A Philosophical View of Speaker for the Dead

Introduction and Synopses

            Orson Scott Card is an author best known for his works in Science Fiction. His greatest known contributions to the Science Fiction genre are two consecutive books: Ender’s Game (1985) and its sequel Speaker for the Dead (1986), both of which won the noted science fiction Hugo and Nebula awards the years they were released. Subsequently he has written several sequels and prequels to these original works. The series currently has eleven books in it with a twelfth forthcoming. 

            I have read several of his books, primarily in relation to his Ender’s game Series. I have noted that his books have very explicit and implicit philosophical themes that range from genocide to protecting nature, to human behavior. Although the philosophies in this book series can be attributed to one philosopher and often can be seen and contradictory, the philosophical content can often be traced to ancient and modern philosophers, many of which were discussed in this philosophy class.

            In this paper I have decided to focus in on of his works and analyze the core philosophies and morals that are addressed directly and indirectly in the text. The text will be Speaker for the Dead, Card’s second written book in the Ender’s Game Series.

            The protagonist in this book is a man Named Andrew Wiggin commonly known as “Ender” or “Ender Wiggin”. The book takes place around 5270AD, in an unknown part of the universe. Humanity is continuing to expand into the universe colonizing the habitable worlds.

Ender however was born some 3,000 years before on earth before the colonization efforts had begun. Ender was recruited at the age of six to go to battle school; a military training base in outer space. In as few short years Ender, still a young child, played the leading role as a military strategist and commander in the defeat and xenocide (xeno- meaning alien, and –cide meaning the act killing), or extermination, of an apparent hostile alien race known by the humans as “Buggers”. Ender was seen as a war hero, a savior from the threat of the alien species.

 Shortly after the Buggers were eliminated Ender, along with his sister Valentine, left the earth and the rest of humanity behind forever to go with the first colonization group to the Buggers home world.

Ender travels at faster-than-light speeds and thus due to relativistic space travel by the time he gets to the Buggers home world all those that he knew back on earth were long dead while he had aged a relatively small amount. On this planet Ender found a message preserved for him from the Buggers. It comes out that the Buggers were not the threat that everyone had assumed them to be. The Buggers had preserved for the discovery of Ender an egg that would be able to perpetuate the bugger race. 

The Bugger’s home world was not suitable so ender once again took to the stars traveling at faster than light speeds for 3,000 years. During this time he wrote a book called The Hive Queen which first person autobiography of the buggers including the good the bad and the ugly.  He sent this to earth under the pseudonym “speaker for the dead” where it became classic literature. Since that time is has become a custom among some to have a “speaker” speak in behalf of the dead, telling their full story rather than the sanitized version that is so often spoken at funerals. Since the publication and acceptance of this book Speaker for the Dead Ender himself has become increasingly unpopular, he is seen as the monster that had destroyed the only sentient life that had been discovered.

In Card’s book Speaker for the Dead Ender finds himself in a similar situation as humanity was in thousands of years ago. Sentient life has been found on a plant called Lusitania. The life are called Pequeninos, commonly referred to as Piggies. The Piggies are several thousand years behind the humans technology wise although they are learning quickly despite the attempts from the humans to their technology from the Piggies. Ender, now in his 30’s, traveled to Lusitania under his true name Andrew Wiggin and the title of “speaker for the dead” with the egg to secretly restart the Bugger race on the only known compatible planet.

The Piggies carry a virus that is lethal to most life including humans; which if they were to achieve space travel could effectively work as a terraforming agent for any plant they would inhabit.  Furthermore through misunderstanding the Piggies have killed a few of the human residents on Lusitania and in consequence humans on a neighboring world sent a strike force to Lusitania to eliminate the Piggies, and all those on Lusitania including ignorantly destroying the now recuperating buggers.

This is justified through labeling Piggies, and ultimately everything not-human, by names that rank life in a hierarchy with humans at the top of the list thus degrading the value of their ambitions, pleasures, and pains. Such labels include ramen, sentient communicable species, comparable to humans and varelse, essentially what we would consider unknowable animals, in which we can ethically manipulate for our benefit, treating then inhuman. On his website Orson Scott Card clarifies this by saying:

By definition a varelse is someone so alien and dangerous that you can't know them and can't reach an understanding with them; but that inability to know them makes it quite possible that they are potentially raman after all, but you have no way of discovering it… Once having admitted the possibility that, to defend your own community, you might have to obliterate another, do you then find yourself leaping to the conclusion that any degree of strangeness is enough to make aliens worthy of treatment as varelse?

The Piggies are seen as less-than-human and feared because of the sentience they have and the potential competition for resources, planets and dominance. The humans thus feel justified in eliminating all the Piggies in an effort to make human life most pleasurable at the sacrifice of other “less valuable” life.

Utilitarianism and Animal Rights

The justification seeks to employ a method of Utilitarianism; that most happiness in the long run would come from the elimination of the Piggies and all those on Lusitania. Although this is an interpretation of Utilitarianism which is not necessarily wrong, it defiantly does not match up with the classical views of Utilitarianism that was viewed by Jeremy Bentham or John Mill.

Jeremy Bentham’s view of Utilitarianism was revolutionary to philosophy for the very reason that he asserted that life should be measured not by how well a person or being reasons, but on their ability to suffer or feel pleasure. Just because we may be able to reason better than other animals does not mean it hurts any less to hurt them than to one of us. As Bentham explained in his book  Introduction to the Principle of Moral and Legislation:

The day has been, I am sad to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing, as, in England for example, the inferior races of animals are still… The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognised that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog, is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?

            In the book Speaker for the Dead humanity has not progressed as Bentham has seen or hoped for, but rather they have digressed back to inflicting pain on sentient being simply because they view them less-than-human, whose pleasure or pain is less valuable than humans. They have reasoned and found it best to destroy an entire species because of this.

            Similarly John Mill said about animal rights in an article defending against animal rights:

It is "to most persons" in the Slave States of America not a tolerable doctrine that we may sacrifice any portion of the happiness of white men for the sake of a greater amount of happiness to black men. It would have been intolerable five centuries ago "to most persons" among the feudal nobility, to hear it asserted that the greatest pleasure or pain of a hundred serfs ought not to give way to the smallest of a nobleman… Nothing is more natural to human beings, nor, up to a certain point in cultivation, more universal, than to estimate the pleasures and pains of others as deserving of regard exactly in proportion to their likeness to ourselves. These superstitions of selfishness had the characteristics by which Dr. Whewell recognizes his moral rules; and his opinion on the rights of animals shows that in this case at least he is consistent. We are perfectly willing to stake the whole question on this one issue. Granted that any practice causes more pain to animals than it gives pleasure to man; is that practice moral or immoral? And if, exactly in proportion as human beings raise their heads out of the slough of selfishness, they do not with one voice answer "immoral," let the morality of the principle of utility be for ever condemned.

            The leading argument against equality in computation in a felicific calculus for humans and non-humans is the uncertainty of the qualitative or quantitative pain of non-humans. In recent philosophy and science it has been shown that in most cases the majority of these assertions against equality are false. Peter Singer, an Australian philosopher and a prevalent voice on the animal rights issues said the following in regards to sensational equality of animals and humans:

[E]very particle of factual evidence supports the contention that the higher mammalian vertebrates experience pain sensations at least as acute as our own. To say that they feel less because they are lower animals is an absurdity; it can easily be shown that many of their senses are far more acute than ours.

            As we examine Speaker for the Dead we see that it does not discusses animals with lower level reasoning and unintelligible communication but rather a highly rational species that learns, adapts, communicates and can express themselves equally as capable as humans, if not more so.  It demonstrates a degradation of human philosophy back to racism and illogical bias.

            One of Card’s main themes in this book is equality, honestly fairness; we need to question all out beliefs in honest light and see the world as it really is. As it says in Speaker for the Dead describing the philosophy of a speaker for the dead:

No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins.

For Card the speaker for the dead really is the ideal philosopher in his mind; he is impartial dealing unbiasedly with the facts, then revealing the person in all honesty holding everyone equal as individuals, all with worth.

 

Conclusion

This is a theme in many of his books and a primary theme of this one.  Who are we to judge if a species, if a person, or if an animal feels any differently about painful experiences, or joyful experiences than ourselves? We have been egocentric as a species since the start of time, we prone to assume that we ourselves are the most important thing in this world.  We often naturally get into the mindset that we are the only real persona on this world. We do not, nor can we feel the pain of others, and thus we deem that it worse for us to feel pain than for them. However for the best possible society for all, for the greatest happiness for all we need to follow the golden rule, perhaps best known from Jesus Christ when he said “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.”

Works Cited

Bentham, Jeremy, and Laurence J. Lafleur. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation ;.New York: Hafner Pub., 1948. Print.

Card, Orson Scott. Speaker for the Dead. New York, NY: TOR, 1986. Print.

Card, Orson Scott. "Student Research Area - OSC Answers Questions." Hatrack River - The Official Web Site of Orson Scott Card. Web. 18 July 2010. .

King James Bible. [Cambridge, England]: Chadwyck-Healey, 1996. Print.

Mill, John Stuart. Dr. Whewell on Moral Philosophy. [Charlottesville, VA]: InteLex, 200. Print.

Rollin, Bernard E. The Unheeded Cry: Animal Consciousness, Animal Pain, and Science. Oxford: . Oxford UP, 1989. Print.

Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation. New York, NY: New York Review of, 1990. Print.