Cabaret Voltaire
But first a word from our sponsors.
Yesterday’s dilemma was the world depicted as a village of a hundred people. That a few people have most of the money and control most of the resources can be seen as an implicit criticism of such unequal ownership. I couldn’t help but note that this really is how Nature seems to do business, although perhaps with less disparity between the haves and have-nots. Chickens really do have a pecking order. It’s in the nature of all animals to acquire as much as they can to the detriment of (intentionally or otherwise) others lower down the pecking order.
But it struck me that when the developed world was developing, there were no international aid agencies. Plague, famine, war and death turned up without the UN following behind them.
While the developed world bears much of the responsibility for the environmental mess the world is in, it seems that the developing world isn’t interested in learning lessons from our mistakes. They (like many of my students) take the view that because someone else did X, they can do X as well. The Third World doesn’t seem to understand that they need to see the bigger picture before they go spewing pollution into the air and water, and need to be more responsible about the environment now. What does it matter and why should it matter if it takes a little longer for them to become developed countries if, by acting as they develop, they benefit the whole planet? But as I said above, animals want as much as they can get and some animals live in countries where the checks on their activities are weak and feeble.
But it struck me that when the developed world was developing, there were no international aid agencies. Plague, famine, war and death turned up without the UN following behind them.
While the developed world bears much of the responsibility for the environmental mess the world is in, it seems that the developing world isn’t interested in learning lessons from our mistakes. They (like many of my students) take the view that because someone else did X, they can do X as well. The Third World doesn’t seem to understand that they need to see the bigger picture before they go spewing pollution into the air and water, and need to be more responsible about the environment now. What does it matter and why should it matter if it takes a little longer for them to become developed countries if, by acting as they develop, they benefit the whole planet? But as I said above, animals want as much as they can get and some animals live in countries where the checks on their activities are weak and feeble.
And now the main feature: Dilemma 100.
In AC Grayling’s book on Descartes, which I read when I was in New Zealand during the winter holiday, there is a description of Descartes cutting open a live dog and sticking his finger into its heart, feeling it beat as the creature died. He thought of animals as mere machines, hence his brutish treatment of them. But in today’s dilemma, Voltaire notes that animals are not just machines. They can learn and would appear to have memory. There are examples of dogs looking for masters who have died.
When Descartes cut dogs open, didn’t he notice that they have much the same internal structure as we do and responded to the infliction of pain that cannot be merely mechanical?
Of course, this dilemma is about vivisection. I think I noted in the discussion about a previous dilemma (perhaps the 11th) that it perhaps depends on the creature as to how we react to the act. Rats (and rodents in general) bad, vivisection all right; dogs (and any animal kept as a pet) cuddly, vivisection not all right. I may be anticipating tomorrow’s dilemma by wondering what purpose such an act has. Is it mere cruelty (or worse, sadism)? Is it curiosity (in which case the animal could be killed first)? Is it to watch the animal ticking (or rather, dying)? What have we learnt from doing this and does the knowledge gained justify the act? Ever?
The discussion at the back of the book quotes CS Lewis who observed that the objectification of an animal means that something of its reality has been lost; and George Bernard Shaw who noted that we could learn the most by vivisecting live humans, but lose some of our humanity in the process. Back in Dilemma 31, it was shown that testing drugs on animals first doesn’t necessarily confirm that they are safe for human use.
When Descartes cut dogs open, didn’t he notice that they have much the same internal structure as we do and responded to the infliction of pain that cannot be merely mechanical?
Of course, this dilemma is about vivisection. I think I noted in the discussion about a previous dilemma (perhaps the 11th) that it perhaps depends on the creature as to how we react to the act. Rats (and rodents in general) bad, vivisection all right; dogs (and any animal kept as a pet) cuddly, vivisection not all right. I may be anticipating tomorrow’s dilemma by wondering what purpose such an act has. Is it mere cruelty (or worse, sadism)? Is it curiosity (in which case the animal could be killed first)? Is it to watch the animal ticking (or rather, dying)? What have we learnt from doing this and does the knowledge gained justify the act? Ever?
The discussion at the back of the book quotes CS Lewis who observed that the objectification of an animal means that something of its reality has been lost; and George Bernard Shaw who noted that we could learn the most by vivisecting live humans, but lose some of our humanity in the process. Back in Dilemma 31, it was shown that testing drugs on animals first doesn’t necessarily confirm that they are safe for human use.
Tomorrow we reach the final dilemma in which the counterargument is posed. And once I’ve done that, what am I going to do next?
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