Speciesism – Peter Singer & A Utilitarian Approach

Utilitarians & Animals

Jeremy Bentham, the founding father of modern utilitarianism, in a forward-looking passage, written at a time when black slaves in the British dominions were still being treated much as we now treat nonhuman animals wrote:

“The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognised that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but Can they suffer?”

Bentham points to the capacity for suffering as the vital characteristic that entitles a being to equal consideration. The capacity for suffering -or more strictly, for suffering and/or enjoyment or happiness- is not just another characteristic like the capacity for language, or for higher mathematics. Bentham is not saying that those who try to mark ‘the insuperable line’ that determines whether the interests of a being should be considered happen to have selected the wrong characteristic. The capacity for suffering and enjoying things is a prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests in any meaningful way. It would be nonsense to say that it was not in the interests of a stone to be kicked along the road by a schoolboy. A stone does not have interests because it cannot suffer. Nothing that we can do to it could possibly make any difference to its welfare. A mouse, on the other hand, does have an interest in not being tormented, because it will suffer if it is.

Peter Singer on Animal Rights

Singer’s book Animal Liberation is the most influential book concerning moral relations between humans and animals. He was inspired by the gay, feminist and black liberation movements which had at their core a demand for equality. The book seeks to examine what type of equality lies at the heart of these liberation movements and to extend this notion to animals.

What kind of equality do these movements demand?

• Not equality of treatment – men cannot have a right to abortion!

• Not everyone is equal – people’s skills, intelligence, background suggest that this is not the case.

• Not equal potential – we are not all potential Einsteins!

Singer thinks we should not be concerned with ‘factual equality’ but rather ‘moral equality’ that demands an “equal consideration of interests.” He finds this principle in Utilitarianism and it is implicit in Bentham’s slogan “each to count for one and no-one for more than one.” He extends this to “the good of any one individual is of no more importance from the point of view… of the universe than the good of any other.”

Singer is arguing that the significance of an interest should not be discounted on the grounds of whose interest it is – e.g. the interests of an octopus cannot be discounted relative to those of humans because of the sort of creature it is. The proper objects of equal consideration are interests, not beings.

What are interests and how can we identify them?

• An interest is something that its satisfaction makes it better off and its frustration makes it worse. Sentient being have an interest in pleasure and avoiding pain. E.g David Cameron, an elephant and a fish and I are all sentient beings: thus we have a common interest in pleasure and the avoidance of pain.

• Singer is committed to assessing acts by calculating the value of their consequences. He acknowledges that it can be difficult to compare pleasures and pains across species, but ,he points out, it can be difficult to make such comparisons across humans.

• Even an unsophisticated attempt at moral arithmetic suggest that much of our treatment of animals is wrong and should be condemned.

• Singer thinks our treatment of animals is a prejudice which may be overcome – what we do to humans we must be willing to do to animals. Thus zoos, factory farming, experimentation on animals and McDonalds should be condemned.

Problems

• Is it possible to have empathy with an animal or know how it thinks or feels?

• Tom Regan argues the problems with a Utilitarian approach is that it only sees individuals as a means rather than ends. They are only valuable if they contribute to creating a better world. They are receptacles of value rather than valuable in themselves. Singer’s core principle, the principle of equal consideration, suggests this view is true.

Regan thinks this is completely the wrong way around. In opposition he asserts the “Postulate of Inherent Value”: individuals have value independently of their experience and their value to others.

He rejects the perfectionist view of value – that value comes in degrees. The higher beings have more perfections and lesser beings have more imperfections. Everyone who is the “subject of a life” has inherent value, says Regan:

“Individuals are subjects of a life if they have beliefs and desires; perception, memory and a sense of the future, including their own future; an emotional life together with feelings of pleasure and pain; preference and welfare interest; the ability to initiate action in pursuit of their desires and goals; a Psychophysical identity over time; and an individual welfare in the sense that their experiential life fare well or ill for them, logically independently of their utility to others.”

For an excellent discussion if these issues see

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-animal/

Do we have responsibility to future generations?

A common argument in favour of action to preserve and protect the environment on a personal and global level is the notion that we should care for the environment for the sake of future generations.

At first sight it seems a reasonable proposition – if we continue to pollute as we are doing so at the moment the lives of future generations will be more difficult than ours and their quality of life may be adversely affected. However this idea has throw up a huge number of philosophical problems:

1. ” Argument from Ignorance “- – we do not know who future generations will be, that they will be or what they will be like. Since we know so little about them it makes no sense to specify any obligations to them

2. “Disappearing Beneficaries “- we do not have a responsibility to bring future generations into existence and it is meaningless to talk about responsibilities to those in the future. We can’t even use the Greatest Happiness Principle since who we don’t know who is to benefit from the happiness.

• Annette Baier claims that we can make sense of the claim that someone is made worse off by our actions, even if, under the alternative action, they might not have existed at all. One can acknowledge the significance of a “wrongful life” a life in which someone would say “it would have been better off I had not been born” Our obligations are not to particular people but to the interests of future people.

• Mary Anne Warren distinguishes between:
“possible people” – who don’t necessarily exist and
“future people” – who will exist.

It is absurd to suggest we have obligations to possible people but we can work out suffering that possible people may endure as a result of our actions. We need to “recognise certain minimal requirements of moral responsibility”. Warren thinks “it is irresponsible, and contemptuous of the welfare of future persons, to deliberately bring into being persons who will almost certainly be unhappy. It is wrong because it results in the unnecessary suffering in the future, suffering on the part of individuals who in the timeless perspective are no less real than we are.”

Another argument against responsibilities to future generations is:

3. “The Fallacy of Affirming the Consequent”- even if we admit it is in future generations interests for us to look after the environment, it is a fallacy to suggest that this necessarily becomes people’s right. While it is possible that a being with interests also has rights it does not necessarily follow that they do. It is wrong to infer rights from interests!
If x has rights then x has interests
X has interests
So, x has rights

“The practical difficulties of representing future generations again speaks of thinning out rights and provides a practical argument expecting representatives now living to advocate the straightforward rights of future beings”. Bertram Bandman – Do future generations have the right to breathe clean air?