Skywritings

Re: Frost, Ben (2017) Ecorazzi January 9, 2017
Why the Mainstream “Animal Movement” Promotes Peter Singer

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Stevan Harnad: Such a pity — a tragedy, actually, for the (animal) victims — this needless, destructive, dogmatic divisiveness. So few vegans in the world, yet the “abolitionist” zealots fight with them instead of trying to reach the hearts of carnivores. This is not the way to cultivate compassion. Nor to reduce suffering. Nor, for that matter, to convert most people to veganism or abolition.       — A Non-Dogmatic Abolitionist

Gary Francione: What are you talking about? It’s not a matter of being “divisive.” It’s a matter of criticizing an ideology which holds that, because animals (supposedly) have a qualitatively different level of self-awareness, they lack an interest in, or have a qualitatively different interest in, continuing to live. That is the basis of the welfarist movement, which holds that killing animals per se is not to harm them and that the focus should be reducing suffering. This has nothing to do abolition. One cannot be “divisive” unless there is a unitary whole that can be divided. There isn’t.

I have attempted to engage you before. You never deal with the substantive issues. You simply repeat the welfarist PR slogans. You’re doing it here.

Gary L. Francione. Rutgers University

P.S. If you would like to have a public discussion about this, let me know, We could do something on a platform like Skype. Let others determine whose position is correct.

Stevan Harnad: Hi Gary,

Thanks for your reply. Here are a few clarifications that I think might help:

1. I too am a vegan abolitionist (activist).

2. This means that I do anything I can to help and protect animals.

3. I don’t eat or wear or use animals in any way.

4. I do anything I can toward abolishing the use of animals.

5. I do anything I can to try to encourage people to become vegans as well as activists doing anything they can to help and protect animals and to abolish their use.

I realize that most people in the world are carnivores and do not (yet) share all of 1 – 5. So I think that the more people begin to do at least part of 1 – 5, the better for the animal victims, present and future.

I don’t hold any part of the ideology that you attribute to the welfarist movement. I am sure that there are people who hold some or all of those views, but they are not vegan abolitionist activists.

I am an abolitionist vegan activist who is also a welfarist, and so are many others. I think that not only do I not fit the stereotype you describe as the ideology of “welfarists,” but that that stereotype does not fit many other abolitionist vegan activists who are also working for animal welfare, including those who are provisionally making common cause with non-vegans who are merely trying to reduce rather than abolish animal suffering.

I would be very happy to have a public discussion with you. I admire your heart, your feelings towards animals, and all you are trying to do to help animals and to abolish the horrors. But my public discussion with you will be ecumenical, because I do not oppose the positive efforts of fellow abolitionist vegan activists to end the horrors. I just greatly regret divisiveness among abolitionist vegan activists as well as negative stereotyping. I don’t think fighting with one another helps the countless animal victims that we are all fighting to help and protect from the horrors.

Best wishes, Stevan

GARY FRANCIONE: You say: “I am an abolitionist vegan activist who is also a welfarist, and so are many others.”

No, you’re not an abolitionist.

In the 1990s, many welfarists said they really wanted to achieve animal rights (which required abolition) but they supported welfare as a means to that end. I wrote a book in 1996 (Rain Without Thunder) in which I discussed this phenomenon, I called it “new welfarism.” I explained the theoretical and practical problems of that position. What you are articulating is *exactly* that position: you’re an abolitionist but support welfare. Abolition is a position that says that the means must be consistent with the end. You cannot simultaneously support abolition and welfare,either in some absolute way or as a supposed means to the end of abolition. You are articulating a new welfarist position. You either are not familiar with my work or you don’t agree with it but I have yet to see you make a single substantive argument against it.

You say: “I don’t hold any part of the ideology that you attribute to the welfarist movement.” But you say: “I am an abolitionist vegan activist who is also a welfarist.” So you’re a welfarist but you don’t embrace the welfarist ideology? Sorry, that makes absolutely no sense.

There is no divisiveness amongst abolitionists. There are abolitionists and there are new welfarists. They are two separate approaches to animal ethics.

Stevan Harnad: Hi Gary,

I know your position and I know your work and I admire and value it, as I do the work of all sincere, dedicated vegan abolitionist activists.

But yes, I cannot agree with you that one cannot be working toward complete abolition while also working for immediate welfare improvements along the way. I know you hypothesize that this entrenches and reinforces animal exploitation and the industries that thrive on it.

That is a hypothesis. It might be right, it might be wrong. I believe it is sometimes right but often wrong. I also cannot bring myself to not do whatever I can to lessen the current victims’ immediate suffering on the strength of a hypothesis. I might have been able to do it (for a while) if there were overwhelming evidence to support the hypothesis, and if abolition were around the corner, but neither of these is alas the case.

One is free, of course, to define “isms” in any way one wishes. You are working toward the total abolition of animal use by humans. So am I. I would say that by the ordinary rules of nominalizing verbs in English, that makes us both “abolitionists.” On the road to abolition, I am also working toward reducing ongoing animal suffering as much and as soon as possible, by any means possible. Knowing your compassion and motivation, I am absolutely certain you are too.

It seems reasonable to say that working to reduce animal suffering is working to increase animal welfare. But the path from a noun (welfare) to an ideologized hyper-noun, “welfarism,” is more arbitrary and subjective. And I think you have projected an ideology onto those who are trying to reduce current animal suffering on the path to total abolition, describing them as people who are delaying or deterring abolition, either inadvertently, or deliberately, for their own interests.

There do indeed exist many people who are deliberately or inadvertently delaying or deterring abolition for their own interests. Such people, either knowingly or unknowingly, really aren’t abolitionists.

But that simply does not cover all the people who say, truthfully, that they are abolitionists, and act accordingly, and who also say, truthfully, that they are “welfarists” as well, trying to reduce animal suffering along the way, and act accordingly.

Nor is there any reason to believe that formulating a hypothesis or attributing an ideology makes real people fit one’s hypothesis or one’s attribution as a matter of fact. That rather exceeds the definitional power of language.

I will be directing a Summer Institute on “The Other Minds Problem: Animal Sentience and Cognition” in Montreal in June 2018. The daytime sessions will be scientific ones, focussed on sentience and biological/psychological needs, species by species, from invertebrates to fish to birds to mammals to primates. The evening sessions will be about ethics and practical activism for immediately reducing and eventually abolishing animal suffering. I hope you can come and give a talk.

With best wishes,

Stevan

On a long walk in Princeton many years ago I asked David Lewis whether the distinction between what’s necessary and what’s contingent might be just an epistemic (based only on what we do and don’t, can and can’t know), rather than an ontic one: The things we regard as necessary are the ones that are either provably necessary, on pain of formal contradiction with our premises, such as the fact that 29 is prime or that “p or q” implies p, or are thought to be “nomologically necessary,” based on current causal theory and evidence, such as that apples fall earthward rather than skyward because of gravity. The things we regard as contingent are just the ones that are not provably necessary, nor thought to be nomologically necessary.

In other words, the necessary/contingent distinction could be metaphysical, but it could also be that everything that is and that happens is necessary (could not have been otherwise), either formally or nomologically, but we just don’t always know the proof, or the laws/evidence/reasons. Contingency and possibility are just symptoms of our ignorance.

The idea has its homologue in metatheory of probability: What look like possibilities only look that way because of our ignorance. Everything is determinate and necessary; just some of it (unproved and unprovable theorems, the answers to NP-complete questions, many-body problems, even quantum indeterminacy), is uncertain, unpredicatable, its formal or causal story unknown or even unknowable. (No, I don’t think QM’s hidden necessity would be committed to the truth of hidden-variable theory.)

What would become of the realist view of necessity if everything were necessary? (Those are, of course, epistimic “woulds” and “weres”.)

This would not solve the “hard” problem of consciousness either because it’s not enough to say that our brains must produce consciousness: We still want to know, as with everything else, how and why. The hard problem is an epistemic one, of causal explanation.

And of course there’s a lot more at stake in asking whether the laws of nature themselves could have been otherwise than in pondering whether or not the various incarnations of the Ship of Theseus are the same ship.

Formalists in mathematics would then be pragmatists, in John Burgess‘s sense, but the law of non-contradiction would be the underlying realist constraint.

Non-ontic contingency would of course have implications for “possible worlds” theory, “concepts,” and “free will.”

Footnotes:

“Uncomplemented Categories” (for which non-members do not exist) are admittedly problematic.

If everything were ontically determinate and necessary this would not only pose problems for free will but for ethics.

LANGUAGE, LIE-DETECTORS AND CARLO COLLODI

1. Yes, Trump is a compulsive (and repulsive) serial liar.

2. Yes, the right-wing press is trying to minimize this.

3. Yes, it’s harder to prove that someone tried to deliberately misinform people rather than just “mistakenly asserting and believing something false to be true.”

4. Yes, Trump can be serially absolved of his serial lies by sugar-coating them as “mistakenly asserting and believing something false to be true.”

5. Fine. Ban the word “lie” in the Trump era, forget about intent, and simply, relentlessly keep building a cumulative list of the things that Trump asserts to be true that are false, from day to day, every day, coupled with the evidence in each case.

6. Let’s see how many people are ready to believe the things Trump says as this list just grows and grows and grows.

7. Natural language evolved 300,000 years ago on the default assumption that what people tell you is true; if the default assumption had been that it was false, language could never have gotten off the ground.

8. But, as a safeguard, we also evolved highly sensitive serial lie-detectors: If someone keeps lying to us, we stop believing them, whether we like it or not.

9. The deplorables believed (or pretended to believe) Trump enough to vote for him despite the evidence; the decent majority already saw through him long, long before the time of the election (but the electoral laws gave Trump a false majority anyway).

10. Let’s see how long Trump’s serial lying leaves him any credibility at all in the US and the world as the list of the things he asserts to be true that are false just grows and grows, like Pinocchio’s nose…

Picike,
már nem vagy,
és amire kiváncsi voltál,
már tudod hogy nincs
— vagy is tudtad volna,
ha lett volna,
ahogy XCIV lettél volna,
ha még lettél volna.
Mi még vagyunk,
egyre kevesebben,
de emlékszünk,
és a műveid,
meg a Bonzóé,
még vannak
és még lesznek
már akkor is
mikor már nem emlékszik senki.
Na és?

Le foie gras à nouveau banni en Californie Le Devoir 8 janvier 2019

Alain Roy: « Il faut mettre tout ça en perspective : est-ce que mon confort alimentaire, ma tradition, mon goût l’emporte sur la souffrance d’un être vivant qu’on reconnaît susceptible de souffrance selon la science ? »

Une lecture que ne partage pas Rougié. Le producteur de foie gras (de Marieville, en Montérégie) estime plutôt que le stade de « stéatose hépatique », ou « lipidose » du foie, atteint par l’engraissement maîtrisé des canards est « un état réversible et non pathologique », selon les informations publiées sur son site Internet.

Quelle hypocrisie: En réhabilitation on encourage les alcoholiques souffrant de la stéatose hépatique de cesser de boire pendant que c’est encore réversible, avant que ça mène à la cirrhose du foie, la démence, le cancère du foie et la mort.

La production de foie gras grossit le foie jusqu’à 10 fois sa taille normale. Cela entrave la fonction hépatique en obstruant le flux sanguin et dilate l’abdomen, ce qui rend difficile la respiration des oiseaux. La mort survient si le gavage est poursuivi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foie_gras#Humane_foie_gras

Jusqu’un certain point la strangulation et même l’égorgement sont réversibles, si on arrête de les faire assez tôt.

Est-ce que dans sa publicité l’entreprise Rougié est en train de prôner la réhabilitation des oies? Pas la peine, puisque les alcoholiques s’empoisonnent de leur propre libre arbitre, tandis que les oies ne se gavent pas volontairement.

(Au moins boire du vin donne du plaisir au buveur — avec ou sans foie gras — mais le gavage ne donne que de l’agonier au gavé, pour le plaisir du consommateur, et au profit des gaveurs de la Montérégie. Est-ce réversible, ça?)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-MBjIoXNLprWlRDcGlzaVRfY3M/preview

Extraits du code civile du Quebec B-3.1 – Loi sur le bien-être et la sécurité de l’animal

CONSIDÉRANT
—que la condition animale est devenue une préoccupation sociétale;
—que l’espèce humaine a une responsabilité individuelle et collective de veiller au bien-être et à la sécurité des animaux;
—que l’animal est un être doué de sensibilité ayant des impératifs biologiques;
—que l’État estime essentiel d’intervenir afin de mettre en place un régime juridique et administratif efficace afin de s’assurer du bien-être et de la sécurité de l’animal;

Nul ne peut, par son acte ou son omission, faire en sorte qu’un animal soit en détresse.

Pour l’application de la présente loi, un animal est en détresse dans les cas suivants:

—il est soumis à un traitement qui lui cause des douleurs aiguës;
—il est exposé à des conditions qui lui causent une anxiété ou une souffrance excessives.

Toute disposition d’une loi accordant un pouvoir à une municipalité ou toute disposition d’un règlement adopté par une municipalité, inconciliable avec une disposition de la présente loi ou d’un de ses règlements, est INOPÉRANTE.

MA QUESTION: « Face à ce constat, comment est-ce que la ville de Montréal peut faire venir le rodéo de St Tite à notre festival NomadFest 2017? »

(Le maire répond que ça se fait ailleurs aussi (St Tite, Calgary), qu’on nous assure que les animaux ne souffrent pas, qu’il y a des vétérinaires qui sont présent, et que ce qui est important c’est que ça se fasse de façon « professionnelle ». Il promet de m’envoyer des informations supplémentaires à ce sujet.)

QUESTION COMPLÉMENTAIRE: « Est-ce que le maire a jamais témoigner de près ce qui ce fait au rodéo — et est-ce qu’il permettrait faire ça avec ses animaux de famille? »

(Le maire répond qu’il a été voir le rodéo à St Tite, qu’il était satisfait, et qu’il y a une différence entre les animaux domestiques et le animaux de rodéo.)

Le maire semble avoir attendu à ce qu’on l’applaudisse après cette réplique. C’est un indice de la direction que nous devons prendre: Le maire cherche l’applaudissement, il n’aime pas la mauvaise presse, il souhaite être re-élue. Donc il faut lui communiquer — sans rancoeur, tout à fait sang-froid — ce que les citoyens du québéc ont communiqué avec leur manifeste, et ce qu’ils attendent en termes de respect à la nouvelle loi B-3.1…

Il faut insister sur une consultation publique, témoignage privilégié de la SPCA de Montréal, témoignage privilégié de l’ordre de vétérinaires, témoignage privilégié des autres métropoles qui ony banni les rodéos, et beaucoup de preuves vidéos des dégâts…

Hilary was only half-right: The Trump supporters were (and are) ALL deplorables, without exception. So are those who voted 3rd-party or didn’t vote. They all share the blame for what’s to come. Only the numerical majority of decents are blameless. Yet they, too, will suffer the consequences of the triumph of the deplorables — as will the rest of the world.

To have voted for a vile, cheap, ignorant and indescribably dangerous con-man like Trump, with eyes open, has no other word to describe it than deplorable. Yes, we now have to try to make the least worst out of this terrible bargain, but to pretend that Trump voters are anything but deplorables is to pretend OJ Simpson was actually innocent because so adjudged by a jury of peers.

We are in the era of crowd-sourced hearsay demagogy (that some are beginning to call “post-truth”).

Obigate carivores have no choice, to survive. We are not obligate carnivores but facultative omnivores, with a choice. Nonhuman animals not only eat meat, but they kill, hurt, rape, subjugate and steal from members of their own species; so do humans. But we thought the better of it, and outlawed it. So what kind of an argument is it that other animals and our ancestors did it, so it’s alright for us to go on doing it in the special case of meat eating, at a time when it is no longer necessary for our survival or health — and harmful to every sentient being on the planet?

21 décembre 2016

[English text follows at end]

Maître Zambito,

Tout d’abord, j’aimerais vous remercier pour votre appel téléphonique.

Ensuite, comme convenu, voici une courte liste de mes remarques, qui seront suivies de ma proposition :

1. Ainsi que le précise la Loi B-3.1 sur le bien-être et la sécurité de l’animal, « la condition animale est devenue une préoccupation sociétale ».

2. Le Québec a malheureusement mauvaise réputation en ce qui concerne le traitement des animaux.

3. Pourtant, la signature, il y a trois ans, par plus de 50 000 Québécois, du manifeste Les animaux ne sont pas des choses, manifeste qui a inspiré la loi B-3.1, démontre que cette préoccupation sociétale croissante pour la condition animale est partagée par les Québécois.

4. Pas une société, y compris la société montréalaise, n’est justifiée de tirer fierté de son passé lié au cheval, ni de le célébrer.

5. La façon noble et compatissante d’honorer le patrimoine que nous partageons avec les chevaux serait de nous dissocier de leur exploitation de jadis : nous vivons plus que jamais à l’époque de l’automobile et du transport public; la circulation à cheval et l’assujettissement des chevaux ne sont plus ni nécessaires ni justifiés.

6. Continuer d’exploiter les chevaux, de les stresser et de les exposer aux dangers inhérents à un milieu urbain, même si cela s’inscrit dans la pratique d’une industrie contrôlée, n’est pas un hommage rendu au cheval ni à notre passé commun. Il s’agit plutôt de la pérennisation des abus auxquels nous avons le devoir de renoncer – et auxquels bien des métropoles dans le monde sont en voie de renoncer.

7. Le maire Denis Coderre maintient que les options qui s’offrent à ces chevaux de misère — retraités d’une vie non moins clémente – sont les calèches ou l’abattoir.

8. Mais voilà une opportunité à rendre un véritable hommage au cheval : À l’heure où les voix toujours plus nombreuses s’élèvent globalement pour dénoncer la vie déplorable des chevaux de calèches, Montréal pourrait offrir un redressement digne et décent de nos pratiques — une réhabilitation sensible face à notre passé doux-amer envers nos chevaux. Au lieu d’industrialiser et de perpétuer le métier obsolescent et mal vu des calèches à cheval en milieu urbain, au lieu de construire des écuries pour prolonger la triste vie de servitude de ces êtres sensibles, Montréal pourrait maintenant créer un refuge pour les chevaux à la retraite afin de leur épargner l’abattage et afin de démontrer la compassion et l’empathie des Montréalais et des Québécois envers nos anciens esclaves. À titre d’exemple, les cochers pourraient afficher sur leurs calèches électriques l’emplacement de ce refuge, là où les touristes pourraient aller voir les chevaux et constater le traitement juste et louable que leur auront réservé les Montréalais. C’est ainsi une image moderne et de compassion que les touristes garderont de notre ville et qu’ils communiqueront autour d’eux. Cette image sera le reflet du changement d’attitude des Québécois à l’égard des chevaux, en particulier, et des animaux, en général.

Si le comité juge cette option prometteuse, je me ferai un plaisir de la développer plus avant et d’exposer les fonctions éducatives du sanctuaire urbain proposé, unique au monde, qui donnerait de Montréal et du Québec une image incomparablement plus positive et progressiste, digne de la loi B-3.1. La politique de l’industrialisation des calèches, pour sa part, ne ferait que perpétuer l’image rétrograde et la mauvaise presse actuelles de la ville, les manifestations de protestation et la critique internationale.

Si vous êtes sensible à ma proposition, j’offre mes services pro bono pour l’élaboration de ce sanctuaire urbain, projet auquel je suis sûr que d’autres bénévoles (et des bienfaiteurs) se rallieraient.

Bien cordialement,

Étienne (Stevan) Harnad

Mr. Zambito,

Thank you for your phone call.

As agreed, here is a short list of my remarks, followed by my proposal:

1. As stated in Quebec Civil Code Bill B-3.1 on the welfare and safety of animals, “animal welfare has become a matter of social concern.”

2. Unfortunately, Quebec has a bad reputation in the treatment of animals.

3. Yet three years ago, more than 50,000 Quebeckers signed the manifesto “Animals are not things“, a manifesto that inspired Bill B-3.1, demonstrating that this growing social concern for animal welfare is shared by Quebeckers.

4. No society, including Montreal society, is justified in taking pride in or celebrating its past history with horses.

5. The noble and compassionate way to commemorate the heritage we share with horses would be to dissociate ourselves from their past exploitation: we live in the day of the automobile and public transport; circulation on horseback and the subjugation of horses is no longer necessary or justified.

6. Continuing to exploit horses, stress them and expose them to the dangers inherent in an urban environment, even within a controlled industry, is not a tribute to the horse nor to our shared past. Rather, it is the perpetuation of abuses that we need to renounce – and many of the world’s metropolises are now in the process of renouncing them.

7. Mayor Denis Coderre maintains that the only two options open to these unfortunate horses – who are “retired” from prior lives that were no less kind – are carriage service or the slaughterhouse.

8. But in reality there is a third option, and with it an opportunity to do real homage to both our past and present with the horse: At a time when more and more voices are being raised against the deplorable life of carriage horses, Montreal could offer a dignified and decent alternative — a genuine reform after our bitter-sweet past with horses: Instead of industrializing and prolonging the obsolete and inhumane use of horse-drawn carriages in the urban setting, instead of building stables to extend the servitude of these exhausted retirees, Montreal could now create an urban sanctuary for retired horses to save them from slaughter and to demonstrate the compassion and empathy of Montrealers and Quebeckers toward our former servants. Coachmen could display the location and description of the sanctuary in their horseless electric carriages so tourists from everywhere would know, and could even go to see the retired horses and the decent treatment that Montrealers are now giving them. This is a modern and humane image that tourists will carry back with them from our city, reflecting the change in Quebeckers’ ways with horses in particular, and animals in general.

If the committee considers this option promising, I will be happy to develop it further and to outline the educational functions of the proposed urban sanctuary, unique in the world, which would give Montreal and Quebec an incomparably more positive and progressive image, worthy of of Law B-3.1. The policy of industrializing urban horse-drawn carriages, in contrast, would only perpetuate the retrograde image and bad press of our city today, along with the protest demonstrations and international criticism.

If your response to my proposal is positive, I offer my services pro bono for the development of this urban sanctuary, to which I am sure that other volunteers (and benefactors) too would rally.

Best regards,

Étienne (Stevan) Harnad
Rédacteur-en-chef, Animal Sentience (Sensibilité animale) Éditions Humane Society, United States
Professeur de psychologie, UQÀM, McGill

“Anyone looking for a crystal ball for the coming Trump administration would do well to ‘study Hungary’s record’. And not just for clues about how a rightist strongman can permanently reorder a society and its institutions once it controls the legislature (as Trump and Orban do) and a judiciary (as Orban does and Trump is about to) – but also for how such a politician continues to consolidate power as his policies fail….”
— Susan Faludi: Hungary’s sharp rightward turn is a warning to America

[identity deleted]: “I hate to say that this can’t happen in the US, that the Hungarians have a long tradition of oppressive governments and that the US does not; that the Hungarians are used to repressed freedoms of all kinds, and have almost never really had freedom in the way the US has; but after so many instances of “it can never happen”, I am not sure of anything any more.

“I do feel that at least in North America it would take a lot more to do what Orban has done. The traditions of the countries are at opposite sides of the spectrum. It is just as hard for Hungarians to internalise the freedoms that we have, as it would be for us to internalise the oppression that has been their way of life, essentially for centuries.”

My explanation would be different:

1. No one lives for centuries: Each individual’s lifetime experience is what they see and hear during their own life-cycle (including what they are told about past centuries).

2. Hungarians have not been oppressed for centuries; they’ve just kept telling themselves that for centuries. Plenty of eastern European peoples (and peoples elsewhere) have had a much worse time of it than Hungarians, who were on the side of the oppressors during the Austro-Hungarian centuries. But Hungarians have made a culture of feeling sorry for themselves (though not for their victims), and they keep passing it on from generation to generation.

3. I think the real common factor is the mentality of the deplorables; they are all over the planet. Perhaps under 50% in the US. But the majority in Hungary. I could sketch the profile of a deplorable; it’s not very deep: They are not impoverished people but people who are less well off than they were or they feel they deserve to be. And the rest is just about where they lay the blame: immigrants, black people, non-christians (or non-whatever is the home cult), conspiracies, China, liberals. They also claim to blame the rich (though that’s exactly what they want to be, and when they are, they become exactly like the rest; Trump is among the worst of them, though he’s always been well off).

Well the deplorables now have their day (again). But more is at stake than ever in the past. And more damage — permanent damage — can be done by them in a short time than ever before. The worst time to hand the planet over to the deplorables.