debitage: part of the core tool and scraper tradition

debitage

30.9.06

My Manifesto, Of Sorts.

I recently did a LiveJournal meme with brief answers to my stances on various political issues. The list of issues is still fairly biased toward things that get attention in the major media outlets, but I was OK with that since I rarely take the time to state a position on many of those issues.

Stentor Danielson, 16:23, |

26.9.06

Whence Come Obligations To Animals?

I don't want to harp on Kian too much, but her anti-animal-rights post also raises another common frustrating argument. She says that, while reason-less animals may not have rights, we do have obligations to them. I don't dispute that there can be obligations without rights. The problem is that opponents of animal rights never go on to explain what the basis or parameters of these obligations are. So we have a detailed Kantian theory of rights, plus a vague allusion to additional obligations. Occasionally our obligations are clarified as being to avoid causing "unnecessary" suffering -- which only begs the question about what kinds of suffering are necessary. Without a surer foundation, such obligations become individually or culturally relative.

The cynical reading of this is that it's a sort of auxillary hypothesis meant to keep our cultural intuitions from being out of sync with our moral theory. Our society accepts a lot of things (e.g. factory farming) that would be violations of any reasonable animal rights theory, yet also condemns many things (e.g. torturing kittens) that would be allowed by a pure Cartesian speciesism, while being internally inconsistent (e.g. our revulsion at eating horses while we chow down on cows). Vague obligations are therefore a useful fudge factor, to be invoked when we encounter practices that we don't like, while those we do like can be excused by declaring the harm "necessary" and pointing out the animal's lack of rights.

A somewhat less cynical, but still problematic, reading is that our obligation to animals is purely conventional, a sort of supererogatory charity. We, as individuals or as a society, can agree to take on certain obligations toward non-rights-holding entities. Those obligations are fully binding after the commitment is made, but they originate in the desires of the obligation-holder (including the desire to be a certain sort of person or culture). Hence no argument of morality or justice can be used to show that we ought to adopt a certain level of obligation.

Stentor Danielson, 14:29, |

Red Line to F-F-F-Florence!

I realize it's never going to happen in a million years, but I'm drooling just at the possibility that Pinal County might get public transportation.

Among the reasons it's never going to happen is backwards thinking like this:

But Deputy Pinal County Manager Ken Buchanan said the county first needs to improve and expand its roads and highways.

"We're still working on roads, where they'll connect," he said. "Then, we'll talk about transit. What it's going to come down to is subsidizing transit."

You can't finish with the roads first as if they're an independent question. The more and better public transport you build, the less roads you need. But the more roads you build, the less people will think about, or want to use, public transportation.

I suspect quality public transportation, especially if done in conjunction with (coerced or voluntary) transit-oriented, rather than car-oriented, development would be an economic boon to the county. Reliable commuter rail would make Casa Grande or Florence a much more attractive place to live.

Stentor Danielson, 00:43, |

25.9.06

Three arguments

A1. Most heterosexual couples are able to produce children.
A2. Only those couples which can produce children should be allowed to marry.
A3. Therefore all heterosexual couples should be allowed to marry.

B1. Most women have less upper body strength than men.
B2. Only people with great upper body strength should be allowed to be firefighters.
B3. Therefore all men, but no women, should be allowed to be firefighters.

C1. Most humans (and few if any animals) are capable of "reason."
C2. Only things that are capable of "reason" have rights.
C3. Therefore all, and only, humans have rights.

As far as I can tell, these three arguments are essentially identical in their logical structure. And it seems that any liberal would recognize that arguments A and B are fallacious -- the ecological fallacy, to be precise (as well as disputing the truth of premise 2, but that's beside the point for now). Yet most of them (Kian's post is the example that motivated me to post this) would assert that argument C is sound. Indeed, argument C is at the heart of the most common rebuttal to the idea of animal rights.

Stentor Danielson, 23:47, |

Vulnerability

Roger Pielke, Jr. makes a good point about the real source of hurricane danger:

Q: Does the relationship between global warming and hurricanes matter?

A: I have a paper that's currently under review that looks at future global economic impacts of hurricanes under the assumptions of the most bullish scientists saying there's a hurricane-global warming connection and the most conservative assumptions saying there's very little connection. And from the standpoint of impacts, perhaps counter-intuitively, it really doesn't matter that much. Why is that? It's because the pace of societal growth in coastal locations, the accumulation of wealth, occurs at such a rapid rate that it drowns out any signal of climate change over the long term. Modulating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere makes sense for climate change, but it probably doesn't make sense for dealing with future hurricane impacts.

Geographers have been pushing this sort of view of natural hazards for decades, but it hasn't sunk in. It would be interesting to research why, when nature and society clash, we have such an inclination to think the fix lies on the nature side of the equation.

Stentor Danielson, 23:19, |