After reading the selection from Derrida's "The Animal that Therefore I am" distributed in class, please post a question and your attempt at an answer here.
As I mentioned in class, this is an intentionally short selection, so if you have time, you may want to read it more than once. Derrida would have certainly appreciated it if you were to read it again and again.
Until Wednesday.
Jack
ReplyDeleteHow many animals are raised to feed domesticated dogs and cats…..such as Derrida’s cat?
I was glad to be reminded of Kevin’s mention that the first article was taken from a 10-hour address given by Derrida. I have always found it easier to digest words written to be read than words written for a speech, and was therefore very glad to have David Wood’s response at the end to help clarify much of what I missed in Derrida’s article. Wood also seems well ‘grounded’. Besides, as a person who grew up on a large farm in the Midwest, how can I not like someone who finds a way to bring Aldo Leopold into the discussion.
I now understand why we were pushed last week to be able to pull from Coetzee’s work the question of ‘do animals suffer’ given its relevance to Derrida’s rephrasing of this argument on page 121. I used to dread the loading of cattle, hogs, and sheep into the trucks to haul them to the stockyards over an hour away in Omaha. I knew by their response to that process alone that animals suffered, and that no matter how pleasant their lives may have been in near-free range conditions on large open pastures for their whole life up until that moment, their final hours (perhaps the ones that matter most) were often miserable. Perhaps it is my recollection of these experiences that helps me rationalize the hunting I have done (always for meat as a consumer of animal protein). While I have never enjoyed what comes after pulling the trigger, if I am to continue to eat animal protein I find it much more tolerable to do so as a result of a ‘quick and unexpected’ death than a long and drawn out process of man-induced suffering. Here is where Wood’s discussion of the war on self-deception & ignorance is well-founded. The urban dwellers are disconnected from their contribution to animal suffering. They have removed all ownership of responsibility for the poor end-of-life experience that animals have. I have to be cautious not to go into an Upton Sinclair’s ‘The Jungle’ soapbox here, but it is a text that has good parallels with where we have come in our course discussions.
I find it interesting that people overlook the impact of the house pet explosion on the ‘protein shortage’ we all face. Undeniably some of the very same people arguing for the improvement of the artificial conditions that animals are raised in to meet the current demands of protein are themselves contributing to the need to further confine these animals to feed their dogs and cats. Perhaps they should not just be asking “is man more important than the animal?” without also asking “is my dog more important than a cow?”.
John S. Sonin
ReplyDeleteEng. 419—Maier, Krein
Blog 10—April 1. 2009
Boy!, I sure do like Derrida’s prose. It’s much less convoluted than Uexkull’s (sic) but just as insightful with its “frontal” distraction followed by a “backdoor” whammy—sentence wise! Ideas that come to mind are like a bee attracted to a blossom then finding and piercing for the nectar at its stem. Derrida starts with a ubiquitous attraction to draw me in and then delivers the whammy of his point after I follow his idea (sentence) to the end.
I like, also, how he suggests we must reorganize our thinking so as to note the relationships, verbs, rather than the objects or nouns of our reality. Everything is in flux and whether the animal is before, after or alongside us, the essence is unification; we came from ONE, parted, but will return to ONE. Big Bang confirms this on the universal level (expansion and shrinkage), cell division and decay models the microscopic process, but seeing the figurative cat seeing us, without letting our subjective ”fears” distort our thinking, is the clearest indication we have that it’s familiarity in the eye contact.
It’s not “and” or “or,” instead it’s “forward” or “back.” His Dasein idea is shared amongst everything we perceive and that Dasein is in flux, changing with the universal pursuit of entropy. What besides ego-driven arrogance, has given us the “right” to judge?
Perhaps this post should go in last week’s blog, but since we're discussing Peter Singer today, I thought that I'd posit it here. I should first start with the note that I read Singer with a skeptical eye, seeing a few glaring oversights in the first page or so that made me doubt Singer's abilities as a philosopher.
ReplyDeleteHe begins by talking about a piece by Thomas Taylor in response to a book written in 1792. He then follows with this: "Let us assume that we wish to defend the case for women's rights against the attack by Thomas Taylor. How should we reply?"
"One way in which we might reply is by saying that the case for equality between men and women cannot validly be extended to nonhuman animals. Women have a right to vote, for instance..."
At this point, I asked myself "Is this guy serious?" From the thousands of examples he could have chosen to respond to an article in 1792, he chooses THE RIGHT TO VOTE?!?" He would be laughed at in the 18th century - women's suffrage didn't come around for another century or so.
This point is fairly irrelevant and undamaging to his argument, but it explains the state of skepticism that I was in when I read the rest of his article. I didn't trust the accuracy of what he said.
And indeed, I found a few gross mischaracterizations in his representation of Descartes' view. I should say here, that I generally agree with Singer. However, I consider what he wrote in this section to be ENTIRELY SEPARATE from any of our discussion earlier in the semester.
He discusses Descartes in the following way: "Although, as we shall see in a later chapter, the view that animals are automata was proposed by the seventeenth-century French philosopher Rene Descartes, to most people, then and now, it is obvious that if, for example, we stick a sharp knife into the stomach of an anaesthetized dog, the dog will feel pain."
Descartes does not refute this! Singer emphasizes his point my saying "Nearly all external signs which lead us to infer pain in other humans can be seen in other species, especially the species most closely related to us - other species of mammals, and birds." And paints himself to be in direct contradiction with Descartes, when, in fact, Descartes makes the same observation. Descartes merely holds "As for the movements of our passions, even though in us they are accompanied with thought because we have the faculty of thinking, it is none the less clear that they do not depend on thought, because they often occur in spite of us. Consequently they can also occur in animals, even more violently than they do in human beings, without being able to conclude from that that they have thoughts." Descartes says that fear is a passion that animals have, and seems to imply that they can feel pain (he never explicitly says it, but if they cannot, what are they afraid of?)
Descartes might very well agree with Singer about animal rights. But he is the person that everyone beats up on in their openings. But what Singer argues against are inferences that HE draws from what Descartes said - rather than what Descartes actually said. I am reminded of a quote that Dennett uses in one of his articles - I do not have the article with me, and cannot quote directly, but I'll try to post it before class - that goes something like "there is not one word in all of Descartes that takes a moral stance on animals." That is not his concern, although Singer conveniently shows him as someone that believes that animals have no rights as all, and therefore is a speciesist that Singer must directly oppose.
I also think that Singer conveniently side-steps Descartes when he writes in a footnote "I am here putting aside religious views, for example the doctrine that all and only humans have immortal souls... Historically these views have been very important... Logically, however, these religious views are unsatisfactory, since a reasoned explanation of why it should be that all humans and no nonhumans have immortal souls is not offered."
Again, my reaction was "WHAT?!?" I thought that was precisely what Descartes was doing! So I again pulled out Descartes, and indeed, he says "I came to realize, however, that there are two different principles causing our motions: one is purely mechanical and corporeal and depends solely on the force of the spirits and the construction of our organs, and can be called the corporeal soul; the other is the incorporeal mind, the soul which I have defined as a thinking substance.” He maintains that the incorporeal mind is immortal, and the corporeal soul is mortal. Animals have the latter, but not the former. How can Singer claim, then, that there has been no reasoned explanation of why no nonhumans have immortal souls? All he would need to do is pick up anything that Descartes wrote about animals.
All that I can say is that Singer discusses an entirely different issue. In fact, I don’t think that anything that he claims is at all affected by anything that we’ve read thus far. He deliberately disregards the questions that the first half of our class dealt with – which is fine, but acting like he’s revolutionizing the views of these other philosophers is just wrong. I don’t think anyone we’ve read thus far – with the exceptions of Regan and maybe Coetzee – have taken a moral stance on animals… I guess I just wanted to point that out…
One of the things about the reading that struck me was Derrida’s initial point. When he starts off talking about the cat watching him in a state of undress. Now, I know that this I a bit off the ball from Derrida’s arguments but the thing that struck me was the idea that the animals have no concept of being naked therefore they cannot be naked in the sense that we attribute to it. That without the concept of good and bad they cannot truly be naked. So even thought this is a little off from what I imagine the general discussion will be it is still the point that I want to bring up. I know that what Derrida was getting at was the idea they lack the concept of the idea of good and evil but it still got me thinking. Let us say that I was raised in a culture that has not concept that nudity is bad and the community is always nude. Now say that this culture has a very deep sense of right and wrong, so for instance, murder, theft and incest are bad but not let’s say nudity, profanity, polygamy, or anything else that differs from us. This community that I would be a part of would have their own concepts of right and wrong and they would differ from our own, but they would still have the concept of right and wrong. Now, as things go in this argument we are still separated from animals in the ability to conceptualize right and wrongs, but what I want to suggest is that maybe we do not have to be. The example that I want to use to support my idea is focused on my own dog, so it obviously has issues on that she is domesticated and that this could be an isolated event—an anomaly, or just me reading too deep into the action of my dog. Derrida’s whole initial argument is that he is ashamed and embarrassed to be seen naked by his cat, who, he says, has no concept of nudity and it is therefore a little bit foolish to be embarrassed or ashamed. Anyway, what I am trying to get at is from my experience animals do have the ability to be embarrassed or ashamed—whether or not they can conceptualize it I won’t try argue here. Please note that the following story has a certain amount of a giggle factor but I am being perfectly serious. I live in a small relatively cramped apartment so things and people are usually pretty close together. Upon occasion, my dog (and I am sure others as well) will pass gas and the house will seem unlivable for the next five or ten minutes. When this happens she has developed the tendency to skulk off afterword, head down body slumped and trying to look small—in other words, conveying all the traits a person might when they are embarrassed or ashamed—when we do something as simple as saying her name or saying “gross.” Saris, my dog, has never been punished for something like passing gas, and aside from the odd exclamation of disgust or shock no one has ever really scolded her for it. This being said she has nothing to really worry about except for an unpleasant smell. There is to be reprimand or anything of the sort but she still acts as if she is ashamed. She does not always move, or act ashamed, until someone says something, so clearly she is not just moving because it smells bad but because she wishes to distance herself from those of us who would disapprove. To me this seems to be an example where Saris learned that something not good and acts accordingly. It seems that by observing the people around her she has learned and judged that passing gas is not a particularly good thing. I take it that she is inferring from our behavior and tone what is good or bad. So, from this example what I want to ask is why can’t animals have right and wrong whether or not they can conceptualize it? And if they can have it what is to say they cannot conceptualize it in some form or another? It seems to me that whatever concepts of right and wrong we have are concepts that we learn and are taught, so if they are never taught to an animal, be it monkey, dog or turtle, how does this lack of knowledge allow us to infer anything about what they can or cannot conceptualize? I am not sure if this makes sense to anyone but it was just something I thought I would throw out for arguments sake.
ReplyDeleteThis guy, Jacques Derrida, needs to get off his high horse! I found his paper boring, self-important, and above all, complicated. In fact, it was so complicated and written at a level that the everyday person would find boring. I know that I found it boring and if his paper was not a required reading, I would have stop on the second page. I feel the Derrida just went on and on. He could have made a his point, what ever it is, much sooner. He starts with being nude in front of his cat and then rambles on about being ashamed of being nude. Then some how he tlaks about who is fallowing who. Then there is some "abyss" which for me he never really explains to my understander.
ReplyDeleteDerrida does make some good points in that I like how the sentance sounds. For example he says that "the industrialization of what can be called the production of consumption of animal meat"(119). I got nothing out of the rest of the paragraph. He also mentions "animal rights" and the question can they [animals] suffer. Yet he asks "can they not be able?" (121). I was not really able to get what his answer was fallowing that question.
I would have to say in all that Derrida writes for a small and select group of people and not for the everyday person.
I thought I didn't have the reading so I tried to do some research on Derrida and ended up reading a little more about the roots of continental philosophy and contemporary focuses. But then I found the reading so I was able to formulate a better question for this post.
ReplyDeleteDerrida's discussion of shame and nakedness seems to be an effective driving example for this excerpt of his "The Animal That Therefore I Am" discussion, but I what stood out most to me was his discussion of other philosophers from his insistence on his little cat being a real little cat. My question is, what makes his real cat important to his arguments against the anthropocentrism of the division of the animal and human world?
His real shame and shame of shame is important to his exploration of our attitudes towards animals and the differentiation between humans and animals. This is important to his status among continental philosophers because he rejects many of the points made by other philosophers. Troubled by his shame, he doesn't strive to set himself above the animal kingdom, but focuses instead on a secondary shame by which he criticizes humans role in the mistreatment of animals that we do not fail to critique in our mistreatment towards our own species.
His initial shame makes him aware of his consciousness of himself as a person and allows him to explore a lot of the "properties" of humans.
Apparently I don't have the selection from Derrida's speech, so I'm going to respond to last week's discussion. This is my disclaimer - if you're more interested in this week's discussion do not read this.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I would like to take a quote from Jack's post for this week: "Here is where Wood's discussion of the war on self-deception & ignorance is well founded." The mention of self-deception & ignorance sums up my feelings on the Coetzee readings last week. I found the willed ignorance that Costello talked about to be one of the more paramount issues in last weeks selection.
The self-deceptive factor that Costello stressed is also the reason I was not, in any way, offended by the holocaust analogy. If I viewed the analogy as a parallel between human and animal suffering, then yes, I might be offended. But I feel as though the analogy was appropriate for other issues it throws light on: Self-deception and the human ability to avoid recognizing the horrendous acts around them.
There are multiple quotes in Coetzee's reading that illustrate this feigned ignorance: Page 19, "...they did not know for sure [about the holocaust killings]; said that, while in a sense they might have known, in another sense they did not know, could not afford to know, for their own sake."; page 20, "... horrors went on in all of them, more horrors by far than one could afford to know, for one's own sake.". When speaking about factories and farms that commit animal cruelty, Costello said that she was not immediately aware of any in the vicinity, "Yet I am sure they are here. They must be. They simply do not advertise themselves. They are all around us as I speak, only we do not, in a certain sense, know about them." (Coetzee, 21). Again, on the holocaust, "The particular horror of the camps, the horror that convinces us that what went on there was a crime against humanity, is not that despite a humanity shared with their victims, the killers treated them like lice. That is too abstract. The horror is that the killers refused to think themselves into the place of their victims, as did everyone else." (Coetzee, 34). Interspersed throughout the section on the holocaust are bits of other arguments, but the constantly reocurring theme is that of feigned ignorance. This is why I see self-deception as the main focus of the selection. Now I would like to move to the, "Open your hearts" remark.
This led to our distinction, in class, between reason and emotion. When thinking abstractly, this works well enough (distinguishing the two as very different, or even opposite), but in practice it can be a bit more difficult. I would like to kick this section off by quoting Costello's explanation of the usefulness of the 'heart': "In other words, [the Nazis] closed their hearts. The heart is the seat of a faculty, [i]sympathy[i], that allows us to share at times the being of another. Sympathy has everything to do with the subject and little to do with the object, the 'another'..." (Coetzee, 35). This is where the emotion vs. reason argument gets a little hazy, reason is not at the throne of empathy. At one point during our class discussion Kevin Maier asked the class a question in relation to the propriety of judgement via emotion, the class was understandably mute, though one person had enough courage to answer and he appeared strongly opposed to judgement via emotion. I do not disagree that judgement via emotion is problematic, judgement is typically designed to be as objective as possible. But I would not go so far as to disregard emotion entirely (which the student I am speaking of, in his defense, may not be doing at all).
Emotion can be manipulated (fear-based politics), it is often ill-founded (jealousy vis-a-vis inaccurate accusations), but unfortunately for anyone who might wage war on emotion, it is a huge component of our human nature. Emotion is arguably the key reason we are able to sympathize, and therefore empathize, with another. I would like to flatly say that noone has ever empathized with another being without feeling some form of emotional attachment. That is what empathy is defined as, "Identification with and understanding of another's situation" (Am. Heritage Dictionary, fourth edition). How can one understand another's suffering without understanding the emotional component (sadness,grief, anguish, etc.)?
I'm the least emotional person I know (assumption based, not for sure) and yet I am pioneering the defense of emotion, I find this ironic. Machines cannot empathize with a human, mathematical models can not plot human suffering (unless you base suffering on physical outputs such as heart rate, perspiration, pupil dialation, which would, at any rate, be arguably inaccurate), and biological chemistry can't tell how bad you're suffering based on chemical outputs. The human species is believed to have evolved over millions of years (possibly longer, I'm simply illustrating a very long period of time). Our evolutionary precursors (presumably apes) definitely have emotion (I don't feel the need to cite this reference, this seems self-evident, I'd be surprised if anyone actually doubted this). Emotion, for all purposes, is a very successful evolutionary trait - it helps humans identify with one another, and even animals at times. Why think we are better than a tried and true evolutionary trait?
Yes, I view emotion with a large degree of skepticism, but I find it foolhardy to cast it aside as having little value. Costello's "Open your heart" statement is effective in that it identifies a subjective component in human nature that does not have an objective counterpart. Subjective experience alone gives rise to empathy. Empathy is in large part responsible for our ability to sense suffering and need in our fellow humans, I would think it would be disastrous if the human race were to cast aside emotion.
Casting off emotion may work if the entire human species were, in the Nietzschean sense, "Beyond good and evil", but we're not there yet. Time and time again we read stories of horrific acts committed by bizarre individuals (I'd rather not go into detail). These are the people who are often said to be
sociopaths - people who fail to empathize with their victims. In the current human evolutionary state emotion is helpful, moral guidance is a necessary evil. Emotion is something some people would rather do without, and for the better, but arguing against emotion large-scale is a bit frightening.
Furthermore, reason has its limits in human implementation as well. The 'Unexpected Hanging Paradox' is the perfect example -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexpected_hanging_paradox - This paradox may seem arbitrary to the reader, but the implication is there - logic can only take human understanding so far.
So to sum up, I am more in tune with reason than emotion, but I disagree with casting the two as dualistic and antithetical in human implementation, we need both of them.
I had a hard time understanding how Derrida got from undressing in front of his cat to a history of violence against animals. The only part of his lecture I fully understood and agreed with is the section on our forgetting and misunderstanding of this violence. As a meat-eater myself, I can see these traits in myself. I’m not thinking about poor Bessie’s living conditions or painful death as I raise my fork of grilled steak to my mouth. Which is also why I thought his discussion of animal suffering interesting. Although I disagree with the grouping of all animals into Animal (fish I argue suffer less than primates), I found his arguments persuasive. Animals do suffer, and the fact that I am able to forget this eat time I eat is pretty astounding. Perhaps my forgetfulness is a product of language. We refer to cow as beef, pig as pork, etc. to separate their suffering from what is on our plate. But I think the argument could also be made successfully that our forgetfulness has nothing to do with language. We just don’t think about animals much less talk about them. For once we don’t use words to justify our actions. We simply don’t justify at all.
ReplyDeleteDerrida lost me from the start. Why is he ashamed to be naked around his cat? I've never been. Maybe it's because all of the pets I've had over the years have felt no shame licking their schlongs or girl-parts or asses in front of me, so why should I feel shameful if I'm simply nude?
ReplyDeleteGranted, I get his point and understand he's of a different generation.
I was more intrigued by Wood's assertion that naming things gives them value and permanence in our minds (which he may have drawn from Derrida—if it was in there somewhere I lost it among all the French words, talk of the "abyss," and convoluted explanations). Wood says this isn't the case, but I think it is. By labeling the whole of the animal world "animals," it's okay to kill a species or two because hey, there are other animals. Wood argues that this doesn't hold up because we apply it to "man," but I think we DO apply it to man. Most people are very good about being charitable with people they know or feel like they know (i.e. televangelists, celebrities, etc.), but most people display no emotion or care when you talk about the horrors in Sudan, the starvation in Zimbabwe, the conflict in Bosnia, the oppression in China, the poverty in South America, and so on. We may not say it out loud, but most of us simply do not care about these "people" who have no names. We don't care about animals whose names we don't know, either, or animals whose names we may know but are more likely to just call "animals."
However, I don't think the actual act of naming is the cause of this phenomenon, but rather the product. We tend to care about those who are like us. We self-segregate ourselves into cliques, sub-cultures, and groups of like-minded people. If you're a good American you hate communism, disapprove of Islam, and think it's only okay to kill people who wear turbans and act all angry towards America (and the mentally handicapped if you live in Texas). In short, we refer to specific species of animals as "animals" because they are different and distant from us, they aren't different and distant because we refuse to call them by a more specific name.
David Leggitt
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jess that it is quite astounding that we forget that what we are eating is in fact a suffering animal, and I agree that this is probably a product of language. I also think it is interesting that many of the vegetarians I have met in the past became vegetarians when they were young. Is this a product of youths imagination and rudimentary use of language? For example, calling something called veal might mean nothing to a child, but baby cow means a lot.
On the while I had a really hard time understanding Derrida’s stuff (and later I looked up an image of him and found the same one that is on the blog page and that face he is making at the camera says it all!). But I wondered if this had to do with the fact that it was translated from French. But then I decided that he was just like all the other philosophers and scientists, he’s just part of the community and using the language of that community.
To come, finally, to my question: why does he equate nudity and dressed to bad and good? And is there a way to tell if animal have a concept of good and bad?
I do not think that the logic that animals are naked thus they have no knowledge of good and evil is very strong since nakedness=evil is not even a human universal.
Could it be that animals have a description of good and evil based on what is beneficial to the individual? If this were the case, the phytoplankton of the red tide could be said to possess an idea of good and evil, the boar who eats his young at the start of spring has a concept of right and wrong.
Furthermore, if this were true it could be said that animals hold to their convictions stronger than most humans.
I agree with most of Josh's post, though I'd like to question his thought that insensitivity to animals created the all-encompassing term "animals", and not vice-versa (I know my summation doesn't do it justice, but for brevity...).
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure he's incorrect, though I'm not sure he's correct either. I could go around with circular logic all day and at the end of it I would simply have accrued a massive headache. It could be said that in order to lack reverence for the lives of animals one would have to have some abstract conception of the word "animals", though it has just not yet been verbalized - more specifically, one would have to have already classified animals as arbitrary beings in order to disregard the sanctity of their life, which would be synonymous with the effect of verbalizing the word "animals". But again, in response to that claim, one could say that one would first have to disregard them in order to glean a term or conception of the inferiority of the entire species-encompassing umbrella. The absolute nonsensical nature of this paragraph is the reason that I will simply say that I will not attempt to identify the source of the chicken-and-egg issue at hand here, I'll content myself to say I just do not know.
Regardless, I agree with Josh in his disagreement with Wood - I as well feel that humans subconsciously lack distinction towards those individuals who we do not know, and as a result, often overlook the tragic outcomes of such indifference. I would take this a step further and say this was one of Coetzee points in writing Costello's speech. If it was not one of his points, I would say that his piece unintentionally created this statement.
The discussion of “I” and the “animal and/or animals” was really interesting to me. Do we naturally think in dualisms? For instance, Derrida mentions the importance in the Other in forming a concept of Self. The Other, who is not me, and I who am not the Other. Do we do any violence to a thing by naming it or is it this problematic, as Wood suggests, because it is a category? Also, it is interesting that many of the philosophical discussions of the distinction between men and animals so blatantly homogenize this group: “the animals.” They thus rely on the reader’s acceptance that the difference between different species is so insubstantial as to be negligible. Both Derrida and Coetzee critique the content of the debate regarding animal rights. The central issues we have considered thus far are, as Derrida says, issues of power—the power to think, the power to reason, the power to speak. Are these relevant to the moral questions posed in debates concerning animal treatment? Derrida writes that Bentham’s question “amounts to asking ‘can they not be able?’” Are questions regarding the ethical treatment of animals questions that can be answered by logic or by sympathy? Is pity reason enough to believe something?
ReplyDeleteI like the last post, as it illuminates some of the issues I have with such a discussion.
ReplyDeleteI believe the overall framework by which we look at these questions is a bit too reductionist in methodology. I'm reminded of what is a standardized 'Easterner' mentality in such a situation - They do not reduce things to such simple terms, they view the cohesive whole. I'm sure this sounds like rambling, but give me a few more sentences.
We are inclined to say that Reason and Emotion are antithetical, thus we should use one or the other. We should view them as abstractions. But that is not how Anything in the world works, even science (i.e. particle-wave duality), we have been given two faculties that seem very different: Reason and Emotion, so why not attempt to guide both of them, to the best of our human ability, to create a cohesive image of the task at hand - Animal rights.
I do not think asking "What do you feel emotionally" grasps the issue entirely. Nor does, "What do your equations tell you". But both, if we can find a symbiosis in the two, can be helpful as additives to the debate.