This is a response to Twitch streamer Rem the Bath Boi’s completely ridiculous (this is his preferred rhetoric) and demonically awful (ditto) blog dropping titled “The Argument from Marginal Cases and the Foundations of Normativity.” Since some time was already devoted to digging into Rem’s “foundations” concerning morality, this post will be focusing on Rem’s grand foray into animal ethics, as he tries to posture his way into refuting the argument from marginal cases.
The argument from marginal cases can’t yeet
Relativist Rem, after announcing that he went over his animal ethics and bioethics notes, begins things by claiming that #NameTheTrait is just another iteration of the argument from marginal cases. This point was made over a year ago on this blog, so that won’t be contested.
Regardless, let’s see Rem’s humble approach to the topic:
. . . I will be calling this argument that Ask Yourself uses the Argument from Marginal Cases, because that is what it is. You know what else it is? Old and ineffective.
Ineffective in what way? In terms of persuasion? Thoughtful people are convinced by the argument to go vegan, or at least see the strength of the argument. It’s a shame (but perhaps unsurprising) that Rem lacks the intellectual honesty to do the same. Ineffective in terms of defensibility? Well, we’d hate to tell Rem to read before he runs his hairy lips, but let’s look at some quotes from Daniel Dombrowski’s Babies and Beasts: The Argument from Marginal Cases:
Both one of the most important opponents to animal rights (R.G. Frey) and one of the most important defenders of them (Dale Jamieson) agree that the AMC has been the most noteworthy argument put forward in defense of animals (p. 3-4).
. . . I examine the AMC from the perspective provided by Mary Anne Warren, Richard Watson, and several authors who have worked with Peter Singer on the great ape project. The AMC is very much alive and well (p. 5-6).
That said, Babies and Beasts: The Argument from Marginal Cases is a comprehensive account of the argument, and it would be unfair to expect Rem, a Twitch streamer who specializes in “meta-normativity and reasons, philosophy of language, meta-epistemology, and decision theory,” to be familiar with it. So, let’s look at Animals & Ethics 101: Thinking Critically About Animal Rights:
. . . anti-animal theorists tend to focus on necessary conditions, claiming that: We must take a being’s interests seriously, it’s wrong to harm it (except for very good reasons), we must respect it, etc., only if it is like this: ___. They then typically fill in that blank with rather cognitively advanced abilities: sophisticated reasoning, thinking about one’s thinking, intellectual achievement, religious worship, and so on.
Their challenge, of course, comes from the fact that many human beings lack such sophisticated minds, yet we think we must take their interests seriously. This problem for anti-animal theorists is known as the “argument from marginal cases.” To get around it, these theorists often attempt to do some intellectual acrobatics, trying to relate non-mentally sophisticated human beings (who seem to lack the stated necessary condition for, e.g., having any moral rights) to sophisticated human beings in peculiar ways. We will attempt to pin down their reasoning and see if it seems to be generally valid or is developed as an ad hoc response to this problem or worse (p. 40).
But forget all that because some narcissistic, Twitter-addicted teenager said that the argument is “ineffective” and later “ridiculous” and “has no force.” So, to those who are not a rugrat (smugrat), can one in good faith, even if one disagrees with its conclusion, see the AMC as “ineffective” and “ridiculous”? It appears to be one of the strongest arguments in favor of animal rights (or ethical veganism). If it’s not one of the strongest, then what is? Or is animal rights and ethical veganism that indefensible?
Fuzzy Lips Concept
Rem continues:
In reality, the thrust of the argument can be easily applied to any ‘concept’ that we would like. In the case of the vegan argument, it is being applied to the concept of ‘personhood’ or (if you want to keep that notion narrow) to the concept of ‘deserving of moral status’. Yet, we could equally apply it to any concept easily enough, like the concept ‘chair’. I could argue that we should call all sofas chairs because there are so many marginal cases that exist between them that to say that the two extensions of the concepts are mutually exclusive is impossible. This, of course, is a ridiculous argument and has no force. The natural, and correct response, to such an argument is to admit it is a fuzzy concept, as most concepts are. This means there will be edge cases that we have to be more wary about and (perhaps!) ultimately will have no definitive answer. In the case of these edge cases, we can be pragmatic (given our finite capacities) and simply say that they fall under the concept ‘chair’ or, in the vegan case, ‘deserving of moral status’.
First, Rem is trying to get away with making concepts mean whatever he wants by appealing to vagueness. This is an annoying sophistical trick. Even if “deserving of moral status” is vague, that does nothing to justify Rem in excluding animals or treating them as a borderline case. He still has to explain why animals are either excluded (while marginal humans aren’t) or a borderline case.
Next, keep in mind that, at this point in his blog dropping, Rem has not explicitly given the argument from marginal cases. He’s said a little bit about its history and how #NameTheTrait is the same argument, but he hasn’t laid the argument bare. There are a few good culprits which may explain what is happening. One being that, though the argument is simple, Rem may not understand the argument that well—a very real possibility, given that Rem has seemingly read nothing on animal ethics. Additionally, Rem has a habit of arguing dishonestly and in bad faith (here, here, and here). Lastly, making the argument clear would cut through some of the bloated rhetoric and posturing that Rem often relies upon to argue.
But the argument is straightforward. There’s no morally relevant difference between all humans and all non-human animals that permits exploiting the latter and not the former. This is the critical account of the argument. The positive account argues that the reasons as to why many humans are rights-holders or hold direct moral standing are reasons that equally apply to many animals. In short, talk of fuzzy concepts is a sophistical move and one that only weakly skirts around the AMC proponent.
So far in response to the AMC, Rem becomes a sorites reject with his fuzzy lips concepts. Playing “fuzzy concepts” like a Yu-Gi-Oh card is obviously more effective and has more force than the straightforward argument from marginal cases.
Naming the trait, bro: Currently or will probably have rationality
After all this hemming and hawing about fuzzy concepts, Rem just comes out and just gives what he believes to be a morally relevant difference that “completely [rebuts]” the argument from marginal cases:
If are [sic] then asked to determine the difference in properties that fall under the concept of ‘deserving of moral status’ we could choose something like ‘has currently or has a probability, within reason, of obtaining rationality’. This, in reality, is a complete rebuttal to the argument from marginal cases . . .
Rem the Scholarly Boi doesn’t know the difference between a “rebuttal” and a “response.” His “complete rebuttal” is just a restatement of similarly troubled criterion that the argument from marginal cases is objecting to initially. So, in repackaging and biting the bullet, he’s only succeeded in moving his lips to utter some response to the argument from marginal cases, not a “complete rebuttal.” And even if it is a rebuttal in a weak, trivial sense, Smugrat shouldn’t smugly treat it as a successful refutation, given that, as we’ll see in a bit, it still fails to overcome the problems brought on by the argument from marginal cases.
Rem:
. . . and also is not new: it has been used frequently in the literature on the philosophy of death by figures like Nagel, Silverstein, etc. It allows us to rule out all those ‘fringe cases’ that the vegan wants to pin us down on. Infants are now deserving of moral status because they will (in basically all cases) gain rationality. This also saves people who are in a coma or vegetative state, as there have been numerous cases where an individual in a vegetative state with essentially no hope of recovery has regained consciousness. Thus, thus [sic] probability that someone in a vegetative state regains consciousness can become high enough to fall under the concept. Cases of extreme disability become more difficult as these are cases where there hasn’t ever been treatment. But, scientific consensus on many of these disabilities has concluded that there is hope that our techniques will become powerful enough to subvert the symptoms and fall under ‘rationality’.
Other than this mystical appeal to science “subverting symptoms” of non-rationality, talk about not being new, indeed. Rem falls back on an insipid response to the argument from marginal cases that has some clear problems—the intelligibility of these problems must not be part of the necessary* preconditions of Rem’s experiences.
There’s two points to focus on here: First, the nonparadigmatic humans who were not born rational and have no reasonable chance of becoming rational are still an obvious counter to Rem’s “complete rebuttal” of the AMC; Second, Rem’s fuzzy-brained, arbitrary account for moral standing has more in common with a desperate defense of racism than any sort of serious moral philosophy.
Rem, Royalty, & the Raiders: How Rem Steps on a Rake & Ends Up Easy Prey for the AMC
For the first, Rem’s “complete rebuttal” is comical when it’s pompously given. The problem for Rem’s criterion here is that we have humans who will not (or have no reasonable chance through natural means to) become rational throughout their lives. So, think of the irreversibly severely mentally enfeebled who are born as such. People like this fall outside of Rem’s criterion of “has currently or has a probability, within reason, of obtaining rationality.” His solution?
. . . scientific consensus on many of these disabilities has concluded that there is hope that our techniques will become powerful enough to subvert the symptoms and fall under ‘rationality’.
Sorry, what? Aside from Rem citing nothing to back up this confident assertion of “scientific consensus,” is he being serious by saying that severely mentally enfeebled humans have moral standing simply because science might, say, create genius pills in the future?
For the honest person, clear problems abound.
Rem’s argument is that the reasonable likelihood of acquiring rationality is what makes mentally enfeebled humans deserving of moral status. However, this immediately falls apart, since such treatment for irrationality, if there ever will be one, will not be available anytime soon. For instance, consider a mentally enfeebled person who has 6 months (or less) left to live. Such a person would have no chance of receiving Rem’s sci-fi brain surgery. So, they would no longer qualify as “deserving of moral status” on Rem’s account.
Next, imagine earlier humans with far less scientific hopes and advancements. Did severely mentally enfeebled humans living in the Middle Ages share the same moral status as animals because it was not “within reason” at the time to create genius pills, edit their DNA, or whatever? Could Gilles de Rais, a 15th century baron and serial killer of children, permissibly torture and kill an orphan with Down syndrome for fun? Or would the child still be morally covered because, you know, “deserving of moral standing” is fuzzy and maybe in 500 or 50,000 years some scientists of their species might create genius pills or 3D print a new, rational brain? The arbitrariness of Rem’s response (sorry, “rebuttal”) to the argument from marginal cases could not be more apparent.
Right. So, that’s the pre-scientific humans, now imagine the post-scientific humans. Let’s imagine a post-apocalyptic world where humans are relatively low in number and expertise, but have plenty of supplies to survive comfortably. They are not repopulating quick enough (radroach meat made them sterile), and they will dwindle into extinction in the next generation. They also live simple lives, as most technology and scientific research has been destroyed or lost, and no one has the expertise or the knowledge to rebuild to our standards. There are severely mentally enfeebled people living during this post-apocalyptic, post-scientific world, but, as said before, there is no competition for supplies and they live decently enough. There’s no tragic dilemma in which they must be killed. Now, according to Rem, there would be no direct duty to not torture and kill these severely mentally enfeebled humans for fun. After all, there will be no genius pills in this scenario.
Rem:
. . . ‘has currently or has a probability, within reason, of obtaining rationality’.
Mojave raiders can permissibly kill and torture severely mentally enfeebled people for fun. What a great REBUTTAL to the argument from marginal cases, Rem. These reasons aside, maybe he should amend his criterion out of a sense of self-preservation, as we’re starting to doubt Rem’s capacity for rational thought.
Rem thinks it’s okay to torture and kill severely mentally enfeebled people for fun (unless there’s a reasonable chance to create genius pills in the future)
As hinted at earlier, Rem’s confused response to the AMC is more like that of a racist ethic rather than any sort of enlightening one, and this comes into focus when we see the arbitrariness of Rem’s criterion.
According to Rem, the reason why it’s wrong to torture and kill a severely mentally enfeebled human today (or why it may presumably be wrong in the past) is that (without the “selective pressures for rationality in place”) a member of the same species will, at an indeterminate time in the future, use Science® to make genius pills, 3D print a brain, etc., so that the mentally enfeebled may become rational.
Rem’s account of why it’s wrong to torture a severely mentally enfeebled person for fun:
“You shouldn’t torture that guy for fun. I know he’s not rational, but he’s a member of a group that currently has or has a probability, within reason, of obtaining rationality. You see, I saw a meme on IFLS that said that the scientific consensus is that we have hope that our future technologies will become powerful enough to make people like that torture victim rational. Thankfully, with this argument, you can still be lazy and pay to have animals tortured for pleasure, convenience, and custom. Dad, can you buy me a grilled cheese and give me rent money?”
The animal rights advocate’s account of why it’s wrong to torture a severely mentally enfeebled person for fun:
“You shouldn’t torture that guy for fun. Like you, what happens to him matters to him, he has interests he would rather fulfill than frustrate (such as the avoidance of pain), he’s aware of the world and his place in the world, and he has an experiential welfare that can go well or ill for him logically independent of the utility he provides to us or anyone else.”
Now, this isn’t to say which one will be more convincing to the sadist, but, rather, it’s to ask an honest person to think about the two different accounts of the moral standing of severely mentally enfeebled people, and consider which of the two offers an intuitive, better understanding of this moral question. Rem’s intellectually-lazy, blindingly obvious arbitrariness, or the animal rights account? We think only laziness, prejudice, dishonesty, and muddled thinking can lead one to Rem’s view.
Contrary to Rem’s posturing, his criterion easily falls prey to the argument from marginal cases (so, it’s far from a rebuttal). Additionally, the criterion Rem employs is entirely arbitrary.
Rem took some good notes on evolutionary biology
Rem:
It might be immediately objected that there is probability that many animals could develop rationality too, and thus would fall under the concept as well. To these individuals, I would simply suggest reading a bit on evolutionary biology . . .
It makes no sense for Rem to even consider this objection. Obviously, such an objection would be a nonstarter because no animal has a chance of evolving rationality within its own lifetime; that’s not how evolution works. What this indicates to us is that Rem isn’t actually concerned with whether or not an individual has a chance of becoming rational. Rather, his actual criterion for moral status is something like ‘being a member of a group that has currently or has a probability, within reason, of obtaining rationality.’ Of course, this criterion is even more bizarre and arbitrary than the previous one.
Rem:
To these individuals, I would simply suggest reading a bit on evolutionary biology and realizing that i) the selective pressure does not exist; and ii) this possibility will only occur millions of years after the death of humanity. As such, its possibility is irrelevant for the moral considerations of current persons.
A citation is needed here. Rem doesn’t know anything about this topic, and it’s quite annoying for him to smugly point to the whole field of evolutionary biology to support his claim. One could easily read “a bit” about evolutionary biology without finding anything about whether or not animals will evolve rationality. Instead of actually being helpful to those interested in this issue by providing a citation to clarify and support his claims, Rem just mentions the whole field under discussion so he can pretend to have general knowledge about it.
Selective pressures for intelligence obviously do exist. What Rem must be saying is that there are no selective pressures for human-like intelligence, and there won’t be any until “millions of years” after humans have gone extinct. How does he know this? Well, he doesn’t. Even if he knew that right now, no species has environmental conditions that put it on a path towards human-like intelligence, he doesn’t know how environments will change over time. Also, he doesn’t even know how much time we’re talking about, since there’s no way he could know when humans will go extinct.
Rem continues:
It may also be remarked that we could genetically engineer chimpanzees to have rationality, and therefore they would fall under the relevant concept; however, just as these arguments in the case of abortion do not work, they do not work here either. If this were the case, rape would be morally justified given that we could produce more rational being. The problem of an adequate line to divide reasonable expectation of scientific discovery in one case or another is obviously not one that can be given due attention here; however, it doesn’t matter in the end.
Rem gives a sketchy argument that allowing for the creation of rational animals through genetic engineering would justify rape. However, whether or not genetically engineering rational animals is morally justified is irrelevant. What matters for Rem’s view is whether or not there is a reasonable probability that it will happen. It seems at least as plausible as Rem’s hypothetical brain-rebuilding technology.
Rem’s questionable understanding of the AMC (cont.)
Returning to Rem:
The fact that there are marginal cases we do not wish to devoid of moral status leads one to conclude that we must extend moral status to all animals.
No, it doesn’t (see our following explanation of Singer and Regan’s use of the AMC). Rem bizarrely suggests that if we recognize the direct moral standing of people with Down syndrome, then the AMC proponent is committed to giving direct moral standing to bivalves. Rem offers no good argument as to why this is the case. Instead, Relativist Rem quickly moves on to essentially raising the perennial meme argument against vegans that they accept some slippery slope where all animals are equally covered at the expense of plants and rocks getting covered too.
Rem continues:
(As an aside: there is an interesting question here of why we cannot apply the Marginal Cases Argument to plants utilizing the general class of ‘animals’ as our starting point. It seems intuitive that the line cannot be equally drawn for animals over different sorts of plants, or we have to draw some sort of line in the animal kingdom which itself seems impossible for the same reasons we cannot draw the line for a difference between, say, a chimpanzee and human. If we extend this to plants, can we not extend this to further organic life? Can we then ascribe moral status to rocks too perhaps?
Peter Singer and Tom Regan, two big names who apparently weren’t covered in the animal ethics course Rem took, both use the argument from marginal cases, and they make it rather clear that their use of the argument applies to some or most animals, but not all (and certainly not rocks and plants).
For example, in Animal Liberation, Singer argues for the principle of the equal consideration of interests. Animals without interests or the capacity for pain, which may include bivalves and insects, are not covered by Singer’s use of the argument from marginal cases or his principle of the equal consideration of interests. One can see the heirs to Singer’s thought in many consequentialist vegans, who propose “ostroveganism” (i.e., avoiding animal products with the exception of bivalves).
And for Tom Regan, who is one of the biggest names in animal ethics second to Singer, well, his defense of animal rights has been seen as too conservative by some animal rights advocates, as Regan’s defense (at least in the 1980s) cautiously limited itself to mammals one-year and older and some birds. This is because his subject-of-a-life criterion does not apply to rocks, plants, or the minds of “less sophisticated” non-human animals.
Singer and Regan’s arguments and use of the AMC clearly preclude plants and rocks. Singer, we believe, makes his criterion both sufficient and necessary, so plants and rocks are ruled out under his utilitarian ethic. Regan, however, is a bit more careful, and argues that his subject-of-a-life criterion is sufficient but not necessary. An environmental ethic which considers plants and rocks remains an open question, but Regan also believes that their value would have a different basis (as they are not subjects-of-a-life) than the account he gives for that of many humans and non-human animals.
Relativist Rem believes that the AMC proponent can be led to this slippery slope because one can always run the AMC with the “general class of animals” as the marginal cases. However, Rem’s rehash of the argument from marginal cases that utilizes the “general class of animals” isn’t remotely comparable to the originally stated AMC, as the originally stated AMC’s strength, at least in part, comes from our strong intuitions regarding certain nonparadigmatic humans (for example, our intuitions are strong concerning the moral standing of someone with Down syndrome, but the moral standing of an irreversibly comatose human is less intuitively obvious). Again, simply citing the “general class of animals” doesn’t compare. Rem is clumsily grasping at straws to basically make the anti-vegan argument “but what about plant lives!” Well, what about plant lives and the “general class of animals”? There is a morally relevant difference between plants and dogs, which is why Rem’s rehash of the AMC is dead on arrival.
Rem:
. . . I wonder how the Marginal Cases fanboy would respond to Panpsychism?).
In passing, one has to love the cheeky interjection of panpsychism. Panpsychism, we’re sorry to say, doesn’t pose this insurmountable problem for the “Marginal Cases fanboy” (whatever the hell that is) for a couple reasons.
First, the arguments of Singer and Regan can reject the consciousness in a thermometer as being morally relevant. There is some experience so as to be like a thermometer or consciousness is some ontologically fundamental aspect of the thermometer, but that doesn’t entail that the thermometer feels pain or has interests (in the morally relevant sense Singer would mean). And a thermometer wouldn’t fulfill Regan’s subject-of-a-life criterion.
Second, a vegan could argue that, even if a thermometer met the given standards of Singer and Regan, there remains a compatibility between the consciousness of the thermometer and the obligation to be vegan. So, there’s a conscious thermometer or rock in the morally relevant sense. Okay. Humans and non-human animals could still share the same morally relevant features, which make them both rights-holders (akin to Regan’s view) or whose interests ought to be equally considered (akin to Singer’s view).
A thermometer or rock, we’ll grant because Rem is desperate for entertaining this objection, can feel pain, has interests, is aware of the world and its place in the world, has emotions, etc. All said and done, it still could be the case that we ought to be vegan. The position of the vegan, or the conclusion of the AMC, is not that we must avoid all pain, suffering, and death or give up being vegan. That would be cozying up with the nirvana fallacy. Yet, this is the unthinking strawman often leveled against vegans (Rem is clearly leaning toward this strawman, as he is, in spirit here, an unoriginal anti-vegan), but the stronger vegan views will admit that, at the cost of living, there will be some harm to others.
That is, we’ll grant, for the two people out there who genuinely believe it, that plants and rocks are intelligent, sensitive, and emotional beings deserving of full or direct moral standing. What follows? Could it still not be a greater harm to kill humans and non-human animals when faced with the dilemma between their lives and the lives of rocks and plants, and, so, it’s morally preferable to kill the latter over the former when faced with such a dilemma? Could it be the case that, on a whole, we would require more deaths and harm if we ate a non-vegan diet given its inefficiencies? After all, a non-vegan diet would require more plants, land, fuel, and water (all of which are conscious, I guess), maybe Rem’s precious thermometers (?), not to mention the threat it poses to human health, and, most importantly, requires actively and intentionally killing billions of non-human animals.
Relativist Rem on Reductios
Rem:
So let us say, from our point of view, the argument works. I want (hold some positive-attitude) towards a given class of humans being deserving of moral status, and this entails (if we wish to be consistent) granting all animals (or a large subsection of animals) moral status as well. Yet, what if we approach someone and they simply bite the bullet (as most consequentialists would!)? What are we to say then?
I’ve talked to Isaac about this, and apparently it’s simply a reductio ad absurdum. Well, to be truthful, it isn’t in any meaningful sense of the word; rather, there are conflicting values that definitively exist between someone who is fine to hold fetuses or those in a comatose as morally exempt, and those who would accept the Argument from Marginal Cases. Usually a reductio ad absurdum is employed when there are agreed upon inferential rules and axioms; however, in the case of normative ethics, these axioms and inferential rules are the very thing up for question (it could be said that this is actually applied ethics, but given how often these Marginal Case fanboys engage in normative ethics in connection with animal ethics, I’m not sure what to think for them). So, if you bite the bullet, they just label you a “psychopath” who “wants genocide against disabled people.”
Ask Yourself is reasonably considering that most people have the belief that it’s wrong to wantonly kill the mentally enfeebled. So, even under Relativist Rem’s account of reductios where there have to be agreed upon axioms between the disagreeing parties, the reductio still stands more likely than not. Next, when Destiny, who actually might be sincere, admitted that his position entails the permissibility of torturing dogs for fun, that was the reductio of his view (in the non-Ask Yourself/non-Rem sense of the term). It doesn’t matter whether Destiny shared or agreed with the same axioms of his interlocutors.
Rem is led to the same problem Ask Yourself faces when debating sincere psychopaths. After all, under Relativist Rem’s account, if one were debating someone who did not share your axiom that, say, it’s wrong to treat people as a mere means, then that person would not be reduced to absurdity when he or she says, after being faced with a thought experiment, that it’s permissible to enslave, torture, molest, and kill anyone for fun. Funnily enough, Relativist Rem accepts Ask Yourself’s view that reductios are contingent on each parties’ starting axioms. So, one cannot reduce Ted Bundy’s view to absurdity when they point out that his moral beliefs lead to the conclusion that it’s permissible to rape and kill for fun because, according to Rem, in normative ethics one can’t be reduced to absurdity unless one accepts the same axioms. Okay, so the most dogmatic utilitarians don’t have to worry about a thought experiment in which it would be optimific (and therefore obligatory for the utilitarian) to kill an innocent black person to calm down a racist town, all because the utilitarians don’t share the same axioms.
Rem continues rambling:
This is wrong on both fronts (not that I would be objecting to the Marginal Case Argument on this bullet-biting front anyways). I’m unsure these people actually know what ‘psychopath’ means, but people who do not grant moral status to certain classes of organisms are certainly not psychopaths. For one thing, you can accept a position in applied ethics and still have immense sympathy for the class of things you don’t recognize the moral status of. (When I was a kid I knew that ants didn’t have moral status, but I still couldn’t bear to crush it). For another, psychopathy is no longer a clinical term.
Arguing over the term “psychopath” is pedantry on Relativist Rem’s part, who actually does hold a psychopathic position (his position is that raiders can permissibly torture and kill the mentally enfeebled for fun because there are no selective pressures or badass science). If Dennis Rader and Rem the Soy Boi both share similarly demented axioms that lead them to the same ethical quagmires, then, yeah, they should both expect the “psychopath” label.
Further, “not [granting] moral status to certain classes of organisms” could easily be psychopathic. If one fails to recognize the direct moral standing of people with Down syndrome (a “certain class of organism”), that could reasonably be called psychopathic. Relativist Rem’s flippant dismissal of animals as being just a “certain class of organism” who do not have direct moral standing is question begging, and it reads as if it was written by Dennis Rader.
To strike at the point: Rem’s interlocutors, when they accuse him and Destiny of being psychopaths, do not have to be under any illusions that they are medically diagnosing someone. Rather, the label of psychopathy is a rhetorical way to point out someone’s lack of conscience. The distinction is made clear in the following:
In 1979 the APA eliminated the final diagnosis of “psychopath” as a mental illness and changed the term into two distinct words: “sociopath” and “antisocial.” A psychopath is antisocial but not psychotic; the psychopath, who does not have a conscience, is not mentally ill.
However, it is debatable whether the absence of conscience should be considered mental illness (Nightmare in Wichita: The Hunt for the BTK Strangler, p. 291).
Rem continues:
With regards to the ‘genocide’ accusation; it’s simply laughable. One can reject the moral status of certain classes of organisms yet still argue they should be [sic] not be harmed or killed; one need only look at Kantian arguments for indirect moral status.
The Kantian arguments for indirect moral status aren’t considered as strong or as plausible as Rem passingly implies (the indirect duties view is often seen as exceptionally weak in animal ethics), and this limp, indirect duties view is what generates the charge of psychopathy. Under the indirect duties view, a dog has no direct duties owed to him, just as we owe no direct duties to a car. It may harm us or other rational agents to harm the dog (or to damage the car), so we ought not harm the dog (or damage the car) out of concern for rational agents (and rational agents only). So, yeah, under Rem’s view, a dog shares the same moral status (or lack thereof) as a car. If we can damage a car without harming rational agents, it would be permissible to do so. If we could torture a dog for a good two weeks of fun without harming rational agents, it would be permissible to do so. This is indistinguishable from Destiny’s conscience-free (i.e., psychopathic) view.
Back to Rem:
And, if genocide did take place against, for example, fetuses, you cannot use this as an argument against the person who has bitten the bullet. It is on your [sic] to argue why this is an incorrect argumentative move to make.
First, it’s disingenuous to compare the mass killing of fetuses (who may have no mental activity) to that of the killing of many non-human animals (those who do have mental activity, such as the experience of pain and fear). Second, if your argument entails the genocide of people with Down syndrome for fun or the torture of dogs for entertainment, then one doesn’t require any further argument. Your view is strongly counterintuitive, and one would be justified in rejecting it. A lot of moral philosophy proceeds like this. The additional moral premises or principles one cites to back up the reductio would be less certain than the initial claim that it’s wrong to torture dogs for fun. This point is unlikely to reach past the tangled, holistic web Rem finds himself stuck in.
Rem:
You must actually engage with the individual (beyond a surface-level argument taught in PHL101) and have a real discussion about moral value and what is deserving of moral value. Plenty of philosophers have written deep, engaging texts on just this question (Korsgaard springs to mind); yet, these Marginal Cases fanboys are too lazy to do any reading usually.
Rem projects too much. It’s not clear that he’s read much of anything on the topic before giving his arrogant declarations. His account of the moral value of individuals is incredibly shallow and lacks any serious thought beyond a philosophy 101 spitball. His account is as arbitrary as any racist could hope for.
Smugrat continues:
If you think you have won an argument by yelling at people by calling them psychopaths or saying they support genocide: you haven’t. You are just avoiding the argument and exposing your lack of critical thinking skills.
Again, let’s consider our beliefs that torturing dogs for fun is wrong (that we owe it to dogs not to torture them for fun) or that it’s wrong to genocide people with Down syndrome (that we owe it to people with Down syndrome not to genocide them) because, like us, they have lives of their own that can go ill or well for them.
Now let’s consider Rem’s beliefs to the contrary—that is, we can torture dogs for fun if it harms no (potentially) rational agents because there’s no selective pressures for rationality in place, or we can permissibly genocide people with Down syndrome for fun if a member of our species can’t create genius pills in the future.
The one lacking critical thinking skills seems to be predominantly on one side of the fence here. The “winner” of the argument appears to be on one side of the fence here too. And the one making a “ridiculous” and “ineffective” argument seems to be the one whose name rhymes with “Belativist Bem.”
Update: Relativist Rem, after having blocked indy and Vespine, wrote a response to this 6,000 word blog post within nearly two hours of it going up. As one would imagine, Rem’s response is completely level-headed, well-argued, humble, carefully thought-out, and free of typos or sloppy writing. And just as all that is certain, Rem definitely didn’t just end up biting the bullet.
Indy 
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