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Meat is Murder
Everybody follows some moral beliefs concerning animals. If you eat a burger, you follow a belief that animals have instrumental value and can be killed for culinary purposes. If you think that a greyhound deserves better than to be put down on a race track or that elephants do not belong to circuses, you are following a belief that animals have value in themselves, as individuals.
More and more people are starting to doubt whether cows can be reared and killed in the name of McBurgers. Only a few decades ago people would have struggled to understand what a “vegetarian”, never mind a “vegan” is, whereas now these terms are everywhere. This has lead to a conflict between the instrumental and individual views concerning animals: burger-munchers and animal-people go head to head. It is very likely that we will see even more societal debate over the ethics concerning animals in the future: animals are here to stay, and so are those who will argue that cows are not burger machines.
In this debate, it is extremely important that we understand why we tend to value animals the way we do, and what ethics has to say on the matter.
Definitions
Anthropocentrism
Definitions and norms often walk hand in hand. How we define a being will affect how that being is treated and valued. For instance, labelling another human being with negative terms is often seen to offer justification for building a hierarchical, exclusivist relation to that human. Perhaps the most common form of labelling is based on cognitive ability. Different races, women, children, social classes, and so forth have been discriminated against on the basis of their presumed lack of intellectual capacity. Therefore, ethics tends to be affected by definitions, and when these definitions go wrong, the result will be unjust ethics.
Moreover, the definitions themselves are often affected by ethics: there is a vicious circle taking place between the two. How we define another human being will partly depend on how we value her. If I loath Mary, I will define her in negative terms. Therefore, in the past different races and women have been viewed as mentally “lower” than white men simply because they have already been deemed to be morally inferior. That is, giving them less value has been justified on the basis that they are less intelligent – a statement, which again has been based on the belief that they have less value. The resulting ethics is not only unjust, but deeply confused, muddled and arbitrary.
The same applies to non-human animals. Definitions concerning animals often play a key role in determining the value of animals. Again, cognitive abilities are crucial.
Perhaps the most common element in definitions of animals is the belief in their mental inferiority. This “mechanomorphic” or “machine-like” (a term coined by cultural theorist Eileen Crist – it refers to the opposite of “anthropomorphic” or “human-like”) conception maintains that animals are biological mechanisms, guided by blind instincts and drives instead of cognitive ability. The conception walks hand in hand with the idea that only humans are mentally able beings. Humans are defined as beings whom are thoroughly cognitive, to a degree that they have somewhat miraculously stepped outside of biology and become beings of “culture” rather than “nature”.
This means that animals are often viewed via dualism: animals are defined as the opposites of humans. Whatever capacities are held important in humans will most likely be denied in the context of animals: if humans are intelligent, animals are dumb; if humans are cultural, animals are nothing but biology; if humans are moral, animals are nothing but aggressive beasts, and so forth. Animals are placed as the ultimate opposite of humans. It is no wonder, then, that racism and sexism have made use of animal metaphors by likening Jews to rats and women to cows: when we really want to insult somebody, we do it by calling them animals.
The presupposed dividing line between humans and other animals is keenly celebrated. The history of Western culture has been obsessed with finding a clear distinction between humans and other animals, and the same trend continues today. Rationality, language, self-awareness, beliefs, intentionality, and so forth are put forward as mental capacities that no other animal than human can achieve. Humans are rational, language-using beings whilst other animals remain something akin to an idiot, hopelessly captured within their blind instinct. Sometimes the search is so desperate that it becomes comical: the special value of humans is based on the fact that they have thumbs, or that they use tools, or (as will be seen later) that only they master the rules of grammar.
Dualism gains many concrete forms in the contemporary culture. Firstly, there is a strong desire to control the biology within humans. That is, we want to have power over the “animal within us”. Biological sciences take part in what has been termed “bio-politics” in their desire to control our own biology, including cells and genes. These sciences are used to map out the last gene and least bit of DNA information in the human body in order to make it transparent, controllable and modifiable, and therefore erase traces of “nature”. The ultimate dream, it seems, is to defy the basic rule of the organic world, which states that everything will age and die. We do not want to ever become ill, or grow old, or die – we want to have perfect control over the rules of nature.
Secondly, and more importantly, the biological nature of animals is greatly emphasised: if humans are defined as the beings whom can control nature, animals are defined as part of the nature that is to be controlled. Therefore, biological sciences make ever greater use of the animal by rendering her into a research model or a biomedical instrument that produces organs, medical ingredients, cell tissue or genes for us to use and play with. Animals become biological raw-material for humans to use and instrumentalise. Here, the mechanomorphic understanding of animals gains its most extreme form, as the animal becomes a type of an “ultra-machine”: she is created and programmed by humans in order to serve human purposes.
The ultra-machine does not only exist in the laboratory, but also in the barn. Animal production has traditionally depended upon breeding new strains of animals in order to maximise production and profit, and in the era of bio-politics, such breeding will take entirely new forms. Chimeras and hybrids between animals and animal species (combinations of two or more animals of the same species, or combinations between, say, pigs and cows) and genetic manipulation (taking away or adding genes from sources such as plants) are the routes which are already explored and experimented on in order to produce animals with huge muscles or teats, animals with no fat, cows filled with fish oil or the health benefits of vegetables, and animals who produce entirely new flavours of meat. The animal’s physiology will be drastically altered in order to suit the culinary preferences of the consumer, who rather see animals made into machines in order to gain health benefits than simply eat less and more healthy.
Of course, we do not need to refer to these future-possibilities that only a couple of decades ago would have sounded like science fiction horror: animals as biological machines can be found everywhere in the contemporary society. Chicken, cows, pigs, and all the other animals that are crammed into tiny cages or shackled from their necks in order to make them produce us more and more meat and milk are defined solely via their biology. Their value is in their flesh, their eggs, and their milk. Cognitive abilities are not even mentioned when these animals are the topic of discussion: they are pure biology, pure raw material for humans to use and instrumentalise as they see fit. The same trends can be seen in zoos, circuses, and even the pet industries – they all profit from presenting us with animal biology in various forms, and by (when it comes to pets) modifying that biology so that it would be as cute and small as possible, or as ferocious and strong as imaginable. To put it simply: we view animals as bodies that we can benefit from, and then proceed to modify and control these bodies in order to secure the benefits – be it cheap bacon or entertainment.
The belief that animals are nothing but pure biological raw material is so strong that those, who go against it, will often be marginalised outside the boundaries of “proper” humans. Therefore, animal rights activists are argued to be guided by “sentimentality”, “irrationality”, “fundamentalism” or “violence” – all opposites of the standard stereotype of humanity, which underlines rationality. If animals are bio-machines, those who speak up for the animals must not quite be human (surely, a “normal” human being would not speak up for the animal). The consequences can be severe. In order to protect the financial gain of pharmaceutical companies and animal industries (massive source of income for nations such as the UK) governments make no secret of their desire to bring an end to activism. Special legislations (such as the SOCPA in UK) are introduced in order to render legal activities, such as demonstrations, into illegal acts, such as “conspiracy” or “blackmail”. Sentences are severe, and people are put to prison for much longer than what many rapists of child molesters would serve, simply for having organised demonstrations. Governments get away with this absurd situation simply because of the label placed upon activists and reproduced in the media: if activists are not “normal”, why care about them? The truth behind the activists, their real causes and what really happened, easily remains ignored.
However, it is extremely important that we remember the way in which ethics can impact definitions. If Jews were described as rats because it was believed that they have no value, the same logic applies to animals. The pig is defined as pure biology, as a dumb mechanism, because it is believed that it has no value. The definitions, again, give rise to ethics, and a vicious circle is formed. The pig has no value because the pig is dumb, and the pig is defined as dumb because people do not think that the pig has value. Like in the context of racism and sexism, the resulting ethics is deeply confused and muddled.
And here comes the important part: just as a racist decides who does and does not have value depending on what serves his own interests, humans often decide to deny that animals have value simply because this enables them to go on and use animals as they please. It would be extremely difficult to justify the consumption of beings that have complex mental abilities and value (this is why most get angry even at the thought of people eating dogs) – therefore, it is very convenient to simply deny such abilities and value (this is why most do eat pigs). We base definitions and values concerning other animals on selfish grounds.
Therefore, definitions and values concerning non-human animals are often grounded on an “anthropocentric” (human-centred) worldview. According to this view, the world is to be defined in a way that best serves human interests. Of course, in most fields, such obvious bias has been forsaken (at least on the surface) for objectivity (we do not, for instance, think anymore that the earth centres the universe), but in relation to non-human animals, anthropocentric views still dominate. Pigs are evaluated via human-tinted glasses that emphasise human interests: if I want to eat pigs, I will define them as beings whom are nothing but dumb biology.
Anthropocentrism revolves around use: what is useful for humans, what kinds of benefits can we gain from other animals? The Western culture has been particularly keen on defining animals from the viewpoint of use-value. Animals are placed in different categories on the basis of their use, and then defined on the basis of these categories. Therefore, “pets” are often defined in individualistic terms, as hardly anybody would argue that a dog has no mind. In contrast, “production animals” (pigs, cows, and so forth) are almost without fail defined in instrumental terms, and those who suggest that they may have minds are ridiculed. The “function” of pets is to keep company, and therefore they need to be defined individualistically; the function of pigs is to produce bacon, and therefore their minds have to be vigorously denied in order to avoid morally awkward questions (what are we doing, killing and eating beings with minds?). Actual knowledge of the animals’ capacities has little relevance. Pigs are much more intelligent from the human viewpoint than dogs, but this does not matter – pigs will still be defined as mindless animals and dogs as our clever best friends. All that matters in the definitions of animals is their use-value. What the animal in herself is actually like is not important. Because of this, it has been argued by ethologists that we tend to see least signs of minds in the animals that we eat the most.
There is a definite need for a new perspective on animals. As it is, our anthropocentric, use-based understandings of animals tell us more about ourselves than animals. They mirror our own face: what we see is human benefit and superiority, not animals. Intellectual honesty requires that if we talk about animals, we actually take animals into account. When we are entirely blinded by our own human interest, the pig will be nothing but a dumb source of bacon – when we take the pig herself into account, a different picture may emerge.
Animal minds
Therefore, the animal needs to be brought under the lime-light. We need to look at the animal before creating understandings of her. The first port of call is cognitive ethology, the study of animal minds. For some time now, it has been producing research that is truly astonishing: animals master most (if not all) of the cognitive abilities traditionally assigned only to human beings. Concepts, beliefs, intentionality, consciousness in the phenomenal sense (the capacity to experience “what it is like”), and even abstract concepts and different forms of self-awareness (including bodily and social) are amongst the capacities mastered by many animals. The pig is a being whom can form concepts (categories concerning the reality, such as “edible” or “friend”) and beliefs based on the concepts (such as “she is a friend”), whom can direct her own behaviour purposefully (for instance: “I am thirsty, there is something to drink behind that house, I will go there”), and whom experiences her life as something, has a viewpoint to existence.
It has often been argued that the evolution history of the latter capacity (the capacity to experience or “consciousness”) stretches back so far, and is of so much advantage to animals, that it is very likely that a vast amount of animals have it. This makes them subjects in a very concrete sense: at the moment we feel our existence as something, when it is like something to be us, we become subjects, a “somebody” instead of a “thing”.
However, the traditional, anthropocentric stance on animal minds has been that as long as there can be any shadow of a doubt, we should conclude that animals do not have minds. In practice this has meant that as long as it is possible to explain the behaviour of animals in any other than mind-related terms, we should abandon the idea of animal minds, no matter how ridiculous of far-fetching that other alternative is. Most commonly, animals are defined as highly advanced robots – they go about acting exactly as if they had cognitive abilities, experiences, and personalities, but in fact they are robots in disguise. Daniel Dennett, a great sceptic of animal minds, has called their behaviour “intelligent but unthinking” thus referring to the idea that their actions make a lot of sense and are intelligent, but that there is actually nobody “home” – nothing other than automatic computations are going on in the minds of the animals. In effect, we are asked to believe something that goes against our own observation and common sense. How an earth did we come to this? What could possible have made seemingly intelligent people maintain that dogs are unconscious, biological robots?
The main reason behind the scepticism is language: since it is presumed that animals cannot master propositional language (language based on sentences and grammar or “syntax”), they cannot really think at all. Language is the basis of a mind: we live in complete darkness before we acquire language. However, many argue the contrary. According to them, language does not exceed minds, but rather is a consequence of those minds: we are first conscious beings with various cognitive capacities, and only then develop language. This idea strikes very common sense – so common sense, in fact, that it seems incredible that any philosophers should think otherwise. Of course, the further development of many skills and capacities may depend on language, and human minds might be very different if we did not have lingual ability, but we need a mind to start off with – why else would we have developed this incredible capacity, if not in order to communicate and structure the cognitive contents already in our minds? That is, why would we have developed a way to communicate beliefs, if there were no beliefs there to begin with? As has been pointed out, the claim that language “just appeared” is very mystical: surely it needed a basis (cognitive capacities) and a need (to communicate the contents of those capacities) on which to appear.
This claim is supported by the fact that there are groups of humans, amongst whom language can be rather secondary. Mental images, feelings, associations, connotations, image-based memories, and so forth are amongst the elements that these people seem to use more than language. The same can even be said about “average” human beings. As the philosopher Steven Sapontzis has argued, when I am looking for a pen and remember that I have one in my pocket, I am not formulating sentences in my mind (“I need a pen; I wonder where I might have a pen; I will try and recall if I have a pen in my pocket; oh yes I have a pen in my pocket”), but rather am going through quick associations. Even those, who have a habit of narrating their actions and speaking to themselves, constantly fall silent in the middle of thing – this happens when the associations take over and language is just too darn slow to even manage to narrate the associations. Language does not build minds, it merely follows them. This has led many to argue that animals, too, structure their beliefs around similar images, feelings, associations, and so forth. For instance, Temple Gradin has suggested that animals follow similar thought-patterns as autistic people, for both rely on associations based on various senses (such as sight, touch or smell) much more than language. It is very likely that we have not even begun to understand the ways in which animals may make sense of the world: perhaps smells, sounds, touches, and other bodily senses build utterly unique ways of constructing understandings of the world in the minds of animals. To state that propositional language is the only way is incredibly short-sighted and – quite simply – silly.
The emphasis on language looses its footing even more when taking into account animal communication. Great apes, dolphins and parrots are amongst the animals that are capable of learning hundreds of signs and of communicating through those signs. Koko the gorilla can have long conversations by using American Sign Language, and Alex the parrots talks away like any person with an inquisitive mind, even making up new ways of expressing things (therefore, incents become “pretty smell machines”). Research into animal communication has revealed astonishing facts about how animals use signs in order to express what they know or feel. In the wild, vervet monkeys warn each other of danger and give out different calls for different types of danger, and in the barn chicken chatter about where food can be found, how much there is, and what type it is. In the laboratory, rats will warn each other of the dangers of poisons that they have learned to avoid in previous experiments – all of these animals (and many more) show signs of “culture” by teaching their young certain things that biology and instinct alone will not teach. In experiments, dogs can learn the names of hundreds of toys, and pigs will use signs of various kinds in order to navigate in their highly sophisticated social settings. The list is long, and if more research was done, it might prove to be endless.
So, animals appear to use language. The most common objection has been that this is not “language” as such, for it is not propositional, syntax based language. We need to understand grammar before we are able to use language. However, this criticism leaves a lot to be hoped for, and if anything is a symptom of how ridiculously strong our sense of anthropocentrism is. It seems that no matter how incredible cognitive abilities animals portray, someone will say: “Ok but we want more!”. Nothing is enough, animals never seem to throw us back in wonder but rather make us stand up in anger: “That cannot be language, for we are special!”. Of course, it is still a matter of debate whether or not animals can use syntax, for what counts as syntax varies amongst those taking part in the debate (for instance, some animals understand that the meaning of a sentence changes if you change the position of the words, which some take to be a sign of syntax, whilst others still insist on asking for more). Perhaps we will some day be able to say that animals use propositional language, perhaps not. What should catch our attention, though, is the fact that animals do use language in a more general sense, that they communicate via signs. This is incredible. This really ought to make us wonder what an earth are we doing to animals, to obviously intelligent beings. What should also catch our attention is: can we really state that only beings capable of grammar have minds? Does this not, quite simply, sound insane?
It is worthwhile to look at the reasons behind our reluctance to accept that animals are beings who have minds. What lies behind the bizarre idea that only beings capable of grammar have minds and that animals are extremely advanced machines created by evolution?
Firstly, the view has cultural roots, which make it less than objective. One of the reasons behind the emphasis on language is the belief in human superiority. The afore-mentioned anthropocentrism is very much present in arguments that insist on “syntax”. This needs to be kept in mind. For a very long time, “soul” served as the main element on the basis of which humans could claim their exclusive status. Humans were the images of God, only humans had souls, and therefore humans were worlds apart from other animals. Particularly after Darwin, this belief started to loose its appeal. Something else was needed in order to construct a difference, and language was an ideal candidate. Whereas before the human soul would separate us from the natural world and lead us into the realm of heaven, now human language separates us from other animals and leads us into the realm of “culture”. In either case, humans step away from animality towards a non-material existence. When we emphasise propositional language and argue that animals remain in the darkness, all that we may be saying is in fact that: “Only we have souls, only we are special, and only we can travel on to the realm of spirituality”.
Secondly, we need to be aware of what is being argued here. The sceptics would have us believe that when Koko the gorilla looks at the mirror and says: “Think that me”, she does not really have a mind. And when the dog in an experiment howls and struggles and trembles and vomits and screams, he is not really suffering, or really afraid, because there is not really anything that it is like to be a dog. All that we can intelligently deduce about animals, and all that we can instinctively and emotionally interpret when seeing animals, is in fact a big fat illusion. We really need to sit down and think about this. Science tells us to follow the most simple explanation, but here we are meant to believe that, rather than having developed awareness and cognitive abilities through their long history of evolution, animals are in fact ingenious robots that can (unlike any robots made by humans) act precisely as if they were thinking, feeling beings. Why not cut out the middle man, i.e. the whole robot thing, and just admit: “These are thinking, feeling beings”? Belief in the mechanomorphic understanding of animals is highly mystical, and highly odd. To put it simply: it’s just daft. Plain and simple.
It ignores what Darwin told us: that we are an animal species amongst many, and if we have developed various capacities, it is extremely likely that other animals have developed many capacities, too. We are all living, biological beings, whom have had to develop different abilities in order to cope in the demands of our environments – mental capacities serve a functional role. Not just in the case of humans, but in the case of other animals. To argue that only humans have minds is to go against what we know about our history as a species, evolution, and biology. Those insisting on the relevance of propositional language and grammar really need to sit down and face up to the oddity of their own claim.
This also applies to those who insist that only human brain physiology can create minds. This belief was already refuted by Darwin, who was adamant that many animals do, indeed, profess amazing cognitive abilities. We need to separate functions from structures: the same function can be achieved with different structures. Just as movements can be achieved via both wings and legs, mental abilities can be achieved via different types of brains, human or animal. Unfortunately, humans have had the tendency to make evolution into a story about humans: we talk about progress and human brains, as if we were the centre of all that which surrounds us, and of the history of the world. This has sparked the philosopher Mary Midgley to claim that at times the theory is treated like a religion, which worships “superman” or “superhuman”. What we keep forgetting is all the incredible life-forms that surround us, and which have all developed in their own, particular directions. The history of evolution is not a ladder (on the top of which humans would sit), but a radiating bush or a complicated web, within which various types of astonishing capacities present themselves.
The third reason for the odd emphasis on language stems from philosophy. Language has been celebrated by many philosophers, and emphasis on it gained its pinnacle in the 20th century, when the highly influential philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein brought forward his philosophy of language. The main claim was that language creates realities: how we perceive the world is dependent on the meanings we have adopted via language. However, it is a great mistake to think that this means animals cannot have “realities”. Wittgenstein himself thought the issue to be very complicated, and indicated that animals could well have their own ways of creating meaning. More importantly, his theory concerns beings, whom emphasise language – it is for highly lingual beings that language (obviously) becomes central. For those that do not have language the issue does not arise. Their realities may be based on something entirely different.
More importantly, Wittgenstein waged a war at the sceptics, who pondered on how we can know whether other beings have minds (albeit he was talking of human, not animal minds). Before him, many had been spending time on the “problem of other minds”, which very much resembles the arguments presented against the minds of animals, but places them in the human context: how can I ever really know if another being has a mind instead of it being just an illusion? They had concluded that there is really very little to ever give us certain, absolutely certain, proof that the person in front of me, who talks and smiles like a thinking being, is in fact a thinking being. Who knows, maybe all around us is an illusion? Maybe all humans, except myself, are robots? This problem, which still plagues some in philosophy of mind, seemed ridiculous to Wittgenstein. In fact, to him, it was not a problem at all. To make it a problem was a philosophical mistake of the grand kind.
Wittgenstein argued that how we approach others is the key to everything. Famously, he maintained that he is not of the “opinion” that a person in front of him has a soul (mind), but that he rather perceives the person as a being who has a soul. Opinions are a matter of debate, and for him, it makes no sense what so ever to make the mind of the person in front of him a matter of debate. There can be no doubt, for doubt makes no sense. We do not view the world from an objective viewpoint, coolly administering tests on it in order to achieve opinions of its nature – rather, we approach it as something. Therefore, when we meet new people, we do not every time figure out on the basis of evidence and counter-evidence whether or not they have minds. We approach humans as beings of mind.
Many philosophers, who are sympathetic towards animals, make use of this idea. For instance Dale Jamieson argues that instead of an “inferential stance”, which infers mental states on the basis of a given behaviour, we should use an “affective stance”, within which animals are approached as beings, who have minds. Therefore, instead of nit-picking the behaviour of animals via endless questions and experiments, we have to simply look at the animal in front of us from a more affective and intuitive viewpoint. One of the reasons for this is that the sceptical attitude will always deny that animals have minds – as it will always deny that humans have minds. As pointed out, one can always come up with a wild scenario that could, however unlikely, explain the behaviour of both animals and humans without reference to “minds”. There is always one more criteria to be met, one more test to be done. This is because the whole sceptical outlook is based on a philosophically unsound basis: it is trying to prove the positive by excluding the negative, thereby “proving a zero”. That is, all alternative explanations have to be proven wrong before we can accept that animals have minds, and (like with anything) there will always be one more such explanation, or at least a possibility of it.
Philosopher Cora Diamond has maintained that we should, instead of scepticism, use “perception” when it comes to both humans and other animals. Rather than constant doubt, we are to meet other beings via using our sensibilities, intuition and reflection rather than just cold, hard, scientific formulas. Her claim can be broadened to concern animal minds. Perception will quickly show us that the animal who acts just as if she has a mind, actually has a mind. To suggest otherwise is “deflection” from sensibility.
Therefore, we need to get rid of scepticism and approach animals via “perception” that takes into account, not only intellect, but also reflection, common sense, emotion, empathy, compassion, and intuition. These together will lead us on the right track, and will enable us to see minds where minds ought to be seen. Most importantly, we need to give animals the benefit of a doubt, to approach them – not through the viewpoint of anthropocentrism – but with open minds.
Ethics
Therefore, animals are more than biology – they are also beings whom can experience and whom have minds. But what does this mean from the viewpoint of ethics?
Animal ethics
Animal ethics is an academic discipline, which has for decades argued that how we value and treat animals needs to be changed drastically. It is based on one important claim: in order to understand what the value of animals is, we need to step outside human bias. That is, if we are to evaluate animals in themselves, rather than just the way they suit human needs, anthropocentric viewpoints need to be abandoned. We need to start from the clean table, without bias and prejudice, and actually look at animals as they are in themselves, outside the context of bacon and barns.
Most theories in animal ethics argue that animals are sentient, cognitive beings – i.e. that they have minds. They also argue that if we follow moral traditions in a consistent way, also animals have to be included, for ultimately minds are what matters when it comes to ethics concerning individuals. However, emphasis is not on “perfectionist” capacities (highly complex capacities such as self-awareness or propositional language), but on the most rudimentary requirement of having a mind: having a viewpoint to the world, i.e. the capacity to experience (consciousness in the phenomenal sense, “feeling what it is like”). It is here that our minds start, and it is here that also ethics need to start.
We become subjects at the very moment that we have a viewpoint to the reality. Being able to experience is that viewpoint – we become alive to the world via it. It is this capacity that most fundamentally separates pigs and humans from stones and trees, and that is at the heart of ethics. Our experiences make the world matter to us, and in turn are the thing that we most care about. And if this applies in relation to ourselves, it applies in relation to other animals. The wolf cares about her own experiences, just as I do about mine. Moreover, experiences enable us to, not only care about ourselves, but also others: they help us to imagine what it is like to be another being, and to care for that being. This empathy is often encouraged in relation to humans, and it is time it be encouraged also in relation to other animals.
Therefore, the reason why the capacity to experience is so fundamental is that it enables us to care about what happens to us. I may kick a stone a million times, but it will never care about whether I do so or not. However, if I kick a dog, it will yelp and bite and run away – it feels the kick as something, it forms negative emotions towards the kick, it matters to the dog whether or not I kick it. These “affective” responses, responses that are born out of our most rudimentary experiences, are at the core of ethics. Torturing a human being is not primarily wrong because she is rational or can use language, but because she can suffer. She will want it to stop. She cares about what happens to her. The same applies to other animals.
Standard approaches to animal ethics have made use of existing moral traditions. For instance, Peter Singer has used utilitarianism to argue for animals, Tom Regan has used rights theory, Mark Rowlands has used contractual ethics, and Stephen Clark has used virtue ethics. These are all major moral theories in the Western tradition, and have been proven to also include other animals. That is, if they are read consistently, also animals have to be given value in themselves, as individuals.
For instance, in its contemporary form, utilitarianism maintains that the task of ethics is to maximise the satisfaction of interests in an equal manner. Therefore, whatever we do, we should make sure that the consequences of our actions are such that the interests of others relevant to that situation are taken equally into account – for instance, world leaders should make decisions that will be beneficial also for the third world countries, and for the future of the planet. Personal characteristics do not matter, and therefore we should not give priority to the most intelligent, or white, or middle-class of the people. Everybody is equal. Singer makes a very simple point: if characteristics related to intelligence or biology (race, sex) do not matter in relation to humans, why should they matter in relation to animals? That is, why should we decide to exclude animals from the realm of ethics because they are considered less intelligent, or because they of different biological species? There is no justification – what we are doing here is blatant prejudice, “speciesism”. The only thing that we should look at is whether or not a being can have interests. If maximising the satisfaction of interests is the most important aspect of ethics, then all those that have interests should be taken into account. Plain and simple. The capacity to experience lays the basis for interests, for it makes us want, desire, and care about what happens: it literally gives us interests. Since most animals can experience, they too should be included in ethics.
Another example is rights theory. It claims that given types of beings have inherent value – that is, they have value in themselves (as opposed to value as tools or instruments for others). This value goes together with certain principles (like the Respect Principle, according to which all beings with inherent value must be treated with respect and without causing them harm), and is protected by moral and legal rights (for instance, the right for freedom or the right to life). Again, personal characteristics like intelligence or race are irrelevant. This sums up the ideology of human rights. However, Regan argues that also animals have to be included. If intelligence or biology do not matter in relation to humans, they should not matter in relation to other animals. Regan argues that the basis for value and rights is found from being a “subject of a life”, which again ultimately is based on the capacity to have a viewpoint to the world, i.e. on the capacity to experience. Therefore, also pigs have inherent value and rights.
The list is long. Various theories and viewpoints have been used to show that, if we are to be consistent, also other animals have to be viewed as beings whom have value in themselves. They are not instruments or pure biology: they are complex, experiencing beings, and they have to be treated with respect. Most of the approaches in animal ethics are extremely difficult to refute. Critics were particularly vocal in the 1980s, but have since fallen more and more silent, as their counter-arguments have been proven to fail. It just is hard to avoid the conclusions drawn in animal ethics. If you believe in utilitarianism, it is incredibly difficult to argue with any credibility that animals should not be taken into account. If you emphasise virtue ethics, the same applies. It seems very tricky to reject the idea that, when we really dig deep, the capacity to experience is the most fundamental in ethics.
Animal ethics often makes use of the “argument from marginal cases”. According to this argument, if we think that perfectionist capacities (like highly advanced intelligence or propositional language) are the basis of value, then in order to be consistent we have to also exclude many human beings from the scope of value. Young children, demented elderly, mentally handicapped, the comatose, and so forth would have to be excluded. This is argued to reveal the ridiculousness of placing so much emphasis on these capacities. Instead of them, it is blatantly something else that lays the basis for the value of both the mentally handicapped and the mentally able human beings. This something is, again, the capacity to experience: both have their own viewpoints to the world, both care about what happens to them. This means that animals, too, have to be included. In general, the argument asks for consistency. Whatever criteria we insist on has to be applied consistently in order to see whether it is any good. Therefore, if animals are used in experiments on the account that they are less intelligent than humans, we would have to explain why not also experiment on those humans that are of similar or less intelligence than animals (this, again, shows that the whole criteria is misled).
But surely you need to be moral in order to have moral value? This claim presumes that, since many animals are not moral agents, they cannot have value in themselves. However, the example of marginal cases alone shows us that something is amiss here (there are large groups of humans, who are not moral agents but who still have value). More importantly, we need to separate the origin of ethics from the content of ethics. Moral agents may be the origin of values, but values do not need to be restricted to only moral agents (any more than beauty – an aesthetic value – would only be restricted to those humans who have an aesthetic eye: it is not only the artists who are beautiful, and similarly it is not only the moral agents who have moral value). To argue differently risks falling into the trap of one version of the genetic fallacy (a logical fallacy that correlates the origin of a belief with the truth-value of the belief). As many have argued, “how” we value is a separate matter from “what” we value.
It is little wonder, then, that today even most sceptics admit that, logically, pro-animal arguments are sound and hard to refute. This has led some of them to resort to rather bizarre tactics: they have claimed that if logics require that we take animals into account, we need to get rid of logics. The desire to remain speciesist is so strong that, having to make a choice between intelligence and eating bacon, the latter is given priority. In this vein, it has been stated that the moral inferiority of non-human animals is a matter that just has to be accepted. It “just is so” that animals have less value, because that’s how, well, it just is. It has even been stated that if philosophy doubts this, we need to abandon philosophy.
What can be made out of this odd argument? Read generously, it may be based on the idea that since the moral inferiority of animals has such long roots in Western thought, we ought to stick to the idea. That is, in the name of tradition, we best not alter our ways. Viewing pigs as bacon is a basic meaning, and basic meanings ought to be held on to. However, the argument falls flat on its face. The relativism behind it is difficult to defend in intra-human situations. Should we accept racism in cultures, where racism is rife? Should we let women be treated as second-class citizens in cultures that have long histories of doing so? Human existence has been rife with prejudices of many kinds (racism, sexism, classism, and so on), and the argument would let us believe that, when those prejudices are traditional, they should not be criticised. In practice this would mean that there would never be moral progress that was guided by moral reflection: any progress would have to be completely arbitrary. The Nazis should not have been resisted on moral grounds in their own country, and the racist should be left be. In effect, this would get rid of morality and ethics. Moreover, the argument involves a kind of intellect-phobia rarely seen. Consistency, rational reasons, reflection – none of these things matter. We should just keep up believing what we believe, at the cost of becoming completely blind to reason. Either way, the argument just does not stick.
A less generous reading of the argument is that people behind it just love their bacon too much. The argument is offered on purely selfish grounds: giving animals more value would place demands on one’s own life style, so such value is resisted at any cost, no matter how high or bizarre. This turns otherwise intelligent philosophers momentarily insane. The interpretation would seem to apply in many cases, for many of the philosophers in question greatly emphasise consistency and reason in all other aspects of their thinking. It is just in relation to animals that these factors are to be suddenly forsaken. That is, they do not “really” believe in utter relativism, they just use it as an ad hoc reason to get rid of the awkward demands made in animal ethics.
This may be the real reason behind the reluctance to treat animals with respect in general. The society does not want to wake up to the idea that animals have value in themselves, for it does not want to give up McMeals and chicken nuggets. It is moral laziness and selfishness that, in the end, dictate how animals are valued and treated.
However, perhaps we finally ought to accept that animals have much more value than we have previously been inclined to think. No matter how you twist and turn the arguments in your mind, it is extremely hard to avoid the conclusion that beings capable of experience have value in themselves. That the capacity to experience renders beings into “somebodys”, whom cannot be treated as “just some things”.
New outlooks
It has been argued that we need a new way of looking at the world. Diamond has emphasised the afore-mentioned “perception” most acutely in relation to ethics concerning animals. She has criticised detailed, objective arguments and philosophising and maintains that ultimately, we need to only open our eyes to the being of animals. If we listen carefully to the animal, if we look at her and actually see her, we will relate to her as a being of value. Diamond talks of a capacity to see animals as “fellow-beings”, and begs us to have moral perception that enables recognising animals as something other than stuff to use. Perception will reveal the animal’s subjectivity and vulnerability, all the things it shares with humans, and the ways in which it differs from humans. Again, it is how the animal is approached that matters.
Philosophers Michael Allen Fox and Lesley McLean have offered as an example two different accounts (one fictional, one scientific) about perceiving animals. In the first one, a human being sees the animal she has just hunted down, and suddenly feels overwhelming guilt when looking at the wounded bird dying at her feet. For the first time, she sees the animal as a vulnerable subject, rather than as a bird that needs to be killed. Moral perception has taken place, and altered the entire way in which the human views animals. In the second one, a scientist details experiments on dogs, which are aimed at inducing learned helplessness. First, the dogs are given electric shocks, and when they perform a given trick, the shocks stop. Then, the same dogs are given electric shocks repeatedly, and no matter what they do or try, and shocks continue. The dogs howl and cry, piss and shit themselves, vomit and tremble, and try all the tricks possible, all they can, to get away (but of course, there is no getting away). The scientist, however, describes all this with scientific curiosity, lacking any signs of concern, moral reflection, or even acknowledgement of the animals’ suffering. The experiment is based on the idea that the dogs will suffer, and that their minds resemble those of humans (they are meant to teach us about human helplessness) – however, the scientist remains utterly quiet about the experiences of the animals, or his own role in producing suffering. The paradox involved in tangible (the experiments rely on animal suffering, whilst the same suffering is completely ignored). Fox and McLean argue that the scientist refuses to see the animal. There is no moral perception, no capacity to actually acknowledge what is going on. The scientist remains completely blind to animals. A monster of sorts, who will cause suffering and then clinically list the symptoms of that suffering. He does not perceive the animal.
Moral perception requires, not only intellect, but also empathy, emotion, attentativity and openness. These are all important parts of ethics. Reason is needed, but it alone will not suffice. We need to also be open to new possibilities, be willing to listen and look at what is in front of us, and use not only heads, but also hearts. Perhaps most importantly, we need to identify with others, see things from their point of view. This is something argued vehemently for by the influential philosopher Martha Nussbaum. Unsurprisingly, she is also urging us to open ethics for non-human animals. The view is also argued for by the novelist J.M. Coetzee. According to Coetzee, pure reason can fail to show us what is important. It may even give us reason to remain egoistic, pompous, and uncaring. Empathy and openness can offer a wholly different understanding of what we are, what animals are, and what really matters.
However, next to reflection, maybe also something else is needed. The famous French philosopher Jacques Derrida has argued that animals are the most important question within philosophy. The Western tradition has been based on the idea that animals are passive objects, and has built entire ontologies (“what is”) and epistemologies (“how do we know”) – in short, the cornerstones of philosophy – on this presumption. But what if the animal was made an active agent? Derrida talks about being looked at by his cat, and of suddenly realising, in that moment, that the cat has become the active subject, and he himself the passive object. Roles have been turned around, and this has sparked him to question the whole way in which he relates to the reality. For him, we need to start seeing animals as these active subjects, and build an entirely new outlook on the world. Perhaps we are not the all-knowing and all-powerful superhumans, centres of evolution and moral value, that we claim to be, and perhaps other animals are active subjects that have value, instead of being passive things to be used in their hundreds of billions. We need to start seeing animals as active rather than passive beings. It is not surprising that Derrida goes on to offer his support for the animal rights movement.
It may well be that we could start viewing ourselves in a different light, too, if we gave animals the value they deserve. It has been argued that personhood happens in the second person sense. Juan Carlos Gomez has claimed that instead of being based on the first person tense – “I am a person” – or the third person tense – “she is a person” – it happens in the interaction between beings (“you are a person”). That is, personhood is based on the capacity to see others as persons, or (more broadly) as active agents and subjects in their own right. This makes personhood a direct, immediate matter that is not based on intellect or language, but rather the capacity to respond to other beings as subjects. This brings personhood back to its original, Creek meaning: personhood is “a role” or “a mask”, which we take on when interacting with others. I become a somebody in front of a somebody. One example is play amongst mammals (a matter, which the renowned ethologist Marc Bekoff has studied extensively). When enticing another dog to play, a dog will bow down, wag her tail, send all the possible signals out that she wants to play, because she knows the other dog in front of her is like herself – a being that will respond to her, as she responds to him. The other dog will be persuaded to play, and constantly during the play they will keep sending signals to tell each other what is going, whether they are happy or serious or ecstatic, and whether they want to stop or not. Both are immediately, without language or deep contemplation, responding to each other as experiencing beings, who have minds – in short, they are treating each other as a “somebody”, even if they lack the lingual capacity to define what being a somebody means. This is what, according to Gomez, personhood consists of. He argues that many animals easily fulfil the criteria.
The claim continues that if I cannot react to another subject as a subject, my own personhood becomes fragmented. I would be like a psychopath, incapable of seeing others as individuals. I would keep behaving around others as if they did not have minds, and as if they were not subjects that can experience. I would meet the person that smiles to me with a blank stare or the dog that wags her tail at me with nothing but coldness. This means that as long as we do not recognise the subjectivity of other animals, our own subjectivity remains incomplete. We remain psychopaths towards animals, unwilling to see that they have minds and experiences, that they too can suffer and that they, too, have value. This cultural psychopathic tendency enables us to keep cramping animals into tiny cages for months just so that we can then eat their flesh in one barbeque party without so much as a notice, or the scientist to keep causing brain damage to conscious monkeys or to force feed dogs and rats chemicals until they shake, vomit and die. We do not see the animal as a subject. We overlook the animal, like a psychopath overlooks the subjectivity of their victim. There is no emotion, no empathy, no recognition of the minds of the animals that are there, right in front of us. By becoming these psychopaths, we have lost our own humanity.
This is perhaps the most important aspect of animal ethics. The current way of treating animals is mentally ill, as if we got completely side-tracked somewhere on the way, somehow derailed from seeing the world as it is. The mechanomorphic way of looking at animals, which stipulates that animals cannot feel, experience, think, of suffer, and that they are so void of value that we can subject them to horrific conditions just in order to suit our whims and culinary desires, is nothing less than psychopathic. This enables us to take part in the most careless, even sadistic practices. Beings with minds are rammed into tiny barren cages, experimented on for the most frivolous of reasons, skinned for their fur, chopped up for their meat, separated from their offspring, denied any chance of living in accordance to the needs and capacities that millions of years of evolution have brought about; they are hunted down for amusement, exhausted and often maimed and killed in racing and rodeo and bull fights just so that humans can gain some entertainment, paraded around in circuses and zoos, trapped and poisoned as “pests”, and so forth and forth. We treat them as mere stuff. Nothing more. Mere biological stuff. Welfare claims (although few and far between) may make us feel better, but this does not change the reality of the animals, and does not change the fact that we still eat the flesh of the very same animals whose welfare we claimed to be interested in – that they are still, in the end, nothing but things to use. But of course, these beings are not things. We have become blind.
Conclusion
We need to start seeing animals again for what they are: beings with minds, experiences, and value. They are “somebodys”. The world consumes tens and tens of billions of animals each year. The amount is set to double by 2050. Animals rarely see the sun, or get to be with their young, or to look around and socialise like their genes tell them to. They are treated like mere things, like a psychopath would treat their victim, as nothing but an empty shelve that can be used in order to gain frivolous benefits. This needs to change. Meat production, fur production, experimentation, hunting, zoos, animal circuses, all need to come to an end. If we really want to retain humanity and see animals for what they are, there is no other choice.
The Nobel Laureate in Literature, J.M. Coetzee, puts it perhaps the best: “Let me say it openly: we are surrounded by an enterprise of degradation, cruelty, and killing which rivals anything that the Third Reich was capable of, indeed dwarfs it, in that ours is an enterprise without end, self-regenerating, bringing rabbits, rats, poultry, livestock ceaselessly into the world for the purpose of killing them”.
We need to change.
Elisa Aaltola
PhD, Research Fellow in Philosophy
