Our regular Friday diet of suggested readings for the weekend:
Psychology’s reproducibility problem is exaggerated – say (some) psychologists.
Reading from Behind: a Cultural Analysis of the Anus. “The anus, you see, is democratic.”
Was Wittgenstein right that philosophy is too scientistic? Or was his mentor, Bertrand Russell, on target when he said that his pupil seemed to have “grown tired of serious thinking and invented a doctrine which would make such an activity unnecessary”?
Speaking of the devil, here is a Wittgensteinian defense of literature against postmodernist deconstruction.
Did we say psychology may have a reproducibility problem? There’s more…
What has philosophy done for us?
A philosopher is arguing that vegetarianism is impossible. I think he’s just confused about biology.
Footnotes to Plato 
Well there have been societies that engage in cannibalism like the highlands in New Guinea till relatively recently.
However, these seem to more ritual than nutritional.
And, of course, the Donner’s don’t count that to the limited extent it happened was a case of desperation.
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“I know that I am a predator” – yes, but I can imaginatively identify with those humans who predate on other humans too, without thinking their behaviour is right. I have great sympathy for the “policing nature” argument, but it is too similar to the rationalisation that I shouldn’t be concerned with all the human suffering that is beyond my immediate reach too (cue debunking of ethically sourced coffee, chocolate and mobile phones, voting, and donating to charities). Emotionally, the idea that my appetites for meat are at least as worthy as those of a leopard fits well, but intellectually a bit harder to defend – I’m not really an obligate carnivore. The idea that it gives me so much pleasure to eat a fatty sausage that this trumps any other considerations reminds me of all those people who disbelieve in utilitarianism because of utility monsters. I’d like to think I’m not a utility monster.
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Daniel: about chicken
‘Why did the chicken …” also points out that it is industrialization that has ‘ruined’ chicken flavor.
There is in Vietnam a local variety that out sells the industrial chicken in the same stall even though the mass produced chicken is much cheaper because the locals say theirs taste better. The author tried it and agrees.
There is a variety in France that actually has an ‘appellation controlee’ that he also says has fantastic flavor.
Americanized industrial chicken may drive these varieties out. We lose genetic variability that may be needed someday, but also flavor.
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synred: Diamond’s point is entirely consistent with the sort of cultural relativity you describe, a la “cannibals in New Guinea.”
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synred: Agreed re: chicken and flavor. That’s why I pretty much only order chicken in really high quality restaurants. The other times are when I am making schnitzel, in which the quality of the chicken doesn’t matter nearly as much.
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Veal — Wiener Schnitzel is better than chicken, but the treatment used to produce it really is beyond the pale, so we stick with chicken.
In English we have these euphemisms for meat — like veal –. The Germans are more direct ‘kalbfleisch’, ‘calf flesh.’ You can’t avoid knowing what you’re eating.
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Labnut, agreed on the difference between the two. As for the use of resources, of course, it will only become more problematic when more non-“Westerners” want the stereotypical meat-heavy Western diet.
As far as your specific points, I would qualify No. 5 somewhat with reference to primates, elephants, cetaceans and probably a few other animals. As to whether cows and pigs, or goats and lambs, let alone chickens and turkeys, have episodic memory to anticipate pain in the way we do is … questionable. I won’t rule it out, but I certainly wouldn’t automatically rule it in.
I’m sure the kippered herrings of Sunday lunch, before they were smoked for my pleasure, have no such anticipation. And, I have already given the Walrus’s answer on the oyster.
On the things like our common food mammals, this is, of course, a version of Massimo’s demarcation problem. We have a fair idea that a cow doesn’t have the same memory as an elephant or a chimp, but it’s got some sort of memory of some sort.
And, there’s the subissue that domesticated livestock, as part of domestication, have lost some fears related to Homo sapiens.
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Dan, on limiting moral discourse about animals to the basis of which “pile” we sort them into, rather than trying to actually think about their pains — especially scientifically researching how they experience pain, fear, etc. as part of making newer moral adjustments, all things that we couldn’t do until recently —
You’re arguably falling into a temporally conditioned “is ≠ ought” hole.
You can thank me, and David my icon, later.
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synred: I also use pork for schnitzel. I actually would use veal, but one cannot get good veal where I live, so my eating of it is quite rare and typically only happens when in Europe.
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Socratic: Er…no. Sorry.
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Socratic: You clearly haven’t digested any of the examples from Diamond’s essay or else you would see the obvious irrelevance of the research you are describing.
*Digested — see what I did there?
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The myth of human exceptionalism – we must be better or different for some reason – just can’t think of any.
I think one of the biggest crimes against food is over-processed vegetable whatever masquerading as meat – faux bacon, faux sausage, faux hamburgers – rubbish.
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I had a vegetarian meal at a Buddhist restaurant in Beijing once. The ‘faux’ fish was fantastic … much better than the tofu crap at Safeway. It was I think in fact made of Tofu, but some how done much better.
The ethics behind ‘faux’ meat I don’t get; it as much as admits we are natural meat eaters and need to compensate for our ethical refusal to eat it.
However, the Buddhist meal was not a crime against food. It was delicious.
The Buddhist argument against eating meat seems pretty strong if you accept their premise. That cow might be your great aunt Minnie.
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I bet if they left out the faux fish, it would have been good. The faux fish certainly wasn’t the reason for the taste; it was likely just a neutral protein source.
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Well there was some way they made if feel like fish. It also looked like fish and I suspect some subtle spicing though it was not a spicy dish (that’s easy, even Tofu is ok if you dump enough Thai spice on it).
Part of it was doubtless the psychology of the presentation.
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Dan, I was responding to your “morally thick” comment. As a response to that, I’ll stand by what I say. In the last generation or so, we’ve at least been able to take a stab at animal mental processes that we never could before.
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http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2013/01/do-animals-tell-stories.html
So hear are a couple of attempts at investigating episodic memory in non-human animals. They are not totally convincing, but hint that we might find some precursor to our memory eventually.
Theoretically, I don’t believe in traits that just pop up, i.e., I thing Darwin was pretty much correct.
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Socratic: You continue to miss the point. What Diamond’s article shows is that we don’t refrain from eating *people* because they have certain morally relevant characteristics. So what good does it do to show us that animals have those very morally relevant characteristics.
It’s fine if you actually have an argument to counter Diamond’s. But you can’t just act as if there is none.
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I’ve long been suspicious of lab research in behavioral psych. The research lab is a stage – it is an arena in which subjects are expected to perform. So few of the behaviors that can be observed under controlled conditions are behaviors we engage in in daily life; so many of the behaviors we actually engage in are completely context dependent and cannot be replicated free of these contexts. Controlled condition research has its uses, but ought not to be taken as paradigmatic of actual experience. That has to be studied *in situ,* and researchers don’t like to do this, and there are few grants for such studies, and much that is discovered in such studies tends to validate some folk-psychology insights that are considered epistemelogicaly ill-founded.
But the fact is (and it is an evident fact) most of us are actually pretty good – pretty successful – folk-psychologists. We have to be in order to be able to communicate with other people; in order to recognize when others are sad, or happy, or threatening, or threatened, etc., etc. If one is not a good folk-psychologist with one’s spouse, that marriage ain’t gonna last long. If you lack abilty for folk-psychology reading of the visual and verbal signs your colleagues present you with, you will live in utter hell in your employment.
Clinical behavoral research is predicated on the assumption that reports of inner states or feelings cannot be trusted, only observable behavor. But the reduction of behavior to performances in clinical settings evidences a clear distrust of – actual behavior.
So we’re not to trust reports of inner feelings, we’re not to trust actual behavior, we’re not to trust folk-psychology, and over the past few decades it’s become clear that we can’t really trust clinical studies on behavior. What are we to trust?
I frankly don’t think there is yet any field we can rightfully call ‘psychology.’ We do have a number of fields – clinical, phenomenological, speculative, sociological – that produce data and theory under the rubric of ‘psychology’ (some trust-worthy and informative, some not). But I’m not sure we have a real grounding for a theoretical discourse of human behavior, and of the insights into human personality this could provide.
So are we at ground zero still? Not necessarily. We should remember here that what the Aristotlean-Thomist traditions (and as it happens, the Tibetan-Buddhist tradition) refer to as ‘psychology,’ we call: epistemology.
If we’re going to move beyond infancy of ‘psychology,’ we need to rethink what we would like to discover there. (My personal suggestion? Back to James, and reset.)
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The two articles on philosophy are interesting in their evident conflict – Scott Soames is obviously defending the kind of philosophy that Wittgenstein undermined (successfully, I think).
Any defense of philosophy is welcome, these days; but the truth is, Soames’ arguments sound hollow, partly because they are history-dependent (thus open to the charge that, while philosophy was beneficial to sconce once, ‘what good is it now?’); and partly because it basically implies that justification for philosophy depends on whether contemporary scientists find any further use for it (and all too many don’t.)
Philosophy really has to find its own voice. I personally am more and more convinced that, although Rorty took the notion to relativistic extremes, it might be healthy to borrow from Rorty consideration of philosophy as a genre of discourse – in teaching, writing, speaking – rather than as a ‘quest for certainty.’ It’s fundamentally a literature – perhaps more art than science.
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Having come to terms with the articles that most interested me in this week’s Weekend Suggestions, I can at last consider the comment thread as a whole. As a Buddhist, and thus committed to vegetarianism as an ideal (but I admit slipping, nobody is perfect), I admit not being terribly interested in that debate. Eating any life form contributes to the suffering of that life form (whether it experiences ‘pain’ or not); but condemning humans for being human and thus engaging in carnivorous behavior frankly contributes to their suffering. So all that is really left is allowing that this choice is a personal one dependent on one’s own insights and commitments.
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Wow, interesting discussion, mostly on vegetarianism! A few quick notes from Berlin, where I’m taking a break from writing my book…
Labnut, “ethical omnivory” simply means that one potentially eats anything, but pays as much attention as possible to the ethical dimension of eating. Which implies considering the treatment of the animals, the environmental impact of the practices of the food industry, as well as their labor practices. It’s impossible to do it perfectly, but it is possible to pay attention to obvious things (e.g., not eating: species that are near extinction, types of food that require maltreatment of animals, like veal and foie gras, etc.).
To bring up the analogy between us and predators is, I think, rather objectionable. Ecologically speaking, we are nothing like “predators,” we are our own category of ecosystem disturbance. I actually don’t object to people eating their meat or fish when they go hunting for it, but to think of going to the local supermarket, buying food produced and processed by an industry that causes suffering and environmental damage is borderline disingenuous.
Dan, the point that vegetarians (actually, mostly vegans) can be annoyingly sanctimonious about their diet is, of course, logically irrelevant to the discussion at hand. It would be like saying that I reject Christianity because of fundamentalism.
As for morality not being overriding, I’m puzzled. You mean you feel you can kill people, say, for aesthetic reasons? It simply doesn’t compute to me that anything would override moral considerations. We may not always act that way, but that’s a different point.
Your point about veganism implying that a huge number of people are morally wrong is also irrelevant: for much of history most people thought slavery was irrelevant, and yet we (rightly) think they were wrong.
Hugh cuisine may be a art form, but see my point above about morality being overriding. I assume one could make an art of torturing people (de Sade?), but I would sincerely hope you would nonetheless reject the practice of such art. Besides, there is such a thing as vegetarian high cuisine, and it is delicious.
Finally, Michael, I used to have the same objection about “faux” meat and fish, but there is a point to presentation, which is true for both vegetarian and non-vegetarian meals. We don’t just eat proteins and vitamins, otherwise we might as well just take a pill.
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Massimo,
“To bring up the analogy between us and predators is, I think, rather objectionable.”
Strong words, but I always respect what you say, so I would be glad if you would enlarge on this statement.
Hope you are enjoying Berlin.
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Michael,
“The myth of human exceptionalism – we must be better or different for some reason – just can’t think of any.”
You have just demonstrated human exceptionalism.
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Massimo,
“ is borderline disingenuous.”
more on strong words. You don’t think perhaps that statement is ‘borderline’ insulting(to hide behind the same euphemism)? I think you should maybe make allowance for the possibility that people have sincere beliefs arrived at in the best manner available to them.
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Humans are exceptional. So are cats.
Being exceptional is not exceptional. You might take it to define species (though I think reproductive isolation may play a role).
Clearly, our abilities in language and episodic memory, usw. outstrip any other living animal. But these cannot have pop’d out of nowhere. Either they evolved from something not quite as good or God did it. If they evolved there are likely to be precursors among other animals esp. are near relatives.
It’s possible over millions of years that something really unique evolved in the Home line. We will hardly to get a chance to run test on homo erectus, so we have to settle for bonobos and other near relatives and see what we find. There are certainly ‘language like’ abilities. I don’t think even the most gung ho ape researchers are expecting full blown human language.
Dolphins have brains bigger than ours, but they use a lot of it for sonar. And they are more distant relatives who got their big brains somewhat differently.
My favorite ape research story is not about language, but problem solving.
The attempted to teach Kanzi how to make tools.
The setup was a box with mm’s in it, tied shut with a string. Kanzi needed a knife to cut the string.
The researcher showed him how to make a knife from flints by striking them with another rock. Kanzi got the idea and tried to do it, but couldn’t. Apparently, bonobos while stronger than us to not have the degree of flexibility in their wrist to perform this action effectively.
Kanzi was one frustrated m&m loving bonobo.
Then they saw him raise his eyebrows like “I have an idea”. A ‘lightbulb’ went off!
Kanzi picked up a rock, raised it high, and through it against the concrete floor. It shattered into a bunch of small pieces. He picked up a sharp one and used it to cut the string and get the m&m’s Hooray!I
It could be this problem solving reveals some level of episodic memory. He remembered what the researcher had shown him and figured out a way to do it himself. I think he would also have had to remember other incidents in which things that dropped on the floor broke.
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Is Wiggenstein always on topic?
I have a question. Did he ever discuss quantum mechanics?
He gets so involved in what ‘red’ means; what would he make of ‘electrons’
‘An electron’ is a marginal concept, since the wave-function of the world is anti-symmetric under the interchange of any two electrons there’s in some sense never just one. Though only one will interact at a time, you can’t know which one. It’s that whole particle-wave thing; electrons have no individual identity. Which one interacted is not even a meaningful question.
I think W would have loved it!
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Massimo:
You’ve given no argument whatsoever for moral considerations being overriding. You’ve simply insisted on it. And of course, they are not. Prudential values override moral ones all the time, every day, and the reason one might not notice is that the moral values in question are typically quite small and common. This, however, changes nothing ,regarding the general point. If the claim is that moral considerations are always overriding, the constant, daily victory of prudential values over moral ones demonstrates that the claim is false.
What I have suggested is that moral values are in competition with a number of values and that includes aesthetic ones. This does not, of course, mean that moral values *never* override. As to *when* one overrides the other, I don’t think there is any way to systematize that, as you would like there to be. It is done on a case-by-case basis, without assurances provided by general principles. No, I wouldn’t kill my next door neighbor to save a painting. But I would kill a clam in order to save linguine con vongole. I would not kill my pet dog for a meal, but I would eat one in a restaurant in Korea. Your desire for general principles to navigate these waters is precisely what I — and Diamond — don’t think exist. And simply insisting that they do is not any sort of argument on their behalf.
You seem *very* rationalistic in your approach to these issues, which is odd for someone who admires Hume so much. Your tendency to abstract away from specific instances and judgments and to ignore the role of sentiments, culture, and local social effect is alien to how I understand moral and axiological discourse. You do this when you try to compare the nonsense of brooding over a bologna sandwich with human slavery. But I never suggested that the point about the absurdity of condemning so many people for what’s in their lunch boxes should or could be generalized in such a way. And the fact that you don’t condemn people for their fishing trips indicates that you don’t really accept the ethical vegan’s attempts to make such generalizations either. Because *if* you accepted the general principles from which they make such comparisons, you would do so as well.
It makes all the difference in the world to whether I accept the judgments of another person, whether they belong to a social group that I want anything to do with. Again, this does not mean that I will ignore *every* proposition they utter, but I don’t see at all how valuations *can’t* be sensitive to such considerations — if *anything* is sensitive to such considerations, it’s valuations — and once again, I don’t see how one grounds the sorts of universal principles one would have to have in order to give rules as to when I should override my being repulsed by such people and when I should not. The fact is, I find ethical vegans irritating and boorish and want nothing to do with them. And yet, they are the only ones shouting at people about their chicken salad sandwiches, which means that unless I read something, someone posts — as you did — I am simply not going to encounter their (in my view) bogus “imperatives.” And such statements do not fall out of the sky or come from a priori principles, as I don’t subscribe to moral theories like Mill’s and Kant’s for reasons we have discussed before.
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Massimo: One more thing.
It is clear that you have thought a lot about the issue of ethical food consumption, that it matters quite a lot to you, and that you have crafted for yourself a position that you think constitutes a moral contribution, in this area. Hence. your relatively newfound mindfulness about diet.
But, of course, there are any number of important issues, things that matter very much to others, about which you do nothing whatsoever, which may lead *them* to adjust their lives in all sorts of ways to make what for *them* is a moral contribution.
One such thing for me — and I pick this one because of the connection to the food issue — is to provide free catering to friends and family and people in my community, who cannot afford it for their life cycle events and for important holiday celebrations. I have catered Bar- and Bat-Mitzvahs for free. I have catered weddings for free. For several years, I catered all the holiday meals at the synagogue for free. This year, I will be making Matzoh Ball soup for several hundred people and also donating the ingredients, so that our congregation can keep the price of our annual Seder down, so that our poorer congregants can afford the tickets.
Just last summer, I catered a wedding in Escondido, CA, for two close friends, who, had they had to pay for a caterer, could not have affording the wedding. Beyond my services being free, I also “donated” half of the food cost, saving them several thousand dollars on top of the labor cost.
To keep the costs down, I had to shop at places like Wal-Mart and Cosco and to use factory farmed meat. These people are not vegans, their family and friends are not vegans, and they wanted a traditional Mexican meal for their wedding, which I provided. Their happiness — their ability to entertain their family and friends at the most important event of their lives — are what mattered to me, not where I bought the pork butt roast.
I think I did a good deed, in doing this. I think I contributed morally doing this. And yet, my moral contribution would clash with — contradict, even — an ethical vegan’s moral contribution in this area.
Hence the complication of these moral issues and their intense context-sensitivity. Hence the absence of governing general principles that might allow one to navigate moral life like one builds a model airplane. And hence the great, great danger in thinking one has hit upon the golden code and rushing out in the world to bash others over the head with it, as the ethical vegans do.
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Labnut, I don’t think you understand what exceptionalism means.
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