ANIMAL ETHICS 42 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY

Transcription

1 In the area of risks to human health, the question is whether products from cloned animals or their progeny couldhaveadverseandunwantedeffectsonhumansand/ or the environment. The research so far shows that this is not the case (U.S. Food and Drug Administration 2008, European Food Safety Agency 2008). The socioeconomic concerns relate especially to agricultural applications of animal cloning and typically focus on the risk that animal cloning could further trends within agriculture toward fewer players in the market, greater specialization, and a deeper divide between rich and poor countries. Finally, there are concerns that our increasing utilization of animals will reduce our ability to relate to them as anything other than providers for human needs. We will thereby lose a sense of kinship and responsibility toward other living beings features deemed essential to the development of a sound human psyche (Gjerris and Sandøe 2007). The ethical concerns regarding risks to animals can be divided into two aspects: risks to animal welfare and risks to animal integrity and naturalness. The low success rates tell a story of huge welfare problems related to the technology. Many animals are stillborn or born with health defects. Two things should be noted, though. First, the animal-welfare problems related to cloning are not special to cloning. They are the same as experienced with other reproductive technologies. It is just that they occur more often in cloning. Second, most of the problems seem to be related to the first generation of animals. Once cloned animals have reached a certain age, they seem to develop like conventional animals. Similarly, the welfare problems do not occur in animals sexually bred from cloned animals (Vajta and Gjerris 2006). Still, the welfare problems in cloning are serious enough that the ethical advisory committee for the European Union has suggested that animal cloning is justified only in research and medical applications (European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies to the European Commission 2008). Some people experience the technology as unnatural and as violating the integrity of the animals. This concern does not relate specially to cloning but rather is closely connected to more general concerns about animal biotechnology and human use of animals. Basically, this concern relates to the dignity of animals and can be interpreted as a longing for a less exploitive relationship between humans and animals (Gjerris and Sandøe 2007). SEE ALSO Genetically Modified Organisms and Biotechnology; Transgenic Animals. BIBLIOGRAPHY Di Berardino, M. A Animal Cloning The Route to New Genomics in Agriculture and Medicine. Differentiation 68: European Food Safety Agency Scientific Opinion on Food Safety, Animal Health and Welfare, and Environmental Impact of Animals derived from Cloning by Somatic Cell Nucleus Transfer (SCNT) and Their Offspring and Products Obtained from Those Animals. Available from efsa.europa.eu/efsa/documentset/sc_opinion_clon_public_ consultation.pdf European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies to the European Commission Ethical Aspects of Animal Cloning for Food Supply. Available from europa.eu/european_group_ethics/activities/docs/opinion23_ en.pdf Gamborg, Chistian; Mickey Gjerris; Jennifer Gunning; et al Regulating Farm Animal Cloning: Recommendations from the Project Cloning in Public. Danish Centre for Bioethics and Risk Assessment, Frederiksberg, Denmark. Gjerris, Mickey, and Peter Sandøe Ethical Concerns Related to Cloning of Animals for Agricultural Purposes. In Sustainable Food Production and Ethics, ed. W. Zollitsch, C. Winckler, S. Waiblinger, and A. Haslberger, pp Wageningen, Netherlands: Wageningen Academic Publishers. Gjerris, Mickey; Anna Olsson, and Peter Sandøe Animal Biotechnology and Animal Welfare. In Animal Welfare, ed. Council of Europe Publishing. Strasbourg, France: Council of Europe Publishing. U.S. Food and Drug Administration Animal Cloning: A Risk Assessment. Available from CloneRiskAssessment_Final.htm Vajta, Gabor, and Mickey Gjerris Science and Technology of Farm Animal Cloning: State of the Art. Animal Reproduction Science 92: Wilmut, I.; A. E. Schnieke; J. McWhir; et al Viable Offspring Derived from Fetal and Adult Mammalian Cells. Nature 385: ANIMAL ETHICS Mickey Gjerris Peter Sandøe Animal ethics is a field of study within environmental philosophy. Animals often have been classified as beings of nature, and in contemporary terminology they form an integral part of concepts central to environmental philosophy, such as ecosystems, biodiversity, species, and environments. However, the link between animal ethics and environmental philosophy is complex: Animal ethics concentrates on individual animals and their value, whereas environmental philosophy traditionally has had more comprehensive (soils, waters, and plants as well as animals) and holistic (species, not specimens; biotic communities; ecosystems) concerns. Many animal ethicists, by contrast, maintain that animals should not be valued only as members of species or communities. 42 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY

2 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Philosophical discussion of the moral status of animals has a long history. Many ancient Greeks, including Pythagoras and Plutarch, were vegetarians on primarily ethical grounds, and many later philosophers, such as Michel de Montaigne, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Stuart Mill, contemplated the normative dimensions of the human-animal relationship. In the nineteenth century Henry Salt published a thesis on that topic in which he defended moral vegetarianism. In addition, serious discussion of the moral status of animals and the normative elements of the human-animal relationship long existed on the margins of philosophy. The discussion about animals became more central and direct in the 1970s, when animal ethics in its contemporary form took shape. The general interest in animal issues can be traced to various factors, such as growing concern for the environment and the ensuing criticism of anthropocentric values, along with new trends in political and moral thinking that underlined nonviolence together with equality and the rights of all human beings regardless of race, sex, religion, or other incidental characteristics. Because the cultural climate was filled with criticism of inherited values and with advocacy of tolerance and equality, it is not surprising that the moral status of animals was reinvestigated. If the human-centered worldview had produced an environmental crisis and if all equal human interests should be given equal consideration regardless of their holders differences, perhaps the equal interests of animals should be given equal consideration rather than being ignored. Perhaps species might be as irrelevant as a moral criterion as sex or race. Further, as more people moved to cities distant from agriculture and animal production, questions about the moral status of animals became less uncomfortable, as a growing number of people no longer gained livelihood from animal husbandry. A work often cited as a groundbreaker in animal ethics is Animal Liberation by Peter Singer. Published in 1975, it combined detailed descriptions of animal production and experimentation with moral analyses. On a practical level it had an impact on the popularity of vegetarianism and animal advocacy. On a theoretical level it provoked more philosophical investigation into the moral status of animals. Tom Regan published The Case for Animal Rights in 1983, and the next year saw the publication of Animals and Why They Matter by Mary Midgley. The moral status of nonhuman animals and the normative nature of the human-animal relationship have become mainstream topics in academic philosophy. Not only philosophers working specifically within animal ethics but also philosophers in other fields of philosophy, such as Martha Nussbaum (2004), Alasdair MacIntyre, Animal Experimentation. Animal ethics is a relatively new topic relating to environmental philosophy, and is concerned with the moral status of animals, among other things. Issues such as the use of animals in research (like the lab rat shown here), education, for food production, and as companions have all been hotly debated. ª IMAGEBROKER/ALAMY and Jacques Derrida (2004), have looked into animal ethics. Some philosophers Singer is the most notable example with a background in animal ethics have become prominent contributors to philosophical discussion of other, more mainstream ethical issues, such as world hunger and health care. GENERAL TRENDS Animal ethics can be divided into three categories: the analytical school, the postmodern school, and the pragmatic school. Members of the analytical school investigate the relevant issues by reference to the familiar ethical theories and methods of modern Western philosophy. Standard moral theories such as utilitarianism, deontology (rights theory), social-contract ethics, and virtue ethics have been applied to the animal issue to see if they could be extended to include nonhuman animals. The familiar commitments of modern Western moral philosophy to neutrality, universality, and consistency are honored. Neutrality requires suspending a bias favoring fellow humans, universality requires that morality remain the same in all contexts, and consistency requires giving equal consideration to similar interests. The most common approach is to take a moral theory and apply it to other animals, often simultaneously amending the theory to make it more comprehensive. Tom Regan, for example, amended Immanuel Kant s deontology, substituting a robust subjective or conscious life for Kant s rationality criterion for moral rights. Just as theoretical backgrounds in the analytical school differ greatly, so do various ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY 43

3 theories in animal ethics. Perhaps the most common example is the conflict between orthodox utilitarianism, championed by Peter Singer, and modified Kantian deontology, championed by Tom Regan, as forms of animal ethics. The majority of philosophical approaches to animal ethics are of the analytical school. Philosophers who have used this approach include Peter Singer, Tom Regan, Mark Rowlands, Dale Jamieson, Bernard Rollin, Stephen Clark, Paola Cavalieri, Evelyn Pluhar, James Rachels, Steve Sapontzis, and David DeGrazia. The postmodern school approaches animal ethics by reference to Continental and poststructural philosophy. In many ways this school is the opposite of the analytical school in that its proponents view neutrality, universality, and consistency with suspicion. The divide is meta-ethical in nature and can be traced back to the general divide that emerged in twentieth-century philosophy between Anglo-American philosophy and Continental philosophy. Postmodernists think that neutrality and objectivity are impossible to achieve because humans are inextricably embedded in their specific epistemologies and perspectives. It also is maintained that values are not universal but socially constructed. In practice this means that emphasis should be placed on explorations of various human perspectives; those explorations include how gender, ethnic identities, biologies, bodily situatedness, and contexts affect values and understandings of animals. For instance, attention has been focused on reevaluating human identity from the animal perspective. Instead of concentrating on how humans view animals, emphasis is placed on how animals may view humans and the possible normative implications of such interspecific points of view. Also, postmodernists maintain that instead of reason and logic, emphasis should be placed on emotions such as awe, care, feelings of being bound, and other affective and intuitive responses. The postmodern school is highly diverse, and not all its proponents share all of these characteristics. Philosophers who have used this approach include Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida. More specific to animal ethics, philosophers who use the postmodern and continental approaches include Cary Wolfe, David Wood, Matthew Calarco, Giorgio Agamben, and Ralph R. Acampora. Some ecofeminist approaches to animal ethics are similar in eschewing rationality, neutrality, universality, and consistency and embracing emotion, difference, context, and partiality. The most notable postmodern-leaning ecofeminists who have contributed to animal ethics include Val Plumwood (1993), Carol Adams (1990), Marti Kheel, Josephine Donovan (1990), and Greta Gaard; Vandana Shiva and Karen Warren also have touched on the animal issue. Many philosophers who have contributed to animal ethics deploy the insights and methods of both the analytical and postmodern schools by taking part in both, combining the two (e.g., taking an analytical approach to postmodern works), or developing entirely new approaches. Those philosophers include Mary Midgley (1984), Clare Palmer (2001), and Steve Best. Despite the meta-ethical differences, the analytical and postmodern schools share many basic premises and conclusions. In regard to shared premises, both resist anthropocentric assumptions and thus seek to explore the value of nonhuman animals from a viewpoint that is not biased toward human beings. In practice this means that the value of nonhuman animals is not derived from instrumentality; the value of a pig, for example, is not derived from bacon. Although humans are tied to the human viewpoint in an epistemological sense (all human valuing originates in the human perspective), they do not have to be tied to a human viewpoint in a moral sense (privileging humans over all other beings). The origin and content of values need to be separated. Although human sensibilities create aesthetic values, it is not true that only humans are of aesthetic value, that only humans are beautiful. Analogously, although human ethical sensibilities create moral value, it is not necessarily true that only humans are of moral value. It is important to acknowledge that other-than-human beings are also valuing beings aesthetically and possibly morally. Therefore, avoiding anthropocentrism is not a logical impossibility, as some have claimed. Another shared premise is the rejection of dualism. Historically the human-animal dichotomy was one of many forms of dualism. In Plumwood s (1991) analysis, privilege, difference, and homogeneity are fundamental to dualism. One of the two terms of the dualism is privileged and regarded as superior to the other: Classically, men were supposed to be superior to women and whites were supposed to be superior to people of color. The two terms of the dualism are marked by mutually exclusive difference, and those of the other category are regarded as being all the same (white people in the South used to say of blacks, They all look alike to me ). In the classical human-animal dualism, humans are defined by culture, rationality, and morality and animals are defined by biology, emotion, and instinct. The classical human-animal dualism, however, is plagued with problems. Proponents of animal ethics often draw from cognitive ethology to point out that many capacities traditionally thought of as exclusive to humans are found among other animals. Many animals, animal ethicists argue, can form beliefs and even abstract concepts, behave intentionally, have consciousness in the phenomenal sense (are capable of experience), and even have social and physical forms of self-understanding. 44 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY

4 This problematizes dualistic notions because it posits that animals are not merely instinctual but also cognitive beings. Humans are biological creatures and one species among other animals. People do not exist outside nature and do not have special value because they somehow have stepped outside animality. Many animal ethicists refer to the theory of evolution and its insistence that humans are not at the top of a biological ladder but are a part of an evolutionary tree and an ecological web within which no species is objectively more valuable than another. To remind their readers of this fact, animal ethicists use terms such as nonhuman animals or other animals. Another shared element is an emphasis on the animal itself. It is the moral status of and the norms concerning animals, independent of human beings, that are of interest. Animals are not passive objects and a tabula rasa on which humans can write different conceptions but active beings with their own independent abilities and interests. A common conclusion is that the capacity to experience (consciousness in the phenomenal sense) is the basis for individual or inherent value both in humans and in other animals. The value of other animals implies that many current practices, from animal production to hunting and animal experimentation, are morally problematic. The pragmatic school concentrates on specific practical issues such as particular aspects of animal experimentation or agriculture. The work often is carried out by nonphilosophers such as veterinarians, biologists, and others interested in specific moral problems that arise in conventional interactions between humans and animals. The theoretical input of this school is small, and its relevance in philosophy is minor in comparison to the other two schools. Whereas the analytical and postmodern schools have come to similar conclusions about animals, the pragmatic school often is guided by a different set of principles. For instance, whereas most analytical and postmodern animal ethicists consider meat production morally unjustifiable, those working in the practical sector may ignore that conclusion and investigate specific criteria for the acceptability of various methods of production and slaughter. Often the philosophical reflection among pragmatic animal ethicists is comparatively limited because their interest lies in the details of specific practices rather than the overall moral nature of those practices. A typical example of the pragmatic school can be found in interdisciplinary approaches to welfare studies in which, for instance, agronomists seek to construct ethical guidelines to matters such as dairy farming by taking into account specific welfare issues brought to light by ethologists. The development of the pragmatic school is one of the key challenges for the future of animal ethics. From the point of view of the pragmatic school, analytic and continental animal ethicists do animals a disservice if they simply dismiss animal agriculture because for the foreseeable future animal agriculture will continue despite the condemnation of animal ethicists. In the meantime paying more heed to present practical issues concerning animals could greatly improve their lot and doing so might encourage more philosophical rigor within the pragmatic school. The case typifies the conflict between an animal rights/liberation stance and an animal welfare stance, both of which have their merits, but the first one has thus far been theoretically stronger. In academia animal ethics also is discussed in disciplines other than philosophy. The analytical and postmodern approaches have coexisted with works in cultural studies that have attempted to locate normative understandings of animals in historical and contemporary cultural perspectives and create critical theories that would question anthropocentric views of animals. Authors who have worked within cultural studies, often with an emphasis on philosophy, biology, and women s studies, include Donna Haraway (2003), Lynda Birke, Joan Dunayer (2004), Eileen Crist (1999), and Barbara Noske. Themes relevant to animal ethics also have been explored outside academia, with one example being the work of the novelist J. M. Coetzee. THE WORKS OF SINGER, REGAN, AND ADAMS The most influential or at least the most widely discussed works in animal ethics are those of Peter Singer, Tom Regan, and Carol Adams. Peter Singer Peter Singer is a utilitarian theorist who has applied that standard moral paradigm to animals. Singer s work is a version of preference utilitarianism, named for its emphasis on the satisfaction of interests. Singer takes as his starting point two claims central to utilitarianism: maximization of aggregate utility and equality. Under the first principle people should favor the action that produces the greatest utility, which in Singer s framework means the greatest satisfaction of the interests of all those affected by that action. Under the second principle people should consider similar interests equally irrespective of gender, race, class, intelligence quotient, and species. Traditionally, utilitarianism has maintained that gender, race, class, and cognitive abilities are morally irrelevant. Singer adds to the argument the idea that species should be among the peculiarities considered irrelevant to moral decision making. People should not overlook the interests of animals just because of their species; that would be a naked prejudice speciesism that is analogous to racism. Furthermore, limited intellectual capacities or a complete lack of those capacities should not be used as a reason for excluding the interests of animals from equal consideration. The fundamental ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY 45

5 ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION Animal experimentation is one of the most controversial areas of animal use. Politically, it gained attention at the dawn of the contemporary animal welfare movement as the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century witnessed heated debates about the justification of what was called vivisection. The trend continues in the beginning of the twenty-first century, and the animal rights movement has launched many campaigns against pharmaceutical industries and universities that take part in animal research. Experimentation has been a common point of debate in philosophy and more specifically in animal ethics. For instance the book often cited as the groundbreaking work in animal ethics, Animal Liberation (1975) by Peter Singer, drawsexamplesfromtheanimalexperimentation industry. The emphasis placed on experimentation is understandable for three reasons. First, experimentation can cause severe harm and suffering to the animals involved. Vivisection refers to the practice of cutting open live animals and reminds people of the suffering that took place before anesthesia was developed. In the contemporary context suffering is arguably still commonplace in areas such as toxicology (testing of chemicals such as medicines, household cleaners, cosmetics, and pesticides for their toxic effects), cancer research (in which cancers are induced artificially in animals by means of genetic modification or chemical stimulation), neurological research (in which brain damage may be inflicted on animals by mechanical or chemical means), and bone and joint research (in which fractures and other injuries are induced to the bones, or animals are made ill with conditions such as arthritis). Second, experimentation is a constantly evolving industry and thus merits ongoing moral discussion. It includes possibilities that test the human imagination, ranging from genetic modification, cloning, and the creation of animal bioreactors to the creation of hybrids between species. Third, experimentation is more complicated from a moral point of view than, for instance, meat eating. It can be argued that meat eating, if done purely for reasons of taste or custom, is difficult to justify; however, because experimentation may save human lives, its moral nature is more complex. There are three basic criticisms of animal experimentation. The argument from marginal cases rests on comparison. Theclaimisthatinthenameofconsistency,peoplecannot kill nonhuman animals for the benefit of humans as long as they do not condone using humans of similar or less mental ability in experiments. The argument from benefit concentrates on the possible benefits of experimentation. It is argued that because meta-analyses of experimentation show that the benefits are statistically very small, experimentation cannot be justified. The cost-benefit analyses go against experimentation: It is wrong to cause actual harm for a hypothetical benefit. This argument often is accompanied by claims according to which experimentation is scientifically problematic (animals are not strong models for human physiology) and politically misguided (experiments are concentrated on common Western ailments that in most cases could be prevented by changes inlifestyleandaremotivatedbytheeconomicgainsofthe pharmaceutical industries). The argument from value rests on the value of animals regardless of any comparison or benefit. People cannot use a being of individual value as an instrument to benefit another, and this makes animal experimentation morally unjustified. Critics have argued that even if one accepts all these claims, it still is possible to imagine extreme circumstances in which people would sacrifice a small number of animals to benefit a large group of people. However, it has been maintained that this argument from extreme cases does not justify experimentation asaneveryday practice. First, in a lifeboat situation in which it is necessary to choose whether to throw overboardahumanorananimal, many people would choose to save the human. However, altering the choice to concern an elderly person and a child or a person similar to oneself and a personverydifferentfromoneselfpointsoutthatitisdifficult to draw general moral principles from such preferences. Extreme situations may say little about general principles and the justification of everyday practices; they only describe difficult choices made in extreme circumstances. It also has been argued that as opposed to thinking of ethics as a matter of conflict between two sets of beings (humans and animals), it would be better to concentrate on taking both into account. One would not use other human beings in a similar situation because of their individual value: They are included in the moral sphere and are thus exempt from being used as instruments.theargumenthereisthat perhaps also animals should be included in the moral sphere. BIBLIOGRAPHY Greek, C. Ray, and Jean Swingle Greek Sacred Cows and Golden Geese: The Human Cost of Experiments on Animals. New York: Continuum. LaFollette, Hugh, and Niall Shanks Brute Science: Dilemmas of Animal Experimentation. London and New York: Routledge. Rollin, Bernard E The Unheeded Cry: Animal Consciousness, Animal Pain, and Science. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Elisa Aaltola 46 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY

6 utilitarian principle of equality requires that the interests of animals be taken into account equally with the interests of humans. This makes Singer s argument radical in the contemporary moral climate. A self-consistent utilitarian cannot overlook the interests of other animals when making moral decisions, and in fact those interests must be taken account of to the same degrees as the interests of human beings. What matters in relation to the moral status of both animals and humans is whether a being has interests; no other factors are relevant. Cognitive abilities may have a bearing, but only when they are tied directly to interests. Thus, the interests of rabbits do not have to be taken into account in discussing freedom of religion, for rabbits do not have cognitive abilities that would give them an interest in participating in that freedom. Similarly, cognitive abilities may heighten or lessen interests, such as the interest not to feel pain or be killed. However, when it comes to interests of equal measure had by both humans and animals, a consistent utilitarianism requires that they be taken equally into account. Singer presents a clear, consistent approach to animal ethics. If one accepts utilitarianism as the most persuasive moral theory, it is difficult to avoid his conclusion. However, those conclusions, though theoretically straightforward, are radical in practice. A consistent utilitarian would have to denounce most practices involving animals in European and North American societies, such as meat eating, hunting, fur farming, and animal experimentation. Singer has been criticized for overlooking the difference between passive (objective) and active (subjective) interests. R. G. Frey (1980) maintained that inanimate objects such as tractors also may have interests in the passive sense (it is in their interest to be oiled). It is not passive interests but active interests that are morally relevant, and if an animal lacks cognitive abilities that enable it to formulate active interests, its interests do not have to be taken into account in moral choices. Singer has responded to this criticism by maintaining that both active and passive interests are relevant and by arguing that inanimate objects do not have interests in anything more than a metaphorical sense. The basis of having morally relevant interests is the capacity to experience. Only when a being experiences the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of its interests do those interests become morally significant; whether the interests are passive or active does not matter. Thus, a cow does not have to conceptualize or be introspective about its interest to avoid pain; all that matters is that it will or will not experience the satisfaction of that interest. People take into account the interests of humans even if the human whose interests they are cannot conceptualize them (and thus have them in an active sense), and the same thing applies to animals. Further, in many cases passive interests have more moral significance than active interests. For instance, an addict may have an active interest in shooting heroin and a passive interest in remaining healthy. In this case the satisfaction of the passive interest generates more utility. Thus, there is little reason to exclude the interests of animals from the moral sphere merely because many of their interests are passive, for many of the most important human interests are passive. It has been claimed that some of the conclusions drawn by Singer do not by necessity apply within utilitarianism. Experiments on animals that lead to greater aggregate utility would appear morally justifiable, at least in some cases. Singer has responded with a version of the argument from marginal cases: If people believe it wrong to use, as subjects of painful medical experiments, human beings with similar or less mental ability than that of the animal subjects of those experiments, they also should believe that it is equally wrong to use the animal subjects in those experiments. If, more particularly, people believe that it is wrong to kill ten mentally unable humans to find cures for ten thousand mentally able humans, they should believe that it is just as wrong to kill ten dogs to achieve that goal. Here Singer appears to emphasize equality the principle that people should take equal interests equally into account more than aggregate utility. However, the conundrum of sacrificing a few for the benefit of many is a problem often cited in relation to utilitarianism per se apart from its extension to animals. Deontologists seize on the intuitive repugnance of deliberately sacrificing a few for the benefit of many as evidence that utilitarianism must be supplemented by the acknowledgment that individuals have rights or intrinsic value that protects them against being used as instruments for others. Utilitarianism also may be inadequate in another way. If an animal has no comprehension of the future or the possibility of its own death, it may lack the interest to live, and that would make its painless killing a morally neutral act. Singer has maintained that because animal production usually leads to at least some suffering (and, as he emphasizes, often severe suffering), such a situation would be merely hypothetical; that is, animal production cannot be justified by claiming that animals have no active interest to remain alive because in practice it ignores other interests that such animals have. Another possible rejoinder is that even if a cow does not have an active interest in continuing to live, it does have a passive interest in doing so and thus cannot be killed justifiably. Hence, even if a cow cannot conceptualize an interest in remaining alive, it is in its interest to remain alive because remaining alive is the prerequisite for the fulfillment of all of a cow s other interests. ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY 47

7 THE GREAT APE PROJECT The Great Ape Project (GAP) is an attempt to extend fundamental protections enjoyed by humans to individuals of four nonhuman species (gorillas, bonobos, orangutans, and chimpanzees) and their habitats. This concept originated with the philosophers Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri in the early 1990s. In 1993 Cavalieri and Singer published The Great Ape Project: Equality beyond Humanity, a collection of thirty-one essays by prominent scientists, philosophers, educators, and activists. The editors stated in the Preface, We seek an extension of equality that will embrace not only our own species, but also the species that are our closest relatives and that most resemble us in their capacities and their ways of living (p. 1). The founders vision of a community of equals thus included humans and the other four great-ape species. As set out in the organization s foundational document, The Declaration on Great Apes, GAP seeks to offer three specific protections to these closest biological cousins: protection of life, protection of liberty, and freedom from torture. Reasoning that individuals who have these fundamental protections are entitled to equal respect and concern, GAP advocates that these nonhuman animals be protected by such social mechanisms as legal and moral rights. GAP s materials emphasize that modern scientific findings about the nonhuman great apes establish that they are complex beings with unique personalities, demonstrable intelligence of several kinds, communication abilities that exceed those of virtually all other animals, profound social needs, and true emotions that humans can easily recognize. According to GAP, these features of the nonhuman great apes clearly justify extending fundamental protections beyond the human species to not only the individual animals but also their native habitats. In general, GAP s reasoning follows two different paths. One path focuses on the cognitive and other psychological complexities of nonhuman great apes as individuals and as members of families and societies. These features in and of themselves are sufficient to merit fundamental protections for these animals. A second path of reasoning is that since these animals are demonstrably complex and since some humans with lesser abilities are protected, it is only fair to protect the nonhuman great apes as well. GAP s ideas have been advanced by national organizations in numerous countries, including Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and the United States. The furthest penetration into public policy has come in three countries: New Zealand, where the national GAP group successfully advocated legally enshrining basic protections for nonhuman great apes in 1999; Spain, where in 2006 the national organization succeeded in scheduling Parliament-level votes on adoption of GAP s basic premises as national policy; and the Balearic Islands, where the government in 2007 officially adopted GAP s recommendations as national policy. Other countries, including Austria and Britain, have enacted GAP-inspired legislation or administrative bans on experiments on nonhuman great apes. GAP s theme of equality beyond the species line has also appeared in philosophical discussions, the recently emerged field of animal law, and other scholarly discussions and publications in various areas of human and animal studies. Some universities have even adopted GAP s central ideas as an educational theme for interdisciplinary courses. Criticisms of GAP s ideas have varied. Some have suggested that the emphasis on cognition is a covert way of affirming a human paradigm for measuring moral worth (individuals similar to humans may qualify, while dissimilar individuals, no matter how complex in their own right, do not). Some have argued that GAP relies on an overstated view of nonhuman ape minds. Another criticism sometimes heard is based on the fear that extending fundamental protections to some nonhumans risks sliding down a slippery slope and extending rights to all animals. BIBLIOGRAPHY Cavalieri, Paola, and Peter Singer, eds. The Great Ape Project: Equality beyond Humanity. London: Fourth Estate, Great Ape Project. GAP Web site. Available at Paul Waldau However, as in the case of painful experiments on animal subjects, this consideration leads to another. If people should cease raising cows for slaughter and consumption, only a few cows would be raised as museum pieces that illustrate a bygone period in human civilization. If being alive is a prerequisite for the fulfillment of 48 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY

8 all of a cow s other interests, the many interests of the many cows that thus would not exist would fail to be satisfied and thus diminish aggregate utility, at least of the bovine variety. Therefore, if animal production satisfied the interests of animals more than it dissatisfied those interests, a utilitarian might have to agree with it. Singer holds that contemporary farming practices lead to a greater dissatisfaction than satisfaction of interests and therefore argues for moral vegetarianism. However, if the situation were to change, a strict utilitarian would have to reconsider the case. Such considerations again point toward the problems that emerge when all the emphasis is on aggregated satisfaction of interests and the value and rights of individuals are sidelined. Although Singer provides a valuable take on ethics concerning animals, it can be argued that more attention needs to be placed on the individual. Tom Regan Tom Regan has taken an entirely different theoretical approach to animal ethics. He espouses deontology, or a duty-oriented ethical theory, and especially rights theory. Whereas utilitarianism emphasizes the consequences of actions, deontology emphasizes the conformity of actions to the practical law of universalization and the logical law of noncontradiction. For example, if everyone always lied if lying were practiced universally no one would believe anything anyone said, and thus it would be impossible to lie effectively. It is possible to lie only if telling the truth is the norm, the rule, the moral law. Because universal lying is self-contradictory and one s actions should pass the test of universalization, from a deontological point of view it is wrong to lie regardless of the consequences. A particular lie may lead to felicitous consequences but still be morally unsound; certain acts are wrong in principle regardless of their outcomes. Deontology, which largely derives from the moral philosophy of Kant, also emphasizes the inherent value of individual moral patients. Whereas utilitarianism underlines utility, deontology underlines the value of the individual regardless of utility. What is inherently valuable is the individual being, not the satisfaction of its preferences. Regan explicitly endorses rights theory as opposed to utilitarianism because only rights theory takes the individual directly into account. Regan starts by maintaining that certain types of beings have inherent value, which is distinguished from instrumental value. According to Kant, every person is an end in himself or herself as opposed to a means to another person s ends. That inherent value is categorical and hence equal: All beings that have it have it to an equal degree. A person s inherent value is the foundation of his or her moral rights. Those with inherent value should be treated with respect for their rights, which are universal, equal, and self-sufficient. Therefore, rights exist regardless of the context, are equal for all beings that have inherent value, and are not dependent on the vagaries of politics; they may or may not be recognized politically, but they are neither created nor destroyed by political fiat. Regan further characterizes rights as justified claims that are made on moral agents. Thus, one cannot have a right against a flood, but one can have a right against a prospective murderer; one can, however, have a right against an agent who causes a harmful flood. Regan argues that the value of an individual is independent of gender, race, intellectual ability, or social class. He also places a great deal of emphasis on moral principles such as the respect principle, according to which beings of inherent value are to be treated respectfully. Up to this point Regan endorses the familiar modern understanding of human rights: All people universally have the same value and basic rights regardless of gender, race, culture, social class, or intelligence. However, like Singer, he makes a radical claim: Species must, if people are to be consistent, also be irrelevant. Therefore, some animals may have the same basic value and rights as humans. Again, the consequences are clear: Animal production and experimentation and other practices that instrumentalize animals should be stopped. Kant made rationality the criterion for inherent value and thus rights, but here again the argument from marginal cases may be deployed. Not all humans are rational: The marginal cases include prerational infants, subrational mentally disabled persons, and postrational senile persons. By Kant s criterion they have no inherent value and thus no rights and therefore may be treated just as people treat other animals: experimented on in medical research, hunted for sport, made into dog food. Because such treatment of the marginal cases would be intuitively repugnant, the criterion for inherent worth and thus for having rights must be made more inclusive so that it includes those cases. The criterion for inherent value that Regan proposes is being a subject of a life. That subjectivity, according to Regan, consists of the ability to have beliefs, emotions, intentionality, and lasting psychophysical identity and memory, among other things. However, the fundamental criterion that Regan uses is the capacity to experience. Whereas for Kant only moral agents can be moral patients, Regan is careful to emphasize that the class of moral agents is only a subset of the class of moral patients. As the argument from marginal cases shows, people commonly give equal value and rights to human beings who are not moral agents; by parity of reasoning, therefore, animal subjects of a life cannot be excluded on the basis of their assumed lack of agency. In relation to rights he also maintains that moral patients do not have to be able to make a claim; it is enough that they have a ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY 49

9 Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy, Volume1 Finals/ 9/11/ :55 Page 50 Animal Ethics Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO), Midwestern U.S. Hundreds of chickens are seen at a large-scale egg producing facility in the midwest known as a CAFO. These are massive, sprawling facilities where hundreds of thousands of animals are housed, often releasing enormous amounts of liquid sewage into the local water tables and even infecting drinking water. Such facilities have been criticized by environmental groups like the Sierra Club. DANIEL PEPPER/GETTY IMAGES. claim. Hence, the moral agents toward whom the claim is directed have the responsibility to ensure that that right is respected regardless of one s capacity to insist upon that right. Against Regan, Carl Cohen (Cohen and Regan 2001) has argued that being a moral agent is necessary for a being to have inherent value and rights. He emphasizes active liberty rights: Rights are liberties to do something, with an example being the right to vote. Such rights, it is argued, presuppose agency; thus, nonhuman animals, or at least nonhuman animals incapable of agency, are excluded. However, this criticism does not pay enough attention to passive rights such as the right to life, which one does not necessarily act upon intentionally and which primarily rest on corresponding duties that fall on others. Like marginal cases, animals seem to be capable of having passive rights and also could have active rights understood in a broad sense, for instance, the right to follow species-specific traits. Moreover, Regan advocates a correspondence theory between duties 50 and rights: Any right had by one can be translated into a corresponding duty falling on others. Therefore, animals do not have to be able either to assert their rights intentionally or to act upon them; it is enough that people as moral agents recognize their duty to respect those rights. Another criticism concerns the enforcement of rights by humans among other animals. It has been argued that if some animals have a right to life, that right must be protected not only from violation by moral agents but from any violation. Thus, people must prevent predators from attacking prey. Regan has replied that because predators are not moral agents, they can assume no duties and thus cannot violate the corresponding rights of their prey. Critics have responded by pointing out that the issue may concern those in a position to help rather than the predators themselves: As people would have a duty to help those who are drowning, they may have a duty to help those who are attacked by moral agents (whether animals, small children, deranged people, etc.). Thus, one could argue that animal rights means that people ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY

10 should prevent predators from attacking their subjects-ofa-life prey by, for example, rounding them up, incarcerating them comfortably in large enclosures, and feeding them soy products until they die a natural death. Some animal rights proponents have argued that this view overlooks the rights of the predators: People cannot prevent predation, for to do so would go against the rights of predators. Small children and deranged serial killers do not have a right to kill, whereas predators, whose survival depends on killing, are in a different position. Moreover, it has been pointed out that preventing predation would lead to ecological destruction, which would lead to large-scale violation of the welfare and rights of animals. If humans prevented predation, they would be directly responsible for an environmental catastrophe and thus guilty of violating the rights of countless animals. Perhaps most important, respecting the inherent value of animals requires respecting the inherent nature of animals; preventing the manifestation of speciesspecific behaviors clearly would go against any such respect. Therefore, the animal rights view does not by necessity imply that predation should be abolished. However, it does lead to some dilemmas in the context of environmental issues. A holistic approach can be in conflict with an animal rights approach. The topic has raised a lot of debate, and animal rights proponents have tended to claim that the two approaches are compatible: An emphasis on the value of individuals does not mean that species and ecosystems have no value. The links between the two have become especially evident in the context of climate change because animal industries have been named as one of the key factors contributing to global climate change. Thus, respect for animal individuals may have environmental benefits. Carol Adams Carol Adams has offered an ecofeminist approach to animal ethics that follows some themes from the postmodern school. She seeks to locate animals within cultural discourses and brings together the oppression of women and that of animals. By doing this she presents an animal ethics that is based on awareness of cultural history, vegetarian literature and voices, and what she terms the vegetarian body. Her basic claim is that animals are made into absent referents in the contemporary culture. People constantly are met with cultural texts that involve the animal most notably dead body parts (meat) but the referent of those texts, the living animal, is absent. Adams argues that the most common referents concerning animals have nothing to do with an animal itself as a living, experiencing being. The absence of animals is emphasized by objectification (the animal body becomes pure biological matter devoid of subjectivity), fragmentation (the body is fragmented into different edible parts and into euphemisms such as beef and bacon), and consumption (the animal is valued only in terms of money and flavor). Contemporary discourses deny not only animals intrinsic value but animal presence and by doing the latter avoid questions about the former. Adams maintains that there is a link between different types of oppression because they tend to involve similar structures, such as violence, absent referencing, marginalization, and belittling. Not comprehending the connections leads to a type of oppressive ethics that excludes y instead of x, a fault Adams finds with mainstream feminism, which excludes animals. One way to fight oppressive ethics is to bring to light the multiple absent referents in the culture and make animals present once more. This can happen through different types of texts, whether fiction, vegetarian voices, or the vegetarian body, which refuses to eat meat and thus leaves the animal intact. Adams takes part in the ecofeminist tradition that emphasizes emotion, narratives, shared experience, and critical theory. Rather than concentrating only on reason, the ecofeminist tradition in regard to ethics also takes emotion into account; rather than abstract theory, it should take local and personal narratives into account in which the lives of animals are acknowledged and shared experiences between species are recognized; finally, ethics should give more consideration to the impact that cultural discourses have on people s ethical understandings and, when necessary, assume a critical stance in relation to those understandings. CRITICISM Proanimal arguments in animal ethics have been criticized from several different viewpoints. Among those viewpoints are the human species, perfectionist capacities, emotive ties, and cultural meanings. It often is argued that human species is a morally relevant factor. However, the argument faces difficulties because the moral relevance of a purely biological identity is unclear. Perhaps because of this, the argument tends to turn to perfectionist capacities (rationality, moral agency, etc.): Only humans have individual value, for only humans have specific perfectionist capacities. As has been pointed out here, this claim faces the challenge of the argument from marginal cases. Some have suggested that such cases some day will be normal adults or have been such adults in the past and thus have equal value. However, this claim also has various difficulties. Potentiality or past capacity cannot be used as the criterion for value at the present moment (a person will be dead some day but should not be valued or treated as a dead person at the present time). Moreover, making normal adults the source of value is prejudiced and gives ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY 51