Animalr rights? Humane treatment of animals? No responsibility to animals?

Great Debates
1

So I just finished reading the New Yorker piece on the founder of PETA. I think she’s a hoot, and I’m not terribly offended by any of their attention-getting ploys. But I don’t care much about PETA.

I’m more interested in the descriptions of raising animals for meat.

To paraphrase from memory, the article says that sows move from pregnancy rooms to suckling rooms for their whole lives, with neither room, IIRC, having enough space for the pig to turn around in.

That’s a problem for me, as it seems inhumane.

My question is, how much responsibility do we have towards animals?

Should we accord them actual rights?

Does our humanity compel us to treat them in a humane manner?

Or should we feel nothing about animals and just use them for any purpose we see fit?

I’d like to avoid discussions of the healthiness of eating meat, as well as details of what specific acts would violate rights vs. humane treatement, if possible.

I am not experienced in these matters and look for informed thought on any aspect of this question. But just for starters, let’s say that ‘rights’ means that there are universal rights for all animals (beyond freedom from cruelty as currently applied). Let’s say ‘humane treatment’ means that you can do to animals what you have to, but you have a responsibility to do it in a way that causes the least pain and fear. (Cost-saving is not defined as something you have to do.)

Also, would it be appropriate under ‘rights’ or ‘humane treatment’ to genetically engineer or select for animals with no pain receptors, no ability to fear, or no brians at all?

Would it be desirable?

Personally, I’m making chili tonight, and I think it’ll be the last time that I eat industrial mammal flesh. I’m gonna stick lower on the food chain and only occasionally indulge myself with humanely raised and slaughtered animals in the future.

2

Check out the book “Fast Food Nation” for a full rundown of the treatment of animals (and workers, for that matter) in the food industry.

I think it’s a mistake to try to treat ourselves as if we are not omnivores. We are part of the food chain. I do think that we should respect the lives of the creatures we are killing for meat, and not do it in a cavalier way. This has been a part of human society for millennia, and should be encouraged.

It might also raise the price of meat, but then a high meat diet iws unhealthy, anyway, so we might benefit in the end.

3

Upon re-reading my post below I will say that possibly TMI descriptions of the slaughter of animals are included, consider yourselves warned.

I’ve never been to one of these industrial farms that Peta gets all riled up about, but I grew up in a rural setting, and we raised pigs for food and sale, and chickens for eggs, food, and sale. The pigs were in their pens, basically a dirt corral, and the chickens pretty much free roam during the day, and an open coop at night.

Not a bad life for a farm animal, it seems to me. However, when it came time to slaughter the pigs it was pretty basic, hold them down and stab them in the heart, which I was too young to do, but watched plenty of times. Chickens we just grabbed the wings with one hand, the neck with the other, and wrung their necks. IMO, the killing part kinda negates any value their free roaming, worry free life held.

Obviously we wanted our chickens and pigs to be in good shape, and fattened when we slaughtered them so we fed them well, kept them healthy and clean. That’s about as far as “rights” as I’m willing to go for domesticated animals raised for food. I mean, come on, we’re going to kill them and eat them, that pretty much ends their rights.

Do animals have an intrinsic right to life? A life free from interference from humans? Not in my opinion. We share the same space, we certainly don’t have that “right”. Animals “interfere” in the life of humans at every turn. Do they deserve a life free from pain and fear? If there wasn’t a single human on the planet that would not be the case, animals do prey on each other. When I get a cold I don’t go whinning about my “right to keep my body free of viruses”, I go kill a chicken, make some soup and spend a day in bed with a leather bound book.

4

We currently have laws on the books against animal cruelty, but AFIK, this is done without according them any rights. So, while it might be easier to protecct animals if they had rights, it’s not necessary for them to have rights in order to be protected. Also, you, as the comsumer, have the ultimate choice of purchasing free-range chicken or other meat obtained from livestock that is not raised under the conditions you have described.

I’ve read a bit about animal rights, and have to admit that I shy away from it not so much because of the concept, but because of the extreme whack-o meantality of most the folks supporting animal rights. I think when you start dealing with animals like chimps (not for food, but for research) you get in a VERY grey area.

5

John Mace I think that as in many moral issues, some people see only black and white. Thus the PETA approach that killing animals for any reason is murder. As someone who’s read up a bit, can you define the difference between animal rights and a human responsibility to treat animals humanely better than I did?

scotandrsn I read Fast Food Nation, but my main resolve from that was that I’d feel better about myself if I stopped eating at fast food places. I think I’ve only slipped once since I finished.

bayonet You knew you were killing a thing, unlike most of us. And you seem to have felt badly about the way it was done. That would suggest to me that you would prefer the killing to be done humanely.

Any thoughts on breeding animals that lack the capacity for feelings or awareness? (My god, I just remembered the cow from the Restaurant at the end fo the universe.)

6

First off, it’s important to understand what a right is: it’s a negative moral duty that a moral subject imposes on all other moral agents.

A duty is something you gotta do. A negative duty is something you gotta not do. A negative moral duty, of course, is something you gotta not do because of moral reasons.

A moral subject is a being you gotta treat in a moral fashion.

A moral agent is a being that’s capable of making decisions based on moral criteria.

Generally, AR folks will argue that many animals (including cows and pigs) are moral subjects: how you treat them, like how you treat infants and adult human beings (but not how you treat rocks) can be more or less ethical.

Most AR folks will argue that nonhuman animals are not moral agents: they, like human infants and rocks, but unlike adult humans, are incapable of using moral criteria in making their decisions.

An animal’s “right to life,” if it exists, is going to be similar to Right to Life mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. When a human being is struck by lightning, it would be absurd to speak of a violation of that human’s inalienable right to life: lightning is not a moral agent, and so it’s incapable of violating a right.

Similarly, neither an infant nor a tiger is a moral agent: a human who is struck down by one of these creatures has had their rights violated.

However, (say AR folks), both infants and tigers are moral subjects. And you’re a moral agent. So you have a negative moral duty not to do certain things to either infants or tigers. Since tigers and infants have a right to life, say AR folks, you’ve got a negative moral duty not to deprive either an infant or a tiger of their right to life.

The full argument is vastly more complicated than that, and includes reasons for granting rights to tigers, infant humans, and adult humans, and includes suggestions for adjudicating between conflicting rights. But hopefully that business above explains why saying that “animals violate one another’s rights all the time” is incoherent to an animal rights perspective.

Daniel

7

Note the added word above – it kinda changes the meaning of the post. Sorry about that!

Daniel

8

Thank you, Daniel. That’s a really helpful framework.

So in terms of my muddled thoughts, animal ‘rights’ ar eas you described them above-- that is, animlas are moral subjects, so we must accord them some rights.

Where does that leave us as regards humane treatment? Are there moral or philosophical grounds for that?

Ken

9

“As someone who’s read up a bit, can you define the difference between animal rights and a human responsibility to treat animals humanely better than I did?”

Noggin: Thankfully, DW has already done that and spared me the embarassment of trying. The only thing I would add is that one might argue about there being a continuum in the animal kingdom (I’m including humans in that group) wrt being a “moral agent” and that it’s not so easy to draw the line. Some people see an unbridgeable chasm between Humans and Chimps (our closest relatives) and others see more similarities than differences. If you can easily draw the line between Humans and Chimps, then the rest is pretty simple. If you allow Chimps in on even a part of the “moral agent” deal, then it becomes a bit more difficult. I’m not sure exactly where I stand on the whole issue.

10

Interesting idea that chimpanzees might be moral agents. My understanding of nonhuman cognition is that only recent research shows an ability for one chimpanzee to understand that a different being has a different perception of the world than it has, and to act based on that knowledge. Such cognitive ability to place oneself in another’s “shoes” is vital to having a moral outlook. (If you’re incapable of imagining that Bob doesn’t like it when you smack him upside the head, then your decision to smack him upside the head necessarily carries no moral overtones).

THe research I saw involved (roughly; I forget the exact physical setup) two chimps in cages facing each other. Victim-Chimp’s cage had two doors: one door into its main living space, and once door partitioned off, so that Victim-Chimp couldn’t see it when someone opened that door. Witness-Chimp, however, could see both doors.

The researcher would occasionally give the chimps a hose bath, which they hated. So the researcher tried an experiment.

She entered Victim-Chimp’s cage through the main door, carrying a hose. Witness-Chimp watched this, but did nothing.

Later, she entered Victim-Chimp’s cage through the partitioned door, carrying a hose. Witness-Chimp started hooting and hollering.

The conclusion was that in the first case, Witness-Chimp knew that Victim-Chimp could see the researcher, and so didn’t bother to alert Victim-Chimp of the danger. In the second case, however, Witness-Chimp was smart enough to put himself in Victim-Chimp’s shoes, know that Victim-Chimp couldn’t see the researcher, and therefore alerted Victim-Chimp of the danger.

This is pretty advanced cognition, believe it or not, and I culd see using it to argue that chimpanzees are capable to some degree of making moral decisions. I wouldn’t know how to put forth a strong argument for that, however.

Daniel

11

You might be interested in the “Animal Liberation” movement in the 1970s. Tom Regan (“The Case for Animal Rights”) was writing about “Animal Rights,” which I learned in contrast to Peter Singer’s “Animal Welfare” (Singer has more recently moved towards the Rights position).

I learned about this in a philosophy/ethics course, so it was framed in a jargony way, but I’ll do my best to remember. If anyone knows any better, please enlighten me - I’d love to clear the cobwebs out of this brain!

[Brief introduction to ethics]

There are two basic ways of determining what is ethical.

One, “deontology,” says that something can be inherently “right” or “wrong”, independent of consequences, and the moral value of something is determined by whether it is towards a “right” or “wrong” end. In other words, “right” determines “good”. For instance, in this society we think it is always wrong, under any circumstances, to kill your baby sister and cook her for dinner, regardless of how hungry you may be. An anti-abortion person saying that abortion is wrong under any circumstances, regardless of risks to mother’s health etc, is making use of this kind of argument.

The other way is utilitarianism or consequentialism, which says that nothing is “right” or “wrong” on its own, it is only the consequences which determine it. To determine the ethical value of an act, we basically add up the positive consequences (measured in terms of “the greatest good for the greatest number”), subtract the negative, and if the result >0 then the action is an ethical one.

In other words, the ends can justify the means. A pro-abortion person saying that yes, kiling a fetus is bad, but sometimes it is necessary, is making use of this kind of argument. (I am of course glossing over any number of important issues, like how to measure ‘greatest good’ and where distributive justice comes in, but I only mean to introduce it!)

[/introduction]

Animal Rights is basically from a “deontological” viewpoint: it is always wrong to harm an animal, or to treat it with less respect than we treat a person. Thus raising chickens, even with lots of nice food and open fields, is akin to slavery, as their life is devoted to you. A lot of vegans feel this way.

Animal Welfare (and again, I must add the disclaimer that Peter Singer wrote about this years ago and has since changed his tune in a number of ways - I’m not familiar with any other advocates of this position but I’m sure they exist) is utilitarian: we should include animals in our calculation of “the greatest number”, and so rule out things like battery chickens and cosmetic testing, but we could still permit things like free-range chickens or medical testing, since the harm to the animal is outweighed by the benefits to humanity. People who don’t eat veal justify it this way.

Both original articles that I read had specific definitions of “animal” that remain highly arguable: one said “a mammal over the age of 1 year old,” for example.

A brief word, if I may, on the subject of chimps (“great apes”) :

An eternal question in the field of animal ethics is where to draw the line - how do you decide what is a moral agent/subject. Daniel has eloquently described the difference between a moral agent and a moral subject - I’d like to add that we need a question, basically, to determine what counts as a moral subject. Something along the lines of “can it feel pain” or “does it have an immortal soul” or whatever. The question must meet two criteria:

  1. it has to be emperically verifiable (therefore eliminating “immortal soul” stuff) and
  2. it must be morally relevant (therefore eliminating stuff like “humans only”)

The tricky part is coming up with a way of including “infants and imbiciles” but ruling out intelligent apes. Some people say this can’t be done (for example) and therefore great apes who are intelligent should be included in our “community of equals.”

12

Dan:

There have been several other similar experiments. And I think the comclusion about generalizing to more than “one” chimp is that the few experiments performed were done with pretty much randomly selected chimps. There would be no reason to believe that we accidently chose the only “chimp moral geniuses” alive.

Now, I wouldn’t put chimps in the same moral category as humans. But I’d entertain the question that they might be morally closer to us than they are to, say, rats.

13

Oh, I agree – I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise in my above post. When I talked about the ability for “one chimp” to understand something, I simply meant that one chimp could understand the perceptions of another chimp, not that there was only one chimp who could pull off this feat.

My apology for the confusion! I think this kind of research is fascinating, and I ought to learn more about it.

Daniel

14

Dan:

Yes, the whole idea of looking at how we, and a few other animals, are able to "get inside the head’ of another creature is really intersting. It is certainly reasonable to postulate that our whole sense of conciousness got started that way. You learn to think of yourself as an individual by first seeing others as being distinct. Research into chimps, human infants, and even dolphins can be very revealing.

15

I think this chimp experiment has to do with whether they are moral agents or not, right? If a chimp can warn another of impending pain, they must be able to imagine that pain, therefore they understand the effects of actions on others, therefore they understand the effects of their own actions on others.

I’m not sure, though, what another being’s status as a moral agent has to do with whether we treat them as moral subjects. I can easily imagine a world in which we ought to treat as moral subjects those who cannot be moral agents (like newborn humans) and can even begin to imagine a way in which there could be a moral agent that’s not a moral subject (computer makes decisions using a programmed moral calculus without cognition).

I’m still trying to work out where the idea that inhumane treatment is wrong fits in. I guess in the lingo of cowgirl’s ethics course, it could be a deontological notion that excessive cruelty, however one defines it, is wrong. But id could also be based on some consequential sense that the value of the meat in my belly is not worth the inhumanity applied to the animal on the hoof.

16

One key difference, of course, betweem human infants and chimps is that human infants grow up to be human adults. The analogy w/ severely mentally retarded humans has more merit. And don’t we limit rights of the severely mentally retarded? Maybe I’m wrong and we don’t-- I’d be interested in hearing from someone knowledgeable on that subject.

17

A question: given DanielWithrow’s summary of terms above, wouldn’t this imply that a moral agent would have the same negative moral duty to another moral agent as to a moral subject? For example, if it is not relevant to object to one animal killing another, on the basis that they have no ability to make moral distinctions, why is it relevant to object to another human, making a moral decision that differs from your own, doing the exact same thing?

On the other hand, if it is considered a duty to impose one’s personal morality on others, why would this not then extend to the entire animal kingdom? Even if we concede that it is nonsensical to assert that animals violate each others’ rights, how does this absolve us from being obliged to intervene to prevent them from causing pain to each other, exactly as we would intervene to prevent another human from causing pain? Of course, this would be an impossibly enormous undertaking, but then so is working to prevent humans from harming each other.