What are the ethical implications of eating meat?

An essay I wrote for Ethics about a year ago that you might find interesting

*********************************************************************************************

Few, if any, ethical issues polarise views the way vegetarianism does. There are certainly other questions that are more vociferously debated – but this is exactly the point. What is unusual about this debate (and perhaps the question of ‘animal rights’ in general) is that only one side consider it a debate at all.

The majority of people appear to believe that deciding what to eat simply isn’t an ethical consideration. Yet many of those who favour vegetarianism insist that eating meat is as abhorrent as condoning racism or slavery in past centuries. Indeed, the parallel of speciesism to racism is commonly drawn in the course of discussions about our treatment of animals, the implication being that future generations will look upon our actions with the same distaste and incomprehension we feel towards slave-owners and racists. To take just one example of this view that our moral progress is far from complete, W.E.H. Lecky writes:

“At one time the benevolent affects embrace merely the family, soon the circle expanding includes first a class, then a nation, then a coalition of nations, then all humanity, and finally, its influence is felt in the dealings of man with the animal world”.[1]


The purpose of this essay is not to argue directly either for or against vegetarianism. Rather, it is to examine the accusation that we are morally inconsistent in failing to consider the ethical claims of animals, and its corollary, that this implies we ought to change the things we eat.

This is a two stage process. The first stage is identifying and sketching out different moral positions that advocates of vegetarianism might appeal to. The second stage is to draw out and evaluate the arguments defending and rejecting the consumption of meat for each ethical position. However, because many of these arguments are applicable to multiple positions, they are grouped together in the second section to avoid repetition. The first section of this essay therefore describes the four moral positions discussed: contractarianism, Kantian deontology, utilitarianism and virtue ethics, and gives a summary of the pertinent considerations of these philosophies relevant to animals. The second stage assesses different arguments in turn, examining the salience and persuasiveness to the different doctrines.

A. Theories

Contract Theories

“The moral theory of contractarianism claims that moral norms derive their normative force from the idea of contract or mutual agreement”.[2] In other words, contractarians believe that our moral duties are nothing more and nothing less that the obligations that rationally self-interested beings would agree to. Contractarianism is usually traced back to Hobbes, who argued that the only way for man to escape the state of nature, an anarchic situation of brutal war of each against all, was for such moral norms to develop.

On this conception of ethics, then, the only reason we have for avoiding wrongdoing is the tacit understanding that this will ensure others do not wrong us either. So, for example, we do not think it is morally permissible to murder another person, because we would not like to live in a society where people are free to murder one another. Similarly, we have a moral reason not to make false promises to one another, because a society where we could not trust people to keep their promises would be a society where it would be considerably more difficult to engage in cooperative activities.

Animals cannot participate in the social contract. They are not capable of making such explicit reciprocal agreements, and are not bound by moral convention in the same way that humans are. The contractarian is only interested in extending moral consideration where it is mutually beneficial, and so has no reason to confer moral status on aminals. As Regan puts it, “As for animals, since they cannot understand contracts, they obviously cannot sign, and since they cannot sign. Like children, however, some animals are the object of the sentimental interest of others”.[3] Contractarians may agree that we are morally obliged not to harm pets, as in doing so, we indirectly harm their owners. But given that the owners of farmed animals willingly give them up for slaughter, this point does not seem relevant here.

Contractualism, in contrast with contractarianism, requires a degree of impartiality: it is grounded in moral equality, rather than self-interest. “According to contractualism, morality consists in what would result if we were to make binding agreements from a point of view that respects our equal moral importance as rational autonomous agents”.[4]

Contractualism, like contractarianism, has been conventionally wary of granting moral status to animals, simply because they are not the sort of rational autonomous agents capable of forming a contract. In Rawls’ words, “It does seem that we are not required to give strict justice to creatures lacking the capacity (for a sense of justice)”.[5]

Nevertheless, there are a couple of reasons why contractualists may be more amenable to the idea of animal rights than contractarians. Firstly, Rawls’ work is primarily a work of political, not moral philosophy, focusing on just one of many ethical considerations, justice. Therefore, it is plausible that contractualists may believe that animals are outwith the scope of justice, but not that they have no ethical significance.

The second thing to remember is that Rawls’ ‘original position’ thought experiment is intended to abstract away from ‘morally arbitrary’ characteristics. Therefore, if we believe that our species is a morally arbitrary attribute, we can use a Rawlsian framework while rejecting Rawls’ own intuition about the moral status of animals.[6]

Kantian/Deontological Theories

Kantian theories do not traditionally admit we have any duties to animals, either. According to Kant, the moral law is binding on all rational creatures. However, since he refused to credit animals with rationality, they exist outwith the scope of Kantian morality. Kant explicitly argues “so far as animals are concerned, we do not have any direct duties. Animals are not self-conscious and are there merely as a means to an end. That end is man”.[7]

However, this perspective has been rejected within the Kantian framework by philosophers who disagree with the claim that rationality is a prerequisite for moral consideration. Most notably Tom Regan has argued that all ‘experiencing subjects of life’ are due certain moral rights. The issue of what (if anything) separates humans from animals will be discussed below, but what is important to grasp here is what achieving moral status means within a deontological moral philosophy.

Deontological ethical theories, of which Kant’s is the most prominent, conceptualise ethics as the process of determining the moral rules which set out our obligations and the restrictions on our action. Depending on the theory in question, the rights secured by having moral status may differ, but it seems unlikely that on any deontological conception, it is morally permissible to slaughter and consume a moral agent. For example, the Kantian notion of never treating a moral agent as a means, but always respecting them as an end in itself would seem to preclude eating meat.

The central issue at stake seems therefore to be whether animals are worthy of moral respect, and if so, does the concept of moral respect entail non-consumption.

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is the most conceptually simple of ethical theories. The rightness of an action depends solely on its consequences, by which is meant the net change in pain or pleasure it brings about. The right action is the one which maximises utility.

Unlike Kantians, utilitarians make only one consideration in determining the moral status of a being: its ability to feel pain or pleasure. Consequently, utilitarians have traditionally always been sympathetic to the moral claims of animals. This attitude can be traced as far back as Bentham, who used utilitarianism to argue for ‘animal rights’ (in the loosest sense): “The question is not, Can they reason? Nor Can they talk? but Can they suffer?”.[8]

This may appear to be a rhetorical question, but a surprising number of people have sought to deny that animals feel pain, or at least in the same way that humans do. If it were true that animals were incapable of suffering, this would of course mean that they carry no weight in utilitarian moral calculation. Singer responds to this suggestion with the observation that “Nearly all the external signals that lead us to infer pain in other humans can be seen in other species”: writhing, facial contortions, moaning, yelping, attempts to avoid the source of the pain and the appearance of fear.[9] Moreover, they have nearly identical nervous systems to ours, with the same evolutionary function. Singer quotes pain expert Richard Sarjeant as insisting, “Every particle of factual evidence supports the contention that the higher mammalian vertebrates experience pain sensations at least as acute as our own”.[10]

Of course, it is absurd to class all animals as alike, and it seems possible that mammals, birds and fish all have different capacities for pain. But this does not imply that their pain is incommensurable. The only animals that are plausibly incapable of feeling pain are some molluscs, such as oysters and scallops (but not squid and octopi). In the name of consistency, Singer accepts that may be morally acceptable to eat them.[11]

Once utilitarians have admitted that animals are worthy of moral consideration, the issue is then whether the action of eating meat on balance increases or decreases aggregate utility. Initially, this seems clear-cut. The utility from eating meat is relatively small. Many humans do get a lot of pleasure from eating meat, but it is far from an essential interest. We can certainly survive without eating meat, and indeed it is often suggested that a vegetarian diet is healthier. On the other hand, there is a large degree of suffering involved in (most) processes of meat production. Farmed animals are herded into cramped, unsanitary conditions, which lead to psychotic, neurotic and repetitive behaviour from madness to cannibalism. To avoid the death and disease such awful conditions would usually entail, they are force fed growth hormones and antibiotics. A number of painful surgical procedures are performed on them without anaesthetic to stop them harming themselves or others (usually out of frustration at their unnatural environs): beaks, toes, tails and teeth are removed, they are castrated and branded without a second thought. Of course, not all farms are as cruel as this, depending on legal restrictions and the type of meat. Yet even the best meat can still be criticised on humanitarian grounds: for example, the legal requirement to stun all chickens before slaughter involves a process that is only 95% successful.[12] Thus, at first blush, at least, it seems the utilitarian ought to be committed to vegetarianism.

Virtue Ethics

The doctrine of virtue ethics posits that ethics ought not to be about judging action, but rather that we should focus on characters. Living a moral life, on this conception, is not a case necessarily of performing right acts, but rather of developing virtuous tendencies and dispositions. The definition of virtue is controversial, but it is usually conceived of in one of two ways. Virtues can either be seen as character traits necessary for a flourishing, eudaimonic life, or as attributes which are generally aretaic (admirable).

When debating the rightness of actions, such as eating meat, virtue ethics usually conceptualises the problem thus: “An action is right iff it is what a virtuous agent would do in the circumstances”.[13] The question a follower of virtue ethics needs to ask themselves is whether eating meat is a virtuous or vicious act. Gruen suggests that vegetarianism displays virtue: “in eating animals or using them in other harmful ways, we do not display the traits of character that kind, sensitive, compassionate, mature, and thoughtful members of a moral community should display”.[14] Similarly, Shafer-Landau appeals to aretaic conceptions of virtue: “seeking and deriving satisfaction from ‘products’ that are known to derive from cruel practices diminishes one’s admirability”.[15]

Initially then, virtue ethics and utilitarianism seem to favour vegetarianism, which deontology and contract theories do not.

B. Arguments against eating meat

Arbitrariness of human-animal distinctions

The first line of argument against eating meat questions why we are justified in eating non-human animals, but not humans (assuming, of course, that it is morally repugnant to eat humans). What feature of humanity justifies granting humans greater moral status? It cannot merely be the fact of being human, since this is as morally arbitrary as the feature of being black, or of being a woman. We cannot consistently condemn racism and sexism, and embrace speciesism.

A number of candidates have been proposed, but none of the characteristics have been uncontroversially human. Humans are not the only animal to develop familial ties: for instance, orang-utan mothers stay with their young for eight years, and maintain relationships after parting. Most animals are capable of social coordination, from packs of dogs to birds with their ‘pecking order’. Any dog owner will be able to tell you that humans are not alone in expressing emotions.

As we have seen, both social contract theorists and Kantians honed in on rationality as the key trait of human beings. Yet this argument draws the marginal cases objection, spotted by Bentham when he wrote:

“What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps, the faculty for discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversible animal than an infant of a day or a week or even a month old”.[16]

Bentham’s point was that for every suggested distinguishing feature between human and non-human animal (such as reason), there are some members of the human species, namely babies, that do not possess that trait. While it may be objected that babies have the potential to develop reason, this is not the case of certain severely disabled individuals.

Cohen attempts to wriggle out of the marginal cases objection by insisting that “The capacity for moral judgement that distinguishes humans from animals is not a test to be administered to human beings one by one…What humans retain when disabled, animals never had”.[17] This does not seem plausible – it is stereotyping of crudest form. It is analogous to preventing a woman from taking a manual job because in general men are stronger than women. If rationality is so important a distinction, why should the distinction not be made on an individual basis, but across the generalities of species?

Some may accept this criticism, and pull up the moral drawbridge. Moral status is not a question of humanity, on this conception, but a question of personhood, where person is defined as a “rational and self-conscious being”.[18] By contrast, a human is a biological member of the species homo sapiens. Those humans who have not reached a rational and self-conscious state have no greater moral status than animals.

However, in the same way as Kant grants that we have indirect duties to the owners of pets, it could be argued that we have stronger obligations not to harm human non-persons because of the affection their families feel for them. This is a tenable philosophical position, but it seems terribly callous. In effect, what it implies is that a person who sets a cat on fire, or who rapes a coma victim does no wrong to the being they harm, but rather the wrong is to the people who care about them. And if the cat is a stray and the coma victim has no family, then apparently it is morally permissible. Clark damns the paradoxical nature of this position: “We are absolutely better than the animals because we are able to give their interests some consideration: so we won’t”.[19]

Deontologists and contractualists are therefore forced into a position where they must choose between affording equal moral status to animals (which would presumably render eating them immoral) or reducing non-persons to the status of animals. Of course, reducing non-persons to the status of animals could also be interpreted as raising the moral status of animals to that of non-persons. The pertinent question is whether this status substantively rules out being eaten. The indirect duties we have to the families and loved ones of non-persons seems to account for why we should not eat humans that are non-persons. However, given that the farmers who raise animals voluntarily give them up for food, the same argument seems to work for relatively few animals.

Hardening of Emotions

There is another argument which may persuade the deontologist not to eat non-persons. It is an argument used by Kant to promote consideration towards animals:

“If a man shoots his dog because the animal is no longer capable of service, he does not fail in his duty to the dog, for the dog cannot judge, but his act is inhuman and damages in himself that humanity which it is his duty to show towards mankind. If he is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practice kindness towards animals, for he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men”.[20]

The point is that if we treat animals cruelly, than this cruelty will inevitably begin to show in our dealings with humans. It is for this reason that the citizens in Thomas More’s Utopia are vegetarian: “Killing, unless it is done as a merciful act, must involve a deliberate withholding of sympathy from the victim. Done repeatedly, it results in a hardening of the emotions”.[21]

Notice that this is almost identical to the virtue ethics argument in favour of vegetarianism: “Becoming caring and compassionate about animals invariably seems to have ‘trickle down’ positive effects for the rest of one’s life”.[22] The difference is that virtue ethicists are interested in the virtues humans develop in their dealings with animals intrinsically for their own sake, whereas Kantians are only interested in them insofar as they indirectly influence the agent’s dealings with humans.

How plausible is this connection between hardness of emotions towards animals and a dereliction of moral duty to humans? It assumes that we see animal suffering and human suffering in the same way, such that if we can make an animal suffer we can do the same to a human. This is not obviously true, in the same way that people who enjoy hitting balls with bats have no necessary predilection towards hitting people with bats. A Welsh farmer, on leaving to fight in Spanish Civil war is reported to have said “If I can shoot rabbits, then I can shoot fascists”. But the words seem naïve and hollow. There is a world of difference between being a farmer and a soldier, and the latter are far more likely to be negatively affected in their dealings with humans.

The causal connection is even weaker in the case of ordinary people whose only encounter with meat is on the supermarket shelves. They do not kill their own meat, they probably barely think if it as ever having lived, so it seems implausible to suggest there is any heartlessness being displayed. However, the virtue ethicist can object to a person who, understanding the cruelty involved in farming practices, persists in eating meat.

C. Arguments in defence of eating meat

Why stop at animals?

One response to the arguments for the extension of moral status to animals is to ask why these arguments are not applicable to plants, attempting to drive the argument to absurd conclusions. The onus is then on the advocate of animal rights to explain the morally relevant difference between plants and animals.

The utilitarian has a ready-made answer. The morally relevant quality is just the one Bentham identified: the ability to feel pain. However, it has been suggested that some plants can feel pain. Clark observes that some plants emit ‘galvanic twitches’, which have been interpreted as a sign of distress. The evidence for this interpretation is sketchy, and given that plants lack a central nervous system, it is certainly not pain in any recognisable sense. Even if it is demonstrated that plants are capable of feeling pain, this need not be a persuasive point for the utilitarian. The absurd consequence the line of reasoning is supposed to lead us to is that we cannot eat any once-living thing. But this would only be implied if the utilitarian were committed not to eating the produce of processes involving pain. This is not the case – the utilitarian’s only moral commitment is to maximising utility. So if it were to be demonstrated that plants do have the capacity to feel pain, utilitarians would have to seek out food sources that involved minimal suffering – most likely to be plants, which probably feel less pain than animals.

Deontologists, such as Regan, employ slightly different terminology for a similar notion. While denying pleasure and pain have the moral significance granted to them by the utilitarian, Regan holds that the true condition of moral equality is to be an ‘experiencing subject of life’. According to Regan’s definition, subjects of life:

“want and prefer things, believe and feel things, recall and expect things. And all these dimensions of our life, including our pleasure and pain, our enjoyment and suffering, our satisfaction and frustration, our continued existence or our untimely death—all make a difference to the quality of our life as lived, as experienced, by us as individuals. As the same is true of … animals … they too must be viewed as the experiencing subjects of a life, with inherent value of their own”.[23]

While this is a definition which may well lead to problem marginal cases within the animal world, it seems highly unlikely that any plants will fit Regan’s definition of a subject of life. Consequently, Regan can escape the absurd consequences objection.

‘If we were all Jews, there would be no pigs’

Another objection to vegetarianism points out that farming leads to the creation and continued existence of numerous animals, who would not have been alive otherwise. If we believe that life is a good thing, the argument runs, surely farming is good because it brings into existence animals that would not otherwise be.

The force of this argument for the utilitarian depends on whether they agree that a farmed animal’s life is better than not existing. The utilitarian has no a priori commitment to the sanctity of life. If a life, on balance, involves more pain than pleasure, the utilitarian is perfectly consistent in arguing it would be better had it never happened. Given the extreme suffering involved in many farming processes, it seems highly likely that many animals would (on the utilitarian conception) be better off never having been born.

Deontological, rights based arguments here enter the murky world of the rights of unborn creatures. It seems most plausible to say that potential creatures have no rights, at the very least until the point of conception. Otherwise, we risked being dragged into absurdity, with every sperm and egg having rights and moral claims.

The more general claim, that species are better off under farming, is highly contentious. As Clark observes, “Species have vanished in historical time, but few have done so because man did not interfere with them”.[24] In any case, if the conservation of species were the real aim of farming, it seems that there are far more humane ways of achieving the same goal.

Causal Impotence

Another major objection to vegetarianism is what Norcross calls ‘causal impotence’.[25] This is the claim that, even if we agree that the treatment of animals in meat production is morally wrong, there is no point in adopting vegetarianism, since the actions of one individual will have no effect on the overall quantities of meat being produced. This objection holds with equal force for both the utilitarian and the deontologist, since it claims that forgoing meat will prevent neither the suffering of animals nor the loss of their lives.

Norcross admits that incremental conversions will have no impact on meat production, but argues that large shifts in demand will.[26] So, for example, if it takes 10 000 people stopping eating meat to save 100 000 chickens a year, there is a 1 in 10 000 chance that you will be the individual whose conversion crosses that threshold. Thus, the expected effect of your decision is to save 10 chickens a year, and so from either the utilitarian or the deontological standpoint, the decision is a rational one. The numbers are, of course, illustrative, but the point holds.

The causal impotence objection does not appear to have any force against virtue ethical arguments for vegetarianism, which argue that vice is shown merely by association with meat production. Nobis argues that to continue to eat meat simply because you believe your actions will not influence the farming industry is as distasteful as buying a lamp carved from the bones of concentration camp victims, and defending yourself with the knowledge that there is nothing you could have done about the holocaust.[27]

D. Arguments for Demi-vegetarianism

There is one final position which we ought to consider before concluding our discussion. We have looked at arguments suggesting we give up meat entirely, and arguments insisting there is nothing wrong with the status quo, but what about the third alternative? Hare’s response to the arguments for and against vegetarianism is to propose a diet which involves reduced and carefully selected meat consumption.[28]

Hare’s argument is premised on the belief that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the consumption of meat. This would seem to put him at odds with absolutist deontological theories which, if they accept the moral status of animals, would see their slaughter as morally repugnant. Hare, on the other hand, believes that if farm animals are reared in comfortable conditions, and slaughtered humanely, it is permissible to eat them. Indeed, Hare argues that such an existence is even better than the animals would enjoy in nature, and so it would increase overall utility to have more, rather than fewer, of these ‘ethical’ farms. He points out that the only way to encourage such farming methods is with the consumer’s market power: the power that vegetarians relinquish. Consequently, Hare concludes that the optimal action is to eat only ethically produced meat.

Hare’s case is impeccably argued and perfectly consistent with the utilitarian perspective. It may also have appeal for those virtue ethicists who agree that to ensure farm animals have a good life and to slaughter them humanely is to act compassionately. However, Hare’s empirical claim that such ethically produced meat is available is a debatable point. This appears to be Singer’s objection to demi-vegetarianism: “the important question is not whether animal flesh could be produced without suffering, but whether the flesh we are considering buying was produced without suffering”.[29]


E. Conclusion

The question posed at the start of this essay was whether it is morally consistent for us to eat meat. The answer, unsurprisingly, depends on your moral convictions. Contractarians have little reason, on their conception of morality, to give any thought to the suffering of animals, and so are not inconsistent in eating meat. However, such a nakedly egoistic moral philosophy seems unpalatably callous and selfish. The verdict contractualism, if it is a complete moral theory (and not just a political philosophy), rests on the question of whether animals are to be considered moral agents. Given its focus on rationality, this seems unlikely. However, if it were possible that you might emerge from the veil of ignorance an animal, it seems unlikely that you would be willing to undergo the present-day farm experience, so a few contractualists may be amenable to vegetarianism.

Deontologists must also resolve the issue of the moral status of animals. The problem of marginal cases makes it difficult for the deontologist to reject the moral claims of animals, and deontology makes it difficult to countenance the eating of a moral agent (this seems the epitome of using them as a means, not an end in themselves). However, a few deontologists may be comfortable with the belief that certain non-rational humans are of lower moral status, and equivalent to animals. These few are consistent in their consumption of meat.

The position of utilitarians seems to rest decisively on the empirical question of whether any current farming methods are humane enough to ensure that farmed animals are better off than had they never been born. If they are, it seems the utilitarian’s duty to support such farms. Yet environmental concerns would seem to suggest that excessive consumption of meat is also bad. If farming methods do not reach this standard, the utilitarian ought to be a vegetarian.

It is difficult to make out the virtue ethics position in all this. It seems compassion is the chief virtue at stake. Insofar as virtue ethics has anything to say on this, it is that it is probably better to support more humane farms. The idea that the consumption of meat in itself is an act of vice seems rather implausible.

[1] Quoted in Singer (ed.), In Defence of Animals, 9.
[2] Cudd, Ann, "Contractarianism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .
[3] Regan, ‘The Case for Animal Rights’, in Singer (ed.), op. cit.
[4] Ashford, Elizabeth, Mulgan, Tim, "Contractualism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .
[5] Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 512.
[6] See Clark, The Moral Status of Animals.
[7] Quoted in Hursthouse, Ethics, Humans and Other Animals, 75.
[8] Quoted in Singer, op. cit., 5.
[9] Singer, Animal Liberation.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Singer and Mason, Eating.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Hursthouse, ‘Virtue theory and abortion’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1991, 225.
[14] Gruen, Lori, "The Moral Status of Animals", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .
[15] Quoted in Nobis, ‘Vegetarianism and Virtue: Does Consequentialism Demand Too Little?’, Social Theory and Practice 2002.
[16] Quoted Singer (ed.), op. cit., 5.
[17] Quoted in Norcross, ‘Puppies, Pigs and People: Eating Meat and Marginal Cases’, Philosophical Perspective 2004.
[18] Hursthouse, Ethics, Humans and Other Animals, 51.
[19] Clark, op. cit., 108.
[20] Quoted in Hursthouse, Ethics, Humans and Other Animals, 75.
[21] Quoted Schliefer, ‘Images of Death and Life: Food Animal Production and the Vegetarian Option’, in Singer, In Defence of Animals, 67.
[22] Nobis, op. cit.
[23] Regan, ‘The Case for Animal Rights’, in Singer, In Defence of Animals.
[24] Clark, op. cit., 48.
[25] Norcross, op. cit.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Nobis, op. cit.
[28] Hare, ‘Why I am only a Demi-vegetarian’, in Jamieson (ed.), Singer and his critics
[29] Quoted in Hursthouse, Ethics, Humans and other Animals.

Big Society, Big Misunderstanding?

The Big Society was supposed to be David Cameron’s great philosophical innovation, the great legacy of his premiership. Yet it has had a beleaguered existence to date Met by incomprehension, scepticism and mockery at every turn, it is surely only the enthusiasm of the Prime Minister that has carried it this far. In the past weeks it has sustained further blows, with Liverpool City Council dropping out of a pilot programme and Dame Elisabeth Hoodless, head of Community Service Volunteers, claiming it is being fatally undermined by government cuts. Where lesser men would have given up, Cameron has sought to prop up the big society once more, insisting in The Guardian that the big society is alive and well.

It’s not often that I feel pity for the Conservative leader, but in this case I have to confess feeling a little sorry for him in the way that his grand scheme has been wilfully misunderstood and misrepresented. This isn’t to say I agree with it, but the scheme deserves to be criticised on its own (de)merits.

The lazy stereotypes: it is a return to Thatcherite anti-statism; it is a Panglossian positive spin on savage public spending cuts or it’s trying to deprofessionalize important occupations. The problem is that the notion of the big society has become too entangled with the government’s cuts. While there is a legitimate argument to say that the cuts are in practice inconsistent with the big society, the two are at least theoretically separable. So, for example, we might say that the big society is a good idea, but not one which must be delayed until the government feels it can afford to back it properly financially. What I want to look at here is whether the big society is a good idea, independent of the immediate political context.

While Cameron was trying to resurrect the big society, Ed Miliband was sticking the boot in with an Independent column linking it to the cuts which “speaks to [The Conservative Party’s] ideological heart. It really believes that a small state will produce a Big Society”.

This is something that Cameron explicitly denies. In the 2009 Hugo Young Memorial Lecture, one of the clearest expositions of the idea, he insisted that despite the problems of state intervention, “it doesn't follow that smaller government would automatically bring us together again”. The novelty of his position is that it rejects the previous Conservative orthodoxy that government intervention in all guises is restrictive and an unwarranted encroachment of liberty. On the contrary, he insists that the state is crucial and necessary in “actively helping to create the big society; directly agitating for, catalysing and galvanising social renewal”. This admission gives lie to the idea that Cameron believes that the government can simply withdraw its support and expect its functions to be spontaneously taken up by the public. On the contrary, one of his central beliefs seems to be that the government has inadvertently created passive, self-interested citizens: “Human kindness, generosity and imagination are steadily being squeezed out by the work of the state”. Having got us into this mess, it appears that only the state can get us out of it.

My understanding is the Big Society is essentially about the empowerment of citizens as a response to this atomisation and submission. The theory is that the best way to so empower people is to give them responsibility. Again, the appeal to ‘responsibility’ is redolent of old-style conservatives objecting to bailing out the poor and the needy. But this is misleading. Responsibility here means being trusted to carry out the tasks of the centralised state on its behalf. Think of it this way: would you be more motivated working for a boss who micro-managed your every move, or one that gave you broad targets and a large amount of autonomy in achieving them? In Cameron’s words, “Our plans for decentralisation are based on a simple human insight: if you give people more responsibility, they behave more responsibly”.

However, the idea of outsourcing the functions of the state leads us to the charge of amateurism: the Big Society means volunteers doing the jobs of professionals. Yet a more charitable interpretation of the Big Society ethos would be to acknowledge that David Cameron is fully aware that certain jobs need to be carried out by qualified professionals. In these cases, the Big Society ethos demands we question how much autonomy these professionals have in their jobs. While the media has generally portrayed the Big Society as trying to encourage volunteering, it seems to be as much about empowering state employees to use their own initiative, and to have a stake in their positions. This is why cooperatives like John Lewis, which shares this philosophy, have been consulted in plans to ‘mutualise’ public services. At the same time, the general public are also promised empowerment in the form of greater transparency and accountability in public service provision.

Armed with this broader understanding of the philosophy of the Big Society, we can see its mark all over this government’s policy. Its healthcare reforms can be understood as an effort to change the role of doctors from passive recipients of NHS largesse to a more active, engaged and autonomous role. Free schools not only harness the public spirit of their founders, but encourage decentralised, services.

Understanding the government’s philosophy is not to condone it, though. Even if we accept that Cameron is acting in good faith, we can object to his vision on a number of grounds. To begin with, the need for a Big Society presupposes that we accept a rather pessimistic diagnosis of modern British society and the effectiveness of the state. Many would deny that public services are in the dire state that is sometimes portrayed. It is also debatable whether the state is such an inhibiting influence on people.

Further, the Big Society argument seems to forget the strengths of a centralised state: coordination and redistribution. Decentralising services means more of a postcode lottery: what you get and how good it is depends far more on your location. It also makes it harder to move resources from rich areas to poor.

The peculiar thing is that these are the sort of arguments that are being made against specific measures, such as free schools and NHS reform. Yet few have linked either the government policies or opposition to them to the Big Society, which is perceived to only be about volunteering and suchlike, rather than an overarching government ideology. In their review of The British General Election of 2010, Dennis Kavanagh and Philip Cowley comment on the irony that “the Big Society was a Big Idea, of the sort which pundits always call for” and yet it was ridiculed and misapprehended by those same pundits. Perhaps it’s my bias as a Political Theorist, but I agree that politics should be about grand schemes and visions. That makes it a shame that, despite its faults, the Big Society has not been noticed as such.

My Acrimonious Break-up from Fernando Torres

In Fever Pitch, among the pathologies of a football fan than Nick Hornby diagnoses is the tendency to draw analogies between serious world events and the game: “I tend to over-estimate the metaphorical value of football, and therefore introduce it to conversations where it simply does not belong. I now accept that football has no relevance to the Falklands conflict, the Rushdie affair, the Gulf War, childbirth, the ozone layer, the poll tax, etc, etc”.

The last week has demonstrated to me the reverse: things that happen in football sometimes feel like serious life events. For those of you who don’t know and don’t care, last Monday Fernando Torres, Liverpool’s star striker, successfully agitated for a move to rival club Chelsea. I’ve (thankfully) never had to undergo the break-up of a relationship, but that’s the parallel I reached for straightaway. And I was not alone. On the forums they said: “we have passion for this club burning in our hearts, and when someone says they love us and then just fucks off the way he has, it is just like breaking up with a girl. It hurts, and if they leave you in sh*te circumstances then you will hate them as well”. Mawkish youtube videos of his goals had (presumably) grown men in tears bemoaning their heartbreak, like jilted lovers weeping over old photographs. And honestly, on Monday at least, it didn’t feel absurd and disproportionate.

The analogy seems to fit, too. There were early flirtations. The giddy excitement of the first union. The exhilaration of its consummation ( the goal-as-orgasm metaphor is a downright cliché by now). There were professions of undying love: "They [Atletico Madrid and Liverpool] are the only two clubs that are in my heart. I have supported Liverpool since I was a boy and I intend on staying here a very long time."

And then it started to go wrong. Comments that seemed innocuous at the time, but which suggested dormant problems stored up for the future. Desperate vows to try and make it work as tensions and frustrations bubbled up to the surface. Finally he decided enough was enough, it wasn’t working and it was time to go. First there was denial, then resignation.

So we find ourselves in this odd post-break up situation. Feeling bitter, angry and betrayed and moved to petty vandalism. Upset by the very sight of him playing for someone else. And yet there’s vulnerability, too. I find myself clinging to articles like this one which assure me “his connection with the Chelsea fans will not be what it was with Liverpool” and that deep down he isn’t happy about the move. No one will ever love him like we did, and he must be lying when he says he was faking it.

Perhaps one day we’ll replay that final scene in the hackneyed film where time has passed and the wound has healed and we’ll be able to acknowledge that the time just wasn’t right, that we had to let him go. Or maybe he’ll never be forgiven.

Cynics will say that it was simply naïve to expect loyalty or reciprocation of our affection from a modern-day professional footballer. That’s what Torres seemed to suggest when he argued that “the romance in football has gone”. But most humans, not just footballers, can be selfish and instrumental. That in itself isn’t enough of a reason to never open your heart to them. Better to have loved and lost. Or something.

In Search of Negative Utilitarianism

Negative utilitarianism is the moral theory that the only criterion of the rightness of an action is the extent to which it minimises suffering or pain[1]. In other words, in any given circumstance, the right action is the one that minimises unhappiness.[2] This, of course, stands in contrast to the ‘classical’ utilitarian doctrine of Bentham and Mill that the right action is the one that maximises happiness, where happiness is taken to mean the overall balance of pleasure and pain.

Since its first clear formulation by Karl Popper in 1945, negative utilitarianism has generally been taken merely as a logical possibility, before being swiftly disregarded as incoherent or counterintuitive (see JJC Smart’s treatment in Utilitarianism: For and Against). Indeed, there is something puzzling about a philosophy that holds that pain in the sole moral bad in the world, but which gives no moral consideration to pleasure. I agree that such an ethical system is problematic. Consequently, I think that pure negative utilitarianism is implausible. However, I wish to discuss a few ways in which ‘positive’ utilitarians may become de facto negative utilitarians.

The basic utilitarian ‘Greatest Happiness’ Principle can be broken down into two propositions:

A: The more pleasure an action causes, the better it is
B: The more pain an action causes, the worse it is

The classical utilitarian uses both propositions in evaluating the rightness of an action. In assessing an action, they must calculate both the pleasure and the pain it entails, and the net value of pleasure minus pain represents the salient ethical consequence of that act. By contrast, the negative utilitarian only accepts proposition B, and ignores proposition A.

This move, on the face of it, seems rather peculiar. Why should anybody committed to the proposition that pain is bad not also hold the view that pleasure is good? In fact, I do not think that any advocate of negative utilitarianism actually does deny that pleasure is good. However, there are three reasons why they may nonetheless ignore proposition A. The first reason is pragmatic: pain is seen as easier to identify or eradicate. The second is that pain has lexical priority over pleasure: the maximisation of pleasure, on this view, is a worthwhile moral project, but it is subordinate to the obligation to minimise suffering. While both of these positions are in practice negative utilitarian, neither can accurately be described as negative utilitarian theories, since both in theory can ascribe some positive value to happiness. However, I wish to argue that a negative utilitarianism that gives no weight to happiness is in fact possible, for there is a third reason to deny proposition A: if we believe that happiness does not exist or is unattainable, then the proposition is redundant.

Pragmatic Negative Utilitarianism

There are a number of reasons why a classical utilitarian might consider negative utilitarianism to be a more practical or desirable guide to action. They might be motivated by an empirical belief that in the world we live in it is far easier to relieve suffering than to bring about happiness. This might be because of the large numbers of people (and animals) in the world living dire and unfortunate lives. If most of the world are suffering, it is necessary to relieve that suffering before we set about making them positively happy. Some might hold that it is better to focus our efforts on easing pain because of our relative lack of knowledge regarding how to make people happy

Indeed, it is fairly clear from Karl Popper’s initial formulation of negative utilitarianism that he personally advocated it at least partly out of practicality and pragmatism Rather than denying that happiness is of any moral importance, he simply suggests that “the promotion of happiness is in any case much less urgent than the rendering of help to those who suffer”. Moreover, his reluctance to advocate active promotion of happiness is linked to contingent human fallibility and his fears for personal liberty: “‘Maximise happiness’, in contrast, seems to be apt to produce a benevolent dictatorship”. Popper is not saying that promoting happiness would not be good, just that we are unlikely to be very successful.

Though nobody has been as explicit about it, there is a strong argument to suggest that most utilitarians have been and are de facto negative utilitarians (although with exceptions, like Richard Layard). Take, for example, the most prominent utilitarian voice in contemporary applied ethics, Peter Singer. The causes to which he devotes his energies have, by and large, been efforts to reduce suffering, rather than increase happiness. His defence of euthanasia seeks to ameliorate the pain of the terminally ill; his fight against global poverty that of the destitute; and his vegetarianism intends to ease the suffering of animals.

Nevertheless, pragmatic negative utilitarianism cannot be classed as genuine negative utilitarianism. If the likes of Singer could be convinced of a guaranteed method of increasing pleasure that produced pleasure more efficiently than pain can be eradicated, they would be bound by principle to devote their efforts to that. The fact that they could, under certain circumstances, be as concerned with pleasure as with pain quite clearly demonstrates that they are not really negative utilitarians.

Lexical Prioritisation of Suffering

Another ethical theory which looks a lot like negative utilitarianism is Clark Wolf’s ‘impure consequentialist theory of obligation’. This theory suggests that the reduction of suffering should have lexical priority over increasing happiness. Our only moral obligation is to diminish unhappiness. However, while Wolf suggests that promoting happiness is not obligatory, he still believes it to be morally good. This implies that all acts that increase happiness are supererogatory: desirable, but not morally required. This philosophy is obviously inconsistent with negative utilitarianism because it explicitly embraces proposition A.

However, most utilitarians do not believe in supererogation, insisting that we are always obliged to perform the action that is morally best. A more orthodox utilitarian, who subscribed to this view, but accepted the lexical priority of reducing suffering over promoting happiness would believe something very similar to negative utilitarianism. If duty A has lexical priority over duty B, then we have to totally fulfil all the requirements of duty A before we should consider duty B. Thus the lexically negative utilitarian would have to eradicate unhappiness before their moral obligations impelled them to look to increase happiness. Since eradicating unhappiness seems like an impossible task, the lexically negative utilitarian is, for practical purposes, the same as negative utilitarianism. Of course, this should not obscure the fact that lexically negative utilitarians would still accept proposition A, it is just that they are unlikely to ever be in a position to act on it.

Personally, I have to include myself among those holding the ‘marginalist prejudice’ Wolf dismisses. I simply cannot see how, if happiness has any value, this value will always be trumped by the need to decrease unhappiness. The very idea of lexical priority demands testing with extreme cases. The lexical prioritisation of suffering means that a world in which all are ecstatically happy but for occasional headaches is worse than a world in which people exist in a state of perpetual physical and emotional numbness

Wolf’s rationale for this move is his commitment to Parfit’s “Compensation principle: One person's burdens cannot be compensated by benefits provided for someone else”. Wolf assumes that everybody shares this intuition, but again it does not stand up to extreme counter-examples. If I offer to make every person in your home town (except you) a millionaire if I can pinch your arm, then surely most people’s moral intuition is that the minimal sacrifice is worth bearing. Consequently, I cannot see how the lexical prioritisation of proposition B over A can be justified.

Pessimism

There is yet a third reason why proposition A might be rejected. If we believe that happiness is illusory or unattainable, then there is nothing to give moral weight to. Proposition A is rendered meaningless or redundant. The most famous proponent of such pessimism in Western philosophy is Arthur Schopenhauer. To better understand the reasoning behind the pessimistic denial of happiness, it is instructive to investigate his treatment of the concept.

The first premise of Schopenhauer’s philosophy is that existence, for all living creatures, entails striving. We are all particular manifestations of the will to life, and as such, we are all perpetually consumed by desires of one sort or another, which tend generally to our survival and reproduction as a species (Note the striking parallels with evolutionary biology). For Schopenhauer, ‘happiness’ consists in the satisfaction of the will, in the fulfilment of our desires.

Now it is unclear from Schopenhauer’s philosophy how this specialised use of the term ‘happiness’ relates to the more common meaning of happiness as a positive feeling or disposition. On one reading, Schopenhauer seems to deny that happiness in this second sense is ever possible: Schopenhauer scholar Christopher Janaway calls this the ‘negativity of satisfaction’ thesis. Alternatively, Schopenhauer may merely be saying that the satisfaction of preferences produces positive feelings only rarely and/or fleetingly.

With the ‘negativity of satisfaction’ thesis, Schopenhauer suggests that happiness is an illusion:

"All satisfaction, or what is commonly called happiness, is really and essentially always negative only, and never positive….satisfaction or gratification can never be more than deliverance from a pain, from a want….consequently, we are only in the same position as we were before this pain or suffering appeared."

"We feel pain, but not painlessness; care, but not freedom from care; fear, but not safety and security. We feel this desire as we feel hunger and thirst; but as soon as it has been satisfied, it is like the mouthful of food that has been taken, and which ceases to exist for our feelings the moment it is swallowed."

Schopenhauer’s core assertion is that attaining what we strive for never produces any positive feeling, but all that we experience is absence of the longing or suffering that we felt before. When we fall in love, all we experience is the absence of loneliness. When we win a game, all we feel is respite from the fear of losing. Life, for Schopenhauer, is nothing but suffering after suffering, broken up by the occasional period of numbness. The pursuit of happiness is a “hunt for game that does not exist”.

It is interesting to place this argument in the context of Bentham’s definition of pleasure: “I call pleasure every sensation that a man would rather feel at that instance than feel none”. But as we’ve seen, Schopenhauer, according to the negativity of satisfaction thesis, would insist that it is impossible to have a sensation that is better than feeling none at all. The reason that we are inclined to seek ‘pleasure’ is simply because the satisfaction of preferences allows us to feel nothing at all. Thus on Schopenhauer’s account, pleasure (which of course utilitarians take to be equivalent to happiness) does not exist.

It appears as though finally we have a genuine form of negative utilitarianism that denies proposition A, and grants no weight to happiness. Anyone who accepts pessimism (negativity of satisfaction), hedonism (pain is the sole metric of value in the universe) and consequentialism (the rightness of action depends only on the extent to which it maximises value) seems committed to negative utilitarianism.

It could still be objected, however, that the negativity of satisfaction is just an empirical, rather than a logically necessary claim. It is therefore contingent on certain facts about the world. We could imagine another or future world in which happiness as a positive emotion is possible. Would the pessimist negative utilitarians be willing to grant happiness any moral weight in such a world? If the answer is yes, then pessimistic negative utilitarianism, like lexically negative utilitarianism, is only adopted on practical grounds.

It may be objected that Schopenhauer would not accept hedonism and consequentialism, the central elements of utilitarianism, since his ethical theory is closer to a form of virtue ethics. Even if this is the case, it does not undermine my general argument. All I sought to show is negative utilitarianism is conceivable. Since there have been people who have accepted the precepts if utilitarianism and people who have accepted the negativity of satisfaction thesis, there is no reason why a person could not affirm both. Such a person, I contend, would be committed to negative utilitarianism.

However, it is interesting to note that in the arguments discussed here, Schopenhauer comes incredibly close to espousing negative utilitarianism. Janaway notes that “An undefended assumption in his argument is a stark form of hedonism: something adds positive value to life if and only if it involves a felt pleasure, while something contributes negative value if and only if it involves a felt pain”. Indeed, Janaway explicitly portrays Schopenhauer as a negative utilitarian, in all but name: “we see that Schopenhauer has done something quite bizarre: he has used as the test of value a hedonic calculus in which each felt pain accumulates points on the down side of life, but where the total figure for satisfaction is permanently set at zero”. What is this ‘bizarre hedonic calculus’ but the negative utilitarian’s metric of value?!

Of course, for Schopenhauer’s view to fully morph into negative utilitarianism, he would need to accept consequentialism, which he does not, to my knowledge. Yet in showing that Schopenhauer’s philosophy is so concordant with hedonism, we have brought the pessimist and the utilitarian one step closer to the unification we seek.

At some points, Schopenhauer even looks to be arguing for the lexical priority of suffering over happiness, quoting Petrarch: “A thousand pleasures do not compensate for one pain”. He continues,

“For that thousands had lived in happiness and joy would never do away with the anguish and death-agony of one individual; and just as little does my present well-being undo my previous sufferings. Therefore, were the evil in the world even a hundred times less than it is, its mere existence would still be sufficient to establish a truth that may be expressed in various ways…namely that we have not to be pleased but rather sorry about the existence of the world; that its non-existence would be preferable to its existence; that it is something which at the bottom ought not to be."

Schopenhauer accepts the essential proposition of lexical negative utilitarianism: that no amount of happiness can make up for the mere existence of unhappiness.

Fascinatingly, Schopenhauer appears to embrace the supposedly repugnant conclusion R.N. Smart takes to undermine negative utilitarianism:

"Suppose that a ruler controls a weapon capable of instantly and painlessly destroying the human race. Now it is empirically certain that there would be some suffering before all those alive on any proposed destruction day were to die in the natural course of events. Consequently the use of the weapon is bound to diminish suffering, and would be the ruler’s duty on NU grounds."

Schopenhauer’s dogged insistence that it would be better if the world had never existed surely means that he would embrace a simple and painless way to put humanity out of its misery. Once again, it is Schopenhauer’s philosophy that contains the tools necessary to defend negative utilitarianism and render it plausible.

Conclusion

Negative utilitarianism will almost certainly remain extremely unattractive to vast majority. It is most reasonable as a rule of thumb for ‘positive’ utilitarians concerned by the difficulties of making people happy. For it to be a stronger philosophical commitment, it is necessary to accept either that no amount of pleasure can make up for the merest suffering or that happiness is an illusion, beyond our grasp. Neither of these are likely to become widely held beliefs. However, enough people have been convinced of these ideas that negative utilitarianism is far from as absurd as has often been made out.

Notice the varying ‘purity’ of these different versions of negative utilitarianism. Pragmatic negative utilitarianism, as a subordinate rule of thumb to ‘positive’ utilitarianism, would cease to exist if we knew how to make people happy as easily as we know how to ease their suffering. Lexical negative utilitarianism would cease to be equivalent to classical negative utilitarianism if all the suffering in the world were to end. Pessimistic negative utilitarianism would collapse into positive utilitarianism in a world where happiness existed. Given the diminishing probability of these conditions being met (from the perspective of the advocates of these positions), it seems the pessimism produces a ‘purer’ version of negative utilitarianism than the lexical version. Both, in turn, are ‘purer’ than pragmatic negative utilitarianism. However, none of these doctrines actually go as far as to say that happiness, were it to exist, is of no moral significance. Consequently, the search for ‘pure’ negative utilitarianism goes on

[1] or unhappiness: these are all taken to be equivalent
[2] for scalar negative utilitarianism read: the more an action reduces net suffering, the more right it is

Why bother Arguing?

Be honest – how many times over the course of an argument have you heard one of the following (or some variant of them)?:

“You know what, you’re absolutely right, you’ve convinced me”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way before, but now I have, I’ve changed my mind”

“What I said just now was completely wrong”

People do change their minds in the middle of a debate, but not very often. Think how many arguments you have had in your life, and think how few of them have reached this sort of satisfying resolution. It’s so unusual and unexpected that I can’t even read the phrases above without imagining them said either sarcastically or in a wearied if-I-agree-with-you-will-you-just-shut-up-and-leave-me-alone tone of voice.

Most of the time, people are too stubborn or invested in their position to even consider changing their minds. In The Art of Always Being Right, Arthur Schopenhauer observes just this fact:

“If human nature were not base, but thoroughly honourable, we should in every debate have no other aim that the discovery of truth We should not in the least care whether the truth proves to be in favour of the opinion we had begun by expressing, or of the opinion of our adversary. That we should regard as a matter of no importance, or, at any rate, of very secondary consequence.
But, as things are, it is the main concern. Our innate vanity, which is particularly sensitive in reference to our intellectual powers, will not allow that our first position was wrong and our adversary’s right.”

This is a problem. The whole point of an argument, the rules of the game, are that you have to convince the other person. That’s how arguments are set up. It’s as if we’ve been playing football for ages without noticing that there aren’t any goals.

As a would-be philosopher, this is particularly distressing. You’ve just been told that you’ve wasted a one day to argue, for a living and so I’m having to confront the possibility that my life’s calling is futile.

It’s not just me that’s invested in the presumption that rational persuasion is possible. It’s one of the very foundations of our civilisation. One of the central principles of the scientific ideal is that if I am wrong and you are right, you should be able to convince me that is the case. Richard Dawkins has an anecdote about one of his university professors who witnessed the theory he had committed his life to expounding being disproved by a fellow biologist. Far from being angry, or resisting the new theory, he shook the man’s hand and thanked him for showing him his error. Dawkins takes this to exemplify all that is great about science and rationalism.

There’s a debate to be had about how representative this tale is. I’m not sure that all scientists are always so magnanimous and that evidence and methodology are so incontrovertible. However, given the fact that scientists generally share objective criteria according to which they can be proved wrong, scientific argumentation is likely to be different to general disputes.

Philosophers, especially political philosophers, cannot place such faith in objective evidence. We argue about matters that cannot often be reduced to the observation of external facts. Political commitments are among our strongest, the ones we will most stubbornly cling to. So what is the point of trying to sell a tax to the libertarian, or a free market to the socialist? It is often said that political commitments are like supporting a football team. Why do we bother trying to divest the Conservative of their Conservatism when we would never hope to persuade the Manchester United fan to support Liverpool?

The first point to note is that people do change their minds, and do so far often than you would think from watching debates. It is very difficult in the heat of an argument to back down and reject the view you were defending, and so lose face. This pride means that we never want to acknowledge when we have been refuse too concede lodges a seed of doubt in our minds. In the course of the argument, we pretend to be unpersuaded, but the objection or criticism nags away until, far from the public glare we relent and give in to it.

The adversarial nature of arguing means that it’s unusual to give your opponent the pleasure of seeing you change your mind. The fact that a person is willing to argue their case means that they must have some sort of pre-existing allegiance to their position. So long as a person is tied to their position, for example because of family loyalty or ideological conviction, they will not be ready to change their mind.

People will change their mind when they are ready and not before. However, this doesn’t mean that they will necessarily change their minds because they are ready to do so. How common is it for a person to say, ‘I’m not sure what I think about the situation in Palestine/global warming/spending cuts anymore, I’m going to look into changing my mind’? More often than not, such a state, if it occurs will be prompted or catalysed by some challenge to their pre-existing opinions. Thus we argue with our opponents so that when they are ready to change their minds they will remember our words. We may know that our arguments are of no use to them now, but we hope that they will carry them with them and that they will later be ready to confront them.

However, even if we could never hope to win round our adversary, I still think there is a point to arguing. The world is full of people who haven’t considered an issue or don’t know what they think about it. For the most part, they avoid getting tangled in debates because if you don’t have a position it’s harder to participate in a dispute. Yet these people are often the audience for arguments.

Many sorts of arguments presuppose such an audience, many of whom will be malleable for persuasion one way or another. Formal debates are usually public, academic disputes occur for the benefit of peers and students, and court cases take place in front of juries.

In fact, the legal analogy seems apt as an example of antagonistic argument as a means for getting to the truth. Nobody expects the opposing lawyers to convince one another, but they do address one another’s arguments and try to defend their positions as best they can. Presumably it is believed that this is a more effective way of establishing fact than if everyone sat in a cooperative Socratic circle and tried to reason it out together.

None of this, however, challenges the essential assumption that we should be open-minded, and willing to change our position. Reflecting on our innate stubbornness, Schopenhauer suggests it may not be so bad after all:

“Nonetheless, this very dishonesty, this persistence in a proposition which seems false even to ourselves, has something to be said for it.
It often happens that we begin with the firm conviction of the truth of our statement. Then our opponent appears to refute it. Should we abandon our position at once, we may discover later on that we were right after all. The proof we offered was false, but nevertheless there was a proof of our statement which was true…
Thus it is that the weakness of our intellect and the perversity of our will lend each other mutual support.”

Even if it looks like we should be persuaded, we may still be in the right, so it is better not to be persuaded. Does that mean that there is no point to arguing?

Is sex selection on non-medical grounds justifiable?

Advances in medical technology now allow parents to choose the sex of their baby without having to undergo excessively invasive or dangerous procedures. Yet most societies have recoiled from this possibility, and have severely limited parents’ freedom to choose. In the UK, for example, HFEA (Human Fertility and Embryology Authority) regulations only permit sex selection for medical reasons: to avoid serious sex-linked conditions, such as haemophilia.

Yet any close scrutiny of the common justifications for preventing parents from choosing the sex of their child shows them to be misinformed, unreasoned or weakly rationalised gut reactions. Any review of either the ethical literature or the numerous public consultations on the subject is bound to uncover the same set of objections to non-medical sex selection. This essay addresses each of the most common concerns in turn, and seeks to demonstrate that they are misplaced or mistaken.

This is a strategy that needs defence in itself, since it assumes that the burden of proof is on those that would restrict non-medical sex selection. Yet this presumption does not seem unwarranted. Forbidding selection is clearly a restriction of freedom, since it prevents someone (parents) from doing something that they wish to do (choose the sex of their baby). There is not a single moral or political theory which would deny that all else being equal, more freedom or preference satisfaction is better than less. Nor does any philosophy I am aware of permit the restriction of freedom or the frustration of preference without any justification whatsoever. To put it another way, there is no ethical system which requires us to get permission before acting – if things are not expressly forbidden, we can assume they are permitted. The consideration is just a weak one – as soon as there is a countervailing reason against an act, we may be justified in restricting it. However, it hardly seems unreasonable to require some such convincing reason against sex selection as a necessary precondition of restricting it. This article/talk attempts to show that no such compelling reason exists.

The ‘Feminist’ argument: sex selection reduces the status of women

One common concern regarding non-medical sex selection is what David Heyd calls the ‘feminist’ argument (though without referencing any actual feminists who he believes to hold it). The basic idea is that allowing parents to choose the sex of their children will allow them to favour boys over girls, and will further diminish the status of women in society.

Heyd’s first response to this line of argument is to observe that non-medical sex selection does not create or promote sexism, it merely reflects the underlying prejudices of the society. He urges feminists to reconsider their targets, and to focus on the underlying root causes of gender inequality, rather than being distracted by symptoms. For example, Heyd implies that attacking the institution of dowries would make girls less expensive, and would make parents less likely to choose boys.

This response is not fully persuasive. Even if sex selection is just a manifestation of gender inequality, it can still be harmful independently of its root causes. Sex selection could perpetuate and normalise sexist prejudices, by reassuring people that it is acceptable to hold such views and to act upon them.

Heyd also refers to the empirical work of Marcia Guttentag, who suggests that historically, the proportion of women in a society is inversely related to their status. If women are relatively rare in a society, they will be valued more, given more power and freedom. This further undermines the empirical claims of the ‘feminists’.

Heyd’s arguments are interesting and subtle. However, the strongest grounds for resisting the ‘feminist’ criticism is the assumption that boys would, in fact, be preferred to girls. In reality, this premise does not seem to hold in Western countries. Gleicher and Barad’s analysis of choices made by parents in an American clinic that offered sex selection found that those wanting boys and girls balanced each other out. Numerous surveys have established that, if anything, there is a slight preference for girls in Western countries.

The Problem of Sex Ratio Imbalance

These findings undermine perhaps the most common objection to non-medical sex selection: the fear that it will lead to a major imbalance in the sex ratio. Yet this fear is clearly unjustified. As we have seen, those that do opt to choose the sex of their children tend to be evenly split between those who want boys and those who want girls. Even if there were an imbalance in this population, the overall effect would be attenuated by the fact that most people probably wouldn’t choose the sex of their babies in the first place. Hall et al’s review of survey data demonstrates most people do not want to decide.

Of course, these findings are limited to Western countries. In many parts of the world, there would be a strong tendency for parents to choose, and in particular to choose to have boys. In countries where sex imbalance and discrimination are genuine possibilities, it would be irresponsible to facilitate them. But when a society is deciding on policies and restrictions which are binding only on it, the effects that policy would have on other societies not subject to their laws is surely irrelevant.

The only reason I can imagine for the UK or other Western societies to consider the effects of permitting sex selection on other societies is that it might leave them open to the charge of hypocrisy in dealing with those other societies. Thus if the UK permitted sex selection but tried to criticise (say) China for doing the same, it would appear inconsistent. Yet it is clear that the inconsistency is only apparent, an acknowledgement of and response to the fact that the UK and China are different social contexts. It is not that different principles are being applied to different societies, rather the application of the same principle requires different responses in different contexts.

In any case, it is important to remember that even if every parent chose the sex of their child, this would still only have a small effect on overall sex balance because sex selection is currently open to so few parents. Sex selection is limited to those who undergo assistive reproductive treatments such as IVF. These methods have much lower success rates than natural conception, so it seems implausible that many parents would jeopardise their chances of conceiving at all just to ensure they could choose the sex of their child.

Inequality of access

The fact that so few will in practice be able to choose the sex of their children may, though, be used as an argument against permitting sex selection. It simply illustrates that access to this technology will almost certainly be extremely unequal. This concern can come from two sources: the worry that the rich will be able to afford services that the poor cannot, or that those who conceive naturally will be unfairly disadvantaged.

The notion that the rich should not be able to buy a better standard of healthcare is problematic because it brings to mind the ‘levelling down’ objection against extreme versions of egalitarian thought. If nobody is made better-off by equalisation, it is hard to see why we should pursue absolute equality. If we cannot make the blind see, does this mean we should all put our eyes out to ensure we can all see equally badly? In the same way, just because some people cannot take advantage of the option to choose the sex of their child, does this mean nobody should have that option at all?

Yet even if we accept that unequal access to sex selection is wrong, it does not follow that we should ban it. Rather, it makes more sense to extend access to the technology to all. Subsidisation of the service or its provision on the National Health Service would give the poor equal opportunity to choose the sex of their children. Perhaps this focuses the issue: there are certain essential medical treatments that we believe all should have access to, rich or poor, such as emergency care, and so we ensure public provision of these. There are others which are not so crucial which we do not mind the rich having greater access to, such as cosmetic surgery, and so these are generally provided privately. The question then becomes whether sex selection is more like emergency care or cosmetic surgery, essential or not.

If we even up access to sex selection between rich and poor, this still fails to address the fact that only the infertile will be able to choose the sex of their baby (Of course, it is not only the literally infertile who will choose their child’s sex – fertile parents who carry sex linked diseases may do the same. However, the point still holds because in forgoing natural conception they are reducing their chances of conception to that of the infertile). This is a peculiar argument, since it depends on us accepting that the infertile are unfairly advantaged. Stated in these terms it seems plainly absurd: if anything the ability to choose the sex of their baby is a sort of compensation for parents’ inability to conceive naturally, and an inadequate one at that. It is helpful to consider the issue in terms of Michael Walzer’s concept of complex equality. According to Walzer, to determine whether two people are equal, it is not sufficient to look at just one dimension, or ‘sphere’ (such as income), but we must consider all indices. Thus while infertile couples are disadvantaged in the sphere of fertility, they are advantaged in the sphere of reproductive choice.

Misuse of medical technology

The distinction between essential and non-essential medical services leads us to another common objection to non-medical sex selection. Many believe that medicine should only be about curing disease. On this view sex selection is therefore a misuse of doctors’ time and resources. Yet the example of cosmetic surgery illustrates the fact that doctors can and do devote their time to other things beyond curing disease. Not many people would go as far as to call for the banning of cosmetic surgery on these grounds, however, as this position would appear to commit them to.

In any case, it is hardly self-evident that doctors have no duties beyond fighting disease. Many insist that enhancement of patients’ wellbeing is an equally important facet of medicine, for example, reducing pain.

‘Slippery slope’ to designer children

Another common fear regarding non-medical sex selection is that it is the ‘thin end of the wedge’, and that accepting it will inevitably lead to the development of ‘designer’ babies. The thought is that if people are permitted to choose one characteristic of their children – sex – then it will be impossible to prevent them from choosing other attributes, such as eye colour, hair colour, intelligence. Even accepting that this would be undesirable (not everyone agrees - see Nicholas Agar’s case for liberal eugenics), it is not clear why exactly the descent down the slippery slope is inevitable. There is no logical certainty that sex selection entails any other form of selection.

Indeed, as Heyd points out, there is a notable discontinuity between sex selection and the choosing of other attributes. While sex selection can be done through sorting of embryos or sperm cells, full-on designer babies would require genetic manipulation. This difference is key: clinical sex selection involves no interference with the human genome at all, and so is crucially different from the production of designer babies.

It is also worth remembering that most people are willing to accept sex selection on medical grounds without fearing the inevitability of designer babies. Yet this is also a case of choosing the characteristics of one’s child – so how is it any different from sex selection on non-medical grounds?

Argument from religion/nature

It is worth pressing the objection to designer babies a little harder to see why exactly these are perceived to be so undesirable. One strong strand of the argument is a religious one, which sees such tampering as questioning the will of God, and undermining His authority. On this line of thinking, to fail to leave the matter of the sex of our baby to divine providence is to fail to respect God’s wisdom and benevolence. Secularised versions of this argument are often founded on the thought that sex selection is in some way unnatural, or represent humanity in some way ‘overstepping’ its remit. For example, Michael Sandel sees the desire to master the ‘mystery of birth’ as ‘hubris’.

None of these can in themselves provide persuasive accounts of what is supposed to be wrong with non-medical sex selection. The fact that something is natural does not in itself make it right or wrong. This much has been established in ethics since G.E. Moore pointed out the ‘naturalistic fallacy’. There are all sorts of established human practices and behaviours that could hardly be classified as ‘natural’, and yet which hardly seem ethically problematic. From wearing clothes to driving cars to artificial reproduction, to reject all that is unnatural would involve rejecting most of modern human life.

The explicitly religious argument is problematic too. Even if we concede the existence of God, it is unclear why we should spend much time trying to second guess His desires and intentions. To the argument that the conception of a boy or girl is in some way the revealed will of God, we can respond that if God did not want us to choose the sex of our children, He would not have provided us with the technology and expertise to do so. God helps those who help themselves, as the old joke reminds us:

There was an old man sitting on his porch watching the rain fall. Pretty soon the water was coming over the porch and into the house.

The old man was still sitting there when a rescue boat came and the people on board said, "You can't stay here you have to come with us."The old man replied, "No, God will save me." So the boat left.

A little while later the water was up to the second floor, and another rescue boat came, and again told the old man he had to come with them.The old man again replied, "God will save me." So the boat left him again.

An hour later the water was up to the roof and a third rescue boat approached the old man, and tried to get him to come with them.Again the old man refused to leave stating that, "God will grant a miracle & save him." So the boat left him again.

Soon after, the man drowns and goes to heaven, and when he sees God he asks him, "Why didn't you save me? I thought you would grant me a miracle and you have let me down."God replied, "You idiot, I don't know what you're complaining about. I sent three boats after you!!"

The ‘Parental Love’ Objection

Perhaps we are being unjust in writing off people’s unease as superstition or luddism. Some philosophers maintain that the unease many feel with non-medical sex selection is rooted in concern for the welfare of the resultant child. This certainly appears to be the position of the HFEA, which seems to accept the argument that children who have their sex chosen by their parents will be somehow disadvantaged. Peter Herissone-Kelly tries to rigorously formalise this intuition, among the most common gut reactions to the matter of sex selection, into what he calls the parental love argument. This also seems the most charitable interpretation of Sandel’s argument above.

On Herissone-Kelly’s account, what is wrong with non-medical sex selection is that it fails to display ‘proper parental love’: “the sort of love that we think parents ought, simply in virtue of being parents, to have for their children”. Presumably, the implication is that if a parent cannot provide such love, they should not be given children. (Note possible difference between ‘giving’ and ‘letting have’)

Proper parental love must satisfy the ‘any incumbent’ model. For A to love B with proper parental love, A’s love must have only one (necessary and sufficient) condition: that B is A’s child. Another way of putting this is that A would love anyone who happened to be their child. Since parents who choose the sex of their children seem to be making their love contingent on them being the ‘right’ sex, they violate the any incumbent model, and so fail to display proper parental love.

This does not follow. These parents may seem to be making their love contingent on their children’s sex, but this is not necessarily the case, nor is it even that likely. The claim is that all parents who would prefer a boy to a girl would therefore not love their child if they were a girl (or vice-versa). This might hold in a minority of cases, where parents would rather have no child than a child of the ‘wrong’ sex. Yet there are almost certainly many parents who would love and be happy with a child of either sex, but who simply have a preference one way or the other.

It is important to separate two distinct concerns here. On one hand, we may be worried that parents with a sex preference may end up with a child of the wrong ‘sex’, and therefore fail to be good parents to it. On the other, the problem is that even if the parents get the sex they wanted, this reflects a deficiency in their attitude – a lack of proper parental love – which is bound to adversely affect their child. This draws out a central plank of the parental love objection – that our attitude to hypothetical children in different possible worlds is an indicator of our strength of feeling for our real children.

Observe that the ‘any incumbent’ model places very strong restrictions on what can be described as proper parental love. If you can imagine any circumstance under which your love for your child would falter, then you do not love them ‘properly’ as a parent. This is a test that many, if not most, real-life parents would fail. The conditions of their love may be few and weak, but only the most saintly could still love a child who lied, stole, raped, killed without repentance. Parents do disown their children, and often because of the despicable characteristics of the child. Herissone-Kelly accepts this argument, and insists that parents who would not love a ‘diabolical’ child cannot hold proper parental love for their real, non-diabolical children.

However, Herissone-Kelly is very careful to point out that he is not doubting that parents who insist upon this ‘non-monstrosity’ condition do love their children. His point is merely that they do not display ‘proper parental’ love. But what is the difference between ‘proper parental’ and other kinds of love? And why should we care about the absence of ‘proper parental’ love, if Herissone-Kelly accepts that some form of love is present? Herissone-Kelly’s answer is that parental love ought to be reliable, and that making your love contingent on a person’s characteristics makes it unreliable. This links his argument to the virtue ethics rejection of sex selection.

The virtue of ‘acceptance’

Herissone-Kelly explicitly builds on Rosalind McDougall’s virtue ethics approach to the question of non-medical sex selection. Virtue ethics is the philosophy that moral rightness consists in possessing and displaying ‘virtues’ rather than in any given action. Virtues are usually defined as dispositions or mindsets, which entail not only acting in a certain way but also certain “emotions and emotional reactions, choices, values, desires, perceptions, attitudes, interests, expectations and sensibilities”. Thus an honest person – one who displays the virtue of honesty – does not merely tell the truth, but does so because of the values, beliefs and motivations that we would associate with honesty.

McDougall seeks to adapt the virtue ethics approach to the question of sex selection, and argues that non-medical sex selection is wrong because it fails to display parental virtue. She posits that the criterion of right parental action is that an action is right if and only if it is what a virtuous parent would do. Traditionally (at least within the Aristotelian tradition), virtues have been regarded as those traits favourable to human flourishing (the Greek concept of eudaimonia). In McDougall’s account, what makes for a parental virtue is that a disposition is conducive to the child’s flourishing, based on immutable facts about human reproduction and rearing.

According to McDougall, one such immutable fact is unpredictability. Children are always capable of placing unexpected strains or demands on their parents, and so it is in the interests of a child’s flourishing to have a parent capable of adapting to this. Even if we could know a child’s entire genetic code, McDougall alleges, environmental factors are constantly capable of surprising us. For example, the child could be blinded in an accident. This fact implies that acceptance is a parental virtue. Parents must be capable of taking their children as they are, even when they fail to meet their expectations because the sheer unpredictability of children means that they will not always meet their parents’ expectations. This seems to be Sandel’s point when he argues that choosing the sex their child “deprives the parent of the humility and enlarged human sympathies that openness to the unbidden can cultivate”.

The virtue ethics account, like the parental love objection, often seems to read too much into parents’ desire to choose the sex of their baby. This one choice need not imply total obsessive control freakery, a desire to dominate every part of their child’s life. It is just one decision, one feature of the child. There is nothing inconsistent about having a preference for the sex of your child and being generally accepting of its other features: appearance, talents etc. Moreover, it does not follow from the fact that a parent has a preference for a certain sex that they would not accept and love a baby of the ‘wrong’ sex. Thus a person can have a sex preference and possess the virtue of acceptance at the same time.

McDougall accepts that it is not clear that having a preference is in itself wrong, but holds that acting on this desire would be wrong. She also insists that even if the parent’s future actions displayed the parental virtues, including acceptance, this would be irrelevant to this moral question, because it is only the act of sex selection itself that is at issue. Yet this seems to break dramatically with the spirit of virtue ethics, which evolved as a rejection of moral philosophy’s obsession with evaluating individual acts. Rosalind Hursthouse bemoans “the extreme recklessness of attributing a virtue on the basis of a single action”. One lapse does not make a person vicious, it is their general character that must be considered. Therefore, a virtue ethics account of sex selection has to account for the motivations, attitudes and characteristics of parents before pronouncing on their moral status.

However, there is a deeper point to be made against both the parental love and virtue ethics objections to sex selection: that they expect too much of parents. Even if we accept that a parent who fails to show proper parental love or the virtue of acceptance towards their children is in some way imperfective, it is not enough to show that they are negligent or incompetent. Herissone-Kelly has to concede that there are numerous well-functioning happy families where parents love their children, but simply fail to meet the (incredibly high) standards he demands. Similarly, many parents fail to be fully accepting, blame children for faults that are not their own and push them to be something they are not. Yet this one failing does not mean that they are unfit parents, or even that their children will be particularly harmed. Most parents are imperfect, rarely is love truly unconditional.