Moral Framework Should be Extended to Animals

Moral Framework Should be Extended to Animals

Ruth Layton, Director Food Animal Initiative, 2008, The Future of Animal Farming: renewing the ancient contract, eds. M. Dawkins & R. Bonney, p. 92-3

Often in my work I am reminded of Ghandi’s well known quote, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” It is a source of hope to me therefore that the leaflet produced by our government last year, in response to the bicententary of the abolition of the slave trade, made the following statement: “2007 is a chance to make a collective commitment that in another two centuries time no-one should feel the need to express regret for our activities today.” At present, our treatment of many of the animals throughout the world who provide our food falls into just such a category, which with hindsight we certainly will come to regret.
DIFFICULT TO JUSTIFY EXCLUDING NON-HUMAN ANIMALS FROM THE SPHERE OF EQUALITY

Peter Singer, Professor of Philosophy Monash University, 1995, Animal Liberation, p. 237

For philosophers of the 1950s and 1960s, the problem was to interpret the idea that all human beings are equal in a manner that does not make it plainly false. In most ways, human beings are not equal; and if we seek some characteristic that all of them possess, then this characteristic must be a kind of lowest common denominator, pitched so low that no human being lacks it. The catch is that any such characteristic that is possessed by all human beings will not be possessed by only human beings. For example, all human beings, but not only human beings, are capable of feeling pain; and while only human beings are capable of solving complex mathematical problems, not all humans can do this. So it turns out that in the only sense in which we can truly say, as an assertion of fact, that all humans are equal, at least some members of other species are also “equal” – equal, that is, to some humans.

If, on the other hand, we decide that, as I argued in Chapter 1, these characteristics are really irrelevant to the problem of equality, and equality must be based on the moral principle of equal consideration of interests rather than on the possession of some characteristic, it is even more difficult to find some basis for excluding animals from the sphere of equality.

Moral Framework Should be Extended to Animals

Peter Singer, Professor of Philosophy Monash University, 1995, Animal Liberation, p. 239-40

In case anyone still thinks it may be possible to find some relevant characteristic that distinguishes all human beings from all members of other species, let us consider again the fact that there are some human beings who quite clearly are below the level of awareness, self-consciousness, intelligence, and sentience of many nonhuman beings. I am thinking of human beings with severe and irreparable brain damage, and also of infant human beings; to avoid the complication of the potential of infants, however, I shall concentrate on permanently and profoundly retarded human beings.

Philosophers who set out to find a characteristic that would distinguish human beings from other animals rarely took the course of abandoning these groups of human beings by lumping them in with other animals. It is easy to see why they did not do so; to take this line without rethinking our attitudes to other animals would mean we have the right to perform painful experiments on retarded humans for trivial reasons; similarly it would follow that we have the right to rear and kill them for food.

For philosophers discussing the problem of equality, the easiest way out of the difficulty posed by the existence of human beings who are profoundly and permanently disabled intellectually was to ignore it. The Harvard philosopher John Rawls, in his long book, A Theory of Justice, came up against this problem when in trying to explain why we owe justice to human beings but not to other animals, but he brushed it aside with the remark, “I cannot examine this problem here, but I assume that the account of equality would not be materially affected.” This is an extraordinary way of handling the issue of equal treatment: it would appear to imply either that we may treat people who are profoundly and permanently disabled intellectually as we now treat animals, or that, contrary to Rawls’s own statements, we do owe justice to animals.

What else could philosophers do? If they honestly confronted the problem posed by the existence of human beings with no morally relevant characteristics not also possessed by nonhuman beings, it would be impossible to cling to the equality of human beings without suggesting a radical revision in the status of non-humans. In a desperate attempt to save the usually accepted views, it was even argued that we should treat beings according to what is “normal for their species” rather than according to their actual characteristics. To see how outrageous this is, imagine that at some future date evidence were to be found that, even in the absence of any cultural conditioning, it was normal for more females than males in a society to stay at home looking after the children instead of going out to work. This finding would, of course, be perfectly compatible with the obvious fact that there are some women who are less well suited to looking after children, and better suited to going out to work, then some men. Would any philosopher then claim that these exceptional women should be treated in accordance with what is “normal for the sex” – and therefore, say, not be admitted to medical school – rather than in accordance with their actual characteristics? I do not think so. I find it hard to see anything in this argument except a defense of preferring the interests of members of our own species because they are members of our own species.