However, whereas Suber is a professional academic, I am not. Before reading any further, read my disclaimer and warning on my My Writings page.
Glenn
Mason-Riseborough (5/5/2003)
Ought we be vegetarians? I will discuss two broad arguments that answer “yes”. I will first consider Peter Singer’s[1] utilitarian argument, which focuses on the capacity to suffer. I will then consider Tom Regan’s[2] rights-based argument, which claims that subjects of a life have inherent value. Both are attempts at showing that not only do (at least some) non-human animals[3] have direct moral status, but also that they have the same moral status as humans. That is, humans and animals do not belong to different moral categories, and so what applies to humans must also apply to animals.
Singer adopts as a starting point a principle of equality—one must treat like alike, and we ought not treat something or someone differently, if there is no good reason for doing so. With this in mind it is possible to see Singer’s basic strategy as a challenge to meat-eaters for just this type of consistency. The problem for meat-eaters is what the relevant moral difference might be, such that they can consistently maintain that it is permissible to eat animal flesh but that it is not permissible to eat human flesh. Singer argues[4] that the meat-eater cannot meet such a challenge. I’ll start out looking at what Singer rejects, before turning to his positive arguments.
A first-off attempt by the meat-eater[5] to meet this challenge might be to simply say that there is a brute fact that humans and animals are different. Singer quotes Stanley Benn as defending such a position:
[N]ot to possess human shape
is a disqualifying condition. However
faithful or intelligent a dog may be, it would be monstrous sentimentality to
attribute interests to him that could be weighed in an equal balance with those
of human beings.”[6]
Singer’s reply to this is to call such a response “speciesist”. In other words, it is a form of (wrongful) discrimination, in which a moral distinction is made for no good reason. Whether or not one has a human shape is irrelevant to its moral status. To make it obvious why there is no good reason, Singer parallels this type of response[7] with the racist who asserts that not to possess a certain colour skin is a disqualifying condition, or the sexist who asserts that not to possess certain sexual organs is a disqualifying condition.
A more sophisticated meat-eater response is to point out some specific difference between humans and animals, which supposedly is a relevant moral difference. That is, we look to find some specific property possessed by humans but not possessed by animals, which is morally relevant. Typically, historically, this is some psychological or intellectual ability (rationality, IQ score, language ability, autonomy, the ability to act morally, etc.).
Singer gives two separate arguments in reply. First, the Argument from Marginal Cases.[8] Singer argues that whichever property the meat-eater picks out, we will always have cases in which either:
(i) The bar is set too high, and we exclude some humans from the “ought not eat” category, or alternatively
(ii) The bar is set too low, and we include certain animals in the “ought not eat” category.
And the meat-eater wants neither of these consequences.[9] While much more work needs to be done to show that this is the case for all proposed properties, I think Singer’s response is a strong one.
Second, the Sophisticated Inegalitarian Argument.[10] Simply put, this is the idea that all these psychological or intellectual abilities, discussed above, are morally irrelevant, anyway. Singer again draws parallels with the other discriminatory “-isms” of sexism and racism, using a modus tollens approach. Singer focuses on the example of racism and IQ.[11] The thought is that if we want to make a moral distinction between humans and animals on the basis of IQ scores, then we have got to make the same moral distinction between whites and blacks. But, Singer argues, we shouldn’t determine moral status with respect to races on the (contentious) empirical claim that there is no statistically significant difference between the IQ scores of whites and blacks. This is because if we did and if it turns out that whites do statistically have higher IQ scores than blacks,[12] then that would justify racial discrimination (we would be sophisticated inegalitarians). And we don’t want that. And so, likewise, we shouldn’t determine moral status with respect to species on the (admittedly less contentious) empirical issue of the statistical difference between the IQ scores of humans and animals. Again, this is very plausible for all such properties, and graphically so, in the clear-cut cases such as IQ.
So much for Singer’s negative arguments. I now turn to what Singer thinks is the only defensible morally relevant property, to determine moral status. This is the property of the capacity to suffer. More formally, Singer’s claim is that the only defensible position is to equally consider all interests. Everyone’s interests count, and we give similar weight to similar interests. Moreover, for one to have an interest, one needs, and only needs, the capacity to suffer. This is setting the bar very low, and forces us to give equal consideration to animals of many different species, but Singer thinks that it is the only morally defensible place the bar can go.
If we grant this,[13] then the next question is that of which beings actually have the capacity to suffer, and thus whose interests need to be considered equally. One clear, simple, and uncontroversial example of suffering is that of feeling pain.[14] Who does this include? Surely, we all take it as uncontroversial that we, individually, from the perspective of ourselves, sometimes feel pain. By analogy, we also uncontroversially grant that other humans also feel pain, and so likewise have the capacity to suffer.[15] Similarly, we typically also grant that other higher animals feel pain and so have the capacity to suffer.[16] Thus, we plausibly grant the capacity to suffer to monkeys, pigs, sheep, rats, birds, and so on.
But how far do we go down the hierarchy of animal complexity? What about fish, insects, or shellfish? Since their physiology is very different, do they feel pain as we do? Luckily, we don’t have to answer that question now.[17] The animals that we typically kill and eat are almost all in the uncontroversial category above, which we have just granted have the capacity to suffer. And so at the very least the case for equal consideration of the interests of these animals has been made. This means that when considering our eating habits, we also have to consider the interests of the animals that may become our meal. We must consider the interests of the sheep, cattle, pigs, fowl, and so on.
What, then, are the interests at issue when considering meat-eating? On the one hand we have our own interests that we need to eat to survive. But these days it is very easy to sustain a healthy vegetarian diet. So it is clear that we don’t need to kill and eat animals to survive. We also have the (weak) possible interests of taste, ease, and unwillingness to change. On the other hand we have the very strong interests of the animals to survive and not to feel pain, which are both clearly violated by our eating them.[18] Weighing these up, it is obvious that the suffering due to the pain and death of the animals far outweighs our own suffering of having to find other, vegetarian, food sources. And so, based on these utilitarian considerations, we ought to be vegetarians.[19]
As with Singer, a lot of Regan’s work[20] consists in showing what is wrong with various other positions, such that we are led naturally to his own preferred view. However, whereas Singer starts out considering then rejecting the various meat-eater positions, Regan’s approach is to consider then reject various normative ethical theories until only his preferred one is left standing.[21] He thinks that such a theory entails giving equal moral status to (certain) animals. And this entails our obligation to refrain from eating these animals. First, I’ll focus on Regan’s worry with Singer’s utilitarianism.[22] I’ll then turn to Regan’s own position.
Despite agreeing with a lot of what Singer says regarding the practical implications with respect to animals, Regan takes issue with Singer’s emphasis on suffering. For Regan that is not what is fundamentally at stake:
But what is fundamentally
wrong [with the way animals are treated] isn’t the pain, isn’t the suffering,
isn’t the depravation. These compound
what’s wrong. Sometimes—often—they make
it much worse. But they are not the
fundamental wrong.
The fundamental
wrong is the system that allows us to view animals as our resources,
here for us …[23]
Regan thinks that the mistake with utilitarianism is that it is not the actual individual who is of interest for the utilitarian, but only the individual’s interests. For Regan, we should be concerned with the individual. Regan is thus making a distinction between the individual her/himself, and the individual’s interests. He analogises with a cup—utilitarians merely focus on the contents, and do not think that the cup has any value in itself. For Regan, this is a big problem. The cup—the individual—does have value, contrary to utilitarianism.
In defence of utilitarianism, we might reply that the individual is the whole functional being,[24] not merely one container-like aspect (as Regan asserts). The utilitarian really is considering the individual, when considering the capacity to suffer, because this property is an aspect of the individual, and moreover is the morally relevant aspect when considering this particular issue. We cannot consider the capacity to suffer in isolation from the individual. So I don’t think that Regan has produced a knockdown of the utilitarian approach.
I turn now to Regan’s own position. Regan takes it as non-negotiable that certain individuals have value, qua individuals—what he calls “inherent value”. And, moreover, those who have it, have it equally (this avoids the problem of discrimination based on sex, race, talents, skills, intelligence, wealth, personality, popularity, etc). But, for Regan, it is not just human individuals who have inherent value; individuals of other species also have it.[25] But what actually is this concept of inherent value? As Mary Anne Warren[26] writes, it is a very mysterious and obscure term, mostly cashed out via negativa. Whatever the case,[27] Regan does tell us is that being an experiencing subject of a life is sufficient for having inherent value. This is another difficult concept, but he attempts to spell it out a little:
…each of us a conscious creature having an individual welfare that has importance to us whatever our usefulness to others. We want and prefer things; believe and feel things; recall and expect things. And all these dimensions of our life, including our pleasure and pain, our enjoyment and suffering, our satisfaction and frustration, our continued existence or our untimely death—all make a difference to the quality of our life as lived, as experienced by us as individuals.[28]
Warren suggests that this amounts to having, in addition to sentience,[29]
the capacities for emotion, memory, belief, desire,
the use of general concepts, intentional action, a sense of the future, and
some degree of self-awareness.[30]
Regan takes it that, on this basis, “animals who concern us (those who are eaten and trapped, for example)”[31] are subjects of a life.[32] This includes “all normal mammals over a year of age”.[33] Clearly, for Regan the bar is set much higher than it is for Singer, in that Regan seemingly requires[34] more than just the capacity to suffer, for something to have moral status. Thus, Singer would include far more animals as having moral status than would Regan.
Thus, any being that has these properties is a subject of a life, and any being that is a subject of a life has inherent value. You either have it or you don’t. Beings with inherent value have equal moral rights. And thus, in conjunction with the Harm Principle,[35] we have direct moral duties to them. This means that for the same reason we cannot farm and eat humans, we also cannot farm and eat other subjects of a life. This means, for Regan, that we must cease farming, caging, and eating our fellow subjects of a life, and we must become vegetarians.[36]
Finally, and very briefly,[37] Warren sets out a number of criticisms of Regan’s position. Amongst the strongest criticisms[38] are:
(1) The problem, above, with respect to the mysteriousness of inherent value.
(2) The questionable connection between having inherent value and having moral rights.
(3) Being a subject of a life doesn’t come in degrees, and there must be a dividing line somewhere.
(4) Consequently having rights doesn’t come in degrees—if the threshold for being a subject of a life is low (or we should give the benefit of the doubt, as Regan suggests), and spiders are included, then this means that spiders have the same moral rights as humans.
(5) There are numerous intuitively implausible practical conclusions.
Singer and Regan both argue, in very different ways, for vegetarianism. For the most part they get to the same practical conclusions regarding our meat-eating practices (although Singer is much stricter in his giving moral status to animals of a greater number of species). I suggest that Singer has fewer weak points in his argument, than Regan, and I take Singer’s argument to be exceptionally strong.
(2234 words)
Bibliography
Herrnstein, R.
J. & Murray, C. (1996). The bell curve: Intelligence and class structure
in American life. New York: The Free Press.
Regan, T. (2003). The case for animal rights. In D. VanDeVeer & C. Pierce (eds.), The environmental ethics and policy book (3rd ed.), (pp. 143-149). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. (Original work published in 1985).
Singer, P. (1976). All animals are created equally. In T. Regan & P. Singer (eds.), Animal rights and human obligations, (pp. 148-162). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Singer, P. (2003). Animal liberation. In D. VanDeVeer & C. Pierce (eds.), The environmental ethics and policy book (3rd ed.), (pp. 135-142). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. (Original work published in 1973).
Warren, M. A. (1987). Difficulties with the strong animal rights position. Between the species, 2(4), 163-173.
Wilson, S. (2001). Animals and ethics. Retrieved from the World Wide Web, 3/5/2003 http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/a/anim-eth.htm.
[1] See, for example, Singer, 1976 and Singer, 2003.
[2] See, for example, Regan, 2003.
[3] For shortcut, I’ll refer to non-human animals as “animals”, despite the technical semantic error in this.
[4] And I agree.
[5] Which Singer raises and replies to last, in his (1976).
[6] Benn, cited in Singer, 1976, pp. 160-161.
[7] At length, and with great rhetorical flourish.
[8] Wilson, 2001.
[9] Thus for example, in violation of (i), in the case of autonomy or moral accountability, many legal systems currently deem certain humans insane, and not morally responsible for their actions. Alternatively, in violation of (ii), in the case of language ability, it is now clear that certain animals (such as chimpanzees, apes, and orang-utans) can learn, use, develop, and teach their offspring language (Singer discusses this in other contexts). Or alternatively, potentially violating both (i) and (ii), in the case of IQ scores, it is clear that many animals score higher on IQ tests than infant humans or intellectually handicapped humans (in other contexts Singer has discussed studies in which certain apes have scored around 80 on IQ tests).
[10] Wilson, 2001.
[11] The argument works only for those properties that admit of degrees, such as IQ. However, those that don’t admit of degrees still plausibly fail on the basis of the previous two arguments, above.
[12] And maybe they do, if the arguments in chapter 13 of Herrnstein & Murray (1996) are to be believed.
[13] And when I turn to Regan, I will raise, evaluate, and reject Regan’s reasons as to why we shouldn’t grant it.
[14] There are no doubt others, also.
[15] This is not an empirical claim that we make, but it is extremely plausible to grant sufficient similarity between ourselves and other humans, given extremely similar behavioural responses and physiology.
[16] Given sufficiently similar behavioural and physiological properties.
[17] Even though it is an important question that also needs answering, for vegetarians who accept Singer’s arguments.
[18] Singer and others give very detailed (and sometimes unpleasantly graphic) discussions of the various ways in which animals suffer in the process of our preparing them for our consumption.
[19] At least with respect to beings that have the capacity to suffer.
[20] See Regan, 2003. Here, Regan tells us that his (2003) is a sketched overview of his 1983 book, The Case for Animal Rights.
[21] This is clearly a much tougher ask. Notably, Regan rejects various indirect duty views—the Kantian view, and the contractarian approach (both in its crude form and in John Rawls’ more sophisticated form). Likewise, Regan thinks there are deficiencies with two direct duty views—virtue based approaches and utilitarianism. However, I worry that, at least in his (2003), Regan is giving criticisms of cartoon positions, for each of these. Whatever the case, I shan’t pursue this worry here.
[22] I’ll also ignore Regan’s “Aunt Bea” version of the typical worry for act utilitarianism—that it supposedly requires that sometimes the individual is sacrificed for the greater good.
[23] Regan, 2003, p. 143.
[24] And this requires a whole big discussion of the metaphysics of personal identity.
[25] And possibly also rocks, trees, rivers, glaciers, etc.
[26] Warren, 1987.
[27] And while this needs to be pursued, I won’t pursue it here.
[28] Regan, 2003, p. 148.
[29] Understood merely as the capacity to suffer.
[30] Warren, 1987, p. 164.
[31] Regan, 2003, p. 148.
[32] Obviously this also needs far more spelling out (which I won’t do here). But we would have to examine whether each of these points is individually necessary for being a subject of a life. We would also have to spell out in far more detail what each point means—for example exactly what the word “conscious” refers to is especially vague and ambiguous, and it is used in multiple ways in different contexts. And we would also have to decide which animals satisfy these criteria and which don’t.
[33] Warren, 1987, p. 163.
[34] Ignoring the complexities of determining what other sorts of entities have inherent value, beside those which are the subject of a life.
[35] That we have a direct prima facie duty not to harm beings who have inherent value.
[36] At least with respect to fellow subjects of a life.
[37] Far too briefly.
[38] Which I think Regan has trouble responding to.