Species ethics - first questions
District 9 - an incredible, intelligent, multilayered story - is the movie of the year.
I'll quickly concentrate on a layer that I've thought quite an interesting angle into an inquiry into ethics - and if this is not too sci-fi, would like to explore this academically at some point, at least on a level of a thought-experiment.
How would our ethical system change if we were not to consider ourselves the highest species? What would an inter-species ethical system look like? What would we consider moral action towards lower and higher species if humans were only a step on a continuum of species?
There are many assumptions and beliefs in the above, begging definition, but since this is not an academic piece, I'll just pen down some ideas I have about this. This far, we have fought and argues about what is right and wrong; whether such questions can be answered; whether they can be asked at all. We have been severely handicapped by our acceptance that the naturalistic fallacy and Hume's guillotine separate the worldly from the the ethical, and that arguments of ethics are eternally doomed to either clash or descend into cultural relativism and even nihilism.
By the fact that we exist, we cannot deduce that our existence has any moral value. We can, however, say that we have the right to exist. Analyzed further, this breaks down to simply two things: that we WANT to exist, and that we have the ability to DECLARE it. Most mammals - lower species in terms of cultural complexity, technology and communication - can be deduced to want to exist as well. In fact, they display fear, warn others of danger and attempt to flee when faced with imminent doom. Of course, that is an declaration of desire to exist, since we wouldn't understand them without some kind of communication.
That's a very short introduction to some ethical dilemmas around animal rights - a loaded subject among vegetarians and carnivores alike. To escape that, I'll just place the point of observation outside the animal-human distinction, and assume that the continuum of species goes beyond that of humans - again, beyond in terms of cultural, societal and technological complexity. How should we assume our declaration of our desire to exist should be reacted to?
One answer could be based on intelligence and self-consciousness, but this approach would require us to draw a line between intelligence and non-intelligence. Are we intelligent? Not in comparison, necessarily. Are sheep not non-intelligent? Again, not in all comparisons. If it is likelier, that intelligence, like other forms of complex interaction, is not a huge, emergent leap but a spectrum (this is my stance, which I aim to argue for in entirety later).
I won't offer answers here, but you should see the perspective I'm aiming for now. Is an ethical system possible that can be accepted between species on a continuum of interacting species (eating another species counts as interaction)? What would that entail? If such a system is feasible to accept, should we accept it, or continue to assume that we are, morally, the highest species?
posted by Mikko @ 21:08
2 comments
2 Comments:
And isn't this one of the points that the movie tries to raise: that a systematized method of societal discrimination/segregation forces subjugated groups to reconsider their ethical systems (and, specifically, when to act outside them)? As such, can we look towards historical examples of this? Or are you looking for broader principles?
I think that all such things are, realistically, a carefully established balance - assertion to the point of danger, but no further. It's a defensive offensive posture, like a cat maximizing it's volume when frightened. Or, in this movie, the balance between the alien's asserting themselves without endangering themselves (most of the time).
Such interesting questions you (and the movie) raise. Both philosophical and practical.
I'm hoping to look for broader principles, although as with most (all?) ethical positions, they may just end up as emotional appeals.
But in this specific case you mention, does the assertion not meet the definition of communication, and as such, signal a desire or a belief that we can either accept or decline as worthy of moral significance?
My point here is, that in order for us to construct ethical systems - which always need to answer questions of equality - we need to construct some sort of requirements that must be met in order for a being/species to be applicable for ethical treatment. Just being human may not be enough, as has been argued by the animal rights movement since and beyond Singer. What if we break the speciesism in the other direction as well, and consider ethical systems, where we were not the strongest and most advanced? What could those systems be like? Are species lower in power and organization always forced to accept what is dictated upon them from above, or is there an ethical system that could be a gradient, not black and white, like the spectrum of species that it were to address?
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