How to argue for and against sport hunting

Journal of Social Philosophy

Volumn 27, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 65-89

  Curnutt, Jordan ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 3142640670     PISSN: 00472786     EISSN: 14679833     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9833.1996.tb00238.x     Document Type: Article

References (77)

1. A useful discussion of the relationships between "action ethics" and "virtue ethics" is found in Louis Pojman, Ethics, Wadsworth, 1990: chapter 7.
2. Herman Melville, Billy Budd, 1924.
3. J.S. Mill writes in Utilitarianism, 1861, chapter 2: "the motive has nothing to do with the morality of the action, though much with the worth of the agent." Thinking Vere's act to be wrong whatever his motive is ironic for Mill, since the execution of Billy was justified by utilitarian reasons.
4. John G. Mitchell, "Bitter Harvest," Audubon, 81, no. 3 (1979): 61-65, lists the typical purposes and goals of sport hunts.
5. Roger King, "Environmental Ethics and the Case for Hunting," Environmental Ethics, 13 (1991): 59-85,
6. has identified another strand of pro-hunting argument which he calls "The Primitivist Defense." This defense is most closely associated with Jose Ortega Y Gasset and his Meditations on Hunting, (first published 1943),
7. but has found a more recent champion in Paul Shepard's The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game, Scribner's, 1973. The Primitivist thesis is that killing is not the point of hunting; only by hunting can man return to his original, unsullied state as predator and escape the influence of modern life which corrupts this primordial condition. King points out that many of Ortega's own examples of hunting have nothing to do with this and much more to do with simply killing animals (pp. 74-75). I can here only express skepticism that an atavistic goal represents any more of a moral defense of hunting than such an appeal would represent a moral defense of defecating wherever and whenever I please.
8. Although an incomplete hunt - one in which an animal is neither killed nor wounded-would not involve violations of these rights, one might want to argue that it would violate a right not to be deceived. A hunter stalking an animal typically attempts to mislead it about his presence, location, or intentions. Paul Taylor maintains that moral agents are required to avoid deceiving animals in this way, but he does not frame the issue in terms of moral rights (Respect for Nature, Princeton, 1986:179-86). Since we are not concerned with incomplete hunts here, we do not need to discuss this matter further.
9. Ann Causey, "On the Morality of Hunting," Environmental Ethics, 11 (1989): 327-43;
10. Theodore Vitali, "Sport Hunting: Moral or Immoral?" Environmental Ethics, 12 (1990): 69-82.
11. "The Joy of Killing," Between the Species, (1991): 121-28. Pluhar does not present an argument against hunting in this paper.
12. For example: Leonard Nelson, A System of Ethics, Yale University Press, 1956;
13. Joel Feinberg, "The Nature and Value of Rights," The Journal of Value Inquiry, 4 (1970): 243-57;
14. "The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations," Philosophy & Environmental Crisis, William T. Blackstone, ed., University of Georgia, 1974: 43-68,
15. and "Human Duties and Animal Rights" On the Fifth Day, R. Morris and M. Fox, eds., Acropolis Books, 1978: 45-69;
16. James Rachels, "Do Animals Have A Right to Liberty?" Animal Rights and Human Obligations, T., Regan & P. Singer, eds., Prentice Hall, 1976: 205-223;
17. Stephen R.L. Clark, "The Rights of Wild Things," Inquiry, 22 (1979): 171-78;
18. Mary Anne Warren, "The Rights of the Nonhuman World," Environmental Philosophy, R. Elliot and A.Gare, eds., Open University Press, 1983: 109-134;
19. Robert Elliot, "Moral Autonomy, Self-Determination and Animal Rights," The Monist, 70 (1987): 83-97;
20. and of course Tom Regan, in many journal articles but especially in The Case for Animal Rights, University of California, 1983.
21. For example: H.J. McCloskey, "Rights," Philosophical Quarterly, 15 (1965): 113-27,
22. "Moral Rights and Animals," Inquiry 11, (1979): 23-54,
23. and Ecological Ethics and Politics, Rowman and Littlefield, 1983;
24. John Passmore, Man's Responsibility for Nature, Scribner's, 1974;
25. Jan Narveson, "Animal Rights," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 7, (1977): 161-78
26. and "Animal Rights Revisited," Ethics and Animals, H. Miller and W. Williams, eds., Humana Press, 1983;
27. Richard A. Watson, "Self-Consciousness and the Rights of Nonhuman Animals," Environmental Ethics, 1 (1979): 99-129;
28. Philip Montague, "Two Concepts of Rights," Philosophy and Public Affairs 9, (1980): 372-84;
29. A.I. Melden, Rights in Moral Lives, University of California Press, 1988;
30. L.W. Sumner, The Moral Foundations of Rights, Oxford, 1987;
31. Tibor Machan, "Do Animals Have Rights?" Public Affairs Quarterly, 5 (1991): 163-73.
32. And some authors who have written comprehensive treatments of the rights issue seem to leave the question of the identity of rightsholders open. I believe both Carl Wellman, A Theory of Rights, Rowman & Allanheld, 1985,
33. and Judith Thomson, The Realm of Rights, Harvard University Press, 1990, can be read in this way. There is yet another possible stance here: one could also accept the affective criteria and argue that animals do not qualify as rightsholders on these grounds either. R.G. Frey does so in Interests and Rights, Clarendon, 1980, but he is also an agnostic about rights, for humans or animals (see chapter one). I will have more to say about Frey in the last section of this paper.
34. His major statement is Animal Liberation, 2nd ed., Avon, 1990.
35. See also his Practical Ethics, Cambridge, 1979, chapters 3-5.
36. The best evidence for the incidence of pain and suffering is found in the many studies which have been conducted on hunting-caused animal crippling. A few examples: a four-year study in Iowa revealed that 27% of white-tailed deer taken by hunters were not killed outright but were mortally wounded, their bodies retrieved later; see F.A. Stormer, et al., "Hunter-Inflicted Wounding in White-Tailed Deer," Wildlife Society Bulletin 7, (1979): 11-13.
37. Over a three-year period, research on duck hunting in Minnesota showed a 15% crippling rate; see R.E. Kirby, et al., "Recuperation from Crippling in Ducks," Wildlife Society Bulletin 9, (1981): 151-52.
38. An early study of hunter wounding showed a 24% crippling rate in mallards; see F.C. Bellrose, "A Preliminary Evaluation of Cripple Losses in Waterfowl," Transactions of the North American Wildlife Conference, 18 (1953): 358-59.
39. "Environmental Ethics and the Case for Hunting."
40. See National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife Associated Recreation, U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1991. For example, in 1991 Minnesota hunters produced $290 million in direct expenditures; this includes licensing fees, equipment, and trip-related expenses such as food, gas, and lodging (pp. 8-9).
41. Robert Loftin makes this point in "The Morality of Hunting," Environmental Ethics, 6 (1984): 244-45.
42. For one poignant example, see David Brown, The Wolf in the Southwest, University of Arizona Press, 1984.
43. Stephen Kellert, Policy Implications of a National Study of American Attitudes and Behavioral Relations to Animals, Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, 1978: 19-24. Among other things, the study indicates that 29% of respondents advocate a total ban on hunting.
44. "The Morality of Hunting": 241-50.
45. Loftin's defense is also not touched by the criticism of Maurice Wade in "Animal Liberationism, Ecocentrism, and the Morality of Sport Hunting," Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 17 (1990): 15-27. Wade thinks the major problem is that utilitarianism could justify huntinghumans (p. 18). Loftin's argument (see below) could not have this consequence. Curiously, although both King and Wade cite Loftin's paper, neither ever mentions this argument.
46. Singer, "Killing Humans and Killing Animals," Inquiry, 22 (1979): 151-52.
47. "Killing Humans and Killing Animals": 156, note 19, though Singer is willing "to give the chicken the benefit of the doubt."
48. Another member of this camp is Holmes Rolston, but he also injects elements of Ortega Y Gasset's "primitivist defense."
49. See Environmental Ethics, Temple University Press, 1988: 88-93.
50. See Round River, Oxford University Press, 1953,
51. for firsthand accounts of some of Leopold's hunts, and the numerous entries for Leopold as hunter in Curt Meine, Aldo Leopold, His Life and Work, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.
52. The University of Wisconsin Press, 1986 (first published 1933).
53. Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, Oxford University Press, 1949: 223-25.
54. There is some reason for skepticism about these monetary benefits. During fiscal 1993, the budget of the Arizona Game and Fish Department was about $16.5 million but only $500,000 (3%) was spent on the acquisition of waterfowl habitat. And that money came from a Capital Outlay Bill from the State Legislature: taxpayers in general, not hunters in particular. See State of Arizona Appropriations Report, Joint Legislative Budget Committee, 1994: 462-63. Although some have argued that hunting is ecologically destructive, the evidence suggests otherwise (see below).
55. Bill Devall and George Sessions, Deep Ecology, Living as if Nature Mattered, Peregrine Smith, 1985: 86.
56. For a specific case of the environmentally devastating effects of human population spillover, apropos, to my Afrikaaner hunters argument, see Paul Ehrlich, "Brazil's Imperiled Rain Forest," National Geographic, 174 (1988): 772-817.
57. For a full-blown treatment of the problem, see his (with 'Ann Ehrlich) The Population Explosion, Simon & Schuster, 1991.
58. In Defense of the Land Ethic, State University of New York Press, 1989: 93.
59. Callicott: 21. The reference to a single deer is ecologically naive; the killing of just one deer would have no effect whatever on an ecosystem degraded by overpopulation. More likely some dozens or even hundreds would have to be killed. The infamous case of a population irruption on the Kaibab Plateau of northern Arizona in the 1920s saw thousands of deer destroyed before the ecosystem was restabilized. For details, see John Russo, The North Kaibab Deer Herd, Wildlife Bulletin 7 (1967), Arizona Fish and Game Department.
60. Callicott: 52-57. The concept of a mixed community is borrowed from Mary Midgley, Animals and Why They Matter, University of Georgia Press, 1983: chapter 10.
61. A Treatise of Human Nature, 1739, Book III, part iii, section 1.
62. Among the more incisive objections are those raised by Paul Taylor, "Inherent Value and Moral Rights,"
63. and Jan Narveson, "On a Case for Animal Rights," both in The Monist, 70 (1987): 15-30, 31-49;
64. David Ost, "The Case Against Animal Rights," The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 24 (1986): 365-73;
65. and J. Baird Callicott, "Review of Tom Regan, The Case For Animal Rights,", repr. in In Defense of the Land Ethic:, 39-47.
66. "Ecology, Morality, and Hunting," Ethics and Animals, H.B. Miller and W. Williams, eds., Humana Press, 1983:183-97.
67. Harm to Others, Oxford University Press, 1984: 33.
68. Interests and Rights, Clarendon, 1980: 72. Actually, Frey holds that desiring x requires that "I believe that I am deficient in respect of" x. There is reason to think that this is inaccurate. There seems to be nothing wrong with saying that a man can desire his wife, patience, health, and friendship while at the same time having all of these. To get around this problem, and maintain Frey's point, I have amended the belief statement to a weaker claim, leaving it open what exactly A believes about x.
69. The view is taken from a remark Joel Feinberg makes in "The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations," Philosophy & Environmental Crisis, W.T. Blackstone, ed., University of Georgia Press, 1974: 52. There, Feinberg (not known as a philosopher of mind) simply asserts that desires "presuppose something like belief, or cognitive awareness" (emphasis altered).
70. In his "Introduction" to The Ways of Desire, Precedent Publishing, 1986, editor Joel Marks comments (p. 13) that although the relationship between desire and belief "has long been sensed⋯it has seldom been the subject of scrutiny in its own right."
71. For example, Robert Stalnaker, Inquiry, MIT Press, 1984:15.
72. Dennis Stampe, "Defining Desire," The Ways of Desire", 149-73. Nor is there any mention here of a linguistic requirement.
73. Do Animals Have Beliefs?" Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 57 (1979): 15-28.
74. Stich's "belief-desire psychological theory" (sketched on pp. 15-17) suggests a close connection between the two. Stich himself does not draw any moral consequences in this article.
75. On Animal Beliefs," The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 20 (1982): 503-512.
76. SDeath, Misfortune, and Species Inequality," Philosophy and Public Affairs, 10 (1980): 57-58. The concept of a "categorical desire" is adopted from Bernard Williams. I am taking "misfortune" and "harm" as synonymous, though Cigman herself never equates the two.
77. Thomas Nagel's definitive statement of the problem, along with his solution, is found in Mortal Questions, Cambridge, 1979: 1-10.