Ethical Animals
Why do we care about right and wrong? Because we’re social animals! Our bodies respond with the uncomfortable sensations we call “guilt” and “shame” when we transgress rules that maintain relationships or the overall health of the social group.
The same is true of other social animals. Dogs, for example, have been observed to have a very strong sense of what we would call “justice.”
Here’s one problem: Because our ethics, at the emotional level, evolve in relation to other people, we tend to limit the sphere of our ethical concern to other people unless the people in relation to whom we develop our ethics evince concern for other beings.
Here’s another problem: When philosophers develop ethical systems based on abstract rules rather than relationships, they’re missing the point. Our ethics live not only in our brains but in our endocrine systems. The purpose of ethics, evolutionarily, is to maintain relationships.
Which brings us to another problem: There are social relationships among people but also ecosystemic relationships among all of the beings in the biosphere. Both are evolutionarily essential.
Here’s the good news: Because ethics are inherently social and emotional, it’s possible for people to influence other people’s ethical beliefs and behavior. It seems to me, on the basis of this rough rumination, that this is least likely to happen when we try to impose essentially unnatural rules-based ethics on others and most likely to happen when we found our ethics on relationships.
When we recognize the relational and animal nature of ethics, then it becomes easier to envision an existential ethics that naturally extends to other beings and our encompassing ecosystem.
In summary: Human beings are social animals living in ecosystems. Ethics are naturally relational for social animals. This argues against abstract rules-based ethics but opens the door for an ethic that preserves and protects not only relationships among people but also with other animals and within ecosystems.
These are just some thoughts. When I started this blog a couple of years ago, my idea was for it to be (among other things) an outlet for the thoughts that drift into my mind over breakfast and then are either forgotten or scribbled into a notebook that only I see. But, recently, I’ve only blogged when I’ve had the time to flesh out ideas more thoroughly. I’m going to go back to just jotting down thoughts that I might or might not ever get around to fleshing out later, just in case somebody else wants to pick them up and run with them.
So, expect to see more of that here in upcoming months. I’ve also got some big announcements to make but — time’s up! — I’ve got to get back to the tasks that have been occupying all of my time lately.
April 4th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Has it really been a couple of years? Wow.
April 11th, 2009 at 11:41 am
I agree. I like the abstract ethical arguments, perhaps more for the strategies they offer than for the “right/wrong” ethics of them. But I have recently realized that the reason animals within the human sphere matter to humans is precisely because they’re within the human sphere… they are part of the human community. And treating animals that are not wild as though they were wild - unable to be cared for by humans - merely because those that *are* wild are members of the same species is a kind of speciesism that denies the capacity for nonhumans to live harmoniously within what are, thus far, human-dominated communities. The key words here are community and harmony. It irks us the way animals are treated, not because we are tirelessly comparing domesticated animals to their “unfortunate” counterparts in the wild, but because we realize that these nonhumans belong to our communities and because treating them poorly creates a disharmonious relationship. Our relationship to wild animals is simply different from that with tame or domesticated animals. Harmony must be created in different ways. And the great need for this realization is demonstrated by the way that we as a society respect “wildlife,” yet object so strongly to caring for those animals we use for our own purposes, though arguably we are “using” wildlife as well.
Just as an organism needs to maintain homeostasis, a balancing act for life, organic communities need to maintain harmony within. We need to acknowledge that humans are not the only members of our communities, for nonhuman animals have slaved and toiled to build our communities since the dawn of the human species. And they continue to do so. It is high time we began to repay them.
Thanks for the post. Very insightful.
April 16th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Aren’t the “abstract rules” based on relationships?
April 16th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
What do you mean by that, I wonder. I could guess and refute, but I’d rather not set up straw men just to knock them down.
April 17th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
I guess the question I was really asking was this: In your opinion, where do the abstract rules come from? I suppose it seemed they would logically stem from relationships. For instance, when Kant argued against using people as means to an end, I would have assumed that was a result (direct or indirect) of his relationships with people; that is, whatever it was he experienced as a member of his community and society itself is what led him to produce his ethical system.
Perhaps the abstract rules have taken on lives of their own and their origins forgotten — maybe we rely too much on the letter of ethical systems instead of their practical, humane applications — but I wonder, if the abstract rules aren’t at some point the result of our animal interactions, however long ago, what is their origin?
On a completely separate note, I’ve been looking into Anarchism and I was told you’d be a good person to go to. Do you know of any good resources on this subject?
April 21st, 2009 at 1:04 pm
I’m not ignoring this question; I just need to think through my reply. Stay tuned…