear hierarchy is established. Earth is, as it were, a house made for humans to live in. This house is furnished for the convenience of its occupier, humankind. The animals do not inhabit this house; they are pieces of furniture. Nature has given humankind ‘complete command over all goods of the earth’.28 Admittedly, this does not mean that the Stoics believed we are justified in doing with it whatever we want. We have been given command over the earth (by nature or the eternal reason which pervades the universe) in the same way and for similar reasons as a gardener has been given command over a garden by its owner. Just like the gardener, we are responsible for what has been given to us. Our relation to the world is not so much one of ownership but rather of some sort of stewardship. Consequently we are not allowed to destroy or abuse our environment. On the contrary: our obligation is to take care of the world, to look after it, to preserve its beauty and not allow it to become ‘a realm of wild animals or a desert of coarse scrub’.29 It is this element of Stoic teaching that has inspired hopes for a Stoic environmentalism. One has to be careful here, though. For the Stoics, nonhuman nature has no intrinsic value. Only humans are ‘of primary importance’ and have a good of their own. That is why Stephens30 was certainly right to point out against Cheney’s31 attempt to reinvent the Stoics as early proponents of ‘radical environmentalism’ that Stoicism ‘couldn’t be farther away from the biocentrism and the anti-anthropocentrism of deep ecology’. If we are obliged to take care of the world around us, then this is only because and insofar as it is serviceable to us. Our responsibility consists in giving the world a shape which makes and keeps it suitable for human beings to live in. We do not have any direct duties to our environment, for instance towards animals, and there is no reason to pay any regard to their interests. The only thing we have to take care of in regard to animals is that there will always be enough of them to supply our needs. Chrysippus allegedly once remarked that the only reason for pigs having a soul instead of salt is that without it they would rot.32 This means that life in animals is nothing more than a preservative, a clever device to keep the meat fresh. Only humans have been given a rational soul, and they are meant to use it in order to ‘contemplate and imitate the universe’,33 that is, in order to recognize the work of reason in the world, to realize what reason demands, and to act accordingly. The rest 27 Cicero, De Natura Deorum, II.158–60. 28 Ibid., II.152. 29 Ibid., II.99. 30 William O. Stephens, ‘Stoic Naturalism, Rationalism, and Ecology’, Environmental Ethics, 16 (1994): 275–86, p. 278. 31 Jim Cheney, ‘The Neo-Stoicism of Radical Environmentalism’, Environmental Ethics, 11 (1989): 293–325. 32 Cicero, De Natura Deorum, II.160. This rather cynical remark was echoed by Henry More in 1653 when he professed that cattle and sheep have only been given life in order to keep their meat fresh for us. Cf. Thomas, Man and the Natural World, p. 20. 33 Cicero, De Natura Deorum, II.37.

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of nature has to serve this end. Hence, although there are things which we ought not to do – presumably, for instance, eradicating a species whose further existence could one day benefit humans – we are not obliged to treat animals in accordance with their own nature or use them for one natural purpose only. When horses are said to be for riding, cattle for ploughing, and so on, this is not to say that we are forbidden to use them for any other purpose. Again in contrast to Aristotle, animals are nowhere said to have an intrinsic telos whose realization is a good for them and which can therefore be taken as a factual starting point for granting them a certain moral status. In the view of the Stoics, animals are made in order to serve our needs and wants, that is, to serve reason. That is their (entirely extrinsic) telos. Holland has argued that if, for instance, the ‘role’ of pigs is to provide us with fresh meat, and the role of mice to ‘discourage laziness and untidiness’, then it follows that animals ‘had better not be used instead to grow hearts for transplanting into humans, as is currently the fate of (some) pigs, or to grow human ears on their backs, as is currently the fate of (some) mice’.34 But even though they may not be particularly designed for that purpose, there is, in the Stoic view of the world, no reason why we should not use them for it as long as it benefits us. Nothing prevents us from finding new uses for the things that surround us and are given to us. On the contrary, reason, and our human responsibility for doing what is reasonable, demands it. So if pigs turn out to be good for growing organs that can be transplanted into humans, it is perfectly legitimate to use them accordingly. Theology or ethic of knowledge? Drawing on a common distinction, Paul Taylor35 distinguishes between two types of environmental ethics, human-centred (or anthropocentric) and life-centred (or biocentric). A human-centred theory of environmental ethics holds that our moral duties with respect to the natural world are all ultimately derived from the duties we owe to one another as human beings.36 … From the standpoint of a life-centred theory of environmental ethics, on the other hand, our duties toward nature do not stem from the duties we owe to humans. (Instead, the) living things of the natural world have a worth that they possess simply in virtue of their being members of the Earth’s Community of Life.

Note that this definition of biocentrism does not imply that every living thing in the natural world has equal worth. Thus one can, like, for instance, Tom Regan37 or Holmes Rolston,38 hold that ultimately humans matter more than any other living thing, and still defend a basically biocentric (or ecocentric) view. What is essential for this view is not equality of value but rather the belief that we have direct obligations 34 Holland, ‘Fortitude and Tragedy’, p. 155. 35 Paul W. Taylor, Respect for Nature (Princeton, NJ, 1986), pp. 11–13. 36 This kind of anthropocentric approach has been influentially developed and defended by Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature. 37 Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley, CA, 1983). 38 Holmes Rolston III, Environmental Ethics (Philadelphia, PA, 1988).

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towards our non-human environment, that is, obligations that are independent of our obligations towards other human beings. Anthropocentrism, on the other hand, does not, on Taylor’s definition, acknowledge any such obligations. The Stoics’ point of view is clearly anthropocentric in Taylor’s sense of the word. It holds that since we have no direct moral obligations to animals or other parts of our natural environment, our use of it is restricted only by the duties we owe to other human beings. Naturally, in many cases someone who has an anthropocentric point of view will agree, in terms of environmental politics, with someone who has a biocentric point of view. Both want to see nature protected from human exploitation and fight for the conservation of animals and plants, species and ecosystems. They can share the same practical ends and favour the same means, although for different reasons.39 Genetic engineering, however, when being used on animals in order to enhance their utility for us, is not very likely to be one of these cases, at least not if it is successful. If we are indeed better off with the genetic manipulation of animals than without it (which of course can be contested), then from an anthropocentric point of view there can be no moral objection to it. If the only kind of value animals are thought to have is instrumental, if they are not granted any intrinsic value at all, then we are more than justified to disregard their well-being and use them as we please, as long as this usage is not detrimental to human good. But that means that it is, after all, not the positive doctrine that animals have been created in order to be used by us that justifies our neglect of their interests, but rather the negative doctrine that there is no intrinsic reason why we should not treat them as it suits us. In other words, there is, contrary to the suspicions referred to at the beginning of this chapter, no special theology needed to support our unrestrained use of animals. That is why it is hard to say to what extent our attitude towards animals and our environment as a whole has been influenced by the Stoic tradition of thought and whether the practice of genetic engineering is based on it or any other kind of theology. Surely we can act as though animals have been created ‘for our own exclusive use’ without actually believing any such thing. It would be sufficient to believe that they are not meant to be treated in any way at all. It seems to me, however, that we cannot really make sense of the claim that living things (or anything at all) possess intrinsic value in a morally relevant sense if we are not prepared to admit that they are in fact meant to be treated in a certain way. For what exactly do we want to claim when we assign intrinsic value to an entity? The discussion in the last chapter has shown that there are various possibilities of which two are relevant for the present discussion. First, we might use the term in a subjective sense and claim that a particular entity, or kind of entity, is not merely valued instrumentally (by us), that is, for the sake of something else, but, instead, for its own sake. It is fairly obvious that we can value nature and non-human organisms intrinsically in that sense. Sometimes we value things for what they are rather than for what they can do for us. However, it is – pace Callicott40 – hard to see how we could ever, on such grounds, justify the moral claim that we ought to value something for 39 Bryan Norton, Toward Unity among Environmentalists (New York, 1991). 40 J. Baird Callicott, Beyond the Land Ethic: More Essays in Environmental Philosophy (Albany, NY, 1999), pp. 221–61.

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its own sake if we happen not to. Unless, that is, we can bring forward a convincing reason for doing so. Yet the only convincing reason seems to be that the thing in question is valuable in itself, that is, objectively, whether we happen to value it, even for its own sake, or not. This second, objective, meaning of the term ‘intrinsic value’ is more appropriate to it insofar as the value something gains in virtue of its being valued for its own sake is not really intrinsic at all, but rather extrinsic (though not instrumental).41 For being considered valuable in itself, however, it is, as I have argued, not enough for an entity to have a good of its own. Having a good of one’s own might be a necessary precondition of having intrinsic value in an objective sense, but it is not sufficient. What needs to be recognized, in addition to the fact of having a good of its own, is, in Taylor’s terminology, the ‘inherent worth’ of the entity in question. To recognize this means to acknowledge (1) that the entity is deserving of moral concern and consideration, or, in other words, that it is to be regarded as a moral subject, and (2) that all moral agents have a prima facie duty to promote or preserve the entity’s good as an end in itself and for the sake of the entity whose good it is.42

Now, it seems that the assumption that there is such an inherent worth to living creatures, that is, an intrinsic value in the proper, objective, sense, has to be made by all who want to defend animals from unlimited human exploitation. Even utilitarians must assume that the suffering of animals is morally relevant, and it can only be relevant if there is some sort of intrinsic value attached to their existence. If they had no value in themselves but could only be valuable for humans, then their suffering would only count if, and as long as, humans cared about it. It would make no sense to claim that they deserve moral concern and that we have a duty to promote their good. Hence the acceptance of objective intrinsic value (or inherent worth) in animals and (possibly) other parts of our non-human environment, is essential for the convincing adoption of any non-anthropocentric ethic. But to say that beings with a good of their own deserve moral concern and that we have a moral duty to treat them in a certain way is not much different from claiming that they are meant to be treated in such a way. This is just another way of putting into words our intuition that the normative constraint we feel imposed on us is something that stems directly from the nature of the object of our concern. Yet how is this supposed to be possible if there is nothing that lends weight to our actions above and beyond our immediate concerns? Why should it, after all, be important what we do if there is no higher authority in the universe that bestows value on things independent of our own transient evaluations? Why should we then care what the last human being on earth – Routley’s ‘Mr. Last Man’43 – does to his environment? Of course, we may well care, but the point is, if we do not, why should we? If there is no higher authority in the universe (or if we do not believe in any such authority), 41 Karen Green, ‘Two Distinctions in Environmental Values’, Environmental Values, 5 (1996): 31–46. 42 Taylor, Respect for Nature, p. 75. 43 Richard Routley, ‘Is There a Need for a New, an Environmental Ethic?’, in Proceedings of the XII World Congress of Philosophy, 1 (Varna, 1973), pp. 205–10.

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then there is no need to justify our exploitative or wantonly destructive practice by pointing out that we have a right to act as we do. We can just do as we please. Hence a thoroughgoing atheist can not even be said to have an anthropocentric point of view proper, for in a universe without God there is, ultimately, nothing that really matters. Therefore there are not even duties towards our fellow human beings apart from those we happen to feel we have. Though we can, as atheists, certainly act as anthropocentrists, we cannot really believe that anthropocentrism is true, that is, that humans alone matter. For without God not even humans matter. In a JacquesMonodian universe, governed by chance and necessity, neither man nor life nor anything else is privileged. Everything is simply as it is, nothing is for anything else, not even for itself. There is no purpose, no meaning, apart from what we choose to put into it. ‘The ancient covenant44 is in pieces; man at last knows that he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe, out of which he emerged only by chance. Neither his destiny nor his duty have been written down.’45 According to Monod, the only ethic suitable to such a universe is an ‘ethic of knowledge’ whose main object is to forbid ‘any confusion of knowledge with values’.46 Is it not more likely that an ethic like this, rather than a theology in favour of man’s dominion over ‘every living thing that moveth upon the earth’,47 underlies the demands for an unrestricted application of genetic engineering to animals?48 Perhaps instead of there being a theological justification for the practice of genetic engineering needed, the moral opposition to it needs some theological support. Anthropocentrism, if it is not a positive belief but simply a way of dealing with our environment, can apparently do without a theology. Biocentrism, on the other hand, may indeed need one. A theology in support of biocentrism: St Augustine A theology suitable to support a biocentric approach to environmental ethics may well be Christian in its premises and outlook. It is common to refer to Francis of Assisi if one wants to demonstrate that Christianity has not been all that bad and sometimes could well have a ‘heart for animals’.49 St Francis, however, was almost

44 For the significance of the covenant see Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, ‘Covenant and Creation’, in Charles Birch (ed.), Liberating Life: Contemporary Approaches to Ecological Theology (Maryknoll, NY, 1990), p. 33 ‘In covenant the solidarity of God with the created world is declared as an everlasting promise.’ 45 Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity (Glasgow, 1974), p. 167. 46 Ibid., p. 163. 47 Genesis 1.28. 48 See Granberg-Michaelson, ‘Covenant and Creation’, p. 28: ‘Objective, scientific knowledge became an absolute value. And the purpose of such knowledge was to exercise power over the creation. The view of life became secularized; we came to understand the world apart from any reference to God. The creation became “nature” – raw material that existed only to be given value through exploitation.’ 49 White, ‘The Historic Roots of Our Ecological Crisis’; Father Peter Hooper and Martin Palmer, ‘St. Francis and Ecology’, in Elizabeth Breuilly and Martin Palmer (eds), Christianity

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heretical in his life if not in his views, and that he has been canonized instead of being condemned is probably more than anything else owing to his extreme modesty.50 It is astonishing that few of those who wished to defend Christianity from the charge Lynn White had raised against it ever thought of mentioning one of the foremost authorities of the Christian church instead, namely St Augustine.51 Of course, as with Aristotle, Augustine is believed to have been in favour of unrestricted animal exploitation,52 but a closer look reveals that a biocentric approach to environmental ethics can find a splendid advocate in Augustine’s teachings.53 When the young Augustine finally adopted the Christian faith, after much struggling during his youth, he was more than anything else concerned with the problem of evil. If God was good and at the same time omnipotent, as Christians were taught to believe, then how could there be any evil in the world? Augustine’s answer, inspired by the neoplatonism of Plotinus, was simple: there is no evil. Evil does not really exist, it is literally nothing (malum nihil est)54 Hence it follows that whatever is, is good. But why is that so? Everything that exists has a certain form, an essence or a nature, because otherwise it would not be anything particular. Properly speaking, without a nature of its own it would not exist at all. But since everything has got its nature from God, in so far as it exists it must be good: Omnis natura in quantum natura est bona est.55 But that does not mean that everything is equally good. Augustine accepts, like the Stoics did, that there is an objective hierarchy of beings. So there are things in the world which are less good than others. From this, however, it does not follow that the lesser are positively bad or entirely worthless. They may appear so, compared to what is greater than them, but in fact they are in themselves as good as it is possible for them to be. If you compare the moon to the sun, says Augustine, the moon may appear rather dull, but considered in her self (per se autem considerata) she is marvellous and beautiful (mira atque pulchra).56 It would be ridiculous to despise the beauty of the moon just because there is a sun. And the same holds for everything else. Everything that was created by God (and there is nothing that was not created by him) is good in its own particular way and deserves to be appreciated for what it is. But what about those things that are decidedly harmful to human beings, like the wild animals or the vermin that endanger our existence or well-being? What about the bacteria that cause fatal diseases in our bodies? Are they not at least positively and Ecology (London, 1992), pp. 76–85; Jan J. Boersema, ‘Why is Francis of Assisi the Patron Saint of Ecologists?’, Science and Christian Ethics, 14/1 (2002): 51–77. 50 Gilbert Keith Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi (London, 1926), ch. 10. 51 A notable exception is H. Paul Santmire, The Travail of Nature: The Ambiguous Ecological Promise of Christianity (Minneapolis, MN, 1987). 52 Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, p. 111; John Passmore, ‘The Treatment of Animals’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 36 (1975): 195–218; Gillian Clark, ‘The Fathers and the Animals: The Rule of Reason?’, in Andrew Linzey and Dorothy Yamamoto (eds), Animals on the Agenda (London, 1998), pp. 67–79. 53 See Attfield, The Ethics of Environmental Concern, pp. 377–8. 54 St Augustine, Soliloquia, I.2.3. 55 St Augustine, De libero arbitrio, I.3, 127. 56 St Augustine, De quantitate animae, 76.

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bad? No, Augustine would be bound to protest, they are not. We have to be careful, he says, not to confound what is bad for us with what is bad as such. Our own subjective evaluations may differ significantly from the objective value of things, because we tend to value things according to their utility and not according to what they are in themselves. In short, our evaluation becomes distorted by our personal or human needs. In order to appreciate things as they really are and as they deserve, we have to give up our human point of view and stop making ourselves the measure of all things. We have to stop seeing our environment merely as a means to our ends.57 Thus Augustine does what the Stoics did not: he distinguishes clearly between the instrumental value of things and their (objective) intrinsic value. Regarded objectively, living beings are always intrinsically more valuable than inanimate things. Even if their instrumental value is low, their intrinsic value may be quite high, regardless of whether their existence suits us or not. Fleas and mice may be a pest to us, but in themselves they are ‘mira atque pulchra’. This is, despite Augustine’s belief in a hierarchy of values, an outright rejection of the anthropocentric approach embraced by the Stoics, even though both – Augustine and the Stoics – equally celebrated the beauty of the world and thought this beauty to be a sure sign of God’s benevolent design. But whereas for the Stoics beauty signified instrumental value, for Augustine it signified intrinsic value.58 Whereas the Stoics convinced themselves that the world’s beauty clearly shows that it is made for our sake, Augustine thought that this very same beauty reveals to us the limitations of a purely human perspective. For Augustine, becoming aware of the beauty of each and every thing in this world makes us understand that the world was not made primarily for our use. Thus the beauty of the world teaches us to adopt a higher, less limited, quasi-divine perspective. In fact, it teaches us to adopt a biocentric point of view. Conclusion: ‘They are all God’s creatures’ By boldly denying the traditional equation of the good and the useful, Augustine prepared the ground for a disinterested appreciation of our natural environment. Augustine’s perspective is, of course, theocentric, but I do not think this prevents it from being biocentric as well. The Stoics’ perspective is, after all, also theocentric, but at the same time it is definitely anthropocentric. In fact, both anthropocentrism and biocentrism (in a strong sense) require some sort of a theocentric background. One cannot really believe that humans are at the centre of the universe (that is, that we matter or our existence has intrinsic value while nothing else does) if one does not believe (however vaguely) that we have been put there by some higher, cosmic authority. Similarly, one cannot really believe that all living beings matter and deserve moral consideration if one does not believe (again, however vaguely) 57 St Augustine, De civitate, XI.16. 58 This important difference has been overlooked by Carmen Velayos Castelo (‘Reflections on Stoic Logocentrism’, Environmental Ethics, 18 [1996]: 291–6), who emphasizes the Stoics’ celebration of nature’s beauty in support of her argument that the Stoics were not that anthropocentric after all.

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that there is something in the universe that gives weight to those beings and to what is being done to them. Thus theocentrism is actually not a third position in addition to anthropocentrism and biocentrism59 but a background presupposition of intelligibility for both of them. Of course one can always say that there is nothing that is valuable in itself, not even human life. Presumably one can then still treat one’s own life as more valuable than other lives, just because one happens to be human and happens to value one’s own life. But that does not mean that one believes one’s life to be intrinsically valuable, or that one believes there is objectively more value in one’s life than in any other, non-human lives. This purely negative, or practical, anthropocentrism does not need any kind of theology and hence neither does the practice of genetic engineering. If, however, we want to assert that all life in general, or animal life in particular, ought to be protected for its own sake, that is, because of its intrinsic value, then we should ask ourselves how far the coherence of this assertion depends on tacit theological or quasi-theological assumptions. For Augustine it would have made perfect sense to say that every creature had intrinsic value because to him this would have meant that God valued every single thing for its own sake, and this was sufficient for him to assert that everything quite literally possessed this value.60 But does it make sense for us, even if we do not happen to believe in the existence of a transcendent reality that is traditionally called God? I, for one, remain unconvinced that it does, even though, personally, I am not a theist nor do I have any particular religious beliefs. But it is certainly not accidental that those environmental ethicists who defend the existence of (objective) intrinsic values occasionally appeal to religious intuitions.61 In his book The Philosopher’s Dog Raimond Gaita reports how his daughter, when she was a child, once said in response to his remark that certain animals (baby rodents) were awful, that ‘they were also God’s creatures’.62 Gaita admits to having been deeply impressed and ashamed as a result of this comment, although he did not believe that there is a God who created the world and everything in it. If he had been asked whether he believed that they really were ‘God’s creatures’, he says he would probably have denied it. Nonetheless he thought then that there were ‘no words that could express better and at the same time so simply this wonderful acceptance of 59 See Christopher Southgate, ‘Introduction to Environmental Ethics’, in John Bryant et al. (eds), Bioethics for Scientists (Chichester, 2002), pp. 39–55, pp. 40–42. 60 For a modern version of this doctrine see Charles Birch, ‘Christian Obligation for the Liberation of Nature’, in Birch (ed.), Liberating Life, pp. 57–72: ‘A theocentric ethic affirms that each life – human and nonhuman – has value not only to the one who experiences that life but also to God. Intrinsic value means value in itself for the creature who experiences value and to God who experiences all value.’ See also Andrew Linzey, Animal Theology (London, 1994), p. 108: ‘Animals are valuable in themselves by virtue of their creation by God.’ 61 See, for instance, Rolston, Environmental Ethics, p. 309: ‘Three quarters of adult Americans … believe that endangered species must be protected even at the expense of commercial activity. … We have already met some of their reasons: extinction is irreversible; we lose diversity, beauty, a genetic resource, a natural wonder, a souvenir of the past. But underlying these there is another, really a religious reason: life is a sacred thing, and we ought not be careless about it.’ 62 Raimond Gaita, The Philosopher’s Dog (London, 2002), p. 134.

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all living creatures’. Gaita thinks that his daughter’s words silenced him ‘because they resonated against a part of our religious tradition in which to speak of the world as God’s creation is, at one and the same time, to speak of it with gratitude as a good world given to us as a gift’.63 Note, however, that no metaphysical proposition about the origin of the world or the structure of the universe is being asserted here. The God whose creatures the ugly rodents were supposed to be is not, in Gaita’s estimation, the God of philosophers, but the God of religion: The God of the philosophers is a metaphysical entity whose properties, if not His existence, are given to reason …. The God of religion, on the other hand, is defined by the requirement that belief in Him must deepen our ordinary human understanding of what matters in life. … Religious claims are always made fully in the realm of meaning.64

If I understand Gaita correctly, this means that to believe in the God of religion (as opposed to the God of philosophers) does not imply the belief that there literally exists a supernatural being with certain properties (omnipotence, omniscience and so on). What it does imply is rather the less clear-shaped (but not necessarily less strong) belief – or perhaps it is not even a belief but rather a feeling – that there are things that matter in life, whether they matter to us or not. ‘What does haunt our imagination’, said Alfred North Whitehead in his last public lecture given at the Harvard Divinity School, ‘is that the immediate facts of present action pass into permanent significance for the Universe.’65 When we experience the world as a fundamentally good world, as something that has been given to us like a precious gift, we feel obliged to honour it and protect and promote that which makes it a good world.66 Some will say that this is not a theology at all. Maybe they are right. I suppose it depends on what one means by theology. It can, however, hardly be doubted that the feeling of permanent significance that ‘haunts our imagination’ is basically a religious intuition – and if we completely lack this intuition, we will find no fault with the genetic manipulation of animals (and neither with that of plants, or even humans), as long as we believe that it will be conducive to our own wellbeing.

63 Ibid., p. 136. Compare Chesterton’s remark in St. Francis of Assisi, p. 88: ‘Rossetti makes the remark somewhere, bitterly but with great truth, that the worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.’ 64 Gaita, The Philosopher’s Dog, p. 135. 65 Alfred North Whitehead, Essays in Science and Philosophy (New York, 1948), p. 72. 66 See Stephen R.L. Clark, God, Religion and Reality (London, 1998): p. 115: ‘Seeing “as God sees” (or with as close an approximation as is possible for human eyes) is to see the good in everything, to see how there is something that should be, whatever faults or accidents we cannot help identifying as what shouldn’t be.’

Chapter Nine

Integrity and the Reification of Life ‘What’s wrong – fundamentally wrong – with the way animals are treated … isn’t the pain, the suffering, isn’t the deprivation. … The fundamental wrong is the system that allows us to view animals as our resources, here for us – to be eaten, or surgically manipulated, or exploited for sport or money.’1 Tom Regan made this claim 20 years ago. What he maintains is basically that the fundamental wrong is not the suffering we inflict on animals but the way we look at them. What we do to them, what we believe we are allowed to do to them, is dependent on how we perceive or conceptualize them. We not only treat them as resources but prior to this we already think of them as resources, and when we look at them all we tend to see is resources. In our perception of them they exist not for themselves but ‘for us’. But obviously it can only be fundamentally wrong in a moral sense to view them that way if it is wrong in a factual sense, that is, if animals are in fact not ‘for us’. But is it wrong? Animals as ends in themselves According to Immanuel Kant, our moral duties to our fellow human beings can all be traced back to the one rule never to treat each other (and oneself) merely as means but always at the same time as an end. The reason for this is that human beings, by virtue of their being capable of acting out of respect for the moral law and thus autonomously, have an intrinsic or absolute value that Kant calls dignity. That human beings have such an absolute value means, for Kant, that they (and in general all rational beings) by their very nature exist as ends in themselves.2 Thus the imperative always to treat them as ends and never merely as means is only an acknowledgement of their true nature. In contrast, all other beings have only a relative, extrinsic value and do not exist as ends in themselves. All value they can possibly have they do have by reason of their being valued by humans. Whether or not they are alive or conscious or sentient does not matter: they can never be ends in themselves unless they possess reason and are capable of acting out of respect for the moral law. Since animals lack this ability they are, again by their very nature, not ends in themselves, we have no direct moral obligations towards them and are free 1 Tom Regan, ‘The Case for Animal Rights’, in Peter Singer (ed.), In Defense of Animals (New York, 1985), pp. 13–26. 2 Immanuel Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, B 65. In English: Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, in Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on the Theory of Ethics, translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (London, 1883), p. 46.

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to treat them, if it suits us, merely as means to our ends. Rational beings that exist as ends in themselves are called persons (the word ‘person’ being a nomen dignitatis), whereas all other beings, including all animals, are most appropriately called, and regarded as, things.3 The idea that animals might literally exist as means (thus justifying their being treated as means) is reminiscent of the Stoics’ claim that the whole purpose of their existence is their usefulness to human beings. Kant, however, did not go quite that far. He merely made the negative claim that animals do not exist as ends, but not the positive claim that they actually do exist as means. The Stoics tended to think of animals as predisposed for human use, as natural born instruments, whereas Kant conceptualized them as ‘things’ because in his view they lack the necessary requirements for moral considerability. So in all practical, that is, moral respects, animals are just like any other non-rational thing. Their existence, their needs and desires, cannot be the basis for moral obligations. Morally speaking their lives and their well-being are a matter of indifference and there is no answer to the question how they ought to be treated. They do not have dignity (that is an absolute value) but only a price, which means that they ‘can be replaced by something else which is equivalent’.4 Thus, according to Kant, replaceability is the hallmark not only of inanimate things but of all living beings except humans. However, replaceability is, contrary to what Kant suggests, not a property an object can possess as such, intrinsically, but only in relation to someone to whom it is replaceable and in relation to a certain aspect under which it is viewed. Anything can be replaceable for us if what matters to us is not the thing in its particularity, individuality, and uniqueness, but rather the thing as a representative of its kind. Because only then another thing of the same kind will do just as well. But what kind a thing is, again is not a question of its intrinsic properties but, instead, of our interest in it. To use a fairly trivial example, a coffee machine is not a coffee machine because it makes coffee (since it does many other things as well, and sometimes it does not even make coffee). Rather, it is a coffee machine because it is designed to make coffee, we expect it to make coffee, and we primarily use it to make coffee. If it breaks we can either get it repaired or buy a new one, and it does not really matter which, because it is, for us, replaceable. We can replace it precisely because it does not matter to us which coffee machine we have as long as it does what it is supposed to do, that is, make coffee. Similarly, when it is suggested that animals are by their very nature replaceable, they are already thought of as performing a certain function or having a certain use. We have an idea of what we want from them, how they should be, what makes them good representatives of their kind. And this idea makes animals replaceable. That is why it is quite wrong to argue that we have no moral obligations to animals because they are, by their very nature, replaceable. Rather, we define them as replaceable because that provides us with a convenient justification not to pay any attention to what is good for them. Being a mere thing means being replaceable in the sense that there is no moral reason why we should not replace it. This is intuitively plausible with respect to inanimate objects like coffee machines. 3 4

Ibid. Ibid., B 77 (English: 53).

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Although they are not in themselves replaceable, there is also nothing about them that puts us under an obligation not to replace them. In that respect, however, animals are not mere things. They are different. They do have a good, and this good is their good, not anyone else’s. If animals could talk they would certainly disagree with both Kant and the Stoics. They do not view themselves as replaceable. They are primarily oriented towards their own survival and to the attainment and defence of their own individual good. They care for what happens to them. There is nothing in the way animals behave or in the way their bodies are shaped and organized that suggests that the purpose of their existence was anything but their own good. It certainly is not our good. And they would also regard themselves and their existence as ends in themselves. They may in fact be treated as means but they exist as ends in themselves. Regarding them merely as means, as things that can be used and replaced at will, is therefore not adequate to what they are. It is a practical denial of their independent existence and their biological integrity as a realization of their own good. As the British philosopher William Wollaston pointed out, a ‘true proposition may be denied, or things may be denied to be what they are, by deeds, as well as by express words or another proposition’.5 Since our actions are expressive of the beliefs we have, we can declare that things are not as they are simply by acting in a certain way. If I, for instance, break a promise, I act as if such a promise has never been made and, by acting that way, declare (wrongly) that it has not been made. If I steal from somebody I treat someone else’s property as my own and thereby declare that it is mine, while in fact it is not. Wollaston believed that this fact explained the difference between good and evil or morally right and wrong actions. He gives the following illustration: To talk to a post, or otherwise treat it as if it was a man, would surely be reckoned an absurdity, if not distraction. Why? because this is to treat it as being what it is not. And why should not the converse be reckoned as bad; that is, to treat a man as a post; as if he had no sense, and felt no injuries, which he doth feel; as if to him pain and sorrow were not pain; happiness not happiness. This is what the cruel and unjust do.6

However, it is not quite clear why it should be morally more wrong to treat a human being like a post than to treat a post like a human being, or more wrong to treat an animal as if it were a mere thing than to treat a mere thing as if it were an animal or a human person. Whereas the former seems to be morally wrong the latter just seems crazy. Somebody who is treating a post as if it were alive and sentient is out of their right mind, but their actions do not seem morally reprehensible. Wollaston realized that it would not be plausible to consider all actions that are expressive of a false proposition as equally morally wrong, and tried to account for the different degrees of wrongness by distinguishing between actions with respect to the ‘importance’ of their consequences. Some actions are more wrong than others because certain things matter more than others. When, for instance, the happiness, welfare or life of a creature is at stake, denying their being what they are is more important than 5 6

William Wollaston, The Nature of Religion Delineated, 6. Ibid., 20.

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if their happiness, welfare and life were not affected. Now, it may seem that by acknowledging that the degree in which an act is morally wrong depends on its consequences, Wollaston seriously undermines his claim that acts are morally wrong because they somehow deny the truth. However, Wollaston could defend his view by arguing that if an action causes suffering but does not deny the truth then it is not morally wrong despite the suffering it causes. For instance – as both Plato and Kant have argued – punishing someone for their crimes is not only justified (and perhaps advisable for the good of society) but also something that is literally owed to them. By being punished they are acknowledged as morally responsible beings, as autonomous agents (in Kantian terms) and thus as beings that possess intrinsic value and dignity. Did one refrain from punishing them one would in effect deny them their humanity, that is, deny them to be what they in fact are. Hence, since they are treated as morally responsible human beings, no moral wrong is being committed even though suffering may be inflicted on them. It would appear then that even though a practical denial of the truth may not be sufficient to declare an act to be (seriously) morally wrong it may still be a necessary condition of moral wrongness. Reification Generally, our practices influence and change the way we look at the objects involved in them. Conversely, the way we look at things determines the role we assign to them in our practices. Biotechnology is a human practice that has a tendency to transform living beings into scientific objects and into mere things. I call this process of transformation ‘reification’. The term ‘reification’ is often used when abstract concepts are being treated as if they represented concrete things which can act and be acted upon. Reification in this sense is a fallacy, very similar in kind to the fallacy that Alfred North Whitehead called the ‘fallacy of misplaced concreteness’.7 To give an example, ‘pleasure’ or ‘happiness’ tend to be reified in traditional utilitarian thinking when they are disconnected from the individual beings that are happy and feel pleasure, and treated as if they had an existence of their own so that they can meaningfully be quantified, added and subtracted. The term ‘life’ is also a good candidate for this kind of reification. Life gets reified when, for instance, in the eyes of those who think of themselves as pro-life activists, life acquires the status of an entity which has a value independent of those whose life it is. The status of being alive, which in fact qualifies a substance, is regarded and treated as if it were itself a substance: life as such. However, this kind of reification is not what I wish to talk about here, at least not primarily. When I speak about the ‘reification of life’ I want the term ‘reification’ to be understood in the old Marxist sense of treating a subject as if it were a mere thing. The German word is ‘Verdinglichung’, which literally means ‘turning (something that is not a thing) into a thing’. What the term addresses is the practical tendency to make a commodity (that is, something that has a price but no intrinsic value) of an

7 Alfred North Whitehead, Science in the Modern World (Cambridge, 1926). Whitehead defines this fallacy (p. 72) as the ‘error of mistaking the abstract for the concrete.’

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entity by disregarding all aspects of it other than those that can be utilized. Following the Kantian lead, this tendency is regarded particularly offensive when it is exhibited towards human beings, because humans should never be treated only as means but always as ends. But if animals, as pointed out above, are also ends in themselves in the sense that they aim at the fulfilment of their own being and do not primarily serve any other ends than their own by holding on to their lives and their particular kind of existence, then we may just as well adopt the Kantian imperative and conclude that animals, too, should never be treated merely as means but always at the same time as ends. The concept of reification originates in Marx’s critique of Capitalist society and was elaborated by Georg Lukacs.8 Only recently it was given a book-length treatment by Axel Honneth,9 who interpreted reification in a much wider context as an expression of ‘Anerkennungsvergessenheit’, which literally means forgetfulness of recognition. Honneth cites Adorno and Horkheimer who once remarked that all reification is a forgetting. What is forgotten is that the other is a subject just like oneself or, in more general terms, that the world outside does not exist exclusively for our convenience. This forgetting is expressed in a certain lack of emotional involvement or indifference – ‘Teilnahmslosigkeit’. Reification is the effect of habitually adopting the perspective of a distant, neutral observer, a perspective that makes all objects appear as mere things. A certain primary relatedness to the world is lost. The adoption of this neutral perspective is generally supposed to be a precondition of good science. Thus reification is required in order to conduct a scientific inquiry. In H.G. Wells’s novel The Island of Dr Moreau we find this idea perfectly expressed by Dr Moreau himself when he remarks to his involuntary guest Prendick: Pain! Pain and pleasure – they are for us, only so long as we wriggle in the dust … You see, I went on with this research just the way it led me. That is the only way I ever heard of research going. I asked a question, devised some method of getting an answer, and got – a fresh question. You cannot imagine what this means to an investigator, what an intellectual passion grows upon him. You cannot imagine the strange and colourless delight of these intellectual desires. The thing before you is no longer an animal, a fellowcreature, but a problem.10

This particular way of looking at animals is the result of what Michael Lynch called the ‘transformation of the animal body into a scientific object’.11 Having observed the behaviour and language of neuroscientists performing electron microscopic studies of regenerative processes in the brain of mammals, Lynch described the tension between mutually exclusive representations of laboratory rats that on the one hand were initially perceived and throughout the experiments implicitly assumed 8 Georg Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness (1925). 9 Axel Honneth, Verdinglichung (Frankfurt/M., 2005). 10 H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau (London, 1921), p. 93. 11 Michael Lynch, ‘Sacrifice and the Transformation of the Animal Body into a Scientific Object: Laboratory Culture and Ritual Practice in the Neurosciences’, Social Studies of Science, 18/2 (1988): 265–89.

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to be naturalistic creatures, but were on the other hand spoken of and eventually treated as analytic products of research. The ‘naturalistic animal’ is the animal of our ordinary perception and interaction. Its presence is necessary but remains systematically unacknowledged in the research products. ‘The “analytic animal” therefore becomes the real animal in a scientific system of knowledge, while tacitly depending upon the naturalistic animal for its practical foundation.’12 There is no indication in the way those experiments were conducted and the way the results were expressed that the entities being used were actually living beings. Every aspect that is supposedly irrelevant to the purpose of the experiment is systematically ignored. By gradually transforming the naturalistic animal – the living, conscious and sentient creature – into an analytic entity and identifying the former with the latter, modern science exemplifies forgetfulness. The knowledge is actually there but it is systematically suppressed and never openly acknowledged, although implicit in the way researchers prepare the animals to yield the results they wish to attain: ‘Animals are treated as holistic, living, reactive subjects to be soothed, cajoled, tricked, and gently led through procedures that transform them into analytic subjects.’13 In the articles that were published after the experiments, animals were no longer present as living beings but as cases ‘which demonstrated an abstract regenerative process in a generalized brain’.14 Animal models Various companies offer so called research models for purchase. Sinclair, for instance, offers ‘miniature swine as Models for Human Diabetes’. On their website it is first stated what a serious problem the disease poses, and that for the lack of suitable large animal models diabetes research has not sufficiently developed. Then, the product is presented: Miniature swine have many characteristics similar to humans that make them a suitable species to model human diseases. Miniature swine are omnivores, easy to handle, raise few ethical considerations, offer similar size to adult humans, have several organ systems very similar to humans in term of anatomy, physiology and metabolism, and test compounds can be administered through all routes of delivery, including trans-cutaneous delivery systems (patches). … Sinclair offers a new induced model of type 2 diabetes with dyslipidemia in miniature swine. The dyslipidemia observed is very similar to the one of diabetic humans and early atherosclerosis lesions have also been detected. The similarities of the lipid metabolism, vascular anatomy, capacity and collateral circulation of the coronary arteries between swine and humans make this animal model even more attractive.15

What is being offered here is not a conscious living being that cares for its own existence and strives to attain and preserve its own kind of good, but a model. A model 12 13 14 15

Ibid., p. 267. Ibid., p. 281. Ibid., p. 266. .

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is a kind of representation. It stands for something else. Normally it is a simplified version of a complex process or state which can be used to facilitate understanding of or increase knowledge about that process or state. If we want to know how something works or what effects certain actions have on it, and we cannot obtain the real thing, or do not, for one reason or another, want to use it, a model is needed that is likely to provide the same information. A model may even be better suited for the purpose of gaining information because it can be constructed in such a way that many irrelevant aspects of what it is meant to represent are eliminated. However, an animal that is being used as a model for a human disease is not in itself a simplified version of that disease. It is, even when it is used as a model, still a living being that cares for itself and has its own particular good. So instead of being eliminated, all those details that are deemed irrelevant for the purpose of gaining a certain kind of information are simply ignored – as much as this is possible. The properties that are explicitly acknowledged and highlighted are not properties of what Lynch called the naturalistic animal but either properties of the analytic animal or properties that facilitate their being turned into analytic animals: being omnivores they can be fed almost anything, so feeding them will not be a problem. They are easy to handle, so no inconveniencies and surprises that might force their user to acknowledge their naturalistic side are to be expected. Their organ systems, metabolism and anatomy are similar to those of humans. The disease affects their bodies in the same way it affects the bodies of humans. An animal model is perceived and used as a representation. Although a representation needs to have no similarity with what it represents (as a thing can be similar to another without representing it),16 in the case of animal models a certain similarity is necessary. The similarity is needed in order to achieve the research goal: this is the primary reason for using it as a model. On the other hand, the model also needs to be different, for if there were no differences between the representation and what it represents, one could just as well use the real thing. In this case the real thing would be a human being suffering from diabetes. Yet experimenting on humans is thought to be unethical. In contrast, swine allegedly ‘raise few ethical considerations’, so the reason for not using human beings does not apply to animals. Ethical concerns appear to weigh less or not to exist at all in the case of animals, and this justifies their being used as a model. In fact, however, it is the way they are represented that allows us to lower their moral status to a negligible degree. In every act of representation there is an object (that which is represented) and a mode of representation (that as which the object is represented). Every representation involves a certain characterization of an object. In the case of animal models, the animal represents a human as the bearer of a certain disease. It is meant to exemplify this human disease. Being meant to exemplify, the animal model is, qua model, a reduction. Similarity is important only in a certain respect, whereas in other respects the dissimilarity is equally important, namely dissimilarity in respect to everything that might be considered ethically relevant, such as life, sentience, conscience, an inner perspective, a subjective existence. These properties are not positively absent 16 For the concept of representation cf. Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art (Indianapolis, IN, 1976).

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in animal models but they are systematically overlooked. Hence the dissimilarity is not intrinsic to the object but a mental, linguistic and social construction. It is a result of what Honneth calls forgetfulness (of a prior recognition). Everything that is not relevant to the purpose (and that may possibly create a meaningful relationship between the animal and its user) is pushed into the background, is suppressed. The animal is regarded and, more important, subsequently treated as a mere model or, in more general terms, a tool. Its intrinsic value is concealed and its instrumental value emphasized. At the same time the instrumentalization is hidden as an instrumentalization. The fact that the animal only becomes a model by virtue of the way humans relate to it (conceptualize and treat it) is forgotten, and what is essentially the result of an interest-guided contraction of one’s visual and mental focus is transformed into an ontological fact. Awareness that one is using an animal as a model is lost and replaced by the belief that one is using an animal model. The process of reification passes through several stages. The starting point is an individual living, conscious and sentient animal. This is initially recognized but eventually forgotten (Honneth’s Anerkennungsvergessenheit). A selective use of language is then employed to deflect attention from those properties that tend to be regarded as giving rise to intrinsic value and thus moral status, and simultaneously to confine attention to properties that are most likely to be instrumentally valued. The next and most important step is the transformation of an instrumental perspective into an ontological fact: the animal now appears not only to be used as a model but to be a model, thereby retroactively justifying its being used as a model. As a result, the animal appears to be an indefinitely usable thing that is completely at our disposal. Incidentally, this crucial transformation of an instrumental perspective into an ontological fact can be seen as an instance of reification in the first sense of the word mentioned briefly at the beginning of this chapter. It is an instance of treating an abstract concept as if it represented a concrete thing. Not only the animal is reified (by being conceptualized and treated as a mere thing), but also the term ‘model’ is being reified by using it as if it represented the whole reality of the object it refers to, instead of a certain use this object can be subjected to. Language helps to sustain this crucial deception. The way we speak about a thing not only reflects but also shapes our perception of it and facilitates the process of reification. As it is important in warfare to verbally dehumanize the enemy and all potential victims of one’s own aggression in order to dissolve possible moral scruples and instinctive inhibitions towards killing fellow human beings,17 animals are being verbally transformed in order to deflect attention from the fact that they are individual living creatures that care for their lives and have a good of their own just as we do. What needs to be forgotten is that animals are not made for our convenience, do not exist as means to our ends, but are ends in themselves. Only natural beings can be ends in themselves. Pure artefacts, on the other hand, are never ends in themselves because they are made for a certain purpose. By employing a certain terminology, natural beings are for all practical purposes turned into artefacts. ‘To speak of organisms as machines legitimizes our treatment of them as artefacts, as 17 Cf. Michael Hauskeller, Versuch üeber die Grundlagen der Moral (Munich, 2001), pp. 165–89.

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completely knowable and transparent objects and of their lives as having no ethical significance.’18 Super-reification through genetic modification A further step in the reification of living creatures is reached when animals are genetically manipulated in such a way that those features that, for some reason or other, hamper our use of them are eliminated and other features that are conducive to their intended use are accentuated or added. Quite rightly Lynch remarked, ‘the genetic design and domestication of laboratory animals anticipates their use as analytic subjects.’19 Animals are not only spoken of as tools and treated as tools, they are quite literally being created as tools. Instead of putting up with the naturalistic animal and trying to ignore it as best as we can, gene technology allows us (or promises to allow us) to create animals that are less and less naturalistic and more and more analytical – increasingly perfect research tools. Mice, for instance, have been used for almost a century to model human diseases because they are cheap, easy to hold, and, most important, develop conditions similar to those of humans such as cardiovascular disease, cancer or diabetes. However, by specific gene targeting (homologous recombination in embryonic stem cells) genes can now be inserted, deleted, modified or substituted so that other human diseases can be modelled that do not normally strike mice, such as cystic fibrosis or Alzheimer’s. Knockout mice, knockin mice, and transgenic mice can be specifically designed according to the needs of the customer. They are custom-made by various companies that offer their services to the requiring researcher: tell us what you want and we will get it for you. The American National Institutes of Health (NIH) advertise Knockout mice as a resource that ‘will serve to further the value of the mouse as a powerful and important tool in the study of human health and disease’.20 Ozgene, a company specializing in the fabrication and marketing of genetically modified mice and rats, advertise their products as ‘the most sophisticated and valuable tools in functional genomics and drug target validation’.21 The instrumental value of the mouse as a research tool is thus not only emphasized but it is effectively raised. Although its intrinsic value is thereby not diminished, but in fact remains the same, it becomes even harder to recognize this and not to forget it. Genetically modified mice are still living, ‘naturalistic’ creatures, but they have also become artefacts into whose very being a purpose has been introduced that is not their own. This external purpose is the sole reason for their existence. It is not that they owe their existence to the fact that we have discovered how to use them for our purposes, but rather that they owe their very nature to what we are planning to do with them. Their utility is the reason not only for that they are but also for what 18 Tracy Warkentin, ‘Dis/integrating Animals: Ethical Dimensions of the Genetic Engineering of Animals for Human Consumption’, AI & Society, 20 (2006): 82–102, p. 100. 19 Lynch, ‘Sacrifice and the Transformation of the Animal Body into a Scientific Object’, p. 274. 20 . 21 .

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they are. They already enter the world as human inventions and consequently are increasingly regarded as the intellectual property of their inventors, as products for which it is thought proper to claim and award a patent. The first patent on an animal was issued in 1988 for a mouse genetically engineered to susceptibility for breast cancer, the so called Harvard oncomouse. Since then more than 500 patents on animals have been issued, including cats, dogs and primates. The patent was awarded despite the fact that US law prohibited that naturally occurring organisms be patented. But of course it was argued that the oncomouse was not a naturally occurring organism. It was not a product of nature but a human product. Although genetically modified animals may not be entirely artificial, they are no longer entirely natural either: they are something like living artefacts or, to use the very fitting term that was introduced into the debate by Nicole Karafyllis, ‘biofacts’.22 But does not the successful creation of such biofacts mean that we have finally managed to bring animals into existence that actually do exist as means (to our ends)? We could then concede that Kant was wrong to claim that only human beings exist as ends in themselves and accept that most animals do too, and may still want to hold that animals that are specifically designed for a certain purpose clearly do not exist as ends in themselves but truly as means. They are not only used as instruments, they are instruments. And if they do exist as means, if they are instruments, then it seems it can hardly be inadequate to treat them as such. We would, after all, only use them the way they are meant to be used and treat them exactly as what they are. Our actions would be truthful, would be adequate to their nature and therefore morally justified. However, even a biofact is still a living creature that pursues its own ends despite the fact that it has been created to serve our ends. It is not in itself meant to be used in any way, that is, it does not exist as a tool, and its being designed as a tool does not provide sufficient moral justification for its exploitation. The fact that our children owe their existence to us does not give us the right to treat them as our property. And if we had conceived them for a certain purpose (for example to take over the family business or to donate some of their bone marrow to a sibling suffering from leukaemia) we would still be morally obliged to let them live their own lives and pursue their own ends, which might turn out to be very different from what we intended. Even if we had used gene technology to render them more suitable for our purposes, that would not entitle us to treat them as our property. The same holds for animals. We may design them at our convenience, but that does not give us the right to treat them any way we please. It would if animals were things, but living beings cannot be turned into things. The process of reification is never complete and remains largely conceptual and perceptual. Biotechnology just gives us the means to consolidate our blindness towards the independent reality of an animal’s existence.

22 Nicole Karafyllis, Biologisch, natüerlich, nachhaltig. Philosophische Aspekte des Naturzugangs im 21. Jahrhundert (Tübingen and Basel, 2001).

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Instrumentalization and integrity Alan Holland once remarked that if it could only be shown that the genetic modification of animals is incompatible with showing respect to them, then this would the best case against it.23 Now, as we have seen, the genetic modification of animals is an attempt to turn a living organism into an instrument that is perfectly adapted to its intended use. The process of reification that has started as a specific way of looking at, thinking and talking about, and treating a living organism, is pushed to its limits by actually re-modelling the organism so that its instrumental value is raised. Thus the animal’s instrumental value becomes so prominent in our perception of it that its intrinsic value is effectively buried underneath it. Does this constitute a violation of the animal’s integrity? I said earlier that biological integrity consists in the ability to live according to one’s own natural ends or teloi. Instrumentalization, or what I have called reification, is a process or an act that aims at either ignoring or eliminating these ends and replacing them with artificial, human-made ends. If those human-made ends are achieved at the expense of the animal’s natural ends, then clearly its biological integrity is impaired. However, it is at least theoretically possible (although not very likely) that an animal is viewed and used as a tool without this having any effect on its ability to live according to its own natural ends. In other words, it could be nothing but a tool for us and not be any worse for it. Would it then still be a violation of its integrity and in so far morally wrong? Or is reification morally wrong only because of what we are likely to do to the animal as a result, but not wrong in itself, as a specific human attitude towards animals, a certain way of thinking about and looking at them? It is difficult to separate an attitude from its practical application and expression. And indeed, if the conceptual and perceptual transformation of a living animal into a resource, an instrument, or a mere thing, had no effect whatsoever on the way we treat animals, Tom Regan would hardly have regarded it as ‘the fundamental wrong’. So perhaps we should concede that the instrumental attitude towards animals is not in itself a violation of their integrity. However, it seems that the respect we owe them (due to their being living creatures with a good of their own, and their leading lives that we can recognize as intrinsically valuable) covers more than just our actions. It not only demands that we do not restrict their ability to pursue their natural ends but also that we acknowledge their true nature (according to which they are not things) in our thinking. The Kantian imperative that we never treat each other merely as a means but always at the same time as an end does not primarily command a certain kind of behaviour towards others but first of all a certain kind of mental attitude. In our daily lives we often treat others as means to our ends. For instance, when we go to a shop and buy a newspaper the shopkeeper is being used by us as a means to acquire what we want. There is nothing wrong with that, as long as we do not forget that 23 Alan Holland, ‘The Biotic Community: A Philosophical Critique of Genetic Engineering’, in Peter Wheale and Ruth McNally (eds), The Bio-Revolution: Cornucopia or Pandora’s Box (London, 1990), pp. 166–74, p. 170.

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the shopkeeper is also a human being who does not exist for our convenience and who deserves our respect. This respect is something we expect from others even when it makes little difference to what actually happens. The shopkeeper would be deeply offended if he learned that we regarded him as a mere instrument without any intrinsic value whatsoever. And he would be offended even if we treated him no different. The point is that we do not want to be ‘used’ even when we are used, that is, we expect that others do not think of us merely as a means but always also as an end. When we find out that we have in fact been treated merely as a means, we are not only disappointed but morally outraged. We feel it is morally wrong to ‘use’ someone like this, to treat people as if they were tools. We are not primarily concerned about the possible or actual effects of being used but about the fact itself. Neither do we think that the wrong consists in our feeling used. Rather, we object very strongly to our being used. Even if we never learned about it we would still not want it to happen. Even if nothing in the actual course of events had been different it would still make a difference to us. We feel that by being regarded merely as an instrument, our individual reality is being denied. We are living, conscious beings that exist for their own sake and not for anyone else’s, and we want this fact to be acknowledged and our identity as not-things to be respected. Yet animals, too, are living, conscious beings that exist for their own sake, and although they cannot demand respect for it, they deserve it just as much as any human does.

Chapter Ten

Genetic Essentialism Genetic integrity The term ‘genetic integrity’ is commonly used in agriculture, conservation biology and ecology when the genetic composition of an organism, a community of organisms or even a whole ecosystem is in danger of being changed by the introduction of new genetic material – either by means of genetic engineering or, more naturally, by the presence of organisms with different genetic stock and the resulting transmission of foreign genes into the native gene pool. The use of the term ‘integrity’ in this context suggests a normative perspective on the perceived or predicted change. The change is not neutral but considered to be a change for the worse. Accordingly, the introduction of new genetic material into a given population is dubbed an ‘invasion’, and after such an invasion has taken place the genomes, formerly intact, are said to be ‘polluted’ or ‘contaminated’. It is clear that these terms cannot be taken literally. They are metaphors that emphasize the normative viewpoint. Apparently there is an angle from which it appears desirable that the genetic composition stays as it is. Because of the complex nature of both ecosystems and individual organisms, the introduction of new genes is likely to have unpredictable and possibly undesirable (or undesired) effects. An ecosystem can collapse (that is, turn into something new) and an organism can develop properties that are detrimental to its health and survival. However, the term ‘genetic integrity’ is most commonly used in the context of conservation efforts where the goal is to protect the ‘genetic resources’ that rare wild species or domestic breeds provide. In these cases, hybridization is to be prevented in order to ensure genetic diversity and preserve genetic material that might turn out to be useful for livestock improvement. The explicit goal is to protect potentially economically important genetic traits.1 Thus the genetic integrity of living organisms that is commonly discussed in the scientific literature is related not to the good of these organisms but instead to their utility. The living organism whose genetic integrity is sought to be preserved is primarily or exclusively viewed as a ‘gene bank’.2 When the term ‘genetic integrity’ is used in this way what it refers to is not an instance of what I have called auto-integrity. Rather, genetic integrity has to be understood as hetero-integrity since the reference point that marks a certain genetic composition as ideal is clearly external. If we happen to share the economic 1 See for instance I. Lehr Brisbin, ‘Conservation of the Wild Ancestors of Domestic Animals’, Conservation Biology, 9/5 (1995): 1327–8. 2 P.A. Jewell, ‘Rare Breeds of Domestic Livestock as a Gene Bank’, Ark, 12 (1985): 158–68.

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perspective we have a good reason for preserving that particular composition and to think of a change as a violation of integrity. However, if we do not, then there is no genetic integrity that can be violated and consequently the reason for preservation disappears. However, genetic integrity can also be understood as a form of auto-integrity, as indeed it often is when ethicists argue about how animals ought to be treated and whether it is morally permissible to manipulate an organism’s genome. When, for instance, Jan Vorstenbosch declares that in biotechnology genetic integrity is central, defining genetic integrity as ‘the genome being left intact’,3 his use of the term is not grounded in an economic but in a moral perspective that is related to an organism’s own good. But what is so special about an animal’s genome and how exactly is it related to its good? Why should it be wrong to change it? One possible reason is that, when the genome is changed by genetic engineering, the usual purpose is to create an organism that has certain features that are different from the features it would have had if the genome had been left unchanged. The manipulation of the organism’s genome is thus only the means by which one hopes to achieve a particular change in the organism’s phenotype. These changes in the organism’s phenotype, however, are often known to be detrimental to its health and welfare, and if they are, we may, for this reason, consider it wrong to manipulate the genome in order to achieve those changes. We may also raise the more general objection that, since we still have only a very rough idea of how genes work, we can never be sure that by changing an organism’s genome we will not induce changes that we have not planned and which again diminish the animal’s subjective well-being. Furthermore, we may feel that an organism’s subjective well-being is not all that needs to be considered, that we should also take into account its telos and the biological integrity that derives from it: the way its various parts fit and belong together, mutually requesting and complementing each other, in order to fulfil certain functions which are expressive of the organism’s very own being and the good that defines its existence. Again, selective genetic engineering can disturb this balance and diminish an organism’s objective good, thereby violating its integrity. It is a question of our personal moral outlook whether we want to give weight to these considerations or not, but in any case it seems that none of them is directly related to an organism’s genome. This is meant to say that the moral objection is in each of these cases based not on the genetic manipulation itself but on its intended or unintended effects on the organism as a whole. The violation that is morally relevant here seems to be the violation of the living organism’s integrity. It is not a violation of the genome and its integrity. Given that ‘integrity’ is a normative concept, there is in fact no genetic integrity if we fail to make out a reason why a genetic composition that has not been changed by human intervention is per se better than one that has been changed, that is, better even if the effects of that intervention neither impair the organism’s subjective wellbeing nor its biological integrity. Again we have to ask what is so special about an organism’s genome that it should be treated as inviolable.

3 Jan Vorstenbosch, ‘The Concept of Integrity: Its Significance for the Ethical Discussion on Biotechnology and Animals’, Livestock Production Sciences, 36 (1993): 109–12.

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I suspect that the tendency to give the genome an importance that justifies the postulation of a morally relevant genetic integrity that exists independently of the biological integrity of the organism as a whole, is a reflection of what Dorothy Nelkin and Susan Lindee have dubbed ‘genetic essentialism’.4 As genetic essentialists we tend to locate the identity of an organism in its genome. DNA is thought to be the locus of the true self and thus a ‘secular equivalent of the Christian soul’.5 Being such an equivalent, the genome gains an enormous moral relevance so that manipulating DNA ‘becomes a sacrilege, a violation of sacred ground’.6 But is it really the genome that makes an organism what it is, so that we can say that this is where its identity lies?7 What about ourselves, as human beings? Would we really want to accept the claim that what human beings are is defined by their genetic make-up, that our very own essence, the ‘soul’ of humanity, as it were, is contained in our DNA? I shall now examine this claim and see whether it is convincing. Should it turn out that it is not, it becomes difficult to sustain the moral claim that each organism has a genetic (auto-)integrity that we ought to respect for its own sake. Human-animal chimeras and hybrids A human-animal chimera is a living organism some of whose cells contain human DNA and some non-human DNA. If, for instance, human neuronal stem cells are injected into the brains of developing mice, rats or monkeys – as has been done in order to create animal models for neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s Disease – the resulting animals contain both human and non-human cells and are thus chimeras. The genetic material contained in each single cell, however, is not mixed. In contrast, an animal-human hybrid is an organism all of whose cells contain the same DNA whose origin is partly human and partly nonhuman. An animal-human hybrid can be created by fertilizing a human oocyte with non-human sperm or the other way round, or by somatic cell nuclear transfer, that is, by removing the nucleus from a non-human oocyte and replacing it with the nucleus of a human cell or the other way round. In this way human skin cells can be fused with rabbit, frog or cow eggs. The increasingly common artificial creation of human-animal chimeras and hybrids is sometimes objected to on the grounds that such organisms are partly human. Due to their being partly human their moral status is believed to be intolerably ambiguous. The assumption being made here is that our genes and cells are essential to what we are, as humans. According to the Nobel Prize winner James Watson, DNA is ‘what makes us human’.8 But is this assumption justified? I will argue that 4 Dorothy Nelkin and Susan Lindee, The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon (New York, 1995). 5 Ibid., p. 2. 6 Ibid., p. 41. 7 Cf. Christine Hauskeller, ‘Genes, Genomes, and Identity: Projections on Matter’, New Genetics and Society, 23/3 (2004): 285–99. 8 Quoted in Nelkin and Lindee, The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon, p. 40. For a similar view see John Noonan, ‘An Almost Absolute Value in History’, in Lewis M.

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being human, for us, has nothing to do with our genomes and that, although there may be many good reasons to oppose the production of chimeras and hybrids, their alleged partial humanity is not one of them. During a public debate on the morality of creating human-animal-chimeras, a Dutch ethicist vehemently defended the following argument: any mixture of human and animal materials, she said, is morally wrong and ought to be prohibited by law because it results in the creation of living organisms which are partly human, and partly non-human. When, for instance, we introduce human genetic material into animals, part of our essence – of that which makes us human – is being transferred to them. Hence, the distinction between humans and non-humans is becoming blurred, with serious consequences. We would then have to ask ourselves whether (or when, after the introduction of how many human genes or cells with human DNA) such human-animal mixtures were human enough to deserve that human dignity and human rights be granted to them. And since there is no clear-cut answer to that question, we would not know how to determine their moral status and consequently would end up in moral confusion. This argument is in line with the concerns only recently raised by the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics: ‘if an entity is accepted as having been created by human and non-human beings, then its whole identity and its entitlement to human rights and dignity could be challenged.’9 A similar claim has been made by Jason Roberts and Francoise Baylis: ‘All things considered, the engineering of creatures that are part human and part nonhuman animal is objectionable because the existence of such beings would introduce inexorable moral confusion in our existing relationships with nonhuman animals and in our future relationships with part-human hybrids and chimeras.’ 10 Although I do not think this is a very good argument, I do not wish to question the soundness of the argument as such. Rather, I want to discuss some assumptions that are being made here which I find both quite common and worth questioning. For instance, is it really true that human-animal mixtures are ‘partly human’? At least we should have to clarify, if it is true, in what sense it is true. Is it true in the sense that those chimeras share (part of) the essence of what we are, as humans? What is our essence anyway, and can it truly be said to consist in or be incorporated in our genome? Real and nominal essences John Locke, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, famously distinguished two meanings of the term ‘essence’.11 First, there is what may be called the real essence Shwartz, Arguing about Abortion (Belmont, CA, 1993), p. 59. 9 Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, Embryonic, Fetal and Post-natal AnimalHuman Mixtures: An Ethical Discussion, Human Reproduction and Genetic Ethics, 12/2 (2006): 35–60. 10 Jason S. Roberts and Francoise Baylis, ‘Crossing Species Boundaries’, The American Journal of Bioethics, 3/3 (2003): 1–13. 11 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The Works of John Locke. A New Edition, Corrected. In Ten Volumes, vol. II (London, 1823), book 3, ch. 3, § 15.

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of things, which is supposed to be ‘the very being of anything, whereby it is what it is. And thus the real internal, but generally (in substances) unknown constitution of things, whereon their discoverable qualities depend … .’ Second, there is what may be called the nominal essence which is related to the ‘artificial constitution of genus and species’, being identical with abstract ideas to which we attach general names in order to enable ourselves ‘to consider things, and discourse of them as it were in bundles, for the easier and readier improvement and communication of our knowledge’. Locke presumed that the second, nominal, meaning is much more common, and indeed, there is a good reason for this. When we refer to human beings, for instance, we do not usually refer to some hidden property in virtue of which (we think) humans are what they are. When we call someone a human being we do not mean that he or she is the bearer of such an intrinsic property. Rather, we mean that he or she looks like a human being, behaves like a human being and thinks and feels like a human being (or as we think a human being should look, behave, and think and feel). We might also mean that he or she has been born by a human being. However, if we imagine that, per impossibile, a female dog had given birth to a baby that looked and developed like a normal human baby, we would hardly hesitate to call it human (and we would most certainly not call it a dog). In contrast, imagine that some creature looked exactly like a dog but behaved like a human being (as far as this is possible for a being with the body of a dog) and even thought and felt like a human (leaving aside the question of how we should know that it did). Here it seems to me that we would not call it human unless we thought it had somehow, magically, been changed from a proper human appearance into its present dog-like form. Rather, we would say that it was a very unusual dog, or else, some hitherto unknown creature which combines a dog-like appearance with a mind similar to that of humans while being neither human nor dog. Likewise, if we had behavioural evidence that someone, although looking like a human being, did not at all feel and think like one (but, say, like an alien life-form having snatched the body of a human12), we would probably not want to call it human either. In other words, there is a cluster of properties13 that make up our idea of what it is to be human, and some are more important than others. Also, the relative importance might change depending on context. This complex and possibly not entirely invariable idea is, according to Locke, the essence of being human: … to be a man, or of the species man, and have the essence of a man is, the same thing. Now since nothing can be a man, or have a right to the name man, but what has a conformity to the abstract idea the name man stands for; nor any thing be a man, or have a right to the 12 Interestingly, it is entirely the lack of typical human emotions like anxiety, love, fear, anger or humour that identifies the aliens in Don Siegel’s 1956 film The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. 13 See R. Boyd, ‘Homeostasis, Species, and Higher Taxa’, in R.A. Wilson (ed.), Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 141–85; Paul Griffiths, ‘Squaring the Circle: Natural Kinds with Historical Essences’, in Wilson, Species, pp. 209–28; R.A. Wilson, ‘Realism, Essence, and Kind: Resuscitating Species Essentialism?’, in Wilson, Species, pp. 187–207.

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species, but what has the essence of that species; it follows that the abstract idea for which the name stands, and the essence of the species, is one and the same.14

Although Locke conceded that there ‘must be some real constitution on which any collection of simple ideas co-existing must depend’,15 he did not have much hope that this real constitution could ever be detected. Moreover, he did not think that, should it be detected, it would be of much use for us when it comes to classifying the world around us. The reason for this is that, contrary to what Putnam and Kripke later claimed,16 for any particular thing, the kind of thing it is, does not depend on its real essence. It would be sheer luck (and hence highly improbable) if we found that the real essence of a particular kind of thing coincided, in extension, with its nominal essence. Also, if it did not thus coincide, this in itself would not necessarily be a reason for us to change our ideas about what it is to be that kind of thing. Let us take Putnam’s well-known example of water whose real essence is purported to be a certain chemical compound, namely H2O. Putnam claims that, if on some imaginary Twin Earth what we are used to call water had not the chemical composition H2O, but instead, say, XYZ, it would, even though being in every other respect exactly like our water, in fact not be water. It would only look like water, taste like water, smell like water, be wet like water, freeze to ice like water, and so on. Now, I do not see why we should not then call it water as well.17 In fact, it seems likely that we would call it water, even if we had been informed that its chemical composition is different from all the water we had ever come into contact with. It would, of course, be very strange indeed if there was only this one difference (without anything else being affected), but that would rather lead us to the conclusion that the chemical structure of a substance must be, contrary to what we would have expected, quite irrelevant to what this thing is.18 Dogs without bones This somewhat contradicts the claim, occasionally put forward by psychologists, that there is a certain tendency in us to regard what is inside an object as more essential to it than what is outside. A study carried out by Gelman and Wellman19 showed that an average of 72 per cent of small children answer in the negative when 14 Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, book 3, ch. 3, § 12. 15 Ibid., book 3, ch. 3, § 15. 16 See Hilary Putnam, Mind, Language, and Reality (Cambridge, MA, 1975); Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History (Cambridge, MA, 1981); Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, MA, 1972). For a detailed critique of Putnam’s and Kripke’s essentialism see John Dupré, The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science (Cambridge, MA and London, 1993), especially ch. 1. 17 See E. Zymach, ‘Putnam’s Theory on the Reference of Substance Terms’, The Journal of Philosophy, 73 (1976): 116–27. 18 See Dupré, The Disorder of Things, p. 25. 19 S.A. Gelman and H.M. Wellman, ‘Insides and Essences: Early Understandings of the Non-obvious’, in E. Margolis and S. Laurence (eds), Concepts: Core Reading (Cambridge, MA and London, 1999), pp. 613–37.

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being asked whether a dog from which the ‘insides’ (blood, bones and ‘stuff like that’) were removed would still be a dog. In contrast, only 35 per cent think (or say) that it would not be a dog anymore if its outsides were removed (that is, according to the explanation given to the children: the fur taken off). Gelman and Wellman interpret this result as follows: ‘identity was judged to change more when the insides were removed than when the outsides were removed.’ I do not think, though, that such a general statement is justified on the basis of what the children were asked. What has been established is merely that, by those children, (the) identity (of a dog) was judged to change more when its blood and bones were removed than when its fur were removed. But without any further information it is very hard to determine the conceptual implications of that. We would at least have to know why the children answered the way they did. What exactly did they imagine when they were asked to imagine a dog with no insides? A hollow dog? A dead dog? It would have been interesting and more telling to ask the children why they thought it was not a dog anymore (and why a smaller percentage of them thought it was still one). Because then it might have become clearer if their judgement really had something to do with the inside–outside distinction as such (as opposed to, in this particular case, where the linkage may have been only incidental). As the experiment stands, this is not clear at all. What if the children had been asked whether an animal that had the insides of a dog (that is, its bones, its blood, and so on) but the outsides of a cat (that is, it looked like a cat) would be a dog or a cat? My guess is that most of the children would have said that such an animal was a cat, and not a dog. And if they had been asked whether an animal which had the outsides of a dog but the insides of a cat would be a dog or a cat, they would probably have answered that it was a dog. If this guess is correct then Gelman and Wellman might, if they only had asked differently, just as well (and with equal justification) have concluded that identity was judged to change more when the outsides were removed than when the insides were removed. It is one thing to imagine a dog with no insides, and quite another to imagine a dog with different (undoggish) insides. Note also that we can imagine a dog with no insides (that is, a thing looking like a dog but not really being a dog, for the lack of insides), but we can not imagine a dog with no outsides at all (although one without fur, but that is obviously not the same). The expectation that the inside of a thing will be generally more essential to it than its outside finds little support in common sense. A dog, to us, is not a dog because of some of its internal features, but primarily because it looks like a dog and then because it barks and bites, runs and jumps and does all sorts of other doggish things. Of course, if it turned out that what we have come to know as dogs were really robots controlled from Mars,20 we might revise our judgement and say that those robots were not dogs and even, if no others existed, that there are in fact no dogs. We would have to deny their existence if our concept of dogs (their nominal essence, or what, to us, it means to be a dog) included their being animals, living organisms made of flesh. On the other hand, if our concept of dogs did not include their being animals, we might still call those robots dogs, or even if it did, just revise our concept so that robots were included. It is not really predictable what we actually would do (let alone possible to say what we should do) in such a 20 Putnam, Mind, Language, and Reality, pp. 139–52.

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case. Both options are equally possible,21 which again counts against the claim that we regard ‘insides’ generally as more ‘essential’ to a thing than outsides. Essentialism about genes Now what about the real essence of human beings? As indicated above, it seems that by now quite a few people have come to believe that the real essence of humans, as well as the real essences of other species, has finally been discovered. We are what we are (as every living being is what it is) by virtue of our DNA. This is the ‘inside’ which really matters. Since the genome is undoubtedly the internal constitution upon which our discoverable qualities depend (even though not everything may depend exclusively on it), we must also, following Locke’s definition, regard it as our real essence. However, even if we grant that all our discoverable qualities, that is, our typical human appearance, looks, behaviour and capacities, do indeed depend (to a large extent) on our genome (which surely is debatable), we are by no means compelled to agree that this is what makes us the kind of thing we are, that is, that makes us human. It seems to me that Locke’s definition is somewhat ambiguous in this respect and suffers from a confusion which we are still prone to fall into. On the one hand, real essence is said to be that whereby a thing is what it is (‘the very being’ of it), on the other, its internal constitution whereon its discoverable qualities depend. It is not entirely clear what ‘depending on’ means here. I take it that it means as much as ‘being caused by’. But it is not clear why what causes us to be what we are, should be, let alone necessarily be, the essence of what we are, the ‘very being’ of us. It may well be that we are prone to some ‘psychological essentialism’, in such a way that we ‘act as if things (e.g., objects) have essences or underlying natures that makes them the thing that they are’.22 But we do not usually suppose that this underlying nature (whatever it is) is in any way relevant to our understanding of what the thing in question is. There is a certain misplaced reductionism at work here similar to that which had lured Descartes into the blatant absurdity of declaring the essence of a piece of wax to be its extension and movability.23 We have to, as it were, ‘undress’ the wax, Descartes wrote, in order to get to its essence. We have to strip it of all its sensory qualities, its looks, smell, taste, sound and touch, only then will we understand what the wax really is. But the only thing that remains after the sensory qualities have been removed is what all material things have in common, namely extension and movability. Thus it turns out that the essence of the wax is identical with the essence of every other material thing, and this is, although Descartes does not seem to realize it, absurd, because what Descartes had promised to find is what makes the piece of wax a piece of wax (and not what makes it a material thing). Hence the essence of 21 See N. Braisby et al., ‘Essentialism, Word Use, and Concepts’, Cognition, 59 (1996): 247–74. 22 D.L. Medin, ‘Concepts and Conceptual Structure’, American Psychologist, 44 (1989): 1469–81. 23 Rene Descartes, Meditationes de Prima Philosophia (Paris, 1641), second meditation.

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the wax qua wax has disappeared somewhere on the way from the sensory to the non-sensory. Now the genome of a human being is without doubt different from, say, that of a chimp (although it is by no means clear just how different, or how similar, it is).24 So it seems that, by declaring our genome the essence of what we are (as humans) we would not fall into the Cartesian trap. However, the difference is not such that one could immediately perceive the one as a human genome and the other as a chimp’s genome, that is to say, the genome as such does not tell us anything about the traits that are connected to it. Just by sequencing the genome and without prior, empirically gained knowledge about what kind of genotype underlies what kind of phenotype, we could never know whose genome it was. We only know that the one is a human genome and the other the genome of a chimp because we took the one from what we regard as a human being, and the other from what we regard as a chimp. But whom we regard as a human and whom as a chimp is not determined by their genomes but (mostly) by their appearance and their behaviour. Hence, the distinction between humans and chimps, and generally the extension of the term ‘human’, cannot be made on the basis of the genome. It has to be known or assumed prior to sequencing. We need to have some fairly clear idea about who counts as a human (and that chimps do not count as humans) before we can try to find out what is special about their genomes. In other words, epistemologically speaking the nominal essence is prior to the real essence. Now let us say that we already knew who counted as human (but how can we know that without knowing the real essence of humankind?). We could now look for the real essence of what we are, for that which makes us human. But when we look at human genomes we find that there is not one human genome which we could call our essence. Instead, there are trillions (actual and possible) human genomes. Is there one of them which deserves to be called the human genome? Rather not. So why not just take all of those genomes, bundle them hypothetically and say that they are all instances of a certain kind of genome, which we could then call the human genome? This kind would then be the essence of what we are. But then we would have to ask what the essence of this kind was. We would have to ask what makes any of these genomes human, because otherwise we would not have gained much, having just exchanged one (undefined) kind for another. So we would have to compare the genomes. But of course we cannot compare all of them (not only for financial and technical reasons but also because we have little access to past genomes and no access to future genomes), so we need to restrict ourselves to a selection of them. But then, how do we select? How do we know which genomes are more typical, or, as it were, closer to the essence of humankind, than others without knowing beforehand what this essence is? And even if we could compare all the genomes of all those living beings we regard as human, how should we proceed in comparing them? Should we leave everything out that is not common to all of them? In this case there 24 See Jonathan Marks, ‘98% Chimpanzee and 35% Daffodil: The Human Genome in Evolutionary and Cultural Context’, in A.H. Goodman et al. (eds), Genetic Nature/Culture: Anthropology and Science beyond the Two-Culture Divide (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA and London, 2003), pp. 132–52.

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would not be much left that could even, in any meaningful way, be called a human genome, let alone the human genome. First of all, because it would be impossible to generate a real human being from a genome that has been stripped of everything not common to all human beings, and secondly, because many sequences in such a stripped genome would be common to many other living organisms as well. The alternative would be to leave everything out that is not essential, that is, that is there but that does not make us human. Obviously we would then, again, already have to know what is essential and what is not. There is simply no way to get rid of particularity here. So maybe each of us could say that my essence is my particular genome, and your essence is your particular genome, but not that our essence qua human beings is our genome, because we would not be able to say what our genome is.25 However, let us, for the sake of the argument, suppose that this problem could somehow be solved or that there is not really a problem here at all (though I do think there is). Thus we could meaningfully speak of the human genome as the essence of humankind. This genome would then be that whereby we are what we are. It would be our ‘very being’. Now what exactly is this supposed to mean? Presumably, that each of us is human in virtue of their genome. So if any of us was found not to have this particular kind of genome, they could not be counted as human. Now imagine we tested the genomes of several people and discovered, very much to our surprise, that the genome of one of them was very different from those of the others. In fact, it resembled suspiciously the kind of genome commonly found in turtles. If we really thought that the genome was essential to what we are, we would, in this case, be obliged to say that a person with a turtle genome clearly is no human being. However, I am quite certain that we (or at any rate, most of us) would not do that. Rather, we would say that sometimes, in rare occasions, humans can apparently have genomes similar to those of turtles. Of course it may well be that it is physically impossible that a human being has a genome resembling more the genome of a turtle than the genome of other human beings. But the point is that, even if it were possible, there would be absolutely no need for us to readjust our categories so that someone who looked like a human, behaved like a human, and felt and thought like a human nonetheless could now be denied the status of being human. As long as we fail to give a good reason why this particular kind of genome should be the only thing that could possibly cause26 us to be what we are, we are not justified in declaring it to be essential to what we are (let alone in calling it the essence of what we are). And in this case we cannot know if there is nothing else that could cause it. Why should not a different internal structure, a different material

25 However, since even if your genome and my genome were identical, I would still not be you and you not be me, then your genome cannot be what makes you you, and my genome cannot be what makes me me. Therefore our essences cannot be identified with our genomes. 26 Whether our genome really causes us, or merely allows us, to be what we are is in fact debatable. See Craig Holdrege, Genetics and the Manipulation of Life: The Forgotten Factor of Context (Hudson, NY, 1996), p. 150: ‘All the genes in the genome taken together in any combination will not evoke the human being, or any other organism.’

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have the same effect? If the internal structure (the genome) were different, would we then have to say that the essence is different? Consider a computer. A computer is a useful tool. As long as it does what computers are supposed to do we do not care what is inside it or how it is made. It is the function that counts. It is the same with a comparatively unsophisticated tool like a hammer. A hammer is not a hammer because of the materials it consists of. It is not its causa materialis which makes it a hammer. Rather, it is its causa finalis, its function. Its essence – that whereby it is what it is – consists in the work it is designed to perform. Living beings, of course, are not tools. They have not been made in order to fulfil a certain function. Nonetheless, they are what they are by virtue of their specific ways of being in and relating to the world they live in. That is how we distinguish humans from nonhumans, and in fact the only way they can be thus distinguished. How human are human-animal chimeras and hybrids? With the rise of genetic engineering it has become possible to combine human genes, cells and tissues with those of non-human organisms. Human stem cells have been injected into the brains of newborn mice27 or monkeys28 in order to study the development of those cells. Human genes have been inserted into rabbit eggs.29 Human thymus and liver tissue have been transplanted into mice to study the function of the human immune system.30 Human nuclei have been inserted into the enucleated eggs of mice and cows. Technically the resulting organisms are human-to-animal chimeras or hybrids. But must we therefore say that they are ‘partly human’? In an open peer commentary on Robert’s and Baylis’s ‘Crossing species boundaries’ Josephine Johnston and Christopher Eliot claim that once we consider something to be human, it acquires rights and responsibilities it did not have when we considered it just an animal or inanimate. To intentionally create a creature that has human components or contains human biological material but does not have human rights and/ or cannot fulfill human responsibilities could be an affront both to the creature itself and to our collective opinions of the worth of human beings. “Offence to human dignity” might code for this affront. It might be one way to express the worried “look what we have intentionally done to someone who is, almost, one of our number!”31

But is there really anyone who seriously thinks that a mouse or a monkey with some human cells or genes is ‘almost one of our number’? If there is, they would have to assume that what makes us human is somehow contained in our ‘biological 27 N. Uchida et al., ‘Direct Isolation of Human Central Nervous System Cells’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97/26 (2000): 14720–25. 28 V. Ourednik et al., ‘Segregation of Human Neural Stem Cells in the Developing Primate Forebrain’, Science, 293 (2001): 1820–24. 29 C. Dennis, ‘China: Stem Cells Rise in the East’, Nature, 419 (2002): 334–6. 30 J.F. Krowka et al., ‘Human T Cells in the SCID-hu Mouse are Phenotypically Normal and Functionally Competent’, Journal of Immunology, 146/11 (1991): 3751–6. 31 Josephine Johnston and Christopher Eliot, ‘Chimeras and Human Dignity’, The American Journal of Bioethics, 3/3 (2003): 6–7.

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material’, which, as we have seen, is not very convincing. Of course, those chimeras are without doubt ‘partly human’ in the sense that they contain parts that are derived from a human being, or at least from something that, if it had been allowed to develop, would have become a human being. But being partly human in this sense can hardly be considered a sufficient reason for granting them human rights, let alone human responsibility. It is not in virtue of our genes, or any other biological material, that we bestow moral rights or (personal) dignity upon each other, precisely because we do not usually consider the material we are made of essential to what we are. To say that a mouse incorporating cells with human DNA is, for this very reason, partly human is as good as saying that humans, by virtue of their sharing roughly 35 per cent of their genes with daffodils, are ‘about one-third daffodil’,32 or the other way round: that daffodils are one-third human. But as those genes that humans and daffodils have in common will, in humans, help produce human properties and, in daffodils, help produce daffodil properties, human genes in a mouse will help produce properties that, though maybe not having been observed in mice before, are definitely not human properties. When a fruit fly’s Pax6 gene, which is critical for eye development, is inserted into a frog embryo it induces the formation of an eye. The resulting eye, however, is not a fruit fly’s eye but, instead, a frog’s eye.33 The same holds for human genetic material in mice or other animals. Since it is the mouse organism that adapts and functionalizes this material in its own peculiar, mousish, way, the genes themselves are, in effect, not human genes anymore, but mouse genes. It takes more than just a few human genes, cells or tissues to make an organism human. Even to say that the resulting chimeras or hybrids are partly human is true only in a trivial sense that bears no moral significance. Furthermore, it is misleading in that it falsely suggests a partial transference of human essence to the animal. Of course, human-animal chimeras that are partly human and partly non-human in a morally significant sense may easily be imagined and possibly be constructed and made viable as well. But the mixture must show in the phenotype (the genotype being a mixture anyway). It must be visible before it can seriously sustain concerns about human dignity and rights. The fusion of a human and a chimp embryo, which may already have been accomplished and whose result some can hardly wait to see,34 is a likely candidate for that kind of concern. However, although I do not think that a sound moral argument against the production of human-animal chimeras and hybrids in general can be derived from their purported partial humanity, there are other objections that might prove stronger. Those objections count against all chimeras, not only human-animal chimeras but, for instance, animal-animal chimeras as well. There are, of course, welfare

32 Marks, ‘98% Chimpanzee and 35% Daffodil’, p. 139. 33 Y. Onuma et al., ‘Conservation of Pax6 Function and Upstream Activation by Notch Signalling in Eye Development of Frogs and Flies’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America, 99/4 (2002): 2020–25. 34 Richard Dawkins, ‘The Discontinuous Mind’, in Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri (eds), The Great Ape Project (London, 1993).

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considerations, but also concerns about instrumentalization and about the biological integrity of living beings that are likely to be destroyed by artificial chimerism.35 Conclusion Concerns about genetic integrity seem to be motivated either by an economic, scientific or otherwise extrinsic interest in the preservation of a certain genetic composition, or, secondly, by the worry that by manipulating an organism’s genome other changes will or might occur that constitute a harm for that organism, or, finally, by a more or less vague belief that an organism’s genome is the core of its identity, the home of its very being. In the first case the focus is not on the good of the organism but on its utility for certain human purposes. Talk about genetic integrity in that context makes sense as long as it is understood that the integrity in question is entirely heteronomous and does not have any direct moral relevance. In the second case – in which genetic integrity is proposed as a form of autointegrity and as therefore having an immediate moral relevance – it is not really the integrity of the genome that one is concerned about but either the health and wellbeing of the ensuing organism or its biological integrity or both. To speak of ‘genetic integrity’ is then only an abbreviated way of addressing the issue of an organism’s good that is thought to be endangered following a manipulation of its genome. Finally, concerning the third and last case – which is the only case in which it makes sense to attribute integrity directly to an organism’s genome without referring to any human interest in its preservation – I have argued that it is quite mistaken to seek our identity as human beings in our genome. It is not our genome that makes us what we are. Yet the same holds for all other organisms as well. What makes them what they are, what gives them their identity, is not their genome but a certain way of relating to the world in which they live, and this is only partially determined by their genome. If all their parts work together in order to realize and express their very own telos, if what they are meant to be and do, and only what they are meant to be and do, informs (and is allowed to inform) their body structure and behaviour, then integrity prevails. To harp on genetic integrity in ethical debates on the morality of biotechnological interferences with the development of living beings deflects attention from what really matters: not whether the genome is intact or whole but whether the organism that will develop from it is intact and whole. As Balzer et al. have pointed out, we should avoid falling to genetic reductionism and identifying an animal’s good with what is supposed to be their genetic integrity: ‘The own

35 Henk Verhoog. ‘Naturalness and the Genetic Modification of Animals’, Trends in Biotechnology, 21/7 (2003): 294–7.

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good of an individual being always refers to that phenotype that develops out of the genome.’36 That is why genes have no moral status whereas living organisms do.37 It may well be, though, that the true reason why crossing the species boundary between humans and animals is so controversial (much more, it seems, than crossing the species boundary between different kinds of animals) is not some form of genetic essentialism, but rather the fear that the strict moral distinction between humans and animals would have to be given up. Johnston and Eliot highlighted the affront to our opinion of human worth and human dignity that in their view human-animal mixtures pose. The Scottish Council on Human Bioethics pointed out that ‘if the distinction between the mental capacities of a human individual and an animal is undermined through the creation of an animal-human mixture then the very concept of the existence of specific human dignity and individuality could be questioned.’38 Apparently, human-animal mixtures threaten our deeply-rooted belief that humans are special, that each of us has an intrinsic value that no other living organism has, at least not to the same degree. We possess dignity and rights and we want to keep this a human prerogative. We do not want to see the distinction between humans and animals blurred because we would like to see ‘them’ safely on the other side of the boundary that divides those that are morally considerable from those that are morally negligible. The creation of human-animal mixtures can only give rise to moral confusion as long as animals are regarded as morally inferior.

36 Philip Balzer, Klaus Peter Rippe and Peter Schaber, ‘Two Concepts of Dignity for Humans and Non-human Organisms in the Context of Genetic Engineering’, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 13 (2000): 7–27, p. 22. 37 Mary Ann Warren, ‘The Moral Status of the Gene’, in Justine Burley and John Harris (eds), A Companion to Genethics (Oxford, 2004), pp. 147–57. 38 Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, Embryonic, Fetal and Post-natal AnimalHuman Mixtures: An Ethical Discussion, Human Reproduction and Genetic Ethics, 12/2 (2006): 35–60.

Chapter Eleven

Moral and Aesthetic Concerns Genetic engineering can be applied to animals in various ways, and not all of them involve the animals suffering from the operation. Many people feel, though, that even when a certain application of genetic engineering brings about no suffering, it can still be wrong. We have tried to tie such intrinsic concerns to the notion of integrity. However, some philosophers do not consider these concerns to be moral concerns at all. Instead, intrinsic objections against the genetic modification of animals are believed to be merely ‘aesthetic’. So we need to see whether the distinction between purely aesthetic concerns and purely moral concerns is really sound in the context in which it is applied. I shall argue that those concerns regarded as proper moral concerns are in truth not less ‘aesthetic’ than the allegedly aesthetic ones, while what is thought to be merely aesthetic is in fact as moral as can be. Now, the question is whether the uneasiness which many people feel about biotechnological manipulations of living beings, regardless of whether, as a consequence, those beings suffer or not, does or does not make sense, morally speaking. I will try to answer this question without attempting to give a precise definition of the aesthetic as opposed to the moral. Rather, I will use the term ‘aesthetic’ in the same wide and admittedly vague sense in which it is used in the arguments that I will discuss. Since nothing seems to hinge on it, a precise definition is not necessary. What is relevant here is the rhetorical function the term ‘aesthetic’ acquires in claims that certain common concerns are not proper moral concerns – in spite of the fact that people who share those concerns think of them as moral. The question is not whether those concerns are aesthetic, but whether they are merely aesthetic in the sense of being not morally relevant. Eliminating suffering Considering it unlikely that we will simply stop using animals as much as we possibly can, Bernard Rollin has argued that from an animal welfare point of view it is justified, or even morally required, to effect genetic changes in the animals such that we can reduce the pain and suffering they would otherwise endure. If, for instance, we could, by means of genetic engineering, create cattle without horns (so we would not have to dehorn them later, which is quite painful to them) or eliminate the drive to nest in chickens kept in battery cages, then why should we not do it? What could be wrong with removing a source of suffering? Hence Rollin is convinced that, if ‘changing the animals by genetic engineering is the only way

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to assure that they do not suffer …, people will surely accept that strategy, though doubtless with some reluctance.’1 However, presenting the alternatives like this seems to anticipate the outcome. If you already take it for granted that there are no other alternatives than either to let the animals suffer or to modify them, you will feel that it is hardly justifiable to oppose the modification. But I do not think we can or should take it for granted that changing the animals’ environment is not possible or realistically to be expected. It is like asking, would you rather let the Iraqis attack the United States with weapons of mass destruction than invade Iraq by military force and take these weapons from them before it is too late? The consequence of putting the question this way is that no other alternatives are seriously considered. Moreover, why should people feel reluctant to use genetic engineering if it is only in the interest of the animal? The main reason, says Rollin, is a certain ‘queasiness’ which is at root aesthetic, that is, not moral: ‘The chicken sitting in a nest is a powerful aesthetic image, analogous to cows grazing in green fields. A chicken without that urge jars us.’2 It is odd, however, that Rollin, while on the one hand asserting that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with changing an animal’s nature (or telos, as Rollin prefers to call it), on the other hand says that it is ‘certainly a poor alternative’ to alter the animal instead of its environment.3 He even calls it ‘the lesser of two evils’4 – the other evil being the pain the animal would have to endure if we did not alter it. But if there is nothing morally wrong with changing an animal’s genome and through it the animal’s physical appearance and structure of behaviour, then why should this be classified as ‘a poor alternative’, let alone an ‘evil’? If the revulsion we (or some of us) experience here is, as Rollin believes, purely ‘aesthetic’, then from a moral point of view this option is not poorer or less desirable than the other (and most certainly not ‘the lesser of two evils’). Yet how exactly do we distinguish in this context between purely aesthetic concerns and purely moral concerns? What Rollin apparently means by ‘aesthetic’ is that our revulsion does not rest on any beliefs concerning the situation the animal is objectively in, but rather on the fact that this situation or the animal itself is somehow unpleasant to our senses. Our revulsion is a matter of taste and does not involve any kind of moral judgement. If, however, it is just not as pleasant to see a hen in a cage as to see it sitting in a nest, can and should we then not ask why it is not so pleasant? Does our revulsion really have nothing to do with the situation the hen is objectively in? Are we, as Rollin suggests, just being ‘queasy’? How can we be so sure? After all, to many of us, it at least seems as if we had a genuine moral concern here, as if changing an animal’s nature so that it no longer suffers from the bad conditions it is forced to live in, were actually something wrong, that is, something we simply ought not to be doing. How can we, without begging the question, say with confidence that

1 Bernard Rollin, The Frankenstein Syndrome: Ethical and Social Issues in the Genetic Engineering of Animals (Cambridge, 1995), p. 175. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., p. 171. 4 Ibid., p. 192.

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our concerns, though they seem to us to be moral concerns, are not moral concerns at all, but ‘merely’ aesthetic? To distinguish so sharply between moral and merely aesthetic concerns becomes even less plausible when we consider another of Rollin’s suggestions. Rollin believes that the common practice of using animals as models for human diseases is, at least potentially, so beneficial for humans that it is extremely unlikely that we will ever give it up. Since, however, this practice involves a lot of suffering for the animals being used, which, in order to study the disease properly, have to be kept alive for quite a long time while anaesthesia can only be applied for a comparatively short time, it is morally insufficient to merely change the animals’ subjective experience. If we really care for the animals’ welfare, we ought rather to try to eliminate their consciousness completely by, for instance, removing or destroying their cerebral cortex.5 We might even some day be able to genetically engineer them in such a way that they are already born decerebrate and with the diseases we want to study. Assuming that ‘the capacity for genetically engineering models for all manner of genetic and other diseases is imminent, and that the research community will forge ahead in creating such models’, decerebration is, according to Rollin, not only ‘the only viable way to control suffering’ but also in perfect harmony with the moral principle of conservation of welfare.6 Thus the moral principle Rollin applies, and which seems to be the only one he accepts as a valid moral principle, ends up as something like this: avoid making sentient beings suffer, but if you cannot (or do not find it convenient to) avoid it by any other means then you should kill it, either physically if you no longer need it,7 or mentally if you still need its living body for your purposes. This, however, is surely a curious moral principle and certainly not in accordance with our moral intuitions, or at least with what we take to be our moral intuitions. In line with Bentham, Rollin obviously assumes not only that what morally matters is whether animals can suffer, but also that this is the only thing that matters. According to this view, genuine moral concerns are concerns about good and bad subjective experiences. All other concerns are, whatever else they might be, definitely not moral concerns. That is, the norm that is accepted here does not permit any other concerns to be included in the moral domain.8 But why should we accept this norm? If we ask ourselves how we know that inflicting pain and suffering on other living beings ought to be avoided or at least requires moral justification, we can hardly say more than that is how we feel about it. Thus the grounds for our belief that wilfully inflicting pain on others is bad does not seem to be much different from the grounds 5 Ibid., p. 205. 6 Ibid. We can, of course, imagine other ways to eliminate the capacity for feeling pain short of decerebration. The fact that there actually are people who are born without that capacity (resulting in many injuries such as chewed off fingers) suggests that insensitivity to pain is a genetic defect which can then in principle be artificially installed by means of genetic engineering. For a discussion of the possibility of animals being genetically manipulated in such a way that they are not susceptible to pain, and the ethical concerns raised by this, see Darryl Macer, ‘Uncertainties About “Painless” Animals’, Bioethics, 3/3 (1989): 226–35. 7 Rollin, The Frankenstein Syndrome, p. 197. 8 See Alan Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Oxford, 1990), p. 7.

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of our ‘queasiness’ about reconstructing animals according to our needs and in such a way that they become something quite different from what they, as it may seem to us, by their very nature are meant to be. A claim like this does, of course, need some backing which I would like to provide through a discussion of H.G. Wells’s novel The Island of Dr Moreau. My reasons for choosing this slightly unusual method of justification, by analysing the contents of this particular novel, are not only its subject matter (the intentional remodelling of living beings) but even more so the implicit deconstruction of a normative system of moral rationality which is believed by its proponents to be entirely autonomous and free from any aspects that might be denounced as merely ‘aesthetic’. What a good novel like Wells’s can do – and sometimes better than a purely conceptual analysis – is show the inadequacy of conceptual distinctions. In this case, it is the distinction between moral concerns and so-called aesthetic ones which are shown to blend seamlessly into one another.9 Never mind that it is ‘fiction’, what counts is that it gets to the heart of the matter. The ethics of the matter The Island of Dr Moreau tells the story of the amateur biologist Edward Prendick, who has the misfortune to become stranded on an island which is inhabited by the notorious vivisectionist Dr Moreau, the alcoholic physician Montgomery who assists Moreau, many animals captured in order to be researched upon, and finally the strangest human beings Prendick has ever encountered and which he is at first not able to make head or tail of. He just knows that there is something wrong with them and that he can hardly bear the sight of them, a feeling that he shares with the crew of the ship on which he travels to the island together with Montgomery and one of those disturbing creatures. On being asked by Montgomery how this creature, which he mistakenly takes to be human, strikes him, he answers: ‘He’s unnatural. … There’s something about him. … Don’t think me fanciful, but it gives me a nasty little sensation, a tightening of my muscles, when he comes near me. It’s a touch … of the diabolical, in fact.’10 Now, this revulsion which Prendick describes here is surely a good example of what Rollin would classify as an aesthetic reaction, for Prendick does not seem to think that the creature is suffering under its condition, or at any rate this is not what gives him this ‘nasty little sensation’. In fact, there is no belief whatsoever underlying his aversion to the creature. He has no clear reason for being revolted: he just is. It is only later that he begins to suspect the truth: Suddenly, as I watched their grotesque and unaccountable gestures, I perceived clearly for the first time what it was that had offended me. … Each of these creatures, despite its human form, its rag of clothing, and the rough humanity of its bodily form, had woven into it, into its movements, into the expression of its countenance, into its whole presence,

9 See Simon Blackburn, Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning (Oxford, 1998), p. 12. 10 H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau (London, 1921), p. 42.

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some now irresistible suggestion of a hog, a swinish taint, the unmistakable mark of the beast.11

Although at first he misinterprets what he sees, thinking that Moreau has somehow changed humans into animals, he soon finds out what is really happening, namely, that Moreau has in fact reconstructed the captured animals in such a way that they resemble, or have become, human beings. Learning, however, that the creatures that have struck him so strange are in fact former animals turned halfway into men, does not lessen his abhorrence. On the contrary, it gives his initial, instinctive reaction a certain justification. He understands now why he has felt the creatures to be abhorrent, and incorporates this knowledge into his perception of them. Yet his feelings about them remain unchanged. In a discussion with Moreau about the justifiability of his experiments, he still thinks of the beast-people, as he calls them, as ‘abominations’.12 They are, in fact, regular monsters which perfectly fit the definition given by Brittnacher in his seminal study on the aesthetics of horror.13 For, according to Brittnacher, a common denominator of all beings designated as monsters is their ‘excessive deviation from the norm of physical integrity. In the physical extremity of the monster, the human and the animal spheres overlap and the idea of an animal kingdom which is neatly organized in species is being revoked.’14 Now it is interesting to note that when Prendick first arrives on the island he wonders why Moreau and Montgomery are being so secretive about the kind of research they are undertaking there. This irritates him since he suspects Moreau to be practising just the usual vivisection of animals which Prendick considers, however painful it might be for the animals involved, ‘especially to another scientific man, … nothing so horrible … as to account for this secrecy’.15 This statement, which expresses the common conviction of many scientists that for the sake of knowledge or human good we are justified in subjecting animals to a great deal of suffering and pain, echoes a remark made earlier by Moreau himself, when he tells Prendick that what he is doing on his island is ‘nothing very dreadful really – to a sane man’.16 Moreau, however, knows what he is doing, and what he takes to be ‘nothing very dreadful’ is not only the infliction of pain on the animals during the process of reconstructing them, but also the whole business of creating beings that are half human and half animal. Thus, while Prendick considers the infliction of pain justifiable – though also seeing the need to justify it – he is by no means prepared to accept the creation of hybrid creatures such as the beast-people inhabiting Moreau’s island.17 So if his 11 Ibid., p. 50. 12 Ibid., p. 95. 13 Hans Richard Brittnacher, Aesthetik des Horrors (Frankfurt/M., 1994). 14 Ibid., p. 184. The original is German and the translation is mine. See also Mary Midgley, ‘Biotechnology and Monstrosity: Why We Should Pay Attention to the “Yuk Factor”’, Hastings Center Report, 30/5 (2000): 7–15. 15 Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau, p. 40. 16 Ibid., p. 35. 17 Though the fact that the hybrids in this case are human-animal hybrids probably adds to Prendick’s (and the reader’s) horror, it is already the hybridization as such that is considered to be somehow wrong. When Moreau explains himself to Prendick he says: ‘You begin to see

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reaction is really purely aesthetic, as Rollin presumably would have us believe, then it is more strongly grounded and much harder to overcome by considerations of utility than the ‘proper’ moral concerns he has about the pain the animals have to endure during the process of reconstructing them. Of course, Moreau himself believes that neither the infliction of pain nor the outcome of his experiments need to be justified by the prospect of any good resulting from it. When Prendick asks him for a reason and for a justification for inflicting all this pain Moreau replies that it is just this question of pain that parts us. So long as visible or audible pain turns you sick, so long as your own pains drive you, so long as pain underlies your propositions of sin, so long, I tell you, you are an animal, thinking a little less obscurely what an animal feels. This pain … is such a little thing. A mind truly opened to what science has to teach must see that it is a little thing. It may be that, save in this little planet, this speck of cosmic dust, invisible long before the nearest star could be attained – it may be, I say, that nowhere else does this thing called pain occur. But the laws we feel our way towards …18

And later he adds what I quoted earlier: Pain! Pain and pleasure – they are for us, only so long as we wriggle in the dust … You see, I went on with this research just the way it led me. That is the only way I ever heard of research going. I asked a question, devised some method of getting an answer, and got – a fresh question. You cannot imagine what this means to an investigator, what an intellectual passion grows upon him. You cannot imagine the strange and colourless delight of these intellectual desires. The thing before you is no longer an animal, a fellowcreature, but a problem.

To this Prendick can only reply, rather helplessly, that whatever Moreau might say, ‘the thing is an abomination’ – a declaration which moves Moreau to the laconic comment: ‘To this day I have never troubled about the ethics of the matter.’19 This passage strikes me as important for two reasons. Firstly, because of the remarkable extent to which Moreau’s more than a century old description of the scientific method, including its conceptual transformation of fellow-creatures into problems, is mirrored by the language and the practice applied by many present day scientists working in the field of biotechnology.20 And secondly – more relevant to that it is a possible thing to transplant tissue from one part of an animal to another, or from one animal to another, to alter its chemical reactions and methods of growth, to modify the articulations of its limbs, and indeed to change it in its most intimate structure? And yet this extraordinary branch of knowledge has never been sought as an end, and systematically, by modern investigators, until I took it up’ (Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau, p. 90). Prendick asks him then ‘why he had taken the human form as a model. There seemed to me then, and there still seems to me now, a strange wickedness in that choice. He confessed that he had chosen that form by chance. “I might just as well have worked to form sheep into llamas, and llamas into sheep ….”’ (ibid., pp. 91–2). 18 Ibid., pp. 92–3. 19 Ibid., p. 94. 20 Cf. Stephen R.L. Clark, ‘Modern Errors, Ancient Virtues’, in Anthony Dyson and John Harris (eds), Ethics and Biotechnology (London, 1994), p. 13: ‘Biotechnology is the art of manipulating living forms as though they were machines.’ That they are in fact little more

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the object of this chapter – because of the emphasis that is put on the – again in a loose sense – aesthetic origin of our conviction that inflicting pain on another living being is morally wrong. ‘So long’, says Moreau, ‘as visible or audible pain turns you sick, so long as your own pains drive you’, your mind is not truly opened, not fit to realize that pain is really a little thing, not of much importance, not to be considered as an obstacle to scientific research. Prendick himself acknowledges the truth of Moreau’s remark when, earlier in the novel, he overhears Moreau vivisecting a puma who cries horribly while being tortured. Prendick reflects: The crying sounded even louder out of doors. It was as if all the pain in the world had found a voice. Yet had I known such pain was in the next room, and had it been dumb, I believe – I have thought since – I could have stood it well enough. It is when suffering finds a voice and sets our nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us.21

Thus the abstract knowledge that some other creature suffers pain does not press itself on Prendick in such a way that he would object to it. It is only when he actually perceives the pain with his senses and is bodily struck (nerves set quivering) by what he perceives that he cannot help but acknowledge the wrongness of the deed. This hints at how very much our moral evaluation of situations and actions depends on, first, to what extent we are capable of a direct inspection of these situations and actions,22 and second, whether what we thus inspect tends to makes us sick with revulsion. ‘We cannot really think that injustice is bad’, remarked Mary Midgley once, ‘if it does not at some point sicken us.’23 But if this is true, then what makes us realize that an action or a situation is morally wrong is exactly what Rollin would classify as an aesthetic quality or reaction. In other words, the conviction that pain is an evil ultimately rests, as Stephen Clark has pointed out, ‘only on our dislike of it’.24 In this respect it does not than machines is argued by, for instance, Michael Leahy, Against Liberation: Putting Animals in Perspective (London and New York, 1991), and R. G. Frey, Interests and Rights: The Case against Animals (Oxford, 1980). Thus it is claimed that if animals have needs then they have them in the same way as trees or even machines have needs (Leahy, Against Liberation, pp. 44ff.; Frey, Interests and Rights, pp. 79ff.), and the same holds for their suffering: ‘Plants can suffer from too much sun or too little water, or a watch from rough handling’ (Leahy, Against Liberation, p. 223). 21 Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau, p. 44 (my italics). 22 For an experimental proof of this see Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (New York, 1974). For a definition of the term ‘aesthetic’ see Marcia Muelder Eaton, Merit, Aesthetic and Ethical (Oxford, 2001), p. 11: ‘A is an aesthetic property of O (an object or event) if and only if A is an intrinsic property of O and A is culturally identified as a property worthy of attention (i.e. perception and reflection). … F is an intrinsic property of O if and only if direct inspection of O is a necessary condition for verifying the claim that O is F.’ 23 Mary Midgley, Heart and Mind: The Varieties of Moral Experience (Brighton, 1981), p. 92. 24 Stephen R.L. Clark, ‘Natural Integrity and Biotechnology’, in David S. Oderberg and Jacqueline A. Laing (eds), Human Lives: Critical Essays on Consequentialist Bioethics (London, 1997), pp. 58–67.

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differ from the conviction that it is wrong to create animals with a reduced or even annihilated capacity for suffering, or hybrids of animals and human beings, or of different species in general. Hence the distinction between purely aesthetic concerns and purely moral concerns breaks down.25 The aesthetic dimension of ethics To insist that, if our actions do not bring about any pain or suffering they cannot possibly be considered to be morally wrong is simply question-begging. Even if we do not agree with someone who thinks that certain actions are wrong regardless of any suffering involved, this does not justify our assumption that their disapproval of these actions is not a moral one at all. There are quite a few people who feel that decerebrating a living being, in order to experiment with it without violating the principle of conservation of welfare, is even worse than just hurting it and making it suffer. It is certainly arguable whether these people might not have the wrong kind of moral intuitions, but that is not to say that their intuitions are not moral in the first place but rather ‘aesthetic’. If there is a kind of disapproval that is really purely aesthetic, it would be one where only the sight (or sound, or smell) of something bothers us or is abhorrent to us. In the cases we have been considering, however, it is for most people the action itself, or the results of this action, to which they object. It is not that they do not want to see it done, or do not want to think about it being done, but that they simply want it not to be done. Mark Packer26 has shown that many of our moral intuitions are aesthetically grounded in so far as their only justification is the vague but often strong feeling of shock or outrage we feel when we contemplate certain actions, and that those feelings are commonly regarded as being sufficient to justify a condemnation of these actions: ‘We are inclined to disallow the actions in question because there is something, perhaps we cannot say, exactly what, that is simply offensive about them.’ We need not be able to explain why it is offensive to us, but this does not make our judgement less valid. Consider the (fictional, but not entirely unlikely) case Packer describes: Within the next few decades, genetic technology may develop to the point that it will be possible to manufacture sides of beef and chicken parts entirely from DNA, without the need to create or raise living animals. Potentially unlimited quantities of T-bone steaks and poultry wings might emerge in just a few days or weeks out of dishes of genetic material that is extracted painlessly from individual cows and chickens. Since no animals would be killed and none would suffer any physical or psychological harm, this process may appear to provide moral license to even the most committed animal rights activist to eat meat. In the absence of suffering and death, there would seem to remain no sound ethical reason 25 As Eaton (Merit, Aesthetic and Ethical, p. 57) argues: ‘A deep mistake has colored value theory. The mistake is believing in the general separability of the aesthetic and the moral.’ Eaton, however, addresses the issue in an (successful, I think) attempt to refute the dogma that the evaluation of art has to be free from all moral concerns. She does not say much about whether moral evaluation requires aesthetic considerations as well. 26 Mark Packer, ‘The Aesthetic Dimension of Ethics and Law: Some Reflections on Harmless Offence’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 33/1 (1996): 57–74.

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for vegetarianism. But an animal rights activist might rejoin to this proposal with a rather arresting suggestion. If it were possible to manufacture animal meat this way, then human limbs and organs might also be brought to the deli counter by means of a similar process of DNA cultivation. Why should the food industry restrict its products just to non-human animals? Higher profits are possible with this expanded array of delicacies, as consumers might be willing to pay more in order to enjoy the naughty thrill of cannibalism without any pangs of conscience. Nobody would suffer any pain, and no one would be killed. In short, there would be no harm.27

I think Packer is quite right to conclude that most people would, in spite of the fact that there would be no harm done, vehemently resist such a proposal. If so, our reaction might be described as aesthetic insofar as it is caused ‘by nothing more than characteristics that are entirely inherent in the behavior of objects themselves’,28 but must also be described as moral insofar as it is an expression of the conviction that far more is at stake here than just a violation of individual taste. Instead we feel very strongly that this is something, whatever the consequences might be, that ought not to be done – not by ourselves and not by anybody else. This might appear irrational, since we cannot properly explain what is wrong with it, and a ‘sane man’ like Dr Moreau would certainly feel quite differently about it, but then moral convictions are, after all, always non-rational, not in the sense of being contrary to reason but rather in the sense of being ultimately not based on or guided by any process of rational decision-making.29 This is not to say that our moral convictions are independent of our knowledge of the situation in question. For us, our moral convictions follow naturally from our beliefs concerning the facts of the situation, but others may have different moral convictions following just as naturally from the same factual beliefs, and to some – those who have a completely objective mind (if there is such a thing) – nothing follows at all in terms of moral value. Thus the entirely ‘sane man’ does not have any moral convictions at all. That is what those who demand a ‘rational analysis of facts’30 fail to realize. The difficulty here is obviously how a ‘rational analysis of facts’ could ever decide the question of whether it is wrong or right to create transgenic animals. After all, there is no one way of ‘ably presenting’ the facts. Every presentation of facts is bound either to be coloured by the presenter’s values, or to be neutral in respect to their moral evaluation. For this reason, if we do not feel strongly about the rightness or wrongness of an action or a state of affairs, we know at best what others expect us to do, and not to do, and hence what is generally considered to be right and wrong. In other words, it is not moral, but social 27 Ibid., p. 58. 28 Ibid., p. 61. 29 Michael Hauskeller, Versuch üeber die Grundlagen der Moral (Munich, 2001). 30 C. Murphy, ‘Genetically Engineered Animals’, in Peter Wheale and Ruth McNally (eds), The Bio-Revolution: Cornucopia or Pandora’s Box (London, 1990), p. 13: ‘Making animals that are a mixture of different species is not a new idea, but it is a new reality. … For many people, the transgenic manipulation of animals is a very frightening concept. … [However:] When we look at transgenic animals we must be aware that our reactions to them are unlikely to be based on the rational analysis of facts ably presented; the nightmare images from past fantasies are too likely to escape from the Pandora’s Box of our imagination and distort our vision.’

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knowledge we have, knowledge of certain facts (namely what is valued by others), but not about what is actually valuable. David Hume thus had every reason to claim that all true morality depends on our sentiments.31 If the sight or contemplation of an action or situation did not elicit any emotion in us, if we did not feel any indignation or outrage whatsoever, then we would not even know that there is something wrong with it. When those parts of our brain which support our emotions get damaged or functionally destroyed, we are still conscious of the moral norms considered valid in the society we live in, but we no longer feel obliged by them. They have lost their binding force on us.32 Having an emotion always means to evaluate the situation one is in or is confronted with.33 Furthermore, having no emotion means not to evaluate the situation. It is tempting to argue that if someone says that she just cannot bear the thought of humans eating human flesh, even if it is especially created for that purpose and nobody is killed or hurt for it, or of animals being deliberately engineered without their cortex or reduced in their capacity to suffer under the circumstances they are forced to live in, then she does not have a good reason for the claim that it is immoral to do so. If, however, we can bear the thought easily, then what good reason could we possibly have to assert its immorality? It all depends on what we mean when we say we cannot bear it. Maybe it is just that we cannot bear the sight of it in such a way that we tend to be sick when seeing it (or imagining it) without really minding the fact that it happens. Even though we felt nauseated, we would then refuse to see more in it than a spontaneous, mechanical and entirely meaningless physical reaction to a visual stimulus. We would, instead of asking ourselves why we are nauseated and whether there might not be something in the object or situation we react to that justifies our nausea, just make sure that we are not exposed to the stimulus, and then not bother ourselves with it anymore. Yet this might be a misunderstanding of what our revulsion really means,34 and we may discover at some stage that our revulsion in fact runs deeper, that what we are not able to bear is not really the sight (the sound, smell, or taste) or the thought of a certain state of affairs or course of action, but rather this very state or course of action itself, and as soon as we realize this we can no longer believe that our reaction 31 David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature (London, 1739/40), III.II.V. 32 Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York, 1994). 33 Robert C. Solomon, ‘Emotions and Choice’, in Amelie Oksenberg-Rorty (ed.), Explaining Emotions (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1980), pp. 251–81. 34 See Raimond Gaita, The Philosopher’s Dog, (London, 2002), pp. 206–7: ‘Some people … become vegetarians because they find they cannot eat meat. At first they might not eat it for a practical reason … and then gradually they find the very thought of eating meat repulsive. It would be wrong to say of the vegetarians I am thinking of that they had just become squeamish, if that meant that their disgust was not a moral disgust. … But because they are likely to identify the moral basis of vegetarianism with decisions of principle, they might hesitate to say that theirs is a moral revulsion. And if, quite literally, they can’t eat meat because the mere thought of it makes them nauseated, then they might be misled into believing that they cannot eat meat only because of the sheer strength of a “merely” psychological revulsion against it. That would be a pity for … the impossibility they express is interdependent with a perception of what it means to eat an animal.’

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is purely idiosyncratic, that we are just expressing a personal dislike that is of no relevance to others. Instead it will seem to us that the object in question justifies our negative reaction. We will not say, then, that it is we who cannot bear what is being done, but rather that what is being done is in itself unbearable. Hence, we will expect or even demand from others to share our feelings of revulsion or abhorrence towards the action, just like Kant thought we would if making an aesthetic judgement. So the fact that there is something we simply cannot bear may well be a perfectly good reason for saying that it is immoral to bring it about or permitting it to be. Conclusion In a well known passage David Hume states the emotional basis of moral evaluation: Take any action allow´d to be vicious: Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In whichever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflexion into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. Here is a matter of fact; but ’tis the object of feeling, not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object. So that when you pronounce any action or character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it.35

Whereas I entirely agree with the first part of Hume’s statement saying that our feelings alone reveal an action to be wrong, I disagree with the second part saying that in proclaiming something to be wrong we mean nothing but that we have a certain feeling of disapproval. Instead, what we mean is something quite different, namely that the action in question is wrong, and that we know it is wrong because we feel it to be wrong. And we do not think that our feeling it to be wrong makes it wrong. That is why we can in principle always do more than just state our feelings – if we care enough to do so. We can reflect on our feelings and try to find out what it is that we spontaneously object to. We can, for instance, reflect on the fact that in treating animals along the lines of Rollin’s argument, we treat them as if they were mere tools or machines designed for human good and that it is this kind of instrumentalization that is morally wrong. Or we can say with Taylor that our attitude is not in agreement with the principle of respect for nature, or, finally, that it violates the animals’ telos or their biological integrity. These notions are not just feeble attempts to rationalize some vague ‘aesthetic’ dislike but, rather, serious efforts to understand our immediate emotional reactions, and to understand them in the light of the nature of, and our relation to, the world in which we live. They are expressions of the genuinely ethical refusal to let our moral world be governed by a convenient theory telling us what we are and what we are not legitimately allowed to regard as wrong or bad. Hence, when, for instance, Stephen Clark declares that there 35 Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, III.I.I.

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‘is something wrong, ugly, horrifying about the sight of a living creature made so wretched that it can no longer even care; there is something wrong, ugly, horrifying about mammals transformed into milk machines, or microcephalic lumps’,36 then he is not just being queasy. For what he is really doing is articulating a common moral concern without pretending that such a concern has much to do with what is thought to be rational or sane. And if a moral theory is not able to incorporate these concerns, this ought to be considered a weakness of the theory and not of the concerns many people actually have.37

36 Clark, ‘Natural Integrity and Biotechnology’. See also Michael W. Fox, ‘Transgenic Animals: Ethical and Animal Welfare Concerns’, in Wheale and McNally, The Bio-Revolution, pp. 31–54, p. 41: ‘Molecular farming – the incorporation of human genes into non-human beings for human benefit – is seen as a form of parasitism: genetic parasitism. It is as abhorrent to some people as the practice of grafting pig livers and chimpanzee hearts into humans’ (my italics). 37 See Mary Midgley, Evolution as Religion: Strange Hopes and Stranger Fears (London, 1985), p. 149: ‘Today, this intellectualist bias is often expressed by calling the insights of common morality mere “intuitions”. This is quite misleading, since it gives the impression that they have been reached without thought, and that there is, by contrast, a scientific solution somewhere else to which they ought to bow as there might be if we were contrasting commonsense “intuitions” about the physical world with physics or astronomy. Even when they do not use that word, however, philosophers often manage to give the impression that whenever our moral views clash with any simple, convenient scheme, it is our duty to abandon them.’ For instance G.R. Grice, Grounds of Moral Judgment (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 146–7. Midgley (Evolution as Religion, p. 50) comments: ‘Grice demands that we withdraw our objections to harshness, in deference to theoretical consistency. But “harsh” here does not mean just “brisk and bracing” like cold baths and a plain diet. … It means unjust. … An ethical theory which, when consistently followed through, has iniquitous consequences is a bad theory and must be changed. Certainly we can ask whether these consequences really are iniquitous; but this question must be handled seriously. We cannot directly conclude that the consequences cease to stink the moment they are seen to follow from our theory.’

Chapter Twelve

Moral Disgust Do we feel an intrinsic revulsion to the idea of changing an animal’s nature?1 And if we do, why should this be considered in any way morally relevant? Most contemporary philosophers tend to think it is not. However, it has been suggested that there ‘is a case for claiming that emotions are sometimes a critical element of moral attitudes, being powerful motives for which there is no conventional vocabulary’, and that they might represent ‘a legitimate expression of “righteous indignation”’.2 Along those lines, the Banner Report emphasized the fact that an objection ‘is often stated in emotional terms is not sufficient reason for discounting it: revulsion or disgust at certain uses of animals may be perfectly rational and founded upon a conviction … as to the intrinsic wrongness of what is proposed.’3 The biotechnological manipulation of animals is just one occasion for a kind of disgust that is intertwined with an intense feeling that something is decidedly not as it should be. In various situations disgust is thought to be a reliable indicator of moral wrongness. For instance, shortly after Saddam Hussein had been arrested the French lawyer Jacques Vergès, who has a reputation for defending all sorts of terrorists and dictators (including Slobodan Milošević), announced that, if he were invited, he would gladly defend Saddam Hussein too. When a journalist asked him if he did not, at least, know the feeling of disgust, indicating that disgust would be sufficient reason not to defend the likes of Saddam, Vergès answered that this question could, with equal justification, have been put to the defence lawyers in the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.4 I do not want to discuss here whether volunteering to defend dictators such as Saddam Hussein or war criminals such as Hermann Goering is in any way immoral for successful lawyers. After all, even mass murderers have the right to be well defended. What I am interested in, rather, is how a feeling like disgust can be thought of as morally relevant at all. For what the journalist implied with his question was that Vergès ought to be disgusted, that disgust was the proper reaction to the idea of defending Saddam, and that, if he did feel disgust as he should, he would abstain from defending the Iraqi former dictator. So obviously disgust was

1 That we do is claimed, for instance, by Joyce d’Silva, ‘A Critical View of the Genetic Engineering of Farm Animals’, in Peter Wheale and Ruth McNally, Animal Genetic Engineering of Farm Animals (London, 1995), pp. 97–108. 2 Ben Mepham, ‘“Wuerde der Kreatur” and the Common Morality’, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 13 (2000): 65–78, p. 73. 3 Michael Banner, Report of the Committee to Consider the Ethical Implications of Emerging Technologies in the Breeding of Farm Animals, UK Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (London, 1995). 4 Michael Mönninger, ‘Des Tyrannen Advokat’, DIE ZEIT, 22 December 2003: 5.

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thought to be, at least in certain situations, a moral feeling, that is, a feeling that ought to be endorsed and accepted as a guide for action. In the course of this chapter I shall examine this assumption and discuss the problems connected with it. My starting point will be Mary Midgley’s claim that strong feelings, including disgust, are essential to all real moral commitment and indispensable for realizing that certain actions are morally wrong in the first place, and John Harris’s counter-claim that feelings, in order to count as moral, must be capable of being justified in moral terms or else be rejected as mere prejudice. I shall argue against Harris that feelings can qualify as moral even when such a justification is lacking and, moreover, that arguments meant to justify a particular moral feeling are themselves in need of justification, which can only be provided by widely shared moral feelings. Thus the seemingly unproblematic distinction between legitimate moral feelings and mere prejudices breaks down. I shall then analyse the feeling of disgust and, following Rozin et al., distinguish between core disgust, animal-nature disgust and moral disgust. The last of these will be interpreted as that kind of disgust which is directed towards actions that threaten the image we have of ourselves as human beings, that is, our idea of what it means to be human. This interpretation will be continued into a discussion of Leon Kass’s controversial proclamation of a ‘wisdom of repugnance’. Once again, the problem of justification is addressed and, this time, rejected. I will argue that the impossibility of solving the justification problem leaves no choice but to take moral disgust seriously for a start and then, instead of asking for its justifiability, to see whether and when it is consistent with the interrelated beliefs and feelings that define our humanity. In the following sections I shall analyse paradigmatic occasions for moral disgust: wanton cruelty, slavery and meat-eating, defiling the dead, and finally the (fortunately still fictional) creation of living organisms that are incapable of feeling by means of genetic engineering. My aim is to show that in none of these cases, although for different reasons, moral theory can adequately explain the feeling, shared by many people, that something is deeply wrong, and that despite this we should not reject those feelings as morally irrelevant. On the contrary, we should take heed of them and act accordingly unless we have good moral reasons not to. Disgust: raw material for moral scruples or mere prejudice? There is much in the world that disgusts us: maggots in food, cockroaches in the cupboard, slugs, faeces (especially those of other people), certain skin diseases, intestines, the way some people behave, how they eat, or laugh, or display their sexuality, physical and mental distortions, old age, poverty and many other things, situations, actions and events. Some people are easily disgusted, some people less easily, but we all know the feeling. Disgust, however, like the related and, in terms of its actual usage, hardly distinguishable notions of repugnance, revulsion and abhorrence,5 is not commonly thought to have much moral relevance, except as 5 It has been observed that in many languages the term ‘disgusting’ is used in the same way and with apparently the same meaning as terms such as ‘horrible’ or ‘outrageous’. See Paul Rozin, Jonathan Haidt and Clark R. McCauley, ‘Disgust: The Body and Soul Emotion’,

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something that occasionally ought to be overcome for the sake of morality. If we want to do the right thing we cannot always give in to our feelings of disgust. On most, if not all, occasions it rather seems to be required that we ignore those feelings, in order to avoid distorting our moral judgement. Thus, writes Martha Nussbaum, ‘the really civilized nation must make a strenuous effort to counter the power of disgust, as a barrier to the full equality and mutual respect of all citizens.’6 Nonetheless, the rhetoric of disgust is often used when people object very strongly to a certain kind of action or particular deed. In such cases, disgust can be the very expression of a serious moral commitment, a fact of which William Miller, in his excellent study The Anatomy of Disgust, justly reminds us: Disgust is more than just the motivator of good taste; it marks out moral matters for which we can have no compromise. Disgust signals our being appalled, signals the fact that we are paying more than lip-service; its presence lets us know we are truly in the grip of the norm whose violation we are witnessing or imagining. To articulate one’s disgust is to do more than state a preference or simply reveal a sensation in our bodies.7

Accordingly, one can argue that the ability to respond with disgust and revulsion to certain deeds is essential to all real moral commitment. Among philosophers, Mary Midgley has frequently made this point. According to Midgley, we cannot even ‘really think injustice is bad if it does not at some point sicken us.’8 Whenever we seriously judge something to be wrong, strong feeling necessarily accompanies the judgment. Someone who does not have such feelings – someone who has merely a theoretical interest in morals, who doesn’t feel any indignation or disgust and outrage about things like slavery and torture – has missed the point of morals altogether.9

Although, Midgley concedes, disgust may often be a mere physical reaction, which often has ‘no meaning’ and is, in itself, ‘not significant’, it nonetheless provides the raw material for moral scruples and, eventually, moral principles which would not exist without it. Disgust at, for instance, bloodshed often does have a meaning. It has played a great part in the development of more humane behaviour, because it can alert people’s imagination to what they are doing, and wake their sympathies for the victims. The same thing happens with unthinking revulsions to unfairness, meanness, ingratitude, envy and the like.10 in T. Dalgleish and M. Power (eds), Handbook of Cognition and Emotion (Chichester, 1999), pp. 429–45. 6 Martha Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity (Princeton, NJ and Oxford, 2004), p. 117. 7 William Ian Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust (Cambridge, MA and London, 1997), p. 194. 8 Mary Midlgey, Heart and Mind (London and New York, 2003), p. 107. 9 Mary Midlgey, ‘Biotechnology and Monstrosity: Why We Should Pay Attention to the “Yuk Factor”’, Hastings Center Report, 30/5 (2000): 7–15, p. 9. 10 Mary Midgley, Animals and Why They Matter (Athens, GA, 1984), p. 43. Of course, disgust at bloodshed does not necessarily lead to more humane behaviour. Often, it only leads

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According to Midgley, there is often a ‘message’ in our emotions that we need to spell out. Emotions like disgust are sometimes trying to tell us something and it is our job to find out what.11 Clearly this account of the moral relevance of disgust and similar feelings faces a serious problem: if the feeling of disgust is not significant in itself, often has no ‘meaning’ and carries no moral message, how then can we ever distinguish those cases where it does from those where it does not? And if the feeling as such does not give us any clue, would it not be better to ignore it altogether and focus instead on those features of the situation that provide us with the relevant moral information that we require in order to determine what we ought to do? If we cannot rely on our feelings of disgust as a guide to morals, if we cannot judge that an action is morally wrong simply on the grounds that we are disgusted by it, then it is hard to see why we should consider it morally relevant at all. This kind of difficulty seems to face all sentimentalist accounts of moral judgement. When Mary Warnock12 argued that a sense of outrage might possibly suffice to deem certain practices morally wrong – like embryo experimentation, shovelling the dead into the ground without ceremony, or the supply of surrogate mothers by commercial agencies – John Harris13 criticized Warnock for assuming, without giving any evidence at all, that a sense of outrage is always a sense of moral outrage. People may be shocked by practices such as the above mentioned, but that does not mean that they are morally justified in being shocked. Perhaps they are only prejudiced: the crucial problem, entirely ignored by Warnock, is that not all feelings are moral feelings and not all outrage is moral outrage. So that while we ought to respect the moral beliefs and feelings of others even where we do not share them, we have no reason to respect their prejudices or brute preferences or aversions.14

Since we have no obligation to take account of people’s mere prejudices, we obviously need a criterion to distinguish prejudice from a genuine moral feeling that might then give rise to a valid moral principle. Harris believes that this criterion can only be the ability to provide a ‘justification in moral terms’ for having that particular feeling and, moreover, expecting others to share it or at least act in accordance with it. ‘Moral terms’, for Harris, are ‘terms which would refer to the way in which violating the principle causes harm to persons or otherwise adversely affects persons or their interests or violates their rights or causes injustice.’15

to more refined (and, incidentally, more efficient) ways of killing. When the Nazis realized that many soldiers had serious difficulties coping with the increasingly frequent mass shootings, they invented the gas chambers in order to circumvent feelings of disgust and thus to facilitate the act of killing. 11 Midgley, ‘Biotechnology and Monstrosity’, p. 9. 12 Mary Warnock, ‘Do Human Cells Have Rights?’, Bioethics, 1/1 (1987): 1–14. 13 John Harris, Clones, Genes, and Immortality (Oxford and New York, 1998). 14 Ibid., p. 56. 15 Ibid., p. 59.

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In the next section I will counter this kind of objection by showing that it begs the question and faces the same difficulty that the sentimentalist view is supposed to fall victim to. The following sections elaborate Midgley’s claim that disgust is an important and in fact indispensable, though not infallible, epistemic guide to certain morally questionable actions and practices. Some more objections will be raised along the way, and hopefully met. Moral feelings and their justification in moral terms When does a feeling qualify as a moral feeling? And can something like disgust ever be a moral feeling at all? When Harris uses the term ‘moral feeling’, he means a feeling that can be justified in what he thinks are moral terms. If, and only if, a feeling can be justified in that way it is thought to be warranted, acceptable as a guide to action and, presumably, rational.16 Hence, in order to decide whether a feeling is moral or not, we have to look beyond its intrinsic qualities and submit it to the test of moral justifiability. If we then find that the feeling does not pass the test, we can discard it as irrational and not worthy of serious moral consideration. However, this way of defining the term ‘moral feeling’ has the effect of blurring the distinction between feelings that have a normative content and those that do not. If I, for instance, happen to feel a strong aversion to meat-eating, this aversion can, in theory, take either of two distinct forms. First, I may hate the taste and look of meat, find the idea of eating dead animals extremely unappealing, resent people who eat meat in my presence, and may even wish that people would generally give up this distasteful habit, without ever thinking that it is wrong to eat meat or that people ought not to engage in a practice that requires the killing of animals. If, on the other hand, my aversion to meat-eating is cognitively related to its presumed wrongness, then my aversion has a normative content and to that extent is a moral feeling, whereas in the former case it is not. Note that in order to feel that a practice, for example killing animals for food, is wrong and ought not to be done, we do not have to be able to give a coherent account of why it is wrong. Before we even attempt to justify our feelings they can be divided into moral and non-moral feelings depending on whether or not they have, or are related to, a normative content. We can thus define a moral feeling as a feeling part of whose cognitive content is the wrongness of a certain kind of action or practice. Thus understood, Mary Warnock was quite right to regard widespread hostile feelings towards human embryo research as moral feelings. This, of course, does not settle the question of whether those feelings should be endorsed and taken as a guide for action. By accepting a feeling as a moral feeling we do not commit ourselves to accepting it as the expression of a legitimate moral concern. Instead, we are just recognizing that that feeling has a moral content, whether this is, in a particular case, justified or not. If you, for instance, feel indignation because you believe a wrong has been done, your feeling of indignation should qualify as moral

16 See Alan Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Oxford, 1990), p. 7: ‘A rational feeling is an apt feeling, a warranted feeling, a way it makes sense to feel about something.’

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even if you are incapable of convincing others that what you consider wrong actually is wrong. If you feel contempt for a particular person because you believe that she behaves in a way she ought not to behave, your contempt is a moral feeling even if others do not see anything contemptible in her behaviour.17 Likewise, if you feel disgusted by a certain practice and your disgust is such that you believe that practice to be wrong (instead of being merely unpleasant to behold), then your feeling of disgust is a moral feeling and the disgust you feel is a moral disgust. If this proposal for using the term ‘moral feeling’ is plausible, then disgust can be a moral feeling when the object of disgust is felt to be something that ought not to be or happen.18 Harris, however, could concede this as a matter of terminology and still insist that any feeling, thought of as moral or not, that cannot be justified in moral terms, is a mere prejudice and not to be taken seriously. In other words, he could argue that not every moral feeling is a legitimate moral feeling. For instance, hostile feelings towards human embryo research are, in Harris’s view, not legitimate because they cannot be justified in what he believes are moral terms. In order to be justified in moral terms an action or practice must harm persons, adversely affect their interests, violate their rights or cause injustice. Since embryos are, per definition, not persons, any unconditional opposition to embryo research is not justifiable in moral terms. Therefore, when people feel outraged about embryo research and protest against it, they have no good reason to do so, that is, no morally legitimate reason. However, it is far from obvious that only those actions that adversely affect persons are properly thought to be morally wrong. It can certainly not be inferred from the meaning of the term ‘moral.’ The fact is that most of us would agree that harming persons is morally wrong and we do agree because most of us have come to feel that way about persons. But there is no conceptual link between ‘harming persons’ and ‘being morally wrong’ such that those and only those actions that harm persons can meaningfully be said to be morally wrong. Philosophers, especially those of a utilitarian persuasion, often talk as if it were quite obvious what is morally relevant and what is not.19 But in fact the only way to find out about what is morally relevant is to look at what people actually feel is morally relevant. To argue, as Harris does, that certain feelings are not moral feelings, that is, morally legitimate feelings, because they cannot be accounted for in terms of those principles that he thinks are alone legitimate is like pulling a rabbit from a hat in which it was hidden right from the start, that is, a clear case of begging the question. One could also call it a prejudice in the disguise of an argument. The difficulty of distinguishing between mere prejudice and morally legitimate concerns is no less of a problem for the 17 See Michelle Mason, ‘Contempt as a Moral Attitude’, Ethics, 113 (2003): 234–72. 18 See Simon Blackburn, Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning (Oxford, 1998), p. 13: ‘there is no doubt about the central ethical role of disgust, anger, and contempt.’ Gibbard (Wise Choices, p. 295) lists as moral feelings for one’s own actions besides guilt and anger: ‘shame, fear, disgust, embarrassment, and humiliation’. 19 See Anne Maclean, The Elimination of Morality (London, 1993), pp. 5 and 15: ‘bioethicists wish to present the moral conclusions for which they argue as the verdict of philosophy itself upon the issues they discuss.’ ‘Utilitarians select one of the forms that moral thinking actually does take – the form of which they approve – and label it the only rational form; thus conferring upon it a title to which it has no legitimate claim.’

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rationalist than it is for the sentimentalist. While the sentimentalist needs to explain why a certain feeling such as moral disgust is supposed to be sometimes morally relevant and sometimes not (unless they want to claim that it is always morally relevant), the rationalist needs to explain why his or her account of what is morally relevant is more adequate than alternative accounts. This, however, can only be done by reference to widely shared moral intuitions, that is, to the way people actually feel about it. Those intuitions in fact provide the only possible justification for any theory of what is morally relevant.20 Accordingly, if those intuitions are ignored because the moral terms one favours do not account for them, these terms lack justification even more than a moral feeling that is not supported by a widely accepted moral theory. For a moral feeling that is shared by the vast majority of people living at a certain time in a certain society is not in need of further theoretical justification, whereas a moral theory that is not backed by the moral feelings that are prevalent at a certain time and place will not appear plausible and, as a consequence, its prescriptions not justified. This claim gains support by psychological research that strongly suggests the epistemological priority of moral intuitions and feelings. Interviews conducted with both conservatives and liberals about sexual morality showed that both groups alike tended to base their respective judgements on their affections rather than perceptions of harmfulness.21 Moreover, they were often at a loss to give supporting reasons for their judgements, yet despite this did not question them.22 This indicates that the reasoning process does not precede the moral judgement. In fact, it seems that we only start reasoning about our moral intuitions when the need arises to convince others of the superiority of our view. As Jonathan Haidt, who some years ago developed a very convincing social intuitionist model of moral judgement, puts it: ‘Moral reasoning is usually an ex post facto process used to influence the intuitions (and hence judgements) of other people.’23 Thus, when we engage in moral reasoning, there is nothing impartial about it. Instead, by referring to those moral theories that are culturally available and generally considered to be acceptable, we construct a post hoc justification for those moral intuitions we already started with. We do not, for instance, judge abortion to be morally wrong because we think that life starts at conception. Rather, we have the ‘gut feeling’ that abortion is bad, and then, if challenged, justify our feeling by arguing that life starts at conception.24 Hence, if we 20 See H.H. Price, Belief (London, 1969), p. 395: ‘the process of justification must stop somewhere. … If you ask me why I approve of charitable actions as such, I can only answer “I just do approve of them, that’s all. And surely you do too?” … Suppose you disagree …. Then there is nothing more that I can do to justify my own attitude. Nor would there be anything more I could do, if I were asked why I disapprove of causing pain to other sentient beings merely for the sake of one’s own pleasure. Here again, I could only say “I just do disapprove of it, that’s all; and surely you do too?”’ 21 Jonathan Haidt and M. Hersh, ‘Sexual Morality: The Cultures and Reasons of Liberals and Conservatives’, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 31 (1993): 191–221. 22 Jonathan Haidt, ‘The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment’, Psychological Review, 108/4 (2001): 814–34, p. 817. 23 Ibid., p. 814. 24 Ibid., p. 817.

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do not succeed in convincing the other party that we are right and they are wrong, this is not because our arguments are not good enough but rather because we make the false assumption that our own moral intuitions as well as those of our opponents are based on more or less rational arguments. Haidt calls this twofold assumption the ‘wag-the-dog illusion’ and the ‘wag-the-other-dog’s-tail illusion’, respectively, the dog being our intuitive moral judgment and its tail the accompanying moral reasoning. Moral arguments are then ‘like shadow-boxing matches: Each contestant lands heavy blows to the opponent’s shadow, then wonders why she doesn’t fall down.’25 If this account is correct, then Harris’s objection to Warnock fails because there is no obvious way of distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate moral feelings other than by presupposing a criterion for legitimacy that derives its plausibility from the very feelings it is meant to legitimize. Again, this is not to say that it is pointless to demand some reflection on why we feel as we do. Generally, we want to make sense of our feelings. But there is more than one way to do that and we should not dismiss certain emotions as morally irrelevant simply on the grounds that we cannot account for them in terms of accustomed moral theories. We always have to consider the entire situation in which a feeling is expressed and judge it on its individual merits. Sensitivity, as Mary Midgley puts it, ‘requires rationality to complete it, and vice versa. There is no siding onto which emotions can be shunted so as not to impinge on thought.’26 The phenomenology of disgust The last section argued that whether a feeling is moral or not does not depend on the availability of a justification for it that is generally considered to be rational. If that is correct then disgust can be a moral feeling even if such a justification is lacking. However, whether it is a feeling we can ever make sense of, and should endorse in respect to certain actions and practices, has not yet been decided. Before tackling this question, though, we need to say a little more about what kind of feeling disgust is. What are its defining features? Disgust is generally considered to be a basic emotion that is distinctively human and can be found in all human cultures. Following Rozin et al.,27 disgust is characterized by the experience of nausea, the fear of contamination, a tendency to distance oneself from the object or situation that elicits disgust and, last but not least, a sense of offence ‘related to a sense of deviance or imperfection: something is not as it should be’.28 The last defining quality links the feeling of disgust to the notion of integrity. If the term integrity, as argued in Chapter 4, denotes that particular condition in which an object is unharmed and is as it should be, then the feeling of disgust detects a violation of integrity. Disgust differs from distaste: while the latter is a reaction to unpleasant sensory qualities, the former is a reaction to the presumed 25 26 27 28

Ibid., p. 822. Midgley, Animals and Why They Matter, p. 43. Paul Rozin et al., ‘Disgust: The Body and Soul Emotion’, pp. 429–45. Ibid., p. 430.

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nature and origin of an object. We do not necessarily object to the taste of maggots in our food; it is sufficient to believe there to be maggots (which are associated with rotting corpses and generally the decay of animal matter). Originally, feelings of disgust were centred on food selection and served to protect the body from harmful substances (just as the Latin term integritas was often used in relation to food that was not contaminated). During the process of human civilization, however, disgust has gradually come to cover more and other grounds, eventually serving to protect not only the body but also the soul from harm.29 Although the way disgust is experienced and expressed has not changed, the objects and events that trigger it have. There are at least three other domains of life into which the original core disgust has expanded. The first domain covers everything that reminds us of our own animal nature, such as body odours, sex, ‘body envelope violations’ and death. All this needs to be hidden if we want to preserve our idea of ourselves as being something special that is not, or at least not to the same extent, subject to natural processes as animals are. In so far as disgust effectively motivates us to hide our animal nature from each other, it has, pace Nussbaum, a civilizing effect. ‘Disgust is thus the emotion of civilization, and of socialization. It is part of affirming our unique humanity.’30 Rozin et al. call this kind of disgust ‘animal-nature disgust’. A further expansion of the core disgust is ‘interpersonal disgust’, which is the disgust many people feel when coming into too intimate social contact with someone they do not know or do not want to have intimate contact with. Finally and, for the purpose of this book, most importantly, there is a disgust that comes about as a reaction to certain socio-moral violations. Rozin et al. find this a ‘puzzling category’ because obviously not all socio-moral violations are considered to be disgusting and many of those that are ‘appear to be disgusting because they involve aspects of core or animal-nature disgust (e.g. the sexual molestation of children, or brutal murders that involve mutilation or other body envelope violations).’31 Some, however, appear to be disgusting on other grounds, for instance when people are disgusted by instances of hypocrisy, racism, betrayal or disloyalty. Why can these elicit disgust whereas other socio-moral violations cannot or at least usually do not? Why, for instance, do we not normally consider someone who commits a bank robbery disgusting? Rozin et al. give the following interesting explanation: A bank-robber has a normal (human) desire for money; he uses unacceptable means to get money, and for his crime he must ‘pay back’ society in some way. However, people who reveal themselves to have deep characterological flaws that make them unfit for participation in society are rejected and ostracized by the socio-moral disgust of their peers. Thus, racism (for liberals) or lack of loyalty (for conservatives) makes a person revolting and perhaps contaminating in a way that a bank-robber is not.32

29 30 31 32

Ibid., p. 431. Ibid., p. 434. Ibid., p. 436. Ibid.

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This explanation, whether convincing or not, provides a link between animal-nature disgust and moral disgust. The link, overlooked by Rozin et al., is the idea we have of ourselves as humans. That the bank-robber is said to have a ‘normal (human) desire’ for money means that we can understand him, that, although we cannot tolerate his behaviour, he is still one of us. He can still be accepted as human without forcing us to negate or compromise our ‘unique humanity’. Actions that disgust us threaten the image we have of ourselves, the way we define ourselves. In the case of animalnature disgust, it is usually sufficient to hide our animal nature from each other to stop or prevent the disgust reaction. Moral disgust, however, is more demanding than that. When we are morally disgusted by an action or practice we do not demand that it be performed secretly. Instead, we demand that it not be performed at all in order to protect our ‘soul’ from contamination, that is, to let no harm come to our idea of what it means to be human. Leon Kass and the wisdom of repugnance Some years ago the neo-conservative philosopher and George W. Bush’s presidential bioethics advisor, Leon Kass, remarked that a society ‘that always rationalizes away the abominable’ is ‘a society that has forgotten how to shudder’.33 One need not sympathize with the Bush government, or identify with conservatism as a worldview, to acknowledge the truth in Kass’s remark. Kass claims that the revulsion or repugnance we occasionally feel in the face of certain actions or conditions often is the ‘emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason’s power fully to articulate it’.34 We ‘intuit and feel, immediately and without argument, the violation of things that we rightfully hold dear’.35 We may, of course, wonder how we can be sure that the things whose violation we immediately intuit are things we rightfully hold dear. Could we not be wrong in holding them dear? What justifies our trusting such intuitions? It seems that the mere intuition, or feeling, that something is terribly wrong, or abominable, is not enough to establish its wrongness. To achieve this, other, more rational grounds seem to be required. Simply to declare that we do not need those rational grounds in order to judge some practice, for instance human cloning, morally wrong, because all it needs to condemn the practice is our instinctual disgust, sounds, as Nicholas Agar puts it, ‘like cheating. Placing the conservative’s conclusion about biotechnology beyond reason’s reach goes against the grain for those who are used to rationally justifying their moral conclusions.’36 Agar rejects Kass’s ‘“yuck” argument’ because he believes that if ‘we lack a rationally persuasive reason to find their existence (i.e., the existence of cloned or genetically engineered human beings) wrongful, we should not translate queasiness into moral 33 Leon R. Kass and James Q. Wilson, The Ethics of Human Cloning (Washington, DC, 1998), p. 87. 34 Ibid., p. 18. 35 Ibid., p. 19. 36 Nicholas Agar, Liberal Eugenics: In Defence of Human Enhancement (Oxford, 2004), p. 56. Similarly Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity, p. 153: ‘To appeal to disgust seems to be just to say “I don’t like that,” and to stamp one’s foot vehemently.’

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condemnations.’37 However, as argued above, to what extent we find arguments in support of certain moral intuitions plausible, and hence rational, depends on whether those arguments are themselves supported by our intuitions. It is hard to see how any argument that is completely disjoined from our moral intuitions can be said to be more convincing, plausible or rational than any other. Most of us share the intuition that suffering is bad and that we ought not to make anything suffer if we can avoid it. That is why arguments to the effect that certain actions are to be avoided because they cause (needless) suffering carry a considerable immediate plausibility. If suffering did not strike us as bad, we would not understand the argument. For the same reason, a moral theory that focuses on suffering and its avoidance gives the impression of providing rational grounds to our intuitions. But the apparent objectivity thus achieved is simply an illusion. Yet if there are, strictly, no rational grounds for our moral judgements, then it seems all we can say is that there are some things we (or some of us) ‘hold dear’ and some we do not. We can then never decide whether we are right in holding them dear. Usually this is supposed to be a problem that needs solving. Yet I am not sure that it is. Perhaps there is no non-circular way of distinguishing clearly and once and for all between legitimate and illegitimate moral feelings, and between rightfully and not rightfully holding something dear. If that is the case, then clearly the practical question of how to deal with those widespread sentiment-based moral concerns that cannot be accounted for by established moral theories becomes more difficult to answer. A straightforward rejection is no longer an option. Instead we are compelled to take those concerns seriously for a start and then see how well they fit to everything else that is important to us as human beings or as members of a certain civilization or society: to other concerns we have, to other things we hold dear, to other moral feelings, and to the image we have of ourselves. Thus the relevant question is not, are those concerns rational and therefore legitimate?; but rather, do they make sense to us in the light of the complex of interrelated beliefs and feelings that define our specific way of living in, and looking at, the world? Now, there are practices that many people most strongly object to without being able to justify their objection or its intensity plausibly in terms of established moral theories, but are nonetheless generally assumed to be morally wrong. Objections in these cases are mostly based on the revulsion felt. What is felt is what I would call a kind of moral disgust. Kass names some of those practices and poses the question of whether anyone can really give an argument fully adequate to the horror which is father-daughter incest (even with consent), or having sex with animals, or mutilating a corpse, or eating human flesh, or raping or murdering another human being? Would anybody’s failure to give full rational justification for his revulsion at those practices make that revulsion ethically suspect?38

Kass has a very good point here. He is not saying that one cannot argue at all that having sex with animals, mutilating a corpse and so on is morally wrong. In fact, there may be plenty of good arguments, even though none of them may be compelling 37 Agar, Liberal Eugenics, p. 58. 38 Kass and Wilson, The Ethics of Human Cloning, p. 18.

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in their own right. But none of these arguments, claims Kass, is ‘fully adequate to the horror’ of the action in question. We may give arguments why a certain action is morally wrong (and some of these arguments will be more plausible than others), but there are some actions that are not merely morally wrong, like, say, theft or the breaking of a promise, but rather more than just morally wrong. It is as if calling it morally wrong were simply insufficient to cover the kind of wrongness that we encounter here. It is not just wrong, but rather a ‘horror’, an ‘abomination’. Of course, we may disagree with what Kass classifies as such a horror. We may, for instance, wonder whether human cloning is really a horror and an abomination in the sense that our revulsion of it, if we happen to feel it, is sufficient grounds for its condemnation. But we must, I think, admit that there are some things that really are a horror, which simply should not happen or be allowed to happen, which can never be justified, no matter whether we can rationally explain why they should not happen. Cruelty Consider the case where a child is tortured and then killed just for the ‘fun’ of it, and then imagine the moral philosopher who undertakes to explain why it is morally wrong to do such a thing. She might say that a child is capable of suffering, or that being tortured and killed is clearly against her interests, and that it is prima facie wrong to violate somebody’s interests or to hurt them and to make them suffer. Or she might argue that a human being should never be treated merely as a means, but always as an end in itself as well. She could claim that torturing and killing a child could never be a universal law and that hence it must be wrong. Or she could say that it is definitely a breach of the social contract. But the fact is: each of these explanations seems hopelessly inadequate. Neither is there any need for such an explanation – because we simply know or at least cannot seriously doubt it is wrong – nor does it help us in any way to understand the kind of wrongness we immediately perceive. Of course, there are many actions whose wrongness can be clarified by systematic explanations for why they are wrong. When we ask ourselves why, for instance, theft is (always) wrong, or lying, or adultery, we may find a utilitarian, Kantian or contractualist account quite helpful and illuminating (as long, that is, as we can relate to the underlying moral intuitions). However, there are other actions whose very nature defies all our attempts to rationalize our objection to them. They are not merely wrong for such and such reasons. Rather, they are horrible, ‘too big for words’. They make us speechless. When it comes to positively cruel, ‘inhuman’ actions, simple moral disapproval is not the proper reaction. Adorno must have had something like this in mind when he, in his Negative Dialectics, remarked that Hitler forced a new categorical imperative on us which to discursively justify would be heinous (‘ein Frevel’): the imperative not to let Auschwitz (or something similar to it) happen again. For this imperative is nothing but the ‘practically applied abhorrence of the unbearable physical pain which the individuals had to suffer’.39 39 Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialektik (Frankfurt, 1966), part III (Meditationen zur Metaphysik), sect. 2: ‘Hitler hat den Menschen im Stande ihrer Unfreiheit einen neuen kategorischen Imperativ aufgezwungen: ihr Denken und Handeln so einzurichten,

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Slavenka Drakulic once reported in the New York Times an incident that happened during the war in Bosnia: Serbian soldiers raped a woman while her little baby lay beside her. When they were finished with her and she asked for permission to breastfeed her baby, one of the soldiers took a knife, cut the baby’s head off and threw it into the arms of its screaming mother.40 This is not just morally wrong: it is positively evil, and we acknowledge this evil by our revulsion. I do not think that it is specifically the dismemberment of the infant’s body that triggers our revulsion in this case. Animalnature disgust may be part of it, but is not at the centre. Rather, we revolt against the sheer wanton cruelty, the apparent complete lack of compassion, and the blatant unconcernedness and ease with which a human body and the accompanying life are destroyed. The cruelty is such that we do not recognize the murderer as a human being anymore. At the same time, knowing that he is one, we recognize him as the mirror image of ourselves. It makes us sick to realize that someone who is capable of doing such a thing belongs to our own kind. This is much worse than just having to realize that we are, after all, animals too. It is not our animal nature that reveals itself in this instance. Although animal nature is something of which we do not like to be reminded, it is not normally something that positively horrifies us. Yet when we are confronted with humans that are capable of committing crimes such as the one described, humanity itself becomes a horror, something we can no longer identify with, but have to all the same. The immediate object of our revulsion, however, is the extreme cruelty displayed. ‘Why is it’, asks Judith Shklar in Ordinary Vices, ‘that wanton pain inflicted upon helpless beings, especially children and animals, is so revolting?’41 Shklar does not give an answer to her question, but she certainly does treat the revolting character of cruelty towards the helpless as a fact. They are, for Shklar, indeed a ‘horror’,42 an ‘abomination’,43 and that is something which definitely can not be appropriately said about morally wrong actions such as lying or theft (except perhaps in certain situations where, for instance, the helpless are robbed of their only means of survival). We may well say that lying or stealing (or bankrobbery) is morally wrong whatever the circumstances, but we would hardly call those actions a horror or an abomination. There is nothing revolting in them. Actions that are considered to be abominable belong to an entirely different moral category. It might be objected that abhorrence is not the same as disgust, that disgust is not what we experience when we come across a case like the one mentioned. However, it is at least very similar to disgust in terms of the bodily reactions connected with it. It is certainly more than just indignation. It can literally make one sick to think that a thing like that actually happened. When I told Drakulic’s story to a group of dass Auschwitz sich nicht wiederhole, nichts Ähnliches geschehe. Dieser Imperativ is so widerspenstig gegen seine Begründung wie einst die Gegebenheit des Kantischen. Ihn diskursiv zu behandeln, wäre Frevel: an ihm lässt leibhaft das Moment des Hinzutretenden am Sittlichen sich fühlen. Leibhaft, weil es der praktisch gewordene Abscheu vor dem unerträglichen physischen Schmerz ist, dem die Individuen ausgesetzt sind, auch nachdem Individualität, als geistige Reflexionsform, zu verschwinden sich anschickt.’ 40 New York Times, 13 December 1992. 41 Judith Shklar, Ordinary Vices (Cambridge, MA and London, 1984), p. 24. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid., p. 30.

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students during a seminar, one of them ran out to the bathroom and threw up. The fact that this can be the result of merely hearing the incident related indicates that it is the action itself (and not, say, the visual appearance of it) which revolts us. Seeing cockroaches in the cupboard, or being in the presence of them, might make us sick with disgust, but it is rather unlikely that thinking of their mere existence will have the same effect on us. This is not because disgust always depends on some kind of sensory presence, but rather because we do not feel any moral disgust towards cockroaches. Moral disgust is the kind of disgust we feel towards abominable acts like the one above mentioned. Slavery and meat-eating It may seem that in the case of wanton cruelty our revulsion, disgust or horror – or whatever we choose to call it – can, to a certain extent, be rationally justified. Although our moral theories may not be suitable to adequately explain the disgust that, for instance, the slaughtering of defenceless human beings triggers in us, they at least can explain plausibly enough why it is morally wrong. The theory thus seems to give us an independent means to test whether our disgust is justified or not. In other words, we need not rely on the feeling of disgust to convince us that the actions we are disgusted by are wrong. At first glance this is very helpful since, after all, it is possible that some actions which I find abhorrent are not considered abhorrent by you, and vice versa, and that some actions on whose repulsiveness we all agree today will sometime in the future be felt to be quite all right, or felt all right sometime in the past. Just consider, suggests Peter Strawson, ‘the changes in the attitude to the institution of slavery, now generally regarded as morally abhorrent; consider even possible future changes in the attitude to meat-eating, which some wish to see generally regarded as no less morally abhorrent.’44 Let us follow for a moment Strawson’s suggestion and first consider slavery. We have learned, or so it seems, that slavery is morally wrong. We are able to justify our abhorrence of it by powerful and indeed very convincing arguments. Hence, we are rather puzzled that such a great thinker as Aristotle did not see what we so clearly see today and that he could really believe that slavery was a natural (and therefore quite appropriate) institution. Slavery is so obviously, in the words of Leon Kass, ‘a violation of things which we rightfully hold dear’. But, again, how do we know that we rightfully hold the liberty of each and every human being dear? One is tempted to think that it is because we see things more clearly now, because we have reflected more thoroughly on the matter. That is why we feel disgusted now. But the truth is that we are not disgusted because arguments have convinced us that slavery is wrong, but rather do we find those arguments so convincing because we find the idea of slavery so repulsive. The disgust we feel today may have been shaped by arguments, but those arguments would never have convinced anybody if they had not been supported by strong feelings pointing in the same direction. Aristotle, after all, had a theory of his own, which he found quite convincing and which in his own 44 P.F. Strawson, Scepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties (London, 1985), p. 47.

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eyes justified his not feeling disgusted by slavery. So why exactly do we not find Aristotle’s arguments convincing anymore? Is it because they are unsound? Or is it because our emotional attitude towards slavery has changed? It seems to me that the latter is much more likely. Now consider meat-eating. Unlike slavery, which all philosophers (and most non-philosophers) today agree is wrong, meat-eating is still a controversial moral issue. At present there are those who are (morally) disgusted by it and those who are not, and both are able to find plenty of arguments for their respective positions. So how should we decide which side is right? If we had one single moral theory shared by both the defenders and the opponents of meat-eating we could in principle solve the matter. But as it is, there are theories supportive of meat-eating and theories supportive of vegetarianism, and which theory one finds convincing does not seem to be independent of what one is in favour of, or emotionally opposed to. However, at least there is, for each position, a well-conceived and widely accepted theory to which one can refer. One does not have to confine oneself to being simply disgusted but can account for why one is disgusted and why everyone else ought to be disgusted as well. That is, whether we find meat-eating repulsive, or not, in both cases we can make good sense of our respective feelings, that is, our repugnance, or the absence of it. But does it not follow from this that there is nothing objectively disgusting, nothing that truly deserves our disgust? Defiling the dead and the ‘objectively’ disgusting Justin d’Arms and Daniel Jacobson45 have argued that emotions, in contrast to, for example, moods or feelings, involve evaluative presentations. Taken in this sense, what I have described as moral disgust is not a feeling but an emotion because it does present certain aspects of the world (that is, certain actions and practices) in a particular way, namely as genuinely (morally) disgusting. According to d’Arms and Jacobson an emotional response can be said to be ‘fitting’ if it accurately presents its object as having certain evaluative properties. Hence, if disgust is an emotion (as d’Arms and Jacobson think it is), then it can be accurate and justified if the object it presents as disgusting really is disgusting. Accordingly, feeling moral disgust towards a certain action or practice would be appropriate (fitting) if and only if it were really morally disgusting. But when is an object really disgusting? Christopher Knapp has rightly pointed out that disgustingness is a relative property: ‘It makes no more sense to say that something is disgusting per se than it does to say that something is illegal per se.’46 Things are always disgusting for someone, so if we are not disgusted by something, so long as we take it for what it is, it cannot be disgusting, and if we are mistaken about its nature, it can only be judged disgusting if we would be disgusted were we to know what it was. It follows that the notion of fittingness does not apply. Either feelings of disgust always fit their objects or they never do. This does not 45 Justin d’Arms and Daniel Jacobson, ‘The Moralistic Fallacy: On the “Appropriateness of Emotions”’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 61/1 (2000): 65–90. 46 Christopher Knapp, ‘De-moralizing Disgustingness’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 66/2 (2003): 253–78, p. 255.

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necessarily prevent us from distinguishing between objects or actions that deserve our disgust and those that do not. It is just that we cannot make this distinction on the basis of objectively disgusting properties, for there is no such thing. If an action deserves our disgust, it must deserve it on other grounds than those. For Knapp, these other grounds are ‘moral reasons’. However, he fails to clarify what reasons count as moral and how we should ever know them to be moral without recurring to the moral feelings people actually have. Just as disgustingness is relative to the disgust actually felt, moral wrongness is relative to the perception of something as morally wrong. But we can only perceive something as morally wrong by feeling some sort of moral disapproval of it, and moral disgust is a very strong sort of such disapproval. Thus we can no more say that something is objectively morally wrong than we can say that it is objectively disgusting. However, there are situations in which it is virtually impossible to acknowledge the non-objectivity of our moral judgements. Struggling with the problem of relativity, Jeffrey Stout claims: ‘When the Nazis made lampshades out of the skins of their human victims, that was truly abominable.’47 That is to say, it does not merely appear abominable to us. Rather, we would be wrong to regard such an action as not abominable, because ‘there are certain ways in which human beings (and their remains) shouldn’t be treated.’ Again, I take the word ‘abominable’ here to be synonymous to the morally disgusting. To call something an abomination is an expression of one’s moral disgust. Stout’s example is quite interesting in so far as, while with the usual moral theories it is fairly easy to explain why human beings should not be killed and mutilated, it is much harder to see why their remains should not be treated in any way that suits us. Why, after all, should we not make lampshades out of the dead? Why not make use of them as long and as much as we can? They surely do not mind, and what good is there in letting them rot? Granted it was wrong to kill them, but once this is done, it seems no harm can result from putting their remains to practical use. If someone should think that the harm in this case was done to the person who once lived, and whose skin is being used in a way she certainly would have minded, we can imagine that the person in question in fact did not mind what would happen to her body after her death – which surely is possible. Even then, I think, we cannot help feeling that Stout is right: it actually is an abomination to treat the dead as if they were a mere commodity to be used at our convenience, no matter whether they themselves would have minded. Strangely enough, it may even seem more horrible to treat them that way than to kill them in the first place, even though we have difficulty stating clearly the exact nature of the harm that is here being inflicted on the dead. But we are convinced that there is harm done, and we do not abandon our conviction when philosophers, putting too much trust in their pet theory, try to persuade us that our reaction is quite irrational and we should not pay any attention to it. No argument will convince us that making lampshades out of the skins of murdered people is not abominable. But of course, no one seriously doubts that we 47 Jeffrey Stout, Ethics after Babel: The Languages of Morals and their Discontents (Boston, MA, 1988), p. 160. Whether the Nazis actually did such a thing or not, is not to the point. The question is: If they did, was it ‘truly abominable’?

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should honour the dead and that in defiling them we somehow defile ourselves, that is, the living. The practice of honouring the dead is something we, to use Kass’s words, ‘hold dear’, and we do not care whether we do it rightfully or not. If we gave up treating our dead with respect we would change the meaning of humanity in a way that few people would consider progress. This may not exactly be rational but it is an essential part of our self-understanding as human beings. There are, however, other occasions for moral disgust that appear to be equally irrational but lack the sanctioning of a long established public opinion. One of those is the repugnance many people feel towards the genetic manipulation of living organisms in general, and the creation of transgenic chimeras in particular. This is the last occasion for moral disgust I want to discuss in this chapter. And again I will use a fictional example. ChickieNobs Margaret Atwood, in her novel Oryx and Crake, describes a scene where the narrator, Jimmy, is guided through the floors and laboratories of an elite college specializing in biotechnology. One room is occupied by strange objects: What they were looking at was a large bulblike object that seemed to be covered with stippled whitish-yellow skin. Out of it came twenty thick fleshy tubes, and at the end of each tube another bulb was growing. ‘What the hell is it?’ said Jimmy. ‘Those are chickens,’ said Crake. ‘Chicken parts. Just the breasts, on this one. …’ ‘But there aren’t any heads,’ said Jimmy. … ‘That’s the head in the middle,’ said the woman. ‘There’s a mouth-opening at the top, they dump the nutrients in there. No eyes or beak or anything, they don’t need those.’ ‘This is horrible,’ said Jimmy. The thing was a nightmare. … ‘No need for added growth hormones,’ said the woman, ‘the high growth rate’s built in. You get chicken breasts in two weeks – that’s a three-week improvement on the most efficient low-light, high-density chicken farming operation so far devised. And the animal-welfare freaks won’t be able to say a word, because this thing feels no pain.’48

No doubt, Jimmy is disgusted by what he sees in the laboratory, although he will soon become used to eating ChickieNobs, as those creatures are called. This is not because later they do not strike him as a horror anymore, but rather because he has managed to dispel all thoughts about what he is eating. Strangely enough, the fact pointed out by the lab assistant, that ‘this thing feels no pain’ so the ‘animal-welfare freaks’ have no reason to protest, does not, in Jimmy’s eyes, make it any better.49 On the contrary, it somehow increases the horror of it. But if there is no pain involved, 48 Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake (London, 2003), pp. 202–3. 49 Jimmy’s opinion is shared by Traci Warkentin, ‘Dis/integrating Animals: Ethical Dimensions of the Genetic Engineering of Animals for Human Consumption’, AI & Society, 20 (2006): 82–102, p. 97. Warkentin discusses Atwood’s novel in relation to Rollin’s claim that if we could genetically engineer decerebrate food animals we should do so in order to protect the animals’ welfare: ‘To suggest genetically modifying a chicken which lacks the urge to nest is provocative enough, but to suggest a chicken which lacks a brain is downright shocking’.

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so that animal welfare concerns simply do not apply, what can be wrong with it?50 If nobody is harmed and no other argument for why it is wrong to do such a thing can be given, all opposition ought to be classified as evidently irrational and unjustified. If the disgust felt by Jimmy is a moral disgust, then surely it is inappropriate here. At least this is what many bioethicists urge us to believe. One of them is, again, John Harris. Discussing the issue of transgenic plants and animals, Harris argues that the uneasiness some people feel about the creation of chimeras (that is, organisms that carry DNA sequences of at least two different species), even if they should look like monsters, is to be dismissed as morally irrelevant: ‘As for making us uneasy, well, we have no sacred right to tranquillity of mind, although many people think that they do.’51 The even stronger opposition to the creation of animal-human chimeras is, according to Harris, equally unjustified: It is a sort of instinctive recoiling from the very idea of contamination with animal products. Like other taboos which employ the ideas of defilement and uncleanness it is either felt or not. It deserves about as much respect as objections to miscegenation. In the absence of an argument or of the ability to point to some specific harm that might be involved in crossing species boundaries, we should regard the objections per se to such practices as on a par with objections to interracial marriage and dismiss them as mere and gratuitous prejudice.52

If we adopt Harris’s position we must, it seems, conclude that Jimmy’s instinctive recoiling from the ChickieNobs deserves no respect either. It is merely a prejudice, in no way different from the rejection of what is called by those who reject it, ‘miscegenation’. The same objection is raised by Martha Nussbaum against Leon Kass’s disgust-based argument against human cloning: Kass ‘offers us no way of distinguishing the disgust that lay behind antimiscegenation laws from the disgust that he endorses as a good legal criterion in the case of cloning.’53 However, there actually is an important difference between those cases: between the opposition to human cloning, embryo research, the creation of animal-animal or human-animal chimeras on the one hand and the opposition to sexual relations between persons of the same sex or of different skin colour on the other. The difference is that there are, in fact, good moral arguments against the enforcement of sexual and racial prejudices. A good moral argument is one that is supported by strong moral feelings that are widely shared. In our society, we have come to respect both the equality of all persons in terms of their basic rights and the right of individuals to sexual self-determination. We have come to think that all people have a right to their private life and to do with it whatever they like as long 50 A similar case is discussed by Bernice Bovenkerk, Frans W.A. Brom and Babs J. van den Bergh in their paper ‘Brave New Birds: The Use of “Animal Integrity” in Animal Ethics’, Hastings Center Report, 32/1 (2002), pp. 16–22. 51 Harris, Clones, Genes, and Immortality, p. 179. 52 Ibid., p. 181. The same point was made by Jonathan Glover, What Sort of People Should There Be? (Harmondsworth, 1984), pp. 40–41. 53 Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity, p. 148.

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as they do not harm anyone. Some may not like the idea, but even they can, if they make the effort, understand that there are more important values to be preserved here. Today the idea of sexual oppression disgusts many people far more than the idea of homosexual relations does.54 Personal autonomy is something we have learned to ‘hold dear’, which is crucial to our self-understanding as members of a basically liberal society. This fact provides us with an excellent moral reason not to give in to our feelings of disgust (or those of others), even if we are not willing to dismiss them as completely morally irrelevant. In the Atwood case, on the other hand, which admittedly is an extreme case, there is no good moral reason to overcome or at least ignore our feelings of disgust. A being is created that is not much more than a living, or rather growing, piece of meat. This might serve economic interests but certainly no moral interests. It might be objected, however, that if something serves economic interests then it has some utility: it benefits people, and if it does then surely it serves moral interests as well. After all, it is good for someone. Yet, although this moralization of the economic is a popular misconception, it is still a misconception. Utility is not a moral concept.55 The whole point of morality is to set limits to the pursuit of utility. Otherwise we could just as well accept Jonathan Swift’s modest proposal of preventing the Irish children from being a burden to their country and their parents. Yet even if utility as such is not morally relevant, since in itself it provides no moral reason for something not to be done, it is hard to see why we should not be allowed to follow utility if no harm results from it. The notion of harm This is the starting point of Harris’s argument, which draws heavily on the notion of harm. If ‘no specific harm’ can be pointed out, he claims, any objection raised is to be dismissed as mere prejudice. I am inclined to concede to Harris the intuitive plausibility of this demand. If someone is disgusted by a certain kind of action (or its results) and she, in consequence, objects to this action being performed, we must suppose that she regards it as harmful, for if she thought that the action (or the state resulting from it) was not harmful in any way it would be hard to understand the moral relevance of her disgust. There would be no reason (even for herself) to classify her disgust as a moral disgust. Furthermore, if she expects us to share her view and to act accordingly we can reasonably expect her to account for her (implicit) claim that harm is being done. If we do not share her feelings of disgust, we need at least to know why we should be disgusted. However, although moral disgust may require the notion of harm being done, it is not always easy to ‘point out’ exactly in what the alleged harm consists. The word ‘harm’ is, as Joel Feinberg rightly remarked, ‘both vague and ambiguous’.56 It is fairly clear though, that there are states and actions commonly regarded as harmful which do not involve any subjective experience of 54 See Dan M. Kahan, ‘The Progressive Appropriation of Disgust’, in Susan Bandes (ed.), The Passions of Law (New York and London, 1999), pp. 63–79. 55 See Maclean, The Elimination of Morality, especially ch. 8. 56 Joel Feinberg, Harm to Others: The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law (New York and Oxford, 1984), p. 31.

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being harmed. A person can reasonably be said to be harmed by being raped in an unconscious state. She can be said to be harmed by being painlessly killed in her sleep. She might even be harmed by events happening after her death, or before her birth.57 There is also the puzzling case where a person is being conceived (and then given birth to) even though it is known in advance that she will be seriously disabled in such a way that her life does not seem worth living. Thinking about this case might help us understand how the creation of living organisms such as Atwood’s ChickieNobs can indeed be something that, for the sake of those organisms, ought not to be done. It is a way of ‘making sense’ of our disgust, a way of spelling out the message inherent to it. Feinberg, discussing the case, argues that since the only possible alternative would have been non-existence, and it seems false to say that somebody would have been better off if she had never existed (since a non-existent person cannot be ‘better off’), or that she is worse off now than she would otherwise have been, we perhaps cannot exactly say that this person has been harmed by her being conceived and given birth to. However, we have good reasons to suppose that the state in which this person is made to live is harmful and that she was wronged by being condemned to existence: We can conclude tentatively that there are some inherited handicaps that are so severe that they doom a child’s most basic future interests to defeat. A child born with such handicaps is in a condition that we would not hesitate to call `harmed` if it were not for the fact that it is not, like standard harms, a worsening of some prior condition, being itself the initial condition of the person who is born. Whether or not we can call him harmed …, there is good reason to claim that he has been wronged to be brought into existence in such a state.58

Although Feinberg seemingly bases his argument on the ‘child’s most basic future interests’ he cannot really mean the interests the child actually has. If the child is, for instance, severely mentally retarded (one of Feinberg’s examples), his interests, whatever they will be, will be the interests of a severely mentally retarded child, and it cannot be presupposed that those interests will be thwarted by his condition. What is being thwarted here are rather the interests he would have had, had he not been born mentally retarded. But the main point is that, as Feinberg remarks: ‘Any rational being would prefer not to exist than to exist in his state.’59 We can go a step further now and suppose that the mental retardation is so severe that the infant does not feel anything at all. In this case, he would have no interests whatsoever. Even so, we would, I think, not be unreasonable or in conflict with the usual understanding of the word ‘harm’ if we insisted that such a child would have been wronged too, and that the state it is in because of somebody’s action is a harmful one. We would certainly not regard such a life as worth living. The same holds here as in the former case: any rational being would prefer not to exist than to exist in this state. This is reason enough to claim that deliberately creating such a 57 Ibid., pp. 65–104. 58 Ibid., p. 99. 59 Ibid., p. 102.

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being would be morally wrong. If we could genetically engineer brainless, entirely unconscious human beings in order to use them as organ donors, we can be sure that most people would strongly object. In fact many would agree that the very idea is revolting and the thing proposed an abomination. Again, we cannot help thinking that it would be a ‘violation of things we rightfully hold dear’. We can now return to the Atwood case. The two cases are sufficiently similar to justify an adoption of the argument given above. Although the ChickieNobs could not have existed other than they are, and their interests have, strictly, not been thwarted, it is plausible to assume that they have been wronged by being brought into existence in such a state. The life they have (if it is a life) is certainly not worth living, and any rational being would prefer not to exist than to exist in this state. That is why creating such beings cannot be dismissed as morally unproblematic. Conclusion Moral disgust is the kind of disgust we experience when witnessing an action or event that immediately, and without further reflection, strikes us as terribly wrong, that is, as something that simply ought not to happen, no matter what the circumstances. Of course, it is always a good precept to reflect on the grounds of one’s disgust and to try to integrate it into the system of interconnected beliefs that make up our moral world. Argument is, as Mary Midgley points out, ‘always in order’.60 But argument will not always help us to understand the firmness and strength of our intuitive conviction that what we are dealing with is a matter of great importance. And we will not always be able to state clearly and convincingly the reasons for our reaction and the resulting moral concerns. Even so, ‘opponents of the yuck factor must concede that, sometimes, we know that an action is wrong merely on the basis of our reaction to it, even if we cannot satisfactorily justify that reaction.’61 Harm, for sure, can be pointed out, but to acknowledge the harm as harm we need more than theory: we need the feeling of disgust or some similar reaction to make us sensitive to it. To dismiss as morally irrelevant widespread feelings of disgust towards what, in virtue of technological advances, we are able to do to living beings, is itself in need of justification. In the absence of any good moral reasons not to trust our intuitions, we should take them seriously and act accordingly.

60 Midgley, Heart and Mind, p. 151. 61 Robert Streiffer, ‘In Defense of the Moral Relevance of Species Boundaries’, American Journal of Bioethics, 3/3 (2003): 37–8, p. 38.

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Index abomination 121–2, 140, 146, 148–50, 152, 157 Adorno, Theodor W. 95, 140, 151 Agar, Nicholas 9, 138, 151 aesthetic 4–5, 30–32, 38, 117–25, 127 analytic animal 96–9 Anaxagoras 54 Anerkennungsvergessenheit 95, 98 Animal Health and Welfare Act 23, 61 animal models 2, 7, 96–99, 105, 119 animal welfare 2–3, 13, 24, 26, 42, 51–52, 68, 73, 93–4, 104, 114, 117, 119, 124, 128 anthropocentrism 57, 82–9 appearance 4, 22–6, 30–31, 33, 107, 110–11, 118, 142 Aristotle 78, 81, 83, 87 artefacts 81, 98–100 Atwood, Margaret 145, 147–9, 151 St Augustine 63, 86–9 Autonomy 9, 36, 39, 62–3, 147 Bacon, Francis 57 Banner Report 49, 129 Baranzke, Heike 63–4 Baylis, Francoise 106, 113 beauty 31–2, 37–8, 45, 79–80, 87–9 Bentham, Jeremy 64, 119 Berkeley, George 43, 70, 73 Bible 78 biocentrism 49, 82–9 biofacts 100 biotic community 37–40 Bockemuehl, Jochen 26–7 Bonitas 63–75 Brittnacher, Hans Richard 121 Bruce, Donald 26 Calhoun, Cheshire 33–6, 42 Callicott, J. Baird 68, 84 Cheney, Jim 82 ChickieNobs 145–9

chimeras and hybrids 103, 105–6, 113–4, 121, 124, 145–146 Christianity 78, 86–7 Chrysippus 79, 82 Cicero 63, 79–80, 82 Clark, Stephen R.L. 58–9, 90, 122–3, 127–8 colours, see secondary qualities commodification 94, 144 common sense 50, 56, 109 Cooley, D.R. 10–12 Cruelty 130, 140–42 d’Arms, Justin 143 Descartes, Rene 110 Dignitas 63–4 Dignity 62–68, 75, 91–2, 94, 106, 113–4, 116 Disgust 118, 120, 123, 126–7, 129–31, 138–42 animal–nature disgust 130, 137 moral disgust 3, 8, 126, 129–30, 134–9, 142–9 dominion 78, 86 Drakulic, Slavenka 141 Ducasse, C.J. 72 duty, see moral obligation Earth Charter 38 Eliot, Christopher 113, 116 emotions 126–7, 129, 132, 135–8, 143 ends and means 43, 47, 49, 51, 55, 57–8, 62, 68, 88, 91–5, 98, 100–01 Epictetus 80 essence 5–6, 12, 16, 46, 87, 105–14 eudaimonia 43, 46 experience machine 43–5 extrinsic concerns, see intrinsic and extrinsic concerns faith 75, 78, 87 fallacy of misplaced concreteness 94 Feinberg, Joel 59, 147–8 Fox, Michael 26, 51–2, 55, 77, 128

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St Francis of Assisi 86, 90 Frankenstein 7 Frankfurt, Harry 33 Gaita, Raimond 33, 89–90, 126 Gelman, S.A. 108–9 genetic engineering 1–7, 9–12, 14–5, 19, 23, 27, 49, 51, 77–8, 84, 86, 89, 103–4, 113, 117–9, 130 genetic essentialism 105, 116 genome 24–5, 103–12, 115–8 God 3–5, 8, 10, 12, 63–4, 77, 79–81, 86–90 von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 8–10 good 2, 14, 46–51, 55–56, 58–68, 72–75, 79–98, 101–04, 115–6, 119 natural 53, 58 species–specific 47, 59 Goreham, G.A. 10–12 Haidt, Jonathan 130, 135–6 Hansson, M.G. 25 happiness 41–6, 61, 64, 80, 93–4 harm 3–4, 14–5, 22, 25–6, 29, 47, 52, 59, 115, 124–5, 132, 134–8, 144, 146–9 Harris, John 130, 132–4, 136, 146–7 Harrison, Peter 78 Holdrege, Craig 26, 112 Holland, Alan 6, 79, 83, 101 Homosexuality 11, 16, 147 Honneth, Axel 95, 98 Horkheimer, Max 95 Humanity 16, 57, 94, 15–6, 114, 120, 130, 137–8, 141, 145 Hume, David 126–7 humiliation 22, 24–5, 61–2, 134 hybrids, see chimeras and hybrids ideal condition 29–31, 36–7, 41–2, 73–4, 95 identity 34–5, 42, 54–5, 102, 105–6, 109, 115 inherent value, see value, inherent instrumental value, see value, instrumental instrumentalization 3–4, 17, 22, 24–5, 77, 98, 101, 115, 127 integrity aesthetic integrity 31–2 auto–integrity 30, 32, 40, 72–3, 103–4 biological integrity (bio–integrity) 32, 37, 40, 42, 46–7, 61, 63–4, 73, 93, 101, 104–5, 115, 127

ecological integrity (eco–integrity) 32, 37–8, 40 functional 31–2 genetic 6, 25–6, 103–5, 115 hetero–integrity 30–32, 40, 73, 103 moral integrity 25, 32, 34–7, 46 personal integrity 32–7, 41–2, 46 intrinsic and extrinsic concerns 9–10, 15, 115, 117 intrinsic value, see value, intrinsic Jacobson, Daniel 143 Johnston, Josephine 113, 116 Jonas, Hans 57 justice 10, 37, 40–2, 46, 123, 131–4, 134 justification 4–5, 7, 22, 25, 30, 86, 92, 100, 119–22, 124, 130, 132–3, 135–6, 139, 149 Kant, Immanuel 12, 51, 62–4, 79, 91–5, 100–01, 127, 140 Karafyllis, Nicole 100 Kass, Leon 130, 138, 142, 146 Knapp, Christopher 143–4 Koontz, Dean 7 Kripke, Saul 108 language and deception 98 Leopold, Aldo 5, 37–8, 40 Lindee, Susan 105 Linzey, Andrew 77–8, 87, 89 Locke, John 36–7, 106–8, 110 lying, see truthfulness Lukacs, Georg 95 Lynch, Michael 95, 97, 99 McFall, Lynne 34 Marx, Karl 94–5 means, see ends and means meat–eating, see vegetarianism Midgley, Mary 121, 123, 128, 130–3, 136, 149 Miller, William 131 Monod, Jacques 86 Moore, George Edward 61, 69–72 moral accountability 64 moral feelings 130, 132–6, 139, 144, 146 moral intuitions 27, 66, 119, 124, 135–6, 138–140

Index moral obligation 27, 32, 51, 60, 64–5, 67–70, 73–4, 78, 82–6, 91–3, 128, 132 natural and unnatural 3–17, 23, 29, 40, 46–7, 52–5, 58, 61, 64, 81, 83–4, 92, 100–01, 121, 142 nature, see natural and unnatural Nelkin, Dorothy 105 Nozick, Robert 43–4 Nussbaum, Martha 131, 137–8, 146 oikeia arête 81 O’Neill, John 68, 74 Orwell, George 65 Packer, Mark 124–5 patenting 100 person 36–7, 62, 92, 134 Plato 37, 40–42, 46–7, 94 precautionary principle 9 Putnam, Hilary 108–9 rationality 3–4, 8, 33, 41–2, 44, 62, 75, 79–80, 82, 91–2, 120, 125, 128–9, 133–136, 138–40, 142, 144–6, 148–9 reference point 30–2, 36–8, 41–2, 47, 73, 103 Regan, Tom 53, 83, 91, 101 Reification 94–5, 98–101 super–reification 99 replaceability 92–3, 98 revulsion, see disgust risk assessment 1, 3–4–9, 8 Roberts, Jason 107, 113 Rollin, Bernard 4, 26, 50–52, 117–20, 122–3, 127, 145 Rolston, Holmes 60, 69–71, 74, 83, 89 Routley, Richard 85 Rozin, Paul 130, 136–7 Schopenhauer, Arthur 44–5 Schweitzer, Albert 66 Scottish Council on Human Bioethics 106, 116 secondary qualities 70–72 sentimentalism 132–4 Shelley, Mary 7 Shklar, Judith 141 sentience 49, 51, 64, 91, 93, 96–8, 119, 135 side effects 1, 8

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slavery 130–31, 142–3 Smith, Lauritz 63–4 Socrates 36, 41 Stephens, William O. 82 Stewardship 78, 82 Stoics 63, 78–84, 87–8, 92–3 Stout, Jeffrey 144 Strawson, Peter 142 subjective experience 26, 44, 56, 61, 119, 148 suffering 3, 7, 14, 22, 24–7, 29, 38, 41–4, 45, 49–52, 56, 59, 61, 64, 85, 91, 94, 97, 100, 110, 117–21, 123–6, 141–2 Swift, Jonathan 147 Switzerland, Constitution of 19–20 Taylor, Gabriele 33–4 Taylor, Paul 6, 26, 49–50, 58, 66, 74–5, 83–5, 127 Thrasymachos 41 telos 5–6, 26, 46–7, 49–55, 57–60, 81, 83, 104, 115, 118, 127 tools 12, 31–2, 51, 81, 98–102, 113, 127 truthfulness 94, 100, 140–1 unnatural, see natural and unnatural Utilitarianism 12, 43, 64, 85, 94, 134, 140 value extrinsic 67–8, 85, 91 inherent 53, 64–5, 68, 74, 85 instrumental 47, 65, 67–9, 71, 73, 84–5, 88, 98–9, 101 intrinsic 6, 21, 23, 37, 40, 62, 64, 66–75, 82, 84–5, 88–9, 91–2, 94, 98–9, 101–2, 116 objective 67–73, 75, 85, 88–9 subjective 67–8, 84 vegetarianism 125–6, 130, 133, 142–3 Verhoog, Henk 15, 23, 26, 59, 115 value egalitarianism 66–7 virtue 33–5, 40–42, 46–7 Vorstenbosch, Jan 25–6, 104 Warnock, Mary 132–3, 136 Watson, James 105 welfare (well–being), see animal welfare Wellman, H.M. 108–9 Wells, Herbert George 95, 120–23 Westra, Laura 5, 38–40 White, Lynn 78, 87

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Whitehead, Alfred North 57, 90, 94 Williams, Bernard 34 wisdom of repugnance, see disgust Wollaston, William 93–4 Wolpert, Lewis 1 worth, see bonitas

Wynne, Brian 1, 8 yuck argument 138, 149 Zenon 80