Final Paper

The following is my final paper for this class. Comments are welcome and encouraged.

Vegetarianism is morally obligatory for most humans because the inherent value of non-human animals is great enough to warrant treating them better. This better treatment includes the continuance of their lives and the cessation of our practices that intentionally cause them pain. Their inherent value comes from a variety of different sources – chiefly from sentience and self-valuation - and is incremental in nature.

            The incremental nature of inherent value does lead us to the conclusion that some lives are worth more than others. While this may be true, all sentient beings have value significant enough to grant them the positive right to life, and the negative right of freedom from harm. The nature of incremental value is useful in situations in which one is weighing different options. For instance: it is immoral to kill or contribute to the killing of adult humans and pigs (because they are both sentient and have reasonably high capacities of cognition among other factors), but in a situation where one must kill either a pig or a human in order to survive, one should choose to kill the pig, since the pig has less inherent value (it has a lower levels of sentience and capacity of cognition). It is still immoral to kill a pig, but with no other choice, it is justified.

 Humans are overwhelmingly omnivores, meaning that they can process both plant-based and animal-based nutrients. Humans are also overwhelmingly not obligate-omnivores, meaning that most humans do not need to eat both plant-based and animal-based foods to survive. In fact, most humans are nutritionally obligated to eat plant-based foods; humans can survive eating an exclusively plant-based diet, but they cannot survive eating an exclusively animal-based diet. Most people, therefore, will not encounter a situation where there are justified in killing or contributing (financially or otherwise) to the killing of a non-human animal. Instead, most humans can and should choose to survive and thrive on plant-based foods.

Additionally, since value comes from many sources, it is impossible to determine the exact sum of values that could warrant a small difference in treatment; our estimates of value are only approximate.

            The argument from marginal cases provides a decent comparison to consider when we think about how we ought to treat non-human animals. Most humans and non-human animals share capacities in varying degrees; both have the ability to perceive, adapt, and learn. Most non-human animals have a value that is comparable to the approximate value of human infants. So, we ought not to treat non-human animals any worse than we treat human infants. The inconvenience of not being able to eat readily available infants when we are hungry even though we really like how they taste is not enough to outweigh the inherent value of human infants. Similarly, the inconvenience of not being able to eat readily available non-human animals when we are hungry even though we like how they taste is not enough to outweigh the inherent value of non-human animals.

            These same arguments extend to veganism; veganism, under the current conditions, is morally obligatory for most humans. Self-defense, as in the cases of obligate-omnivores and people who severely lack resources, can allay the obligation of vegetarianism and veganism. However, such restrictions do not give people free-reign to eat whichever animals they want as often as they want.

            While it is morally best to refrain from eating meat altogether, it is better to reduce meat consumption than to continue eating it with the same frequency. It is also better to eat animals with lower inherent value than to eat animals with higher inherent value. If one is an obligate-omnivore, if one needs animal-based nutrients to survive, one should choose to eat the animals with the lowest inherent value at the lowest frequency that one can.

From Where Does Animal Value Come?

Animal value stems from a variety of different sources, and is incremental depending on those sources. The foundational capacity for value comes from sentience - the ability to experience and process pain and enjoyment. The capacity for sentience gives an organism a value that demands freedom from harm and the cessation of enjoyment. There are also a number of other factors that give an organism value: intelligence, ability to learn, instrumental value, et cetera. These capacities comes in different degrees, and is therefore incremental. An organism with a higher capacity to experience pain is more valuable in that way, than an organism with a lower capacity to experience pain.

These differences may be relevant in some situations, but they do not generally make a difference so long as we accept the basic value of animals and the treatment that such a value would warrant. A random pig because of it's higher sentience and intelligence, has a higher moral value than a random cow. This does not mean that we should treat cows less well, it means that when forced to choose one animal worse, we ought to choose to treat the cow worse. In most everyday situations, this is irrelevant, but that does not mean that it is entirely useless.

What I Took Away From This Class

I started this course with a decently well developed understanding of animal ethics, as it is something about which I think rather often. Since I did have a decent understanding of animal ethics, there were a few topics on which I didn't really change my mind. I started the course as a vegetarian, and I am still convinced that it is morally obligatory. I am, however, much more firm in this belief. Additionally, I also gained a new understanding of veganism; I intend to become a vegan when I am no longer subject to Aramark's lousy (read: virtually non-existent) vegan options.

I also developed a new understanding of 'pet-keeping,' and while I have always considered to role of 'pet-keeping' to be more similar to guardianship, I will, in the future, refer to it as guardianship. Additionally, I have come to understand how the pet market works, such that if I do want an animal companion (which I don't think is necessarily immoral in itself), I will work with an animal shelter rather than a pet-store. I don't want to contribute to the immoral practices involved in obtaining animals for stores.

I am still a bit unsure about animal testing, but I plan to work that out soon. There are, I think, certain cases in which animal testing is entirely immoral. Cosmetic testing is immoral, but I'm not sure if AIDS research on apes - since they do not contract the HIV virus - is necessarily immoral if the apes are treated well apart from their shots.

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In response Brian - full post here

I would agree with your assessment of our moral ability to constrain non-human animals in certain situations. I would compare our ability to interfere with the lives of non-humans to our ability to interfere with the lives of human children.

Human children certainly have conscious, physiological, and psychological interests. We have the moral ability, and perhaps even the moral obligation to prevent children from causing severe harm to themselves. We should prevent children from crossing busy roads, doing hard drugs, harming other people, et cetera. From this I suppose we'd have to conclude that we are obligated to take care of non-human animals in the same way. Though this might be dangerous if we take the argument to its absurd conclusion: we are morally obligated to prevent as much serious harm as we can.

I do wonder if, to get around this, we can make a distinction between the animals of whom we are guardians and animals who don't have guardians. The distinction seems (and probably is) irrelevant, but I can't see how we could avoid the aforementioned conclusion and its negative consequences.

Subjects vs. Motivations

in response to Kurtiss - full post here

The question of who to blame for the immoral actions of a moral patient is quite an interesting one. Practically, however, blame is quite irrelevant because we cannot change the  events of the past. More importantly, we should strive to make sure that the same immoral action does not occur again.

It can certainly useful to figure out the source of immorality, but blaming the source doesn't really matter. Additionally, it is very difficult to determine how many sources there were, and to what extend they influenced the action. We should, regardless of source or blame, provide resources to make sure that the action doesn't happen again.

Using your example of the dog and the neighbors guardian, we can take a number of different actions. We can encourage the guardian to help the neighbor replant the garden. We can help the guardian to pay for training classes. We can help both the neighbor and the guardian to purchase a fence to keep the dog out. We can do many things to prevent the action.

I think it is important to not focus on blame. Even in the case of human-committed immoral acts, blame isn't as important as rehabilitation and prevention. Blame (which focuses on subjects) leads us to retribution and revenge, while identifying a causes (motivations and reasons) can help us to prevent harm, while helping humans and non-humans alike.

Americans vs. The World vs. Non-Human Animals

In response to Sebastian - full post here

You bring up a very interesting point. Still, I think the problem is even deeper than looking after the welfare of humans rather than non-human animals. Try to convince Americans, they are the only people to whom I have direct access, that they should value the life of a citizen of a different nation as much as an American citizen. If we can't convince people that citizenship to an arbitrary nation isn't relevant to value of a life, how could we convince them that species is relevant. On a slightly more humorous note: I can imagine some Americans saying that American animals are more important than animals in other nations. Something that is less humorous is that I can imagine some Americans saying that American animals are more important than people from other nations. As it is, we already value the cats and dogs more than we do the more intelligent pigs.

Personally, I try my best to talk to people to help them understand that harm is bad when it befalls anybody and that we should strive to eliminate all harm, regardless of citizenship, skin-tone, sexual orientation, gender, species, et cetera. Depending on the person, I'll occasionally talk about socialism and about how we humans have the resources to take care of everybody, though we lack the drive and motivation or the knowledge.

Pet-Keeping

Is there anything that is inherently wrong with pet-guardianship?

This is a rather difficult question for me to answer. I want to say that there is nothing inherently wrong with pet-guardianship  but I am well aware of the number of problems that we are having in regards to pet-guardianship. Breeding, for instance, just to get better pets is, I think, not morally justified. If one buys a pet at a pet store, one is contributing either towards this kind of breeding or to the very unethical practice of capturing animals from the wild. The problem here is that, while there may be nothing wrong with pet-guardianship, if there is a problem with the means through which we gain access to animals, then the morality of pet-guardianship itself is irrelevant. Pet-guardianship would only be justified if one happened upon an animal in need of guardianship, or if one was taking care of an animal who has already been bred or captured with assurance that that it would not contribute towards the continuation of current practices.

The next question, then, is what do we do with animals who are in pet-stores? What will happen if we don't adopt them? How will we contribute towards the continuation of the industry if we do?