Animal Equality: Effects of Giving Animals Rights

PHI 103 Informal Logic

June 2, 2014

Argument
When it comes to animal equality it can be hard to imagine a dog, cat, or even a hamster of having equivalence. When I think of animals, I picture our pets, wild animals, and even those in which are consumed. The question of what is and what is not ethically appropriate in the treatment of animals has is debatable. Peter Singer’s provides a utilitarian arguments for why animals with a certain level of perceptive justify equal moral attention with humans.
Introduction
Singer calls for the establishment of a “liberation movement” comparable to those that remained emerging up throughout the dated in which he wrote his essay and attentive on such problems as gay, women’s and African-American rights. Noting how previously “legitimate” forms of judgment and prejudice, over time, correctly came to be observed as unfairly and immorally damaging towards definite classes of people, Singer argues that the time has come for a similar pledge to the rights of species that walk on four legs instead of two.
The animal liberation movement, which was essentially begun by Singer’s book, Slate.com (2001) argues “It is ethically wrong to use animals in such a way that we cause them suffering, either by deprivation of essential components of a happy existence, or by causing them pain.” (Slate.com, 2001) The animal liberationists would like to disallow most medical experimentation using animal models, as well as the commercial use of animals in the food industry. They seek to bring about radical change in society through ethical argumentation, with the goal of convincing people that “pain is pain,” and is thus morally wrong whether it is experienced by an adult human, a child, or a non-human animal. According to Cohen (1986) “the obligation to a being is generally considered to be part and parcel with that being’s having a right. This is because of a widely held theory known as the doctrine of the logical correlativity of rights and duties which states that all duties entail other people’s rights, and all rights entail other people’s duties.” (Cohen, 1986, p. 867)
Why Singer is convinced
An area of Singer’s argument which is especially problematic is his contention that animal interests must be considered as equal to human interest. Leaving aside the problem of how an animal may be said to have an interest, we should inspect more closely Singer’s contention that these interests permit equal consideration. Singer argues that: The racist violates the principle of equality by giving greater burden to the interests of members of his own race when there is a clash of their interests and the interest of those of another race. The sexist violates the principle of equality by favoring the interests of his own sex. Similarly, the speciesism allows the interest of his own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. This argument from analogy makes a gross error, which should be considered unacceptable to anyone. The wrongs of racism and sexism come from the fact that there is no support for discrimination among human beings based on race or sex. Distinctions based on race are never morally justified, while species is, in most situations, a demarcation of capacities which are ethically meaningful. Keeping slaves or barring certain racial or gender groups from equality in society is barbarous because it violates the personhood of those bound or excluded beings.
General Characteristics
The morally significant reasons listed by Steinbock are general characteristics not only of human beings, but also of any other rationally self-aware creature, and for this reason they cannot be called speciesist. It is currently the case that no such rationally self-aware non-human creature has been encountered, but this is nevertheless a list of faces of beings deserving equal ethical consideration with humans. Singer’s writing offers his response to the proposition made by Steinbock and others that we should consider intellectual capacity as morally significant. This was alluded to briefly in the summary of Singer’s argument at the beginning of this paper, but we should investigate this line of argument in more detail. Essentially, Singer argues that we cannot consider hypothetical volume to be relevant to the question of equal consideration, because we would reject a society that was hierarchically stratified based on the intellectual capacity of its members. While this seems to be a rational analogy for why we should reject the stratification of the larger realm of consideration for interests of beings in general, there are certain flaws in this line of reasoning.
The Differences
Steinbock (1978) states “what entitles us human beings to a privileged position in the moral community is a certain minimal level of intelligence, which is a prerequisite for morally relevant capacity” (Steinbock, 1978, p.254). Steinbock (1978) continues “the fact that we would reject a hierarchical society based on degree of intelligence does not show that a minimal level of intelligence cannot be used as a cut-off point, justifying giving greater consideration to the interests of those entities which meet this standard” (p.254) These are valid analyses, and the suggestion of an rational cut-off point in deliberation of concerns does not seem to battle with our longing to sustain the equality of all civilization. However, we must either set the bar so low as to consent in much of the higher animal kingdom, or someway explain why the benefits of human beings with severe mental retardation should be provided equal consideration despite their being below the intellectual cut-off point. Here we come up against Singer’s most powerful argument against his critics: that we cannot place the interest of all human beings above those of other animals based on the criteria of intellectual capacity, because some human beings are less morally capable than non-human animals like chimpanzees or pigs. Bonnie Steinbock replies that the principle of sympathy allows us to treat the benefits of human beings who are severely restricted as more important than other more-able animals because we can recognize with these human beings: we can visualize that we ourselves might have been born with severe infirmities, or we may tomorrow suffer an injury which will decrease our capacities to the degree where we would not pass the intellectual cut-off point. It is important to note that Steinbock’s position, like Singer’s, refuses to allow for cruelty towards responsive beings, and she only distinguishes between morally more- and less-important interests, rather than denying that animals have ethically significant profits. These arguments, however, seems too simplistic and may be the result of a realistic fallacy. That is, Posner and Steinbock seem to suppose that, because we do treat all human beings with a detailed moral privilege, it is right for us to do this, it’s natural. However, it may also be likely for some members of racial groups to favor their own race over others, or for sexists to favor their own sex: the uncertain detail that this appears, to them, to be accepted does not make it ethically precise.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Singer’s argument can be considered flawed for the concept of interest. The fact being that he ignores the crucial ethical differences between us and animals. Animal interests should not be presumed to be equivalent importance to us inevitably without support to back up his argument. There are several morally applicable traits which differentiate between us and animals. For all of these reasons, it should be rather modest to show that Singer does not offer a supported argument for treating animals with equal moral admiration to human beings.

References

Cohen, C., (1896) “The Case for the Use of Animals in Biomedical Research”. The New England
Journal of Medicine. 315: 865-870.
Rowman & Littlefield, (2001).Cohen, Carl, and Tom Regan. The Animal Rights Debate.
Singer, P. (1979) Not for Humans Only: The Place of Non-humans in Environmental Issues, Ethics and Problems of the 21st Century. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press
Singer, P., (1989) Animal rights and human obligations (pp. 148-162) [Acrobat Reader version]. Retrieved from http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/phil1200,Spr07/singer.pdf http://www.madison.com/archives/read.php?ref=tct:2004:12:16:397292:EDITORIAL
Slate.com (2001) Animal rights: debate between Peter Dinger & Richard Posner.” Slate.com. Retrieved From: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dialogues/features/2001/animal_rights/_2.html
Steinbock, B., Speciesism and the Idea of Equality. Philosophy 53.204 247-56.