A LITTLE SIDE TRIP INTO THE REALM OF MORAL JUDGMENT
We have seen the denial of the suffering of animals reflected in the concept “animal automata” of Descartes and the quasi-pathological lack of sensitivity to animal suffering on the part of the Jansenists of Port-Royal, and by way of contrast we have also seen the sadness of Ovid’s elegiac plea for animals and the militant indignation of Voltaire at their mistreatment. These judgments doubtless have complex motivations behind them. How can one reach the conclusion that it is normal to make animals suffer, on the one hand, and on the other, how does one come to be scandalized by this same cruelty?
At the present time, studies carried out by American neuroscientists and psychologists on the processes of ethical judgment and moral decisions are resulting in new and surprising findings regarding these often difficult questions.
When we are confronted by an ethical choice, a number of forces, often conflicting ones, exert influence on our judgment. Immediately, for example, when we learn of a child molested by an adult, we have emotional reactions, sometimes visceral ones. If circumstances then give us the time, to those emotional reactions are added our reasonings regarding the different facets of the situation, helping us make the most just decision. And all of that is influenced by the social, religious, and philosophical norms that prevail in the world around us.
The Three Forms of Ethics
Three main forms of ethics are distinguished: deontological, consequentialist (which includes utilitarianism), and ethics based on virtue.
According to the form of ethics called deontological, which is related to the notion of duty or obligation, certain acts should not be committed under any circumstances, no matter what the consequences might be. Immanuel Kant is the most eminent advocate of this “categorical imperative,” which sometimes can have unacceptable implications. For example, Kant affirmed that we should never lie, even to a criminal who is asking us where his intended victim has fled to. By lying, according to Kant, we strike a blow against one of the foundations of society, the belief in the given word, especially within the framework of contracts. Thus by lying, in Kant’s view, we commit an injustice against humanity as a whole.1
Another vision of ethics consists in deciding whether an act is justified by considering its consequences. Main proponents of this utilitarian point of view are John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham. More human than Kant’s outlook because closer to reality as we experience it, utilitarianism can nevertheless lead to excesses and deviations. It aims to bring about “the well-being of the greatest number” by aggregating the well-being of individuals, and thus as eminent Greek thinkers of old pointed out, can bring us to conclusions such as that it would be good to enslave a hundred people in order to make a thousand free citizens happier. We see what extremes this attitude can take us to, if it is not tempered by other factors such as justice, wisdom, and compassion.
The ethics of virtue is the ethics proposed by Buddhism and some ancient Greek thinkers. It is based on a way of being that, confronted by different situations, spontaneously expresses itself either through altruistic or egoistic acts. As the neuroscientist and philosopher Francisco Varela wrote, a truly virtuous person “does not act out ethics, but embodies it like any expert embodies his knowledge; the wise man is ethical, or more explicitly, his actions arise from inclinations that his disposition produces in response to specific situations.”2
A purely abstract ethics that is not based on a manner of being and does not take into account the specific aspects of circumstances is of no use. In real life, we always work within a particular context that requires an appropriate reaction. According to Varela, “the quality of our availability will depend on the quality of our being and not on the correctness of our abstract moral principles.”
We may remark along with the Canadian Charles Taylor that a good part of contemporary moral philosophy “has tended to focus on what it is right to do rather than on what it is good to be, on defining the content of obligation rather than the nature of the good life. . . .”3 Ethics must be concrete, embodied, and integrated into experience as we live it. It must reflect the unique character of each being and each situation. In our time, the movement toward concern and care for others that has recently been on the rise, especially in the English-speaking world, provides us with an example of the ethics of virtue.
According to Buddhism, ethics is part of the general project of seeking to relieve all forms of suffering. This process requires us to renounce whatever kinds of egoistic satisfaction that come at the expense of the suffering of others and to make every effort to bring about the happiness of others. To fulfill its ethical contract, altruism must, from this point of view, free itself from blindness and illuminate itself with a wisdom that is free from malevolence; it must enrich itself with altruistic love and compassion. Here, Buddhism agrees with Plato, who said, “The happiest man, then, is one who does not have evil in his soul.”4
Ethics and the Light Shed by the Neurosciences
Recent experiments have shed new light on a debate that has preoccupied ethical thinkers for centuries. In his research on moral judgment, Joshua Greene, a philosopher and neuroscientist at Harvard University, has studied the effects of moral choice and behavior on the activity of different areas of the brain. He wanted to come to an understanding of how moral judgments are shaped by a mixture of automatic processes (such as emotional instincts) and cognitive processes that can be controlled (such as reasoning and self-control). In the light of these researches, it appears that moral judgment depends on the functional integration of multiple cognitive and emotional systems of which no single one seems to be specifically assigned to moral judgment.
Concerning the way in which we bring ourselves to resolve moral problems, the “rationalist” philosophers, such as Plato and Kant, conceive of moral judgment as a rational enterprise that takes into account the abstract ideals that engender good motivation and thus indicate the direction to follow. In contrast with these rationalists, the philosophers Greene calls “sentimentalists,” such as David Hume and Adam Smith, took the position that the emotions are the main basis for moral judgment. Greene’s studies show that the emotions and reason together both play an essential role in moral judgment, and that their respective influences have for the most part been inadequately understood.
He advances the theory of a “double process,” according to which deontological moral judgments (those related to questions of rights and duties) are, contrary to what one might think, triggered by automatic emotional reactions, whereas moral judgments of the utilitarian and consequentialist type (the ones whose aim is to promote “the good”) are shaped by more controlled cognitive processes.
In his research Greene made use of the “trolley problem,” which was originally thought up by philosophers Philippa Foot and Judith Jarvis Thomson. A runaway trolley on rails is headed at breakneck speed toward five people who do not see it coming and will be killed if no one intervenes. The problem can be presented in two ways:
• The case of the switch. You are in a position to throw a switch that will cause the trolley to be diverted onto another track where only one person will be killed by the speeding trolley. Is it morally acceptable to divert the trolley in order to prevent five deaths at the expense of one? Most people questioned reply yes.
• The case of the footbridge. The situation is the same with the difference that you are now standing next to a man seated on the guardrail of a footbridge that runs over the railroad track. The only way to save the five people is to push this man in such a way that he will fall on a switch that will cause the trolley to be diverted onto a clear track. (The guardrail is too high for you to be able to climb it in time to sacrifice your own life to save the five people.) Is it morally acceptable to push this unknown man to his death to save the lives of the five others? Most people reply no.
So now we find ourselves with the following problem: Why does it seem normal for most of us to sacrifice one person to save five others in the case of the switch, but not in the case of the footbridge? For Joshua Greene these two cases bring into play two different psychological reactions and two different neuronal networks. According to the first network, both dilemmas are approached in the same way—in utilitarian terms: it is best to save as many lives as possible. This system implies great self-control and is accompanied by relative emotional detachment. It seems to depend on the dorsolateral, prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain associated with cognitive control and reasoning.
The second neuronal network responds in a very different way to the two dilemmas: it reacts with a strong negative emotional response to the idea of pushing a person off the bridge, but it does not react emotionally to the idea of throwing the switch, which is an emotionally “neuter” object. This is true even though in both cases the action chosen will bring about the death of one innocent person in order to save the five others. It turns out that, when the emotional system is strongly activated in the case where it is necessary to physically push someone, that is what dominates the judgment process. This explains why we tend to react in a utilitarian fashion in the case of the switch and in a deontological fashion in the case of the footbridge.
Greene has put forward the hypothesis that social and emotional responses that we have inherited from our primate ancestors underlie the prohibitions that are at the core of deontological views such as those of Immanuel Kant, which forbid crossing certain moral boundaries, no matter what good might result from crossing them.
By contrast, impartial evaluation of a situation—which is what defines utilitarianism—is made possible by structures of the frontal lobe of the brain that have evolved more recently and allow a greater level of cognitive control.
As Greene points out, “Should this account prove correct, however, it will have the ironic implication that the Kantian ‘rationalist’ approach to moral philosophy is, psychologically speaking, grounded not in principles of pure practical reason, but in a set of emotional responses that are subsequently rationalized.”5 This is also the point of view of a growing number of researchers, notably psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who puts forward the notion that, in numerous situations, we initially sense instinctively or intuitively whether or not a behavior is acceptable, and then subsequently we justify our choices through reasoning.6
We see from the preceding account that ethical choices are quite often complex and sometimes harrowing because of the struggle in our mind between our emotions and our reason, between deontological taboos and utilitarian logic. Therefore we must take great care to see that our ethical choices are biased neither by our empathic distress nor by our prejudices.
In the case of animals, the ethics of virtue should lead us to treat them with kindness. When we look at the facts, however, we cannot fail to note the purely arbitrary quality that makes us adopt a deontological position in some cases and a utilitarian one, biased by human interests, in others. A person who kills his cat or dog by banging its head against the wall faces the disapproval of nearly all of his fellow humans; when workers in a slaughter facility subject chickens or piglets to the same treatment, this behavior is not considered reprehensible, because in any case these animals have lost their status of sentient beings worthy of consideration and are well on their way to being transformed into mere consumer products. It often happens on a farm that a pig or a goat is treated almost like a member of the family until the decision is reached that it is time to cut its throat. The victorious racehorse is paraded triumphantly at the racetrack and afterward treated with adulation until the day comes when, old and useless, it is sent to the slaughterhouse because it would cost too much to feed it until it dies. Thus the value placed on animals undergoes total change, from one extreme to the other, at the mere whim of their owners.
“Farid de Mortelle” is the Facebook pseudonym of a young man from Marseille, twenty-five years old, who in January 2014 had himself videoed while torturing a cat. He then put the record of his exploits online on YouTube. You see him standing in front of his friends and throwing a small white and ginger cat as high and as far as possible and watching it fall heavily on the concrete. Hysterical, Farid repeats his act a few seconds later, throwing the little cat violently against a wall. Then he plays with its unconscious body. France was outraged, and a petition calling for punishment of the young man got more than 130,000 signatures in a few days. The “internauts” went into action together to identify and find the guilty party, who was then arrested and condemned to a year in prison. The little cat, Oscar, miraculously survived, despite a broken paw and many bruises. It was picked up by a kindly person and finally found a good home.
In 2007 we learned that Michael Vick, an American football star, had for a number of years been organizing dogfights on his property. This news angered all of the United States. The dogfights had been organized for gambling, and the bets went as high as $26,000. Vick and his friends bought pit bulls, tested them for fighting ability, then electrocuted, hung, drowned, beat to death, or shot to death the ones who were not combative enough. Vick pleaded guilty and had to serve twenty-three months in jail.
Such acts of cruelty are not rare. In these cases, public opinion reacted purely emotionally and deontologically, proclaiming loud and clear that it is unacceptable to treat animals in this fashion. However, the very day that Farid made a martyr out of the little cat, in France nearly 500,000 animals were struck down at the end of a short life—indescribable suffering occurred accompanied by nearly complete indifference on the part of the public. In a slaughter facility in the western part of the country, undersized piglets were destroyed in the meshes of the machine that is utilized to kill them, and other living animals were thrown into an incinerator.7 Rationally, nothing can justify such a divergence in attitude. As philosopher Gary Francione, who is an advocate of abolition of the instrumentalization of animals, tells us, we are suffering here from a veritable moral schizophrenia for which it is our duty to find a remedy.8