Simon Cushing argues against Speciesism in his paper “Against ‘Humanism’: Speciesism, Personhood, and Preference.” He uses Peter Singer’s definition of Speciesism :

Speciesism…is a prejudice or attitude of bias toward the interests of one’s own species and against those of members of another species.

Speciesism is often called “Humanism“, which of course is Speciesism by the human race. Cushing uses two formulations of Speciesism, a strong and a weak:

Strong Formulation :

All and only (innocent ) humans are moral persons

Weak Formulation :

The personhood of a being should hinge (wholly or in part) on its membership in a particular species or group of species.

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In an earlier post, I asserted that since humans are animals, they have a certain minimum level of responsibility to the environment:”The Unsound Argument(Humans and the Environment, Part I)”:http://unsoundargument.com/ethics/humans-and-the-environment-a-minimum-level-of-responsibility. If push comes to shove, humans must at least maintain their environment at survival levels. However, humans are not merely animals, they are also persons. Not only are they persons in the objective sense, but are persons in the subjective sense, i.e. moral agents.

I don’t have all of this worked out yet, but I want to posit that with increasing levels of personhood, there comes an increasing level of responsibility to the environment. At one level (animal) there is a responsibility to survive and that overrides all other responsibilities. At another there is moral agents and that they are responsible to how they treat other beings and their environment and at another level there is an awareness of nature and its beauty and that for its sake moral agents that are aware of it have the duty to protect that beauty.

I know how to build the bridge from self-survival to species-survival to all other species-survival, but I am not sure how to build towards the environment for its own sake. I think I am there but I am not sure how to put it into words. I will need to sketch out levels of personhood and match them with the levels of responsibility. So actually this paper will need a strong, developed view of personhood.

John Hardwig, in his paper, Is there a Duty to Die? suggests that sometimes people have an obligation to allow nature to take it’s course. I read the article a couple of years ago and made some rudementary notes from it:”The Unsound Argument(Is there a Duty to Die? by John Hardwig)”:http://unsoundargument.com/ethics/is-there-a-duty-to-die-john-hardwig. Here is his basic argument:

1. People’s needs and wants and goods are interconnected. (rejection of the indivualistic fantasy)
2. It is immoral to impose serious burdens on others to further one’s needs and wants
3. One is not relieved of their moral duties when they are sick and dying.
4. Sometimes continuing to live will place serious (and undue) burdens on loved ones.
5. ? Sometimes one has a duty to die

While it seems to fly in the face of all of our notions about old age and death, I think he has a point. We are all mortal creatures. We will all die at some point, why is the onus on everyone else to provide individuals constant healthcare? I am not arguing against universal healthcare, just artificially keeping people alive and draining the energy and resources of the community for something that is ultimately inevitable. The community can be one’s family, one’s town, one’s state, ect…

Since this topic is a very sensitive one, Hardwig goes out of his way to dance around specific instances of when a person has a duty to die. He does this to avoid stepping on anyone’s toes.

Is a good death better than a prolonged, miserable life? Can anyone make that determination for anyone? It is a good can of worms.

A while back Dave made a pretty good chart:”The Mindful Mission(Political Parties on Pro-life issues)”:http://www.brendoman.com/hippydave/2005/03/23/pro_life showing the pro-life stance of three parties. I agree with most of his assessments of what stance is pro-life, excepting a couple therefrom. They were euthanasia, war, and poverty.

I want to use two of these areas to highlight what I consider pro-life.

What do I consider the guiding principle behind being pro-life? I can tell you what it is not. Pro-life is not simply being against death in any form or context. People die. It is a natural aspect of the human condition. I do not look upon old age as an evil, even though it brings one close to death.

Instead, it is the freedom to choose that makes our lives valuable. It is why slavery is evil. It is why totalitarism is evil. Freedom is why we shudder when we place ourselves in Kira Argounova’s:”Wikipedia(We the Living)”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_The_Living or Winston Smith’s:”Wikipedia(1984)”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four shoes.

When I apply this concept of freedom giving life its value to the common pro-life issues I am forced two conclusions; abortion is morally impermissible and euthanasia is morally permissible. The killing of an infant takes away all possible choices that person could every have. Euthanasia on the other hand is the supreme enactment of choice. It is the choice whether to continue to make choices. Surely to rob a person of that is morally impermissible.

So while an anti-abortion and a pro-euthanasia stance might seem morally inconsistent to some, it is still possible.

This is mainly a re-hash of part of a discussion over at the Mindful Mission about whether or not a man can be a feminist:”The Mindful Mission(Male Feminists)”:http://www.mindfulmission.com/index.php/2005/08/12/male_feminists. A lady by the name of Pippin had objected :”Pippin - Men can’t be Feminists(Mindful Mission - Male Feminists)”:http://www.brendoman.com/hippydave/2005/08/12/male_feminists#c17480 :”Pippin - Forced Sacrifice(Mindful Mission - Male Feminists)”:http://www.brendoman.com/hippydave/2005/08/12/male_feminists#c17484 :”Pippin - The Imposition of Morality on Others(Mindful Mission - Male Feminists)”:http://www.brendoman.com/hippydave/2005/08/12/male_feminists#c17488 :”Pippin - Equality of the Sexes in the Responsibility of Child Creation(Mindful Mission - Male Feminists)”:http://www.brendoman.com/hippydave/2005/08/12/male_feminists#c17490 to my belief that I agree with feminists on many issues, but reject the permissibility of all abortions.

When I talk about being feminist, I am speaking about holding males and females as equals and living that out. If anyone has questions about how I live that out, please refer them to my wife of three years. She will tell you if my practice in the issue meets my ideals. My wife and I use birth control. We have lost a child in the early stages of pregnancy. WE know what it is like.

Before I address her objections, I must note that when I said “the full and unrestricted right to have an abortion” I meant allowing for abortion in each and every single case. I left the my position open for some or no abortions being legal.

I want to denote the two positions on abortion as pro-abortion and anti-abortion. This minimizes the biases that the terms pro-life and pro-choice inherently contain. Who can say that they are the opposite of pro-life, that is, pro-death / anti-life? The very terms beg the question about the issue.

The objections that Pippin raised can be summarized as follows:

Objections:

1. Men cannot have an opinion on whether or not abortion is right or wrong because they do not experience pregnancy or birth.
2. I am not sure if Pippin is maintaining that a fetus has a prima facie right to life or not. That is a huge step in this process. I’ll try to establish that they do even if for argument’s sake.
3. Women should have the same sexual freedom men do. Allowing for unfettered abortions would restore this inequality.
4. Abortions are morally permissible because to have a woman be responsible pregnancies resulting from all willful sexual acts would be exercising control over the woman.

As I am still waiting for Pippin’s response, there is a chance that I am getting into a straw man here.

Response:

1. Because I cannot physically have a baby does not mean that I cannot determine if an action is wrong for “the other” to do. This is the classic mistake of postmodernism. It might make one unaware of certain points that make the determination hazier, but does not invalidate the determination… That is, unless one is a relativist. If the reasoning is the sound and valid, the conclusion stands no matter who makes the argument. If otherwise, then we would be guilty of a hasty generalization.

   Also, what about the anti-abortion women? There are plenty of anti-abortion women running around. The argument falls flat against objections from women who have the same experiences as you, the ones that the lack of supposedly invalidate my objections.

2. If the fetus has no right to life, as Marry Ann Warren believes, then of course Pippin is correct. The rights of the mother would then outweigh the rights of the fetus. If, however, the fetus has a right to life and the mother has a right to life, then that changes the whole shape of the argument. Judith Jarvis Thompson has argued:”Judith Jarvis Thompson(A Defense of Abortion)”:http://unsoundargument.com/ethics/a-defense-of-abortion-judith-jarvis-thomson that even if we assume for the moment that the fetus has a right to life, a pro-abortion position can still be maintained (My notes on her article are not completely entered into that post, please bear with me).

   She argues that when the mother has taken reasonable precaution against the pregnancy, i.e. cases of rape, incest or failed birth control, she is not morally responsible for the life of the fetus, i.e. an abortion would be morally permissible. Whiles Judith Jarvis Thompson just assumes that the fetus is a person for the sake of the argument, I would argue:”The Unsound Argument(An Objective View of Personhood)”:http://unsoundargument.com/papers/objective-view-of-personhood/ that a fetus is a person in the objective sense, even though it is not a person in the subjective sense.
   I do want to note that even a strong pro-abortion proponent like JJT maintains that abortions solely out of convenience are still morally wrong. (given that a fetus has some sort of a right of existence)

3. I agree that there is an inequality in the view that women are unduly responsible for the consequences of their willful sexual acts compared to men. However, I do not think the solution is to kill the fetus. Instead, we should raise the sexual responsibility of the men to the woman. Make men as responsible for the child as the woman is. Don’t punish the baby for the man’s actions. I think that there is a false dilemma in the reasoning of objection 3) because there is another option, besides a) allowing for abortion or b) having the unjust inequality persist, that is not considered in your argument. I might be wrong on the false dilemma though; perhaps Pippin has considered it and is only listing her conclusions.
4. I think I covered this in objection 3), that it is not a case of exercising control or one party and not another if all parties involved are treated the same. Case in point: If I say to you, don’t steal, and I hold myself to that maxim, I avoid the problem all together. The issue is not controlling behavior, it is about finding a universal ethical maxim.

With all of this being said I have not begun to argue about if and when abortions are morally permissible, I have only tried to deal with the objections that Pippin brought up.

The Scottish philosopher Hume had presented philosophy with a grand problem. Hume had tilled the grounding of the current metaphysics of the day. He had taken the postulates of Descartes and questioned them. He found the evidence for causality in the specific lacking, rendering one unable to point to the exact cause behind any certain event. Like all Empiricists, Hume wanted all philosophical systems to be grounded in immediate experience. He defined the two types of mental concepts, impressions and thoughts and ideas. Thoughts and Ideas are the recalling the memory of situations, and the anticipating future ones. An example of this is thinking about being angry. Impressions on the other hand, are perceptions of the mind that are the most clear. They include our more lively perceptions: when we hear, feel, love, hate, desire and will. An example of this is being angry. The difference is that “impressions are distinguished from ideas when we reflect on any of our sensations or movement. ”

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Last month I finally was accepted to a graduate program at the University of Missouri:”The Univeristy of Missouri”:http://missouri.edu/. I have been accepted into the Deparment of Religious Studies Masters of Arts program:”Department of Religious Studies(University of Missouri)”:http://religiousstudies.missouri.edu/. While I am there I will be a teaching assistant. What I will do is teach the discussion portions of two sections of one class. Say I am helping with the World Religion Class. The students of the class will be lectured by the professor for two days and on the last day they will me with me.

The great thing about this is that not only will I get teaching experience and a tuition waiver and around 400, 500 dollars a month. I am really excited about this opportunity. The most exciting part about the TA’ship is that I will be able to focus solely on my studies and teaching experiance. No more working full time and going to school full time.