b_b, I mean no disrespect to the original discussion. I just felt like mulling the idea over for awhile, and addressing it more seriously than I would have in a quick remark. There were a number of interesting replies. The two that struck me most were ecib’s and lil’s. ecib’s impressed me with the noble attempt at being concise. It is easy to blather on about a subject, so I always appreciate the effort to make a nice crisp assertion. Unfortunately, the question just becomes: “Why is removing agency wrong?” -- but that is, at least, a clearer question. lil’s answer was nicely lyrical. A part of me is inclined to bash people for relying on eloquence to make a point – but having done that many times I wouldn’t like to be a hypocrite. lil’s answer also expresses something consequential that probably wouldn’t get expressed so well if lil weren’t here.
I definitely made an attempt to be as concise as possible. I also agree that my answer at least immediately begs the question "Why is removing agency wrong?" I think it's harder to be concise here because we're actually approaching territory where the answer starts to approach self-evidence. We're getting to premise. It's harder to argue for or against self evident ideas and premises because a good argument won't let you use the self evident ideas and premises themselves to argue for them. Removing a person's agency cuts to the very core of what it means to be a sentient creature on this planet. With self awareness comes the ability to act and make choices based on that self awareness. Beyond just giving us the ability, agency is the primary mechanism by which we perpetuate our survival as a living creature. As humans, our survival instinct is literally manifest in our agency and the choices we make to further our own survival and interests. Agency is the literal expression and manifestation of the human survival instinct.
Were it truly self-evident, it would have been self-evident to the Romans, west Africans, Caribbean English, and all the other slaveholders in history. What is self-evident to us is that it clashes with our particular moral system. Strictly speaking, a slave is not utterly robbed of agency – but rather has his or her agency constrained to what are usually unpleasant options. The Barbados cane cutter could work, run away, attempt to kill his oppressors, do nothing and endure the beating, or commit suicide. All bad choices, but still an expression of individual agency. Only a condition like full physical paralysis would leave a person with no agency at all. In a technical sense, this causes trouble for your definition because we are all constrained by all sorts of conditions, so questions of agency become murky rather quickly. Another problem with the agency argument is that, at least hypothetically, a slave might have desires that generally lined up with those of his owners. If a slave is content, but still the legal property of another, is he not a slave nevertheless? This is why I chose a definition that defines slavery in terms of ownership rather than agency.
Indeed. Why should agency be restricted to humans, when all large animals have the self-awareness, sentience, and survival instincts that predicate agency?
It's the former two that are really fascinating. Sentience is damn hard to prove, by a strict definition, but I think it is after a fashion proved by self-awareness. And that can be shown in a lot of ways. But I always hit a wall when I try to go vegetarian. I'm up to all but one meal a week, generally.
Quoting Jeremy Bentham on the question of sentience: "The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?" I'm not perfect by any means, but I've been about 95% vegan for 2 years now. Maybe I'm just stubborn, but once I made the connection between dairy, egg and meat products and suffering, I couldn't take part in that cycle any more.