JeremyStangroom.Com

Many of the philosophers who have written on the internet have argued that internet relationships are in various ways diminished compared to everyday, embodied kinds. For example, Hubert Dreyfus in his On The Internet argues that:

our sense of the reality of things and people and our ability to interact effectively with them depend on the way our body works silently in the background. Its ability to get a grip on things provides our sense of the reality of what we are doing and what we are ready to do…All this our body does so effortlessly, pervasively, and successfully that it is hardly noticed. That is why it is so easy to think that in cyberspace we could get along without it, and why it would, in fact, be impossible to do so.

It is easy to understand how philosophers come to make these kinds of arguments. Many important facets of our personal relationships seem to require face-to-face contact. Dreyfus, for example, argues that trust in another person is in part based on the experience that they do not take advantage of our vulnerability when given the opportunity to so in a face-to-face situation. Certainly it does seem to be true that we can have a level of confidence in people we meet in person that is not available in online relationships. Particularly, the opportunity for gross deception is minimised in a face-face-situation. The philosopher Gordon Graham, and countless other people, have pointed out that it is very easy to deceive people on the internet by inventing wholly imaginary personas – something which it is much more difficult to achieve in the non-virtual world.

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This Tiger Woods thing is quite amusing, obviously. But if it is true that he has strayed, then really it isn’t surprising. Fidelity is (relatively) easy if beautiful people aren’t offering you sex all the time. If they are, as is presumably the case with Tiger Woods, then it gets a whole lot harder.

I used to think I’d always be able to resist the temptation of illicit sex. But now I’m pretty sure that if I had offers like Tiger Woods, I’d behave exactly as he has done. The flesh is weak.

Here we go again. A teacher is jailed for having consensual sex with a 16 year old girl.

I’m not going to run through the arguments again that make this a ridiculous over-reaction.

But consider the following:

Grim made a full confession to the affair, which involved sexual contact but not full intercourse.

Sentencing, Judge Paul Darlow told him… ‘In your favour I accept that you pleaded guilty at the first opportunity and you are not only of good character but people have told of your abilities as a teacher to bring on gifted children.

‘There was no intimidation and the relationship was consensual on both sides and with genuine affection.’

The guy is now in prison for ten month.

Somebody should start a campaign to end this ridiculous, infantile, illiberal, treatment of people choosing to have sex.

This is ridiculous. The boy was fifteen. It was consensual. If he is experiencing anything like trauma, it seems overwhelmingly likely that this is only because people make such a fuss about this kind of thing.

Yes, Madeleine Martin probably should have known better. Yes, the power relationship was likely asymmetrical. Yes, it isn’t a good idea for teachers to jump their students. But even so… let’s get some perspective here. It was sex that almost certainly both parties thoroughly enjoyed. It was just sex.

Here’s a newsflash for fifteen year old boys. If the worst thing that happens in your life is that you get shagged by your 39-year old teacher, then be thankful. And remember, there will almost certainly come a point in your life when you’ll be absurdly grateful if anybody wants to shag you.

This story is disturbing on many different levels. The gist of it is that a 15 year old girl had trumpet lessons with a 26 year old female teacher. They became close. They fell in love. They had sex. There were complaints, a scandal, a court case, and the female teacher has ended up in prison.

The relationship was entirely consensual – indeed, it seems that there is the intention that it will continue once the teacher is freed from prison. The evidence in court was that the 15 year old girl was the one who pushed for the relationship to become sexual.

Regina Naughton, for the prosecution, said: “They began to have feelings which were not expected. Miss Goddard said she didn’t see her as a 15-year-old and they would have to wait until she was 16, or for three years. But flirting and the sending of text messages to each other began. The teenager described them kissing and then sleeping with each other, and it was at that point that the girl said she wanted a sexual relationship.

“The girl was told that if she felt anything was uncomfortable at any time they could stop. But the girl said it felt right,” she added.

There are a number of points to be made here.

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Richard and Dan live in a society that is thoroughly and harmoniously religious. People are happy. They sing hymns together, burn incense, enjoy wearing robes and have a penchant for incantation. There exists little in the way of what we would recognize as education. Children are taught about God, sacred traditions, the importance of family and community, the truth of the Holy Scripture, but that’s about it.

Richard and Dan, however, do not share the religious sensibility of their fellow citizens. They were brought up by their parents – members of the renegade Enquiries at the Periphery – to be secular humanists. As teenagers, they were closeted away, and put through an intense educational program designed to teach them the overriding importance of science and scientific methodology. At first, Richard and Dan resisted the efforts of their teachers, preferring the simplicity of the beliefs of their early childhood, but the pressure from their teachers was relentless, and inevitably they came to embrace a scientific worldview.

However, their education has not made them happy. They are alienated from the society in which they live, and they find themselves wishing that they could be more like other people – that they could experience the exuberance of happy singing, the joy of worshipping the God they do not believe exists, and the togetherness engendered by a shared belief. But try as they might, they simply cannot believe. It is impossible. They know that their way of understanding the world is the right way, but they wish it were otherwise.

Richard and Dan live lonely, miserable, friendless lives. They are considerably less happy than they would have been had they not been born to proselytizing secular humanist parents. If you ask them about it, they’ll tell you that they were brainwashed as teenagers – that they were victims of a kind of abuse, which has left them unable to live as full members of their society.

***

The notion of brainwashing usually carries with it the idea that a victim has been forced or pushed to believe various things that are palpably false or absurd. The scenario above subverts this idea by asking us to consider whether it is right to describe as brainwashing the inculcation of a worldview that many people think is rationally justified. Richard and Dan are committed to the truth of secular humanism, but they claim that they cannot help but think that way – despite their desire not to do so – because of the nature of their upbringing and education. They have, in effect, been brainwashed.

A possible objection here is to insist that part of what defines brainwashing is that it involves employing specific psychological techniques – such as isolation and emotional manipulation – in order to ensure that people come to believe particular things. The trouble is that this definition seems to leave too much out. Consider, for example, that the scientist Richard Dawkins, and philosopher Anthony Grayling, and many others like them, have suggested that the normal religious education provided by churches, mosques and synagogues is “brainwashing” and “child abuse”.

Perhaps then what defines brainwashing is that it involves the passing on of beliefs that are presented as being unquestionably true. This allows in the teaching of religion as a kind of brainwashing. The trouble is that it also allows in an awful lot else. Just think about how history was taught for a large part of the twentieth century: facts and dates – no questioning, no dissent, and nothing to suggest that the details of history are contested. So was the teaching of history – and anything else taught in a similar fashion – a kind of brainwashing? Perhaps it was.

Maybe the only way to avoid the brainwashing charge is to cultivate a restless and questioning spirit in people through our educational practices. But here the case of Richard and Dan looms large again. They were both precisely taught to be restless and questioning, and it is their claim that they have been damaged as a consequence. For them, it is their inability to leave behind the legacy of their “enlightened” education that has left them isolated and estranged.

This is a reworking of a post that originally appeared on the Talking Philosophy blog.

Pro-Vivisection March

In May 2004, the British Government announced that it was establishing a new national centre which would fund work directed towards the aim of replacing, refining and reducing the use of animals in scientific research. Lord Sainsbury, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Science and Innovation, marked the announcement by insisting that whatever the ultimate aim of the centre, it was clear that animal testing was currently necessary for proper scientific research. In this, he was echoing a statement which he had made some months earlier, reaffirming the commitment of the British government to animal research undertaken within existing regulatory frameworks.

However, this claim that animal experimentation is necessary for scientific research is not universally accepted. Perhaps not surprisingly, it is most keenly contested by the animal rights lobby. The National Anti-Vivisection Society, for instance, argues that ‘the fundamental flaw of animal-based research is that each species responds differently to drugs and chemicals, therefore results from animal tests are unreliable as a means of predicting likely effects in humans. Thus, animal experiments are unreliable, unethical, and unnecessary.’

Whilst this view might justifiably be regarded as being rooted in the hyperbole of a pressure group, the animal rights lobby is not alone in suggesting that the issues surrounding animal experimentation are difficult. For example, in a BMJ article titled ‘Where is the evidence that animal research benefits humans?’ (February 28, 2004), Pandora Pound et al noted in their first sentence that: ‘Clinicians and the public often consider it axiomatic that animal research has contributed to the treatment of human disease, yet little evidence is available to support this view.’ As a result of this claim, the UK media reported that scientists were beginning to doubt whether animal research was useful at all.

‘It was completely predictable that that phrase would become a kind of rallying call for the animal rights movement, and it is very unfortunate,’ says Professor Colin Blakemore, Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council (nb. Blakemore relinquished this position in 2007), when I mention the article to him. ‘But it is possible to counter the claim with the fact that the Royal Society has recently published a pretty comprehensive study which says that virtually every medical advance in the last century has depended on the use of animals in research at some point; or with the statement from the Department of Health, in its evidence to the House of Lords committee on animal experimentation, that the National Health Service could not operate without the foundation of the knowledge which animal research has built. The overwhelming view of the scientific establishment, and I’m not using that expression in a pejorative way, is that animal research is necessary for progress in medical science.

‘Also, it is important to point out that there has been some misinterpretation of the data which Pound et al analyse in their paper. They found, and I think they’re right about this, that the transition between animal research and clinical application often lacks rigour in terms of a proper review of evidence. The eagerness of some scientists or drug companies to try out new treatments can lead to the misinterpretation or over-interpretation of data from animal research. But they only examined six areas of research, out of the many hundreds where it is well documented that animal experimentation led to clinical applications. Specifically, they looked at six comprehensive reviews of animal evidence and the associated attempts at clinical application.

‘In one of these cases, they found that despite clear evidence from the work of people like Michael Marmot that human health is linked to social status and responsibility, there is no analogue of this phenomenon amongst primates. But this isn’t surprising; it doesn’t work this way in primates. Marmot was looking at the civil service, which is not exactly the kind of environment you can easily imagine being mimicked in primate groups.

‘The other five cases were situations where clinical trials, or the preliminary treatment of human beings, had started on the basis of a cursory examination and often very optimistic interpretation of previous animal research. In every case, it turned out that the clinical technique did not work. In retrospect, when the animal research was thoroughly and systematically reviewed, it turned out that the results from the animal experiments didn’t justify the clinical application. So far from showing a mismatch between animal and human results, it showed a perfect correlation. The failure was in the transition between the animal results and the clinical studies.’

What then of the criticism that the small differences in the makeup of complex systems such as animals and humans can make a lot of difference in terms of how they respond to chemicals and drugs, and that, as a result, extrapolation from animals to humans is necessarily unreliable?

‘There are probably only two or three properly qualified people in the world who hold this position,’ Blakemore replies. ‘Ninety-nine per cent of physicians in the United States say that it is essential to use animals in medical research; and more than ninety-five per cent of British physicians say the same thing. So whilst it is important to listen to maverick opinion, it is clear we shouldn’t put too much weight on it when one considers that the American Medical Association, the Royal Society, the British Medical Association, and the General Medical Council all state that animal experimentation is necessary.’

Presumably then it must be possible to give specific examples of the importance of animal research which will settle the issue?

‘Yes, almost everything is an example,’ says Blakemore. ‘Every drug, every form of advanced surgery, nearly every antibiotic, nearly every vaccine; the development of all of them has at some stage involved animal testing. What more evidence is there? By law, every drug has to be tested on animals before it can be used on humans; you cannot get a prescription for a drug which has been developed in the last one hundred years which hasn’t been tested on animals. So when you ask for examples, just about everything is an example: every pain killer; every treatment for heart disease, kidney disease and cancer; chemotherapy; radiotherapy; surgical techniques; bypass surgery; open heart surgery; you name it, animals were involved in the research.’

So what are the motivations of the people who argue that animal research is unreliable and unnecessary? Are they just pursuing a particular moral agenda?

‘I’m not sure,’ Blakemore answers. ‘I know that Ray Greek, for example, has argued that his is not a moral position; he doesn’t object to the use of animals in medical research on moral grounds. He has said, much to the consternation of his own supporters, that if it took the death of 10,000 chimpanzees to find a cure for AIDS, then he would be in favour of it. His argument then is a factual one; that animal research doesn’t work. But I would be extremely critical of the evidence he cites to support his view. Mainly he makes use of excised quotations, which seem to suggest that eminent researchers doubt the value of animal research. But if you go back to the source of the quotations, you find that they are being used out of context, and that the thrust of the papers they appear in contradicts the argument the quotations are being used to support. I don’t call this evidence.’

Perhaps the area of animal research which causes most controversy is that which involves primates. In the UK, this issue became headline news at the beginning of 2004, with the announcement by Cambridge University that it had axed plans to build a new multi-million pound centre for primate research. The BBC reported that the decision to abandon the project was based in part on the spiralling cost of satisfying the requirements of animal welfare legislation and the need for security to protect against the threat of attack from animal rights activists. The decision was greeted with regret by many people in the scientific community. For example, Mark Matfield, director of the Research Defence Society, called it a ‘serious blow for British medical research’ and argued that ‘the government needs to bring in tougher legislation to tackle extremist campaigns, otherwise they will remain a threat to all medical science that depends on animal research.’

What is the importance of primate research? It accounts for only a tiny percentage of the total of animal research, so presumably there are some quite specific reasons for doing it?

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Blakemore confirms. ‘To get a licence for primate research requires that a very special case be made; not only that animals are necessary for the research, but also that it must be primates, that no other animal will do. Moreover, particular attention is paid to the question of suffering; it is much harder to get a license where primates might suffer than it is in the case of say mice. Also, the number of animals to be used, and the objectives of the research will be taken into account. What this means is that research with primates will be of great strategic importance in terms of its potential to deliver results, and it will be work which simply cannot be done with other species. We’re talking here primarily about three main areas of research: endocrinology, where for many of the hormone systems, the monkey is the only model which has the required likeness to human beings; neuroscience, because of the similarity between the organisation of the primate and human brain; and some areas of vaccinology, particularly, for example, in attempts to develop AIDS vaccines.’

The specific worry about primates has largely to do with their cognitive abilities; particularly, there is the possibility that they are self-aware; self-conscious, rather than simply conscious. The philosopher Peter Singer, for example, in his book In Defence of Animals, asks why we are willing to lock up chimpanzees in primate research centres and subject them to painful experiments when we would never think of doing the same thing to a retarded human being who had lesser mental abilities. Singer concludes that it is only speciesism which explains this difference. What does Blakemore make of this kind of argument?

‘I know the arguments, and would keep an open-mind on the nature of the evidence about something like primate self-awareness,’ he replies. ‘But I think it is very important to hang on to one strong moral principle, which is that there is a clear distinction between our responsibilities to our own species and our responsibilities to other species. Most people, given the choice between saving the life of a human or an animal, will think that their primary obligation is to the human being. I’m very fond of animals, I have kept pets all my life, but if it came to a choice between my cat, which has lived with us for some seven years, and is very much a part of the family, and the life of one of my daughters, I would not have the slightest hesitation in saying that the life of my daughter should have priority; and I think that most people would feel the same way. They might love animals, but they see that human beings are just different.’

The response which somebody sympathetic to the Singer view would likely offer to this argument is that at least part of what leads us to the thought that humans are different from animals might be present in a primate and absent in a severely disabled human being.

‘Yes, the idea that all that matters is sentience,’ says Blakemore. ‘But we need a firmer foundation than this to base our judgements upon. In the end, all it amounts to is an anthropomorphic claim about what it must be like to be a monkey. However, this can lead to serious errors of judgement, such as that of Peter Singer himself, when he argues that there is a line to be drawn in terms of sentience somewhere between rats and fish. But why? Just because we can’t get ourselves into the mental life of a fish, doesn’t mean that a fish is not sentient. The correct starting position is that it is possible that all living animals with a nervous system have some kind of experience. Therefore, we have a responsibility to all species to minimise suffering, but on top of this we have a primary obligation to our own species. This is a very normal, biological principle. You see it in virtually every species; they treat their own species differently from other species.’

So when Singer talks about speciesism, would Blakemore be happy to accept that as his position?

‘Yes, that is exactly my position,’ he confirms. ‘But I don’t accept that “speciesism” is a pejorative term; I’m quite happy to defend the position. In the end, you have to draw a line; you couldn’t walk down the street if you really believed that to kill any living thing was a sin or immoral because you’d be worried about the small insects under your feet. There is an extreme version of Buddhism which holds to that position, but taken to its logical conclusion it is ridiculous; you’d end up never moving because you’d be worried about hurting microbes. So it is necessary to draw the line somewhere. The only firm line on genetic and morphological grounds is between our own species and other species. But the fact that we’re justified in treating our own species differently doesn’t mean that we have a kind of Cartesian license to treat other species in any way that we want; because of our own moral status, we have an extended moral obligation towards the rest of the world. It is just that this moral obligation doesn’t entail that we have the same responsibilities to other species as we do to each other. So I’m a speciesist, and I would defend that position.’

At the end of 2003, it was reported that Blakemore had been turned down for a knighthood because of his support for vivisection; and that, as a result, he was considering his position as the head of the Medical Research Council. ‘It has nothing to do with whether I particularly deserve an honour, that is neither here nor there,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. ‘The mission statement of the medical research organisation which I now run includes a specific commitment to engaging with the public on issues in medical research. How can I now, in the present circumstances, go to MRC scientists and ask them to take the risk of being willing to talk about animal experimentation with this indication that doing so will reduce their standing and their reputation in the eyes of the government?’

Was he reassured by the government’s response to this situation that it fully accepted the need for animal research, and that it admired and supported those scientists who had been on the front line in the struggle against animal rights extremists?

‘Yes, I was,’ he replies. ‘But actually, what was almost more important was the widespread support that came from the scientific community and the media. The support from the media, in particular, was quite extraordinary and a big surprise; virtually the entire spectrum made strong statements about the importance of animal experimentation. So the debate served a useful purpose; it produced a kind of national solidarity, which was much needed. This is also reflected in public opinion. The latest opinion poll shows ninety per cent of the population in support of animal research. It is significant that there is no other major issue where you get this kind of consensus; we still treat the issue of animal research as if it is highly controversial, as if the public haven’t made up their mind; but they have made up their mind.’

The opinion poll which Blakemore refers to here was couched in a particular way; specifically, people were asked for their opinion about animal research on the assumption that certain criteria had been met. For example, one question asked whether people could accept animal research for medical purposes, where there was no other alternative. But, of course, it is precisely the claim of the animal rights lobby that there are alternatives to animal research.

‘Well, if there are, let’s see them delivered by those people who claim that there are,’ Blakemore responds, when I put this to him. ‘I have faced the whole range of arguments from those who are opposed to animal research. I have enormous respect for people who simply say that they don’t care about the range of benefits which are the result of animal experimentation; they don’t deny that there have been these benefits, but they don’t want any part of them because they think that animal experimentation is wrong. It is very difficult to maintain this position, because we all do well as a result of advances in medical techniques; for example, we all benefit from the fact that people are vaccinated, and from our knowledge of the importance of public health. But I understand and respect this position.

‘However, I have very little respect for people who say that animals are so very different from human beings that animal research has no relevance for understanding humans; or that all treatments which have been developed on animals are dangerous to humans; or that animal researchers enjoy what they’re doing, that they’re basically sadists, and that anyway, it is only really about filling the pockets of the drug companies. This is not a parody of the kinds of arguments which are made; and I have no time for them. They are rationally indefensible. If there are alternatives, let’s see them. We want them. I don’t know of a single person who uses animals in their research who wouldn’t rather use an alternative. Moreover, there is a great paradox here: the alternatives to animal research which do exist have been developed by researchers who have previously experimented on animals. I’ve had grants to develop alternatives, I’ve done a lot of work on tissue cultures, and I use computer simulations for a lot of my work, yet I’m accused of being a villain because I’ve also experimented on animals.’

Extracted from What Scientists Think (pub. Routledge) by Jeremy Stangroom.

A little while ago I received an email commenting on my writing ability. It contained phrases like: “you’d better pull your socks up”; “very, very disappointing”; and “you indulge in appalling syntax”. So it wasn’t exactly fan mail. But no big deal, if you put stuff out in the public domain, then you expect to get shot at.

Here’s another one, this time about one of the activities which are featured at TPM Online:

I find your questions biased, short-sighted and bigoted; and I find your test without merit or foundation… which makes you bass and without spiritual wisdom. Sad.

Okay, so that one’s a little odd, especially the bit about the freshwater fish, but there’s not much harm there. However, what about this little missive: 

…your litany of frauds and charlatans does not include a noble exception, the one modern philosopher who was neither a fraud nor a charlatan, but who exposed your own pretentious, social-climbing bullshit – Ayn Rand. So wallow in your pseudo-respectability and slash your wrists accordingly…You’re a pathetic wanker who deserves to perish from a surfeit of self-indulgent whim-worship. Do it, with my blessing, and that of any half-decent human thinker who miraculously remains alive on this earth in spite of your demeaning of philosophy and life.

This email was sent to me by the editor of an online journal promoting “freedom”, who was upset, as far as I can tell, by the failure of TPM to include any of the works of Ayn Rand in its shortlist of the greatest writings of Western philosophy. What makes it interesting is that it is indicative of a certain disregard for those we interact with on the internet. It is the disregard, evident to varying degrees in all the emails cited above, of treating people as though they don’t automatically warrant the respect which would nearly always be forthcoming in a non-virtual context. Consider, for example, that it is almost impossible to imagine saying the kinds of things contained in these emails to a stranger in a face-to-face situation. Yet probably many of us will be able to imagine including at least some of them in an email.

Part of the explanation for this difference has to do with some fairly obvious stuff about email communication. First, email is pretty much instantaneous. Therefore, it is just more likely with email that things will be said in haste which would not have been said had more time been taken for reflection. Second, the internet facilitates relatively anonymous communication. Consequently, in our virtual lives, we’re more likely to be interacting with people we’ve never met, we’re never going to meet, and whom we don’t know anything about. In such a situation, there is more chance that we will treat them as though they are not quite fully human subjects. And third, internet communication involves geographical distance, which removes many of the barriers to aggressive behaviour which exist in the non-virtual world. Not least, you’re not likely to get hit for sending someone an abusive email, whereas this is certainly a possible response to abuse in a face-to-face situation.

However, though these factors are all significant, they are only part of the story. What is also important is that the conventions which have grown up around email usage are much more loose than is the case with other forms of written communication. For example, when writing an email, many people think nothing of dispensing with: a salutation; capital letters; complete sentences; complimentary closing phrase; and even – though it is generally considered to be bad netiquette – correct spelling. The advantage of this informality is primarily speed, but it is an advantage often bought at the expense of a concern for the person who has to read the email.

The conventions of email are based on an assumption that what is important in communication is overwhelmingly the content of the message, not the perceptions and feelings of the person who receives it. This is very different from letter writing, for example, where many of the traditional stylistic conventions, some of which are still in common usage, are employed precisely to communicate a certain kind of, albeit ritualistic, regard for the recipient of the letter. To fail to include a salutation in a letter, for example, will, more often than not, be taken to indicate a lack of respect.

The claim here is not that people never show concern for each other when they exchange emails because clearly they do. It is rather that there is no requirement that they should show such concern; that day to day, in many of the short and perfunctory emails which people send, they do not show such concern; and that as a result there is a tendency for them to pay insufficient regard to how their emails are likely to be received when the content of their message suggests that such regard is required (as, for example, when they send a rude or abusive email). Or to put this another way, the informality and speed of email communication will in certain circumstances subvert what is arguably a moral requirement to treat those with whom we interact as fully human subjects.

Are philosophers immune to this tendency? Unfortunately not. Check out, for example, some of the emails about the Israel/Palestine conflict in the archive of philos-l (http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/philos-l.html), the premier mailing list for UK philosophers. You won’t learn anything much about the Middle East conflict, but you’ll find plenty of evidence of philosophers behaving badly in their virtual lives.

Other Examples

Louis Proyect, Unrepentent Marxist, calls me a “Neocon scumbag” and “Creepy Crawly” (the mind boggles!).

Daniel Davies calls me a liar (in effect) (not email, though).

In both these instances, Ophelia Benson at Butterflies and Wheels tells the story.

Fluffy Bunny

Human beings are very good at believing things to be true just because they want them to be true. In some ways, this is a useful ability. For example, the belief that one will beat a normally deadly cancer is helpful if one is undergoing the painful chemotherapy required to give one any chance of survival at all. However, when it comes to our ability to discern the truth about the world, to assess evidence and argument according to the dictates of rational enquiry, our tendency to engage in wishful thinking is no help whatsoever.

Consider, for example, the part that it plays in the currently high profile debate over animal rights and vivisection. It is perfectly possible to object to animal experimentation on moral grounds: for example, one might hold that all life is sacred and that it should always be preserved. However, it is much more difficult to argue that animal experimentation is unnecessary because it has no scientific benefit. Colin Blakemore, one time head of the MRC (Medical Research Council), points out that:

Every drug, every form of advanced surgery, nearly every antibiotic, nearly every vaccine – the development of them all has at some stage involved animal testing… every pain killer; every treatment for heart disease, kidney disease and cancer; chemotherapy; radiotherapy; surgical techniques; bypass surgery; open heart surgery – you name it, animals were involved in the research.

Yet the line taken by many anti-vivisectionists is precisely that animal research has little, if any, medical benefit. For example, the section on “Bad Science” on the SPEAK web site is headed up with the claim that “Using primates kills people”. Further reading reveals that 70,000 people in England each year are killed or disabled by drugs that have been tested on animals.

It is easy enough to demolish this kind of argument: whilst it is true that whenever a drug is associated with a bad outcome, then animal testing will have been part of its development (because all drugs are tested on animals), it is also true: that we judge that the risks associated with powerful drugs are worth it; that we would be worse off in terms of deaths and injuries had there been no animal testing; and that we are overwhelmingly better off in general as a result of drugs that have been developed using vivisection.

Perhaps what is more interesting than the details of the (risible) arguments employed by anti-vivisectionists is the neat correspondence they set up between the wished-for and the real; that is, between the almost visceral desire for a world where there is no animal experimentation, and the claim that by happy coincidence our world does not reward animal experimentation. This kind of wishful thinking short-circuits the necessity to engage in messy and complicated arguments about morality and the relative value of human and animal life. It constitutes both intellectual and moral cowardice.

There is an interesting contrast here with the position of the vivisectionists. They too desire a world without animal experimentation, but recognise that it is not available unless we forego benefits to medical research. Here’s Blakemore again:

If there are alternatives [to animal research], let’s see them. We want them. I don’t know of a single person who uses animals in their research, who wouldn’t rather use an alternative.

It isn’t just anti-vivisectionists who engage in wishful thinking, of course. In fact, wishful thinking is ubiquitous, which is something we need to worry about if we are interested in finding out the truth about things. Consider, for example, that the recent history of the social sciences is replete with examples of an almost childish desire to reconstruct the world through the filter of political, ideological and moral commitments. Marxist theorists spent a large part of the twentieth century falling over each other trying to explain why revolution hadn’t occurred quite yet; sociologists, desperate to detach human behaviour from biology, spent their time jumping through hoops in order to explain away data that suggested that at least some human attributes and behaviour are inherited; and anthropologists, even today, in the name of resisting Western hegemony, happily grant epistemological privilege to local and situated “knowledges”.

Even people ostensibly committed to rational enquiry fall into the trap of wishful thinking. It ill behoves humanists, self-appointed defenders of reason par excellence, to sneer at the likes of Philip Gosse for supposing that the fossil record has been planted by God, whilst they remain committed to the view that it will be possible to reconcile the human-centred aspects of humanism with what science teaches us about the natural world and our place in it. The jury is still out on whether things such as free will, moral responsibility and the idea of human progress will survive the increases in knowledge that science brings. To suppose otherwise is to engage in wishful thinking. It might be more subtle than the kind engaged in by anti-vivisectionists or Philip Gosse style Biblical literalists, and perhaps it will be passed off as understandable optimism, but it no less wishful thinking for that. It is just another example of the way in which ideological, moral and political commitments tend to infect the judgements that we make about the world.

On the morning of June 8, 2000, two men on a motorcycle shot Brigadier Stephen Saunders dead as he was driving to work at the British Embassy in Athens. The next day, his widow, Heather Saunders, arrived in the Greek capital and began what would turn out to be a three-year campaign to bring her husband’s killers to account. Her “tireless and relentless fight for justice,” as the BBC later described it, resulted in her being awarded an OBE – Officer of British Empire – early in 2003, and culminated later that year in the conviction of three members of the Marxist group, November 13, for her husband’s murder. Saunders said afterwards that “nobody really wins in this situation – but if they are taken off the streets for a while and given a piece of their own medicine, albeit in no comparison to what we have suffered, then that is perhaps justice.”

In most contexts, it would be unthinkable to suggest that justice plays little part in this story. We tend to assume that justice involves, among other things, punishment of the perpetrators of crimes. More than this, we also take it for granted that a person is virtuous in pursuing justice as an end; that it is an admirable and praiseworthy goal, the desire for which is likely to be indicative of something of value in a person’s character. However, when one begins to think about these issues more carefully, things quickly become complicated. Punishment is not one of the clearest cases of justice in practice, but one of the murkiest, and a deeper look at “justice” takes us to the hearts of deeply opposed philosophies. Are you a retributivist? A utilitarian? Neither position provides a perfect defense of our desire to punish people.

Consider, for example, what people normally have in mind when they say that they want justice for a loved one who has been the victim of a crime. Zacarias Moussaoui was recently sentenced to life in prison for his role in the September 11 attacks. This is how relatives of victims reacted to his sentencing: “I think he deserved the death penalty, and I’m sorry he didn’t get it.” “I know why the jury made the decision that they did, but I believe in an eye for an eye…. Here’s to hoping someone in jail gets to him.” “He will pay dearly. I mean, just think of the loss of the sun in your life; think of the loss of seeing the stars at night; and only being in one room for the rest of your life; and not having contact with another human being. He’s getting exactly what he deserves.”

Similar sentiments were expressed by the families of the victims of John Allen Muhammad, the Washington sniper, when he was sentenced to death in 2004: “Justice has been served today. I can go to my son’s grave and wish him a happy birthday on Sunday.” “What Muhammad did was inhuman. He deserved to die. He killed so many innocent people.” “There are no winners today. This was not a victory, but it was something that had to be done, and it was done right.”

The common thread running through these reactions seems to be the idea that the justification for punishment lies in its being deserved, and that justice is served if the punishment is in proportion to the crime for which it is a sanction. The idea that justice requires that people attract the rewards and punishments they deserve has a long history. In Plato’s Republic, for example, it is espoused by Polemarchus, who maintains that “it is right to give every man his due,” an idea that later appeared in Latin as suum cuique tribuere – to allocate to each his own.

This general idea about justice is most clearly associated with retributive justifications of punishment. Ted Honderich, in his book Punishment: The Supposed Justifications Revisited, says about retributivist theories that “[t]hey are all ways of saying that a certain penalty or punishment stands in a certain relation to a past offense or something about a past offense, which relation makes the punishment right – morally obligatory or at least permissible.”

The central task for retributivist theories, then, is to spell out what it is about a past offense that makes punishment the appropriate response. This turns out to be much more difficult than one might expect. It is sometimes claimed, for example, that there is intrinsic good in the suffering of the guilty. Thus, the relatives of the victims of Zacarias Moussaoui had little doubt that it was appropriate that he should suffer as a result of his actions. However, while it is undeniable that this idea has intuitive appeal, it is difficult to come up with good arguments in its favor. A quick thought experiment makes this clear.

Imagine a world where punishment has no effects beyond the suffering it causes. It does not deter, nor does it rehabilitate, nor satisfy the grievances of the friends and relatives of victims, nor contribute to the general well-being of society in other unspecified ways. Does it remain right to inflict harm upon a guilty person simply because he is guilty? Retributivist theorists who are committed to the view that there is intrinsic good in the suffering of the guilty are required to respond that it does remain right. There is, of course, no rule of logic that prohibits such a response. However, it is very difficult to see how it can be argued for beyond simply asserting that it is a matter of moral intuition.

The problem here is that other people will have different intuitions about how justice is best served in this situation. They might well think it is wrong to inflict suffering on another human being if there are no positive benefits to be gained. This rather leaves the claim that there is intrinsic good in the suffering of the guilty dangling in mid-air: while it may be a coherent view, it is hard to see that there is much to be said in its favor that would lead one to support it over an alternative view.

The standard criticisms levelled against retributivism tend to show that the justificatory relation between offense and punishment is obscure. This has led some philosophers to suppose that punishment cannot be justified simply by invoking the notion of “just deserts.” However, this is not the end of the story, since it is possible that justice may be served by some other principle of punishment. The most likely candidate is probably the family of theories best described as consequentialist, or utilitarian.

Utilitarianism, originating in the work of Jeremy Bentham and J. S. Mill, is defined in its classic form by the claim that an act is morally right to the extent that it has the effect of causing the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people. Right from its inception, utilitarianism has provoked controversy and strong disagreement, but it remains one of the great traditions in moral philosophy, strongly represented in the work of contemporary philosophers such as Peter Singer and Shelly Kagan.

Utilitarian theories of punishment hold that it is right to punish an offender if the balance of happiness against unhappiness is greater than would be the case if an alternative course of action were pursued. To give a rather crude example: if by punishing Saddam Hussein for his crimes one maximizes the total happiness of the Iraqi people, then his punishment is justified. Obviously, to make sense of this kind of moral calculus it is necessary to be clear about what counts as a benefit and cost of punishment (where these are defined in terms of their contribution to human happiness).

Probably the three effects of punishment that are most commonly thought to be beneficial are: that it is preventative (in the sense, for example, that for the duration of a custodial sentence the possibility of repeat offending is minimized); that it is a deterrent; and that it is rehabilitative. The costs of punishment include, but are not limited to, the suffering that is inflicted upon the offender, and, as a result, upon his friends and family. It is, of course, possible to argue about the details of any one of these aspects of punishment. Thus, one might claim that the evidence does not support the conclusion that punishment is on balance rehabilitative. There is no particular threat here to the utilitarian approach, though, since if any specific punishment has overall disutility, utilitarianism holds that it would be wrong to make use of it.

However, there is something troubling about the utilitarian claim that it is right to punish if it contributes to general happiness. The problem here issues from the fact that it treats those people to be punished as if they are simply the means to an end. On its own, this violates the Kantian imperative – by no means universally accepted, but often felt to be a sine qua non of justice – that we should always treat people “never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.” This is the general complaint against utilitarianism: that if one takes it seriously, one might end up throwing Christians to the lions if the amount of fun had by those laughing in the stadium results in a net gain in utility when weighed against the terrible deaths of just a few poor souls. The Kantian objection is just what most people intuit when they feel repulsed by this possibility; that is, that it is wrong simply to treat people as the means by which to secure the general happiness of others.

In the case of justice, these kinds of worries are manifested in a very specific and rather disconcerting possibility: that it might sometimes be right to punish the innocent. It is possible to illustrate this point by means of a simple story.

Suppose there had been a brutal, sexually motivated murder of a child in a particular town. Although the police were certain that it was just a random attack, it had led to an outbreak of vigilantism within the community that had resulted in injuries to a number of innocent people. During the course of their investigations, the police learn that there is a person living in the area who has a previous conviction for downloading child pornography. They know that he isn’t responsible for the murder, but also that if they plant incriminating evidence, they will be able to secure his conviction. They reason that the outbreak of vigilantism will end with his punishment, and therefore, to the extent that it promotes the greatest balance of happiness over unhappiness, that the punishment is justified.

The worrying possibility here is that utilitarianism commits us precisely to this view. This makes it vulnerable to the obvious objection that to frame an innocent person, thereby securing their punishment, is a prima facie case of injustice. However, the objection is not decisive. Perhaps the best rejoinder is to argue that it is sometimes absolutely right to perpetrate an injustice in order to secure a greater good. Indeed, it is easy enough to find real-world instances where we normally make exactly this judgment. Consider, for example, the nature of quarantine: most of us will accept that on occasion it may be necessary to seal off a geographical area in order to prevent the spread of a disease, even if people currently healthy will fall ill and die as a result. It seems then that the utilitarian can simply bite the bullet, and concede that there will be instances where it is right to punish the innocent.

This slightly disturbing conclusion leads to further, similarly disturbing thoughts. Take the issue of torture: if justice is served by treating people as the means to the end of general happiness, then it seems that torture will be justified in certain circumstances – in a “ticking bomb” scenario, for example, where there is only a limited amount of time to gain information that will save the lives of many people.  Indeed, Alan M. Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor, has argued that in such a situation most people would expect law enforcement officers “to engage in that time-tested technique for loosening tongues.… The real question is not whether torture would be used – it would – but whether it would be used outside of the law or within the law.” Thus, Dershowitz suggests that “torture warrants” should be established for these sorts of extraordinary cases.

Many people, including some utilitarians, find this conclusion unpalatable. There is, however, a partial escape from it, and also from the problem, if indeed it is a problem, that utilitarianism seems to justify victimization. It relies upon drawing a distinction between “act utilitarianism” and “rule utilitarianism.” Roughly speaking, the former looks at the effects of particular acts in determining rightness and wrongness, whereas the latter looks at the effects of following particular rules. Thus, a rule utilitarian may concede that in specific instances victimization or torture will likely produce an increase in general happiness, but insist nevertheless that these practices are wrong, since if they were instantiated as rules for action the effect would be unfortunate in terms of the balance between happiness and unhappiness.

This response, however, is not entirely satisfactory. Partly, there are good reasons to suspect that under close scrutiny rule utilitarianism will collapse back into act utilitarianism – the rules become so particular that they end up describing discrete acts. But also there is something counterintuitive about the idea that the only reason that it is wrong to punish an innocent person or to torture somebody is because it has the contingent effect of decreasing general happiness. If we think that such practices are wrong, it tends not to be because of their bad effects, but rather because we see human beings as autonomous, responsible subjects, the bearers of both rights and responsibilities, and think that justice demands that they should be treated as such rather than simply as means to an end.

Indeed, the utilitarian emphasis on consequences can lead one into the most bizarre kinds of speculations concerning the optimal arrangement of political and social institutions. It is not entirely implausible, for example, that in certain circumstances the principle of general happiness might best be served by appearing to punish rather than by actually punishing. Certainly, if one is confident that an offense will not be repeated, and that the deception will not be uncovered, it is not easy to see what will be gained by making an offender suffer, whereas it is easy to see what will be lost. Why not stage a pretend beating in the public square? It will increase the happiness of so many people – including the punished man, who is being spared an actual beating. In fact, a pretend beating may as well be extra-severe, because likely this will produce even more delight in its audience. Utility for all! From here it is only a small step to the conclusion that in certain circumstances real punishment is less justified than pretend punishment.

It is probably at this point that most people will begin to think that there is something wrong with philosophical argument if it can lead to this kind of conclusion. But there is a sense in which this is precisely the point of an argument of this nature. Although not quite a reductio ad absurdum, its conclusion is sufficiently counterintuitive to throw into doubt the premises from which it is derived. Opponents of utilitarianism can point to the fact that utilitarian arguments can be used to justify the pretense of punishment as evidence of the inadequacy of the utilitarian’s approach.

This thought leads us back to issues of desert – that is, to the idea, hard to shake off, that people either deserve to be punished or not depending on whether they are responsible for actions that violate moral and legal prohibitions. Thus, we find the idea of victimization unpalatable because we do not think that punishment is deserved in the absence of responsibility for an offense; and we find the idea of the pretense of punishment unpalatable because we think that punishment is deserved, in normal circumstances at least, where there is responsibility for an offense.

There is perhaps the hope that it is possible to reconcile the retributive impulse – that justice means punishment for those who deserve it – with the utilitarian demand that we should punish only when its effects produce a net gain of happiness. Not surprisingly, there are “compromise theories” that attempt to do precisely this. For example, H. L. A. Hart has argued that the justification for the general practice of punishment ought to be utilitarian; that is, as a social practice punishment is justified if on balance it has good effects, normally the overall reduction of crime. However, the justification for the punishment of any particular person – that is, the distribution of punishment – ought to be retributive, at least in a negative sense; that is, we should only punish offenders for offenses.

This kind of side-constrained theory – side-constrained in the sense that utilitarian concerns are subject to a retributivist test in determining whether particular punishments are justified – is certainly more satisfactory than either pure retributivism or pure utilitarianism. However, there still lurks the nagging suspicion that the notion of desert, upon which the retributivist account rests, has not been properly worked out. As we noted earlier, it seems obvious that if a person commits a terrible crime he deserves to be punished for it. However, it is not an easy position to argue for; indeed, when we considered one such argument, the idea that there is intrinsic good in the suffering of the guilty, it quickly became clear that moral intuition, not normally the stuff of grounded philosophical argument, played a large part in its justification.

There are, of course, other arguments in favor of desert and retributivism more generally, but they are all far from persuasive. Indeed, the late Oxford philosopher J. L. Mackie said of arguments commonly employed to support retributivism that they are the “philosophical analogues of the sort of opponents that a chess player would like to have if he were going to play, blindfold, a dozen or so opponents at once. Each of them can be dispatched, with ease, in a very few moves.” He concluded that “retributive principles cannot be defended, with any plausibility, as allegedly objective moral truths.”

If this is right, it does not follow that one cannot account for the existence of retributive feelings. Mackie, for example, employed Darwinian principles in order to explain their ubiquity and persistence. His argument was roughly this: individuals achieved an evolutionary advantage to the extent that resentment of injuries became a deeply ingrained psychological disposition in their personality structures; this disposition was then universalized for broadly sociological reasons, so that certain harms came to be cooperatively resented, which is the mark of retributivism generally. Thus, he argued that “retributive attitudes can be readily understood and explained as sentiments that have grown up and are sustained partly through biological processes, and partly through analogous sociological ones.”

It’s likely that Mackie’s account is imperfect. However, it is not at all implausible that human beings are wired up to detect and resent harms, and that this constitutes the wellspring of retributive feelings. Certainly, we already understand perfectly well that the desire for retribution – or, less charitably, revenge – is often overwhelming. That many of the relatives of the victims of 9/11 expressed the hope that Zacarias Moussaoui would suffer for what he did is not in the least surprising. Indeed, if, en masse, they hadexpressed hopes to the contrary, we would have suspected that something strange was afoot. The corollary of this point is that when people do come to forgive those who have done them great harm, we often find them admirable, precisely because we understand that they are in a way acting contrary to human nature. Thus, we are likely to think that Heather Saunders, whose husband was shot in Athens, showed commendable restraint when she insisted that she never thought that his murderers should be put up against a wall and shot, simply that they should be “locked up for a long time to keep other people safe.”

The idea of justice remains elusive in all this, certainly when it comes to the principles of punishment. If it is not possible to justify retributive principles (even if they can be explained), yet we find that we cannot think about the issue of punishment without recourse to them, then we’re a long way from being able to claim that justice is served by our desire to see the guilty jailed, or worse. It might be true, as Ted Honderich suggests, that our grievances are satisfied by so acting, but it does not follow that we thereby act morally or in a way that should make us feel comfortable. There must surely be more to justice than simply acting in accordance with our evolved psychological dispositions – more to justice than just doing what we want to do.