Paul Kurtz

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Paul Kurtz
Born	Paul Winter Kurtz December 21, 1925 Newark, New Jersey, United States
Died	October 20, 2012 (aged 86) Amherst, New York
Alma mater	New York University Columbia University
Era	20th-century philosophy
School	Scientific skepticism, secular humanism
Main interests	Philosophy of religion, Secularism, philosophical naturalism

Paul Kurtz (December 21, 1925 – October 20, 2012) was a prominent American scientific skeptic and secular humanist. He has been called "the father of secular humanism". He was Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, having previously also taught at Vassar, Trinity, and Union colleges, and the New School for Social Research.

Kurtz founded the publishing house Prometheus Books in 1969. He was also the founder and past chairman of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI, formerly the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, CSICOP), the Council for Secular Humanism, and the Center for Inquiry. He was editor in chief of Free Inquiry magazine, a publication of the Council for Secular Humanism.

He was co-chair of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) from 1986 to 1994. He was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Humanist Laureate, president of the International Academy of Humanism and Honorary Associate of Rationalist International. As a member of the American Humanist Association, he contributed to the writing of Humanist Manifesto II. He was an editor of The Humanist, 1967–78.

Kurtz published over 800 articles or reviews and authored and edited over 50 books. Many of his books have been translated into over 60 languages.

Early years

Kurtz was born in Newark, New Jersey, into a Jewish family, the son of Sara Lasser and Martin Kurtz. Kurtz received his bachelor's degree from New York University, and the Master's degree and Doctor of Philosophy degree from Columbia University. Kurtz was left-wing in his youth, but has said that serving in the United States Army in World War II taught him the dangers of ideology. He saw the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps after they were liberated, and became disillusioned with Communism when he encountered Russian slave laborers who had been taken to Nazi Germany by force but refused to return to the Soviet Union at the end of the war.

Kurtz addresses the Banquet at the 1983 CSICOP Conference in Buffalo, NY

Secular humanism

Kurtz was largely responsible for the secularization of humanism. Before Kurtz embraced the term "secular humanism," which had received wide publicity through fundamentalist Christians in the 1980s, humanism was more widely perceived as a religion (or a pseudoreligion) that did not include the supernatural. This can be seen in the first article of the original Humanist Manifesto which refers to "Religious Humanists" and by Charles and Clara Potter's influential 1930 book Humanism: A New Religion.

Kurtz used the publicity generated by fundamentalist preachers to grow the membership of the Council for Secular Humanism, as well as strip the religious aspects found in the earlier humanist movement. He founded the Center for Inquiry in 1991. There are now some 40 Centers and Communities worldwide, including in Los Angeles, Washington, New York City, London, Amsterdam, Warsaw, Moscow, Beijing, Hyderabad, Toronto, Dakar, Buenos Aires and Kathmandu. 

In 1999 Kurtz was given the International Humanist Award by the International Humanist and Ethical Union. He had been a board member of IHEU between 1969 and 1994, and in a tribute by former colleague at both IHEU and the Council for Secular Humanism Matt Cherry, Kurtz was described as having "had a strong commitment to international humanism – a commitment to humanism beyond US borders never seen matched by another American. He did a lot to expand IHEU as a member of the IHEU Growth and Development Committee (with Levi Fragell and Rob Tielman) and then when he was co-chair, also with Rob and Levi. He always pushed IHEU to be bigger and bolder."

In 2000 he received the International Rationalist Award by Rationalist International. In 2001, he debated Christian philosopher William Lane Craig over the nature of morality.

Kurtz believed that the nonreligious members of the community should take a positive view on life. Religious skepticism, according to Paul Kurtz, is only one aspect of the secular humanistic outlook. In an interview with D.J. Grothe, he stated that a categorical imperative of secular humanism is "genuine concern for the well-being of other humans."

At the Council of Secular Humanism's Los Angeles conference (7–10 October 2010), tension over the future of humanism was on display as Kurtz urged a more accommodationist approach to religion while his successors argued for a more adversarial approach.

On May 18, 2010, he resigned from all these positions. Moreover, the Center for Inquiry accepted his resignation as chairman emeritus, board member, and as editor in chief of Free Inquiry as being the culmination of a years-long "leadership transition", thanking him "for his decades of service" while also alluding to "concerns about Dr. Kurtz's day-to-day management of the organization". Kurtz renewed his efforts in organized humanism by founding The Institute for Science and Human Values and its journal The Human Prospect: A NeoHumanist Perspective in June 2010.

Critique of the paranormal

Ray Hyman, Paul Kurtz, James Randi, and Ken Frazier at TAM8, July 2010, Las Vegas, after their session on the history of the modern skeptical movement

 

Another aspect in Kurtz's legacy is his critique of the paranormal. In 1976, CSICOP started Skeptical Inquirer, its official journal. Like Martin Gardner, Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, James Randi, Ray Hyman and others, Kurtz has popularized scientific skepticism and critical thinking about claims of the paranormal. 

Concerning the founding of the modern skeptical movement, Ray Hyman states that in 1972, he, along with James Randi and Martin Gardner, wanted to form a skeptical group called S.I.R. (Sanity In Research). The three of them felt they had no administration experience, saying "we just had good ideas", and were soon joined by Marcello Truzzi who provided structure for the group. Truzzi involved Paul Kurtz and they together formed CSICOP in 1976.

Kurtz wrote:

[An] explanation for the persistence of the paranormal, I submit, is due to the transcendental temptation. In my book by that name, I present the thesis that paranormal and religious phenomena have similar functions in human experience; they are expressions of a tendency to accept magical thinking. This temptation has such profound roots within human experience and culture that it constantly reasserts itself.

In The Transcendental Temptation, Kurtz analyzes how provable are the claims of Jesus, Moses, and Muhammad, as well as the founders of religions on American soil such as Joseph Smith and Ellen White. He also evaluates the activities of the most famous modern psychics and what he believes are the fruitless researches of parapsychologists. The Transcendental Temptation is considered among Kurtz's most influential writings.

He promoted what he called "Skepticism of the Third Kind," in which skeptics actively investigate claims of the paranormal, rather than just question them. He saw this type of skepticism as distinct from the "first kind" of extreme philosophical skepticism, which questions the possibility that anything can be known, as well as the "second kind" of skepticism, which accepts that knowledge of the real world is possible but is still largely a philosophical exercise.

On 19 April 2007, Kurtz appeared on Penn & Teller's television show Bullshit! arguing that exorcism and Satanic cults are merely "hype and paranoia".

The office of Paul Kurtz at Center for Inquiry Transnational, Amherst, NY

Eupraxsophy

Kurtz coined the term eupraxsophy (originally eupraxophy) to refer to philosophies or life stances such as secular humanism and Confucianism that do not rely on belief in the transcendent or supernatural. A eupraxsophy is a nonreligious life stance or worldview emphasizing the importance of living an ethical and exuberant life, and relying on rational methods such as logic, observation and science (rather than faith, mysticism or revelation) toward that end. The word is based on the Greek words for "good", "practice", and "wisdom". Eupraxsophies, like religions, are cosmic in their outlook but eschew the supernatural component of religion, avoiding the "transcendental temptation," as Kurtz puts it. Although critical of supernatural religion, he has attempted to develop affirmative ethical values of naturalistic humanism.

The Paul Kurtz Lecture Series

In June 2010, the State University of New York at Buffalo announced the establishment of the Paul Kurtz Lecture Series. The series will bring notable speakers to the University's campus in Amherst, New York, to speak on topics relevant to the philosophy of humanism and philosophical naturalism. Kurtz had made the bequest and charitable gift annuity to the University, where he taught from 1965 to 1991, to help promote the development of critical intelligence in future generations of SUNY at Buffalo students. On November 5, 2010, the University announced that cognitive scientist Steven Pinker would inaugurate the new Paul Kurtz Lecture Series on December 2, 2010.

Institute for Science and Human Values

Paul Kurtz conceived of the Institute for Science and Human Values in 2009 as yet another branch of the umbrella group, the Center for Inquiry. Upon his resignation from the Center for Inquiry he launched the Institute for Science and Human Values as a separate entity. In ISHV's first press release Kurtz said ISHV hoped to "rehumanize secularism" and "find out how to better develop the common moral virtues that we share as human beings." Kurtz was editor-in-chief of ISHV's journal, The Human Prospect: A NeoHumanist Perspective.

Honors

The asteroid 6629 Kurtz was named in his honor.

At a meeting of the executive council of CSI in Denver, Colorado in April 2011, Kurtz was selected for inclusion in CSI's Pantheon of Skeptics. The Pantheon of Skeptics was created by CSI to remember the legacy of deceased fellows of CSI and their contributions to the cause of scientific skepticism.

Gallery

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  Philosopher Paul Kurtz (left) and author Martin Gardner at a CSICOP executive council meeting in 1979
  
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  UFO Panel at the 1983 CSICOP Conference, Buffalo, NY with Robert Sheaffer (far right).
  

Bibliography

• The Humanist Alternative (Paul Kurtz, editor), 1973, Prometheus Books, ISBN 0-87975-013-8
• Exuberance: An Affirmative Philosophy of Life 1978, Prometheus Books, ISBN 0-87975-293-9
• A Secular Humanist Declaration 1980, ISBN 0-87975-149-5
• Sidney Hook: Philosopher of Democracy and Humanism 1983, ISBN 0-87975-191-6
• In Defense of Secular Humanism 1983, Prometheus Books, ISBN 0-87975-228-9
• The Transcendental Temptation: A Critique of Religion and the Paranormal, 1986 ISBN 0-87975-645-4
• A Skeptic's Handbook of Parapsychology (Paul Kurtz, editor), 1985, Prometheus Books, ISBN 0-87975-300-5
• Forbidden Fruit: The Ethics of Humanism, 1988, Prometheus Books, ISBN 0-87975-455-9
• The New Skepticism: Inquiry and Reliable Knowledge, 1992, Prometheus Books, ISBN 0-87975-766-3
• Challenges to the Enlightenment: In Defense of Reason and Science by Paul Kurtz, et al., 1994 ISBN 0-87975-869-4
• Living Without Religion: Eupraxophy, 1994, Prometheus Books, ISBN 0-87975-929-1
• Toward a New Enlightenment: The Philosophy of Paul Kurtz (Tim Madigan, editor; Vern Bullough, Introduction), 1994, Transaction, ISBN 1-56000-118-6
• The Courage to Become, 1997, Praeger/Greenwood, ISBN 0-275-96016-1
• Embracing the Power of Humanism, 2000, Rowman & Littlefield, ISBN 0-8476-9966-8
• Humanist Manifesto 2000, 2000, ISBN 1-57392-783-X
• Skepticism and Humanism: The New Paradigm, 2001 ISBN 0-7658-0051-9
• Science and Religion by Paul Kurtz, et al., 2003 ISBN 1-59102-064-6
• Affirmations: Joyful And Creative Exuberance, 2004 ISBN 1-59102-265-7
• What Is Secular Humanism?, 2006 ISBN 1-59102-499-4
• The Turbulent Universe, 2013, Prometheus Books, ISBN 978-1-61614-735-8

Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (partial)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

Abbreviation	CSI
Formation	1976
Type	Nonprofit organization (1976–2015) Program of the Center for Inquiry (2015–present)
Purpose	Skeptical inquiry of paranormal claims
Headquarters	Amherst, New York, United States
Region served	Worldwide
Executive director	Barry Karr
Website	csicop.org

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), formerly known as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), is a program within the transnational American non-profit educational organization Center for Inquiry (CFI), which seeks to "promote scientific inquiry, critical investigation, and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims." Paul Kurtz proposed the establishment of CSICOP in 1976 as an independent non-profit organization (before merging with CFI as one of its programs in 2015), to counter what he regarded as an uncritical acceptance of, and support for, paranormal claims by both the media and society in general. Its philosophical position is one of scientific skepticism. CSI's fellows have included notable scientists, Nobel laureates, philosophers, psychologists, educators and authors. It is headquartered in Amherst, New York.

History

The Banquet at the 1983 CSICOP Conference in Buffalo, NY

In the early 1970s, there was an upsurge of interest in the paranormal in the United States. This generated concern in some quarters, where it was seen as part of a growing tide of irrationalism. In 1975, secular humanist philosopher and professor Paul Kurtz had previously initiated a statement, "Objections to Astrology", which was co-written with Bart Bok and Lawrence E. Jerome, and endorsed by 186 scientists including 19 Nobel laureates and published in the American Humanist Association (AHA)'s newsletter The Humanist, of which Kurtz was then editor. According to Kurtz, the statement was sent to every newspaper in the United States and Canada. The positive reaction to this statement encouraged Kurtz to invite "as many skeptical researchers as [he] could locate" to the 1976 conference with the aim of establishing a new organization dedicated to examining critically a wide range of paranormal claims. Among those invited were Martin Gardner, Ray Hyman, James Randi, and Marcello Truzzi, all members of the Resources for the Scientific Evaluation of the Paranormal (RSEP), a fledgling group with objectives similar to those CSI would subsequently adopt.

RSEP disbanded and its members, along with others such as Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, B.F. Skinner, and Philip J. Klass, joined Kurtz, Randi, Gardner and Hyman to formally found the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). Kurtz, Randi, Gardner and Hyman took seats on the executive board. CSICOP was officially launched at a specially convened conference of the AHA on April 30 and May 1, 1976. CSICOP would be funded with donations and sales of their magazine, Skeptical Inquirer.

According to the published correspondence between Gardner and Truzzi, disagreements over what CSICOP should be showed how volatile the beginnings of the organization were. Truzzi criticised CSICOP for "acted(ing) more like lawyers" taking on a position of dismissal before evaluating the claims, saying that CSICOP took a "debunking stance". Gardner on the other hand "opposed 'believers' in the paranormal becoming CSICOP members" which Truzzi supported. Gardner felt that Truzzi "conferred too much respectability to nonsense".

Mission statement

The formal mission statement, approved in 2006 and still current, states:

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry promotes science and scientific inquiry, critical thinking, science education, and the use of reason in examining important issues. It encourages the critical investigation of controversial or extraordinary claims from a responsible, scientific point of view and disseminates factual information about the results of such inquiries to the scientific community, the media, and the public.

A shorter version of the mission statement appears in every issue: "... promotes scientific inquiry, critical investigation, and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims." A previous mission statement referred to "investigation of paranormal and fringe-science claims", but the 2006 change recognized and ratified a wider purview for CSI and its magazine, Skeptical Inquirer, that includes "new sciencerelated issues at the intersection of science and public concerns, while not ignoring [their] core topics". A history of the first two decades is available in The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal published in 1998 by S.I. editor Kendrick Frazier. In 2018, Frazier reemphasized the importance of the Committee's work by saying that "[w]e need independent, evidence-based, science-based critical investigation and inquiry ow more than perhaps at any other time in our history."

Name

Paul Kurtz was inspired by the 1949 Belgian organization Comité Para, whose full name was Comité Belge pour l'Investigation Scientifique des Phénomènes Réputés Paranormaux ("Belgian Committee for Scientific Investigation of Purported Paranormal Phenomena"). In 1976, the proposed name was "Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and Other Phenomena" which was shortened to "Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal." The initial acronym, "CSICP" was difficult to pronounce and so was changed to "CSICOP." According to James Alcock, it was never intended to be "Psi Cop", a nickname that some of the group's detractors adopted.

In November 2006, CSICOP further shortened its name to "Committee for Skeptical Inquiry" (CSI), pronounced C-S-I. The reasons for the change were to create a name that was shorter, more "media-friendly", to remove "paranormal" from the name, and to reflect more accurately the actual scope of the organization with its broader focus on critical thinking, science, and rationality in general, and because "it includes the root words of our magazine's title, the Skeptical Inquirer".

Activities

In order to carry out its mission, the Committee "maintains a network of people interested in critically examining paranormal, fringe science, and other claims, and in contributing to consumer education; prepares bibliographies of published materials that carefully examine such claims;encourages research by objective and impartial inquiry in areas where it is needed; convenes conferences and meetings; publishes articles that examine claims of the paranormal; does not reject claims on a priori grounds, antecedent to inquiry, but examines them objectively and carefully".

Standard

An axiom often repeated among CSI members is the quote "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", which Carl Sagan made famous and adapted from an earlier quote by Marcello Truzzi: "An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof". (Truzzi in turn traced the idea back through the Principle of Laplace to the philosopher David Hume.)

According to CSI member Martin Gardner, CSI regularly puts into practice H. L. Mencken's maxim "one horse-laugh is worth a thousand syllogisms."

Publications

Logo of the Skeptical Inquirer.

CSI publishes the magazine Skeptical Inquirer, which was founded by Truzzi, under the name The Zetetic and retitled after a few months under the editorship of Kendrick Frazier, former editor of Science News. Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope calls Skeptical Inquirer "one of the nation's leading antifruitcake journals". In addition, it publishes Skeptical Briefs, a quarterly newsletter published for associate members.

CSI conducts and publishes investigations into Bigfoot and UFO sightings, psychics, astrologers, alternative medicine, religious cults, and paranormal or pseudoscientific claims.

Conferences

Barbara Forrest participating in the "Creation and Evolution" panel at CSICon 2011 in New Orleans.

Bill Nye speaking about science education at CSICon 2013 in Tacoma, Washington.

CSI Staff at CSICon Halloween Party 2016

CSICOP has held dozens of conferences between 1983 and 2005, two of them in Europe, and all six World Skeptics Congresses so far were sponsored by it. Since 2011, the conference is known as CSICon. Two conventions have been held in conjunction with its sister and parent organizations, CSH and CFI, in 2013 and 2015. The conferences bring together some of the most prominent figures in scientific research, science communication and skeptical activism, to exchange information on all topics of common concern and to strengthen the movement and community of skeptics.

CSI has also supported local grassroot efforts, such as SkeptiCamp community-organized conferences.

Response to mass media

Many CSI activities are oriented towards the media. As CSI's former executive director Lee Nisbet wrote in the 25th-anniversary issue of the group's journal, Skeptical Inquirer:

CSICOP originated in the spring of 1976 to fight mass-media exploitation of supposedly "occult" and "paranormal" phenomena. The strategy was twofold: First, to strengthen the hand of skeptics in the media by providing information that "debunked" paranormal wonders. Second, to serve as a "media-watchdog" group which would direct public and media attention to egregious media exploitation of the supposed paranormal wonders. An underlying principle of action was to use the mainline media's thirst for public-attracting controversies to keep our activities in the media, hence public eye.

Involvement with mass media continues to the present day with, for example, CSI founding the Council for Media Integrity in 1996, and co-producing a TV documentary series Critical Eye hosted by William B. Davis. CSI members can be seen regularly in the mainstream media offering their perspective on a variety of paranormal claims. In 1999 Joe Nickell was appointed special consultant on a number of investigative documentaries for the BBC. As a media-watchdog, CSI has "mobilized thousands of scientists, academics and responsible communicators" to criticize what it regards as "media's most blatant excesses." Criticism has focused on factual TV programming or newspaper articles offering support for paranormal claims, and programs such as The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which its members believe portray skeptics and science in a bad light and help to promote belief in the paranormal. CSI's website currently lists the email addresses of over ninety U.S. media organizations and encourages visitors to "directly influence" the media by contacting "the networks, the TV shows and the editors responsible for the way [they portray] the world."

Following pseudoscientific and paranormal belief trends

CSI was quoted to consider pseudoscience topics to include yogic flying, therapeutic touch, astrology, fire walking, voodoo, magical thinking, Uri Geller, alternative medicine, channeling, psychic hotlines and detectives, near-death experiences, unidentified flying objects (UFOs), the Bermuda Triangle, homeopathy, faith healing, and reincarnation. CSI changes its focus with the changing popularity and prominence of what it considers to be pseudoscientific and paranormal belief. For example, as promoters of intelligent design increased their efforts to include it in school curricula in recent years, CSI stepped up its attention to the subject, creating an "Intelligent Design Watch" website publishing numerous articles on evolution and intelligent design in Skeptical Inquirer and on the Internet.

Health and safety

CSI is concerned with paranormal or pseudoscientific claims that may endanger people's health or safety, such as the use of alternative medicine in place of science-based healthcare. Investigations by CSI and others, including consumer watchdog groups, law enforcement and government regulatory agencies, have shown that the sale of alternative medicines, paranormal paraphernalia, or pseudoscience-based products can be enormously profitable. CSI says this profitability has provided various pro-paranormal groups large resources for advertising, lobbying efforts, and other forms of advocacy, to the detriment of public health and safety.

Organization

Umbrella organization

The Center for Inquiry is the transnational non-profit umbrella organization comprising CSI, the Council for Secular Humanism, the Center for Inquiry - On Campus national youth group and the Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health. These organizations share headquarters and some staff, and each have their own list of fellows and their distinct mandates. CSI generally addresses questions of religion only in cases in which testable scientific assertions have been made (such as weeping statues or faith healing).

Independent Investigation Group

The Center for Inquiry West, located in Hollywood, California Executive Director Jim Underdown founded the Independent Investigations Group (IIG), a volunteer-based organization in January 2000. The IIG investigates fringe science, paranormal and extraordinary claims from a rational, scientific viewpoint and disseminates factual information about such inquiries to the public. IIG has offered a $50,000 prize "to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event", to which 7 people applied from 2009-2012.

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  IIG testing Power Balance bracelet in progress, October 28, 2010 
  
  
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  Dominique Dawes and IIG's James Underdown discuss test protocols Oct 28, 2010
  

  Controversy and criticism

  

  Uri Geller filed a number of unsuccessful lawsuits against CSICOP

   

  CSI's activities have garnered criticism from individuals or groups which have been the focus of the organization's attention. Television celebrity and claimed psychic Uri Geller, for example, was until recently in open dispute with the organization, filing a number of unsuccessful lawsuits against them. Some criticism has also come from within the scientific community and at times from within CSI itself. Marcello Truzzi, one of CSICOP's co-founders, left the organization after only a short time, arguing that many of those involved "tend to block honest inquiry, in my opinion. Most of them are not agnostic toward claims of the paranormal; they are out to knock them. [...] When an experiment of the paranormal meets their requirements, then they move the goal posts." Truzzi coined the term pseudoskeptic to describe critics in whom he detected such an attitude.
  

  Mars effect, 1975

  An early controversy concerned the so-called Mars effect: French statistician Michel Gauquelin's claim that champion athletes are more likely to be born when the planet Mars is in certain positions in the sky. In late 1975, prior to the formal launch of CSICOP, astronomer Dennis Rawlins, along with Paul Kurtz, George Abell and Marvin Zelen (all subsequent members of CSICOP) began investigating the claim. Rawlins, a founding member of CSICOP at its launch in May 1976, resigned in early 1980 claiming that other CSICOP researchers had used incorrect statistics, faulty science, and outright falsification in an attempt to debunk Gauquelin's claims. In an article for the pro-paranormal magazine Fate, he wrote: "I am still skeptical of the occult beliefs CSICOP was created to debunk. But I have changed my mind about the integrity of some of those who make a career of opposing occultism." CSICOP's Philip J. Klass responded by circulating an article to CSICOP members critical of Rawlins' arguments and motives; Klass's unpublished response, refused publication by Fate, itself became the target for further criticism.
  

  Church of Scientology 1977

  In 1977, an FBI raid on the offices of the Church of Scientology uncovered a project to discredit CSICOP so that it and its publications would cease criticism of Dianetics and Scientology. This included forging a CIA memo and sending it to media sources, including The New York Times, to spread rumors that CSICOP was a front group for the CIA. A letter from CSICOP founder Paul Kurtz was forged to discredit him in the eyes of parapsychology researchers.
  

  Natasha Demkina, 2004

  In 2004, CSICOP was accused of scientific misconduct over its involvement in the Discovery Channel's test of the "girl with X-ray eyes", Natasha Demkina. In a self-published commentary, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Brian Josephson criticized the test and evaluation methods and argued that the results should have been deemed "inconclusive" rather than judged in the negative. Josephson, the director of the University of Cambridge's Mind–Matter Unification Project, questioned the researchers' motives, saying: "On the face of it, it looks as if there was some kind of plot to discredit the teenage claimed psychic by setting up the conditions to make it likely that they could pass her off as a failure." Ray Hyman, one of the three researchers who designed and conducted the test, published a response to this and other criticisms. CSI's Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health also published a detailed response to these and other objections, saying that the choice of critical level was appropriate, because her claims were unlikely to be true:
  

  I decided against setting the critical level at seven because this would require Natasha to be 100% accurate in our test. We wanted to give her some leeway. More important, setting the critical value at seven would make it difficult to detect a true effect. On the other hand, I did not want to set the critical value at four because this would be treating the hypothesis that she could see into people's bodies as if it were highly plausible. The compromise was to set the value at five.

  General criticism and reply

  On a more general level, proponents of parapsychology have accused CSI of pseudoskepticism, and an overly dogmatic and arrogant approach based on a priori convictions. A 1992 article in The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, an organ for the Parapsychological Association, suggests that CSI's aggressive style of skepticism could discourage scientific research into the paranormal. Astronomer Carl Sagan wrote on this in 1995:
  

  Have I ever heard a skeptic wax superior and contemptuous? Certainly. I've even sometimes heard, to my retrospective dismay, that unpleasant tone in my own voice. There are human imperfections on both sides of this issue. Even when it's applied sensitively, scientific skepticism may come across as arrogant, dogmatic, heartless, and dismissive of the feelings and deeply held beliefs of others ... CSICOP is imperfect. In certain cases [criticism of CSICOP] is to some degree justified. But from my point of view CSICOP serves an important social function – as a well-known organization to which media can apply when they wish to hear the other side of the story, especially when some amazing claim of pseudoscience is judged newsworthy ... CSICOP represents a counterbalance, although not yet nearly a loud enough voice, to the pseudoscience gullibility that seems second nature to so much of the media.

Ethics of eating meat

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Various types of meat.

 

The question of whether it is right to eat animal flesh is among the most prominent topics in food ethics. The most commonly given moral objection to meat-eating is that, for most people living in the developed world, it is not necessary for survival or health; some argue that slaughtering animals solely because people enjoy the taste of meat is wrong and morally unjustifiable.

Ethical vegetarians and ethical vegans may also object to the practices underlying the production of meat, or cite their concerns about animal welfare, animal rights, environmental ethics, and religious reasons. In response, some proponents of meat-eating have adduced various scientific, nutritional, cultural, and religious arguments in support of the practice. Some meat-eaters only object to rearing animals in certain ways, such as in factory farms, or killing them with cruelty; others avoid only certain meats, such as veal or foie gras.

Overview of the argument against meat eating

Cattle carcasses inside of a slaughterhouse.

 

Peter Singer—Princeton University and University of Melbourne professor and pioneer of the animal liberation movement—has long argued that, if it is possible to survive and be healthy without eating meat, fish, dairy, or eggs, one ought to choose that option instead of causing unnecessary harm to animals. In Animal Liberation, Singer argued that, because non-human animals feel, they should be treated according to utilitarian ethics. Singer's work has since been widely built upon by philosophers, both those who agree and those who do not, and it has been applied by animal rights advocates as well as by ethical vegetarians and vegans. 

Ethical vegetarians say that the reasons for not hurting or killing animals are similar to the reasons for not hurting or killing humans. They argue that killing an animal, like killing a human, can only be justified in extreme circumstances; consuming a living creature just for its taste, for convenience, or out of habit is not justifiable. Some ethicists have added that humans, unlike other animals, are morally conscious of their behavior and have a choice; this is why there are laws governing human behavior, and why it is subject to moral standards.

Ethical vegetarian concerns have become more widespread in developed countries, particularly because of the spread of factory farming, more open and graphic documentation of what human meat-eating entails for the animal, and environmental consciousness. Some proponents of meat-eating argue that the current mass demand for meat has to be satisfied with a mass-production system, regardless of the welfare of animals. Less radical proponents argue that practices like well-managed free-range rearing and the consumption of hunted animals, particularly from species whose natural predators have been significantly eliminated, could satisfy the demand for mass-produced meat. Reducing the worldwide massive food waste would also contribute to reduce meat waste and therefore save animals. Indeed, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, about a third of the food for human consumption is wasted globally (around 1.3 billion tons per year).

Some have described unequal treatment of humans and animals as a form of speciesism such as anthropocentrism or human-centeredness. Val Plumwood (1993, 1996) has argued that anthropocentrism plays a role in green theory that is analogous to androcentrism in feminist theory and ethnocentrism in anti-racist theory. Plumwood calls human-centredness "anthropocentrism" to emphasize this parallel. By analogy with racism and sexism, Melanie Joy has dubbed meat-eating "carnism". The animal rights movement seeks an end to the rigid moral and legal distinction drawn between human and non-human animals, an end to the status of animals as property, and an end to their use in the research, food, clothing, and entertainment industries. Peter Singer, in his ethical philosophy of what it is to be a "person", argues that livestock animals feel enough to deserve better treatment than they receive. Many thinkers have questioned the morality not only of the double standard underlying speciesism but also the double standard underlying the fact that people support treatment of cows, pigs, and chickens that they would never allow with pet dogs, cats, or birds.

Jay Bost, agroecologist and winner of The New York Times' essay contest on the ethics of eating meat, summarized his argument in the following way: "eating meat raised in specific circumstances is ethical; eating meat raised in other circumstances is unethical" in regard to environmental usage. He proposes that if "ethical is defined as living in the most ecologically benign way, then in fairly specific circumstances, of which each eater must educate himself, eating meat is ethical." The specific circumstances he mentions include using animals to cycle nutrients and convert sun to food. Ethicists like Tom Regan and Peter Singer define "ethical" in terms of suffering rather than ecology. Mark Rowlands argues that the real determinant of whether it is ethical to cause suffering is whether there is any vital need to cause it; if not, then causing it is unethical.

Animal consciousness

Shorthorn heifers, a typical multipurpose breed of cattle.

 

Ethologist Jane Goodall stated in the 2009 book The Inner World of Farm Animals that "farm animals feel pleasure and sadness, excitement and resentment, depression, fear and pain. They are much more sensitive and intelligent than we ever imagined." In 2012, a group of well known neuroscientists stated in the "Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness in Non-Human Animals" that all mammals and birds (such as farm animals), and other animals, possess the neurological substrates that generate consciousness and are able to experience affective states. Eugene Linden, author of The Parrot's Lament, suggests that many examples of animal behavior and intelligence seem to indicate both emotion and a level of consciousness that we would normally ascribe only to our own species.

Philosopher Daniel Dennett counters:

Consciousness requires a certain kind of informational organization that does not seem to be "hard-wired" in humans, but is instilled by human culture. Moreover, consciousness is not a black-or-white, all-or-nothing type of phenomenon, as is often assumed. The differences between humans and other species are so great that speculations about animal consciousness seem ungrounded. Many authors simply assume that an animal like a bat has a point of view, but there seems to be little interest in exploring the details involved.

Philosophers Peter Singer (Princeton), Jeff McMahan (Oxford) and others also counter that the issue is not one of consciousness, but of sentience.

Pain

A related argument revolves around non-human organisms' ability to feel pain. If animals could be shown to suffer, as humans do, then many of the arguments against human suffering could be extended to animals. One such reaction is transmarginal inhibition, a phenomenon observed in humans and some animals akin to mental breakdown.

As noted by John Webster (emeritus professor of animal husbandry at the University of Bristol):

People have assumed that intelligence is linked to the ability to suffer and that because animals have smaller brains they suffer less than humans. That is a pathetic piece of logic, sentient animals have the capacity to experience pleasure and are motivated to seek it, you only have to watch how cows and lambs both seek and enjoy pleasure when they lie with their heads raised to the sun on a perfect English summer's day. Just like humans.

Influences on views of animal consciousness

When people choose to do things about which they are ambivalent and which they would have difficulty justifying, they experience a state of cognitive dissonance, which can lead to rationalization, denial, or even self-deception. For example, a 2011 experiment found that, when the harm that their meat-eating causes animals is explicitly brought to people's attention, they tend to rate those animals as possessing fewer mental capacities compared to when the harm is not brought to their attention. This is especially evident when people expect to eat meat in the near future. Such denial makes it less uncomfortable for people to eat animals. The data suggest that people who consume meat go to great lengths to try to resolve these moral inconsistencies between their beliefs and behaviour by adjusting their beliefs about what animals are capable of feeling. This perception can lead to paradoxical conclusions about the ethics and comfort involved in preferring certain types of meat over others. For example, venison or meat from a wild deer generally has a much higher nutritional quality and a much lower carbon footprint than meat from domestically-raised animals. In addition, it can be virtually assured that the deer was never bred or raised in unnatural conditions, confined to a cage, fed an unnatural diet of grain, or injected with any artificial hormones. However, since the necessary act of killing a deer to procure the venison is generally much more apparent to anyone who encounters this sort of meat, some people can be even more uncomfortable with eating this than meat from animals raised on factory farms. Many ethical vegetarians and ethical meat-eaters argue that it is behaviour rather than supporting beliefs that should be adjusted.

Environmental argument

A monocultivated potato field

 

Some people choose to be vegetarian or vegan for environmental reasons. 

According to a 2006 report by LEAD Livestock's Long Shadow, "the livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global." The livestock sector is probably the largest source of water pollution (due to animal wastes, fertilizers, and pesticides), contributing to eutrophication, human health problems, and the emergence of antibiotic resistance. It accounts also for over 8% of global human water use.

Livestock production is by far the biggest cause of land use, as it accounts for 40% of the global land surface. It is probably the leading player in biodiversity loss, as it causes deforestation, land degradation, pollution, climate change, and overfishing. A 2017 study by the World Wildlife Fund found that 60% of biodiversity loss can be attributed to the vast scale of feed crop cultivation needed to rear tens of billions of farm animals. Livestock is also responsible for at least 20% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, which are the main cause of the current climate change. This is due to feed production, enteric fermentation from ruminants, manure storage and processing, and transportation of animal products. The greenhouse gas emissions from livestock production greatly exceeds the greenhouse gas emissions of any other human activity. Some authors argue that by far the best thing we can do to slow climate change is a global shift towards a vegetarian or vegan diet. A 2017 study published in the journal Carbon Balance and Management found animal agriculture's global methane emissions are 11% higher than previously estimated. In November 2017, 15,364 world scientists signed a warning to humanity calling for, among other things, "promoting dietary shifts towards mostly plant-based foods." A 2019 report in The Lancet recommended that global meat consumption be reduced by 50 percent to mitigate climate change.

Animals that feed on grain or rely on grazing require more water than grain crops. Producing 1 kg of meat requires up to 15,000 liters of water. According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), growing crops for farm animals requires nearly half of the US water supply and 80% of its agricultural land. Animals raised for food in the US consume 90% of the soy crop, 80% of the corn crop, and 70% of its grain. However, where an extensive farming system (as opposed to a feedlot) is used, some water and nutrients are returned to the soil to provide a benefit to the pasture. This cycling and processing of water and nutrients is less prevalent in most plant production systems, so may bring the efficiency rate of animal production closer to the efficiency of plant based agricultural systems. In tracking food animal production from the feed through to the dinner table, the inefficiencies of meat, milk, and egg production range from a 4:1 energy input to protein output ratio up to 54:1. The result is that producing animal-based food is typically much less efficient than the harvesting of grains, vegetables, legumes, seeds, and fruits. 

There are also environmentalist arguments in favor of the morality of eating meat. One such line of argument holds that sentience and individual welfare are less important to morality than the greater ecological good. Following environmentalist Aldo Leopold's principle that the sole criterion for morality is preserving the "integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community", this position asserts that sustainable hunting and animal agriculture are environmentally healthy and therefore good.

Religious traditions of eating meat

Hinduism holds vegetarianism as an ideal for three reasons: the principle of nonviolence (ahimsa) applied to animals; the intention to offer only "pure" (vegetarian) or sattvic food to a deity and then to receive it back as prasad; and the conviction that an insentient diet is beneficial for a healthy body and mind and that non-vegetarian food is detrimental for the mind and for spiritual development. Buddhist vegetarianism has similar strictures against hurting animals. The actual practices of Hindus and Buddhists vary according to their community and according to regional traditions. Jains are especially rigorous about not harming sentient organisms.

Islamic Law and Judaism have dietary guidelines called Halal and Kashrut, respectively. In Judaism, meat that may be consumed according to halakha (Jewish law) is termed kosher; meat that is not compliant with Jewish law is called treif. Causing unnecessary pain to animals is prohibited by the principle of tza'ar ba'alei chayim. While it is neither required nor prohibited for Jews to eat meat, a number of medieval scholars of Judaism, such as Joseph Albo and Isaac Arama, regard vegetarianism as a moral ideal.

In Christianity as practised by members of Eastern Orthodox Church, Roman Catholic Church, Greek Catholic Church, and others, it is prohibited to eat meat in times of fasting. Rules of fasting also vary. There are also Christian monastic orders that practice vegetarianism.

Criticisms and responses

Morals

It has been argued that a moral community requires all participants to be able to make moral decisions, but animals are incapable of making moral choices (e.g., a tiger would not refrain from eating a human because it was morally wrong; it would decide whether to attack based on its survival needs, as dictated by hunger). Thus, some opponents of ethical vegetarianism argue that the analogy between killing animals and killing people is misleading. For example, Hsiao (2015) compares the moral severity of harming animals to that of picking a flower or introducing malware into a computer. Others have argued that humans are capable of culture, innovation, and the sublimation of instinct in order to act in an ethical manner while animals are not, and so are unequal to humans on a moral level. This does not excuse cruelty, but it implies animals are not morally equivalent to humans and do not possess the rights a human has. The precise definition of a moral community is not simple, but Hsiao defines membership by the ability to know one's own good and that of other members, and to be able to grasp this in the abstract. He claims that non-human animals do not meet this standard.

Benjamin Franklin describes his conversion to vegetarianism in chapter one of his autobiography, but then he describes why he (periodically) ceased vegetarianism in his later life:

...in my first voyage from Boston...our people set about catching cod, and hauled up a great many. Hitherto I had stuck to my resolution of not eating animal food... But I had formerly been a great lover of fish, and, when this came hot out of the frying-pan, it smelt admirably well. I balanc'd some time between principle and inclination, till I recollected that, when the fish were opened, I saw smaller fish taken out of their stomachs; then thought I, "If you eat one another, I don't see why we mayn't eat you." So I din'd upon cod very heartily, and continued to eat with other people, returning only now and then occasionally to a vegetable diet. So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.

One study found that approximately 60% of contemporary professional ethicists consider it "morally bad" to eat meat from mammals. Writing in Current Affairs, Nathan J. Robinson describes the billions of non-human animals that suffer and die at the hands of human beings for consumption as a "holocaust" and, citing Jeremy Bentham's formulation "The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?" contends that it is "morally reprehensible" and "deeply wrong".

Animal welfare

Various programs operate in the US that promote the notion that animals raised for food can be treated humanely. Some spokespeople for the factory farming industry argue that the animals are better off in total confinement. For example, according to F J "Sonny" Faison, president of Carroll's Foods:

They're in state-of-the-art confinement facilities. The conditions that we keep these animals in are much more humane than when they were out in the field. Today they're in housing that is environmentally controlled in many respects. And the feed is right there for them all the time, and water, fresh water. They're looked after in some of the best conditions, because the healthier and [more] content that animal, the better it grows. So we're very interested in their well-being up to an extent.

In response, animal welfare advocates ask for evidence that any factory-bred animal is better off caged than free. Farm Sanctuary argue that commodifying and slaughtering animals is incompatible with the definition of "humane". Animal ethicists such as Gary Francione have argued that reducing animal suffering is not enough; it needs to be made illegal and abolished.

Non-chordates

Peter Singer has pointed out that the ethical argument for vegetarianism may not apply to all non-vegetarian food. For example, any arguments against causing pain to animals would not apply to animals that do not feel pain. It has also often been noted that, while it takes a lot more grain to feed some animals such as cows for human consumption than it takes to feed a human directly, not all animals consume land plants (or other animals that consume land plants). For example, oysters consume underwater plankton and algae. In 2010, Christopher Cox wrote:

Biologically, oysters are not in the plant kingdom, but when it comes to ethical eating, they are almost indistinguishable from plants. Oyster farms account for 95 percent of all oyster consumption and have a minimal negative impact on their ecosystems; there are even nonprofit projects devoted to cultivating oysters as a way to improve water quality. Since so many oysters are farmed, there's little danger of overfishing. No forests are cleared for oysters, no fertilizer is needed, and no grain goes to waste to feed them—they have a diet of plankton, which is about as close to the bottom of the food chain as you can get. Oyster cultivation also avoids many of the negative side effects of plant agriculture: There are no bees needed to pollinate oysters, no pesticides required to kill off other insects, and for the most part, oyster farms operate without the collateral damage of accidentally killing other animals during harvesting.

Cox went on to suggest that oysters would be acceptable to eat, even by strict ethical criteria, if they did not feel: "while you could give them the benefit of the doubt, you could also say that unless some new evidence of a capacity for pain emerges, the doubt is so slight that there is no good reason for avoiding eating sustainably produced oysters." Cox has added that, although he believes in some of the ethical reasons for vegetarianism, he is not strictly a vegan or even a vegetarian because he consumes oysters.

Animal and plant pain

Critics of ethical vegetarianism say that there is no agreement on where to draw the line between organisms that can and cannot feel. Justin Leiber, a philosophy professor at Oxford University, writes that:

Montaigne is ecumenical in this respect, claiming consciousness for spiders and ants, and even writing of our duties to trees and plants. Singer and Clarke agree in denying consciousness to sponges. Singer locates the distinction somewhere between the shrimp and the oyster. He, with rather considerable convenience for one who is thundering hard accusations at others, slides by the case of insects and spiders and bacteria, they pace Montaigne, apparently and rather conveniently do not feel pain. The intrepid Midgley, on the other hand, seems willing to speculate about the subjective experience of tapeworms ...Nagel ... appears to draw the line at flounders and wasps, though more recently he speaks of the inner life of cockroaches.

There are also some who argue that, although only suffering animals feel anguish, plants, like all organisms, have evolved mechanisms for survival. No living organism can be described as "wanting" to die for another organism's sustenance. In an article written for The New York Times, Carol Kaesuk Yoon argues that:

When a plant is wounded, its body immediately kicks into protection mode. It releases a bouquet of volatile chemicals, which in some cases have been shown to induce neighboring plants to pre-emptively step up their own chemical defenses and in other cases to lure in predators of the beasts that may be causing the damage to the plants. Inside the plant, repair systems are engaged and defenses are mounted, the molecular details of which scientists are still working out, but which involve signaling molecules coursing through the body to rally the cellular troops, even the enlisting of the genome itself, which begins churning out defense-related proteins ... If you think about it, though, why would we expect any organism to lie down and die for our dinner? Organisms have evolved to do everything in their power to avoid being extinguished. How long would any lineage be likely to last if its members effectively didn't care if you killed them?

Animals killed in crop harvesting

Steven Davis, a professor of animal science at Oregon State University, argues that the least harm principle does not require giving up all meat. Davis states that a diet containing beef from grass-fed ruminants such as cattle would kill fewer animals than a vegetarian diet, particularly when one takes into account animals killed by agriculture.

This conclusion has been criticized by Jason Gaverick Matheny (founder of in vitro meat organization New Harvest) because it calculates the number of animals killed per acre (instead of per consumer). Matheny says that, when the numbers are adjusted, Davis' argument shows veganism as perpetrating the least harm. Davis' argument has also been criticized by Andy Lamey for being based on only two studies that may not represent commercial agricultural practices. When differentiating between animals killed by farm machinery and those killed by other animals, he says that the studies again show veganism to do the "least harm".

Non-meat products

Egg-laying chickens in battery cages

 

One of the main differences between a vegan and a typical vegetarian diet is the avoidance of both eggs and dairy products such as milk, cheese, butter, and yogurt. Ethical vegans do not consume dairy or eggs because they believe their production causes animal suffering or premature death.

To produce milk from dairy cattle, most calves are separated from their mothers soon after birth and fed milk replacement in order to retain the cows' milk for human consumption. Animal welfare advocates point out that this breaks the natural bond between the mother and her calf. Unwanted male calves are either slaughtered at birth or sent for veal production. To prolong lactation, dairy cows are almost permanently kept pregnant through artificial insemination. Although cows' natural life expectancy is about twenty years, after about five years the cows' milk production has dropped; they are then considered "spent" and are sent to slaughter for meat and leather.

Battery cages are the predominant form of housing for laying hens worldwide; these cages reduce aggression and cannibalism among hens, but are barren, restrict movement, and increase rates of osteoporosis. In these systems and in free-range egg production, unwanted male chicks are culled and killed at birth during the process of securing a further generation of egg-laying hens. It is estimated that an average consumer of eggs who eats 200 eggs per year for 70 years of his or her life is responsible for the deaths of 140 birds, and that an average consumer of milk who drinks 190 kg per year for 70 years is responsible for the deaths of 2.5 cows.