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- [00:00]
Martha Nussbaum
Neighborhood.
- [00:02]
Liberty Mutual Spokesperson
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- [00:12]
Martha Nussbaum
Hey, everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?
- [00:15]
Liberty Mutual Spokesperson
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- [00:37]
Martha Nussbaum
First, there's one that I call the so like Us approach, which urges protection for apes and elephants on the grounds of their likeness to human beings. Now, there are many flaws in this approach which I don't have time to go into. It's inaccurate neglecting abilities that animals have and that we don't have. For example, birds can perceive magnetic fields. Dolphins can perceive what's inside an object. They approach to echolocation. But above all, it values animals for the wrong reason. Because of us, not because of them. First assuming our first place value and then conceding that, well, a few other creatures manage to attain some value by likeness to us. But an animal's goals are its own, as is its life.
- [01:31]
Podcast Host (Philosophy for Our Times)
Hello, and welcome to Philosophy for Our Times, bringing you the world's leading thinkers on today's biggest ideas.
- [01:39]
Podcast Co-Host (Daniel)
It's Ed here and Daniel.
- [01:41]
Podcast Host (Philosophy for Our Times)
And today's episode is a new theory of ethics. So, Daniel, what can we expect?
- [01:47]
Podcast Co-Host (Daniel)
So today we'll be listening to Martha Nussbaum, who's a philosopher and professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago. And in this episode, she'll bring us into the world of animal ethics through the telling first of three short stories centered around different animals, before exploring what our emotional reactions to them reveal about how we view animals, and presenting her own novel approach to justice beyond the human race. Whether you're a staunch vegan or think that animal suffering at the hands of humans is a necessary aspect of societal progress, there's something in this talk for everyone.
- [02:17]
Podcast Host (Philosophy for Our Times)
Well, let's get right to it and hand over to Martha.
- [02:30]
Martha Nussbaum
Hello, it's really nice to be with you. And I'm going to talk about animals for about 35 minutes and then take your questions. Animals suffer injustice at our hands. The cruelties of the factory farming, industry, poaching and trophy hunting. Assaults on the habitats, many creatures, and innumerable other instances of cruelty and neglect. Human domination is everywhere. In the seas, where marine mammals die from ingesting plastic. In the skies, where migratory birds die in huge numbers from air pollution and obviously on the land where the habitats of many large mammals have been destroyed almost beyond repair. Addressing these large problems requires dedicated work and effort, but it also requires a good normative theory to direct our efforts. And I'm going to argue that an approach based on my version of what's known as the capabilities approach, is the one we need. But first, what is injustice? Here are some stories that I think will yield an intuitive account. I'm going to pair two descriptions, one of the animal going about its business flourishing and the other of the animal brought to grief by wrongful human treatment. Let me now introduce you to three particular animals. Virginia is a sensitive female elephant in Kenya, described and named by elephant scientist Joyce Poole. Virginia loves music and as we'll see, so Hal Whitehead is a great whale scientist, especially focused on whale song. So I've given his name to a humpback whale who is proficient at singing, one of a group I observed from a whale watching boat near the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. No fictional pig is more imperious and more striking than the Empress of Blandings in the novels of P. G. Wodehouse, A Noble black Berkshire sow in superb condition who wins many medals. So first, the mother elephant. Virginia's story. Virginia has large amber eyes. When she hears music she likes, she stands very still and her lids droop. Joyce Poole, who describes her, spends her days with the whole matriarchal group, and she finds that Virginia, who is smaller than the main matriarch, Victoria, has a particular fondness for Joyce's singing. Amazing Grace is her favorite. Often, however, Virginia is on the move, covering huge tracts of grassland, her huge feet padding noiselessly across the floor of Kenya's Amboseli National Park. Her new baby elephant walks beneath her belly, sheltered by that enormous maternal frame. Elephants are wonderful mothers, hugely protective of their young and even known to sacrifice their lives to save the lives of their young. Now consider something that might happen. And that does often happen. Virginia lies on her side, dead, her tusks and trunk hacked off with a machete, her face a bloody red hole. The ivory trade flourishes today, despite many attempts to curb it, and the market for animal trophies such as tails and trunks, flourishes with human pedigree. It's not even illegal to import those items into the U.S. the other female elephants gather around her and try vainly to lift her body with their trunks. Eventually, giving up the effort, they sprinkle earth and grass upon her body. But the baby elephant is missing, taken, no doubt by some zoo in the United States to be sold and a zoo that's not too particular about origins. Second, the humpback whale Pal story. Our small whale watching boat cuts through the choppy surf off of Australia's Great Barrier Reef. In the distance, several pods of humpback whales appear, breaching and slapping their tails and flukes. Their huge backs gleam in the sun. One of them is how over the boat's motor we hear the whales singing, the patterns of sound too complex for our ears to chart them. Although we know that humpback whale song has a complicated syntactic structure, an enormous variety, and is constantly changing, sometimes apparently out of sheer fashion and interest in novelty. A variant that appears here may make its way to Hawaii in a year's time, as whales imitate one another when they hear something new that they like. The sound is beautiful to us and profoundly mysterious. Now look at Hal, washed up dead on a beach in the Philippines. His once healthy frame is emaciated, and Inside researchers find 88 pounds of plastic trash, including bags, cups and other single use items. Hal has starved to death. Plastic gives whales a sensation of fullness but no real nutrition. Eventually, there's no room for real food to enter. Some of the plastic in Hal's stomach had been there so long that it is calcified, turned into a plastic brick. He will not sing again. And finally, third, the sow, the story of the Empress of Blandings. The Empress of Blandings is a noble black Berkshire sow of enormous size, cared for as a favorite companion on the estate of Blanding's castle. She loves her trough where appetizing food is always offered her by her human caretaker, whose name is Cyril, well beloved. But when Cyril has to go to jail for a short time for drunken and disorderly conduct, the Empress begins to pine and loses her appetite. Her human family, including the very pig focused Lord Emsworth, worries helplessly about her well being, tempting her with various treats, but all in vain. By a stroke of good fortune, however, Jamie Belford turns up at landings. And his skill in hog calling, learned during a period of work on the farm in Nebraska, brings the Empress back to her usual good spirits. She eats with gusto, making, as Woodhouse puts it, quote, a sort of gulpy, gurgly, flobby, squishy, wafflesome sound that delights Lord Emsworth. Shortly thereafter, she takes her first medal at the 87th Shropshire Agricultural show, the silver medal in the fat pigs class. Now let us imagine a very different and much more common life for the Empress. Instead of flourishing among the kindly people and the Fostering environment of Blanding's castle and the gentle world of PG Wodehouse, where all beings are treated with love and humor. The Empress has the bad fate to be living on a hog farm in Iowa in the early 21st century. Now newly pregnant, she's been thrust into what's known as a gestation crate, which is a narrow metal enclosure just the size of her body, with no bedding, floored with slats of concrete or metal to allow waste to descend into sewage lagoons below. She cannot walk, she cannot turn around, and she can't even lie down. No kindly hog caller speaks to her. No pig loving humans admire and love her. No other pigs or other farm animals greet her. She's just a thing, a breeding machine. Most of the approximately 6 million sows in the United States are on factory farms, and these crates are used in most states, though they're banned in nine states and in several countries in Europe. Sows in gestation crates show loss of muscle and bone mass through lack of exercise. They exhibit behaviors such as bar biting and tongue lolling, indicative of boredom and frustration. One type of frustration is being forced to defecate near where they live and eat, because sows normally choose to defecate far away from where they sleep and eat. They're very clean animals, actually. Another is deprivation of all society, for pigs are highly intelligent and social animals. In a poignant illusion to the fact that pigs are not mere automata, but have a characteristic form of life, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production recommended in 2008, and this was a recommendation to all nations, the phase out within 10 years of all intensive confinement systems that restrict natural movement and normal behavior, including swine gestation crates. Well, we're more than 10 years, much more, and this still hasn't happened. These stories summon us to compassion and to what I would call transition anger. That is to say, an anger that's not retributive and backward looking, but forward looking and corrective. We feel that is outrageous. It should not happen again going forward. But why do we react this way? What do the three stories have in common? Well, first, in all three cases, we're aware that we're dealing with a sentient being, a being who feels pain, who perceives the world, who has its own perspective on its own life. Second, the creature is trying to live and to live a life characteristic of an animal of that kind. That's what the good stories bring out, is describing a flourishing life for each animal. Third, the animal striving for flourishing has been thwarted and it has been thwarted by conduct that is wrongful, either deliberate or neglected. These, for me, are the basic intuitive ingredients of injustice, the wrongful thwarting of ascension. Beings striving. Now, in my book justice for Animals, I criticized two prominent philosophical approaches that had been directing our practical and legal efforts to combat these injustices toward animals. First, there's one that I call the so like us approach, which urges protection for apes and elephants on the grounds of their likeness to human beings. Now, there are many flaws in this approach which I don't have time to go into. It's inaccurate neglecting abilities that animals have and that we don't have. For example, birds can perceive magnetic fields. Dolphins can perceive what's inside an object. They approach to echolocation. But above all, it values animals for the wrong reason, because of us, not because of them. First, assuming our first place value and then conceding that, well, a few other creatures manage to attain some value by likeness to us. But an animal's goals are its own, as is its life. Second is the utilitarian approach, which began with Jeremy Bentham's Clarion call in 1789 to justice. In his famous footnote and continues today with Peter Singer's important work, Bentham holds that the only good thing in life is pleasure and the only bad thing is pain. But he does insist that animals are just as vulnerable to pain and suffering as humans are. This approach, I think, is much better, and it zeroes in on a central aspect of our exploitation of animals, namely pain. But it flattens the world too much. Animals do need freedom from pain for sure, but they also need the ability to move freely, to play, socialize, to choose their own paths through the world, to enjoy social relationships. So let me now turn to my own capabilities approach, and I'll call it the CA for short. As an approach to justice in the human world. The CA holds that a minimally just society will provide each and every citizen with a threshold level of 10 significant capabilities. Capabilities are substantive opportunities for choice, not just inner abilities or abstract possibilities. As an approach to justice for animals, my approach holds that all sentient creatures, that is all who have an internal subjectivity, a point of view on the world, a category that includes all vertebrates. And many invertebrates ought to have the opportunity to live a flourishing life in accordance with the characteristic life form of their own species. The CA attempts to supply what I would call a virtual constitution to which nations, states and regions can look in trying to improve or newly frame their animal protective laws. This will take time and Lots of work. But so too does the task of framing and protecting human rights. Still, this flexible approach permits nations and states within nations to stride boldly ahead without waiting to get a global consensus. The basic goal is that all animals should have the opportunity to live lives compatible with their dignity and their striving up to some reasonable threshold level, and with exceptions, for self defense and the defense of others. Ideally, we should learn enough, and we're starting to, to make a separate list for each type of creature, putting on that list the things that matter most when it comes to survival and flourishing. That means a huge number of different lists. But I do believe that if we focus on the large general rubrics of the human CA as it now exists, it offers good guidance as a starting point. That should come as no surprise, actually, because the CA captures, in effect, the shared terrain of vulnerable, striving animality that each species inhabits in its own way. You'll hear the rubrics as I go through the list here. All strive for life, for health, for bodily integrity, for the opportunity to use whatever senses, imagination and thought are characteristic for that type of creature. Practical reason sounds at first too exalted, too human to be a good guide. But really, it isn't. All creatures want the opportunity to make some key choices as to how their lives will go. Affiliation and emotional health are crucial for all animals. Though their types vary greatly, all seek to relate well to the world of nature around them, and this usually includes members of other species. The ninth capability, play and fun, are not peculiar to humans, as scientists increasingly recognize their key aspects of animal sociability. Finally, of course, all animals seek various types of control over their material and social environment. Now, people might worry that such a list is bound to be anthropomorphic, verging on some of the errors of the so like us approach. I understand this charge, but I think it's mistaken. The list was made up not by thinking of what's distinctively human, but but by thinking in various general terms about vulnerable and striving animality. A topic that actually Aristotle already addressed in the small treatise on which I wrote long ago, my doctoral dissertation, namely De Motu animalium on the Motion of Animals. In that work, he proposed what he calls a common explanation for why and how all animals move through the world to get the things they need and want, allowing for significant variation at the species level, but insisting that at a very general level we find a common pattern. I think that's right, though we always have to be on our guard against obtuseness. Or self privileging perception. At the more concrete level, however, there will of course be much divergence and we should always be open to learning. So each kind of animal has its own form of social organization and even of sense perception. Only painstaking study will show what should be said. Now, in a way, the practical applications distinctive of this approach are obvious. Show respect for all forms of life, not just those that look like us. Don't just focus on pain, but look at the whole form of life and how different choices are impeded. Many zoos do not inflict pain, but they do thwart in many ways the animal's characteristic choices and forms of life. To return to my three stories, my approach would mean strenuous efforts worldwide to stop poaching and the abduction of young animals. It would mean an end to the whole factory farm industry in the short term and in the long term, I believe an end to our reliance on killing animals for meat in favor of plant based meat and even today now real meat grown from stem cells without killing animals. That's really starting up just now. In Hal's case, it would mean a concerted effort on the part of all humanity to reform our careless behavior with regard to plastic trash and aggressive cleanups to remove the plastic that's already out there. But there's endless amount to say. But I'm going to end this talk with just one example of the legal implementation of the spirit of my approach, a happy harbinger of what may be a new era in law in the form of a remarkable 2016 opinion by the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in the case called Natural Resources Defense Council versus Pritzker. By the way, that's not the JB Pritzker who's the governor of Illinois. It's his sister Penny, who was Secretary of Commerce in the Obama administration. So the U.S. court of Appeals ruled that the U.S. navy violated the law in seeking to continue its sonar program in a way that impacted the behavior of whales to some extent. The opinion is a technical exercise in statutory interpretation of a law that's called the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The court says that the program violates the statutory requirement of, quote, effecting the least practicable adverse impact on, end quote, marine mammal species. But what's significant and fascinating is that the argument relies on the consideration of whale opportunities or capabilities that the program disrupts. And I'll read a bit of the opinion. Effects from exposures below 180 decibels can cause short term disruption of or abandonment of natural behavior. Patterns. These behavioral disruptions can cause affected marine mammals to stop communicating with each other, to flee or avoid an ensonified area, to cease foraging for food, to separate from their calves and to interrupt mating. LFA sonar can also cause heightened stress responses in marine mammals. Such behavioral disruptions can force marine mammals to make trade offs like delaying migration, delaying reproduction, reducing growth or migrating with reduced energy reserves. Now, this opinion still doesn't give Wales legal standing, in other words, the ability to go to court as a plaintiff of an action. That's a very important issue, by the way, and one that about five nations have now given whales standing. India, Ecuador, Colombia, Pakistan and Argentina, but still not Europe and the United States. So anyway, this opinion doesn't give the whales standing. No such radical legal move is necessary to reach the clear result that the program is unacceptable. Because the whales did not have standing, they had to depend on the luck of having protection through the Marine Mammal Protection Act, a law made with real concern for the interests of whales. The whales also had to depend on judges who read the law imaginatively and broadly, taking very seriously a set of obstacles to the whale's form of life that did not involve the infliction of pain. So go back to the list. It affected movement, reproduction, emotional health. So even that part of the capabilities list is in there, even though they don't know the capabilities approach. The opinion, written for a unanimous three judge panel by Judge Ronald Gould, who sits and has long lived in Seattle, where whale watching is a common pastime, concluded that obstructing a characteristic life activity, even without pain, is an adverse impact that must be avoided. Avoided even by the United States Navy. I imagine this judge, I don't know him, but I imagine him as someone who has really looked at whales with curiosity and wonder. But whether he and his clerks have really gone out whale watching. The opinion displays ethical and imaginative attunement of a type increasingly seen here and there in my country, particularly in coastal areas. It sees whales as complex beings with an active form of life that includes emotional well being, affiliation and free movement. In short, a variety of species, specific forms of choice and agency. The opinion goes well beyond Bentham's focus on pain and it also steers clear of the so like us approach. It focuses on what whales actually want to do. It's a harbinger, I hope, of a new era in the law of animal welfare and animal justice. So thank you so much.
- [26:54]
Podcast Host (Philosophy for Our Times)
Thank you for listening to Philosophy for our times. Hopefully you liked the episode and if you did, please remember to like like subscribe Share. But yeah. What did you think, Daniel?
- [27:04]
Podcast Co-Host (Daniel)
I'm kind of torn on this one. Because of course, I'd like. I'd like to live in a world where animal suffering just wasn't a thing. But the pessimist in me feels like this is a bit of a pipe dream. We've had enough trouble so far trying to mobilize politicians and corporations into acting to save our planet. Which is, in part, of course, a selfish desire, given that without Earth, we. We wouldn't exist. So the idea that these same groups would try any harder to save any species other than ourselves just feels unrealistic to me. That said, as with all these things, we might as well try our best and continue to hold those in power accountable. And start eating more tofu along the way.
- [27:39]
Podcast Host (Philosophy for Our Times)
Unless, of course, you're a sadist, in which case I think this talk is not really taking you into account and your desire to inflict pain upon other sentient life forms. But maybe that's for a future episode. Anyway, we will see you in the next one. Bye. Bye.
- [27:57]
Podcast Co-Host (Daniel)
Bye.
- [27:59]
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