Reflections on Veganuary

This year, I've completed my first ever Veganuary - a pledge to not consume animal products for the entirety of January. At face value, it does not sound like a particularly breezy challenge: not consuming animal products means cutting out not only meat, fish, but also animal by-products like egg, milk, cheese - and even Asian household staples like oyster sauce and fish sauce.

A question for full disclosure - did I cheat? To an extent, yes. We - together with several friends - were late to the party. We only properly started Veganuary on the 10th of January, having only came up with the idea of doing it the day before. So truth, we only made it through three weeks of vegan diet, instead of the full month. However, at least speaking for myself, I adhered to the diet as strictly as I could, and I was fully vegan over the period (bar an inadvertent mistake where I didn't realise honey was considered non-vegan-friendly - since honeybees had to produce them!).

Whenever people find out that I am participating in a vegan diet, the two most common responses I've received are: (1) 'why would you do this?', or (2) 'I get it, but I can't do it myself'. The first question is sometimes motivated by genuine curiosity, especially amongst those who are not familiar with the philosophical roots of veganism. Sometimes, this question comes from a more judgemental perspective, carrying a similar tone to, 'Are you mad?', or 'What is the point of this self-torture?'. Those who know me well know that I tend to either get irritable or proud (bizarre, I know) when I become the recipient of judgment, especially on subjects relating to lifestyle or taste. In this scenario I would snarkily reply that 'I just feel like doing it'. Admittedly, this isn't a particularly mature response, but it in no way diminishes the satisfaction of saying it.

If at the time I am able to apply the principle of charity and assume that the other person is genuinely curious about my motivations for Veganuary, I might reply with something akin to a verbal bullet point summary. My verbal bullet point summary (written out, now just an ordinary bullet point summary) has three points:

1. Personal challenge - see if I could do it

2. Reduce animal suffering

3. Do my part for climate change

Clearly, a more morally preferable ordering of motivations would be to prioritise (2) and (3) due to their altruistic nature. If you count pride or ego as one of your motivations, it would seem to diminish, or even defeat the entire purpose of the entire Veganuary challenge. Yet it seems to be the case that ego is primal, whereas altruism is more complex, requiring empathy, logical reasoning, and an abundance mindset. Arguably, all of these pre-requisites are skill-based; it takes effort and reflection for one to recognise that they are slipping on them, and that intentional action is required for rectification. In other words, altruism takes work.

It's worth clarifying that this in no way means I have little empathy for the countless animal souls that have suffered under industrial farming practices, or that I am indifferent to the effects of climate change. It is more accurate to describe that I recognise certain primal instincts as powerful motivators for (consequentially speaking) virtuous acts, and that when they are combined with 'truly' virtuous intentions to motivate good moral behaviour, one is much more likely, and more frequently, 'do good'. If I had completely rejected leveraging pride as a motivator for Veganuary, I might more likely have failed it, and harmed the good cause as a result.

Here's a good question to ponder: to what extent is it justified to use sinful motivations (think the seven cardinal sins, for instance) to drive morally good action?

Is our society in moral decline?

We're in moral decline: this is an idea that I've frequently come across in what other people have said, but never gave any serious attention to. 

This is the idea that our society is displaying a trend, where it is becoming more and more open to values and ideas that we've in the past deemed immoral and inappropriate: 

• Being open about one's homosexuality,
• Legalisation of marijuana,
• Increased acceptance to inter-racial relationships and relationships with huge age disparities,
• The public discussion of sex and related topics considered less of a taboo,
• Break down of social hierarchy between rich and poor, old and young

... and perhaps many more others. (None of these phenomena are absolutely global, but are definitely evident in some societies) 

As far as I'm concerned, these 'trends' do not exactly overwhelm me either positively or negatively. I have a feeling that I have, more than many others who are concerned about this moral decline, a better understanding of what morality really is (in a sort of meta-ethics context). (See here and here)

Morality is akin to emotions and bodily feelings: my opinion is that as best practice, we shouldn't let our feelings of morality affect our judgement any more than we shouldn't let our feelings of hunger or lust affect our actions. 

Moral decline or not - for me, that doesn't seem to be a huge issue to fuss over. What's probably worth spending more time on is to analysing the material and (socio-)psychological consequences of these 'moral' trends, and acting to make the best of what could and probably will happen.  

A Picture of a Modern Man

In this post, I'm going to illustrate the belief system of a 'modern man'. This 'modern man' is not representative or typical of any existing individual or any individual in an existing culture, so I'm not promising that you will be able to find someone like this in real life. For our purposes, think of this 'modern man' as a hypothetical being. Let's call him 'Bob', and these are the things that Bob believes in:

Hypothetical 'modern man' Bob.
(Sorry for the illustration)

Charity

For me (Bob), there is no reason to spare any charity to anyone, unless I am compelled to do so by a strong emotional feeling or any non-moral motivations. Non-moral motivations may include the need to maintain a 'healthy' public image or the need to conform to norms (familial, social, etc.). For example, if volunteering makes me sound like a kind person or makes me look good on my CV, I'd do it primarily for those reasons. 

While I may not donate money to a suffering child in a distant country, I am still willing to pay a significant sum to help a friend out because I am emotionally attached to that friend. 

Politics
Political issues are uninteresting, unless these issues directly affect me or those whom I care about. By 'directly', I mean that the cause-and-effect is immediate and visible. For instance, changes in primary education funding policy are uninteresting, because I (Bob) do not expect to have any children in the foreseeable future and the welfare of any particular child does not affect me at the moment. 

Religion and the Meaning of Life

I do not deny that questions about religion and the meaning of life are important, but you can describe me as a 'procrastinator' in terms of how I actually behave in my inquiry. Other problems (e.g. earning a living, dressing to look smart, resolving conflicts and calculating tax payments) are actually more pressing, and importantly, more tractable than the question about God or the meaning of life. However, as a matter of intuition, I'm more inclined towards atheism than any other religious slash philosophical systems. I'm also more inclined to the view that there is no afterlife.

While I'm not exactly the 'carpe diem' or 'YOLO' sort of person, I believe in prioritising my time in solving the problems which have a real immediate impact. As for the "zen", mystical kind of questions, I'll figure them out at some point in the future when I've got a lot of time on my hands and nothing to do. 

Morality (general) 

My general judgments about what's right and what's wrong typically depends on (1) the beliefs of those around me and (2) the limited range of information I'm exposed to, but this is something that I'm reluctant to admit. In a nutshell, I 'go with the flow' with respect to morality, but I don't like to be thought of as someone who does so. Alternatively, you can describe me as 'practical' in relation to morality. 

The magnitude of my feelings about these judgments are generally weak to moderate, unless they are those which make an immediate and visible impact on how I live. 

So this is Bob. A law-abiding, practical, 'normal' man who is loyal to his family and friends but does not 'stick out' to irritate the norms of society. Call him materialistic, but Bob would say that there isn't a very good reason to behave otherwise. Why, after all, should anyone commit themselves to idealistic beliefs (about morality or politics) when they cannot know their truth or benefit from them within a single life time?  

But is anything wrong with Bob? 

Some Thoughts About Morality II

In Some Thoughts About Morality I, I discussed briefly about the origins of 'right' and 'wrong' and what follows from adopting the view that we ought to act morally because it follows from intuitions (conscience). I ended the post with an introduction to the "evolutionary" theory of morality, giving neither a clear nor comprehensive account of what it is about. 

As I was writing Some Thoughts About Morality I about five months ago, frankly I was at that point unaware of the literature in Evolutionary Psychology.* While I was quite illuminated by some of the material that I then came across, I will try to present my initial idea here in a non-scholarly way as I had originally intended.** 

The original "evolutionary" theory of morality is this. The claim is that there is no intrinsic value to morality, i.e. morality is not something that's good only for its own sake: morality is good only insofar as it contributes to the reproductive fitness of human beings as a group.*** The very rough idea is that if you assume there are two types of human beings in the world: (1) moral, altruistic ones versus (2) immoral, selfish ones, Group A with more moral individuals will have more reproductive fitness than Group B with more selfish individuals.

The red dots represent altruistic/moral individuals, while the blue dots represent the selfish/immoral individuals. The claim is that Group A (with moral individuals) is more likely to survive through natural selection. 

Why is this so? What is the evidence? One good reason that can be given is that such a picture of morality seems to best explain a lot of the following phenomena:

• Altruism and selfishness (or moral and immorality) is found across all societies. 
• Feelings about right and wrong (i.e. conscience) are universally found across cultures. 
• The apparent lack of a rational basis for morality. For instance, it is difficult to give a good fundamental reason for doing something morally than not. Also, how often do you feel that there are just no right answers to certain moral debates, regardless of by how much our scientific knowledge will advance?
• Why our conscience seems to emerge "naturally" like our ability to develop thought. Just think how feelings of guilt and compassion (can) emerge in humans without learning.

The plausibility of the "evolutionary" picture of morality lends support to the view that it is indeed representative of how the world really is. Interesting, such a picture of morality also fits well into the "Stag Hunt" example in Game Theory. The Stag Hunt example illustrates a situation where two individuals are always better off if they work together: if Jack and Jill go hunting separately (defect), they'll only manage to catch a rabbit each; if they cooperate and hunt together, they'll be able to catch a whole stag (which we'll assume that half a stag is way better than one rabbit). 

This table shows that cooperating is always the best outcome for the two individuals in a Stag Hunt game. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Analogously, in the evolution story, what seems to have arisen is that individuals are always better off  together if they act morally. This includes not killing or injuring each other and not to act in ways which endanger the whole group (which is why we hate traitors). This is why Group A is more likely to survive than Group B: acting cooperatively increases their survival chances. 

Quick note: the reason why we still have selfish and evil individuals now may be due to the fact that the system fails to effectively "prune" the free-riders and those who are good at cheating. It's not difficult to see how living in a group large enough and possessing cheating skills good enough prevents these guys from being kicked out of the group. They get to enjoy the benefits of being in a moral society without being moral themselves.

But that's enough about evolution. IF this picture is true - what does all this say about morality? Should we be moral, just because we are born with a conscience? I suppose what all this tells us - if it is true - is that if we really want to fit a picture of morality with the rest of our knowledge about the world (particularly, scientific knowledge), we might need to resort to treating morality as something that is great as a means to an end. Psychologically, believing in this picture may lead us to treat morality less seriously, and we'll be worse off because society as a whole may become more selfish. To some extent, the "moral fabric" of society - what keeps humans working well together - relies most humans on NOT believing in this picture, grounding morality on something like "natural rights" or religion. 

Hey, isn't this an example where "ignorance (of some) is bliss (for everyone)"?

Speculative? Blasphemous? No, I don't think one post is enough to give a very comprehensive discussion of this fascinating issue. In a further post, I shall talk about Gyges' Ring and how this picture of morality fits into the story. 

*See this primer on Evolutionary Psychology by Cosmides and Tooby.

**Not to be mistaken as indicating my laziness to cite and quote /_/ 

***Reproductive fitness is measured by the number of offsprings. 

Some Thoughts About Morality

Occasionally at our most 'philosophical' moments we would discover that we hold some grossly inconsistent and irreconcilable beliefs in our minds. In response, we may choose to ignore the inconsistency by assuring ourselves that there isn't actually one, and that with the passage of time the knot will untie itself. Alternatively, and ideally what philosophers tend to do, is to reflect upon our reasoning habits and find a way to metaphorically untie the knot. Naturally (and very likely) this is going to be time-consuming, but philosophers are disposed to think that the consequences of untying the knot is itself worth the time spent on untying.

One of these 'knots', I'd like to think, is the issue of morality; more specifically, it is the task of explaining the origins of morality, and related to that, the question of why we should be moral at all. 

Where does 'good' and 'bad' come from? 

Why should we be 'good'?

Philosophy textbooks, or introductory books to ethics, are abound with attempts from the history of philosophy to address these two problems; but in my opinion few have been satisfactory in offering a view that is at least not blatantly inconsistent with what we feel or (we think) we know. One such inconsistency is that between God and morality: if we don't believe in the existence of God (as referred to in the Bible), why should we be moral? Since afterlife and judgment is not likely to occur, why should we be good? If we think there is a good reason to be moral, why does the thesis that God exists faces so many difficulties in explaining why so much evil exists (The Problem of Evil), in justifying omnipotence and omniscience, and in explaining significant scientific evidence (e.g. evidence for evolution)?

Do we act morally because we fear punishment from karma or God? 

  

My personal sympathies are with the view that the personal, all-powerful and metaphysically independent-from-nature 'God' in the sense described by the Bible and classical theism fails to provide an apt description of reality. Some may label this view as atheism, but that is not the issue of debate here; my concerns are that if I am to hold the view that the Biblical God does not exist, how should I make sense of morality? Why should we be moral?

A common-sense response to this problem is what I would call the conscience (a good Chinese equivalent is 良心) reply. The reply runs as follows: since we feel 'bad' for doing immoral things, such as stealing money from an elderly woman's purse, the 'bad feeling' alone suggests that we ought to act in ways which are consistent with our conscience. Through this perspective, sympathy can perhaps be understood as one of the feelings that we get when our conscience is at work, and another example of these 'conscience-feelings' is guilt.  

Does having guilt or sympathy necessarily mean that we should act according to these feelings?

What about evil psychopaths who seem to completely lack a conscience? 

Before we dismiss this reply by saying that it offers no proper reason to act morally and that many people have a 'twisted conscience' that prevents them from seeing what actions are moral and what aren't, I must remark on the significance of the conscience reply. First, it offers us evidence (by introspection) that humans have an intuitive capability to distinguish between moral and immoral actions. This, I would argue, provides a basis in resisting the typical moral theories (like textbook Kantian ethics) which attempt to justify morality upon universal and objective reason. In other words, it seems that whether an action is moral or not should be judged using our feelings, and not reason. Similar arguments have been made by David Hume. 

Second, the conscience reply is itself evidence that we don't always act morally because of a certain fear of punishment, judgment, and going to Hell. We may act morally according to feelings, but these feelings are not necessarily fear. Alternatively one may suggest that, consistent with the 'conscience' reply, that we sometimes act morally (sometimes, if not always) out of instinct.

Now entertain this (perhaps to some repulsive) idea for a moment: suppose the moral conscience is an evolutionary survival function that homo sapiens have developed in evolution. Just like the ability to feel pain and fear, or even the ability to use language, our moral conscience has helped us humans to live peacefully and survive effectively in social groups when we evolved. Our conscience inclines us to protect and defend the weak, and to act in ways which benefit our social group most as a whole. Our conscience motivates us to sacrifice ourselves for the greater good, to give ourselves up if we judge that it would save the lives of others we care about. Another way of seeing this is that the sense of duty that we may feel towards our parents, a friend, or a spouse forms part of this conscience. 

A common sense of duty may have been important for survival: when the individuals in a social group A all act according to their conscience, group A has a higher chance of survival compared to a group B which is more 'immoral' and less keen on duties on the whole. 

Does this best explain where morality comes from? 

Does that mean it's not always desirable to be moral?

In Thoughts About Morality Part II, I shall examine the significance and implications of such an evolutionary theory of morality. 

Posted with Blogsy

Eating Dogs.

A health hazard warning may be necessary for dog-lovers who are about to read the following.

The question is simple: Is it wrong to eat dogs?

Most people will answer, "Well not really - but would you eat one?"

Personally I rather enjoy the company of dogs, and I would refuse to eat a dog even if I enter a restaurant and it's the only dish on the menu (I think I'd turn out and leave). I think I speak for a lot of people when I say dog-eating is quite a disgusting thing to do; to some it would almost be like eating your own brother or friend.

Yet, on some level it doesn't make a lot of sense when we complain about people who eat dogs. How are dogs different from other animals? Just because cows and pig and sheep aren't "man's best friend", we're allowed to eat them? Just because chickens and turkeys do not perform fancy tricks like dogs do, it is justified to eat them?

Some vegetarians may argue: Don't eat meat at all, because it's wrong altogether!

That's debatable, but it still doesn't solve the dog-specific problem we are looking at here: If we are meat-eaters and we justify eating meat on the usual reasons (e.g. men are born carnivores; survival of the fittest; I don't care about animals), does that mean it is also right to eat a dog? If it is not wrong to eat a dog, aren't we being inconsistent when we complain about people being immoral when they eat dogs?

Perhaps the biggest reason why we find eating dogs disgusting is because there is a "emotional bridge" between humans and dogs. To some extent, there is a relationship. People who keep animals like chicken or pigs as pets would tend not to eat chickens or pigs. It is an element of human emotion that we feel disgusted if we commit harm to things we love for a more trivial cause (e.g. satisfying your stomach), and human emotions constitute a part of morality. The very same reason why most (I genuinely hope I can replace "most" with "all") would say eating a human being is wrong.

Of course, this argument is based on a lot of challengeable assumptions. For example, it may be under different circumstances and for different reasons why someone may eat a dog. But meanwhile, we can perhaps settle with the conclusion that eating dog is wrong; but inconsistent for a meat-eater to hold at the same time.