The Bowdoin Orient

Editor's note, April 3, 10: 30 p.m.: Following publication, the editors were made aware that the piece below drew from arguments in a video found here without attribution. It should not have been published in this form without indicating the source; proper sourcing has been added below. 

What are you thinking? What do you care about? What is so different about you and me? These are the sort of questions I often ask myself whenever looking at an animal. While it is most likely a hopeless task, I try to imagine what it would be like to fly, what it would be like to have gills, what it would be like to have eight legs and what it would be like to be owned by humans. I wonder whether being human really is better than being any other species. Maybe it turns out that dogs live happier lives than humans, even though they might understand less. Maybe the life of a migratory bird is more interesting—traveling to opposite ends of the Earth by simply flapping their limbs. However, what I wonder most is whether we are making a grave mistake in how we treat our animal kin.

While neuroscience has given us much insight into how the human mind and other minds work, it still has much work to do in understanding the extent of our differences. We have already found that many species (e.g. orcas) have emotional capacities that rival our own, making it indisputably wrong to detain these species and break up their families like we would a rock for an exhibit. We generally seem to treat animals with higher cognitive abilities in a more kindly manner, but this does not always hold true. For example, a pig is smarter than a dog, but we treat dogs more kindly by most standards. Therefore, at the bare minimum, we should consistently treat animals more kindly based on their cognitive abilities.

Yet, I fear that neuroscience has not developed enough to make these hard and fast judgments about which animals deserve to be treated more like humans. We have to ask the question: while some of these animals lack higher cognitive ability, what if they are not as different from us as we thought? What if the experience of being a pig is not so different than the experience of being a human? If this were true, we would be committing horrific acts on a massive scale. We just happened to draw the lucky card of being the mammal with the highest cognitive ability.

However, my fear runs even deeper than the discoveries to be made in neuroscience. What if it can’t be discovered what exactly it is like to be a pig? What if the nature of being a pig can only be understood in a subjective context? For example, I can’t know what it’s like to be you, let alone an organism of a completely different species. In this sense, our lens of the human experience is infinitesimally narrow in terms of the numerous ways of experiencing the world.

Of course, if this were true, we would be treating animals that are not so different from ourselves like inanimate objects and we would never be able to know about it. As a result, it would be conscientious and safe to treat our animal kin with more kindness rather than taking the risk of treating these organisms in ways that would make us cringe if humans were the victims.

If the above argument does not convince you that we should treat animals more kindly, wait just a minute. In order to justify treating animals differently than humans, you would have to say that creatures with higher cognitive abilities should be treated more conscientiously. While I would generally agree with this premise, it has gone much too far in how we implement it.

The difference in DNA between a chimpanzee and a human is about a one percent difference. Think of all the things that humans can do that chimps cannot. Think of all the things humans have created and discovered that chimps have not. This one percent difference makes us the most dominant species on the planet while the chimp is just another primate. Now, as Neil DeGrasse Tyson did, imagine an alien species with a one percent difference in DNA from us in the other direction, meaning that they are to us what we are to chimps. It is hard to imagine what such a species would be capable of. Maybe their toddlers would know quantum mechanics. Maybe they could calculate things only our computers can calculate. Maybe they can grasp scientific truths that we never could. Nonetheless, once we acknowledge that there may be such an alien species out there, our above premise that animals of higher cognitive abilities should be treated more kindly becomes troubling.

Would it be okay for this alien species to keep humans in cages? Would it be okay for them to eat humans for nutrition? Would it be okay for them to hunt humans for fun? By our own standards, it seems that all of these actions would be okay. We keep chimps and orcas in cages. We eat pigs for nutrition. We hunt all sorts of animals because it is “fun.” Yet, in doing so, we have condoned any alien species to come here and treat us as horribly as we treat our animal kin.

One could try to argue that there is a line of “consciousness” that humans have crossed which differentiates us from other animals, but I claim that such a hard and fast line may be an arbitrary distinction. We could be merely insects unintelligibly squirming compared to a super-intelligent alien species.

Quite frankly, if a highly intelligent alien species saw how we treated our cognitive subordinates, they would have every right to treat us the same. Is that how you would like to be treated?

One hears the phrase “God and country” all the time in mainstream politics. Candidates on both the right and the left often talk about how their faith informs their policies and drives them to bring about positive change. However, when unpacking the relationship between God and country further, they seem to be at odds with each other in terms of the principles they affirm. More specifically, God and country both suggest that the other is subordinate, presenting a dilemma for those who say they love both “God and country.”

First, I will start with country, which is the United States for our purposes. The United States was definitively founded on the premise that church and state should be separated in order to protect religious freedoms. This fundamental freedom can only be obtained if there is no lone religious establishment that secures a disproportionate amount of political power, thereby enacting laws that trespass on the freedom of other religions. However, by protecting religious freedom, the government has affirmed the principle that all religions are equal, a principle that cannot be true if one of said religions were “correct.” Furthermore, by establishing itself as a mediator of religious laws, the government also establishes itself as higher law compared to religion.

As an example, let us take a fictional religion in which the idea of private property does not exist and the acknowledgement of anything as private property is a sinful act. As a result, stealing would not be considered a wrongful action and even might be encouraged within the teachings of this religion. While this religion may have legitimate reasons for believing in such a radical concept, a member of said religion would undoubtedly be arrested if they stole my car. No one outside the framework of this fictional religion would agree that these people should be able to steal whatever they may please. In this sense, the secular law that we all abide by overrules their religious beliefs.

While there are many counterexamples to the aforementioned thought experiment, the very fact that a religion has to go through the government to get an exemption from a certain secular law implies that the government considers itself as higher law. In terms of power dynamics, the one who gives the exemption makes the rules rather than the one who gets the exemption. Furthermore, what if two religious beliefs are directly opposed to one another? Since there is no common ground between two religious frameworks, the only way to argue your case is by saying “you have the wrong God.” In such a situation, the secular law acts as the only coherent mediator between the two religious frameworks.

With the previous example in mind, the only way to protect religious freedom is by establishing a secular law that mediates all religious laws. Otherwise, to secure religious freedom is to promote a segregation of religions in which every person would move to a country that establishes a non-secular government of their religion. Thus, the United States treats its laws as objective while it treats everyone’s religious teachings as subjective, granting minor exemptions in particular cases. In short, it is not truly God that rules over man, but the laws of the United States of America that rule over man, says the United States government.

Given that the United States government has established itself as superior to religious law, I cannot imagine that the classic monotheistic God is too happy about it. Imagine God creating the universe, creating us and giving us a book to live by only for us to say that we can do better in terms of the objective law. In fact, I would expect that a monotheistic God would find the concept of a country quite silly. Do we really think that He created all of nature and all of us just so that we could draw arbitrary lines on a map and say, “That side is yours and this side is mine?” No, of course not. If there were a God that cared about what we do and sent rules to live by, it would be for all of us to live by, not just a certain nationality, culture, or ethnicity.

In terms of religious freedom, God and country are not on the same page. More specifically, if you believe a certain religion, you must think that the religion is true. If your religion is true, you must accept that it holds a special place among religions, being that yours is the only one that is true. Therefore, a dilemma emerges of how to justify the principle that all religions are equal.

You might say that it is everyone’s right to believe what they want, but that is a humanist approach to a universe governed by a divine lawmaker. If you believe that God has truly laid out the guidelines of how to live and how to act, then how can you justify saying that it is perfectly fine that people believe things that are directly opposed to what your divine lawmaker commands? By supposing a humanist ideal that all religions are equal, you are undermining the doctrines of the very religion you are trying to protect.

As a result of this discussion, those who say that they love both “God and country” have to reconcile the feud between the two. I wish I had a good answer for such a question, but it seems to me that the two are diametrically opposed, both claiming to affirm objective principles that everyone should follow. Meanwhile, nearly 50 percent of people would not vote for a political candidate that is an atheist, which is more bias than any other major category (including Muslim). Maybe it’s just me, but wouldn’t a non-religious person be best suited to establish secular law?

Given both the growth and scrutiny of political correctness on campus and everywhere in the United States, we must ask difficult questions about political correctness: What does it accomplish? Does it discourage discourse? Is political correctness good? In order to answer these questions, I will use “scientific correctness” as a guide to shed some light on this pressing issue. There are two reasons why scientific correctness, as I define it, will serve as a helpful guide for evaluating political correctness: it is clear how scientific correctness is a force for good and it functions in similar ways to political correctness.

What is scientific correctness? I made up the term, but I will define it as the pressure in the scientific community to accept theories that are empirically supported and reject theories that are not supported within the framework of the scientific method. For example, a scientist would be pressured by other scientists to accept a given theory A (the Earth is round) over another competing theory B (the Earth is flat) if the evidence (e.g. observations, simplicity) were in favor of theory A. 

Now, what does scientific correctness accomplish? Scientific correctness elevates the theories that are supported by the evidence and forces new theories to be proven through rigorous empirical testing. Political correctness works in a similar way. Political correctness encourages ideas that have been found to be in tune with our moral intuitions and reason, while also forcing new ideas to stand the test of our moral judgments and norms. The specific mechanism of political correctness is often to discourage ideas through many mediums (e.g. institutional punishment, social pressure) that we have found to be out of tune with our moral intuitions and reason. As scientific correctness moves humanity towards scientific progress, political correctness moves humanity towards moral progress.

Does political correctness or scientific correctness discourage discourse? Short answer: yes, but it is often justifiable. As a first example, let us take a person who claims and advertises that the Earth is flat. (Let’s randomly call this person Bob.) Bob is ridiculed for believing and advertising a theory that is vastly unsupported by the evidence. As a result, Bob is actively discouraged from spreading his unjustified beliefs. However, this discouragement is warranted because this theory has time and again failed to fit the evidence. If we had to continuously revisit whether the Earth is flat or whether the Earth moves around the Sun, there would be no sense of scientific progress.

As an example for political correctness, let us take a person who claims and advertises the notion that homosexuality is evil. (Let’s randomly call this person Jerry Falwell.) Jerry is ridiculed (at least in some circles) for believing in an idea that is inharmonious with our intuitions of equality and respect. As a result, Jerry is actively discouraged from spreading his unjustified beliefs. However, the discouragement is warranted since homophobia has time and again failed to provide sufficient reason for spreading inequality and disrespect. If we had to continuously revisit whether homophobia, racism or sexism is wrong, we would have no sense of moral progress.

Due to the fact that it suppresses bad theories and elevates good ones, scientific correctness is a force for good in that it promotes truth over falsity. Similarly, political correctness is a force for good in that it protects those to whom certain ideas attempt to degrade, divide and disenfranchise while also honing in on general moral principles.

With all of that said, political correctness and scientific correctness are not always right about which ideas they should promote and which they suppress. There was once a time when it was considered scientific blasphemy to hypothesize a universe in which Earth was not at the center. Similarly, there was once a time when it was politically incorrect to refer to slaves as people. However, despite these divergent examples, time has cleared these issues up. Both scientific correctness and political correctness have moved humanity forward, which is why we are more scientifically and morally evolved today than we have ever been.

On an individual level, people are obviously entitled to their beliefs. Believe whatever you want! Challenge scientific correctness! Challenge political correctness! However, when you present a potentially controversial idea to the public sphere, you must keep in mind that, unlike in the scientific community, people’s feelings, sense of identity and wellbeing are on the line. Therefore, you must respectfully support your ideas with reason and evidence if you want to remain unscathed.

There is one great aspect of the scientific community that we should all try to reproduce: asking questions. The high frequency of questions in science helps everyone discern what is actually meant by a certain claim so that every claim can be evaluated accurately on its own merit. Accordingly, the easiest way to be politically correct is to ask a question. Everyone benefits and grows with questions. It is the best way to compassionately and respectfully understand experiences, ideas and feelings that are unfamiliar to you. Therefore, if you take away anything from this article, I hope it is that you ask away. 

Nick DiStefano is a member of the Class of 2018.