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The Case for Animals
Singer’s Utilitarian Argument
 What is morally
relevant?
 What makes
someone/somethi
ng worthy of
moral
consideration?
Suffering
 The capacity for
suffering and
enjoyment
 Bentham: “The
question is not, Can
they reason? Nor Can
they talk? But, Can
they suffer?”
Equal Consideration
 Equality: Everyone’s interests deserve equal
consideration
 A prescription of how we should treat beings
 Bentham: “Each to count for one and none for
more than one.”
 Sidgwick: “The good of any one individual is of
no more importance, from the point of view (if I
may say so) of the Universe, than the good of
any other.”
Racism, Sexism, Speciesism
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Refusal to give equal
consideration on the basis of
Racism
race
Sexism
sex
Speciesism
species
In each case, interests of one group are
favored unfairly over those of others
Utilitarian Basis
 Capacity for suffering and/or enjoyment is a
prerequisite for having interests
 Capacity for suffering and/or enjoyment gives
us interests
 We must into account all interests equally
 So, we must take into account all who have
the capacity to suffer and/or enjoy anything
Animal Suffering
 Animals can feel pain
 This is just as important as the same
amount of pain felt by humans
 But capacities for suffering and
enjoyment may differ
 Equal consideration does not imply
equal treatment
Equal consideration and worth
 Equal consideration does not imply equal worth
 Typically, humans have capacities that animals
do not: self-awareness, abstract thought,
planning, complex communication
 These affect value of life, though not evil of pain
 So, typically, human life is more valuable than
animal life
Relevant Differences
 Sensitivity
(slapping horse v.
baby)
 Mental capacities
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Terror
Anticipation
Memory
Knowledge of
what’s happening
Cross-species consistency
 Severely brain-damaged or retarded infants and
adults may have fewer mental capacities than
animals
 Dilemma: Either animals also have rights to life,
or it is acceptable to kill the brain-damaged and
retarded
Cross-species consistency
 Singer’s path:
neither may be
killed for trivial
reasons, but both
may be killed for
serious reasons
The Case Against Animals
Benefits of use of animals
 Even if animal pain must be given equal
consideration, medical research on
animals is justifiable
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Elimination of disease
Increase in longevity
Avoidance of pain
Saving lives
Improving quality of lives
Every advance must be tried on a living being for the
first time: if not animal, then human
Common Sense Morality
 Animals have partial moral standing
 Their lives and experiences have direct
moral significance
 But much less than those of human
beings
Common Sense Morality
 Causing animals
gratuitous suffering is
wrong
 Killing animals for no
good reason is wrong
 Killing animals for a
reason may be
acceptable
Vagueness
 We should worry about possible abuse of
the rules we adopt
 There are no sharp boundaries between
babies and adults, the retarded or damaged
and the intelligent, normal adults and the
senile, etc.
 There are borderline cases
 Slippery slope: If we fail to treat them as
having moral standing, we jeopardize our
own moral standing
Animals
 There are sharp boundaries between
humans and other animals *
 There is no danger of slippery slope (“If
we say raccoons have no rights, soon
some will say that Republicans have no
rights!”)
 So, we would not analogously grant
moral standing to animals
Partial moral standing
 But animals have some moral standing: it is
wrong to kill or hurt them without good reason
 Virtues: we want rules that will encourage the
development of virtues
 One can’t be cruel to animals but kind to
human beings
 So, we should adopt rules that will encourage
kind treatment of animals
The Case for Animals
Regan’s Kantian Argument
 You and I have inherent value as individuals
 We are all equal in inherent value
 Irrelevant: race, sex, religion, birthplace,
talents, skills, intelligence, wealth, personality,
pathology, popularity, usefulness. . . .
 Your value as an individual is independent of
your usefulness to me
Rights View
 Categorical Imperative:
 Act only on maxims that can be willed as
universal law
 Treat everyone as an end, not merely as a
means
 Treat others with the same respect you
have for yourself
 You have the right to respect as an endin-yourself
Consequences of Rights View
 Racial, sexual, social discrimination all
in principle forbidden
 Ends do not justify means that violate
rights
 Can never violate an individual’s rights
in the name of social good
Species Boundaries
 What makes you worthy of respect?
 You are the experiencing subject of a life
 You are a conscious creature with individual
welfare important to you regardless of your
usefulness to others
 Animals are also experiencing subjects of a
life
 So, animals have inherent value
Degrees of inherent value?
 Do animals have less inherent value than
humans?
 Why? Whatever feature they lack is also
lacked by some humans: Do they therefore
have less inherent value?
 All who have inherent value have it equally,
as experiencing subjects of a life
Implications
 Lab animals: used— we may not
experiment on them
 Farm animals: used— abolish
commercial animal agriculture
 Eliminate hunting
 Eliminate trapping
 Vegetarianism
The Case Against Animals
Cohen’s Kantian Argument
 A right is a (potential) claim that one
party may exercise against another
 Rights are claims within a community of
moral agents
 To have a right, you have to be
 Able to make a claim
 Part of a community of moral agents
Autonomy
 Kant: we deserve moral respect
because we are autonomous: selflegislating
 Animals lack free moral judgment
 They cannot comprehend duties
 They cannot make moral claims
 They cannot respond to them
 They therefore cannot have rights
Rights and Obligations
 We may nevertheless have obligations
not based on rights
 Obligations may arise from
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Commitments
Differences of status
Special relationships
Particular acts or circumstances
Humane Treatment
 We are obliged to treat animals
humanely
 We owe animals the decency and
concern required but their status as
sentient creatures
 But this is not to treat them as humans
or holders of rights
Dilemmas
 Brain-damaged, retarded, etc.:
 Are still members of the moral
community
 We do not apply tests to individuals one
by one
 Continuity between species
 Animals are not autonomous moral
agents
 No animal can exhibit mens rea,
commit a crime (monkey jails?)
 Does a lion have a right to eat a zebra?
Does the zebra have a right not to be
eaten? Absurd.
Moral standing
 Not all sentient creatures have equal moral
standing
 Speciesism is NOT like racism or sexism
 There are no morally relevant differences among
races or sexes that affect equality of moral
standing
 There are morally relevant differences among
species: moral reflection, autonomy, making and
recognizing claims. . . .
Vagueness
 In the original position, we would worry about
possible abuse of the rules we adopt
 There are no sharp boundaries between babies and
adults, the retarded or damaged and the intelligent,
normal adults and the senile, etc.
 There are borderline cases
 Slippery slope: If we fail to treat them as having moral
standing, we jeopardize our own moral standing
Animals
 There are sharp boundaries between
humans and other animals *
 There is no danger of slippery slope (“If
we say raccoons have no rights, soon
some will say that Republicans have no
rights!”)
 So, we would not analogously grant
moral standing to animals
Partial moral standing
 But animals have some moral standing: it is
wrong to kill or hurt them without good reason
 Virtues: we want rules that will encourage the
development of virtues
 One can’t be cruel to animals but kind to
human beings
 So, we should adopt rules that will encourage
kind treatment of animals
Natural Law
 We have a right to use animals to further our
own survival or biological welfare
 But we may not go beyond that
Carruthers’s Argument
 Things often matter without having
moral standing: ancient buildings, trees,
works of art
 They may give rise to duties indirectly,
by way of the interests and concerns of
those who care about them
Common Sense Morality
 Animals have partial moral standing
 Their lives and experiences have direct moral
significance
 But much less than those of human beings
 Causing animals gratuitous suffering is wrong
 Killing animals for no good reason is wrong
 Killing animals for a reason may be
acceptable
Dilemmas
 Kant: animals are not rational agents,
so don’t have moral standing
 Isn’t that true of babies, the braindamaged, senile, etc.?
 Astrid and her grandfather
 We have to rethink the grounds of moral
standing
Vagueness
 We should worry about possible abuse of
rules we adopt
 There are no sharp boundaries between
babies and adults, the retarded or damaged
and the intelligent, normal adults and the
senile, etc.
 There are borderline cases
 Slippery slope: If we fail to treat them as
having moral standing, we jeopardize our
own moral standing
Animals
 There are sharp boundaries between
humans and other animals
 There is no danger of slippery slope (“If
we say raccoons have no rights, soon
some will say that Republicans have no
rights!”)
 So, we would not analogously grant
moral standing to animals
Partial moral standing
 But animals have some moral standing: it is
wrong to kill or hurt them without good reason
 Virtues: we want rules that will encourage the
development of virtues
 One can’t be cruel to animals but kind to
human beings
 So, we should adopt rules that will encourage
kind treatment of animals