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Animal Neopragmatism
From Welfare to Rights
John Hadley
 Animal Neopragmatism

“Hadley’s book offers a distinctly different and innovative animal ethics which
goes beyond the, now rather stale, debate between exponents of rights and wel-
fare. Through the utilisation of neopragmatism and an anti-representational
analysis of language, he is able to show convincingly that the non-hedonistic
rights vocabulary of dignity and respect can be tied to the more politically
acceptable language of welfare. Hadley’s brilliantly conceived linguistic turn in
animal ethics is therefore of considerable political significance.”
—Robert W. Garner, Professor of Politics,
University of Leicester, UK

“The philosophical wit Sidney Morgenbesser quipped “Pragmatism is all very

well in theory, but it doesn't work in practice.” In this accessible and engaging
book, John Hadley demonstrates that pragmatism can be a genuine force for
social and political change when theory and practice are brought into align-
ment. Hadley’s strategy is ameliorative working-from-within, using linguistic
pragmatist tools to extend the folk notion of animal welfare to include difficult
cases of pain-free but demeaning treatment of animals.”
—David Macarthur, Associate Professor in Philosophy,
University of Sydney, Australia

“Animal ethics is dominated by moral realists. Until now, alternative perspec-

tives have barely been represented, much less defended in book-length detail.
Animal Neopragmatism is, therefore, a game changer. In this insightful and pro-
vocative volume, John Hadley sets out a powerful pragmatist theory about how
to understand dignity, and rights-based objections to seemingly harmless ways
of using animals. Going forward, all proponents of animal rights will need to
grapple with Hadley’s arguments.”
—Bob Fischer, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Texas State University, USA
“Animal Neopragmatism is an engaging and accessible book presenting a novel
theory of animal ethics. Using pragmatist philosophy—long overlooked by
animal ethicists—Hadley reveals how both metalevel problems and linguistic
analysis are of central relevance to even the most practical of moral and politi-
cal questions about human-animal relationships. This is shown with both char-
acteristic lucidity and philosophical acuity. Animal Neopragmatism deserves to
be taken seriously by both animal ethicists and animal advocates.”
—Josh Milburn, Associate Lecturer in Political Philosophy,
University of Sheffield, UK
 John Hadley

Animal
Neopragmatism
From Welfare to Rights
John Hadley
Western Sydney University
Penrith, NSW, Australia

ISBN 978-3-030-25979-2 ISBN 978-3-030-25980-8 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25980-8

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse
of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by
similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt
from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the
authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein
or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.

Cover illustration: Irene Law/EyeEm/Getty

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Acknowledgements

Passages in Chapters 3 and 4 appeared in ‘From Welfare to Rights with-

out Changing the Subject’ in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. Vol. 20,
No. 5, 2017: 993–1004. I am grateful to the publisher, Springer, for
permission to reproduce parts of the article.
Thanks to Josh Milburn, Ben Bramble, Luca Simonian, David
Macarthur and Paul Andrew for helpful comments on sections of the
manuscript.

v
 Contents

1 Introduction 1
Neopragmatism 2
The Function of Language 3
Animal Welfare and Public Reason 4
Two Problems of Animal Welfare 5
Experiential Pluralism and Expressivism 6
Two Problems for Animal Rights Theory 7
Objections to Animal Neopragmatism 9
Pragmatist Critique of the Philosophical Tradition 10
Moral Realism, Rationalism and Reductionism:
The Three-Rs of Animal Rights Theory 11
Last Word Philosophy 12
References 14

2 The Political Problem of Welfare 17

Hedonism 18
The Intrinsicality Thesis 20
Animal Welfare Science and the Scientific Concept
of Welfare 22

vii
viii      Contents

Measurement of Welfare 24
Welfare Scientists as Accidental Hedonists 26
The Folk Concept of Welfare 27
Empirical Evidence for Folk Nonhedonism 28
Nonhedonistic Considerations 30
Nonhedonistic Considerations as Proxies for Feelings? 31
Conclusion 33
References 35

3 The Philosophical Problem of Welfare 39

Changing the Subject 40
Inherent Value and Respect 42
Dignity 43
Changing the Subject Is Strategically Unwise 45
Public Reason and Moral Pluralism 46
Philosophical Method in Animal Ethics 47
Philosophical Realism 48
Truth in Animal Ethics 49
Rationalism and Representationalism 50
Moral Realism 52
Reductionism 53
Conclusion 55
References 58

4 Relational Hedonism 61
The Social Dimension of Pain 63
The Nonrelational Orthodoxy 64
Concern for Pain 65
Helm’s Theory of Love and Concern 67
Two Models of Concern for Pain 69
The Aesthetic Dimension of the Badness of Pain:
Pain’s Impact Upon Life Narratives 72
When Pain Is Out of Place 73
Two Cases of Out of Place Pain 74
Objections to the Life Narrative Thesis 75
Narrativism and Animals 77
 Contents     ix

Conclusion 80
References 82

5 Responses to the Welfare Problems 85

The Political Problem of Welfare 87
The Changing the Subject Problem 89
Experiential Pluralism 90
A Similarity Argument for the Existence of N-Experiences 92
Unfamiliar Experiences 93
Objections 95
Expressivism in Animal Ethics 97
Public Deliberation and Deliberative Democracy 98
Expressivist Deliberation and Decision-Making 101
Conclusion 103
References 105

6 Two Problems for Animal Rights Theory 109

Animal Rights Theory 110
The Equivocation Problem for Animal Rights Theory 111
The Fallacy in the Basic Argument for Animal Rights 115
The Semantic Implications of Darwinism 118
Objections 119
The Placement Problem for Animal Rights Theory 120
The Metaphysics of Inherent Value 123
Animal Rights Theory and Quietism 125
Conclusion 126
References 129

7 Objections to Animal Neopragmatism 133

Philosophical Realism and the Correspondence
Theory of Truth 134
Peircean Truth: Truth as a Regulative Assumption 136
Coercion and Deception 139
Peircean Truth and Animal Neopragmatism 141
The Warranted Assertibility View 142
The No Practical Difference Objection 143
x      Contents

Institutional Animal Ethics Committees 145

Conclusion 147
References 149

8 Welfare, Rights, and Pragmatism 151

American Pragmatism 153
Insurgent Amelioration 153
Neopragmatism 154
Intrinsicality and Relational Hedonism 156
Contemporary Pragmatism 156
Animal Ethics Without Realism 157
References 158

Appendix: Animals, Friendship and Neopragmatism 161

Glossary 177

Author Index 183

Subject Index 185

 1
Introduction

There are things people do to animals that give us pause for thought,
even though it is unlikely the animals concerned are suffering. Relevant
examples of the kinds of action I have in mind include using animals
in artworks or as studio guests on television, confining them in more
or less natural surroundings, petting zoos, genetic modification, fancy
dress competitions, corpse desecration, and organ harvesting. What can
be said in opposition to these practices if the animals are not suffering?
The standard response from proponents of animal rights is to appeal
to concepts like dignity or respect. For example, it might be argued that
to dress a bear in an Elizabethan collar is to treat it in an undignified
way, or to use a python as an object of curiosity on television is to fail
to respect its inherent value. The problem with appeals to dignity and
respect, however, is that they amount to changing the subject (Hadley
2017b)—of turning an issue that can be framed in the familiar terms
of animal welfare into the specialized and idiosyncratic terms of animal
rights. While media attention on animal protection issues is increasing,
the distinctive features of animal rights philosophy rarely rate a men-
tion in reporting or commentary. Against the background of widespread
ignorance about animal rights, the concern with appeals to rights-based

© The Author(s) 2019 1

J. Hadley, Animal Neopragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25980-8_1
2    
J. Hadley

concepts like dignity and respect is that otherwise sympathetic peo-

ple may be inattentive to claims they don’t understand or find too
challenging.
Yet it is appropriate for proponents of animal protection to object to
certain seemingly benign uses of animals. After all, in liberal democra-
cies that is their right. There is also a fair chance that persons objecting
to practices in which animals do not suffer will find support amongst
a significant number of their fellow citizens. This is because the aver-
age person is not simply anti-pain. What I mean is that, contrary to the
presuppositions of the hedonists, citizens of liberal democracies have
more diffuse and wide-ranging concerns than aversive phenomenol-
ogy.1 While these concerns may be difficult for most people to articu-
late, arguably, they are part and parcel of human nature and spring from
the moral psychology of the reasonably socialised person. In effect, the
reasonably socialised person carries with them a picture of what appro-
priate human and animal relations ought to be like, and practices that
are at odds with this picture can have a jarring effect on one’s moral sen-
timents (Hadley 2013, p. 98). Certain practices just seem problematic
and make people feel uneasy. The proponent of animal rights is correct,
therefore, to draw attention to questionable practices involving animals
because doing so likely accords with the concerns of her fellow citizens.

Neopragmatism
In this book I aim to show how thinking about human concern for ani-
mals as broad-based and nonhedonistic facilitates the development of
an animal rights theory that avoids the practical and theoretical prob-
lems associated with appeals to rights-based considerations such as
dignity and respect. The solution is to more closely align such consid-
erations to the familiar and uncontroversial concept of animal welfare,
specifically, the badness of pain which, I presuppose, is the central moral
consideration of animal welfare theory and practice.2 The key to this
alignment is to adopt a distinctly relational approach to animal welfare
and focus on the linguistic practices of persons. A linguistic analysis is a
 1 Introduction    
3

signature feature of the version of American pragmatism known as neo-

pragmatism. As two leading neopragmatists explain:

Pragmatism begins with linguistic explananda; with phenomena con-

cerning the use of certain terms and concepts, rather than with things or
properties of a non-linguistic nature. It begins with linguistic behaviour
and asks broadly anthropological questions. How are we to understand
the roles and functions of the behaviour in question? What is its practical
significance? Whence its genealogy? (Macarthur and Price 2007, p. 95)

In effect, the neopragmatist in animal ethics moves from analysis of a

particular concept or property purportedly possessed by animals to an
ostensibly anthropological analysis of the usage of terms by persons. In
other words, instead of trying to define dignity or respect with refer-
ence to a natural feature of animals, we simply focus on why persons are
using the terms. Accordingly, in line with the discussions in Chapters 4
and 5, the motivation for using terms like dignity and respect is to sig-
nal a concern about what is being done to animals, and this concern is
more wide-ranging than simply a concern for any aversive phenomenol-
ogy the animal may be experiencing.
The two signature pieces of theory that serve to distinguish animal
neopragmatism are: firstly, a psychological-cum-anthropological thesis
about the scope of a person’s concern for pain and, secondly, an expres-
sivist analysis of the semantic value of the usage of rights-based or non-
hedonistic terms such as dignity and respect. In line with the former,
the claim is that the scope of concern for pain extends beyond aversive
phenomenology to include nonhedonistic considerations; in line with
the latter, the claim is that sentences containing rights-based terms like
dignity and respect are expressions of emotions, attitudes or opinions.

The Function of Language

The linguistic focus of animal neopragmatism requires analysing
the usage of terms like respect and dignity in what philosophers call
anti-representational fashion. Anti-representationalism is contrasted
4    
J. Hadley

with representationalism; each is a rival theory about the function of

language. The representationalist accepts the standard picture of knowl-
edge as a matter of having mental states which accurately correspond to
the external world. In line with representationalism, sentences express
beliefs which describe a state of affairs in the world. Accordingly, when
someone says, “Using an animal as a studio guest fails to respect its
inherent value”, they are making a claim about an action (using an ani-
mal as a studio guest) and the property of an animal (inherent value).
In contrast to representationalism, anti-representationalism rejects
the standard picture of knowledge as a matter of possessing beliefs that
accurately describe the world; instead, sentences are understood in
terms of the role they play in human practices (Bacon 2012, p. 175).
In line with the form of anti-representationalism known as expressiv-
ism, sentences function to express the speaker’s emotions, attitudes or
opinions. Accordingly, when someone says, “Using an animal as a stu-
dio guest fails to respect its inherent value”, they are expressing their
disapproval of the practice. When a sentence is understood in line
with anti-representationalism, no change of subject problem occurs
because the speaker is not making a claim about animals and aligning
their usage of rights-based terms to properties that are distinct from the
capacity to suffer.3 How, then, can registering disapproval of a practice
in which animals are not suffering be interpreted as a concern about the
welfare of animals as opposed to their rights?

Animal Welfare and Public Reason

Providing a credible answer to that question is an important concern of
Chapter 4. The answer is two-fold: in liberal democracies, welfare is the
only game in town and any practice involving animals must fall under
the remit of the established animal welfare paradigm if it is to be the
proper subject of ethical evaluation and, potentially, progressive policy
reform. Any attention directed at the practice, therefore, by practical
necessity renders the practice a welfare issue. In other words, because
the usage of animals is governed by welfare legislation and norms, when
an activist expresses objection to, say, the use of animals as studio guests
 1 Introduction    
5

on television, the action is bona fide welfare-directed. Secondly, as the

empirical analysis in Chapter 2 and the Helmsian psychological the-
sis in Chapter 4 will show, people’s concern for others is broad-based,
encompassing a range of concerns over and above aversive phenom-
enology. Simply put, a concern for an individual just is a concern for
the individual in a wide-ranging and holistic sense.4 By corollary, the
badness of pain encompasses more than simply aversive phenomenology
and extends to a range of impacts upon the life of the sufferer. These
impacts reflect the relational dimension of pain, and I will argue they
deserve to be viewed as authentic elements of welfare. Accordingly,
when people use terms such as dignity and respect to register their con-
cern for what is happening to an individual, they signal their concern
for the individual’s welfare.

Two Problems of Animal Welfare

While the relational dimension of pain finds a place in the neoprag-
matic theory developed in this book, nonhedonistic considerations like
dignity and respect are outside the existing remit of orthodox animal
welfare theory. Orthodox animal welfare theory is grounded in the
theory of value known as hedonism. Hedonism is the view that wel-
fare is exclusively concerned with feelings, specifically, pleasure and
pain. Pleasure and pain are phenomenologically valenced mental states:
pleasure is any positively valenced mental state; pain is any negatively
valenced mental state.5 In line with hedonism, only negatively valenced
mental states can be bad for welfare, and only positively valenced
mental states can be good for welfare. Accordingly, the welfare hedon-
ist defines good and bad welfare with reference to pleasure and pain,
respectively.
The orthodox view of animal welfare is a consequence of the influ-
ence of animal welfare science. Animal welfare science is regarded by
policy makers as an important source for the animal-related content of
welfare policy.6 In line with the scientific conception of welfare, welfare
is a measurable state of animals and the most important states are pos-
itively valenced and negatively valenced mental states. In other words,
6    
J. Hadley

like hedonism before it, welfare science is feelings-focused and the

key feelings are pleasure and pain. The disconnect between the broad-
based public or folk conception of welfare and the narrow feelings-fo-
cused orthodox or specialist conception of welfare is what I refer to as
the political problem of welfare. The political problem of welfare is the
focus of Chapter 2.
If orthodox welfare thinking is feelings-focused, then attempts to
broaden the concept to include nonhedonistic considerations like dig-
nity and respect are effectively attempts to move away from the welfare
orthodoxy. Proponents of including dignity and respect in welfare legis-
lation and codes are thus vulnerable to the charge of changing the sub-
ject. This the problem I label the philosophical problem of welfare or
the changing the subject problem. The philosophical problem of welfare
is the focus of Chapter 3.

Experiential Pluralism and Expressivism

In Chapter 5 I present two theories which stand as possible solutions to
the two welfare problems. Experiential pluralism is the view that feel-
ings other than pleasure and pain can impact upon the welfare of an
individual. Pluralism reconciles broad-based public concern for animals
with the feelings-focused welfare orthodoxy by analysing nonhedonistic
concerns in terms of nonhedonistic experiences. In line with pluralism,
when a person uses a term such as dignity or respect, they are drawing
attention to the nonhedonistic experiences of the animal. In turn, expe-
riential pluralists can argue that their theory avoids the changing the
subject problem because the change they enjoin is only minimal. The
pluralist simply calls for a broadening of the range of welfare-related
feelings. Whereas the hedonistic orthodox view is that pleasure and pain
are the only relevant feelings, experiential pluralism encompasses other
feelings such as novelty or compassion. It is important to note that
experiential pluralism, like hedonism and orthodox animal rights the-
ory, is a realist theory, which means that the foundational assumptions
of philosophical realism are background assumptions of pluralism.
 1 Introduction    
7

Expressivism, in contrast, is an irrealist theory that purports to rec-

oncile broad-based public concern for animals with the feelings-fo-
cused welfare orthodoxy by preserving the existing vocabulary of
concern without any attendant ontological commitments. In other
words, citizens can talk all they like about dignity and respect without
being accused of changing the subject, because there is no suggestion
that the terms they use refer to natural features of the world. It is only
because nonhedonistic concepts like dignity, respect and inherent value
are reduced to natural features of the world in orthodox animal rights
theory, that proponents of animal rights are vulnerable to the charge of
changing the subject.7
In Chapter 5 I also sketch how public deliberation about animal pro-
tection would play out when inquiry and moral vocabulary are under-
stood in expressivist terms. Instead of seeking once and for all answers,
deliberators are aiming to have their views resonate with their interloc-
utors. In fact, it is best to think of deliberators as co-experimenters and
fellow community of inquiry members; linked in analogous fashion to
the way all scientists can be said to be united in a common endeavour
to get the world right, so to speak.

Two Problems for Animal Rights Theory

Tying rights vocabulary to welfare is expedient for the business of
promoting animal protection in the real world and makes for well-
grounded philosophical theory. As well as being politically engaged in
the familiar terms of animal welfare, the neopragmatic approach to ani-
mal ethics avoids the metalevel problems associated with thinking about
welfare and rights in the usual way. An analysis of these problems is the
focus of Chapter 6. A brief summation of the problems will suffice for
this introduction.
The first problem is the equivocation problem or, more commonly,
a fallacy of equivocation. A fallacy of equivocation is a well-known fal-
lacy in the canon of informal logic. In line with time-honoured norms
of philosophical logic, valid arguments have conclusions that are
unambiguously supported by the premises. Validity, therefore, requires
8    
J. Hadley

uniformity in meaning across the concepts in the premises of an argu-

ment. In other words, if a premise contains the concept chair, the sense
of the term must be the same wherever the term appears in the argu-
ment; you cannot have chair meaning ‘head of the meeting’ in one
premise and ‘item of furniture’ in another premise. An argument that
included two distinct senses of the term chair would be classed an inva-
lid and labelled fallacious. An invalid or fallacious argument arises when
the meaning of one of the terms in the argument is sufficiently ambig-
uous to call into question the logical relation between premise and con-
clusion. In effect, the protagonist putting forward a fallacious argument
commits a sleight of hand by trading on the ambiguity in the meaning
of different senses of the same the term to secure the appearance of a
valid argument.
In Chapter 6 I suggest that orthodox analytic animal rights theory
faces an equivocation problem. There is sufficient ambiguity surround-
ing the meaning of the term sentience to undermine the logical rela-
tions between the premises and conclusion of the basic animal rights
argument. In Descent of Man ([1879] 2004), Darwin had famously said
that the mental states of humans and animals differ by degree not kind.
Implicit in this claim is an acknowledgement that there is variation
between human and animal mental states. The question, then, is what
are the downstream effects of this acknowledged variation? It is com-
mon for philosophers to suggest that the variation results in a difference
in the interests or rights that can be meaningfully predicated to humans
and animals (Rachels 1990). But why stop there? Why wouldn’t the
implications of Darwin’s claim extend to the meaning of the terms used
in speaking about interests and rights? After all, a degree of difference is
still a difference.
The second problem that undermines animal rights theory is the
so-called placement problem. The placement problem is a distinctly
metaphysical problem arising from the overall metaphilosophical world-
view embedded in animal rights theory. The worldview is known as
philosophical realism, but the specific aspect of realism that emerges
as a particular problem for animal rights theory is object naturalism. I
will explain realism and object naturalism in depth later; suffice to say
now, however, that animal rights theory has an underlying metaphysical
 1 Introduction    
9

structure that is conceptually very similar to religious ethical theories.

The problematic concept is Regan’s (2004) notion of inherent value,
but the placement problem extends to any concept of value. How does
value feature in a scientific picture of world? If the only entities that
exist are things that can be the proper subject of the physical sciences,
then how do we locate value in the physical sciences picture? Animal
rights theorists pass over this question as if it has no theoretical signifi-
cance. In Chapter 6 I suggest the placement problem calls into question
the popular view that animal rights theory can trace its theoretical roots
to Darwinism.

Objections to Animal Neopragmatism

A full rendering of the equivocation problem and the placement prob-
lem will be given in Chapter 6. In Chapter 7 I address the main the-
oretical objections to the neopragmatic theory of animal ethics. The
first objection relates to objectivity and truth: proponents of ani-
mal rights, like proponents of any theory, need to be able to claim
the mantle of truth and the pragmatic theory advanced in this book
leaves out truth altogether. The objection continues: because the time-
honoured epistemic norms of philosophical realism find no place in
pragmatist theory, there is no basis for judging the merits of any rival
claims about the welfare of animals. There are two responses to the
objection: one is to argue there is a conception of truth that can find
a place in neopragmatic theory. This is the theory of truth, associated
with pragmatist philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce, as an ideal end
point or regulative assumption of inquiry. The second response is to
concede that truth is unimportant in animal neopragmatism but stress
that the vocabulary of animal protection debates remains the same.
Proponents of animal protection can still use the familiar vocabulary
of animal rights in attempts to have their position resonate with their
interlocutors.
The second objection is that animal neopragmatism fails on its own
pragmatic terms precisely by leaving so much of the status quo in place.
It is a test of any pragmatic theory that it makes a practical difference in
10    
J. Hadley

the lives of real people. The objection continues: given that the vocab-
ulary of the animal protection debate remains the same, and given also
that pain remains as the central concern for welfare, then neopragma-
tism leaves the animal protection landscape unchanged. The response to
this objection is to concede that neopragmatism leaves the status quo
substantially in place but to point out that the theoretical intention was
always reform rather than revolution. In other words, what the objector
mistakes for conservatism is actually the playing out the familiar prag-
matist strategy of progressive amelioration.8

Pragmatist Critique of the Philosophical

Tradition
The starting point for the neopragmatist is a particular conception of
persons set against the background of a rejection of the foundational
assumptions of the philosophical tradition. Neopragmatism, therefore,
has both a positive case and negative case motivating it. The merits of
the kind of anti-representationalism typical of pragmatism will hope-
fully become clearer after the discussions in Chapters 5 and 6. Below,
I will briefly explain some of the foundational assumptions of the
philosophical tradition that pragmatists reject. I presuppose that these
assumptions are operative in orthodox animal rights theory.9
The first assumption is metaphysical realism. The easiest way to
understand metaphysical realism is with reference to the everyday
practice of subject-predicate discourse. Imagine somebody point-
ing to a nearby item of furniture and saying, “The chair is wooden.”
The subject of the statement is the chair and the predicate is wooden
or, strictly speaking, woodenness. While it is commonplace to describe
things like chairs with reference to their predicates, doing so has an
implication for how the world is understood. Notice that the predi-
cate term wooden is used to refer to a property or feature of the chair.
The usage of subject-predicate discourse presupposes an ontology or
metaphysical worldview whereby things exist as bearers of particular
shareable properties. Some metaphysical realists are known as natural-
ists and some are labelled as supernaturalists. Naturalists hold that the
 1 Introduction    
11

only things that exist are the kinds of entities that can be the subject
of the natural sciences, including psychology (Fisher 2011; Macarthur
and Price 2007). A supernaturalist, in contrast, leaves room in her met-
aphysical picture of the world for entities that are difficult to place in a
scientific account of the world. Items such as a human soul, numbers,
and the property of sanctity are examples of entities that supernaturalists
may include in their account of the world.

Moral Realism, Rationalism and Reductionism:

The Three-Rs of Animal Rights Theory
Moral realism is the idea that the framework just applied to the case
of chairs and their properties can be just as readily extended to state-
ments considered to have ethical subject matter. These are statements
that include predicate terms like good, bad, right and wrong. Thus, for
the moral realist, the statement “Giving to charity is good” picks out
an action (giving to charity) and a property (goodness) in just the same
way that the statement, “The chair is wooden”, picks out an item of fur-
niture and a property it bears. And, according to realists, just as a state-
ment about the materiality of chairs can be true or false, so can claims
about the morality of particular actions. In line with moral realism, the
statement “Giving to charity is good” is truth-apt and can be made true
in the same way as the statement about chairs—by whether the world
corresponds to the statement. In other words, whether, in actual fact,
giving to charity is good.
At this point readers may be perplexed about how claims concerning
goodness can be true or false in the same way as claims about wood-
enness. Here another framing assumption of metaphysical and moral
realism—reductionism—plays its part. Reductionism is the identifi-
cation of one set of properties with another set of properties in order
to enable a statement to be truth-apt (Fisher 2011, p. 180). For exam-
ple, a hedonist may identify goodness with the promotion of pleasure.
With such a reduction in place, the meaning of the statement “Giving
to charity is good” becomes ‘Giving to charity promotes pleasure.’ The
hedonist’s reduction of good to pleasure serves to render the statement
12    
J. Hadley

capable of being true or false. The statement will be true if, in fact, giv-
ing to charity promotes pleasure, and false otherwise.
It is easy to see how moral realism and, by corollary, metaphysical
realism, are framing assumptions of orthodox animal rights theory. A
claim such as “It is wrong to raise and kill animals for food” will be ren-
dered truth-apt through a reductive analysis of wrongness to, say, ‘fails
to promote a net aggregate balance of pleasure over pain.’ The statement
will be true if, in fact, raising and killing animals for food fails to pro-
mote a net aggregate balance of pleasure over pain. Of course, deter-
mining the truth of this statement turns on the acceptance of a host
of answers to related questions about animal mental states, the welfare
impacts of intensive confinement systems, and consumer psychology,
but the basic point is that the methodology of reduction furnishes truth
conditions for claims about the ethics of practices involving animals.
The final assumption is rationalism. Rationalism is the traditional
philosophical methodology of reasoned argument based upon logical
relations between premises and conclusions. For philosophers, reasoned
argument is the functional equivalent of the scientist’s microscope. The
back and forth process of justification and objection is like focusing a
microscope upon a new discovery. The deliverances of arguments, like
the findings of empirical inquiry in science, are held by rationalists as
truths. A number of epistemic norms and virtues accompany rational-
ism, most notably, responsiveness to evidence and open-mindedness. I
discuss the implications of these norms and virtues for the conduct of
debates about the ethical treatment of animals in Chapters 5 and 7.

Last Word Philosophy

The assumptions just described are all related and together they create
a picture of the animal ethics literature as just so many rival theorists
working away more or less like orthodox scientists. As the above discus-
sion shows, just like a group of scientists, animal ethics theorists have
certain metaphilosophical constraints upon them that are intended to
serve to discipline their thinking. In line with this picture, disciplined
 1 Introduction    
13

thinking is accepted as a virtue of ethical reasoning. Inquiry is cast as

a dispassionately objective process that proceeds via the consideration
of arguments which more or less conform to the rules of philosophi-
cal logic. The conclusion of a rational argument can be accepted as the
truth, in like manner to the findings of an empirical research protocol.
Accordingly, the proponent of animal rights can claim that their argu-
ment deserves to be regarded as correct—as the last word on the subject.
The problem with last word philosophy, however, is that it often fails
to cohere with practice. Homo sapiens are emotional animals and prone
to partiality. The framing assumptions of last word philosophy con-
stitute ill-fitting constraints on people whose views are very likely the
product of complex noncognitive factors and personal circumstances,
and, thereby, resistant to rational evidence.10 While some people might
be analytically minded and impressed by logical relations and clarity,
others may prefer epistemically messy and emotionally charged debate;
especially when the topic in question is human relations with animals.
What the pragmatists succeed in doing is showing how the framing
assumptions of the tradition are, ultimately, options, and people who
aspire to make progress can find suitable theoretical resources elsewhere.
Shaking up the established order in this way, neopragmatism affords the
opportunity for the development of a distinctly different animal rights
theory, a theory that coheres with a more realistic conception of people
and their concerns.

Notes
1. In Chapter 2 I review the empirical evidence and in Chapter 4 I offer a
psychological-cum-anthropological thesis in support of this claim.
2. I present a genealogical analysis in support of this claim in Chapter 2.
3. For example, Cataldi (2002) and Nussbaum (2006) each betray an
implicit commitment to representationalism when they analyse a moral
concept, dignity, in terms of a purportedly natural feature of animals.
In Cataldi’s case, dignity is analysed with reference to inherent value; in
Nussbaum’s case, species-typical behaviour.
14    
J. Hadley

4. This part of the book owes a lot to Helm’s (2010) theory of love and
concern, which I discuss in Chapter 4. In line with Helm’s view, when
a person shows concern for some specific aspect of a loved-one’s life, we
can be assured that they are concerned for the loved-one in a broader
sense. In like manner, I argue herein that when a person shows concern
for another’s pain, this reflects a wide-ranging concern for the other.
5. Negatively valenced mental states are often referred to as aversive and
as involving aversive phenomenology. Phenomenology refers to how the
experience feels on the inside, so to speak.
6. I say animal-related content because, clearly, welfare policy includes
non-animal-related content in the sense that legislation, codes of prac-
tice and norms are influenced by commercial demands of representa-
tives of animal user industries.
7. It is important to note that for the purposes of the critique of this
book, besides reductionism any form of analysis that proceeds from
a term or concept to a natural feature of the world will generate the
changing the subject problem.
8. Koopman (2009, p. 2) identifies the “central concern” of pragmatism as
“transitioning” and “meliorism”.
9. In Chapters 3, 5, and 6 I refer to these assumption as the three-Rs of
animal right theory.
10. The lure of representationalism, it has a been argued by pragmatists
(see, e.g. Rorty 1979, p. 376; 1991, p. 35), is the promise of an ulti-
mate standard that is outside of our actual practices. The idea of such
a standard, Rorty argues, appeals to a religious impulse. The thesis in
Jamieson, Wenk and Parker (2003) opens up the prospect that an anal-
ogous impulse may also be a feature of animal rights thinking. For a
discussion, see Hadley (2017a).

References
Bacon, Michael. 2012. Pragmatism: An introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Cataldi, Sue. 2002. Animals and the concept of dignity: Critical reflection on a
circus performance. Ethics and the Environment 7 (2): 104–126.
Darwin, Charles. [1879] 2004. The descent of man, 2nd ed. London: Penguin
Classics.
 1 Introduction    
15

Fisher, Andrew. 2011. Metaethics: An introduction. Durham: Acumen.

Hadley, John. 2013. Liberty and valuing sentient life. Ethics and the
Environment 18 (1): 87–114.
Hadley, John. 2017a. Religiosity and public reason: The case of animal rights
advocacy. Res Publica 23 (3): 299–312.
Hadley, John. 2017b. From welfare to rights without changing the subject.
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 20 (5): 993–1004.
Helm, Bennett W. 2010. Love, friendship and the self. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Jamieson, Wesley V., Casper Wenk, and James V. Parker. 2003. Every spar-
row falls: Understanding animal rights activism as functional religion.
In The animal ethics reader, ed. Susan J. Armstrong and Richard G. Botzler,
556–562. London: Routledge.
Koopman, Colin. 2009. Pragmatism as transition: Historicity and hope in James,
Dewey, and Rorty. New York: Columbia University Press.
Macarthur, David, and Huw Price. 2007. Pragmatism, quasi-realism, and the
global challenge. In New pragmatists, ed. Cheryl Misak, 91–121. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Nussbaum, Martha. 2006. Frontier of justice: Disability, nationality, species
membership. Cambridge: Belknap Press.
Rachels, James. 1990. Created from animals: The moral implications of
Darwinism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Regan, Tom. [1983] 2004. The case for animal rights. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the mirror of nature. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1991. Objectivity, relativism and truth: Philosophical papers.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 2
The Political Problem of Welfare

In this chapter I outline the political problem of welfare. The ­political

problem of welfare is the divergence between two different ways of
thinking about welfare. On the one hand, the specialist conception of
welfare and, on the other hand, the public or folk conception of welfare.
Roughly, the specialist view is that welfare is all about feelings, ostensi-
bly, measurable suffering, and the folk view is that welfare is about more
than feelings. The folk have a broad-based and diffuse notion of welfare.
When close attention is given to the folk view of welfare, it is fair to
say that it encompasses a raft of considerations that progressive theo-
rists identify as important elements of welfare. These considerations can
be classed as nonhedonistic and include intrinsic value, respect, dignity,
integrity, and naturalness.1 Because the views of the folk overlap with
progressive theory, policy makers would be wise to consider progressive
theories as a potential source for values and principles. An important
take away message from this chapter is that progressive theorists are
in-sync with mainstream opinion after all.
That the specialist conception of welfare is so influential in shaping
the policy conception of welfare, however, entails that there is a ques-
tion mark hanging over the democratic legitimacy of existing welfare

© The Author(s) 2019 17

J. Hadley, Animal Neopragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25980-8_2
18    
J. Hadley

policy.2 The focus of existing welfare policy upon measurable suffering

is too narrow to adequately reflect public opinion and, therefore, an
exclusively feelings-focused welfare policy inevitably fails to achieve its
democratic purpose to assuage citizens’ concern for the care of animals.
Ideally, policy assuages citizen concern by having its content reflect
the preferences and commitments of citizens. To the extent that policy
makers are concerned to have democratically legitimate welfare policy
reflect the view of citizens, then existing laws, codes of practice, and
norms need to be reformed in the direction of the folk conception.
In this chapter I will explore the political problem of welfare. I trace
the problem to the theory of value known as hedonism, and the influ-
ence of animal welfare science over welfare orthodoxy. If welfare ortho-
doxy was not ostensibly hedonistic and scientistic, then there would be
no divergence between the specialist conception of welfare and the folk
conception of welfare.

Hedonism
Hedonism is what moral philosophers call a theory of value.3 Theories
of value purportedly tell us about why we should think something is
morally significant. Theories of value may identify a single factor, or a
range of factors, as the basis for valuing something as good or bad. Most
theorists of value tend to be realists and single-minded about the basis
of value. To be realist about value is to be believe that value is a bona
fide feature of the world, akin to size, shape and colour. In line with
realism, to say that something is good or bad is no more controversial
than saying it is round or liquid. To be single-minded about value is to
identify a single factor as the basis for valuing something. Someone who
believes that there is one feature of the world which grounds the value
of things is known as a monist. In line with philosophical monism,
debate in value theory is a contest between rival views, each aspiring for
the mantle of being correct, right or best. We will see below that welfare
scientists and welfare policy is ostensibly realist and monist—scientists
regard welfare as a real property of animals and they identify feelings as
the sole measure of good or bad welfare.
 2 The Political Problem of Welfare    
19

Hedonism is what’s known as an experiential theory of value. In

line with an experiential theory of value, experiences are the only basis
by which to judge something as good or bad. The experiential focus
of hedonism affords a basis for judging the contribution that some-
thing makes to the value of individual lives. It is as a theory for judging
how well lives are faring, that is, as a theory of welfare or well-being,
that hedonism is most influential in debates about animal protection
(Gregory 2016). In line with a hedonistic theory of welfare, only an
experience can enhance or diminish an individual’s welfare. For exam-
ple, imagine that I just had a conversation with a colleague. In line with
experiential theories of value, the only basis for judging whether the
conversation enhanced or diminished my well-being is an experience
of some kind. Perhaps the conversation caused me to feel satisfaction
or dread. The principle that experience alone can be good or bad for an
individual’s well-being is known as the experience requirement (Hawkins
2016). Hedonism is distinctive in its singling out of only two kinds of
experiences: pleasurable ones and painful ones. In line with hedonism,
pleasure and pain are analysed in terms of positively valenced and neg-
atively valenced feeling, respectively. Thus, to be in pain or suffering is
to have an aversive (negatively valenced) experience on the inside, so to
speak. Likewise, to have a pleasurable experience is to have a positively
valenced feeling. Tying pleasure and pain to positive and negative feel-
ings puts the hedonist in a position to say that anything that produces
pleasure is good and, conversely, anything that produces pain is bad.
The purported measurability of hedonism is held up as a virtue
of the theory. The nineteenth century English philosopher, Jeremy
Bentham, enjoined that individual units of well-being, he called them
utiles, should be distinguished on the basis of a range of variables such
as intensity and duration (Bentham [1789] 2007, p. 29). For Bentham,
the longer lasting and more intense pleasures added more to an individ-
ual’s well-being than fleeting low intensity pleasures. The merits of laws,
policy proposals, a person’s dispositions and character, relationships,
and actions, according to Bentham, could be similarly evaluated simply
by taking into account the tendency of each to augment or diminish
the individual or collective balance of pleasure over pain. In the nine-
teenth century, the measurability rendered hedonism a more transparent
20    
J. Hadley

and objective basis for decision-making than political expediency, cus-

tom, or nepotism. We will see that this kind of reductive approach to
well-being is mirrored in the scientific approach to animal welfare.

The Intrinsicality Thesis

But hedonism is in one important respect incomplete. It is one thing to
assert that pleasure and pain are the only values, it is another to explain
why pleasure should be thought of as good and pain considered as bad.
Despite pleasure and pain being two intuitively compelling and very
familiar experiences, few people question and understand the underly-
ing evaluative grounds of positively valenced and negatively valenced
experiences. What makes pain bad exactly? Is it the experience of pain
itself that makes it bad, or the fact that the experience is unwanted?
Pain theorists purport to answer these questions (Kahane 2016).
Imagine that you are in pain. Say that you have just had the first part
of a root canal procedure. The anaesthesia has worn off and you have a
sore tooth and jaw from the vigorous scraping out of the canal. You are
trying to sleep but are distracted by the negatively valenced phenom-
enology that you are experiencing. On one side are pain theorists that
say the pain is bad simply because of how it feels on the inside. These
theorists are known as sensation theorists. A rival view is that pain is
bad if and only if it is unwanted. In line with the latter view, pain is bad
because it signals desire frustration, and desire frustration is purportedly
bad in itself. The desire theorist says, because you are in pain it must be
the case that you desire the experience to end. If you desired to experi-
ence the pain, however, according to desire theorist, the pain would not
be bad for you.
Notice how both the sensation theorists and the desire theorists
accept that the badness making feature of pain is a nonrelational feature,
that is, an aspect intrinsic to the experience of the sufferer. In line with
this way of thinking, causing pain and alleviating pain is, at bottom,
a matter of doing something to the sufferer and the sufferer alone. If
I were to step on someone’s toe, for example, the badness of the pain is
to be found inside them; my motives, character or concerns may bear
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Title: On the Sweeny wire

Author: Charles R. Barnes

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Most recently updated: November 8, 2023

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Street & Smith Corporation, 1926

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON THE

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 ON THE SWEENY WIRE
By Charles R. Barnes
Author of “The Sweeny Motor Car,” “Mr. Sweeny: Financier,” Etc.

A party telephone wire is like a political picnic—lots of strangers on the

ground and all full-fledged listeners-in. And Belle Sweeny, the race-track
gambler’s widow, found her neighbors’ conversation irresistible, but, sad to
relate, almost as disastrous.

A telephone inspector was in the Sweeny apartment, looking over

the instrument. Mrs. Sweeny stood by, evidently suspicious, and
watched the man as he worked. Sometimes telephone inspectors
turned out to be evil-disposed persons, bent on loot. If one’s back
were toward them, they would deftly collect whatever property
happened to be available and decamp. So Mrs. Sweeny gave this
man no opportunity at all to develop a burglarious streak, but
watched his every move.
At last he finished brushing out the transmitter, tapping here and
there with an inquisitive finger, tightening contact screws and the
like, and went his way. His observer, now off duty, made her way to
the Boarder’s rooms for a chat.
“Good mornin’,” she said, as she entered.
He returned the greeting and offered her a chair.
“Thanks,” said she, seating herself. “One of them telephone fellers
was just here, fixin’ the thing. I been watchin’ him. You don’t find me
takin’ chances on parties that comes around like that, bein’ flat
workers. Not me!”
“It’s best to be careful,” agreed the Boarder.
“That’s what my Danny usta tell me b’fore he was shot,” she
continued. “We was on a party line then⸺” She broke off abruptly,
as if memory had flashed a message. “Say,” she resumed, “was you
ever a party liner?”
“A what?” the Boarder asked.
 “A party liner,” came the repetition. “You’re one when you and
three or four other people all listens to what each other says on the
phone, b’cause they’re on the same line and can. Anybody that
would listen like that would peek through a keyhole—and I never met
nobody that wouldn’t listen. After you’ve been a party liner for a
while, you’ve got more of a rubberneck disposition than a’
astronomer. You watch a show from beginnin’ to end, through op’ry
glasses, b’cause it makes you think you’re peekin’ at somethin’ on
the sly. It’s a worse habit than whis’lin’ through your teeth; but there’s
times when it comes in handy for some folks. The fine young one I
had almost put Mr. Dan Sweeny and wife down and out.”
“I suppose the telephone company got after you?” the Boarder
hazarded.
“You don’t get no coupon with that guess.” Mrs. Sweeny assured
him. “Nothin’ like that happened; but somethin’ else did. Me and
Danny seen our bank roll all made up and ready to go on in a
disappearin’ act. It was a scary time for me, I tell you, mister.”

The boarder left off whittling the end of a pencil and began to
make himself comfortable.
Mrs. Sweeny continued:
“About that time Danny had had a fallin’ out with a feller named
‘Mike the Wop’ that was workin’ at one of them race-track books. My
husban’ wouldn’t stand for somethin’ he done, and told him so. They
quarreled somethin’ outrag’ous; but afterward they made it up.
Danny brought him out to dinner, and we treated him real stylish, like
he was in the legislature and willin’ to be bought on the racin’
question. But that there Mike wasn’t no kind of a man. He had a low,
backbitin’ disposition—he said he had Sicilian blood in him, and I
believe it. Them Sicilians is great on that revenge thing, mister.”
The Boarder nodded.
“And,” his landlady went on, “I didn’t trust him; and afterward I told
Danny to watch him like he was a tack on a dark floor. I remember
that time at dinner that the telephone was talked about—somethin’
brought it out—and our party line got a hearin’. And Mike, bein’ one
of them fellers that alwus likes to pan out wimmin for bein’ mutts and
havin’ no principles, says he bet I listened on the line.
 “‘Well,’ I says, ‘bein’ that I’m honust by nature,’ I says, ‘I’ll say this
much: If I happen to take down the receiver and the line’s busy,’ I
says, ‘mebbe I don’t put the thing right back up on the hook,’ I says.
“Mike laughs.
“‘Haw-haw-haw!’ he says, ‘you’re like all the rest of ’em, Mis’
Sweeny,’ he says. ‘Wimmin would listen on a telephone line, if what
they heard was that their own house was burnin’ down,’ he says.
‘They’d stick till the folks got through talkin’ and then take a chance
at gettin’ out alive,’ he says.
“Well, I didn’t have no argument with him, seein’ that he’s nothin’
but a rowdy. And then the talk turns to who’s on the line with us. You
know how them things will come off. You bring up somethin’ to talk
about and tell all you know about it, and then begin to lie. We told
Mike that a Presbyterian minister was the L party; and a clairvoyant
was the X party, and a feller named Doyle, that run a corner saloon
over on Amsterdam Av-noo, was the R party, and we was the J party.
I knew, for I’d called up the information operator from downtown and
asked. Mebbe I was buttin’ in, but I just had to know. At first I was
goin’ to kick about havin’ a saloon on our line, but the phone wasn’t
there; it was at the man’s house. Of course all this patter didn’t mean
nothin’ much to Mike at the time. It was just somethin’ that comes off
between ladies and gent’m’n. But wait! I seen the time when I wished
we’d never said a word about who was on our line. All the trouble
come from that.”
The Boarder was showing considerable interest.
“I don’t see how⸺” he began.
But Mrs. Sweeny had the floor, and reminded him of it.
“Sometimes,” she declared, “you don’t seem like you had sense.
Ain’t I doin’ my best to tell you how?”
He subsided, and she went on:

“That evenin’ when Mike left, Danny walked to the corner saloon
with him and interduced him to the proprietor, Doyle. This here Doyle
was crazy about the horses, and had more respect for Danny, who
was a bookmaker, than for the man that made the subway. Danny
didn’t stay, though, but come home right away. He wasn’t one of
them stay-out-all-nights, except when there was somethin’ special to
celebrate, like makin’ a big winnin’ at the track. When he come in, he
says to me:
“‘Belle,’ he says, ‘Mike ain’t such a bad feller.’
“‘There’s worse,’ I says, ‘but they’re in jail. Take it from me, Danny,
the Wop is the kind that’ll meet you with a glad face and then forget
that he ever looked pleasant—he’s a smile-that-won’t-stay-on feller,’
I says. ‘I like him much,’ I says; ‘about as much as you’d like doin’
the housework,’ I says.
“You see, mister, a woman’s got a’ instinct that’s wound up all the
time and rings up people and things like a cash register.”
The Boarder was moved to comment.
“Woman’s intuition is a strange thing,” he said.
“I bet on mine,” she assured him, “and I don’t have to walk home
much, as you might say. And when it told me the Wop’s number—
which was 00—I was sure that the right record was playin’. I tried to
make Danny listen to it, but he was goin’ to sleep in his chair and
wanted peace. So we let the thing drop.
“One mornin’ not long after that our telephone rung, and some
party ast for Mr. Doyle.
“‘You’re in the wrong pew,’ I says.
“‘Ain’t this the R party?’ says the feller talkin’, and his voice
sounded familiar.
“‘No,’ I says, ‘this is the J party.’
“I heard him laughin’.”
“‘Hello, Mrs. Sweeny,’ he says, ‘rubberin’ in on the line again? This
is Mike talkin’.’
“‘No,’ I says, gettin’ mad. ‘I ain’t rubberin’ in on the line. Our bell
rung,’ I says, ‘and a lady’s got a puffec’ right to answer her telephone
if the bell rings,’ I says.
“He laughs again.
“‘Correct,’ he says; ‘go to the head of the class.’ Then he told me
he didn’t mean nothin’ and for me not to go away mad. But I hung
up, and throwed a salt cellar across the room, I was so put out.
“After a while, though, the thing got to easin’ up on my chest, and I
begun to wonder what the Wop’s business with Mr. Doyle was. I
knew that Doyle was makin’ considerable money out of his place; so,
puttin’ two and two together, it looked to me that mebbe the Wop
was after it. Now, mister, we’ve brought up at the place where there’s
a curious woman to deal with—and somethin’ usually happens when
one of them persons is turned loose, don’t it?”
“I believe so,” laughed the Boarder.
“You better had,” she told him. “Oh, don’t they know human
nature, though!”
“Who?” inquired he, not knowing where he stood.
“Them gamblers,” she replied. “They know it better than a s’ciety
woman thinks she knows bridge. Well, let me go on with my story.
The next day, about the same time in the mornin’, our phone rings
again, and it is another case of wrong number and another case of
Mike. After we’d rung off, I gets to thinkin’ again: ‘What does he want
with Doyle?’ And the next minute I’ve got the receiver down, and
there I am, a peeping Tomerino, waitin’ for what’s comin’ off. I didn’t
stay in suspense. Right off I heard Mr. Doyle sayin’:
“‘Hello!’ And then come Mike’s voice. They was talkin’ about a
winner that was bein’ held for a killin’. Mr. Doyle was to play it on
Mike’s tip.
“‘I ain’t quite sure yet,’ says Mike. ‘They’re keepin’ that horse
covered up; but I’ll give you the info in time. You’ll know in two or
three days. Then get on, and get on hard.’
“Mr. Doyle was for it, mister. And mebbe you think I ain’t the
curious little girl about that time! What horse was goin’ to come
through? If I could find out and tell Danny, we’d have a fine, soft
place to cut loose in, after the horse had got home ahead of ’em all.
The thing got me all excited. I couldn’t hardly wait till the next day, for
I meant to listen in again—that telephone had took all my morals
away from me, and I just didn’t care what happened, as long as I got
that information. I didn’t even excuse myself on the grounds that I
was doin’ a’ underhanded thing for the husban’ I loved—and at that, I
figgered on gettin’ a swell dress out of the killin’. This money thing,
mister, is somethin’ that’s awful quick and sure in givin’ wimmin a
crool attack of bein’ wicked. Ain’t it?”
The Boarder thought so.
 “Well,” Mrs. Sweeny went on, “it took me out of the Sunday-school
class right away. And to make the temptation all the stronger, Mike
the Wop alwus seemed to get our number b’fore he got what he
wanted. You’d ought to of heard him pan out the service! He was
real worked up about them girls makin’ so many mistakes. But I
didn’t care. When the bell rung, I knew that them two men was goin’
to talk, so I got right on the job. And I stuck like garlic smell on a’ I-
talian. I got crazy to know the name of that horse; and you can know
how anxious I was, when I tell you that I almost cut out bein’
company for Mrs. ‘Big Joe’ Goss⸺”
“Er⸺” the Boarder began.
“She was a sick lady I was sittin’ up with afternoons,” Mrs.
Sweeny hastened to explain. “And there’s more telephone stuff to
her side of the story. But just you wait. It’ll all come out in time. Mrs.
Big Joe was the wife of a pool-room keeper that me and Danny
knowed real well, and her bein’ all in with neuritis, I was puttin’ out a
helpin’ hand and gnawin’ on the rag all afternoon, so’s she wouldn’t
have a relapse thinkin’ how Big Joe abused her. I’d been doin’ it
about ten days; and lately I’d of gave my right mitt to stick around
and listen to what might come over the telephone. Gee! but I was
anxious to get the name of that horse, mister! It was real deep
anxiety, the kind that makes you forget hatin’ people.”
“I think I can appreciate your position,” the Boarder assured her
with sympathy.
“You don’t have to be a bettin’ man to do it,” she said. “If you’ve
ever walked down street in a new suit, without no umbrella, and
you’re dead sure it’s goin’ to rain, and it don’t,-then you have went
through somethin’ like I did about that horse. But things have a habit
of comin’ to ends, and this here pony business wasn’t any exception.
A day or two later, it all come out. My bell had rung, as usual, and
when me and the Wop had quit roastin’ the telephone company to
each other, I. hung up and waited long enough for Mike to get his
number. Then I kicks in. Mr. Doyle took down his receiver at just
about the time I did—say, I had the thing timed to a second—for I
heard him say:
“‘Hello!’
 “Mike says ‘Hello!’ too. Then he went on;
“‘Doyle,’ he says, ‘I’ve got it. They’re goin’ to pull it in the fourth
race to-morruh,’ he says.
“‘What is it?’ says Doyle.
“‘Whirlwind, Junior,’ says Mike, ‘and go to it, Doyle, like it was
beefsteak and mushrooms,’ he says, ‘and you hadn’t et in a week.
It’s the best thing that’s happened since Doc Cook discovered easy
money,’ he says. ‘And don’t let this info get away. There’s twenty to
one, if you get on early, and half that, anyway,’ he says.
“Mr. Doyle didn’t take a second to answer.
“‘You’re on,’ he says, ‘and I’ll carry fifty for you.’
“‘Fifty?’ says the Wop, in a voice that might mean anything.
“‘I mean a hundred,’ says Doyle. And then they babbled along for
five minutes about the horse, and the best pool room to put up the
money in, and such a line of stuff. Doyle never went to the track,
b’cause if he did he couldn’t help bettin’ on every race, and that
alwus busted him.”
Mrs. Sweeny paused a moment, a bit out of breath.
“I can’t help rememberin’,” she continued, “how fine I felt when I’d
got that tip away from them men. I couldn’t wait till Danny come
home that night. Once or twice I thought of tryin’ to locate him in
some of them Broadway bootleggeries, but I stopped to think that
mebbe some one else might be in on the line—some telephone girl
—and spread the Whirlwind, Junior, stuff. You see, mister, when
you’re bad yourself, you find yourself believin’ that everybody else is
a crook, too. It’s caused by what you tell me is the sighological
moment⸺”
“No,” interrupted the Boarder, “it is a psychic phenomena—a brain
condition⸺”
“Put that in storage,” Mrs. Sweeny indignantly cut in. “Don’t you
s’pose I know what I’m talkin’ about? Sighological moment is good
enough for me. I heard Mrs. ‘Gold Dollar’ Cohen say that a few
evenin’s ago, and she ain’t got nothin’ on me. If she can use them
there words, I guess Belle Sweeny can. They don’t cost nothin’ and
⸺”
The Boarder smiled.
 “I meant no offense,” he said. “Won’t you please go on with the
story?”
Mollified, the good lady gave her upturned nose the “going down”
signal, and sailed forthwith into her yarn.

“Well,” she continued. “I was fidgety as a crate of hens till Danny

come home. Then I told him all about what I’d heard.
“‘Belle,’ he says, when I’d shook it out of the trap, ‘you get a nice,
new dress just for this. What does that there one cost you was tellin’
me about—the grape de foy grass?’ he says.
“‘Danny,’ I says, ‘it ain’t grapes, it’s crépe,’ I says. But I didn’t
bother him with the rest of the name, b’cause I knowed he wouldn’t
understand. I only mentioned somethin’ like two fifty, which was
nearer his idea of information, and he stood for it.
“‘To-morruh,’ he says, ‘when I bring home the money,’ he says,
‘you get yours. I’ll go to it for a thousand,’ he says, ‘and when
everything’s added up, there ought to be enough to pay our hired girl
with, anyhow,’ he says. And with that he went to readin’ his paper,
after havin’ asked when in—well, he wanted to know when dinner
would be ready, he bein’ as hungry as never no man was b’fore. So I
left him go ahead and read his paper, and we didn’t mention the
horse again till the next day.
“I tell you, mister, I was just about crazy to go out to the track and
see that Whirlwind, Junior, eat ’em up. I could see in my mind about
how it would be. The horse would keep pretty well in front for a while,
till the jockey seen just what he had to beat, then he’d give Whirlwind
his head, and mebbe beat him up, down the stretch. And there’d be
a gang of howlin’ maniacs, yellin’ for the fav’rite to make good.
“You bet there’d be excitement enough to satisfy a modust young
thing like me, and I wanted to mix up in it. Also, I wanted to set
around with a knew-it-all grin all over my face and collect my bit, me
havin’ gave Danny fifty to put down for me. Did you ever make a
surething bet?” she asked.
“No,” replied the Boarder.
“Then,” Mrs. Sweeny said, “you don’t know the thrillin’ feelin’ you
get, waitin’ for things to come across. I can’t describe it to you, but it
sure is some feelin’. It begun with me as soon as Danny went out of
the house, and kep’ up right along. At noon, I slips over to Mrs. Big
Joe’s house for lunch and to stay there with her all afternoon. I
couldn’t go to no track, with her feelin’ like she wanted to jump out of
the window and spendin’ her time quarrelin’ with her nurse. She
wouldn’t row none with me, b’cause she kept too interested in what
scandal was goin’ on in our set.

“I guess mebbe I’d been there a’ hour, when the phone, that was
set on a stand by her bed, begun to ring.
“‘I wisht,’ she says, all nervous, ‘I wisht, Belle, that some one
would kick this thing in the eye for me. It like to drives me bugs,’ she
says, puttin’ the receiver to her ear. I was siftin' close b’side her, and
when she says ‘Hello!’ I could hear the voice at the other end real
plain.
“‘Is Joe there?’ it says. And you can just guess that I set up and
took notice. That there voice belonged to Mike the Wop, and I seen,
just as clear as anything, that Big Joe was in on the deal, too.
Somethin’ told me he was. Mrs. Big Joe said her husban’ wasn’t
nowhere around. He was down at his pool room, she was sure.
“‘No,’ says Mike, ‘he ain’t there. I called up. Say, Mrs. Goss,’ he
says, ‘I wisht I knew where to find him.’
“‘What you want with him?’ she says.
“‘There’s a bad tip loose,’ he says, ‘on Whirlwind, Junior,’ he says,
‘and I don’t want Joe to fall for it,’ he says. ‘Nobody’s supposed to
play it,’ he says, ‘but Sweeny. It’s a plant,’ he says.
“Mrs. Big Joe looks up at me, and I’m bendin’ down close to the
receiver that was against her ear. She pulled it away a little bit, so I
could hear better. ‘This here’s too good to be true,’ she says,
forgettin’ that anything was the matter of her. Then to Mike:
“‘What’s this you’re sayin’?’
“‘Sweeny’s goin’ to get his this afternoon,’ Mike tells her, ‘and I
guess him and his rubberneckin’ wife is goin’ to have somethin’ to
study about to-night,’ he says. Then we heard him laugh. ‘Ha-ha-ha!’
he says, ‘I bet they have their telephone tore out by the roots,’ he
says. ‘And I bet she never rubbers again, as long as she lives.’
 “Mrs. Big Joe gets awful anxious at that. ‘What you drivin’ at,
Mike?’ she says.
“‘You’ll hear later on,’ he says. ‘I’m showin’ Dan Sweeny that he
can’t make a monkey of me and get away with it,’ he says. ‘And I’m
flatterin’ myself today that I’m clever enough to walk home alone,
anyway. So Joe ain’t there? Well, I got to hunt him up. If you should
happen to get him on the phone, tell him I said not to play that
Whirlwind thing. It’s goin’ all up and down the line, and how it got
loose I don’t know. Tell him, if you find him. Good-by.’ And Mike hung
up b’fore we could get any more out of him.
“Mrs. Big Joe was so interested that she couldn’t hardly stay in
bed.
“‘Tell me, Belle,’ she says, ‘what all this here funny business
means,’ she says.
“I just set there and bowed my poor, whirlin’ head in my hands.
For I seen it all now. The Wop had been nursin’ his grudge against
Danny, and he had played a slick hand. He’d been callin’ up our
number right along, figgerin’ that I’d rubber in and hear what was
goin’ on. I s’pose he kept at it so long to be sure that I’d get the
phony tip. He’d prob’ly been listenin’ for that little click you hear when
somebody takes down another receiver on a party-line wire, and
he’d found out when I was listenin’ that way, takin’ a chance, like all
them gamblers does, that it was me, and not somebody else. And
right now he was havin’ his little giggle and warnin’ his good fr’en’s
off the information.
“It sure had me goin’, mister, and for a while I was so flustered
that I couldn’t get my head workin’ even good enough to tell Mrs. Big
Joe what had happened. Wasn’t it a’ awful thing, mister, me gettin’
my husban’ in wrong, through my sneakin’ ways?”
“I suppose you felt decidedly unpleasant,” the Boarder said. “But
what of Doyle? Was he being slaughtered, too?”
“It looked like this to me,” Mrs. Sweeny told him. “What do you
think the Wop cared about Mr. Doyle? Nothin’. He wasn’t no fr’en’ of
the Wop’s—just a’ acquaintance—a fr’en’ of a man that the sneakin’,
lyin’ Sicilian didn’t like, anyway. Doyle was only a tool, that’s all.
Nobody cared what happened to him.”
 “I see,” said the Boarder.
“Well,” she resumed, “I fin’ly got settled down enough to tell Mrs.
Big Joe the whole story. I didn’t hide a bit of it. But she didn’t have a
word to say against me.
“‘I’d of did the same,’ she said. ‘A lady has got a puffec’ right to
listen if she wants to. What do we have party lines for, if they ain’t to
listen at, when a pusson ain’t got nothing else to do?’ she says. And
I thought it was real lovely in her. Some folks is too narrow-minded to
take her kind of a view of things.
“But she was full of the idee that we ought to find Danny and
make him run away from that Whirlwind stuff. For the life of me, I
didn’t know where to telephone to, for sometimes Danny left his
pardner run the book and stayed in town, even when he was bettin’.
And them times he was usually in a hotel room, playin’ poker and
such a line of work.
“‘Be-lieve me,’ I said to Mrs. Big Joe, ‘I’m clean up in the air,’ I
says, ‘for I don’t know where to look for him.’
“But she wanted to do somethin’.
“‘Belle,’ she says, ‘call up all the live dives along Broadway, close
to Forty-second Street,’ she says, ‘and if he ain’t in one of ’em, we’ll
get the track. Now begin.’ She takes the book from the table and
hands it to me.

“For a while, it seemed as if the type just danced around, but soon
I was able to read, and then I begun to call up numbers. My only
hope was that, as Whirlwind, Junior, wasn’t to start till the fourth
race, Danny might fool around with some of his pals till late, and then
ride out to the track in a’ automobile. When I got that far in my
reasonin’, I kept repeatin’ that word, ‘automobile, automobile,
automobile.’ It struck me like a hunch, but it was several minutes
before I knew what it meant. After that, I didn’t telephone no more
places. I rung up Mrs. Gold Dollar Cohen.
“‘Say,’ I says, ‘somethin’ turrible has happened,’ I says, ‘and I
must get to Danny,’ I says, ‘b’fore the fourth race. And will you lend
me your car for a fast ride, and your choofer?' I says. Follerin’ which,
I told her of the mean trick that the Wop had pulled on me and
Danny. Mrs. Gold Dollar spoke right up, as soon as she seen what
was happenin’.
“‘Belle,’ she says, ‘you can have the French car,’ she says, ‘and,
what’s more, I’ll go along. Where are you now?’
“‘At Mrs. Big Joe’s,’ I says.
“‘Then,’ she says, ‘get trimmed up, Belle,’ she says, ‘b’cause it
won’t be more’n ten minutes till I’m yellin’ my head off out in front of
that there place for you,’ she says. Then we hangs up, and I’m the
busy party for a while, gettin’ fixed for the trip. Oncet I says to Mrs.
Big Joe that I’d ought to stick around and take care of her, but she let
out a awful holler at that.
“‘There is big things to be did this day,’ says she, ‘and I’m sure I’m
able to take care of myself,’ she says, ‘for there’s the nurse to bawl
out,’ she says, ‘when I want somethin’ to do. And, anyway, I want
Mike the Wop to understand that ladies has a puffec’ right to listen at
a telephone. I do it myself,’ she says, ‘and I ain’t goin’ to stand for no
call down from no cheap Sicilian,’ she says. ‘Our husban’s ought to
beat him up.’
“‘Ain’t that the truth!’ I says, real emphatically. And then I was on
my way, hopefuller than I’d been since the Wop showed us his hand.

“Mrs. Gold Dollar was waitin’ for me when I got downstairs.

“‘Belle,’ she says to me, ‘wait till we get over in Brooklyn,’ she
says. ‘I’ve told my man to hit it up and make Sheepshead Bay
quicker than it was ever did b’fore. I don’t care if we do get pinched,’
she says, ‘for the Gold Dollar is havin’ a great season with his book,
and his wife ought to be allowed a little fun now and then,’ she says.
“My eyes was shut all durin’ that trip, mister, so I can’t tell just
what happened. All I know is that them new French-make cars hits
only every sixteenth high spot, and even at that they touch so light
that you can’t notice it. Mrs. Gold Dollar screamed all the way out.
When she begun, the choofer stopped the car, but she hollers:
“‘Ferdunund, if you do that again, I’ll scream! Go on! Make them
wheels go round like they was paid for it. I’m havin’ the time of my
life!’
 “And you can take it from me, mister, he done just that. Whee! We
sure did go; and it didn’t seem hardly ten minutes b’fore the thing
stopped, and there we was. Both of us set right out on a hunt for
Danny, and pretty soon we found him talkin’ with a couple of gents.
“‘Danny,’ I says, ‘we been bunked,’ I says.
“‘Give it a name, Belle,’ he says.
“‘The Wop,’ I says, ‘has handed us somethin’.’
“‘Whirlwind, Junior?’ says he.
“‘Yep,’ says I. ‘It’s bad. He ain’t goin’ to win.’ Then I told him the
story as fast as I could patter it out. When I was through, he only
kinda laughed.
“‘Well, Belle,’ he says, ‘I’m sorry you and Mrs. Gold Dollar took the
trouble to come way out here and tell me,’ he says, ‘for I didn’t get on
Whirlwind. They was a big tip out that he was to make a killin’, and it
didn’t look good to me. I don’t never fall for them hot ones, Belle, for I
never seen many of ’em get across,’ he says, ‘but thanks, just the
same, for the bother you and Mrs. Gold Dollar has went to on my
account,’ he says. ‘It makes a man think he’s got fr’en’s.’
“I was so surprised, mister, that I couldn’t do nothin’ but stare.
“‘You didn’t get on?’ I managed to say, after a while.
“‘Nope, I didn’t,’ he says.
“‘Well,’ says I, comin’ to my senses, ‘it looks to me as if the only
man that gets stung is Mr. Doyle,’ I says, ‘and I guess somebody
ought to call him up.’
“Danny looked at me hard when I said that. In another minute he
was runnin’ away as hard as he could go.
“‘I’m goin' to phone him,’ he says.
“And five minutes afterward he was back, mister, with a grin on his
face that made it look like a half-opened steamer trunk.
“‘Belle,’ he says, ‘nobody has got no worries but Mike the Wop.
My fr’en’ Doyle didn’t make no bets,’ he says, ‘b’cause he was in on
the plant. He was stallin’ for Mike; only he didn’t know it was us,’ he
says.
“‘Who was meant, then?’ I says.
“‘Haw-haw-haw!’ says Danny, 'who do you s’pose?'
“‘The minister on the line,’ says I.
 “‘You lose,’ says he. ‘Doyle said that he thought they were after
the clairvoyant!’
“‘My sakes!’ I says.
“‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Mike the Wop says to Doyle that the clairvoyant
had trimmed him some way. And Doyle didn’t have no use for her,
b’cause his wife kept goin’ there and spendin’ money for bum
information. So he got in on the plant, and there you are,’ he says.
“Mrs. Gold Dollar and me was so supprised that we couldn’t
chatter. And that’s some supprised for a woman. Then Mrs. Gold
Dollar come to. She dug down in her shoppin’ bag, and brought out a
hundred.
“‘Well,’ she says, ‘somebody’s got to lose somethin’ this day, Mr.
Sweeny,’ she says. ‘Go put this on Roller Skates for me, to show,’
she says.”

TURN THE DIALS

Perhaps the next time the radio set begins to howl as if a dozen
cat fights were mewling inside of the loud speaker, it is not static that
is interfering with the reception from the broadcasting station, but a
newspaper photograph which is being sent through the air.
For an event has occurred that has been anticipated for some
time—it has been found possible to send pictures for long distances
by wireless. Though the apparatus has not been brought to that point
of perfection where we can sit at home and see, cast upon a screen,
moving pictures, the while spoken or sung words of the performer
issue from the loud speaker—this development will probably come
later—photographs can be transferred as great a distance as across
the Atlantic Ocean.
The picture to be sent is first translated into radio impulses by
photoelectric cells. These radio impulses are broadcast, received on
the other side of the ocean, where they actuate a receiving
apparatus which reproduces the picture as a sketch in hot brown
wax. The wax flows from a fountain pen, which is operated by radio
impulses. The reproduction is a sketch in wavy lines of wax, which is
deposited on the paper a little thicker than the ink on an engraved
card.
 So, the next time the loud speaker emits squeaks, howls, squeals,
or absolutely impossible-to-be-identified noises—don’t blame it on
static! Just turn the dials and try to get something else, for you may
be listening to a drawing or a photograph flying through the air in
bits.

Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the July 7, 1926 issue

of The Popular Magazine. The prescient description of television
that would “probably come later,” included here, appeared on the
final page of the story.