ABSTRACT
Charges of this kind are a very common way of dismissing these scruples, and other scruples as well. Just what these charges mean, however, is not so clear as one might suppose. We badly need to get it clear, because the relation between emotion and reason is a very central crux of our lives. What else, besides emotion, is in general needed for a valid scruple, and how is its presence detected? ‘Emotivist’ theories of ethics have suggested that morality altogether is nothing but the expression of emotion, or of attitudes formed from it.1 If this were right, the complaint that scruples about animals were only this would be vacuous. But is it vacuous? What does it mean? We had better consider some examples. Here, for a start, is a piece from an article about controversy over the conditions of battery chickens (italics are mine throughout):
Next, with slightly more attempt at subtlety, part of a scientist’s defence
against criticisms of his piece of research entitled ‘Development of Grooming in Mice with Amputated Forelimbs’:
Next comes a piece which is rather different, because the scruples involved are ecological rather than humane and might just as well have applied to plants:
Then, because it is important to understand the charge in quite general terms, I add a piece (self-explanatory I think) on a quite different topic:
What charges are actually being made here? We all feel that some accusation or other is present. This impression is so strong that people often find that their most natural response is denial. We incline to say at once, ‘I have absolutely no emotion in the matter,’ and to say this even when it is plainly false. (‘Damn you, I haven’t lost my temper.’) We do that, of course, in order to avoid the related but much stronger charge of being actually overcome and carried away by emotion, of being so emotional that our thought is paralysed.
