THESISxii
A Philosophical Newsletter
Volume 6 • Number 3
1999
Inside this Issue:
Sonya M. Boesse
ANSELM’S ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
Eric Moore
EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ANIMALS
A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
Mike Rosenberg
REPRESENTATIVE REALISM AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL SKEPTICISM
A Dialogue
Anselm’s Ontological Argument
Sonya M. Boesse
‡ Anselm of Canterbury undertakes the twofold task of demonstrating the existence of God and demonstrating certain truths regarding God’s attributes. In carrying out this task, he has recourse to a single consideration, namely, that God is something than which nothing greater can be conceived. I will argue that, although Anselm’s argument may seem sound, it in fact commits the fallacy of begging the question.
Anselm’s argument, in brief, is:
1. God is the greatest conceivable being (I will call this GCB for short).
2. It is greater to exist than to not exist.
3. Therefore, God exists (necessarily).
Anselm evidently offers the first premise as a definition, which he takes to be self-evident. He reaches the conclusion by a simple process: if we try to imagine a GCB which does not exist, then obviously we are not thinking of the GCB, because a GCB that did not exist would lack some conceivable greatness (in this case, existence).
As Kant observed, a basic problem with this argument is simply grammatical. A normal declarative sentence consists of a subject, a verb, and an object or predicate. The last line of the argument, “God exists” does not meet these requirements. God is the subject, and the word “exists” is simply another way of expressing the verb to be, which is not a predicate, but a copula. Existence is thus misused to mean a quality of God, and leaves the sentence unfinished. The obvious question in response to the statement “God is” is “God is what?” -- for the sentence lacks a proper predicate.
In addition to (and perhaps underlying) this problem is another error: the argument commits a fallacy of presumption. It begs the question by assuming without adequate support that the first premise is true. After reading the first premise the reader should ask, “How do we know that God is the GCB?" Usually, in committing the fallacy of begging the question, the arguer is unable to supply an answer to this question because the key premise is merely stipulative. In this argument the concept of the GCB, which evidently contains the conclusion, would be in question. The arguer appears to have made a deductively valid argument because the premise supports the conclusion, but it does so only by assuming it. The argument is circular, hence fallacious.
Anselm might reply by trying to restate the conclusion. He may supply the missing predicate(s) by saying he means that “God is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, etc.” But this attempt to finish the sentence simply unpacks the first premise, and merely underscores the fact that the argument begs the question.
Sonya M. Boesse is a student at MCLA
Equal Rights for Animals
A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
Eric Moore
‡ Both Tom Regan and Evelyn B. Pluhar endorse the view that animals1 have rights equal to human rights; for example, the right to life, the right to self-defense, the right to non-interference, and so on.2 I shall show that this view has unacceptable consequences, and so must be rejected. The objection that I will give is based on an objection that Regan himself considers and rejects, so it will be worthwhile to review that objection and Regan's response before giving my strengthened version.
The objection that Regan considers is that of conflicting rights between predators and prey (284), and what follows is a reconstruction of that argument. Assume that all animals and humans have equal rights. Then, since both sheep and wolves have rights, wolves violate sheep's rights when they hunt and kill them. Of course, sheep have a right to self-defense, and can use whatever means available, even if that requires harming the wolves. Unfortunately, sheep do not know self-defense, so typically are killed. But suppose a human (a moral agent) learns about one of these hunts. Since the sheep are innocent, and they are threatened, and the wolves violate their rights, the human is morally obligated to intervene.
The principle in operation here is this. Moral agents have a prima facie duty to intervene when an innocent animal's rights are being violated. Thus, if a human sees a sheep being hunted by a wolf, or indeed just about any prey being hunted by any predator, that human has a duty to intervene. But clearly this is absurd. There is no such duty. Even worse, since wolves have rights, and saving the sheep would harm the wolf (who cannot become a vegetarian as we humans can), if we were to interfere and help the sheep, we would violate the wolf's right not to be harmed. So, if animals have rights, then whether we interfere or not in hunting situations we act unjustly. Therefore, it is absurd to attribute rights to animals.
Regan would claim that that this objection "is open to the very charge of absurdity it levels against attributing rights to animals" (285). The problem is that this argument overlooks a crucial fact: wolves are not moral agents, so therefore they cannot have duties to anyone. In particular, wolves have no duties toward sheep. Since the wolves have no duties to the sheep, they cannot violate the sheep's rights. Therefore, we have no prima facie duty to interfere. No rights are being violated. The wolf may hunt the sheep and we act justly when we do not interfere.
I think that this reply is highly unsatisfactory. It grants entirely too much to the wolves. It follows from Regan's reasoning that not only do the sheep have no rights against the wolves, but that the wolves have rights against us not to interfere. We humans are moral agents, and so we do have duties, and in particular, the duty not to harm other animals. If it would harm the wolves to interfere with their hunt (and Regan seems to grant this), then not only is there no obligation to help the sheep, there is a positive obligation to refrain from helping the sheep. This seems wrong. However, the following case is much worse. Suppose that instead of sheep, the wolves are hunting a couple of hapless hikers. Like the sheep, suppose that these hikers are not equipped to scare off the wolves or defend themselves. They will be killed unless we intervene. If we follow Regan's reasoning not only do we have no duty to intervene, but we have a duty to refrain from intervening. We must let the hikers be killed or we will violate the rights of the wolves. This is so because even though the hikers are people, that does not matter in this case. The wolves have no duties to the hikers because the wolves are not moral agents. So, if we were to intervene, we would not be acting justly, because we would be harming the wolves, and they have a right not to be harmed. This is clearly absurd.
Regan could respond in the following way. He could claim that it is not true that we have a duty to refrain from interfering with the wolves, only a duty to refrain from harming them. If we wished, we could scare off the hunting wolves and prevent them from killing the sheep or the hikers. Of course, if we followed the wolves around and constantly interfered with their attempts at hunting, this would harm them. But just the one time would not, because there is no reason to think that the wolves would starve if they did not make this particular kill.
This response is still unsatisfactory. For one thing, it leaves it open to us to refrain from interfering with the hapless hikers. All that has been shown is that we may interfere, not that we must. But this still seems too weak. Furthermore, if it turns out that we can save the hikers only by harming the wolves, say by shooting them, then we would be prohibited from doing so. The hikers could harm the wolves because the hikers have the right of self-defense. But we have a duty to refrain from harming the wolves. Nor would we circumvent this problem if we gave the hikers our guns so that they could shoot the wolves. We would clearly still have violated our duty to the wolves. But this is not good. Not only do we have a right to shoot the wolves; we have a duty to do so. The rights of the wolves are not equal to the rights of the hikers.
It might be thought that the concept of allowable harm to innocent threats saves Regan's view. Suppose a young child picks up a loaded gun and starts firing it at us. We have the right of self-defense, even if that requires us to harm seriously or kill the child. Of course, we must try every other option that we can reasonably try, but if all else fails, we are permitted to kill the child to save ourselves, even though the child is innocent (293). Similarly with the wolves: they are an innocent threat, but we have the right to self-defense, even if it requires harming them.
This will not do, for Regan discusses this example as a threat to us, and that is fundamentally different from the case of the hapless hikers. In that case, only the hikers are threatened, not us. We would not be harmed if the hikers were killed. Furthermore, note that Regan's justification of harm to innocent threats is one of self-defense. He writes, "...since we are innocent of any relevant wrongdoing, since we are seriously threatened by the gun-wielding child ...it cannot be wrong to do what will harm the child..." (293).
The equal rights advocate could bite the bullet and grant that there is a duty to let the hikers be killed by the wolves. However, it is not clear to me that either Regan or Pluhar can consistently take this stance. The reason is their response to the lifeboat case. Consider a lifeboat with five beings, four humans and one large dog. Suppose that the lifeboat will sink and all five will die unless one of the five is thrown overboard (to certain death). Regan clearly argues, and Pluhar seems to believe, that it is right to throw the dog overboard.3 Since neither is willing to bite the bullet in this case, I do not see how either could consistently argue that it is our duty to let the hiker die in the wolf case.
So any right that would require us to save the hikers would, when equally applied to animals, require us to save the sheep. On the other hand, any right that would allow the wolves to kill the sheep would, when equally applied to people, allow the wolves to kill the hikers. Thus, the attribution of equal rights to all animals entails unacceptable consequences. Either we have conflicting duties that allow no just solution in cases involving predators and prey, or even worse, we end up with the wrong duties (the duty to let the wolves kill the hikers). The only way to resolve this dilemma is to give up the equal rights view.4
Notes
1 If not all animals, at least all mammals over one year in age. This stipulation has no effect on the rest of the paper.
2 Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1983. Evelyn B. Pluhar, Beyond Prejudice, The Moral Significance of Human and Nonhuman Animals, Durham: Duke University Press,1995.
3 Regan argues that death for the dog is less of a loss than death for any of the humans (324). Pluhar recognizes the underlying perfectionism of Regan's view and so rejects his reasons (291) but only claims that, "If we do throw the dog out of the boat, it should be for reasons other than his inability to do calculus" (295).
4 Nothing I have said here should be taken as an argument against attributing any rights at all toward animals, or as an argument against the highly plausible claim that we have some direct duties to animals.
Eric Moore teaches philosophy at MCLA
Representative Realism and Epistemological Skepticism
A Dialogue
Mike Rosenberg
‡ (Epistemological Skeptic): What exactly is this “Representative Realism” you speak of?
(Representative Realist): I will be glad to explain: representative realism is the view that the mind does not provide direct access to reality, but rather represents it much as a photograph does. The objects that presumably exist in the world outside of ourselves (the “real stuff”) are connected to us through our senses. We are similar to a camera in this sense: we get a very good idea of what the external world is, because our eyes see it and capture it, and our brain “develops the film” into an image we can recognize. This image represents the real, although it is not ‘the real’ in itself.
ES: I see, very intriguing. Let me get this straight however; You claim that we cannot have direct access to reality, but we can gain a concept of the “external world” through our perception of it?
RR: When there is intersubjective agreement about our experience of an object, we then have reason to assume it exists outside of any particular mind. I do not claim that our senses could not deceive. My claim is only that we cannot have direct knowledge of an object which does exist outside of us, either because of an underlying feature of human knowers which forbids it; or because we would need to be the object in order to eliminate the gap between the “knower” and the “known.”
ES: For the sake of argument, I will grant that there is a world outside of mind that is not entirely of our creation. Moreover, I’ll indulge your “representative realism” by granting that we know only through representations. However, since you cannot compare objects directly with concepts, how can you be sure which objects correspond to which concepts (or that there is any kind of correspondence)?
RR: This is easily explained. There is a necessary relationship between the concept and the object to which the concept refers. The string which attaches the two, the relationship, which you and I both are capable of knowing when we identify everyday things, is a capability we all share and almost take for granted. When we experience an object and gain an impression of it, we create a concept and a label for it. For example, when we first see a car, we retain in our mind the concept of it, so the next time we see the car, we are able to identify it. The relationship between the object and the concept is not a loose one, or else our mind would not function in the efficient way that it does. We might think the car is a house, or even a horse, or a wheelbarrow. This does not happen, however, because the concept exists in our brain – and we know which objects correspond to which concepts, because of the innate reciprocity of the relationship.
ES: Even so, there still is this gap – the gap between the concept and the object. Even if your views were correct, there still would exist this gap, am I correct?
RR: You are.
ES: So, therefore, since there is this gap between the knower, and the “objects” that the knower claims to perceive, you can hardly be certain of the “real.” For example, have you ever walked down the road, glanced across the street, and thought that for sure you saw a close friend, but as you took a closer look and approached the person, you noticed that the person was not your friend, but just a look-alike?
RR: Yes, of course.
ES: And I’m sure there have been many times when you thought you saw someone or something, maybe after a hard day at work or being very tired, and at second glance noticed that you were just “seeing things;” that nothing was there at all. In these cases, what are these representations corresponding to? If we gain our concepts of the real through visual representations of it, but at times such as those I have just mentioned the representations in fact represented nothing real at all, how can you ever trust your senses? So far, I find three major faults in your view: (1) it is possible for us to misperceive objects in the world, (2) our senses are susceptible to illusions, and (3) it is unclear how much epistemological value perceptions have, or to what extent, if at all, belief should be rooted in that which we perceive.
RR: I concede that illusions and error are possible. But should we take such exceptional cases as determinative or normative? We surely both agree that we are actually perceiving this table before us and not some illusion.
ES: I’ll grant that. But consider the chair against the wall at the end of the room. How can you be certain, epistemically, that your mental representation actually corresponds to the chair itself, since you concede that you only know the chair through your representation of it?
RR: I can check the accuracy of my representation quite simply by asking others to describe their experiences and representations of the same chair. If their uses for it and descriptions of it fit my image well, I have at least some independent confirmation that I am correctly representing the chair.
ES: You seem to be a very trusting person! Are you sure you can trust you neighbor’s experiences and representations, and the congruency of their representation with yours?
RR: I have no problem with trusting my peers because I recognize that knowing is a discursive process, which does involve trust, as well one’s own sensory perception, and systematic investigation – not direct knowing. I also recognize the epistemological fallibility in trust. However, to arrive at knowledge, you need to trust your senses, and other people’s senses as well. You will then at least have an idea that the object in the world outside of you is representing something that is corresponding to the epistemic concepts of more than one person. In this sense, although we may not have direct knowledge of the object, we know our representation of it checks out, because of agreement with other’s experiences.*
*Thanks to Matt Silliman and Eric Moore for comments on earlier drafts of this dialogue.
Mike Rosenberg is a student at MCLA and President of the Philosophy Society
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