Philosophical approaches to animal ethics

1. Gary Varner, Professor of Philosophy Texas A&M g-varner@tamu.edu http://people.tamu.edu/~g-varner/ Philosophical approaches to animal ethics In collaboration with Sponsored by the USDA Higher Education Challenge grants program

2. “The Bloggs Cases” Scarce drug case: You are an emergency room physician, and you only have five doses of a certain drug left. Alas, you have six patients who need it. Bloggs has a very severe version of the condition for which the drug is a treatment, and it will take all five doses of the drug to cure him. Your other five patients have mild versions of the condition, and each of them will be cured by a single dose. Any one of the six who doesn’t get the full dosage they need will die. What would be the right thing to do? A. Give all five doses to Bloggs. B. Give one dose to each of the other five.

3. “The Bloggs Cases” Transplant case: Suppose that you are a famous transplant surgeon, and that your transplants always work. You have five patients, each of whom needs a transplant. One needs a heart, one a lung, one a liver, and two need one kidney apiece. One of your patients, Bloggs, has come in today to find out the results from some lab work. You know from the results of the lab work that Bloggs would be a perfect donor for each of your five other patients, and you know that there are no other available donors. So you ask Bloggs if he would be willing to be cut up and have his organs distributed. He declines your kind offer, but you realize that you could easily overpower Bloggs and cut him up without his consent, and that no one would find out. What would be the right thing to do? A. Don’t overpower Bloggs and let the others die. B. Overpower Bloggs and transplant to the other five.

4. “The Bloggs Cases” What’s the difference? Scarce drug case Transplant case (Either 5 die or 1 dies) (Either 5 die or 1 dies)

5. Philosophical approaches to animal ethics What this lecture will do: Note the variety of reasons people give for worrying about how we treat animals. Discuss the distinction between “animal welfare” and “animal rights.” Describe two key underlying moral philosophies.

6. What reasons do people give for worrying about how we treat animals? • “People care about how animals are treated.” • “The law (or my profession) requires certain treatment.” • “A healthy animal is a productive one.” • “Animals are sentient (feeling) organisms.” • “Animals have rights.”

7. Some related moral philosophies • Virtue theory: “Good people treat animals well.” • Ethics of care: “There are professional/legal requirements regarding them.” • Utilitarianism: “Maximize aggregate happiness.” • Rights views: “Individuals have moral ‘trump cards’ against utilitarian arguments.” Utilitarianism and rights views get a lot of attention because they are related to the distinction between “animal welfare” and “animal rights.”

8. What does the distinction suggest to you? Animal rightists Animal welfarists

9. A popular/political conceptionof the distinction Animal rightists • Radical • Abolitionist • Advocate violence, law breaking • Emotional/unreasoning • Uninformed • Animal activists Animal welfarists • Moderate • Revisionist • Work within the system • Calm/reasoning • Well informed • Scientists and agriculturalists

10. How philosophers conceiveof the distinction Animal rightists • Rights-based thinking • Focus on the individual’s rights Animal welfarists • Utilitarian thinking • Focus on maximizing aggregate happiness

11. How philosophers conceiveof the distinction Animal rightists • Rights-based thinking • Focus on the individual’s rights Animal welfarists • Utilitarian thinking • Focus on maximizing aggregate happiness Each view grows out of a major tradition in moral philosophy. Various philosophers have written carefully reasoned discussions of each view.

12. What reasons do people give for worrying about how we treat animals? • “People care about how animals are treated.” • “The law (or my profession) requires certain treatment.” • “A healthy animal is a productive one.” • “Animals are sentient (feeling) organisms.” • “Animals have rights.” Utilitarianism’s focus on maximizing aggregate happiness focuses attention on the suffering of animals.

13. Peter Singer’s utilitarian view Chapter one, “All Animals Are Equal,” is a very widely reprinted essay. In Animal Liberation, Singer kept utilitarianism in the background, but his arguments there are consistent with a utilitarian stance. Photo credit: Amazon.com

14. Peter Singer’s utilitarian view When we say that “all humans are equal,” what we mean is that we all deserve equal consideration our interests. He argues that “sentience” (the capacity to experience suffering and/or enjoyment) is necessary and sufficient for having interests. Singer says that many non-human animals are capable of experiencing physical pain, which suffices to make them sentient. He concludes that all animals capable of feeling pain deserve equal consideration of their interests. Singer also argues that if we gave equal consideration to animals’ interests, we would stop using them in ways that we wouldn’t use our fellow human beings.

15. Utilitarian responses to Singer But utilitarian arguments have been used to defend some of the same practices that Singer opposes. For instance: A utilitarian should defend medical research on animals, because it can maximize aggregate happiness, by curing diseases and improving treatments. And some argue that humanely raised and slaughtered farm animals add to the world’s happiness. This is “the replaceability argument” for humane animal agriculture:

16. Utilitarian responses to Singer But utilitarian arguments have been used to defend some of the same practices that Singer opposes. For instance: A utilitarian should defend medical research on animals, because it can maximize aggregate happiness, by curing diseases and improving treatments. And some argue that humanely raised and slaughtered farm animals add to the world’s happiness. This is “the replaceability argument” for humane animal agriculture:

17. Utilitarian responses to Singer But utilitarian arguments have been used to defend some of the same practices that Singer opposes. For instance: A utilitarian should defend medical research on animals, because it can maximize aggregate happiness, by curing diseases and improving treatments. And some argue that humanely raised and slaughtered farm animals add to the world’s happiness. This is “the replaceability argument” for humane animal agriculture:

18. How philosophers conceiveof the distinction Animal rightists • Rights-based thinking • Focus on the individual’s rights Animal welfarists • Utilitarian thinking • Focus on maximizing aggregate happiness Each view grows out of a major tradition in moral philosophy. Various philosophers have written carefully reasoned discussions of each view.

19. “The Bloggs Cases” Transplant case: Suppose that you are a famous transplant surgeon, and that your transplants always work. You have five patients, each of whom needs a transplant. One needs a heart, one a lung, one a liver, and two need one kidney apiece. One of your patients, Bloggs, has come in today to find out the results from some lab work. You know from the results of the lab work that Bloggs would be a perfect donor for each of your five other patients, and you know that there are no other available donors. So you ask Bloggs if he would be willing to be cut up and have his organs distributed. He declines your kind offer, but you realize that you could easily overpower Bloggs and cut him up without his consent, and that no one would find out. What would be the right thing to do? Don’t overpower Bloggs and let the others die. Overpower Bloggs and transplant to the other five.

20. What reasons do people give for worrying about how we treat animals? • “People care about how animals are treated.” • “The law (or my profession) requires certain treatment.” • “A healthy animal is a productive one.” • “Animals are sentient (feeling) organisms.” • “Animals have rights.” If animals have rights, then they may be due something more than “humane” treatment.

21. Tom Regan’s rights view Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights (1983) makes a sophisticated argument for extending moral rights to some animals. Photo credit: Amazon.com

22. Tom Regan’s rights view Regan argues that widely shared beliefs about human rights rationally require us to extend moral rights to some non-human animals. He conceives of moral rights as “trump cards” against utilitarian arguments. Most people believe that humans have some rights in this sense, including humans who are profoundly cognitively impaired. What grounds the attribution of such rights to both normal humans and the profoundly cognitively impaired, Regan argues, is that all of them are “subjects of a life,” that is, they all have a psychological life that goes better or worse for them.

23. Tom Regan’s rights view But then, Regan argues, consistency requires us to attribute moral rights to any non-human animals that are similar “subjects of a life.” Regan argues that a range of animals qualify, including at least all normal, adult mammals and birds. If these animals have moral rights, however, then they “have trump cards” against the utilitarian arguments that are commonly used to justify things like animal agriculture and medical research. And if we wouldn’t accept a utilitarian justification for using cognitively impaired humans for agriculture and medical research, then we shouldn’t accept that justification in the case of these animals.

24. How philosophers conceiveof the distinction Animal rightists • Rights-based thinking • Focus on the individual’s rights Animal welfarists • Utilitarian thinking • Focus on maximizing aggregate happiness Each view grows out of a major tradition in moral philosophy. Various philosophers have written carefully reasoned discussions of each view.

25. Philosophically, these represent two important ways of thinking about ethics: Animal rights • Rights-based thinking • Focus on the individual’s rights Attributing rights as “trump cards” against utilitarian arguments may call for an end to some traditional uses of animals. Animal welfare • Utilitarian thinking • Focus on maximizing aggregate happiness Utilitarian thinking may leave room for various traditional uses of animals, with a focus on welfare-improving reforms.

26. What reasons do people give for worrying about how we treat animals? • “People care about how animals are treated.” • “The law (or my profession) requires certain treatment.” • “A healthy animal is a productive one.” • “Animals are sentient (feeling) organisms.” • “Animals have rights.” Utilitarianism and rights views receive the most discussion, but there are ethicists working in other ethical traditions.

27. What reasons do people give for worrying about how we treat animals? Other traditions in ethical theory include: • Virtue theory • Ethics of Care • Contractualism • Theology-based ethics

28. The main “take-home” point • Students in veterinary medicine, animal science, and related fields often get exposed only to the popular/political conception of the “animal welfare”/“animal rights” distinction. • But it’s important to understand that, philosophically speaking, the distinction is grounded in two important traditions in moral philosophy: utilitarianism & rights-based thinking.

29. What this lecture has done • Note the variety of reasons people give for worrying about how we treat animals. • Discuss the distinction between “animal welfare” & “animal rights.” • Describe two key underlying moral philosophies.

30. credits Preparation of this on-line lecture was funded by USDA Higher Education Challenge Grant program award #2010-38411-21368: “Development of an integrated curriculum for animal bioethics: teaching farm animal welfare, agricultural environmental ethics, and rural societal issues based on a cross-disciplinary pedagogy.”

31. Supplementary materials for teachers and students: The following web site contains this lecture and additional curricular materials in the general area of agricultural animal bioethics: • https://vet.purdue.edu/CAWS/bioethics/ An introductory essay that mirrors the content of this lecture, with some additional material, is: • Gary Varner, “Animals in Agriculture,” in Gary Comstock, ed., Life Science Ethics (springer, 2010), pp. 239-265. A very concise, but helpful and general overview of animal ethics is: • David DeGrazia, Animal Rights: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2002). The central works by Singer and Regan are: • Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, revised edition (Avon Books, 1990). • Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, 3rd edition (Cambridge University Press, 2011). • Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, 2nd edition (University of California Press, 2004).