Grim posted about a bear who came to an unfortunate and unfair bad end. I don't know how many societies in history would consider it unfair though. Topic for another day.
Do animals in the wild live Good Lives? It should immediately go to definitions, but I ask that you consider the question in an informal sense first. Is it better than a pet's life? Obviously in some ways much better, yet we consider it a value to return animals to the wild when we can. Our history of movies and books ( Born Free, Free Willy) glorify living in the wild, with more than a hint of the anthropomorpication of beasts who yearn to breathe free. We read into their escape behavior of wanting to impulsively chase food or random smells a philosophy of life. It ain't so.
But is this really their experience? And as they experience things primarily in the moment with no overarching summation of what their life is like, does it make sense for us to apply that standard for them, of the turkey's great life as of November 20th actually being a bad deal? The value of a pet's life is deeply bound up in its value to the owner. Or do the questions of Good and Value not overlap enough to inform each other?
I'm not trying to trap anyone with this one. I can see points all over the place here.
I am -- unsurprisingly -- inclined to apply Aristotle's definition of the good life from the Nicomachean Ethics to the question. Though he meant it for men, the standard can apply to animals without anthropomorphizing because it allows for beings to have different natures. The good life is the life of eudaimonia, which is to say the life of arete, or excellence in one's natural capacities. That is to say that one lives a good life if one's soul is happy, and one's soul is happy when one is pursuing one's vital powers in the pursuit of excellence as defined by one's nature.
ReplyDeleteIf that is the right standard, then the wild bear is definitely living a good life: he or she is hunting, fishing, eating, striving, aligning all their vital powers in pursuit of the excellent life of a natural bear. I don't see how they could have a better life, although they could perhaps have a more pleasant one if removed from hunger or fear or cold. The wild bear is virtuous, though, in the strict sense: and if they pursue excellence mostly because nature and want leaves them little choice, nevertheless they pursue it. Today's bear fought off a dozen dogs for a space, and even the lake for a while. A lake daunts even Smaug: "The lake was mightier than he, it would quench him." Yet the bear fought the lake as well as the dogs, and it was the lake that finally conquered.
He was a mighty bear, and a worthy one.
As you say fairness might not apply; but there are very good questions about whether fairness is a coherent concept even among men. In spite of the weight people try to hang on it, it is very difficult to define in a meaningful way. To say that fairness is 'treating relevantly similar cases similarly' is to offer to equivocate on both what is relevant and what is similar. When you're ready for that discussion, let me know.
C.S. Lewis had a somewhat different take on that in The Problem of Pain. "Man was appointed by God to have dominion over the beasts, and everything a man does to an animal is either a lawful exercise, or a sacrilegious abuse, of an authority by divine right. The tame animal is therefore, in the deepest sense, the only “natural” animal—the only one we see occupying the place it was made to occupy, and it is on the tame animal that we must base all our doctrine of beasts."
ReplyDeleteDominion does not imply taming, although it does not exclude it. Tame a black bear, perhaps; tame a blue whale? If God intended that he might have shown us a road. As well try to tame a wife, whom some among the religious say God intended of husbands; and you can talk with her.
ReplyDeleteI think the idea of a soul, even smuggled in, is at least on the road to anthropomorphising.
ReplyDeleteWell, the smuggling is more me translating Greek concepts in an easy way. The Greek concept ‘Anima’ is not a soul in anything like a Christian sense; it’s more just the animating force that all living things have, which is linked to breathing. Eudaimonia doesn’t really mean ‘happy soul’ but ‘good daimon,’ which is a concept that requires a lot of explaining. Both parts do: what a daimon is, but also what it means for a thing to be good. That already embraces a notion of alignment with nature, and a sense of wholeness or completeness. (Cf. Eukaryotes)
ReplyDeleteBut we still have nothing that tells us the bear likes this in either a superficial or deep way. It is our imposition on him what is best for him. What his abilities are now may or may not be what Bear, Pefected should be aiming for - same as with a human child. I can feel a delight in bear acting bearish - but I know that is arbitrary on my part.
ReplyDeleteYour point and James’ are at odds, I notice. Insofar as you treat the religious duty seriously, it’s neither arbitrary nor an imposition of ours — it’s the fulfillment of a duty imposed on us and them by God.
DeleteIt need not be arbitrary whether you do so or not. Aristotle’s standard isn’t arbitrary but reasoned. It’s true that one could reason to more than one conclusion; but that doesn’t make a carefully considered standard that many people have reasoned about together “arbitrary.”
There’s a good philosophy-of-mind point that we can’t really fully understand another’s experience. That, though, ends up being just as true for other people (and arguably even for earlier versions of ourself, per Wittgenstein’s later work).
In any case, I can’t imagine an argument that would show that — whatever it means for a bear to be happy — this bear wasn’t happier without the dogs and slaughter than with them. By any objective standard they ruined his day and destroyed his life. Even if we want to hold as inaccessible any understanding of what it means for a wild animal to be happy or virtuous, it’s clear enough that this was fatally disruptive to whatever that might have been.
It's not for me to judge whether a bear's life is good enough to preserve, or whether I'd be doing him a favor by killing him.
ReplyDeleteSurely it's a bad thing to inflict gratuitous suffering.
ReplyDeleteInflicting gratuitous suffering is a bad thing would be considered an understatement. Akin to humans torturing other humans or a human torturing an animal just for the hell of it.
DeleteIn an exercise in absurdity, I am imagining how this might play out on my neighborhood Nextdoor site. While it's quite easy to blame the humans who trained dogs to 'hunt' in this way, and they would be summarily executed (or at least excoriated) on Nextdoor, the 'true' venom would be reserved for those who allowed the bear to be exposed to the naked nature of humans and dogs. What do you mean he escaped your backyard? How could you be so stupid to not secure it properly? In fact, you should have never let him out of the house, you careless thoughtless idiot!
ReplyDeleteIn that same essay Lewis went on to try to imagine (surprise!) an ideal/Edenic lion, and surmises that "taming" isn't the same as making a house pet of something. I figure that the wild bear was meant for the glory of God, and one that we had found a role for consistent with its nature would also be for the glory of God. Chasing it down and drowning it doesn't fulfill the bear's nature, as far as I can see.
ReplyDeleteI considered the attack on the bear so obviously evil that I was not even thinking of it in terms of "aveage bear danger in the wild." I suppose dogs used to hunt have been around a long time, and we have no reason to think that earlier humans, who were much less skittish about inflicting pain on both humans and animals, might have similarly used dogs to kill bears just for fun. Such behaviors are so common and so long-standing that it becomes a good question whether this is human nature or fallen nature or both. I want the answer to be "Fallen Nature" but I am not sure it doesn't lead to lots of immediate contradictions about hunting, training, high spirits in general.
ReplyDeleteI was really more having a joke on Grim, that he had decided the better life for the bear would be the one he - as a human - would choose if he were a bear himself. In such situations, how do we guard against choosing what our heart wants and then looking for brain reasons to back that up? The wild animals turn out to be a better example than I intended, as making human choices for beasts who know no such thing comes up at every turn.
The bears up here, following their instincts, like hanging around humans, specifically dumpsters. Animals have done much the same for a long time, as the human is a part of their environment also.
"I was really more having a joke on Grim..."
ReplyDeletePoor AVI. Joking about philosophy with a philosopher is akin to mud-wrestling with a pig, which you are advised to avoid because you'll get covered in mud and the pig likes it. Philosophers are really interested in this question; here's Nagel's famous paper on the subject from 1974, which remains hotly discussed to this day.
http://www.philosopher.eu/others-writings/nagel-what-is-it-like-to-be-a-bat/
You might like it; he really is interested in the question of how much it's possible for us to ably imagine or understand what it is like to be a very different sort of creature. He ultimately thinks it is impossible; but so, as above, does Wittgenstein even as regards other people who speak our language, or even earlier selves whom we are trying to remember having been. These turn out to be impossible problems to solve purely; I think that means turning to pragmatic solutions that are workable if not pure. Aristotle's approach (as you doubtless recall) is one I think of as being proto-pragmatic in a helpful way.
I've sat for hours in hunting blinds in South Texas, practicing being quiet enough so that the small birds come in and join me. Either that, or up a tree in a comfortable place. It was on a medium-sized ranch, slightly less than 20,000 acres, and overrun with game. My greatest joy and satisfaction would be to watch and experience, and occasionally hunt. I would watch deer, turkey, hogs, jaguarundi (once), and of course the standard ranges of varmint - skunk, opossum, raccoon, armadillo.
ReplyDeleteIt's my belief that they're not dissimilar to homo sapiens in their emotional ranges. On a sunny day, in good health, they are at their best. As they age, their gait become stiffer, their movements more tentative. But yes, in their prime they are every bit as capable of feeling their joyful oats at mere existence, as we are.
Our pets are different. In a lot of ways, they have it better than us - a full time, loving and dedicated caretaker that is smarter and more able than they are. Our dogs and cats are much happier that we are, generally speaking. Why wouldn't they be? The deep, contented sighs of the dogs on their beds, wrapped in a blanket, full bellies, with master and mistress close by, say it all.