Man Bites Blog

This post from Megan McArdle reminds me that we have a tendency to believe that there are no trade-offs.  That if we just do the right thing, things will magically work out for the best, and that doing the wrong thing has some other non-anticpated consequences that make it worthwhile.  McArdle’s post deal with the notion that slavery was not economically viable for Southern plantation owners, anyway, so it was doomed to failure.  Some other examples:

• Torture is intrinsically immoral, and besides, it doesn’t work!
• Abortion is the killing of the unborn child, plus it causes emotional and physical problems for the women who procured it.
• Embryonic stem cell research is immoral; besides, stem cells from other sources are so much more promising!
• The invasion of Iraq was unjust; plus, it made us less secure.
• It is a moral imperative to have a diverse work force; plus, it makes good business sense!

We haven’t been promised that doing the right thing will not involve sacrifice.  It sure is nifty when doing the right thing aligns with our material interests, and it sure would be nice if right behavior was immediately rewarded, but it’s not guaranteed.

Why is this a problem?  Well, if we base our argument against abortion on the notion that it damages the women who pocure them, then all it takes is one counter-example of a woman who had an abortion and is doing fine to debunk it.  Plus, some of these claims whittle away at the credibility of the movement.

Second, it leads us to resist paths that do entail sacrifice.  We (convenientyl) see bad material consequences as a sign that we’re doing the wrong thing.

It sure would be nice if doing the right thing always resulted in good consequences, and doing the wrong thing was immediately punished.  Unfortunately, real life isn’t that easy.

Contemporary moral analysis is largely rights-based.  For something to be proclaimed a moral wrong, it must be a violation of some right, preferably one that can be applied broadly and consistently.  So, if someone asserts that something is wrong, all that is necessary to refute the argument is to drill down to the right being claimed, and then cite an instance where that right is not applied as forcefully.  You can’t oppose embryonic research without also opposing IVF.  If you oppose abortion but not capital punishment, you are a hypocrite.  And so on…

I think this is an incomplete way of looking at things, which I think is manifested in a couple of posts at Megan McArdle’s blog examining the question of why we are outraged by dogfighting but not the treatment of calves for veal, for instance.

First, I acknowledge that a case can be made that treatment of calves for veal is indeed outrageous.  Nevertheless, I don’t believe that the lack of public outrage is case for no outrage, or that those outraged by dog fighting but not veal are hypocrites who base their moral judgement on the cuteness of puppies.  There’s a subtle race card being played here as well.

Jonah Goldberg gets closer to the issue.  Dog fighting isn’t repugnant because animals have rights, or because puppies are cute.  Humans have a special relationship with dogs — we not only keep them as pets, but they also serve us in myriad ways — as guides to the blind, as police dogs, hunting, watchdogs, etc.  Dogfighting is a betrayal of that relationship and trust. 

Which explains why, from my perspective, even though they both take human life, opposing embryonic research is a more compelling moral imperative than opposing IVF (even though IVF is also morally problematic).  Embryonic research treats the embryo as a means to an end, whose sole purpose is to be an instrument to serve us, which changes the relationship.

If our outrage at dogfighting causes us to take a closer look at other incidents of animal cruelty, that’s great.  But if it doesn’t, it doesn’t mean we’re hypocrites or simply moved by aesthetics.  It means that there’s more to moral analysis than evaluating rights claims — the impact on relationships matters, too.