Cannibalism (from Caníbales, the Spanish name for the Caribs, a West Indies tribe that formerly practiced cannibalism) is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh or internal organs of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy. A person who practices cannibalism is called a cannibal.
Above is the first definition of cannibalism that came up from a quick internet search. We looked at the case in the lifeboat last week in the tutorial, but I want you to think more deeply about this:
(a) if one eats another person’s organs when they have died legitimately, is it wrong? Why?
(b) if another person consents to have their organs eaten is this different from one donating to medical research or for transplantation?
(c) do we have a right to use our body as we see fit? Do others have any rights to use our body as they see fit? (Think carefully about what is a right here!)
At stake in this is the worry that certain central moral beliefs are culturally relative. Now it is okay for taste to be culturally relative — Mediterranean pop music may be different from Russian pop, for example — because taste is particular and subjective (is it though? Think of wine connoisseurs who believe that certain wines are objectively better than others).
For this task — in the comments below — I want you to be creative. Imagine you are the cabin boy and the other two men are salivating at the prospect of your tender flesh. They near you… You have one short speech to convince them that what they are about to do is wrong. You cannot appeal to taste (“I have very little fat, my flesh won’t be at all marbled”) nor to threats and promises (unless moral — think about that!). You must appeal to reasons they will recognize as sound and enable them to overcome their momentary impulse of survival at all costs.
You can do it in groups (tell me who you are in the text though) or as individuals. You will have to log in with your usual uni details and then post the comment so I can reply.
a) No, it is the same as eating an animal when they die. The element of killing someone for the organs is eliminated so technically it isn’t ethically wrong. However with it being a human, naturally it would feel inhumane to eat our own kind.
b) Utilitarianism – organs being donated would benefit more people rather than one person just eating the organs. If they consent then we should follow their wishes, so in that aspect it is the same situation.
c) Could say we have the right to our own body as it is ours, but some could say that our body is ‘God’s temple’ so we shouldn’t abuse it, or keep it sacred even after death, so eliminated organ donations. Without our consent, no one can do whatever they want with another persons body. Some laws include this e.g. rape, etc. The example of the dentist abusing bodies under anaesthetic shows that we can’t do whatever we want.
Cabin boy response:
Religious belief – 10 Commandments, ‘thou shall not kill’, most religions don’t agree in killing other humans.
Natural Law – preservation of life – Aquinas
Why not someone else on the boat? Killing another person could save the cabin boy. Why is their lives more valuable right now?
Duty of Care – under the care of the captain. More important to save than kill.
Chloe Suter and Evie Eastwood
Some good ideas. I wonder whether the wrongness has to do with consent. Had they drawn lots rather than made the decision for an other then the respect of one’s own property is met. If they had set up a lottery then they are expressing autonomy. Consent is the difference between violations of rights and legitimate action (think of boxing versus a street fight).
A) Because this person has died legitimately, it is not committed murder. It is not treating the dead person as a means to an end in this sense; it is not killing the person solely for their organs. However, the respect and value of humans should be taken into consideration.
B) Yes there is an obvious distinction. By giving the organs away to be eaten, this has an immediate effect, whereas with medical research, there isn’t. You do not know with medical research whether you will have an impact or be of any help in the medical development. In both cases the individual will be dead and probably will know no different where their organs have gone. Yet, when carried out, it is following the individuals’ wishes, showing respect to the deceased.
C) I believe that we do have a right to use our body as we wish to do so because it is our own and through our self and mind we make conscious decisions. When it comes to other people, consent is essential. However, even if a person tells you that you can push them off a cliff; it does not mean you should do it. In some sense no-one owns the body, ourselves and the government (with laws) hold certain responsibilities and rights over it.
Cabin boy’s response:
-Following naturalism, it is inherently wrong to eat other humans.
-The intrinsic value of mankind means life is precious and shouldn’t be deliberately taken away.
-Why is my life less significant than any other passengers on the boat? Equality-all lives are of equal worth. (Kant and Kingdom of ends.)
-It would be treating me as a means to an end rather than an end in itself (Kant’s maxim.)
-Killing me now is obviously against the law, murder is wrong. You will get caught and you will be punished.
-Following the religious view, murder is a sin.
-How do we know that we can’t all make it out alive?
Jess Searby
can Naturalism offer us a reason to do things or just explain why we do what we do?
a) I would suggest that we have a natural moral opposition to the consumption of Human flesh, before or after natural death. We have a conception of the self which is maintained after our death (My family visits the grave of my grandfather, identifying the location where he is buried with his previous existence), and thus, in my opinion at least, one would feel guilt for eating the organs ‘belonging’ to someone.
b) From a personal level, no there is no difference, in consenting that after death my organs may be consumed I am signing away my rights to the property of my body in the same way the one might consent for their body to be dissected and used for medicinal purposes.
However, from a social perspective it is easy to condemn the individuals concerned, the wouldbe cannibal and the ‘victim’. Aside from the repugnance with which society reacts to cannibalism, it could be suggested that it is selfish of the individuals, who do not wish to have the body ‘laid to rest’, to consume it without using it to further humanity, as this is the only common reason for not disposing of the body in a traditional manner.
c) To the extent that we are functioning as a rational human being, yes I believe we should have the right to use our bodies as we see fit. The drug addict who damages themselves through what they ingest and what they do to fuel their habit forgoes the right and responsibility for their own body, and as such should be given help to recognise that what they are doing is ‘wrong’. Similarly, it could be said that the person so maddened by pain that they wish to end their own life might also be acting irrationally and without due consideration, an issue present in society today. As stated in the previous comment, the example of the Dentist abusing their patient whilst under anaesthetic provides a strong argument to against others having the right to use our bodies as they see fit, which is tackled by the need to sign off permission for medical treatments.
For my speech as the cabin boy, I would focus on the following points.
I, as another human being, have a right to life, as much as you do.
I am young and likely to make a recovery from my illness if we are rescued.
You, my Captain, are planning on murdering and eating me, a young individual in your employ and of whom you have a responsibility to protect. Can you live with yourself, failing in that crucial responsibility to your crew?
Why kill me? If we are not rescued soon I am likely to die anyway, and you will feel less guilt and will be judged less harshly if you do not murder me.
Tom Stables
The value we extend to corpses is obviously felt and seems rational. They are different from other things. But actually, they are not. We do not extend the same to bodies of animals live or dead. Why?
-I think, in a way, we do extend the same value to animal bodies if we have had an emotional connection to them, eg. a pet. People often bury pets in their garden, or at least take some care with how the body is dealt with. It would be odd to see a beloved family pet of ten years disposed of without a care. Thus the emotional connection is what makes the body special, it’s not just a property we give to human corpses. They do become different solely because of how we felt about the living individual.
-I think our respect/treatment of other bodies, ones not important to us, can be explained through empathy, and recognising how we would like to see our loved ones treated.
Jack Hewitt
Okay I am going to be polemical here and hope others are reading. People who bury their poets are making a mistake, they might as well bury teddy bears when we outgrow them.
I think we would be really upset if our childhood teddy bear (Or in my a case toy tiger. Called Tiger) was carelessly thrown away. Again it’s a case of having an emotional connection with the thing. A teddy bear isn’t going to decompose and start to smell, so we don’t need to do the same thing as with a pet. But with both we feel strongly about them, so want to always treat the physical thing with care and love.
Jack Hewitt
a) Technically, it’s not really any different from eating an animal, but in our culture the thought of eating human flesh repulses most people. As a society we regard human life as more precious than animal life (we give human beings proper burials but this is rarely given to an animal). Many have argued that what separates us from animals is that we have souls, and even though religious followers argue that this leaves the body after death, we still believe it to be appropriate to honour the body that has harboured that soul of the person we knew and loved, hence why people spend lots of money on funerals.
b) It is different- donating organs benefits the greater good. It is noble for someone to donate their organs to science. However, can it really be said to be noble for a person to desire others to eat their own flesh? If the person who died was ok about someone cutting into their flesh and eating it, why would they not donate their body to science, to benefit society and potentially save someone’s life? In a situation where it is not necessary to eat human flesh to survive, I don’t see how it can be justified. For me, it’s clearly relative- I have been brought up to feel sick at the thought of eating another person’s flesh, but at the same time to view organ donation as a positive, helpful thing.
c) I would say that I fully have the right to use my body as I wish, as long as no harm is done to others, but that no other person does without my consent. So, if I donate my organs to science, then science has a right to use my organs for research. However, even if I donated my body to someone to be eaten, I still feel that it would be wrong for the person to actually eat me- because this is not a ‘normal’ convention of the society that we live in, and could be harmful to the cannibal (he will be ostracised and treated like a freak). It also raises questions of whether, if cannibalism did become a conventional part of Western society, this would be harmful in the way we view life. Perhaps we would not see life as being so precious or of death as being something that deserves proper recognition.
If I was the cabin boy, I would argue:
1) If you kill me, I will be dead and will know no different. But you will have to live with your choice and the guilt for the rest of your life. Every time you see a boy like myself, you will remember what you did and feel repulsed with yourself. My flesh might keep you alive, but your memory of me as a person with real thoughts and feelings and a desire to survive myself, will eventually kill you, through the guilt you will inevitably feel.
2) I know you are starving and all you can think about is your survival, but try to think back to who you were before we found ourselves in this situation. Surely then the thought of killing an innocent person and then feasting on them would have sickened you- but you are still that person. Use your reason. Surely you would rather die, having stayed true to yourself and to your principles, than live but be a murderer?
Marie Hunt.
The cabin boy speech works. I worry about two things here (i) the use of “external” justification: if I had a soul… a non-believer can just dismiss that, it is false for him,. You need to look for reasons we all share (universality); and (ii) the work convention does: you might be right but we need to assume there may be universal moral values.
a) whilst it is very difficult to say that anything is objectively morally wrong, the fatal disease ‘Kuru’ that incurs from cannibalism seems to show that it is unnatural. As much as I agree with the ethical theory of cultural relativism, cannibalism appears to be condemned at a basic, physical level.
b) Yes, it is different. The tribes in places such as Papua New Guinea practiced cannibalism on their relatives after death because they believed it to be a spiritual ritual and therefore morally ‘good’. For one human to eat another, random human this ideology cannot fit in. The donation of one’s organs to medical research/transplants actually benefits others and may allow lives to be saved whereas the continued practice of cannibalism results in death.
c) I do think that we all have the right to use our bodies as we wish. That being said, I do not think that I have the right to infringe on anyone else’s rights/liberties. In this way, other people do not have the right to do with my body what they want unless I consent, and vice versa. If I gave my body up with the intention of it being eaten then it would not necessarily be morally bad for someone to eat me. However, with reference to my answers for the first to questions, I do think that nature has dictated cannibalism to be wrong or at least unproductive.
As a cabin boy, faced with the prospect of being murdered and eaten I would first try and appeal to the two men’s reason. I would tell them about the disease Kuru that has come about from cannibalism. The tribe in New Guinea most famously associated with cannibalism, and this disease, is the Korowai tribe who practiced cannibalism for religious reasons. They have now had to stop, though, because they were being wiped out by the disease. I would tell them about the fact that it attacks one’s nervous system and brain, and is a slow and painful death.
If they were still making advances and licking their lips, I would try and appeal to their morals. i) what right do they have to ‘play God’ (if they were Christians)
ii) how have they decided that it should be me who dies? do they have more of a right to life than me, and, if so, who would have more of a right to life than them?
iii) if we are rescued, then there is no need for them to eat me. if we are not, then they will only prolong their suffering. In order to survive until we are rescued, it is much more sensible to try and find drinkable water.
iv) if they eat me and are then rescued, which must be their hope, then they will be condemned for murder. if they do not tell anyone, they will at least have to live with the guilt which would probably be immense, since it is not the usual practice of sailors to commit murder.
Pandora Monnas
Is the appeal to the well-being of those who would eat you a moral argument? It is if you are a naturalists (and we shall see with Hobbes that the distinction between morality and prudence disappears — rightly so he would say). Nature dictates that drinking alcohol is “bad”, we still do it. Arguments of the sort “it is unnatural” are not moral arguments normally. Hobbes sits uncomfortably here.
(a) by societies standards it would be considered wrong in the way that it would be considered sadistic or psychotic for someone to even want to eat another humans flesh. Having respect and sort of empathy for strangers is a characteristic humans share, particularly when we die.. hence if you were ‘good’; you wouldn’t crash a funeral, or dance on someones grave, or eat them when they die. Physically, when someone dies their presence still exists the same as when they were alive, besides the ‘soul’ argument..so similar to some peoples reasoning for vegetarianism, that respect we share for humans should still exist after the individual dies, regardless of how they died.
(b)Cannibalism doesn’t benefit the greater good, even if 10 people are fed, or a ritual signifying harmony and healthy future is promised.. there is no ‘long term’ and widespread benefit as such..
Medical research, despite it being hard to measure each individuals input, it generally produces a better outcome with long lasting benefits and the overall improvement and development of medicine. This impact can be measured because the outcomes can be applied to benefit every single human on the planet compared to the rich meal cannibalism provides to a few.
(c) We have right to use and abuse our body as we will, as long as we inflict no harm on others in the process. However, if a girl was going to take drugs to the point she became addicted, then physically she is not ‘hurting’ anybody else.. but emotionally she will be affecting friends and family and through concern will probably be affecting their well being. But it is the girls choice to take the drugs in the first place, and whilst she physically isn’t affecting anybody else, their may be knock on effects (butterfly affect) that cause physical harm on other people. So if the girl died from the drugs, her mother may commit suicide and her sister may then self harm. Although these things aren’t the girls ‘fault’, she essentially caused them. So perhaps we shouldn’t be able to use our body as we see fit, because it could always have a negative effect on somebody else. Then according the butterfly effect theory, so could anything.
Equally this example can be used for less controversial scenarios! ie. a tattoo or dying your hair blue.
Amelia Terry
The Butterfly Effect doesn’t need top be invoked. There is a problem with indeterminacy with consequentialist theories: how can I be sure that my action will produce the results desired? But this is a problem with life in general, some would argue.
a) In Western Society it would be unacceptable as we believe respect for the dead includes burying or cremating the body. However, there are different circumstances where it would be more acceptable than others. For example in the lifeboat case if the cabin boy had died legitimately and the starving ship mates had eaten him this would be more acceptable than someone eating a dead body even though they had the option to eat other food.
b) No because it is up to the person before they die to decide what should happen to their body. So if they consent for it to be eaten by someone this doesn’t harm or effect anybody else. However, medical research and transplantation help the greater good so these would be more meaningful causes to donate your body to.
c) Yes we do have the right to use our body as we see fit and so we should be able to decide what is done with our body before and after death. Our loved ones, to an extent have a right to use our body how they see fit after we die. For example, if you had no will or wishes for after your death your family and friends should be able to make decisions on your behalf.
Amelia Jones & Sophie Hammond