Abortion and Moral Ignorance



Eat Responsibly: An Argument for Vegetarianism and against the Moral Ignorance Thesis

This paper takes on several distinct but related tasks. First, I present and discuss what Gideon Rosen has labeled the “Parity Thesis,” which states that whenever an agent acts from ignorance, whether factual or moral, she is culpable for the act only if she is culpable for the ignorance from which she acts. Second, I offer a counterexample to half of the Parity Thesis, the part I call the Moral Ignorance Thesis. Third, I present a principle—Don’t Know, Don’t Kill—that supports the view that the purported counterexample actually is a counterexample. Finally, I suggest that my arguments in this direction can supply a novel sort of argument against (or at least considerations against) many instances of killing and eating certain sorts of animals.

I. The Parity Thesis and the Problem of Moral Ignorance

Michael Zimmerman and Gideon Rosen, among others, have discussed the problem of moral ignorance at length.[1] The basic issue vexing them is this. In cases of actions done from factual (non-moral) ignorance, it is commonly accepted that a person is morally culpable for the action just in case she is culpable for the ignorance from which she acts. The question is whether the same considerations apply in cases of moral ignorance—ignorance of moral facts. Zimmerman defends the view that the cases are similar: in cases of actions done from moral ignorance, a person is culpable for the action just in case she is culpable for the ignorance from which she acts.[2] Rosen follows Zimmerman, defending what he calls the ‘Parity Thesis’:

Parity Thesis: Whenever an agent acts from ignorance, whether factual or moral, he is culpable for the act only if he is culpable for the ignorance from which he acts.[3]

I plan to argue against half of the Parity Thesis, the part that focuses on moral ignorance.[4] This is the part of the thesis that Rosen discusses at length. Let me rename that thesis:

Moral Ignorance Thesis (MIT): Whenever an agent acts from moral ignorance, he is culpable

for the act only if he is culpable for the ignorance from which he acts.

To argue against the MIT, I must find a case in which

(i) an agent acts from moral ignorance

(ii) the agent is culpable for the act

(iii) the agent is not culpable for the ignorance from which he acts

In the next section, I will offer a case that I think meets these three conditions, serving as a counterexample to the MIT. To do this, however, it will be helpful first to conduct a fuller discussion of these three conditions, so that we might assess whether or not a particular case meets them. Particularly, we’ll need to consider what it means for an agent to act from ignorance, how we establish whether an agent is culpable for an act, and how we establish whether an agent is culpable for the ignorance from which she acts. In order to discuss these conditions, it will be helpful to look at the main example Rosen offers in support of the MIT.

The Ancient Slaveholder

Rosen offers a case in which we are to imagine an ancient Hittite lord who owns slaves, buying and selling human beings, requiring forced labor, breaking up families. Rosen tells us that the legitimacy of chattel slavery “was simply taken for granted” and that “until quite late in antiquity it never occurred to anyone to object to slavery on grounds of moral or religious principle.”[5] Rosen concludes: “Given the intellectual and cultural resources available to a Hittite lord, it would have taken a moral genius to see through the wrongness of chattel slavery.”[6] Rosen offers this as a case in which the slaveholder acts from ignorance, is blameless for his moral ignorance, and is excused from being culpable for his actions as a slaveholder on the grounds of his being ignorant.

Acting from Ignorance

Rosen isn’t explicit about what he means when he says that an action is “done from” ignorance, or when he says that an agent “acts from” ignorance. I think the most natural understanding of these locutions is something like the following:

(AI1) a person P performed action A while ignorant of some fact F, and

(AI2) P would not have done A had P known that F.

I think that it is natural to include both (AI1) and (AI2); if we only included (AI1), we might suspect that the action was done from callous indifference as much as from ignorance. It’s not clear that this matters (assuming that the attribution of callous indifference doesn’t undercut our assessment regarding the agent’s culpability for being ignorant), but it does seem to go against the tone in which these cases have been presented. The locution ‘done from ignorance’ seems to imply that the ignorance played an important causal/explanatory role in the agent actually performing the act in question.

Rosen doesn’t distinguish several different ways in which someone could be ignorant of some fact F:

(I1) cases in which a person is ignorant because she has never thought about the issue (and so has

no beliefs about F)

(I2) cases in which a person is ignorant because, though she has thought about the issue, she has

come to have false beliefs about F (she believes that not-F when in fact, F)

(I3) cases in which a person is ignorant because, though she has thought about the issue, she

doesn’t know what to believe (she doesn’t believe that F or that not-F)

In all three cases, it is natural to say that the person is ignorant of F. Presumably, one can act from ignorance in the way described regardless of which of the three ways best describes one’s way of being ignorant. In defending the MIT, Rosen tends to rely on cases of the first sort, cases in which the person has never thought about the issue. He does mention cases of the (I2) variety, however, and similar considerations involving our lack of control over whether or not we are ignorant could apply for all three variants. There is a sense in which one’s ignorance is ‘deeper’ in the first two cases, since not only does one not know that F, one also doesn’t know that one doesn’t know. The (I3) cases are different: there is a ‘taking a chance’ component that is absent in cases of (I1) and (I2). This component might be lessened if we imagine cases in which the person in (I3) would find it very difficult or even impossible to resolve her uncertainty. Regardless, it seems that one acts from ignorance in the third case as well, as long as one would have actually acted differently had one known that F obtained.

Culpability for Acts

Rosen doesn’t present a theoretical analysis of what it is for someone to be culpable for acting in a certain way, relying instead on our intuitions in response to cases. The main case he presents, involving the Hittite slaveholder, is actually not a straightforward case in this regard, since (1) some may not share his intuition regarding the slaveholder’s non-culpability, and (2) we might worry that our intuition in this case is responding to something other than what he wants the case to illustrate.

My intuitions are at odds with Rosen’s with regard to the Hittite slaveholder case: it seems to me that the Hittite slaveholder is morally responsible for his behavior with regard to slavery. The difficult thing for me is determining whether my differing intuition is really an intuition about culpability regarding the action, or whether what has in fact happened is that the case of the Hittite slaveholder has slipped into a case where the individual is culpable for being ignorant, or, even more problematic, into a case in which no actual ignorance is involved at all. It can just seem deeply implausible that a normal adult person in a comparable position to the ancient Hittite slaveholder could be both (a) ignorant of the moral fact of the moral questionability of slavery, and (b) blamelessly ignorant. Though it may be ahistorical of me, or some sort of failure to imagine my way into the ancient Hittite mindset, it seems implausible to say that it would take a “moral genius” to see through the wrongness of chattel slavery.

The thought here is that there are certain action-types that raise red flags, that jump out as being morally controversial—though this isn’t to say that all tokens of the action-type are wrong. I think killing a living organism is an action-type of that sort. I think that treating someone without any moral regard, treating someone as mere property, is also that sort of action-type. I venture the perhaps optimistic thesis that one person simply can’t perform actions of this type without feeling a twinge of ‘this doesn’t feel right.’ If this is right, then once the person has felt the twinge, there is a sense in which (a) they may no longer be ignorant (they have correctly perceived some moral fact), (b) they may no longer be ignorant that they are ignorant (they have correctly perceived that there is a moral issue, though they don’t know what to think about it), or (c) they are not blamelessly ignorant, willfully ignoring or remaining blind to what may be a moral fact. Obviously, cases in which no ignorance or no blameless ignorance is involved will not help us assess the validity of the MIT. Cases involving people who are not ignorant that they are ignorant—cases of the (I3) variety—will be the focus of most of my discussion. The take-home point from this section is that Rosen doesn’t offer anything but his (perhaps controversial) intuition in support of not holding the Hittite Slaveholder culpable for his blamelessly ignorant slaveholding actions.

Culpability for Ignorance

Rosen also doesn’t offer a detailed account of what it is for someone to be culpably ignorant. The two most compelling interpretations of ‘culpable ignorance’ involve what we might call violations of either epistemic or moral norms. Rosen isn’t careful to distinguish between these, but it is helpful to do so.

Here is an intuitive view of culpable ignorance:

A person is culpably ignorant with regard to some fact F just in case they don’t know F and

(CI1) they have done something (put an obstacle in their epistemic path: e.g. taking an

amnesia pill) and/or

(CI2) they have failed to do something (investigate in a certain way, make an inference) and

(CI3) they ought to have behaved differently with regard to (CI1) and/or (CI2)

Rosen and Zimmerman put pressure on (CI3) on ‘ought implies can’ grounds. The basic idea is this: sometimes people don’t know that they are ignorant. If they don’t know that they are ignorant, they can’t reasonably be expected to do anything about their ignorance. So, too, if they don’t know that they don’t know that they are ignorant—they can’t do anything about that ignorance, either. One sees the beginning of a problem. Because addressing this concern adequately is outside the scope of this paper, I will for the most part leave it aside, focusing on cases in which people do know that they or ignorant, or that they are unsure of something. In these cases, there is no problem of this sort with regard to (CI3). The counterexample I’ll offer in a moment is a case of this sort.

The other main difficulty with (CI3) is the issue of the type of ‘ought’ involved. Particularly, it is unclear whether the ‘ought’ invokes epistemic or moral norms. Rosen discusses this distinction only briefly, and ends up asserting that the relevant obligations are “moral obligations governing the epistemic aspects of deliberation.”[7] Unfortunately, he says almost nothing about the contours of these obligations, their source, or how we can identify them. He says that they include duties “to look around, to reflect, to seek advice, and so on.”[8]

Instead of analysis, Rosen offers two cases to help make out the obligation he seems to have in mind. The first is a case in which someone unwittingly trespasses on unmarked private land that is in the middle of a public forest. The second is a case in which someone unwittingly bumps into someone while walking on the sidewalk, his nose in a book. In the first case, Rosen says, “there is no sense in which I should have known,” but that “in the second, by contrast, I am obviously at fault for not knowing that you were in my way.”[9] Unfortunately, Rosen offers little in the way of analysis to help us see why these two cases ought to be treated differently. Though there is not room to offer the textual support for this reconstruction here, we can reconstruct Rosen’s notion of ‘blameless moral ignorance’ into something like the following:

A person is blamelessly ignorant of a moral fact just in case:

(BI1) she never thought about whether moral issues might be involved, it was reasonable for her

not to think about this, and she remained ignorant of the moral fact, or

(BI2) she did think about whether moral issues might be involved, and

(a) she didn’t intentionally commit ‘mistakes’ in reasoning or sabotage her attempts at discovery,

(b) she sincerely made a good faith effort to figure out the moral facts in the time available to her,

(c) and she still remained ignorant of the moral fact.

For Rosen, we are supposed to have a moral obligation to abide by (BI2)(a) and (BI2)(b), but we don’t have an obligation to get the answer right. Since these are moral obligations governing our epistemic practices, he wants them to be sensitive to what we actually can do in a given case, in terms of our epistemic abilities. Again, behind this seems to be something along the lines of ‘ought implies can’ reasoning.

Note that this account of blameless moral ignorance excuses in cases in which my earlier statement of culpable moral ignorance might not. On the reconstructed Rosen account, a person is blamelessly ignorant if they didn’t intentionally sabotage their investigation and if they did the best they could under the circumstances. I’m tempted to think that our moral obligation to get the moral facts right before acting, or at least before taking certain sorts of actions, is more demanding than Rosen’s (BI2) suggests, but I won’t argue for that here. When offering the counterexample to the MIT, I’ll be concerned to find an instance of blameless moral ignorance on Rosen’s account, not on mine.[10]

II. A Counterexample to the Moral Ignorance Thesis

Imagine a case in which a person, Douglas, is contemplating ordering a pig for a special dinner (imagine that the pig is currently still alive and healthy). If he orders the pig, it will be killed and shipped to his local market for him to pick up, cook, serve, and eat. (For simplicity’s sake, I will sometimes refer to the complex chain of action beginning with someone ordering the pig and ending with the pig being eaten as ‘killing’ the pig. Obviously, it is not quite the same as literally killing the pig, but I don’t think the differences matter for our purposes, and we could run the case so that the person actually does the killing, though that would sacrifice the quotidian quality of the example, at least for those of us less familiar with farm life.) Though not thinking in these explicit terms, he is able to understand the idea of moral status, and is questioning whether or not the pig has significant moral status—moral status such that it would be wrong to kill the pig in order to eat it. If the pig did have significant moral status of this sort, Douglas would not kill it. After considerable effort, he is still unable to come to an answer to this question—he doesn’t know whether the pig has significant moral status. His reasons for wanting to kill and eat the pig are straightforward: he likes the taste. There are plenty of other food options that would not require killing pigs or any other animals. Still unable to decide the question, he goes ahead and decides to order, serve, and eat the pig, and does so successfully.

Let us stipulate that pigs have significant moral status, moral status such that it is wrong to kill them simply in order to eat them (when other sources of food are available), though Douglas doesn’t know this.[11] Given this assumption, we can now ask about Douglas’s conduct, with an eye toward evaluating the case as a possible counterexample to the MIT. Our assessment of this purported counterexample to the MIT will consider three questions: (1) was he acting from ignorance; if so, (2) was he culpable for his ignorance; and, finally, (3) is he culpable for his conduct.

Acting from Ignorance

Recalling our earlier discussion, it seems clear that he was acting from ignorance. He performed an action A (ordering, cooking, serving, and eating the pig) while ignorant of some fact F (the moral status of the pig), and he would not have done A had he known F. At least one reason why it is important that we stipulate that the pig actually has significant moral status should now be clear. If the pig did not have this status, then there would have been no fact F with respect to which he was acting in ignorance—there was no fact F such that if he had known about F he would have refrained from performing action A.

Culpable for Ignorance

It seems clear that he was not culpable for his ignorance regarding the moral status of the pig. He did think about whether moral issues might be involved, he didn’t intentionally commit ‘mistakes’ in reasoning or sabotage his attempts at discovery, he made a good faith effort to figure out the moral facts in the time available to him, and he still remained ignorant of the moral facts. If, as Rosen suggests,[12] Truman is blamelessly ignorant for not knowing that it was wrong to bomb Hiroshima, then it seems reasonable to think that Douglas is blamelessly ignorant for not being able to determine whether a pig has significant moral status.

Culpable for Acting

This question is harder to answer than the previous two, at least in part because we have fewer guidelines to help us determine whether Douglas should be held culpable for doing what was morally wrong. I find it natural to say that he is culpable for ordering the pig. He knew that it would be wrong to order the pig if it turned out to have significant moral status, he knew that he didn’t know whether the pig had this moral status, and he went ahead and ordered it and had it killed anyway. I think that there is a compelling moral principle behind this intuition; in a moment I will present and say a few words in defense of that principle. If I am successful, this will be a justification for seeing Douglas as culpable for going ahead with ordering the pig, which in turn will reinforce seeing the above example as a counterexample to the MIT. Before presenting this principle, it is necessary to engage in a brief digression regarding two different senses in which a person ‘ought’ to have done something or refrained from doing something.

Objective vs. Subjective Ought

When assessing Douglas’s conduct, there are at least two questions on which we might focus. The first is whether it was morally wrong to order and kill the pig. The second is whether he is morally culpable for ordering and killing the pig and (if it turns out to be wrong) for thereby doing something that was morally wrong. These questions can be rephrased: (1) was the ordering of the pig wrong, (2) was it wrong for him to order the pig. The first focuses primarily on the action performed, the second on the agent performing the action.

The possibility of different answers to these two questions stems from the distinction between the ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ senses of ought. On the subjective sense of ought, we consider the situation of the agent as she believed it to be, asking: given that she thought that she was in such and such a situation, was what she did something that she ought not to have done. On the objective sense of ought, we don’t take into account what the agent believed the situation to be, asking only whether the action she performed was something that she ought to have done or not. In this case, I have stipulated that things are such that what he does is objectively wrong: a pig has significant moral status, if a pig has significant moral status then it is morally impermissible to order and kill it, and Douglas orders and kills a pig. So our inquiry is focused only on the question of whether he is morally culpable for doing something that was morally wrong—where being ‘morally culpable’ essentially amounts to doing something that was subjectively wrong, wrong relative to what he knew.

Though I think there are cases in which one does something subjectively wrong even if one doesn’t do something objectively wrong, the only cases that can serve as counterexamples to the MIT are those that involve actions that turn out to be objectively wrong. This is a reason that some cases I’ll discuss—where what the agent does is ‘subjectively’ wrong (wrong given what the person believed at the time), even though what the agent does was not ‘objectively’ wrong—won’t work as counterexamples to the MIT. They do not count as instances of acting from ignorance, at least on my construal of this condition. There was no fact F (that the pig has significant moral status, or that a fetus has the moral status of an infant human being, or whatever) that they were acting in ignorance of. The upshot of this section is that when we consider whether Douglas is culpable for his actions, what we are considering is whether it was subjectively wrong of him to order the pig.

III. The Principle: Don’t Know, Don’t Kill

Here is the principle that I think Douglas violates:

Don’t Know, Don’t Kill (DKDK): If someone knows that she doesn’t know whether a living organism has significant moral status or not, it is seriously wrong for her to kill that organism or to have it killed, unless she believes that there is something of substantial moral significance compelling her to do so.

It is my view that it is subjectively wrong to kill a living organism when one violates DKDK in doing so—whether or not one also violates some objectively described moral principle. It is clear that Douglas violates DKDK. He knows that he doesn’t know whether the pig has significant moral status or not, and he doesn’t believe that there is anything of substantial moral significance compelling him to order and kill the pig. There isn’t sufficient space to offer a full exposition and defense of DKDK, nor to discuss DKDK’s numerous neighbors in logical space, but I want to say a few things in support of it.

A first and rather obvious point in support of DKDK is that commonsense morality seems to include a presumption against killing. Of course, it is a rebuttable presumption—if the killing is morally required, say, as in times of war; or if the killing is of something that lacks significant moral status, as many would say of our practice of exterminating cockroaches. The point DKDK makes is that one must affirmatively rebut the presumption, or at least subjectively think that one has done so. It is not enough simply to know that one doesn’t know whether or not the organism being killed possesses significant moral status, and certainly not if one doesn’t even believe that there is anything of moral significance compelling one to act.

Another reason to accept DKDK is that such a principle encourages us to err on the side of caution when we are contemplating killing a living organism. DKDK only applies to people who (1) know that they are ignorant of whether the organism they are contemplating killing has significant moral status, and (2) don’t take themselves to have any compelling moral reason to kill the organism. Shouldn’t people in this situation be morally prohibited from killing? If they do kill in such a situation, it seems that what they did was subjectively wrong—wrong given what they knew and believed—even if it turns out that what they did wasn’t objectively wrong—wrong given what was actually the case.

Let me offer one final point in support of DKDK. An often-noted ‘irrationality’ in commonsense moral thinking is that we inflict greater punishment (and feel more disapprobation towards) those who, for example, drive recklessly and hit someone than those who drive just as recklessly but are fortunate enough not to hit anyone. If we treat violators of DKDK just as seriously whether or not the organism with unknown moral status turns out to have moral status, we will be consistent in the way that critics of our differential treatment of the morally lucky and unlucky suggest we should be.

Conclusion

I think that in cases in which an agent

(a) is non-culpably ignorant of a relevant moral fact (the moral status of a living organism),

(b) knows that she is ignorant,

(c) acts from ignorance (she wouldn’t have acted if she knew the moral status of the organism),

and

(d) kills a living organism

(e) without believing that anything of substantial moral significance compels her to do so

the agent is culpable for the act—guilty of serious wrongdoing. Cases of this sort provide counterexamples to what I have labeled the Moral Ignorance Thesis.

More controversially, I think that whenever one acts in this morally reckless way—knowing that one doesn’t know whether what one does kills something with significant moral status—one does something wrong. This remains the case whether or not the thing killed actually has significant moral status (though if it does not then one cannot be said to be acting from ignorance in the way defined above). In the case that the organism killed does not have significant moral status, what one does is subjectively wrong—wrong given what the person believed. In the case that the organism killed does have significant moral status, what one does is both subjectively and objectively wrong.

It is hard to know how many cases in the real world share these features. It seems that many instances of eating animals will have these features, though there is a question of whether one is really ignorant about the moral status of the animal in question, and, if so, whether one knows that one is ignorant. It does seem clear that nothing of substantial moral significance is compelling people to eat the animals. In cases of abortion, for example, the situation is reversed. In many of these cases, we don’t know what to believe regarding the moral status of fetuses, and we are aware of our ignorance in this regard. On the other hand, these cases more often exhibit substantial moral reasons in favor of performing the action—getting an abortion—than do those cases in which all that is at stake is a certain sort of gustatory pleasure.

-----------------------

[1] Zimmerman, “Moral Responsibility and Ignorance,” Ethics, Vol. 107, No. 3, Apr. 1997; Rosen, “Culpability and Ignorance,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, November 2002.

[2] Zimmerman, p. 411.

[3] Rosen, p. 64.

[4] I think that many of the same counterexamples that apply in the case of moral ignorance will apply, suitably modified, to cases of factual ignorance as well. Thus, it is not parity, strictly speaking, that is challenged, but the view that those acting from non-culpable ignorance will be excused. Factual ignorance and moral ignorance may still be in the same boat, just a different boat than the one suggested by the Parity Thesis. I will not argue for this here, however, focusing narrowly on the issue of moral ignorance.

[5] Rosen, p. 64.

[6] Rosen, p. 66.

[7] Rosen, p. 63.

[8] Rosen, p. 63.

[9] Rosen, p. 63.

[10] Why offer my account of culpable ignorance? Basically, we’ll end up in one of two dialectical situations when a purported counterexample to the MIT has been presented. In the first situation, we can grant that the person is blamelessly ignorant, and then find them ‘still culpable’ for what they do, acting in ignorance. In this situation, the case stands in as a counterexample to the MIT. Rosen has a lenient standard for finding someone to be blamelessly ignorant, and so it is that standard that I will employ, since this is the standard he uses to judge the cases he offers.

Alternatively, we can argue that the person wasn’t blamelessly ignorant, that they should have done more (perhaps the investigative burden was higher because of the type of thing they were doing, I’ll suggest), and this is why they are culpable for the act done from ignorance—they are culpable for the ignorance. This option doesn’t serve as a counterexample to the MIT. Basically, this view involves seeing the obligation in (CI3) as more demanding, which I think is an intuitive thing for us to feel (perhaps feeling that the Ancient Slaveholder is not blamelessly ignorant), and which is why I mention the option here. I don’t employ this standard because it would be to hold the agents in my examples to a different standard than the one Rosen employs.

The ultimate difference between these options ends up being trivial. In either case, they are ignorant of some fact, and culpable for what they do. I think the best interpretation of the case I’ll offer is that the person was blamelessly ignorant, but culpable for acting anyway. The culpability stems not from them not knowing something, but from them doing something, given that they didn’t know.

[11] It will become clear in a moment why it is necessary to stipulate this. The stipulation shouldn’t be a reason to reject the counterexample—after all, it could well turn out that pigs actually do have significant moral status, and it is certainly possible that this is the case.

[12] Rosen, p. 63.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download