PHIL 103 slides 11-14

why do reparations matter

reparative justice. Meant to repair damages, not punish ppl for their ancestors. realizing social justice and equality for people living today who continue to suffer the real harms caused by the legacy of racial injustice through effects on their unjustly diminished starting points and real opportunities—harm clearly reflected in current racial inequities.

how are reparations seen in the past vs current

Reparations relate BOTH to injustices in the past (slavery) and current (housing, banking)

How should we do repayments?

payment by proxy? (paying back their desecdents)

Who should we owed reparations?

the ppl who should pay are the fed gov due to it being a general social responsibility

In 1865

reportations were owed as the ppl suffered human right violations, deprivation of liberty, physical and emotional violence, theft of their labor, education, but were NOT able to get repations 

examples of reparations

Jap descents (gave 200,000 to each surviror), germany paid 70 billion in reportation

were we going to give reparations

There was an initial promise of 40 acres and a mule by General William Sherman but Pres Andrew JOhnson overturned it

Callie House

someone who was born into slavery and wanted to get reparations for the elderly who were not able to set up pensions, she filed a class-action lawsuit, the courts rejected it, and she was charged with mail fraud and imprisioned for her efforts

reasons for reparations

there was continued systematic systems to keep Blacks down such as black codes, convict leasing, sharecropping, jim crow laws, poll taxes, redlining, KKK, discrimination in employment (The point is that the cumulative negative effects down the generations of wealth building has therefore has the lack of wealth entails)

example of why reparations are needed

Homestead act- only white americans could get free land which helped white americans own land

GI bill after WW2. white vets were able to benefit more bc they were allowed to serve

Home Ownership- 98% of white americans got to get loans for homes while Black americns weren’t

What did Martin Luter King says about reparations

requires not only ending segregation, but need ecnomic repair. Can’t just have an integrated lunch counter. People need to be able to have the money to buy the hamburger

why are reparations confusing

should be figured out to the extent to which current descendants have been harmed by the past injustice and find ways to address that take the special steps to address current harmful racial disparities that stem from injustice

Questions that should be asked

where would the relevant ppl did today if not have been damages by slavery or Jim crow and other systemic discrimination; the extent to which the gap between the two groups are as seen with wealth, and this needs to be address by a case to case basis

Challenges for Implementation

some black americans would get the reporation but others wouln’t like the people who are actually doing well (Examples are: in IL when ppl who have been affected by housing discrimination through a specific time can have access to a reparation fund that helps ppl buy a home  (for people or descendants)

Are human beings the only animals that have rights? Or do other animals have rights too?

If other animals have rights, (1. what rights do they have?, 2. how strong are those rights?)

Non-Sentient Things

have only physical being, not subjective, experiential being: there’s ‘nobody home’ (non-living: Artifacts (e.g., cars, laptops, the Mona Lisa); Natural (e.g., the Grand Canyon) and living:  redwood tree)

Sentient Beings (have subjective, experiential being)

Owned non-human animal (e.g., pet cat or dog), Unowned non-human animal (e.g., wild dolphin), Human animal (e.g., you)

It’s possible to act wrongly with respect to things in any category

1) acting wrongly with regards to x; 2) wrongly x (For example, with non-sentient objects, only #1 makes sense, #2 doesn’t apply. Like don’t vandalize the car, adding a mustache to Mona Lisa. There’s no obligation to things like that, but they do to my cat or dog. So there is SUCH THING as wronging sentient beings, violating direct moral oblihations to them. For sentient things, unlike non-sentient beings, we have the presence of a Subject: a subject of experience, and a subject with interests which changes things. Now there are obligations to have subjects w interests or of wronging them, And it makes sense to speak of having moral rights that could be violated if wronged. Applies to: Owned non-human animal (e.g., pet cat or dog), Unowned non-human animal (e.g., wild dolphin), Human animal (e.g., you)

Two views of the Scope of Animal Rights (moderate views, strong view)

Moderate views: 1) All sentient non-human animals have rights against having serious pain and suffering inflicted on them—i.e., rights against cruel and inhumane treatment, but 2) many do not have rights to life and liberty, though perhaps some do. (Humane farming of many animals may be okay.); Strong View: Sentient non-human animals have not only the above rights, but also generally have rights not to be killed or used by us in harmful or restricting ways, even if they’re humane. So we must eliminate: harmful use of (any) animals in scientific research and product testing; commercial animal agriculture (no commerce in dead animals); commercial hunting/trapping

Animals are not to be seen as resources that are there for our use. They are not “mere means” at our disposal

Industrial Farming Practices:

We don’t need to eat meat, and under current farming conditions it is not healthy for us (e.g., due to overuse of antibiotics and growth hormones); This is actually a very inefficient way to feed people; Farming practices were not always like this and don’t have to be this way.

How should factory farming practices be critiqued?

Immanuel Kant’s view: a merely instrumentalist critique of cruelty to animals, reserving intrinsic concern for rational beings only. (he’s saying if you mistreat animals you might start mistreating other humans)

GENERAL MORAL PRINCIPLE: Treat ALL things in a way that is fitting to their nature

Mere things (Mona Lisa, scrap of paper); Morally Significant Beings (cows, pigs); Immature, Emerging Persons (pre-rational children); Severely Impaired Human Beings.; Rational Agents (healthy adult humans; ET) factory farming is morally problematic because it fails to treat morally significant beings in a way that is fitting to their nature, instead treating sentient beings as if they were mere things

how is the moderate view supproted by the general moral principle

Sentient animals have rights against having serious pain and suffering inflicted on them—i.e., rights against cruel and inhumane treatment. Factory farming egregiously violates those rights and wrongs these animals. The Moderate View denies this further right to life and liberty (at least for many animals), claiming instead that humane farming may be morally okay (for at least some animals).

Tom Regan Argues for the Strong Right View

Regan’s View: Extend Kant's idea of ends-in- themselves (which Kant applies only to persons) to a broad range of non-human animals. being an end-in-itself, i.e., having full intrinsic value (the same inherent value or dignity as human persons) and a full right to life and respect, according to Regan, is not being a rational being, but being "an experiencing subject of a life, a conscious creature having an individual welfare that has importance to [it] whatever [its] usefulness to others." Regan argues that all animals that are "experiencing subjects of a life" have an equal inherent value (i.e., equal to ours) and an equal right to life. To think otherwise, he thinks, is mere “SPECIESISM".

Argument from Marginal Cases

1) A being's moral status depends on its own properties (e.g., its mental capacities).

2) But mentally deficient humans have the same inherent value as normal humans, and so equally possess a full right to life

3) Therefore, what matters for possessing full inherent value and a full right to life must not be the possession of ___normal human mental faculties____, but instead the possession of some set of properties that are common to ___all humans with full inherent value and rights_

4) The only plausible candidate for this set of properties is this: being "the experiencing subject of a life, a conscious creature having an individual welfare that has importance to [it] whatever [its] usefulness to others.“

5) But many non-human animals satisfy this criterion no less than these deficient humans. E.g., a normal chimp may possess greater intelligence and emotional capacity than a severely mentally impaired child or an Alzheimer's victim, and is at least as much of an experiencing subject of a life

6) Therefore, many non-human animals--in fact, all who count as "experiencing subjects of a life"--have the same, full inherent value and basic natural rights as human beings.

Regan’s “Argument From Marginal Cases

1) A being's moral status depends on its own properties (e.g., its mental capacities).

2) But mentally deficient humans have the same inherent value as normal humans, and so equally possess a full right to life.

3) Therefore, what matters for possessing full inherent value and a full right to life must not be the possession of normal human mental faculties, but instead the possession of some set of properties that are common to all humans with full inherent value and rights.

4) The only plausible candidate for this set of properties is this: being "the experiencing subject of a life, a conscious creature having an individual welfare that has importance to [it] whatever [its] usefulness to others."

5) But many non-human animals satisfy this criterion no less than these deficient humans. E.g. a normal chimp may possess far greater intelligence and emotional capacity than a severely mentally impaired child or an Alzheimer's victim, and is at least as much of an experiencing subject of a life.

6) Therefore, given 1, 2 and 5, many non-human animals--in fact, all who count as "experiencing subjects of a life"--have the same, full inherent value and basic natural rights as human beings.

Is Regan argument for Marginal Cases a sound argument

does not believe that this is a sound argument due to premise 1. Instead, it should incorporate the fundamental nature of thing we’re dealing with; A severely impaired human may have the same individual mental properties as a normal pig, but as a human being (a clear member of that kind) she is still metaphysically a very different kind of entity, with a different nature.

Proposed response to marginal case

a being can possess full moral status by satisfying either (or both) of these conditions: 1) Possessing fancy mental properties, or by 2) Being a member of a ‘person-species’ (a species whose normal, mature members possess the fancy mental properties in question), such that the dignity of that kind extends to them as well (An example of a typical mature human being satisfy: rational agency or a person-species; An example of a typical marginal human being satisfy (like severe altimers): satisfy the second one, not the first; Would a super smart monkey count? Yes, it would have rational agency

Overall proposal

1) Treat all things in a way that is fitting to their nature, and 2) in the case of living things, a being’s nature is a function both of its (a) individual properties; b) species- membership; 3) while rational agency is relevant to full inherent value and moral rights of personhood, it needn’t be possessed by the individual if it is at least characteristic of their essential kind

what does Fitzpatrick add on to the overall proposal

his general principle can be applied to all categories of being:

Mere things (Mona Lisa, scrap of paper)

Morally Significant Beings (cows, pigs)

Immature Ends in Themselves (children)

Marginal Cases’ (e.g., mentally impaired human beings)

Mature, Healthy Ends in Themselves (most adult humans)

Basic Principle

Sentient animals should be treated in a way that is fitting to their nature as sentient animal agents (Sentient animal agency involves having at least many of the following: instincts, preferences, goals, control over bodily movements, perception, cognition, emotions, capacity for enjoyment and pleasure, and for frustration and pain)

Creatures with sentient animal agency have interests, related to their potential for flourishing or languishing (as experiential subjects). Like us, they have interests in:

• Not suffering

• Not being injured

• Not having instincts frustrated or development stunted

• Not being deprived of environment and resources needed to flourish

• Not having control of their bodies taken from them

• Not being deprived of species-typical social relations

• Principle: Treating animals in a way that is fitting to their nature as sentient animal agents requires treating them in ways that appropriately take their INTERESTS into account. We must respect a kind of dignity that attaches to sentient animal agency

Even tho diff creatures will have somewhat diff interests depending on their particular natures (squirrels and chimps dont have the same interests)

However, we need to treat all creatures in ways that give appropriate weight to their interests

Interest Egalitarianism (Peter Singer)

Similar interests should be given EQUAL consideration regardless of the species membership of the subject. E.g., pain is pain and matters equally wherever it occurs; Singer’s answer: The pain is NOT a worse thing in the child, and it’s just speciesism to suggest that the child has a greater claim to the pill

Doubts about interest eqalitarianism

Singer is viewing interests generically and atomistically, and in abstraction from the nature of the being who has these interests. E.g.: Interest in avoiding pain, Interest in avoiding injury’ But: interests are possessed together as a coherent package of detailed interests, within a distinctive form of life and flourishing for a particular kind of being. And we can’t properly understand the moral significance of interests if we ignore all that. Additionally, details and context matter (interests doesn’t exist in isolation, they are a whole package of interrelated interests). Significance for value- differences in how we value a squirrel’s life vs human, moral status of human vs squirrel

Alternative to Singer’s View (Hierarchical Claim)

Because of these value-relevant differences, human beings and human development and flourishing plausibly have greater inherent value than non-human animals and their development and flourishing. A human being is a subject of much richer interests and a more valuable form of being and flourishing;

A human being therefore has a higher moral status than a squirrel, and

A human being’s development and flourishing is more morally significant than a squirrel’s, having a greater claim on resources

So: Is it just speciesism- they are not similar because you are taking superficial differences