EthicsBowl.org

Case 7 of the 2018-2019 NHSEB nationals pool invites us to reflect on pet owners’ responsibilities and on when a shelter dog would be better off left unadopted.

Characters Frankie and Sam have a roughly equal ability (or inability) to care for a pet. While both are dog lovers, neither has much money for veterinary care, the best home, or much time to devote to dog walking or play.

Frankie decides to refrain, while Sam goes ahead and adopts. Frankie’s reasoning is that any dog he might take home would be better off in a shelter where it might be adopted by a better resourced owner or simply euthanized. (Frankie doesn’t explicitly say that a dog would be better off euthanized than living under his care, but that unadopted dogs are often put to sleep is an obvious implication, and therefore must be in play in Frankie’s reasoning.)

Sam’s reasoning is that even though the conditions at his house aren’t ideal (his landlord forbids pets in the house), his dog is better off with him than at the shelter.

Analyzing Frankie vs. Sam’s decision, and the implications for the ethics of pet adoption, could be broken down into two steps. Step 1: determining whether a dog’s interests are morally valuable.

From the Kantian perspective, dogs lack rationality, and therefore are not owed direct moral duties. That is, we needn’t treat dogs as ends in themselves – the standard Kant demands for creatures that do possess rationality, in light of their ability to self-govern, and obey moral rules for their own sake.

However, Kant clarified that this doesn’t mean we’re free to treat non-rational animals any way we please. This is because the way we treat Fido may influence the way we treat one another. A person who leaves a dog tied to a stump in their backyard, denying it affection, nutrition and medical care, may very well come to treat human beings in a similarly callous fashion. Therefore from Kant’s perspective we have indirect duties to be good to non-human animals, because the way we treat our pets shapes the way we treat our neighbors.

From the Utilitarian perspective, our moral obligations to dogs is direct. Given the fact that their nervous system is relevantly similar to our own, it’s reasonable to conclude that dogs feel pleasure and pain in the same way that we do. And since Utilitarianism is all about objectively maximizing net pleasure over pain, the impact of our actions on our pets’ pleasure/pain is just as important as the impact on humans’ pleasure/pain.

Further, I believe it was Tomas Regan who made the “center of a life” argument (in Taking Animals Seriously) that many animals are relevantly similar to us in that they constitute a distinct being living a distinct existence. They possess a distinct consciousness, a past, a future, desires, relationships, emotions – most of the stuff that would seem to make humans’ welfare worthy of moral concern. Therefore if we think the interests and welfare of humans is worthy of moral consideration, we should extend the same to nonhuman animals – both constitute “centers of a life.”

These three brief arguments don’t mean a dog’s interests outweigh or are necessarily equal to humans’. But they do mean your intuition that we can’t treat a dog as if it were a brick can be explained with argumentation.

Step 2: determining whether a dog would be better off in a shelter (and possibly euthanized) or adopted by a loving but under-resourced owner.

Here the answer would seem to turn on just how bad the conditions at the shelter are, whether it’s a “no-kill” shelter, and just how unprepared and unfit the owner in question is.

The case states that Sam feels badly that he can’t bring his dog inside due to his landlord’s restrictions, and that his dog “gets cold and wet sometimes” as a result. An important question is whether Sam lives in Miami or Minnesota, as well as whether his dog is a Chow (thick coat) or a Chihuahua (not so much).

Another is whether Sam’s dog has access to a partially wooded (shaded) acre with plenty of room to run, or to only a 10×10 concrete pad. Sam’s dog would also likely appreciate playmates (squirrels to chase or neighbor dogs to converse with… at 3 a.m.). And dog houses can be conditioned and comfortable, or glorified cages. Simply saying Sam’s dog is in “the backyard” doesn’t give us much insight, but these are the sorts of factors that would impact the dog’s welfare, and in turn the moral permissibility of Sam’s treatment.

Another important consideration is the dog’s age. Much like humans, sometimes ailments will crop up in adolescent years, but dogs usually require the most intensive (and expensive) medical care later in life. If Sam’s dog is between a year and five years old (assuming it’s a breed that usually lives a decade or more) and has shown no signs of disease, the need for vet care in the near future may be low. If it’s pushing fifteen, the vet will likely need to be visited often, and continuous medications for arthritis and other ailments may be necessary in order for the dog to remain relatively pain-free.

Further, if Sam has good reason to think he’ll be in a better position financially to care for his dog when he gets older, the risk he’s taking now that no emergency vet visits will be in order may be a fair gamble. This gamble is more defensible to the extent that shelter life would be miserable (some are nice; others pitiful), and to the extent that Sam has reason to think he’ll have more time for his dog in the near future.

So there ya go. The ethics of adopting a dog on a budget in two quick steps 🙂 There’s more to analyze, but hopefully this will point you in the right direction.

The best of luck to all teams competing at UNC this year, and special encouragement to the teams from Tennessee, DC, LA and Houston (this one was for you and your crew, Deric – enjoy nationals!).

Matt

As your team considers case #15, the temptation to cite the 2^nd Amendment, Supreme Court rulings, various laws and the like will be strong. Resist! Just because something is legal (or illegal) doesn’t make it moral (or immoral). You’re prepping for an ethics bowl, not a trial. So bring arguments grounded in logic, not legal precedent. But how?

While I usually discourage using the language of rights (too coarse, simplistic), I once argued that people enjoy a human right to keep and bear arms based on our basic interest in personal security combined with the state’s inability to guarantee it. People who only read that conference presentation’s title, “A Human Right to Keep and Bear Arms,” likely concluded I was a gun nut. However, those who attended learned that “arms” didn’t necessarily mean firearms, but simply defensive tools.

The argument went something like this: if humans have an interest in personal safety (and we do), and if no degree of police protection short of solitary confinement can guarantee our safety at all times (and it can’t), then so long as some people are prone to violently attack others (and they are), would-be victims will have an interest in reliable defensive tools – if nothing else, as a last resort. However, if self-defense is all we’re after, there’s little reason to think those tools have to be guns.

How about pepper sprays, or some new (even nastier, even more caustic) chemical propellant? Sprays wouldn’t work when it’s windy, or when you’re attacked in the sauna. So how about stun guns – handheld high voltage zapper thingies? Or tasers – the police officer’s go-to nonlethal tool – which shoot wire-bound probes and electrocute with the push of a button. Might these tools prove effective at fending off assailants in many circumstances?

Maybe so, but for better or worse, firearms have proven even more effective (a determined attacker might brush off a stun gun zap, but not a 12-gauge slug), can better handle multiple attackers (a taser can only subdue one assailant at a time, but a pistol can repel a dozen or more in trained hands), and are surely a more compelling deterrent. If there’s a chance I might get shocked if I assault someone, I’ll think twice. But if there’s a chance I might get killed, that’s a far more powerful reason to do something more peaceful.

At the same time, the current availability of firearms hasn’t put a stop to violent crime. In fact, in many cases guns unfortunately facilitate and amplify violent crime.

So an important question is whether guns’ heightened effectiveness at stopping and preventing violent crime outweighs the likelihood guns will be used to commit violent crime. Which leads to questions about how firearms might be regulated in ways that would retain their deterring and defensive benefits, but hinder their potential to cause harm. I’m of course considering rate-of-fire and magazine capacity restrictions. Bump stocks were recently banned because they could be easily used by novices to fire semi-auto rifles almost as quickly as fully-auto rifles (though with a severe drop off in accuracy). And some states have limited magazine capacity because while 10 or fewer shots *might* be needed to repel a home invasion, being able to fire 11 or more shots before reloading might primarily be useful to someone only interested in maximizing random innocent deaths.

This leads to another key question: whom, if anyone, should be allowed to own firearms? Everyone over 18? Over 21? Only current and ex-police? Only current and ex-military? Any citizen who’s passed a basic background check? Only those who’ve completed rigorous safety trainings and mental fitness exams? Even violent felons have a fundamental interest in personal security. But how do we balance a person’s interest in protecting themselves against their propensity for harming others?

Then there are questions of concealed carry, open carry, whether it’s legit for employers to prevent employees from keeping legally owned firearms in their personal vehicles on company property, whether citizens should be allowed to carry in establishments that sell alcohol (independent of whether they’re actually consuming alcohol).

Then there are pistol grips and folding stocks and bayonets. And inter-state transport questions, safe storage questions, and questions of civil and criminal liability. If someone steals my gun and commits a crime with it, should I be held liable? Applied ethicist Hugh LaFollette has argued yes, on grounds that this would give people very good reason to securely store their weapons. Want to really give your team an edge? Check out his argument for yourself here.

Lots of questions, none of which have quick and easy answers. Well, quick and easy answers are available, as a quick Google will show. But this is ethics bowl, where the judges aren’t interested in the NRA’s or the Brady Campaign’s talking points. They’re looking for well-thought-out views that directly address the question posed… which your team won’t know until it’s asked… But your team can (and should) develop a general position on firearms regulations which they can then mold at the bowl.

But whatever general direction your team takes the issue, make sure they appreciate, are taking into account, and are prepared to address contrary views. Single-minded hardheadedness may be rewarded in some circles, but ethics bowl is not one of them.

And if the other team brings up the 2^nd Amendment, or any law, for that matter, use it as an opportunity to highlight your team’s understanding of the distinction between legality and morality. Ethics bowl is primarily concerned with the latter.

P.S. If you and/or your team finds the firearms terminology intimidating, questions welcome (I’m not an expert, but know more about guns than the average ethics professor).

What if social media likes, follows and subscribers didn’t reflect a person or thing’s popularity, but their budget?

As NHSEB case 6 exposes, social media endorsements can easily be bought online. The motive is simple: the more Twitter followers, Facebook likes and YouTube subscribers, the more credible, trustworthy and cool a person, cause, party, or product appears to be. Nothing succeeds like success, and so it’s much easier to add followers when it appears that you already have followers.

However, paid social media endorsements dilute the value of all social media endorsements. We can see this, and why the practice might be unethical, by analyzing it from the perspective of Kant’s Categorical Imperative.

Kant’s CI sounds fancy (and kinda is), but can be simplified into two basic rules:

1. Only do stuff you could rationally endorse everyone else doing in similar circumstances
2. Always treat persons with respect, and never as mere tools

In applying rule #1, also known as Kant’s universalizability test, consider what the result would be if everyone paid people and bots to follow them and like their posts. If everyone did this, then the number of followers, likes or subscribers an account enjoyed would cease to impress.

Having 100k+ YouTube subscribers is only a good indicator that the channel is of high quality (or at least adds value for many people) because we assume the numbers represent actual humans who genuinely endorse and enjoy the videos released there. However, if everyone always paid for YouTube followers, we’d realize a channel’s subscriber count is not an indicator of its quality, and would have to find some other way to decide whether to invest the time to sample its content.

The same would be true for Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram and all social media platforms – followers, likes, subscribers etc. are only impressive because we assume they reflect actual popularity among actual non-paid humans.

Using Kant’s ethics to consider the implications of universalizing the purchase of social media popularity clarifies why doing so would undermine the intent of those who currently do it. When people buy likes, they want to come off as more popular than they actually are. But since they couldn’t endorse everyone doing this (for if everyone did it, they’d get no benefit by doing it themselves), social media influence buying can’t pass Kant’s universalizability test, and is therefore unethical, at least from the perspective of Kantian Ethics. Analyses from other ethical angles may generate a different result.

And by the way, for an ethics video or two, check out my YouTube channel, YouTube.com/MattDeatonPhD. As far as I know, all 338 subscribers are actual unpaid humans 🙂