Dr. Elliott Malamet

“Dogs never bite me. Just humans.”

– Marilyn Monroe.

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

– George Orwell, Animal Farm, 1945.

Are there any moral arguments today that don’t just end up being a clash of personal opinions? Is it possible any longer to maintain that some ethical positions are objectively superior to others? Each year that I taught ethics in high school, I would ask the following (non-original ) question: If your dog and a perfect stranger were both drowning in a river, and you had the ability to save only one of them, whom would you choose?  Sorry, you can only save one. You do not know how or why they ended up in the river. No one else is close enough to help. To find out what some of my students thought, and the moral mayhem that ensued, read on. (All student names have been changed).

There may have never been a better time not to be human. Animals have lawyers, doctors, personal trainers, psychotherapists. They have parties, social directors, health insurance, vacation routines, pinup fame. They have their own airlines and their own resorts. They are in striking distance of the good life. 

Dennis Prager, an American political commentator and radio show host, wrote that for many years he posed the dog vs. stranger question to high school seniors with the result that only one out of three would save the stranger. I initially hesitated to ask my own students, believing that Mr. Prager had exaggerated and that the real consensus—save the person–was a foregone conclusion.

I was wrong. In annual discussions about dogs in rivers, my teenage pet owners reminded me of the true tension – “dog versus stranger”. Although some would save the stranger, most had a ready-made defence of their choice of dogs over humans. “It may not sound so nice, but I don’t love the stranger,” they said very simply. “I love my dog.”

It was then that I became, in their eyes, nasty. “It’s just a dog,” I said.

“Dr., do you have a dog?” asked Evan, his look a mixture of pity and contempt. When I confessed that I did not, eyes rolled knowingly. Clearly, I did not understand. Dogs are true friends; they are more reliable than people; they are smart; they are loyal; they sense what you’re feeling and can cheer you up, they can love you back – the testimonials came pouring in. I was an outsider to the world of dog life, to the power of such bonds. As Amanda showed me, dog owners are willing to put their money where their mutt is.

Amanda’s exhibit A was from a 1998 trial in Los Angeles. When bathroom fixture mogul Sidney Altman died, he left his Beverly Hills mansion and $350,000 to his cocker spaniel, Samantha. In contrast, his human companion Marie Dana received $60,000 tax free, and could live in the house, but only as long as Samantha, now an aging 15, was alive. Upon the dog’s death, the $5 million property was to be sold, the money given to animal charities. As Marie Dana’s tax-free stipend would be eliminated, she brought her injured pride to the courtroom in the form of a lawsuit, which the judge, the Hon. Gary Klausner, ordered to be mediated, urging that the two parties settle out of court.

Mr. Altman’s priorities are fairly normative in certain circles. Leona Helmsley’s posthumous gift of twelve million dollars to her dog, a Maltese named Trouble, was unusual in its amount but not in its principles. Attorneys and animal rights groups confirm that a growing number of people have set up trust funds for their animals. A later court ruling reduced Trouble’s inheritance to a mere couple of million. We all have to cut back in tough times. What’s a poor dog to do?

Trouble would no doubt be just a bit envious to hear of the fate of the Roddenberry dogs. Just prior to her death in December 2008, actress Majel Roddenberry, widow of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, put a clause in her trust to ensure their dogs would continue to live in one of the family mansions, and provided a four million dollar fund for upkeep for the dog house.    

I have nothing against pets. Period. I like dogs. But for my students, `pet’ was far too mild a word. Companion, best friend, significant other, confidante – the stories rolled in, day after heartwarming day. Stories about Oliver and Muffins and Oreo and Katya and Dylan and Angel and Cracker and Shuki and Stanislav and Buster and Freckles and Benjie and Oscar and Solomon and Bagel and Grace and Roxy and Elvis and Snickers and Reggie and Lincoln and Fluffy and one simply named Dog.

Look what’s it gonna be?” I finally asked one day. “Do you save the dog, not just because you love her but also because you think she might be equal to humans, or do you admit that you made an immoral choice by saving a lower form of life over a human being just because it’s your dog.”

“I’d save the person without a second thought,” says Miriam. “Even if I owned a dog.”

“Why? I ask.

“Because of God. People are made in God’s image. We are not just animals.”

“And if you don’t believe in God?” asks Mark. “Like I don’t see what God has to do with this.”

“I guess what Miriam is saying,” I add, “is that one way of looking at all of ethics is to do what it is you believe that God wants from you, because only God has an opinion that transcends human subjectivity and, I guess, human fallibility.”

“Yeah,” says Mark, “but that only works if you believe in it.  And who knows what God wants? Like the Jews say one thing, the Christians are into Jesus, the Muslims are a whole other thing.”

I understand both Miriam’s point of view and also Mark’s objection. It is a perfectly legitimate and time honoured tradition to base one’s ethics on a divinely commanded morality. But as Mark’s comments demonstrated, in a modern pluralist reality, appealing to God as the final word on moral dilemmas unfortunately ends up creating a nearly unbridgeable divide between religious believers and those who ground their ethics elsewhere. Religion, in this scenario, is what the late American philosopher Richard Rorty once labelled a “conversation stopper.” By invoking an ethos that emerges from a metaphysical beyond, or even a religious tradition which is not one’s own, the conversation can soon break down into a theological he said/she said.

On the other hand, what is a believer to do – simply suppress their deeply held faith every time they engage in a moral discussion with others who are not similarly inclined? What are they allowed to import into the discussion in the end, if they must remain mute rather than express their conviction that there is a higher being who is in ultimate charge of the moral realm?

But, for Mark, as he told me privately afterwards, “bringing God” into the argument is sort of “cheating.” In his words, “it’s like when you can’t actually argue the issue just based on what we know and think in the human world, so you fly in the superbeing to make it all work out. Something about that just kind of bugs me.”

I sympathize with Mark’s frustration, and I realize that the gap between Mark and Miriam might never be overcome. Does God exist in any way as a moral ground for the non-believer? Is God like a distant volcano that they have heard about – imposing, inaccessible, somewhat brooding but capable of eruption? Or just a complete epistemological blank, like a leprechaun but not as charming? Or simply a word, three random letters in English, four in French and German, of several lengths in Hebrew?            

Does the injection of divine based morality into a contemporary ethical conversation have any standing, or is it—ironically–reduced by cultural relativism to just another opinion in the spectrum? You like God, no problem, it’s all good. Just as long as you don’t think that god belief is any more valid than, say, my certitude that the world stands on top of a turtle. In the opening to A Brief History of Time, Steven Hawking conveys an anecdote about a lecture on astronomy given by a well-known scientist (or perhaps, says Hawking, the British philosopher Bertrand Russell):

“The scientist described how ‘the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.’ At the end of the lecture a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: ‘What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.’

The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, ‘what is the tortoise standing on?’

‘You’re very clever, young man, very clever,’ said the old lady. ‘But it’s turtles all the way down.’    

For many of my students, God is the turtle theory as presented by a little old lady – quaint, harmless, a tad loony, a relic of pre-scientific knowledge. Not that they would assert outright atheism or anything as strident as that. Some would profess to believing in God without that belief having much if any consequence in their lives in any practical way. No need to attack God when the divine can simply be absorbed, meekly assigned one of the stalls near the end of the row of the multicultural flea market.

The binary was remarkably consistent – those who had dogs would save dogs, and those who did not would save the humans. Those who chose humans as pre-eminent did it because it seemed plain to them in ways that they could not even articulate. And for those who opted for their dogs, it came down to simple self-interest and love of the particular dog over the abstract person. Saving my dog will make me happy, happier than sacrificing my dog by saving the person. I do not wish anyone harm, but I can find no larger principles to justify letting my dog drown. Think I’m exaggerating? Do the following – go and ask people you know both in and outside your family. Let me know what results you find.

One concept that has become strongly ingrained for many of us, and thus for many of our children, is that feelings are the basis of ethics. But what if you don’t love the person who needs you? What if, truth be told, you are a little revolted by that homeless man, and you’d rather click the remote at the sight of the starving African? Are we exempt from moral obligation just because we’ve lost, or never had, that loving feeling? I hope I never lose my balance too close to the river’s edge to find out.

Please feel free to write me at ellliott@livingjewishly.org and share your thoughts, ideas and experiences, and your questions.

Further Reading

Jonathan Balcombe, What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins, 2016.

Peter Singer, In Defence of Animals, 1985.

Mary Warnock, An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Ethics, 1988.