Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation (Part 2)
Utilitarianism: causing pain and taking the lives of animals
Apart from the unworkability of his cost/benefit method of guiding action, Singer’s “updating” of Bentham’s utilitarianism is troubling on a deeper level. Can it be true that the pain and the interests of animals are of the same moral significance as the equally severe pain and the interests of humans?
Singer, of course, does not claim that human and animal pain or human and animal interests are equal, but only that they must be given equal consideration. We may treat humans and animals differently, but always because of their greater or lesser suffering or their greater or lesser interests and never because they are humans in the one case, animals in the other. That being so, Singer’s moral concern about animal research focuses on two issues: (1) subjecting animals to pain, and (2) painlessly killing animals whose interests are on par with the interests of newborn, severely retarded and hopelessly senile humans.
Let’s consider the second issue first. Singer maintains that many animals ¯ adult chimpanzees, dogs, pigs, cats and mice ¯ have the same level of self-awareness and self-direction possessed by some humans ¯ infants, the mentally impaired and the senile. If we take the lives of the former to advance medical knowledge and cures, we should be prepared to take the lives of the latter as well. Singer does note, however, that there is good reason to stay a killing hand from infant, retarded and senile humans ¯ taking their lives would add to the balance of suffering in the world by grieving their parents, friends, care givers and children and by rendering all of us anxious about our own future. This reason is persuasive enough to narrow Singer’s human categories to severely impaired newborns who have been orphaned or whose parents seek their euthanasia.
To consider such newborns ¯ let us call them marginal humans =AF any differently than animals constitutes speciesism according to Singer. Speciesism, however, is a bias, a preference without rational basis. Isn’t there some rational basis for distinguishing between animals and marginal humans? James Lindemann Nelson is one who thinks there is. He reminds us that:
“The distinction is this: the birth of a ‘marginal’ human, or the reduction of a normal human to a marginal state, is a tragedy; the birth of say, a healthy collie pup, whose potentials are roughly on a par with the human’s is not” (16).
The grief and the pity we experience in the presence of marginal humans reveal just how different they are from non-humans who lack the same potentials but whom we happily accept as normal. By virtue of some physiological accident marginal humans are missing what they might have had, while animals, by physiological nature, “lack” what they never can have. This difference, which seems to constitute a rational basis for considering marginal humans as humans and not as animals, calls into question the charge of speciesism that Singer levels against animal researchers.
We still may ask what difference between human and non-human animals underlies the special consideration and treatment we give to our own species. An answer to this question may appear more clearly if we go on to analyze the first issue of Singer’s concern ¯ inflicting pain. This issue is less perplexing than that of taking life. It is not a matter of comparing the lot of research animals to humans who appear in no way different than many animals, but to humans who exercise self-awareness and self-direction. Although less perplexing, it will require a somewhat longer reflection.
Before beginning that reflection, we should take stock of the dimensions of the issue. Because of anesthesia and analgesic treatments, some 90 percent of animals involved in biomedical research never experience pain; they should cause Singer no concern (17). Still, the 10 percent subjected to painful procedures ¯ many of them animals assigned to studies that seek to understand the mechanisms of pain itself ¯ do pose a problem. Numbers or percentages of themselves never make a moral argument. The point in mentioning these statistics is only to note that Singer, just as he uses marginal humans as a wedge case to argue for considering human and animal interests equally, uses a fraction of biomedical research cases ¯ those in which animals experience actual pain ¯ to challenge the whole research enterprise.
Moreover, animals are used in pain-causing research protocols only after those protocols have survived levels of scrutiny and approval beyond those required for the use of animals in all other procedures. It is not that researchers don’t attach any weight to the pain of animal subjects, but only that they do not extend ¯ as Singer believes they should =AFthe same protection to them that they do to human subjects.
The controversy, then, is about whether or not the pain of some research animals puts them on the same moral footing as humans. One of Singer’s critics, the philosopher Peter Carruthers, notes, “The hardest thing to accept [about Singer's system] is that the suffering of an animal should have equal moral standing with the (equally severe) suffering of a human being” (18). Hard to accept, but also difficult to refute. After all, pain is pain. Although most people feel that something is amiss if we consider the equal suffering of humans and animals equally, they may be hard-pressed to explain why.
We best approach this issue by examining Singer’s egalitarianism. A recent critic points out that his notion that each individual counts for one and only for one, important as it is to political democracy, has monstrous effects in ethics (19). To consider strangers and members of one’s own family equally when trying to decide how to spend emotional or financial resources strikes most people as heartless and repugnant. Kinship counts. Not even Singer can live under the tyranny of his cold logic. He has been forced by filial feelings to commit more money to his elderly mother, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, than to others whose needs, as assessed from the egalitarian viewpoint, are greater than hers. Singer now confesses that he has begun “to appreciate that the moral life is complex” (20).
Complex, indeed. And, considering the pain of rats and pigs equally with those of our children affronts our moral sensibilities even more than denying comfort to one’s mother for the sake of an unknown person’s suffering. Singer calls our sensibilities speciesist, but speciesism, as we have mentioned, is a prejudice or practice without rational basis. Surely there is some rational basis for considering the suffering of our kin in humanity differently from that of animals and for not subjecting humans to pain-causing research.
That reason is one we have already mentioned in speaking of Aristotle, Aquinas and Kant ¯ we who are humans shape our lives and fashion our world through questioning, deliberating and making free choices. Others who would impose their will upon us do so to our injury, an insult to the capacity for moral decision-making that is fundamental and defining of who we are. For humans, there are harms greater than pain.
This difference seems obvious, and we wonder why Singer doesn’t pay attention to it. It may be because our language has not caught up with advances in cognitive science. Eskimos have dozens of words for varieties of snow, but we have the single word “thinking” and the single word “desiring” to designate two important activities that appear to be quite different in human and animal species. Singer frequently asserts that animals share with us certain capacities ¯ the self-awareness in which we think of ourselves as the same thing in different times and places; the ability to remember the past and anticipate the future; and the capacity for interacting with others. This ambiguous assertion hides an enormous difference between the species. Singer employs key words ¯ self-awareness, past, future, interaction ¯ that mean one thing when used of humans and something else altogether when used of animals.
Consider my dog. When Fatigu* sees me standing at the door with his leash, he begins wagging his tail excitedly and pawing my leg. Fatigu* is certainly aware of himself, remembers past walks, foresees another walk, eagerly desires that walk and obviously interacts with me. He has an interest or welfare that matters to him, an interest that I can serve or thwart.
But what is going on in Fatigu*’s mind? The only way we can know is by judging his behavior, and his behavior tells us only this much: Fatigu* is a conscious knower. In addition to undergoing vital processes such as the formation and nutrition of skeletal and muscular structures, he is aware of himself in the process of knowing things around him. His image of me at the door holding the leash calls up from memory other images of previous outings. The association of images triggers an expectation ¯ If A, then B.” Feelings associated with previous walks give momentum to the expectation, and Fatigu* begins to wag his tail.
Like humans much of the time ¯when we daydream or drive to the mall on auto-pilot ¯Fatigu* lives all the time in a stream of consciousness in which he perceives patterns in space and time. He knows the relationships of up and down, here and over there, before and after. Because he can perceive these patterns, he can know “If A, then B.” As anyone will vouch who has walked a dog, this “if/then” knowing is truly astonishing, surpassing much human knowing in quickness and accuracy. Such knowing allows animals to rapidly and effectively win sustenance, bear offspring and, for a short time, stave off predators (21).
Fatigu*’s behavior as I fasten on his leash gives no indication, however, that his knowing and desiring are identical to mine. Neither he nor any dog has ever declined a walk because he foresees inclement weather or notices that his master is weary. What we have said about Fatigu*’s knowing tells us less about any reasoning inside his head and more about a reasonable habitat that “his head is inside of,” a habitat in which there is a dependable relationship between A and B (22). Fatigu* doesn’t seem to be driven by the performance of asking questions which turns such a habitat into a world that is a cause of wonder.
Because of that wonder, my thinking is driven not by the “If/then” link, but by questioning. Questioning lifts me across the threshold between simple consciousness, in which I am aware of myself, and into introspective consciousness, in which I reflect on myself, my feelings and my knowledge. Asking “What if?” involves me in supposing, imagining, having insights and taking responsibility for the truth of what I affirm or deny. It turns a “before” into the past, my fragile reconstruction of what really happened and why. It turns an “after” into my uncertain future, that equally fragile creation that results from my deliberations about what ought to be. It converts desires into values as I take stock, seek to understand and choose to follow or reverse the momentum of feelings in free decisions about what is truly worthwhile. Finally, it transforms my interactions with others into responsible inter-relationships.
Whether animals ever wonder or engage in questioning, with all of its consequences, is highly doubtful. They certainly give no evidence of “What if?” thinking. Singer’s assertion about what they share with us ¯ the self-awareness in which we think of ourselves as the same thing in different times and places; the ability to remember the past and anticipate the future; and the capacity for interacting with others ¯ is ambiguous and misleading. The truth lies in distinctions. Humans and animals alike are self-aware, but only humans are reflectively conscious. Humans and animals alike live in the “before” and “after” of the space-time continuum, but only humans, are, in Darwin’s apt phrase, “utopian creatures” who construct past and future (23). Humans and animals alike have preferences, but only humans form values. Humans and animals alike interact, but only humans do so responsibly.
The fact that human beings possess reflective self-awareness, self-direction and a sense of responsibility not possessed by animals makes a great difference in how we weigh the pain and injury we might cause members of our own species against the pain we might inflict on animals. Humans, as we mentioned, can be harmed by more than pain and suffering. For that reason, we use humans as experimental subjects only when they give informed consent; we use animals in research as long as scientists vouch for their humane care. We guarantee the rights of humans; we safeguard the welfare of animals.
Common sense and “nature alive”
Philosophical realism ¯ the thinking of Aristotle and Aquinas undergirding the use and, at the same time, compassionate care of animals ¯has been called common sense gone to school. Originally denigrating, this judgment may be construed as a compliment. After all, an important function of philosophy is to reveal the foundations of intuitions and thought patterns that make up the wisdom of ordinary people. Our task is to make common sense philosophically articulate.
It won’t do, however, for us to simply repeat Aristotle or Aquinas or even Kant in a louder voice, as if animal rights partisans are just slightly deaf. The world view of Aristotle and Aquinas was static; they considered the stable essences of beings that they believed had either existed from all time or had been created in one original divine act. Our world view is dynamic; we reflect on populations that emerge and then become extinct in the patient process of evolution. The only way to move dialogue forward is to revisit the humane tradition based on Aristotle and Aquinas in light of contemporary understandings of ourselves as situated within evolutionary nature. Such is the suggestion of Strachan Donnelly, a philosopher at the Hastings Center for Bioethices (24).
Donnelly understands the nature of biomedical inquiry ¯ its method of controlled experimentation, its reliance on the explorations of basic research, its tentative character, even its serendipity. He appreciates medical science not only because it leads to the relief of suffering, but also because it enshrines the human value of advancing knowledge. At the same time, he is solicitous for the well-being of animals. He wants to stake out ground on which scientists and animal rights critics ¯ humanitarians all ¯ should be engaged.
According to Donnelly, “Ethical oughts are crucially determined by what concretely is. ought ” What is, is a world characterized by “the fundamental and ultimately good fact of metabolic existence, life using life” (25). It is a world in which individual creatures live in dependence on others and serve ongoing life, in turn, by becoming their sustenance. The primary and final value in such a world is life itself or what Donnelly calls “nature alive”¯ the ongoing emergence of individuals into existence and their striving to secure existence.
Secondary to this value of nature alive are a pair of interconnected values ¯ the worth of individuals and the worth of communities. Ultimately, there is no considering individuals and communities apart from one another. Biological individuals depend on the ongoing communities in which they arise, while communities depend on individuals’ flourishing and then perishing. Each requires the other ¯ in life and death ¯ to survive. It is the rule of life that animal organisms, including humans, “harm” other individuals, but this “harm” serves the primary value of nature alive.
We should explain the qualifying quotation marks around the word “harm.” The only unqualified harm that individuals can inflict is the harm of pain. Animals inflict that harm on prey, and some humans sometimes cause unrelieved pain to animals. The harm of death, on the other hand, can be predicated of individual animals only hypothetically ¯ it is a harm that an animal would prefer to avoid if that animal were aware of its impending death. It is not a harm but a boon to the species and to other species.
Extinction of a nonhuman species may be a harm from viewpoint of another species, but that species can be harmed in its own extinction again only hypothetically. Moreover, a species, may actually benefit from being exploited in domestication or used in research. Dogs, for example, are more of an evolutionary success than the wolves from which they have been domesticated, and laboratory mice thrive both in numbers and genetic diversity well beyond their threatened cousins in the field. Far from being a harm, the interdependence or symbiosis of two species in mutual usefulness is a good for both (26).
Donnelly goes beyond Aristotle and Aquinas, who assessed the value of animals as being merely instrumental ¯ that is, coming from their usefulness to humans.
Living beings have value in themselves both because they make up the marvel of nature alive and because communities exist to support their emergence. In addition, they have value because they contribute to the continuance of those same communities.
But, Donnelly stops short of Singer, who finds an identical intrinsic value in all sentient creatures. Depending on the degree of their individuality, purposiveness and relatedness to the world, living beings have more or less value in relationship to each other. It is such complexity ¯ not suffering, as utilitarians maintain ¯ that ultimately lends them their moral status. Of all species, humans are the most individual, most purposive and ¯ since they dwell in realms of meaning and not just in habitats ¯ most related to the rest of the world. For that reason, humans are in the most responsible position regarding all of nature alive. We are “saddled with the task of ethically and judiciously sacrificing or harming life for the sake of the ongoing worldly reality and goodness of life” (27).
Since the ultimate ethical principle, according to Donnelly, is responsible respect for life’s goodness, we must balance judiciously the needs of organic individuals and ongoing communities. This principle doesn’t always entail sacrificing the interests of animal life to human life, but it does provide justification for human experimentation on animals (28). And from it come specific directives to researchers: try to understand and reduce animal suffering and harm; insure that scientific protocols are genuinely important and well-conceived; when possible, use lower forms of life in preference to complex organic individuals; and, provide good care of laboratory animals, respecting even their social being.
Animal rightists fault Donnelly’s view for once again drawing a line between humans and animals. We have seen how Aristotle and Aquinas distinguished humans from animals in terms of rationality and free will, and how Peter Singer, on the other hand, wants us to discriminate between animals that do or do not have nervous systems causing them to register pain ¯ by barking, writhing, etc. ¯ as we do. According to Donnelly, most people draw the line between humans and animals with good reason. Human beings are more individual, purposive and related to the world than animals.
Conclusion
There is, as we have pointed out, something special about human consciousness. Although mammals, like humans, are aware of themselves, none appear to question themselves or wonder what to do with their lives and the world around them. For humans, consciousness is so developed that it has become conscience and life appears to us as one challenge after another in creating what ought to be from what is. Since it is human nature to make ourselves and shape our world through relationships and choices, we know that others act wrongly when they attempt to impose their will on us. We who do not exist to be used by others have a special relationship with anyone in whom we recognize the same capacity. We cannot use another human being for our benefit.
Of course, this difference between humans and animals does not of itself constitute justification for anyone, researchers included, to inflict pain on animals. Just as most people, if asked, would say that the suffering of animals does not have the same moral significance as the equal suffering of humans, so most people, if presented with the opportunity, would flinch at causing any animal pain. They would recognize their instinctive ethical position in the Jewish Talmudic principle (tza’ar ba’ale hayim) prohibiting cruelty and commanding those who would be righteous to remember and alleviate “the pain of living creatures.” Or, returning to what we have called the perennial philosophy of the human/animal relationship, they would agree that our very existence and humanity is at stake in how we use and treat animals (29).
Notes
1. French, Richard D. Antivivisection and Medical Science in Victorian Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975, 315-318.
2. Key, Jack D. and Alvin E. Rodin. “Historical Vignette: William Ostler and Arthur Conan Doyle Versus the Antivivisectionists: Some Lessons from History for Today.” Mayo Clinic Proceedings 59 (1984):186-196, 195.
3. French, 405.
4. Linzey, Andrew. “Good Causes Do Not Need Exaggeration.” Animals’ Agenda 20: 24-25, 24.
5. Paton, William. Man and Mouse: Animals in Medical Research. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984, 2.
6. Singer, Peter. “Animal Liberation: A New Ethic for Our Treatment of Animals (2nd edition). New York: New York Review of Books, 1990.
7. Hearne, Vicki. “What’s wrong with animal rights.” Harpers 283:1696 (September, 1991), 59-64. The quote is from Bentham, Jeremy. Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.New York: Hafner Publishing Company, 1946, 310-311.
8. Singer, 1990, 18-19, and Singer, Peter. Practical Ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993, 117.
9. Singer, 1990, 81-82.
10. Bentham, 311.
11. Singer, 1990, 21.
12. Singer, 1990, 36.
13. Russell, Sharon M. and Charles S. Nicoll. “A Dissection of the Chapter ‘Tools for Research’ in Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation.” Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine 211 (1996):109-139, 109.
14. Singer, Peter. “Sense and sentience: We might not need pig hearts if the ban on human embryo experiments were lifted.” The Guardian (August 21, 1999), p. 24.
15. Singer, Peter. “Precommentary: The Significance of Animal Suffering” and “Postcommentary: Ethics and Animals.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (1990): 1-60, 46.
16. Nelson, James Lindeman. “Animals, handicapped children and the tragedy of marginal cases.” Journal of Medical Ethics 14 (1988):191-193, 192.
17. USDA. Animal Welfare Enforcement, Fiscal Year 1996, Report of the Secretary of Agriculture to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
18. Carruthers, Peter. The Animals Issue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 9.
19. Berkowitz, Peter. “Other People’s Mothers.” The New Republic 4, 434 (January 10, 2000), 27-37.
20. Berkowitz, 2000, 37.
21. Lonergan, Bernard J.F. Insight. New York: Longmans, Green and Todd, 1953, .
22. Budiansky, Stephen. If A Lion Could Talk. New York: The Free Press, 1998, p. 28.
23. Cited in Budiansky, p. 23.
24. Donnelley, Strachan. “Animals in Science: The Justification Issue.” In Strachan Donnelley and Kathleen Nolan, eds. Animals, Science and Ethics. Briarcliff Manor, New York: The Hastings Center, 1990, p. 8 -13, p. 9.
25. Donnelley, Strachan. “Speculative Philosophy, the Troubled Middle, and the Ethics of Animal Experimentation.” Hastings Center Report. March/April, 1989: 15-21, p. 18.
26. Heffner, Henry E. “The Symbiotic Nature of Animal Research.” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 43 (1):128-139, 1999.
27. Donnelly, 1989, p. 20.
28. Donnelly, 1989, p. 20.
29. Bleich, Rabbi Dr. J. David, “Judaism and Animal Experimentation,” in Regan, Tom (ed.), Animal Sacrifices, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986, p. 61-114.
Tags: Peter Singer