I’ve never understood the argument occasionally advanced that having moral concern for animals makes a person “anti-human.” Even considering the cases where an animal’s significant interests directly conflict with human significant interests, if one were to conclude that the animals interests trumped the human interest this would not it seems provide evidence for some diminished concern for human beings, never mind antipathy towards human beings in general. Sometimes a variation of the argument is offered that claims that concern with “animal rights” or animal interests necessarily takes away from one’s concern for human rights. I’ve never found that persuasively argued either.
We have much weaker and sillier arguments flying around the public discourse space prompted by the Michael Vick case. Here’s one of Tenessee’s representatives weighing in:

But does anyone besides me see the hypocrisy of some on the left who go nuts about Michael Vick and the whole dog fighting thing and yet are the same people who don’t care about the loss of human life caused by illegal aliens or are the same people who fight for the right to kill unborn babies?

I hear the battle cry of: “It is my body, it is my property, I can do with it what I want” from the pro aborts, but the opposite cry from the same person against a person whose property is a dog. Do they respect the life of a dog more then they respect the life of a human?

The sport’s savants weigh in as well, for example, here.

The larger point is that, as much as we’re tempted to react to the federal indictment of Vick as though it contained the most heinous accusations against a football player since O.J. Simpson’s, there’s a whole lot of hypocrisy here.

For one thing, animals are put to death on a continuous basis, as I was just telling one of my fellow pet-lovers at a neighborhood barbecue while wiping away the hamburger grease that had dripped onto my suede Pumas.

It also must be noted – and I am not defending the sick behavior of anyone whom a jury decides has committed an offense such as electrocuting a pit bull – that there are NFL players who’ve been charged with having committed deplorable crimes against actual human beings. Some of them even have been convicted, yet most of us manage to let it go when they do good things for the home team or emerge as value picks in the fantasy draft.

It’s worth considering what an argument that purports to demonstrate hypocrisy must accomplish. In the first example above the argument would have to show that “some on the left” (s.o.t.l.) are applying the same moral principle in a discriminatory way. For example, if s.o.t.l believed that what Michael Vick apparently did to dogs is wrong because killing mammals is wrong then perhaps granting that a fetus or the victims of the murderous illegal aliens are mammals, if they condone those latter deaths they are hypocrites. But there are obvious and well articulated differences between the cases being considered that s.o.t.l. can appeal to.
The second case is weirder. He seems to be suggesting that we ought to be less upset about Michael Vick because in the past people who have committed other crimes have been forgiven by the fans. Whether the moral fiber of the football fan is the appropriate test is a difficult question. But, nevertheless, even granting the premises of this argument it isn’t clear that “hypocrisy” has anything to do with it.

The accusation of hypocrisy in moral argument is often a cheap rhetorical ploy, functioning somewhere in the neighborhood of the ad hominem fallacy. By attacking the consistency of the moral critic you try to undermine the particular position they are advancing. At the same time, these sorts of arguments based on similarities between cases are theoretically central to moral argument. The burden of the argument lies with the person who claims that cases are the same or similar in the relevant morally significant ways. This would be why Peter Singer’s argument from the first chapter of Animal Liberation could be used to demonstrate hypocrisy (speciesism), while the first quote above fails to do so.

Of course, there is one point that I’ll agree with: it isn’t clear why there is a moral difference between killing an animal for entertainment and killing an animal for gustatory pleasure.

In a comment on yesterday’s post about expertise, frequent commenter Matt K observes:

>If I need my car fixed I go to an automotive mechanic and not a plumber. When I need to get a good handle on some set of facts, say the historical/cultural circumstances of Iraq, I seek the knowledge of academics who are experts in that area. Politicians and their lackeys (aka pundits) are NOT the relevant experts on almost any matter. I don’t understand why a large bulk of the American public finds this hard to believe.

>We live in a society where we put a lot of trust into experts. Experts are people who we believe not only have more knowledge than we of certain subjects, but also who we believe are qualified to form solid well-informed opinions on those subjects, opinions that we can use to make good decisions. Pundits are certainly not experts, so we should trust there opinions no more than we would trust the opinion of any other non-expert. So we need to focus closely on their arguments since they have no special relation to the facts. And, when actual experts come to conclusions that differ from pundits we should cast a very critical eye toward the pundit’s arguments.

>So my point is that it is a very good thing to evaluate arguments found in op/ed pieces, but if we want to show the wider public the biggest weakness behind such foolish argumentation we need to help them understand the difference between experts and non-experts. Experts can make foolish arguments too, even in their area of expertise. But, the argument of the expert should begin at a different status than the argument of a non-expert. And, perhaps if Goldberg understood that then he wouldn’t say such foolish things.

He makes I think a number of important points about our impoverished public discourse. At the risk of generalization, public discourse (and by that I mean stuff that you’ll find on an op-ed page, or other similar public forum) is largely run by invested advocates. These are (1) pundits, people whose sole function consists in partisan advocacy of some variety (and there are many varieties–more on that another time), (2) members of ideologically defined “think tanks” whose sole function is, wait for it, advocacy (on special issues such as the economy, foreign policy, “family values” and so on) or (3) actual partisan political operatives (members of congress, or the administration) whose function again is to, you guessed it, advocate for their position. Don’t bother pointing out exceptions to the rule. They are few (Paul Krugman is a real economist at an Ivy League institution, but, at times unfortunately, he’s also a general pundit of everything).

It’s fairly rare that anyone other than these three classes of people finds her or his way onto an op-ed page. And now a number of rather famous bloggers types have simply replicated the kind of generalized a priori pontificating proper to the print pundit. You can probably guess who I mean. This is really unfortunate. The neat thing about blogging (not ours of course) is that it gives you greater access to people who know things. It’s too bad that some have chosen to replicate all of the defects of the op-ed page.

Back to the point. Among those who fall outside of these classes are academic (as well as other) experts. For the reasons Matt states above–the car mechanic reasons–you’d think we’d hear more from people with the kind of basic knowledge of the sundry areas of human knowledge. I think I can speak for a lot of people when I say that I don’t know much about anything, really. I’m especially ignorant of Middle Eastern cultures, history, economics, military strategy, to give a few recent and relevant examples. When called upon to think about these matters, I follow the advice of Gene Hackman in Heist: I think of someone who knows more than I do and I ask: what would she do?

After all, so many questions of vital public interest differ very little from the kinds of questions that interest me on a daily basis: how do I make crispy French fries? Start by asking Alton Brown.