COMMENSAL ISSUE 88

I would like to take the opportunity to reply to some of the criticisms levelled against my account of cannibalism (C86, pp. 16-18) by Rick Street (in C87, pp. 16-17). Firstly, Mr. Street says that morality is a social construct and thus, I presume, believes in some sort of historical and/or cultural relativism. The fact that what is considered to be morally right and morally wrong depends on the society in which these value judgements are being made is indisputable and, in fact, trivial. If this was all that relativists believed there would be no arguments. But relativists say that what is considered morally right is morally right and therefore that moral values vary from society to society. In effect the rightness and wrongness of an action depends on the number of people doing it. If this were true then anything that a society did would be justified: the crucifixion of Christ would be justified, being both legal and favoured by the majority. If a society decided they could avert natural disasters by setting fire to everybody from out of town, they would be justified in doing so. If the Germans thought that their society would he better off without four (sic) million Jews, then they would be justified in killing them. Indeed, this is where the collectivism involved in society is at its most pernicious. Prejudices are caused by society, not alleviated by them. If everyone were just treated as individuals then such things as racism would simply never arise. They are not, as is naively thought, the product of a lack of unity, but in fact they are the product of too much. Hitler would never have got as far as he did if he hadn’t got thousands of people to believe what he was telling them. In contrast let’s take the most extreme example of anti-social behaviour: the actions of mass or serial murderers. The most successful of these have only managed to kill a dozen or so people. In the scale of things this number is insignificant. Serial killers are effete amateurs.

Secondly, I did not advocate vegetarianism for either humans or any other animals. I think meat eating is reasonable (although I would hesitate to call it moral) simply because nature has been designed that way. That is a long way, however, from saying that the life of the lion is in some way more important than the life of the wildebeest, that the life of the human is more important than that of the lion or indeed that the life of the Mensan is more important than the life of the non-Mensan. I was trying to show a correspondence between the sets of cases if intelligence were used as a morally significant dividing line. The argument was that if having greater intelligence makes the human more morally important than the animal then it follows that the vampire/Mensan is more important than the human/non-Mensan. Therefore I decided that intelligence was NOT a morally significant dividing line.

I decided that what was a morally significant dividing line was autonomy, being the ability to think and choose for yourself. The problem here is that ‘lower' animals may have more autonomy than is immediately apparent - primates are capable of purposive activity and humans may have less autonomy than is immediately apparent because it is constantly eroded by social pressures. In fact, if Mr. Street were to be followed, people would be reduced to mere extensions of their society and would rather assume the moral status of plants moving involuntarily towards the light.

It is true that one could not get away with eating humans for long. It is also true that to kill a human without causing anybody any pain is more difficult than killing an animal without causing anybody any pain due to the emotional attachments that the human collects. Both of these objections suggest that cannibalism is impractical, but not that it is immoral. Please note: even the autonomous should not cause pain.

Lastly, Mr. Street says that humans are not the only animals to produce art and then goes on to cite several examples of engineering. The difference between art and non-art is not in how it is originated but in how it is evaluated. A nest is a 'good' nest if it provides shelter, attracts a mate etc. A pen in a 'good’ pen if the ink that comes from it doesn't smudge or run. In these cases the criteria used are functional and objective. But a painting cannot be adjudged to be good in the same way that a nest or a pen can. It does not have a function in the same way. Its evaluation is purely subjective.

To clear up a final misunderstanding, my name is Dave. Any similarities to persons living or undead are purely coincidental.

Dave Botting

Dave : Thanks for writing in again & revealing your true identity ! I think I agree with most of what you have to say above. Is anyone watching the BBC2 Serial The Nazis - a Warning from History ? Do you really mean that the evaluation of art is purely subjective ? Surely, while art has to be viewed in its context, it can be either relevant or irrelevant, well or badly executed, etc ? Having decided what it is the artist is trying to say, is it a purely subjective judgement as to whether or not that objective has been achieved ? Isn’t it the case that many aesthetic disagreements arise from using the wrong evaluation criteria ? Similar to evaluating a pen as though it were a sword ?

Theo