On Human Morality & The Rights of Nonhuman Animals

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Once it has been understood that the ability to think abstractly, about the world and about ourselves, is both dependent upon and derived from a material construct, the question of free will naturally arises.  That is to say, the question arises as to whether or not we have available to us any independent position to take in response to our material causality.  Insofar as our abstracted sense of self is rooted in and dependent upon a material causality, that abstract self may be said to be the subject of all the various confluent material forces which allow it continuance of being.  However, to the extent to which any given organism has the capacity for self-knowledge, free will becomes operative insofar as that organism has the ability to gather and collate information about itself and its environs and use that information to decide amongst two or more possible actions.  All possible actions are, obviously enough, themselves based upon and derived from materiality; moreover, any action taken, resultant though it may be of a choice made via free will, can also be described as being wholly determined by material forces and, as such, be thought of as failing to describe the operation of free will in any genuine manner.  That is, any given choice, once it has been made, can no longer be described as exampling the operation of free will but rather, must be seen as having been arrived at through the gathering influx of various confluent forces, each one of which is expressive of a material causality.  Yet, paradoxically, the ability to choose between two or more possible actions, though this ability is itself determined by a material causality, also exerts an influence upon that causality, and thus may be said to change its nature in an ongoing fashion; which is to say, in its very substance:  i.e. that which could have been and now is, was always going to be; and that which is not never could have been, or it would be so now.

Thus with regard to the issue of free will and the obligations it entails upon us with reference to ourselves, it could correctly be said that we owe ourselves both nothing, and everything.

Applying the same question to a relationship which includes two or more sentient beings, the same answer must be given:  that is to say, just as it we might describe the obligations entailed by free will with regard to the individual's relationship to his or herself as consisting of both "nothing" and "everything," we may describe the relationship existent between two or more individuals in the same terms.  To address this question properly, however, one must necessarily speak in the conditional sense with regard the manner in which most of humanity is required to live, this condition generally being predefined by whatever laws the current governing system has put into effect.  Dispensing with such a condition, one may address the nature of human relationships with greater ease.  Should it now happen that basic bodily needs are not able to be met, and/or should the principle of egalitarianism be ignored or refused with regard the distribution of such goods as are available for the meeting of those needs, the self-preservation of each individual, family or clan will naturally be given priority.  However, even in those cases in which an egalitarian relationship between individuals or groups of individuals is being striven towards, the absence of any enforcing agency may well cause contact between them to degenerate into power relationships in which the weak or disadvantaged are victimized to a greater or lesser extent by those who are stronger or of greater ability; the only sure method of overcoming this is through maximization of the capacity for empathy.  Empathy derives from the ability to displace one's own conscious self-awareness in favor of another's, for the purpose of understanding what it is to exist as another; its operative procedure is one of unbiased observation combined with the utilization of the imaginative faculty.  It requires the ability to suspend – at least momentarily – one's belief in a supra-human, transcendent self; additionally, it requires an understanding that "self" and "other" constitute in reality one integrated system.  Once this has been accomplished, it can be seen that empathetic awareness is the most certain means we have of keeping the total ecologic system, comprised of both self and other, in proper working order.  Empathy may or may not require an act of self-sacrifice; the degree to which one is willing to enact self-sacrifice, should the need of another call for it, is dependent upon the degree to which one willingly develops and exercises self-displacement.  This in turn is dependent upon the application of a choice made via the modus operandi of free will.

A fuller discussion of empathy and of the value that should be placed on the practice of self-displacement would require the examination of a variety of situations and their effects on human behavior; the results of such an examination, however, would pertain only to that which services the greatest good for the system as a whole.  For the individual, consideration of such policies as might be developed via this examination would obviously have some impact, perhaps profound in nature; however, empathetic awareness as a description of experiential process is not much concerned with such an influence.  Rather, it is a private matter, partaking of the influx of many various confluent influences, both personal and social.  Inhibiting factors fostered via the mandates of governing persons and/or institutions notwithstanding, it would likely manifest itself as a struggle on the part of each individual to prevent intentional suffering wherever possible, and to relieve unintentional suffering as much as possible.  The sanctity of the system as a whole – and only that system expressive of equality between self and other is worthy of sanctification – demands that no creature capable of suffering be made to suffer for another (though empathetic awareness, arrived at through the auspices of free will, may cause them to do so "voluntarily," as it were).  The equality between self and other is arrived at automatically once the belief in a supra-human, transcendent self has been dropped, and the interdependence of all constituents of the system as a whole is recognized.