Response to Andrew

(the original post can be found here: http://www.aaaandreww.blogspot.com/)

I find the issue of how to deal with labels fascinating. The very fact that there is a semantic separation for a lab animal versus being just an animal signifies and reinforces a deeper conceptual segregation. I also think that labels for race and sexuality fundamentally reinforce a conceptual parsing up of human and animal kind into groups with no inherently greater or lesser moral value.

On the other hand I'm not sure if we can critique divisive terminology because it's so useful. We impose categories on the world to make it possible for us to understand and communicate about the world. The only thing we can do about the moral circumvention often employed by humans to get around their inconsistent actions is not to get rid of conceptual categories but to try to be less inconsistent in our action.

Q&A Six Question Two

Q: Where is hard line between moral preference to those with proximity to us and a universal morality?

A: My initial attraction to the study of morality was the promise of a universal ethics that would categorize actions into positive or negative and also determine what actions should morally be taken. The very plausibility of a scientifically rational and universalizable ethics is very much up for debate but if it wasn't to some degree considered a possibility then there would be no need for a discussion about ethics.

It would seem that while we have a duty not to kill others in order to further ones own interests, and yet this case seems to have a logical foil, which is self defense. In the self defense scenario it seems like you are allowed to defend yourself against an attacker, but this seems to directly violate the first principle of not harming another for one's own interests. So then we can amend the first principle to say that we can never harm others for our own interests unless those interests are very great?

That does not seem practical because it leave a huge grey zone regarding defining what a 'great interest' is. Could 'great interest' be a large sum of money?

Q&A Six Question One

Q: Why is self defense justified?

A: The question of consuming animals for the purposes of life saving experimentation is closely akin to the justification for self defense. If you have an attacker that will kill you that will not stop unless you kill them then it seems you are free to defend yourself.

For animal experimentation it is as if to stop the attacker you must kill a number of innocent bystanders. Also if we assume incrementalism, giving the rights of non-humans less value than humans, we further complicate our calculations. If we do not consider incrementalism as a reality then it would be equally permissible to use humans for experimentation.

I keep wondering why it is permissible to experiment on animals, if the need is great enough, but it seems never to be permissible to experiment on humans against their wishes even when a great multitude can be saved if this happens. Maybe humans consent is more important due to their higher cognitive capacities, but I'm inclined to think this feeling is also informed to some extent by a speciesist bias.

In the end the extremely confusing and hard to calculate complications that come up when justifying the use of animals for experimentation inclines me to be against it.

Philip Wollen

This is an extract from the intelligence squared debate 'Should Meat Be Off the Menu?' Philip Wollen's emotionally charged argument touches on the basic case for animal rights. Though animals may not have the cognitive capacity of humans, and even if we can rightly accord them lower beings because of this, they have the same essential capacity to suffer that makes them morally relevant. It is a simple moral law that those with the capacity to suffer must be included in the moral sphere, it is wrong to think not that if we can make agreements with a being or that some circumstance of birth puts us in a position of power over them that this amounts to a moral privilege to dispense with them as we may. There was once a time where it was universally moral for those 'better' humans to be accorded the power and moral right to power over other humans as we assume for ourselves the right to power over non-human animals. It is an arrangement repugnant to every egalitarian ideal, and it's a gross oversight by a humanity that is struggling to move beyond a dark past of human slavery.

It is our capacity for empathy that is our most unique human capacity, if we fail to exercise it we also fail to be more than any other animal.

Q&A Five Question Two

Q: Is a vegan diet obligatory even if the animals producing non-flesh products are kept in the best possible conditions? [For example if you keep chickens in your back yard in a luxurious coop, with tons of forage, and plentiful feed, and collect their eggs]

A: The majority of laying hens in the US live and die in cramped, crowded, and dirty conditions, often killing each other, going insane, and dying within months of their birth. This is an artificial scenario imposed by the brutal logic of the capitalist market, and I think it is clearly an immoral situation.

Under the best of scenarios it would seem like collecting the products of animals such as a hen would not be immoral. This does not address the situation of the vast majority of animals in industrialized countries however.

Q&A Five Question One

Q: Where is the hard line of trivial desire versus vital need when interfering with the lives of animals?

A: I am sure that eating animals is a trivial desire that does not amount to a vital need to interfere in the lives of animals and do the wrong of ending their lives. I feel confident in this belief because eating animals is not necessary for nutrition, and the excessive resources needed to produce meat makes it an exorbitant luxury. That being said it is hard to put down the hard and fast line where it is OK to end the lives of animals when it corresponds to a great need on the part of a more highly sentient being (such as a human).

We can see that most people would agree that if you could choose between taking a humans life and a dogs life it is more moral to take the dogs life in order to save the human. This shows there are situations where human's value, being greater than that of an animal, entitles them to preferential treatment, but I'm having a hard time thinking of any day-to-day situations where humans morally take precedence over animals. Any ideas for the sort of situation you would commonly observe wherein a humans higher moral status should result in a quantifiable difference in treatment (not differences resulting from being a certain species or whatnot)?