Ignoring Sufficiency

Hi Everyone!

Yes, it is me, asking a question. I am in the process of finishing up my latest book and I have one argument in there that I am not sure about. I want to make sure that I am not missing anything obvious (it happens). So here we go. This is a criticism of an argument by Peter Singer. His argument is presented as follows:

1. In order to conclude that all and only human beings deserve a full and equal moral status (and therefore that no animals deserve a full and equal moral status), there must be some property P that all and only human beings have that can ground such a claim.
   Any P that only human beings have is a property that (some) human beings lack (e.g., the marginal cases).
   Any P that all human beings have is a property that (most) animals have as well.
   Therefore, there is no way to defend the claim that all and only human beings deserve a full and equal moral status.

What follows is my write up of a problem I see with this argument. Your feedback is appreciated...

The Sufficient But Not Necessary Problem

Recall that conditions could be necessary or sufficient. Singer’s version of the argument ignores the possibility of sufficient conditions. This is a major problem for the soundness of the argument. Consider the following modification to the argument:

1. In order to conclude that all and only great students deserve a full scholarship (and therefore average students do not), there must be some property P that all and only great students have that can ground such a claim.
   Any P that only great students have is a property that (some) great students lack (e.g., the marginal cases).
   Any P that all great students have is a property that (most) average students have as well.
   Therefore, there is no way to defend the claim that all and only great students deserve a full scholarship.

We have a problem with the first premise. It is false that there must be some property that all and only great students have (i.e., a necessary condition). There can also be some property that only but not necessary all great students have. If we ground a “great student” with having one of the following properties: a 4.0 GPA, a 1600 on their SATs, or won a Nobel prize then any of those properties would be sufficient to be part of the “great student” group deserving of a full scholarship. It can also be the case that students with at least two of the three properties would be deserving of the full scholarship. In such a case, it is not true that there must be some property that neither all nor only great students must have. Because of this, the rest of the argument falls apart.

Just as it not true that “in order to conclude that all and only great students deserve a full scholarship, there must be some property P that all and only great students have that can ground such a claim,” it is also not true that “in order to conclude that all and only human beings deserve a full and equal moral status, there must be some property P that all and only human beings have that can ground such a claim.” It is tempting to simply accept Singer’s argument as sound because we might agree with the conclusion, but this would be fallacious reasoning. It would be as problematic as concluding that the earth is not flat because nobody you’ve ever known fell off the edge.

Oh, the argument from marginal cases (kinda similar to the name the trait argument we discussed before). So your point is that what can make all great students worthy of a full scholarship (and not average students) is a stack of properties that meeting one or some of these properties is good enough for those students to be worthy of the scholarship and distinguished from average students, but it is not necessarily the case that all great students must have one shared property among all of them. My initial thoughts is that you have a fair point there. I don't think that version of Singer's argument works given this criticism of yours. I think name the trait resolves this problem, but I also know you don't like name the trait and it's quite a mess to delve into this topic again. lol
So you've been finalizing a new book? I guess that explains your absence from the site for the past week or so :)
I have a few requests from you please regarding the new book, and I would really appreciate it if you consider them:
1. I know you are pro-veganism and you hold the view that it is not ethical to kill animals for food, so it would be really nice to mention this stance of yours in the book (perhaps as an example of how one's agreement with a conclusion should not make them biased towards accepting unsound arguments that support that conclusion).
2. Please present what you think are good/the best argument(s) in favor of animal rights/veganism. I am really interested (as I am sure your readers will be) in knowing how you have come to your conclusion regarding animal rights and your argument(s) in favor of them. I mean if we see a certain stance as the good/right stance to hold and we point out certain argument that argue badly for that stance, it would be a good followup to present what good arguments for that stance would be.
3. Please inform us as soon as the book is published. I am definitely purchasing it. Can't wait to read another logic-and-reason-based book of yours :)

Interesting logical question. My main comment, which I think is along the same line as Bo's, is that the premise is questionable. The supposed uniqueness of human beings might not be due to one single quality, but rather a constellation of qualities.

Of course, as Aristotle said, it's easy to praise Athens among the Athenians. So, I would add that it is also easy to praise human beings among human beings!

Good luck w/ the book!

I often get these things wrong, because the initial premise seems so disjointed and muddled it precludes any further discussion or expenditure of time.

So, pertinent to Singer's argument:

In order to conclude that all and only human beings deserve a full and equal moral status (and therefore that no animals deserve a full and equal moral status), there must be some property P that all and only human beings have that can ground such a claim.

Right off the bat it seems we have a gaping non-sequitur. Why would the bestowal of full equal moral status on all human beings require the exclusion of animal rights?

Your response about the exclusionary difference between average and great students when considering scholarships makes sense. Although the remedy is terrifyingly fascist) but Singer's wild jump to excluding animals as essential to guaranteeing moral equality for humans seems cuckoo-bird. (Appeal to WTF? fallacy) Ha!

1 is just asserted, why does there have to be a property?

2 is just asserted, without naming what this property is I have no way to evaluate the claim.

3 is again just asserted and is a contradiction of 1 which stated only humans have the property, so it's completely arbitrary to then claim that all animals have P "because reasons".

4 is false invalid (?) as it assumes that this is the only possible argument.

I don't think it's particularly useful to rule out other options because you can't think of any. That's personal incredulity.

As far as i understand the argument, in the way it is presented it's not very convincing.

The issue of excluding animals from rights, because they're not human is something to be demonstrated separately. Even granting everything it simply does not follow that if humans have equal rights, animals cannot have them. It's even more puzzling considering we're animals as well, so unless there's an argument for a qualitative, fundamental difference between "Regular" animals and us, it's not going to fly with me.

To play devil's advocate:
Is it not possible, that even though the P property is present in most average students as well as great students, they do not present themselves in the same manner? If such a difference in performance is what separates the average from the great, is that not what is needed in the argument? For example, if we consider winning a Nobel Prize, but doing so due to serendipity, i don't believe you can call this person a great student since gaining the prize is the result of an accidental and not wilful discovery (Admittedly, this presupposes that being a student is a conscious active process, and that you can't be a regular or great student if you learn or produce by accident, but i think that's a fair assumption). To accept serendipity as the cause of excellence would put random lottery winners on the same category as experts who predict how to measure gravitational waves, and not by skill but simply because they have achieved something noteworthy.

So i would make the case that P is equally present in all students. But the difference in application of P necessarily sets apart in a qualitative way, great and average students. Those that are in the category of great by virtue of application of P, would then be deserving of scholarships while others would not.

Back to the original form, the same P property that is present in humans and most animals, does not present itself in the same manner.
Humans display P in a manner that justifies setting them apart from other animals.
It is therefore not acceptable to extend the same human rights of humans to non-humans.

I realise that you would have to find such a property and see the difference between animals and humans before the argument is to be considered, but unless i made a logical blunder, it is the last step in the argument while the rest is taken care of. Unless there's a demonstration that P can't, in fact, present itself differently between animals and humans. Of course, all along i was also attempting to turn sufficiency irrelevant.

There's also the issue of what happens by granting human rights to animals. Do they also effectively become humans? Can i incarcerate a pickpocketing monkey the same way i'd incarcerate its trainer? Can chimpanzees obtain credit cards if i instruct them on how to sign the papers and obtain the necessary documents? Can i hire a crocodile as security personnel?

The problem is that there are many types of properties that are not specified in premise (1). Of the different types of properties that exist, there are two that are relevant to the argument in question: essential (necessary) or accidental (contingent). For an object to be what it has to be and not something else, it can not lack its essential properties (a soccer ball has to have some essential property that makes it a soccer ball and not a basketball ball, like the material of which it is made). And an object can lack its accidental properties and will remain the object in question and not something else (a soccer ball can be of various colors and will remain a soccer ball).

The other aspect of the properties is that a set of properties form a property as well. For example, if a house has the property of being beautiful, the house must have a set of properties so that it can acquire that property (colors, size, specific architecture, etc). So when Singer refers to "some property P" does it refer to an essential or accidental property? Does it refer to a basic property or a property that is acquired by a set of properties?

Singer's argument, of course, is to prove that human beings are not special and that there is nothing that makes them different from non-human animals. For this, his argument is that human beings do not have essential properties since there are human beings in marginal cases that lack the property that only humans possess. But this is ridicule, because "being human" is in itself a property. So that when he says in the premise (2)

Any P that only human beings have a property that (some) human beings lack (e.g., the marginal cases).

He is referring to some beings with the essential property of being human who lack a contingent property.

Then in the premise (3) when it says

Any P that all human beings have is a property that (most) animals have as well.

What he is saying is that beings with the essential property of being an animal share some contingent property with beings with the essential property of being human.

And finally, (1) is pretty naive,

In order to conclude that all and only human beings deserve a full and equal moral status (and therefore that no animals deserve a full and equal moral status), there must be some property P that all and only human beings have that can ground such a claim.

What about the property of being human?

Is that really an accurate statement of Singer's argument? It seems shot full of holes. Denken's last point being rather effective in demolishing the argument as stated! As for me, am I missing something or is there not a contradiction between 1 and 2? How can one move logically from1's statement "...there must be some property P that all and only human beings have...", to 2's statement, "Any P that only human beings have is a property that (some) human beings lack ..."? If all have it, how can some lack it? And I think I recall that in logic if you accept a falsehood as true you can prove anything.