Jan Narveson

Down through the past decade and more, no philosophical writer has taken a greater interest in the issues of how we ought to act in relation to animals, nor pressed more strongly the case for according them rights, than Tom Regan, in many articles, reviews, and exchanges at scholarly conferences and in print. Now, in The Case for Animal Rights we have a substantial volume in which Regan most fully and systematically presents his case for a strong panoply of rights for animals. The argument is direct and cumulative, leading up to a final chapter in which Regan draws his conclusions: vegetarianism is obligatory, hunting and trapping wrong, and virtually no use of animals permissible in scientific experimentation. These are radical conclusions; few of us would be unaffected by them, and most of us, indeed, would be in for a terrific alteration in various aspects of our lifestyles. It certainly behooves us, then, to follow his arguments with care. In the present essay, my main concern will be to examine the arguments in this book. But I shall also be concerned to develop an alternative viewpoint, though at lesser length than the subject merits.

This book investigates the idea of inequality. According to the author, it does not address the question whether one should care about inequality nor which version is more plausible. Instead, its purpose is “to understand egalitarianism”, to “elucidate the notion of inequality”. The general thesis is that inequality is a “complex notion,” as shown by the fact that there are many different ways of measuring it. This is relentlessly detailed in a series of chapters that many will find rather hard on the brain, with their panoplies of diagrams and technical distinctions, complete with acronyms. Still, the diagrams are clear enough, and the terminology to the point.

As I sit down to begin this essay, the strains of “Tristan und Isolde” are still ringing in my ears; meanwhile, another dozen or so Pakistanian refugees have died for lack of sufficient food, shelter, or medical attention, probably, during the time it will have taken to compose this paragraph. The Isolde in that performance commanded, probably, a fee of four or five thousand dollars; each member of the audience paid, on the average, perhaps ten dollars to see the performance. This works out, probably, to an average of one year’s worth of refugees kept alive and in some sort of health for every two members of the audience, or about two hundred for the wages of the leading soprano for one evening. The arithmetic is doubtless inaccurate: possibly it would require as much as three opera tickets to keep our refugee going, and Isolde could manage but fifty. But the orders of magnitude are about right.

Morality for the purposes of this paper consists of sets of rules or principles intended for the general regulation of conduct for all. Intuitionist accounts of morality are rejected as making reasoned analysis of morals impossible. In many interactions, there is partial conflict and partial cooperation. From the general social point of view, the rational thing to propose is that we steer clear of conflict and promote cooperation. This is what it is rational to propose to reinforce, and to assist in reinforcing in society; it is not necessarily what it is individually rational to do. Even so, given the general situation, the rationality of its reinforcement will typically support the rationality of individual action as well. Game theory makes it possible to clarify these interactions, and these proposals for social solutions

In this paper, I shall be concerned to explore the utilitarian account of promising, which for some time has had, in many circles, the status of a dead horse. My aim is not to flog it, however, but to show that perhaps it yet lives. At least, I hope to show that some prominent and apparently powerful objections to this account do not find their mark. In the course of this, several subjects of wider interest will come in for review as well, and it is hoped that some further light on the utilitarian position in general, as well as the concepts of expectation and obligation, may glimmer forth.At the outset, some clarification of the question at issue about promising is essential. Briefly, the question is: why ought we to keep our promises? Less question-beggingly put: why, if at all, should we keep promises, and to what extent?; where by talk of ‘extent’ it is meant that the question of whether we sometimes should not keep them, of its being a matter of attaching a “degree of stringency” to the obligation, is to be kept open.

Pacifism and terrorism are at opposite ends of one spectrum: pacifists have too many friends; terrorists have too many enemies. The indiscriminacy robs both of any credibility. Both fail to distinguish between aggressors and their victims. Discussion of terrorism, however, is complicated by insufficient attention to the distinction between noncombatants and innocents. Just War theory relies heavily on that distinction, providing protections to noncombatants as such, without going into the further question of innocence. Terrorism thus violates the restrictions on justice within combat, as well as those on just cause. And in the end, it invites retaliation in kind, which is tantamount, nearly, to moving battle back to the Hobbesian State of nature.

The basic bearer of responsibility is individuals, because that isall there are – nothing else can literally be the bearer of fullresponsibility. Claims about group responsibility therefore needanalysis. This would be impossible if all actions must be understoodas ones that could be performed whether or not anyone else exists.Individuals often act by virtue of membership in certain groups;often such membership bears a causal role in our behavior, andsometimes people act deliberately in order to promote the prospectsof members of a given group. Nevertheless, it is rational to awardproportionally to individual contributions to those actions andindividual shares in the production of the consequences of thoseactions.

Aggregation in moral philosophy calls for the summing or averaging of values or utilities as a guide to individual behavior. But morality, it is argued, needs to be individualistic, in view of the evident separateness of persons, especially given the great disparities among individuals who nevertheless interact with each other in social life. The most plausible general moral program is the classical liberal (or “libertarian”) one calling for mutual noninterference rather than treating others as equal to oneself in point of demands on our action. Why, then, would we ever aggregate? The reason is that we are affected by behavior that has general effects, especially unintended side effects, on all sorts of people among whom we ourselves are often to be found. When we are randomly situated among such groups—as we sometimes are and often are not—minimizing aggregate harm is the plausible strategy, and sometimes promoting aggregate benefit as well.