A New World Needs a New Paradigm

I recommend this article by Unitarian Univesralist minister, the Rev. Peggy Clarke, that appeared in the Huffington Post on March 18, 2015.  Those working on any justice issue, as she points out, need not compete with one another about which justice issue merits more attention - "These issues are all the same."  This issue is the paradigm that is killing us, the planet, and the beings that share their biotic communities with one another.  She describes this paradigm of hierarchy as one that tells us "that the dominant class is on top and everything else is in service to it."

She asks us to instill a new paradigm of a Beloved Community "that topples the hierarchy and recognizes our radical interconnectedness, a paradigm that doesn't advantage any one group but life as a whole. In the new paradigm, all life is precious,"  and the needs and bodies of all individuals matter.

This is no easy paradigm to grapple with, for all humans experience both the benefit and harm of dominance.  We don't know how to "give up" all forms of dominance, now, and can't collectively imagine how to structure social institutions that do not enforce power and privilege of some over others.  How do we live, as individuals and as a society, in a way to maximizes benefit and minimizes harm?  

This question and others similar to it are the foundations of the First Principle Project. What would our lives look like if we did not draw a line between those of worth, and those without?  Would we break down rampant dualistic thinking that gives rise to oppression in both insidious and overt forms?  Could we live better, flourishing in beauty and belonging, and so save the earth and the beings that live in our shared biotic community?  

Would we more powerful together knowing, as Rev. Clarke says, that "the fight for justice is the fight for life in every form?"

In the shared quest and questioning,


LoraKim

Rev. LoraKim Joyner, DVM
First Principle Project Facilitator

Reading Mark

Guest Author: Meredith Garmon

Minister, Community Unitarian Church at White Plains

As the conversation has unfolded for more than a year since Mark Causey’s important “Inherent Worth” post (2014 Feb 20 – CLICK HERE), there are points I particularly want to re-emphasize. Here’s my interpretation and summary of the excellent points I understand Mark to have made.

“Inherent worth” contrasts with instrumental worth: something with only instrumental worth is valuable only as a means to an end; an entity with inherent worth is an end in itself. On what grounds, then, can we say any being lacks inherent worth?

Other animals are subjects of their own lives (Tom Regan). They have a biography, not just a biology. Nonhuman animals care about their own lives, have the capacity to experience pain and suffering, and can be harmed. Their lives can go better or worse for them. If human pain and suffering counts morally, then so does theirs, and we should never cause them harm without a sufficient reason.

“The question is not Can they reason?, nor Can they talk?, but Can they suffer?” (Jeremy Bentham)

Because they can suffer, and are subjects of their own lives, we cannot legitimately use then solely as instruments for our own purposes. The world is not a stockpile of resources for human exploitation.

The medieval hierarchy that Arthur Lovejoy dubbed “the Great Chain of Being” placed God at the top, followed by angels, then humans, other animals, plants, and finally inanimate things like rocks and dirt. Proffered bases for separating the human species into its own – and higher – plane have included: intelligence (rationality), the possession of a soul, being moral, having language, and so on. We now understand that all animals, including humans, share a common biological ancestor, and recent advances in our scientific understanding have largely discredited all of the above reasons given for human uniqueness. Scientific findings continue to further blur the distinction between human and nonhuman animals. The work of biologists and ethologists (Marc Bekoff, Jonathan Balcombe, Frans De Waal, and Jane Goodall, among many others), challenges us to expand our understanding of nonhuman animals’ amazing cognitive, emotional, and even moral capacities.

What differences remain between humans and other animals – such as humans’ advanced cognitive, linguistic, social, and moral capacities – are differences of degree not of kind. Moreover, every species has its uniqueness. Human uniqueness also includes limitations: we cannot echo-locate like dolphins or bats nor photosynthesize like plants. These differences are not morally relevant. Different beings aren’t better beings any more than different humans are better humans.

“All beings have inherent worth and dignity” does not mean all beings have the same value or have equal worth. It simply says that even tapeworms, cockroaches, and dustmites have some worth that is inherent and not instrumental.

Indeed, even plants and fungi warrant moral concern, for they, too, are integral parts of the interdependent web of life affirmed in the Unitarian Universalist seventh principle, as well as in Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic:

“A land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it...it implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.”

The world into which we are born is much older, complex, and complete than we are. We are just beginning to understand the complex balance and intricacies of our planet’s ecosystems. We are increasingly realizing that the web of life as a whole has intrinsic, inherent value far beyond merely instrumental worth.

At the same time, we are sometimes justified in using some beings for our own vital needs. We are within our moral rights to eat carrots, cut down trees to build a house, or use antibiotics to cure an infection. Even Arne Naess’ Deep Ecology Movement, allows that

“any realistic praxis necessitates some killing, exploitation, and suppression.”

The First Principle Project is not asking for an unrealistic praxis. It asks to recognize that, along with our needs for instrumental use of other beings, we also recognize that they have inherent worth. It is a call to expand our circle of moral concern and compassion and to acknowledge the truth of our membership in the larger life community that has value in its own right. The beings of that community had value before Homo sapiens arrived on the scene, and they still do now.

We have always had to make difficult decisions when our legitimate interests conflict with the interests of other beings. The First Principle Project asks us to recognize that we face such difficult choices not merely when human interests conflict with other human interests, but also when human interests conflict with nonhuman interests.

When human interests conflict with interests of other beings, factors to be considered include:

1. Sentience (the ability to feel pains and pleasures.) Cows? Yes. Carrots. Probably not.

2. Consciousness (self-awareness). Conscious beings have a sense of self that persists over time and interests in how their lives go.

3. Sociality. Social beings have more complex capacities for relationships and experiences. It means that a harm to a member of the society causes pain to other members. The death of a social being is occasioned by mourning among survivors.

4. The importance of the interest to the being who has it. Vital interests trump non-vital interests. The interests of beings with sentience, consciousness, and sociality count for a lot – but not all their interests are vital. The human interest in eating a cow, when alternatives are readily available, is a preferential taste. That interest would normally be outweighed by the cow’s interest as a sentient and somewhat conscious being.

Recognizing the inherent worth of all beings entails recognizing that the rest of nature has value which does not depend on what use humans can put it to. Spiritually, affirming that principle expands our circles of compassion by opening our hearts and our arms to embrace the more-than-human world in which we live.

Inherent Worth - Our Principles Defined Part II

Today we look at the words inherent and worth in the First Principle.  First let us look at them separately. 

The Oxford Online Dictionary defines inherent in this way: "Inherent:   Existing in something as a permanent, essential, or characteristic attribute."

What does this mean in terms of human relationships with others?  No matter the species it means that another individual exists without being defined or judged by another. Instead they have inviolable characteristics with which they come into and leave this world.  Experiences, behaviors, and thoughts of themselves or others, do not impact the basic defining characteristics of what it means to be that individual.

The Merriam Online Dictionary defines worth as "the value of something measured by its qualities or by the esteem in which it is held." Dictionary.com defines worth in several ways, including, "excellence of character or quality as commanding esteem," and "usefulness or importance, as to the world, to a person, or for a purpose."  In all these cases worth is determined by something outside of the individual or species under consideration. It is a value given to one by another. 

When we combine inherent with worth, into inherent worth we come up with a strong statement about the existence of individuals. They have immutable value that does not change based on their experiences in their lives, the quality of life they lead, or the judgment of others. 

Tom Regan explains inherent worth in terms of the cup analogy (1).  Individuals are the cup, and for Unitarian Universalists, let's say chalice.  By being a chalice we are saying that individuals come into existence with worth that is not dependent on what might eventually fill the chalice, such as how humans might describe, value, or use them, or the kinds of lives they live.  A dog that attacks humans and cats with little provocation might be a different kind of dog from one that rescues mountain climbers or visits people in the hospital.  The individual dog's experiences and nature, and how others perceive her, is what we might pour into the chalice to describe this particular dog.  But by being a dog, she comes into this world as a sparking gem in the web of life, even though her lived experiences might be described in a range from dark coal to brilliant diamond.  There is no bad dog or good dog, all dogs are God's children.

No matter what, inherent worth means one's existence is a luminous chalice, a sign that each life is a beacon to guide us in living a life of reverence, full of beauty and awe. How each fills that chalice and what you do with it will vary, but know that you hold something precious in your hands.

Rev. LoraKim Joyner, DVM

First Principle Project Facilitator

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[1] Regan, Tom.  2004. The Case for Animal Rights: Chapter 7.

Inherent Worth

Today's Guest Author:  Mark Causey, M.Div., Ph.D  

Teaches Philosophy and Liberal Studies at Georgia College & State University

Member:  UU Congregation of Gwinnett (in Lawrenceville, GA).  

Board of Trustees UU Animal Ministry

Philosophically speaking, inherent worth is contrasted with instrumental worth.  For something to have instrumental worth indicates that it is valuable only as a means to an end.  Money has instrumental worth in this sense.  It is a means to an end (i.e. the things I can purchase with it).  Money has no value except its current exchange value for goods and services.  For something to have inherent worth means that it is valuable in and for itself.  An entity with inherent worth is an end in itself.  Our first principle (as it currently stands) concerning the “inherent worth and dignity of every person” is meant to call attention to the fact that [human] persons (the dictionary presently limits the term “person” to humans) are ends in themselves.  It is meant to prohibit our usage of persons as mere instruments, like tools and things, for our purposes.  In Kant’s formulation, we should always treat others as ends in themselves and never merely as a means to our own ends.  Each person is his or her own unique center of value.  Slavery was a denial of the inherent worth and dignity of the personhood of the slave.  The slave was a person reduced to mere instrumental value.  UUs rightly rejected this reduction of persons on moral grounds.  Of course the present first principle goes beyond merely prohibiting slavery in that it also calls us positively towards and attitude of respect for all persons regardless of the many differences that may exist between us.  I will address the issue of equal worth below.

The question currently being posed by the First Principle project is whether all beings, not just human beings, have inherent worth.  To answer this question in the negative and to reserve inherent worth for human persons only invites a further question: “On what grounds do we deny inherent worth to other beings?”  To reply on the grounds that other beings are simply not human is to beg the question.  It doesn’t tell us why humans, and only humans, have inherent worth to begin with. 

A large part of our inheritance from both classical western philosophy and our Judeo-Christian past is the notion of the hierarchy of values in terms of beings that Arthur Lovejoy dubbed the Great Chain of Being.  With God at the top and humans a close second (or third if you are a medieval theologian and count angels as second), then follow the animals, plants, and finally inanimate things like rocks and dirt.  It should of course be noted that even within the human category, there was traditionally also a hierarchy in terms of sex and race in which white males tended to count for more than women who counted for more than slaves and so on.  In Biblical terms this was cashed out through the Genesis story of the separate and special act of the creation of humans as distinct from the rest of creation.  But this worldview also belongs to the days of the geocentric universe, and few of us take the Genesis creation myths to be literal, scientific accounts of the origins of the universe.  This sort of hierarchical ranking of beings is out of touch with modern science.  Ever since Darwin we have realized that whatever differences exist between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom are differences of degree not differences of kind.  We all share a common biological ancestor.

But worldviews, especially when they favor our interests, are hard to change.  Humans have been set apart and above the rest of nature on the basis of intelligence (rationality), the possession of a soul, being moral, having language, and so on.  Indeed, Descartes went so far as to claim that only humans had minds and could feel pain.  Animals in his view were just very cleverly constructed automatons whose shrieks of pain as they were being vivisected were just so many squeaks of their cogs and springs.  Recent advances in our scientific understanding, especially the contributions of animal ethology and cognitive ethology, have largely discredited all of the above reasons given for human uniqueness.  True to Darwin’s early insights, recent science is continuing to blur the distinction between human animals and the rest of the animal kingdom.  The work of biologists and ethologists like Marc Bekoff, Jonathan Balcombe, Frans De Waal, and Jane Goodall has demonstrated a far greater degree of human/animal continuity than discontinuity.  These scientists, among many others, are challenging us to expand our understanding of non-human animals in terms of their amazing cognitive, emotional, and even moral capacities.

The moral point, however, is that whatever the real differences (of degree) between us, they are morally irrelevant.  Insofar as other animals are subjects of their own lives with, as Tom Regan observes, a biography not just a biology, they are not the sorts of things we can legitimately use as instruments for our own purposes.  Insofar as they have the capacity to experience pain and suffering the generally accepted moral harm principle states that we should never cause harm to another without a very good reason.  Because animals other than us also care about their own lives and their lives can go better or worse for them, they are very different from a tool fashioned for our use.  If human pain and suffering counts at all morally, then so does theirs.  There is no qualitative difference, no difference in kind.  As Jeremy Bentham famously noted: “The question is not Can they reason?, nor Can they talk?, but Can they suffer?”

The word being, however, can also include more than just humans and other animals.  It can also include other life forms like plants or fungi.  While these may not be sentient beings like us (so there is here a difference in kind not just degree) is there any reason to entirely exclude them from our circle of moral concern?  We do so at our own peril.  We humans are latecomers to the world.  As our seventh principle reminds us we are merely members of an interdependent web.  As Aldo Leopold formulates it in his famous Land Ethic: “A land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it...it implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.”  The world into which we are born is much older, complex, and complete than we are.  We are just barely beginning to understand the complex balance and intricacies of our planet’s ecosystems, which through our ignorance and hubris we are rapidly destabilizing and destroying.  It is the height of hubris on our part to think that this world, billions and billions of years in the making, is simply raw material put here for our use.  But if we assign to the rest of nature only instrumental worth, that is exactly what we are saying.

One of the most common objections I hear when presenting or talking about the First Principle Project is the objection that replacing the word “person” with the word “being” now means that we are all the same.  “Does that mean that a tapeworm or a cockroach has exactly the same inherent value as a human being?!”  What I believe has happened here is that the objector has subconsciously inserted the word “equal” into the formulation of the revised principle.  What we are saying is that we are “called to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of all beings.”  What the objector is hearing is that we are “called to affirm and promote the equal inherent worth and dignity of all beings.”  If every being has equal inherent worth, does that mean I can no longer swat a mosquito?  But the First Principle project is not proposing to insert the word “equal” into the principle.  It is quite natural for us to hear the word “equal” here because it is implied (although not explicitly stated) in the current wording of the principle. What we hear in the current first principle is that all persons, regardless of race, sex, ability, identification, etc., have equal worth and dignity.  We are so used to fighting for the principle of equality amongst humans, as we should, that we automatically transfer this notion to the proposed changed wording including all beings. 

Does acknowledging inherent worth in all beings necessarily mean equal worth?  After all, if all beings have exactly the same worth, what justifies my use of any being even for my own vital needs?  I would have no moral right to eat either a carrot or a cow.  I would have no right to cut down a tree to build my house.  Or take an antibiotic to cure an infection.  We would arrive at a moral dead-end in which no realistic action would really be possible.  Even the deepest ecological vision, Arne Naess’ Deep Ecology Movement, only proposes biospherical egalitarianism in principle allowing that “any realistic praxis necessitates some killing, exploitation, and suppression.”  All that the proposed principle change is asking is for a paradigm shift in our thinking about the more-than-human world—a shift away from anthropocentric instrumental value, towards an acknowledgement and respect for inherent worth.  It is a call to expand our circle of moral concern and compassion beyond the limits of our own species and to acknowledge the truth of our membership in the larger life community that has value in its own right.  It had value before Homo sapiens arrived on the scene and it still does now.

We will still have to make difficult decisions as our interests legitimately conflict with the interests of other beings.  We do this amongst equal humans all the time.  What is different about the acknowledgment of the inherent worth of the non-human world is that our human interests will not (or at least should not) always automatically win.  The world is not simply a stockpile of resources for our exploitation.  To assert that simply because humans can—and have—dominated the rest of nature that this justifies our attributing inherent worth only to humans is really just another form of the “might makes right” argument that we would rightly reject if applied in human affairs.  Any number of otherwise unacceptable acts could be justified on that argument.

The only way to justify the view that non-human nature has only instrumental value, would be to establish some way in which humans are separate from and independent of the rest of nature.  Such a view was once commonly held and its remnants are very much with us still (much like the view of white racial superiority was once commonly accepted and its remnants are still all too much with us still).  But such a view flies in the face of reason and science, and even our own deepest intuitions and feelings.  As a thought experiment try this.  Complete the following sentence: “Only humans can ______.”  Make sure you complete the sentence in a way that qualifies every human being and no other type of being.  For example, “Only humans can use language” won’t work because not all humans can use language (infants and severely mentally challenged people cannot and some primates and even some parrots can in a more robust way than simply repeating words or phrases).  Now ask yourself if whatever you filled in the blank with is a morally relevant characteristic.

This is not at all to deny that humans are distinctive in our advanced cognitive, linguistic, social, and moral capacities. But these differences of degree do not in any way correspond to superiority in value.  Difference here need not mean better—just different.  We do not treat more intellectually advanced humans morally as having more inherent worth than the rest of us.  We would not, for instance, condone the involuntary use of lower IQ human beings in painful medical experiments in order to find a cure for a higher IQ individual on the basis of IQ differences alone.  Animals and plants have capacities we do not possess.  We cannot echo-locate like a dolphin or a bat nor photosynthesize like a plant.  Humans are not the sole bearers of value. 

So how to decide when our interests conflict?  The Great Chain of Being makes it easy.  Humans win. Every time. But if we reject the notion of the chain in favor of an interdependent web, what can guide our decisions?  I would suggest that there are some morally significant factors to consider: factors like sentience (the ability to feel pains and pleasures), consciousness, and sociality.  Vital interests trump non-vital interests.  Living things have more at stake than inanimate objects.  It is hard to imagine doing a moral harm to a rock.  Easier to imagine harming a plant.  Easier still to imagine harming an animal or a human.  Conscious beings, animals human and non-human, have a sense of self that persists over time and interests in how their lives go.  Social beings have more complex capacities for relationships and experiences.  It means that a harm to a member of the society causes pain to other members.  For example the death of a social being also affects the others in that society who mourn their loss (humans are not the only animals to mourn our dead—elephants for one do so as well).  Is this just another Great Chain of Being worded differently?  I don’t think so.  There is nothing here to imply that humans must always come out on top.  For example, in the choice of whether to eat the cow or the carrot the cow gets greater consideration because of the morally relevant facts that cows are sentient, conscious, and social beings.  As Alan Watts wryly observed, he was a vegetarian because “cows scream louder than carrots.”  But what about the human’s interest in eating the cow (because they really like the taste of a good steak)?  It loses because the non-vital interest (taste preference) does not override the cow’s vital interest in remaining alive.  This blog entry is not the place to work out all the ethical issues (as if I could anyway).  My point is simply this: recognizing the inherent worth of other-than-human beings does not commit us to a moral dead end or an impossible practical position of non-action.  It simply requires us to recognize at a minimum that the rest of nature has value which does not depend on what use humans can put it to.  It simply asks us to make a more humble, as well as a more ethically, intellectually and scientifically defensible assessment of our place in the grand scheme of things.  Spiritually it calls us to expand our circles of compassion by opening our hearts and our arms to embrace the more-than-human world in which we live.  That’s all we’re really asking.