[6.10.2.] Alastair Norcross on Torturing Puppies.

 

The next reading, by Alastair Norcross (professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder[1]), is an article published in the Southwest Philosophy Review in 2004.

 

Norcross describes himself as a “card-carrying, no-holds-barred, act utilitarian.”

 

His argumentative strategy is to compare the actual treatment of chickens in factory farms to an imagined case of the torture of puppies by Fred. Fred must torture puppies in order to extract from them the hormone that will allow him to experience the taste of chocolate. Norcross argues that “human gustatory pleasure does not justify inflicting extreme suffering on animals” (RTD 136).

 

gustation (df.): the act or sensation of tasting (“gustatory” is the adjectival form, meaning “having to do with the act or sense of tasting”).

 

Obviously, it is immoral for Fred to torture puppies simply so that he can enjoy the taste of chocolate.

 

According to Norcross, there are no morally relevant differences between what Fred does to the puppies and what happens to billions of chickens, pigs, calves, etc. every year.

 

He considers a number of possible morally relevant differences between Fred and us meat-eaters, but argues in each case that the alleged difference is really no such thing:

 

1.      Fred tortures the puppies himself, whereas consumers of factory-raised meat do nothing to the animals they eat.

·        Norcross: “What if Fred had been squeamish and had employed someone else to torture the puppies and extract the cocoamone? Would we have thought any better of Fred? Of course not.” (RTD 133)

 

2.      Fred is aware of the puppies’ suffering, whereas many (perhaps most) consumers of factory-raised meat do not realize how much animals raised for food suffer.

·        Norcross: no one who has read this far into his article can use this excuse anymore; plus awareness of this sort of animal suffering has been spreading for years, so as time passes fewer and fewer people can use this excuse.

 

3.      “Causal Impotence.” Fred is the sole cause of the puppies’ suffering; if he didn’t torture them, they wouldn’t be tortured. But no single consumer of factory-raised meat will stop animal suffering by becoming a vegetarian—animals will continue to be raised for meat and slaughtered, no matter what any one of us does. “Since the animals will suffer no matter what I do, I may as well enjoy the taste of their flesh.” (RTD 134)

 

Norcross considers two ways of responding...

 

(A)  The Alabama Cocoamone Industry story (RTD 134-35). If you would not condone ordering the cocoamone-laced coffee, you cannot cite causal impotence as a morally relevant difference between consumers of factory-raised meat and Fred.

 

(B) The claim that individuals are causally impotent is false.

·         It is very likely that if only one person stops eating chicken (for example), that is not going to change the number of chickens bred, tortured, and slaughtered by the chicken industry. But neither is it the case that everyone has to give up chicken in order to affect the number of chickens that have such lives. Suppose that the chicken industry will reduce the number of chickens it produces every year by 250,000, every time another 10,000 people stop eating chicken. This means that if you stop eating it, you have a 1 in 10,000 chance of saving 250,000 chickens a year. By continuing to eat chicken, you are taking a small risk of causing a very great harm... and “[w]e commonly accept that even small risks of great harms are unacceptable” (e.g., child safety restraints in automobiles; safety devices in airplanes; smoking and drinking while pregnant) (RTD 136).

·         Even if you are not the 10,000^th person to convert to vegetarianism and so do not yourself bring about a reduction in the number of chickens with miserable lives, still, “your conversion will reduce the time required before the next threshold is reached. The sooner the threshold is reached, the sooner production, and therefore animal suffering, is reduced. Your behavior, therefore, does make a difference.” (RTD 136)

·         By becoming a vegetarian, you can influence others to do the same, who can in turn influence others. So this is yet another way in which you are not causally impotent to help change what the meat-production industry does.

 

 

Stopping point for Monday October 25. For next time, read all of “Liberalism, Torture, and the Ticking Bomb” by David Luban (RTD ch.23).