A Defense of PETA

Here is a short essay in support of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Ambrose Bierce

Reverence, n. The spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a dog to a man.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Harlan B. Miller on Philosophical Paralysis

The ethical incoherence of our customary treatment of nonhumans has been demonstrated time and again by [Peter] Singer, [Tom] Regan, [S. F.] Sapontzis, [David] DeGrazia, [Evelyn] Pluhar, and others. Almost every member of the American Philosophical Association would agree that all mammals are conscious, and that all conscious experience is of some moral significance. But somehow this has no connection with one’s choice of food. Like the undergraduate who listens to, and actually understands, the refutation of naive relativism, and still writes in the final exam that “no one can judge another person’s morality,” many philosophers suffer from a sort of inferential paralysis.

(Harlan B. Miller, review of Ethics into Action: Henry Spira and the Animal Rights Movement, by Peter Singer, Ethics: An International Journal of Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy 110 [January 2000]: 441-3, at 443 [italics in original])

From the Mailbag

KBJ

I remember seeing a TV documentary interview with Peter Singer, set in his family home. Singer at that time lived here in Australia and the family had a cat. All members of the family were strict vegetarians, except the cat, of course. It was a cause of some angst to the Singers that puss would only eat canned cat food.

regards
TG

PETA

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is both loved and hated, both celebrated and excoriated, both supported and opposed. It might be said that those who love PETA do so because they accept its ends, while those who hate it do so because they reject its ends. PETA has a stake in promoting this view, for it diverts attention from the organization’s strategies and tactics.

I think the view being promoted is mistaken. There are many people who accept PETA’s ends but reject its means. There are many people who genuinely care about animals and would gladly throw their support behind a reputable organization, but who believe that PETA adopts reprehensible and counterproductive tactics. How do I know this? I teach. I receive letters. I read newspapers. I watch television. I’ve had over twenty years of experience with this issue. I know whereof I speak.

Can we agree that it’s wrong to degrade women (or any other group) in order to promote a goal? If so, then we can ask whether PETA’s campaigns degrade women. I believe they do. Can we agree that rational persuasion is superior to manipulation? If so, then we can ask whether PETA prefers the latter to the former. I believe it does. Can we agree that commercialization is bad? If so, then we can ask whether PETA is commercialized. I believe it is. Can we agree that a serious organization, devoted to long-lasting social change, should not rely on celebrity? If so, then we can ask whether PETA relies on celebrity. I believe it does.

I’m trying to reach agreement on moral principles so that we can discuss facts. Sometimes I get the feeling that, to PETA, the end justifies the means. If manipulation works better than rational persuasion, then by all means manipulate! If tactic A gets more attention than tactic B, thus getting PETA into the news, then tactic A is preferable to B. If degrading women or cozying up to powerful commercial interests helps animals, then it must be done.

I despise this sort of result-oriented thinking. It appalls me. Animals do not benefit, in the long run, from anything but rational persuasion. It particularly galls me to find philosophers supporting PETA. No self-respecting philosopher would manipulate an audience, however important the end. Philosophers are concerned with knowledge, not mere belief. Their objective isn’t to change people’s beliefs but to provide good grounds for belief. This rules out appeals to emotion, for example. It rules out buckets of blood, paint-throwing, rudeness, and other vile, self-defeating tactics. PETA turns off more people than it recruits. I’m convinced of it. Is this good for animals? With friends like PETA, animals don’t need enemies.

Philosophers must remain independent. They must avoid affiliation, association, and membership. Philosophers (think Socrates) are devoted single-mindedly to the acquisition of knowledge, which means, among other things, having rational grounds for belief. Nothing must interfere with this objective. The philosopher, as such, would rather not change beliefs at all than change them through disreputable means. Philosophers are deontologists, not consequentialists. Philosophical argumentation is constrained, not free.

I call upon my philosophical friends (they know who they are) to sever ties with PETA. Immediately. Regain your lost independence and self-respect. Come home to philosophy. Come back to what attracted you to philosophy in the first place: its integrity, its honesty, and its methodological purity. You can’t be both a philosopher and a shill. You can try to be both, but you can’t succeed at it.

From the Mailbag

Keith,

A friend pointed out your blog to me noting that while she appreciates reading your Animal Ethics blog, there is a lot of anti-PETA rhetoric in it. I read through some of your blog and enjoyed a lot of your articles. I only discovered two anti-PETA posts (one calling them "jerks" and another citing Gary Francione's essay).

Getting involved with PETA and becoming a member has changed my view of them quite a lot. I used to think very negatively of PETA. This weekend my husband and I attended their "Helping Animals 101" conference. I found them to be very effective and consistent in their approach to helping the animals. I don't agree with everything they do, nor do I think every tactic they use is the best one, but overall I am very impressed with the level of their commitment and success. I also have a lot of respect for the PETA staff members; those I know personally are not only intelligent and gifted, but extremely ethical and concerned for humans and animals alike.

PETA is constantly misrepresented and taken out of context. And PETA's tactics reveal more about society and the media than they do about their seriousness regarding animal cruelty. PETA does what works to get their message across. Unfortunately we live in a society in which often, what works, is less than ideal.

Canis Familiaris

See here for some dog lore.

Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians

A reader named Eileen sent a link to this site. I'm delighted to hear about this organization and wish it success. I will put a permanent link on the left side of this blog.

Eggs

Yesterday I found a new source of free-range eggs. I was in Whole Foods Market in Arlington, Texas, to buy yeast flakes and Vegemite. Here are the eggs I bought. Before you jump on me for eating eggs, please note that Peter Singer eats free-range eggs (and dairy products) when he is away from home. He told me so.

Harming Animals

A student who should be studying for her Ethics examination sent this to me. Make of it what you will.

Huckleberry

Huckleberry died five years ago today. See here.

Confusions and Fallacies About Animals, Part 5

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who is considered by many contemporary philosophers as one of the greatest philosophers of all time, thought that all and only humans have dignity, by which he understood moral worth or value. This view can be challenged either by showing that some humans lack dignity or that some nonhumans have it. I believe some nonhumans have it. Indeed, I believe that all nonhuman animals have it.

Kant’s mistake was in locating worth in agency. But this is not part of the concept of dignity; it’s a normative position that one can consistently reject. Strictly speaking, dignity is the state of being worthy of honor or respect. It says nothing about the basis of worth or respect. A being can be worthy either in virtue of what it is or in virtue of what it does (or both). Thus, even if animals lack moral agency, they can still be worthy in virtue of what they are.

Let me give some examples. Have you been to a circus? What did you think when you saw bears wearing tutus and moving about on skates? Did you sense that it was undignified? Or what about mules who are trained to dive into pools? Or chimpanzees made to wear clothing and smoke cigars? Be honest. You felt sorry for the animals. You felt as though they were being degraded. Trust your feelings. They don’t lie.

Dignity does not require possession of the concept of dignity, much less the ability to defend oneself from affronts to it. That is a crude (but common) mistake. Having one’s dignity violated is not the same as being embarrassed or humiliated, so the fact (if it is a fact) that the aforementioned bears, mules, and chimpanzees are neither embarrassed nor humiliated is neither here nor there as far as having their dignity violated is concerned. Dignity is a condition, not a mental state or attitude.

Each animal species has a telos, or end. It has characteristic ways of behaving and feeling in response to environmental stimuli. When we take wild animals out of their natural habitats and train them to engage in unnatural behaviors for human amusement, we rob them of their dignity. This is no more acceptable in the case of animals than it is in the case of humans.

If you value dignity, you will boycott rodeos, circuses, bullfights, and zoos, all of which degrade and violate the animals they use and display. If you wouldn’t want your dignity violated, don’t violate the dignity of others, including our animal brethren.

Dogliness

One of my colleagues just sent a link to this beautiful essay from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Veganism in a Nutshell

I'm not a vegan, but I'm close. The only animal products I ingest are (1) fish and (2) eggs from free-roaming hens. I hope it will not seem hypocritical of me, therefore, to plug the vegan diet. It's a diet to which I aspire, even if I am not yet there. See here.

From Today's New York Times

More Mad Cow Mischief

The federal Department of Agriculture is making it hard for anyone to feel confident that the nation is adequately protected against mad cow disease. At a time when the department should be bending over backward to reassure consumers, it keeps taking actions that suggest more concern with protecting the financial interests of the beef industry than with protecting public health.

Just a few weeks ago, the department refused to let a small private company test its cattle for mad cow disease to satisfy Japanese customers. That decision was incomprehensible, unless it was driven by a desire to protect the beef industry from pressure to conduct such tests on all 35 million cattle slaughtered annually in this country.

Now the department has been caught refusing to test a cow that collapsed at a slaughterhouse in Texas; such a collapse could be an indication of mad cow disease. The department's own inspectors at the site wanted to take a brain sample for testing but were overruled by their regional office.

Further evidence of lax regulation emerged when the department quietly expanded the range of beef products that could be imported from Canada, where mad cow disease has been detected, only to be stopped short by a lawsuit.

There is no evidence yet that mad cow disease has invaded American cattle and thus no reason for inordinate worry. The task ahead is to make sure that our herds remain free of the disease. No one can be confident if the department remains so blatantly protective of the American meat industry.

Dolphin Intelligence

I grew up watching Flipper, so naturally I love dolphins. See here for an interesting and informative essay.

From the Mailbag

You need to check out and link penn and teller's show/ PETA episode from this season of "Bullshit" on Showtime. I wish more people would see this, then maybe they would stop funding the jerks at PETA.

If you have never seen this show, it is on Thursday nights at 9 cst 1 new and 1 older episode each week . . . tackling issues like environment, recycling, peta, bottled water, etc.

Season 1 is on dvd for sale and rent.

Artur Oczko

From the Mailbag

Dear Keith,

I just came across your website and wanted to let you know how incredibly excited I was to find someone with conservative political views who is still pro-animal rights. So rarely do I find someone who has the same values, morals, and beliefs as I do. Furthermore, I enjoyed your article on liberal anger immensely (in addition to laughing sooo hard at the core truth involved) and forwarded it to several of my liberal and conservative friends. Thanks for voicing your opinion.

Kelsey
California Lutheran University
Class 2007

Confusions and Fallacies About Animals, Part 4

Some people (including readers of my blogs) appear to think that in our dealings with animals, it’s enough to refrain from making them suffer. This explains why people think it’s acceptable to raise animals for food, provided they are not made to suffer along the way and provided they are killed painlessly. Some would insist, further, that any animal put to death be replaced by an equally happy animal, thus keeping the total happiness of the world the same.

We don’t think this way about humans. Suppose I had a taste for human flesh. Would it be acceptable for me to raise happy humans, the way Smallholder raises happy calves (see here), and then kill them painlessly? What’s the difference? Why the double standard? Why do we think like consequentialists with respect to animals but insist on deontology for humans? Why do we view animals, but not humans, as interchangeable and (therefore) replaceable?

Think about why it’s wrong to kill humans. (Here I draw on Don Marquis’s essay on abortion, from which I have learned much.) To kill a human is to deprive him or her of a future that contains activities, enjoyments, projects, and experiences. Life is the precondition for these things. Without it, they cannot exist. Even a painless killing deprives a human of these valued things.

But animals have futures that contain activities, enjoyments, and experiences, although perhaps not projects in the strict sense. Their lives are the preconditions for these things. Without their lives, these things cannot exist. Even a painless killing deprives an animal of these valued things.

The cases are parallel. You might object that humans and animals are different. Of course they’re different. But are the differences morally relevant? Humans differ among themselves, but not all the differences are morally relevant. We don’t let skin color, for example, affect one’s rights. Why is species membership morally relevant? How could it be, since it’s a biological concept? Species is no more relevant than race is, and you don’t think race is relevant.

Your life is the most important thing you have, since it’s the foundation on which everything else you value is built. This is as true for cows, pigs, and chickens as it is for you. What makes it wrong for someone to kill you is that it deprives you of these valued activities and experiences. That’s precisely why it’s wrong to kill animals. Apply the same standard to both cases. Be a consequentialist through and through, like Peter Singer, or be a deontologist through and through, like me. Don’t be a consequentialist with respect to animals and a deontologist with respect to humans. That’s irrational and self-serving.

Tough but Not Cruel

Joanna Lucas also sent a link to this animation about veal. Thanks, Joanna.

Bullfighting in Barcelona

Joanna Lucas sent a link to this report, which says that Barcelona, Spain, has declared itself a nonbullfighting city. Surely Spaniards can find a replacement for this barbaric form of "entertainment." What I don't understand is how Spain could oppose capital punishment, which upholds the dignity of persons, and allow bullfighting, which degrades it. Europeans, in general, have things backwards.

From the Mailbag

Keith,

Just a note to let you know that the "Peaceable Kingdom" screening, that you so graciously announced on your blog earlier this month, went exceptionally well. We had over 80 people in the audience, unanimously positive comments on the survey cards and nice proceeds to contribute to our local farm sanctuaries.

Peaceable Kingdom is a beautiful film—a remarkable work of art and philosophy—I encourage you to see it if you haven't already.

Meanwhile, this e-card is to thank you for your support of our effort to show Peaceable Kingdom (turn up you speakers).

All the best,

Joanna

Bucket of Blood

Dennis Mangan sent a link to this debate about PETA's Bucket of Blood campaign against KFC. Thanks, Dennis.

From the Mailbag

Keith,

Thanks for sending me your recent blog entry [dated 5 April; see below] on eating meat. I am not a purist in the sense you attribute to me. Of course, I agree that the state of affairs of one woman being raped is objectively LESS BAD, than the state of affairs of twenty-four women being raped. I acknowledge the comparative judgment. I just don't think it gets the rapist (or you) off the hook. Even committing one rape is so bad that the rapist deserves serious moral sanction. I know you think of rape as an extremely heinous instance of wrongdoing. I don't think that, in the case of rape, you would maintain, of a person who regularly rapes 24 women a year, but who out of conscience cuts back to only one rape a year, that that person has done enough where rape is concerned. One rape is one too many. Better than twenty-four? Yes. Good enough. NO!

How is your position on eating fish any different?

Your friend,

Mylan

T-Shirts

Here is a link to a T-shirt company that may be of interest (but in which I have no financial or other interest). I, personally, need a T-shirt like I need a blow to the head. I get a T-shirt at nearly every bike rally and footrace I do. I've done 327 bike rallies and over a hundred footraces. My walk-in closet is filled with T-shirts!

Soymilk

I have consumed no dairy products since 1972, when I was fifteen. No milk, cheese, butter, ice cream, or yogurt. Recently I discovered White Wave Chocolate Soymilk, which has the taste, texture, smell, and appearance of chocolate milk. I haven't tried the other White Wave products (see here for details), but I assume that if the company got the chocolate milk right, it got everything else right. What a world! The taste you want, without harming anyone. Please look for White Wave products in your local grocery store. I get mine at Kroger.

Xenotransplantation

Should organs and other bodily tissues be transplanted from animals to humans? See here and here.

The Center on Animal Liberation Affairs

Here is a site that may be of interest.

From the Mailbag

Hi Keith,

This [see here] is a topic that is close to my concerns at the moment. Australia exports tens of thousands of live sheep to the Middle East every year. Last year, one shipment was refused by Saudi Arabia, and 58,000 sheep spent months at sea, without room to move and in temperatures around 100 degrees. Thousands died. Refusal of shipments is fairly common (of course, the sheep certainly suffer even when all goes to plan; some sheep are too stressed to eat, and starve to death). Information here.

Here's where religion comes in: the sheep are destined to be slaughtered by Muslims performing a religious duty. You write that no religion requires meat eating. True, so far as I know. But some religions require killing: Islam, and also Santeria (see P. Casal, "Is Multiculturalism Bad for Animals?" Journal of Political Philosophy [March 2003]). The shipments are refused because apparently the Koran requires that the sheep be in good condition: obviously, that's hard to guarantee when they're shipped from Australia. This is a big debate at the moment in Australia (I'm addressing the Australian Veterinary Association annual conference on the topic). Of course, I want the sacrifices stopped. But I think given the mutual mistrust between Islam and the West right now, this has to come from their side. We can only hope. . . .

cheers,

Neil

Dr Neil Levy
Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics
University of Melbourne
Parkville, 3010
Australia

Confusions and Fallacies About Animals, Part 3

“Animals kill each other, so why can’t we kill them?” Anyone who lectures on the moral status of animals, as I’ve been doing for twenty years (almost to the day), has heard this question dozens of times. It has a powerful appeal to certain minds. But it’s thoroughly, almost ludicrously, confused.

Nobody doubts that animals kill each other. It’s just that nothing of a normative nature follows from that fact. In general, that something is the case is no reason that it ought to be the case. This principle—that one cannot validly infer an “ought” statement from “is” statements—is known as Hume’s Law, after the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776). (Some people mistakenly call it “the naturalistic fallacy,” but that refers to something else.) Imagine a parallel argument: “People murder each other, so why can’t I murder?” Pretty lame, eh?

Let’s reconstruct the questioner’s reasoning to make it valid. In other words, let’s make it so that the conclusion follows logically from the premise(s). This will focus attention on the truth or acceptability of the premise(s). Perhaps the person who asks the question is reasoning as follows:

1. Predation is morally permissible.
2. When humans kill and eat other animals, they are preying.
Therefore,
3. It is morally permissible for humans to kill and eat other animals.

This reasoning would justify interspecific predation but not murder.

The problem with the reasoning is that the first premise is nonsensical. It has a false presupposition. To say that predation is morally permissible is to presuppose that the animals who engage in it are moral agents, capable of reasoning and acting on principle. No animal is a moral agent. Only humans are moral agents. Only humans, therefore, are morally responsible for their conduct. Predation is just a fact about our world. Those who engage in it are neither blameworthy nor praiseworthy.

It might be said that if no animal is a moral agent, then no animal has moral status. But moral status comes in two forms: moral agency and moral patienthood. Children are moral patients, but not moral agents. The severely retarded are moral patients, but not moral agents. The senile are moral patients, but not moral agents. Are we to cast these individuals out of the moral community because they cannot reason or act on principle? To be a moral patient, one needs only interests, and animals clearly have interests, the main one being in not suffering.

There’s also a relevant difference between humans and animals that undermines the analogy. Humans don’t need animal flesh in order to survive. Many animals (the carnivores) do. (Humans are omnivores, not carnivores.) Even if animals were moral agents, and therefore morally responsible for their conduct, it would not follow from the fact that they kill and eat each other that humans may follow suit. In the case of animals, it’s self-defense (which is not to say that they think in those terms). They kill to survive. They have no choice. Humans don’t need to kill animals to survive. We have a choice.

At this point it might be said that something has to die for another thing to live. This is true, but, as I argued a week ago (see here), there are morally relevant differences between animals and plants. Both are alive, but only animals can suffer, and suffering is intrinsically bad. Humans must eat. Nobody denies that. They do not have to add to the world’s suffering in order to do so.

Isn’t it odd that the people who ask the question posed at the outset don’t look to the animal world for moral guidance in other areas? If we’re to emulate animals with respect to diet, why shouldn’t we emulate them with respect to habitat, reproduction, child-rearing, hygiene, social structure, and other matters? Let’s not be selective! I suspect that people who ask the question aren’t thinking clearly and carefully. They’re groping for a reason to continue eating meat.

Cruelty

Ever heard of pâté de foie gras? See here. You have to wonder about someone who would contribute to such cruelty. Not knowing how this “food” is produced is one thing; knowing and not caring is another. Please get the word out so that consumers of this “food” are deprived of the excuse of ignorance. (By the way, I’m not implying that ignorance always excuses. There is such a thing as culpable ignorance. People have a duty to find out how the foods they eat are produced.)

Ambrose Bierce

Carnivorous, adj. Addicted to the cruelty of devouring the timorous vegetarian, his heirs and assigns.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Veal

If I could get people to make one change in their diets, it would be eliminating veal. This would destroy the market for veal and prevent a great deal of misery. See here.

René Descartes (1596-1650) on Animal Minds

I know that animals do many things better than we do, but this does not surprise me. It can even be used to prove that they act naturally and mechanically, like a clock which tells the time better than our judgement does. Doubtless when the swallows come in spring, they operate like clocks. The actions of honeybees are of the same nature; so also is the discipline of cranes in flight, and of apes in fighting, if it is true that they keep discipline. Their instinct to bury their dead is no stranger than that of dogs and cats which scratch the earth for the purpose of burying their excrement; they hardly ever actually bury it, which shows that they act only by instinct and without thinking. The most that one can say is that though the animals do not perform any action which shows us that they think, still, since the organs of their bodies are not very different from ours, it may be conjectured that there is attached to these organs some thought such as we experience in ourselves, but of a very much less perfect kind. To this I have nothing to reply except that if they thought as we do, they would have an immortal soul like us. This is unlikely, because there is no reason to believe it of some animals without believing it of all, and many of them such as oysters and sponges are too imperfect for this to be credible.

(René Descartes to the Marquess of Newcastle [William Cavendish (1593-1676)], 23 November 1646, in The Correspondence, vol. 3 of The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham et al. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991], 304)

A Friend of Animals

Marc Bekoff is a biologist at The University of Colorado at Boulder. He writes both scholarly and popular essays on animals. Here is one of his latest popular essays. Here is Marc's personal home page. Keep up the good work, Marc!

Vegemite

Has anybody eaten Vegemite? I haven't, but I want to. Where can I get some? I've never seen it in a grocery store. What does it taste like?

Fighting the Facts

Some people cannot entertain hypotheticals. See here.

Old Font

Having tried Comic Sans for a few days, I decided to go back to Bookman Old Style. Sorry for the inconvenience (if any). Thanks to those of you who provided feedback.

Engineering Animals

Here is a short essay on genetically engineered animals. Let me know what you think.

Repartee

I received the following letter from a reader:

Professor Burgess-Jackson:

Forthwith, I am no expert in the field of animal ethics. . . .

However, as a constant reader of your site, many of your posts prompt internal questions. The following came to mind upon reading your plant/animal dichotomy [see the previous post], and since I've heard many make a similar point in regard to animal rights, I'll ask you (perhaps you could deal with it on your blog someday).

Where does one draw the line, and is the line arbitrary? I'm thinking here about insects. Surely, building one's home not only displaces but destroys many thousands of insects. Are we to take this issue weightily or lightly? Mosquitoes stinging us? Stepping on ants as we walk through the grass? Etc. I guess I'm asking whether insects have rights, and how far one may go before an ordinary swatting of a gnat away from one's ear deigns moral responsibility?

I think you get the point. Now, I'm honestly not offering this as an "argument" against your views—I would just like to hear something said about it. Surely, it seems to me, such considerations are stronger than the "plant" examples to which your interlocutors alluded?

One final request: could your answer entertain a non-utilitarian mode of argument? As a non-utilitarian, I am less likely to be convinced by such an argument (though I can readily see how the argument would be formed on utilitarian grounds).

Just food for thought.

Take care, Allan

Here is my reply:

19 April 2004, 2:15 P.M. Allan: The line is not arbitrary. If a being is sentient, it has moral status. There are two kinds of case: (1) those in which it is clear that the being is sentient and (2) those in which it is not clear that the being is sentient. Let's call these cases, respectively, "easy" and "hard." Cows, pigs, and chickens are easy cases. Insects and mollusks are hard cases. Let's not commit the fallacy of inferring the absence of easy cases from the presence of hard cases. In other words, from the fact that it's unclear whether insects are sentient, it doesn't follow that it's unclear whether cows, pigs, and chickens are sentient. As to your final question, I'm a deontologist. It's wrong to harm others. Suffering is a harm. So it's wrong to inflict suffering on others. You don't have to be a consequentialist (or, more particularly, a utilitarian) to think that suffering matters, morally. kbj

Keep those cards and letters coming!

Confusions and Fallacies About Animals, Part 2

It is astonishing how often plants come up in connection with animal liberation. Even intelligent people think that bringing animals into the moral community requires bringing plants in. Since it is absurd to think that plants have moral status, they say, it is absurd to think that animals have moral status. The assumption is that there are no morally relevant differences between animals and plants. Either both of them have moral status or neither of them has moral status. Since plants clearly do not have moral status, neither do animals.

The flaw in the reasoning is that there are morally relevant differences between animals and plants, differences that ground a difference in treatment. Animals (most of them, anyway; certainly those that are most often eaten) are sentient; plants are not. Both are living, to be sure, but nobody thinks that being alive is a sufficient condition for having moral status. Peter Singer doesn’t. Tom Regan doesn’t. I don’t. You don’t.

It might be said that plants are sentient, in the sense of having the capacity to suffer. There is no evidence for this. (Take my word for it. I wrote an essay entitled “Do Plants Have Rights?” for a graduate seminar many years ago, which required that I review the scientific literature.) The people who say it don’t believe it, either. I often hear it said that plants have amazing abilities. They respond to all manner of environmental stimuli, from light to heat to magnetism to noise. But machines can be made to respond to environmental stimuli. Your thermostat isn’t sentient. Your car isn’t sentient. Your computer isn’t sentient.

There is no reason whatsoever to think that plants can feel pleasure or pain. They lack brains and nervous systems. What good would a pain response do for an organism that can’t move to avoid painful stimuli? Animals can avoid pain by moving; plants cannot. Evolutionarily speaking, it would be pointless for a plant to be sentient. It is not pointless for an animal to be sentient.

There is a great deal of intellectual dishonesty among those who deny animals moral status. They seem committed to thinking of and using animals as resources and will let nothing—not even logic and common sense—stand in the way. They ridicule those who take animals seriously. When they make the point about plants, they do so with an air of triumph. But the joke’s on them. Those who think animals have moral status have thought things through to a much greater degree than those who don’t. Take my word for it. I’ve been reading, writing, and talking about the issue for a quarter of a century.

If you sincerely believe that plants are sentient, act on your belief. You may think it shows that any living organism may be killed and eaten. What it actually shows, when you combine it with your belief that pain is intrinsically bad, is that you’re acting wrongly. You should be foraging for plants and animals that died natural deaths, not raising and killing them for food. But suppose this were an inadequate diet. Then one would have to make comparative judgments about the degree to which various organisms suffer. Presumably, if plants were sentient, they would be less sentient than animals, so one would have an obligation to consume them rather than animals. Either way, it’s wrong to eat animals.

From the Mailbag

I don't see how Smallholder can love on his cattle every day [see Smallholder's post of 14 April 2004, infra] and then lead them to their death. That's like me taking my cats or dogs to the slaughterhouse after they sleep in the bed with me!

Maybe he could find another career that allows cow-petting and makes him a profit so he can cow-pet on a regular basis.

Mindy Hutchison

New Font

As you will undoubtedly have noticed, I changed fonts. One of my students used an interesting font in her term paper. I snooped around in a Word document until I found it. It's Comic Sans MS. It looks like hand lettering. There's something rustic and endearing about it, so I decided to use it in one of my blogs (the other being AnalPhilosopher). I still like Bookman Old Style, but there's no reason both of my blogs have to have the same font, is there? Feedback is welcome.

By the way, there appears to be a controversy about Comic Sans MS. See here and here.

From Today's New York Times

The Bush administration generally frowns on federal regulation and touts the virtues of voluntary efforts to deal with all manner of national problems. So it was quite a shock when heavy-handed regulators at the Agriculture Department refused to let a private company test all the cattle it slaughters for mad cow disease.

The request to conduct tests was submitted by Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, a small producer in Kansas, which wanted to resume selling its high-priced Black Angus beef in Japan, a major market. The Japanese have detected some 10 or so cases of mad cow disease in their own country, so they now test every animal slaughtered for food purposes there. They want American exporters to do the same.

Creekstone was willing to oblige even though it believes the American beef supply is already safe. (One cow in the state of Washington tested positive for the disease last December, but it was found to have originated in Canada.) The Japanese ban is costing the company some $200,000 a day and has forced it to lay off 45 workers. Creekstone planned to test all 300,000 animals slaughtered at its Kansas plant each year, using the same rapid diagnostic tests used in Japan.

In a country like the United States, where not a single indigenous case of mad cow disease has yet been detected in cattle of any age, such blanket testing is probably overkill. It would seem adequate for consumer safety purposes simply to test most of the nation's disabled cattle and a suitable sample of healthy cattle, as Agriculture officials plan to do. But it is hard to see how Creekstone's desire to do more would hurt anyone else.

The Agriculture Department gave a curt no when Creekstone, which was required under a 1913 law to get permission to conduct the tests, sent in its request. The stated reason for the rejection was that the rapid tests are licensed only for surveillance, not to guarantee consumer safety. But critics contend the department is primarily trying to protect the beef industry from pressure to test all 35 million or so cattle slaughtered in this country annually. Such blanket testing would raise production costs, and discovery of a single case of mad cow disease, or even a false positive, might cause American beef sales to plummet.

What is most worrying about this entire incident is not that Creekstone will not be able to do the tests, or even that the federal government appears to be discouraging a minor concession that would lead to both exports and jobs. If the cattle industry has the clout to sway a government department on this kind of issue, it probably has the clout to influence federal officials when it comes to questions much closer to the interests of American consumers.

American negotiators are pressing the Japanese to relax their requirements, and if they succeed Creekstone, at least, will have a happy ending. If they do not, the government should change its mind and let the market rule. That would be at least a small sign that the people who help protect the safety of American meat have their priorities in the right place.

Biocentrism

Do plants have rights? See here.

From the Mailbag

dear mr. burgess-jackson, i have discovered your web log (both, actually), parts of which i rather enjoy. especially issues on animal rights and their linking (though i could not disagree more) with vegetarianism [to which i had to link in my nectar&ambrosia blog]—and the variety of responses you publish.

best regards,
jens f. laurson
Editor-in-Chief
Center for International Relations
International Affairs Forum

A PETA Apologist

Dennis Mangan replies to my PETA post here.

From the Mailbag

Yet another reason for animal-rights folks to distance themselves from PETA. This is disgusting.

I'm all for the humanest possible treatment of animals, but this isn't how I'd go about convincing people!

jan

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re "U.S. Won't Let Company Test All Its Cattle for Mad Cow" (news article, April 10):

Is this government bureaucracy gone amok or simply another example of the failure of public servants to protect the interests of the American public?

How can testing of all cattle for mad cow disease, a potentially fatal illness, be bad for consumers?

Contrary to what the National Cattlemen's Beef Association says, the most important thing is not the potential false impression that untested beef is not safe but rather the truthful understanding that tested beef is not infected.

What a perversion of the free-market system and what an example of a government agency's pandering to an industry group at the expense of the health of all Americans.

NORMAN OKSMAN
Katonah, N.Y., April 12, 2004

From the Mailbag

Keith,

I am not sure what your policy is on reader-to-reader discussions, but I would like to respond to Joanna's criticism if I may. I was unclear in my post and do not want to leave the impression that I deny the individuality of the steers I raise.

What follows is a bit lengthy, so feel free to cut and paste as you see fit—I also posted it on Mike's blog. I hope Big Hominid and Naked Villainy are ginning up some more site traffic for you.

Dear Joanna,

I'm always happy to bring happiness, humor, and joy to others. You should see me dance. Unfortunately, your amusement at my failure to recognize that meat comes from "individuals" arises only because I did not specify my background in my brief post. I am a small-scale organic farmer who sells a few (seven this year) custom-raised, humanely treated, grass-fed baby beef in the Shenandoah Mountains and certainly do not deny the individuality of the animals I raise. In fact, my blogosphere handle, "Smallholder," is taken from the English term that not only denotes someone who traditionally farms a small patch of land, but also lives in close harmony with his animals. I know each animal intimately, spending one or two hours in direct, hands-on contact with my boys every day.

If you were to drive up the hill at Sweet Seasons Farm at 5:00 AM on any day of the week, you would find the barn light on and yours truly inside, feeding the boys with hand-mixed milk replacer. As they drink, I rub their sides, talk to them, scratch their ears, and lift their tails to make sure they don't have runny manure. They particularly like chin rubs. As I clean out the night's manure, the only real difficulty I have is the lads throwing me off balance as they seek even more attention. The same process gets repeated each evening as well. In fact, one of the little scamps was too affectionate last night—I had forgotten the egg basket and carefully placed several eggs in my front pants pocket. One of my twins didn't think he had gotten enough love and butted my hip—breaking four of the eggs.

In fact, the close association with the individuals can get even more intense. Last year, a snowstorm coupled with freakish wind swirling through the hills pushed snow through the barn's second story, around the hayloft, and into the pen. I went out at eleven in the evening to check to see if my boys were snuggly warm in the midst of the blizzard and found them standing forlornly with a quarter inch of snow on their backs. Intellectually, I understand that cattle are built to survive this sort of thing—I have seen my neighbor's cattle with an inch of encrusted ice all over their hides—but I didn't want my lads to be cold. I jerry-rigged (look at me ethnically slandering myself) a tarp over the calf pen, rubbed them all over with a blanket, changed the straw bedding, and then proceeded to sleep in the barn to add my body heat to their pen. It was cold, nasty work. But I kind of enjoyed waking up at three in the morning with calves snuggled up to me on each side, their heads tucked between my shoulders and face.

This year I had an outbreak of pneumonia. I had one calf that I tube-fed three times a day for a week, cradling it in my arms and massaging its ribs to aid digestion.

I could provide many, many more examples.

I'm sure Joanna will object that it can't be humane because the guys must be terrified at the end of their lives. I'm sure the slaughtering process is hard on 99.9% of the steers destined for hamburger, but the kindness I have shown the boys and the mutual affection we have also help their ends come cleanly. They follow me right up to the truck and I drive over to a Mennonite Farmer who slaughters on the side. He takes the animals in the order that they arrive, so I shoot to get to his place at 4:00 AM so I am first in line. They calmly walk down the ramp and into the facility. He was shocked that they would just follow me like little lambs—normally unloading and moving is accompanied by a fair amount of yelling and shoving. He hits them with a .22-caliber bullet to the brain and they are down—no muss, no fuss.

Ah, many animal-rights advocates might contend, there is still cruelty because they die in the end. While I am in agreement with animal-rights activists in their critiques of unnecessary (mental and physical) cruelty, they typically lose me when they make that judgment. If the goal of animal-rights activists is to eliminate as much animal suffering as possible, attacking humane farming is not conducive to their end. My animals lead TREMENDOUSLY better lives on my farm then they would in nature.

The PETA crowd seems to misunderstand that "Mother Nature" is, as Gene Logsdon puts it, often "Old Bitch Nature." Animals aren't living out in a state of Disney Technicolor utopia. Animals in the wild are perpetually fearful, subject to predation, parasite-ridden, frequently sick, and constantly hungry. Most die young and their deaths are ugly, traumatic affairs.

Professor Burgess-Jackson has stated that the art of persuasion is based on making people realize that their basic beliefs are in conflict. I have a challenge for his readers.

If my beliefs are:

A) Suffering should be minimized.

B) Animals in my care, provided with meals, shelter, health care, and protection from predation, suffer much less than they would in the state of nature.

Show me where these beliefs are in conflict. Please do so without using the "don't use others as an end" arguments. I'd buy that in person-to-person relationships, but don't accord full moral (human) weight to animals.

Smallholder

From the Mailbag

Donovan and Smallholder's posts read so much like Psychology 101 illustrations of Denial (animals don't suffer, Donovan), Justification (it's acceptable to eat meat because other animals do it, Donovan, or because the "meat" was raised "humanely," Smallholder) and Dissociation (meat comes from "humanely raised meat" not from individual animals, Smallholder), that they are almost comedic. Thank you, I enjoyed reading them.

Joanna

From the Mailbag

Dr. Burgess-Jackson,

Yesterday you posted a letter from "Donovan." May I reply?

Dear Donovan,

As a fellow omnivore, I also believe in eating meat. However, I am dismayed that you so blithely dismiss animal suffering. While the position that animals are not morally equivalent to humans is defensible, we still ought not to cause unnecessary pain and suffering when it is avoidable. If you are unwilling to minimize suffering for the sake of animals, do so for your own sake. The way we treat "lessers"—however one might define that term, reflects on us and changes us.

The best parallel that I can think of is the historical opposition that many virulent racists offered to the institution of slavery. They opposed chattel bondage not because they felt any sympathy for Africans but because the racists were alarmed by the way that the institution coarsened slaveholders.

I believe (the good professor will have to confirm this for me; it has been awhile since freshman philosophy) that Aquinas extended this rationale to animals. If I may paraphrase badly: even though they do not have moral weight (souls) we ought to treat them well so as not to develop the habit of cruelty that might then be extended to our fellow man.

You don't have to become a vegetarian to eschew being a cog in the horror machine. Buy humanely raised meat and enjoy it with a clean conscience.

Smallholder

Your political posts still tend to irk me, but the animal rights stuff is always thought-provoking.

All the best.

From the Mailbag

Why cant i deny that pain and suffering is bad for animals? For me its as simple as the food chain and im at the top of it. I love meat and have no quibbles about doing whatever is required to put it on my families dinner table. The super market just makes it easy. Got to love the division of labor!

Sorry i just dont put animals on the same playing field as humans.

Donovan

From the Mailbag

Keith,

I am looking forward to your "series of blog entries that address the most common confusions and fallacies" about the moral status of animals. I will definitely stay tuned.

Meanwhile, see the link below for an activist effort that we hope will achieve similar results in terms of clarifying people's moral thinking (ha!). Should confusion still persist even after the screening, then, at least the event will have benefited local farm sanctuaries. The fundraiser will be held at my studio. Discussion to follow the film. Wish us luck.

Joanna

Confusions and Fallacies About Animals, Part 1

Some people defend their omnivorous diet by citing their religion. This is puzzling. No religion, to my knowledge, requires meat-eating. Some forbid it. For those that neither require nor forbid it, meat-eating is permissible, optional, or discretionary. Whether you should eat meat depends, therefore, on other considerations besides your religion, such as whether it contributes to the amount of pain and suffering in the world.

Do you care about pain and suffering? I assume you care about your own pain and suffering. You probably also care about the pain and suffering of your loved ones. But why are pain and suffering bad? Don’t say you’re not sure whether they’re bad. If you didn’t believe they were bad, you wouldn’t care whether you or your loved ones experience them. And once you admit that pain and suffering are bad, you can’t very well deny that it’s bad for anyone, even animals, to experience them. Pain is pain. Suffering is suffering. Why should it matter whether the being who suffers or experiences pain is white or black, male or female, American or Ethiopian, human or animal?

The meat you eat involved a great deal of pain, suffering, and deprivation. This is a fact, not an evaluation. (See here.) Most meat-eaters shield themselves (conveniently) from the suffering their actions cause. Find out how the meat that ends up in your grocery store got there. Ask yourself whether it’s right for you to support an industry that inflicts such suffering. Don’t say I’m imposing my values on you. I’m imposing your values on you. I’m trying to get you to examine your beliefs and behavior. I believe that if you do, you’ll see that you’re not living up to your moral principles. You would never think to inflict pain, suffering, and deprivation on a human being because of something as trivial as taste. Why is it permissible to inflict them on an animal?

Don’t say that your religion draws a moral line between humans and animals. We’ve already been over that. Your religion doesn’t require that you eat meat. At most, it allows you to eat meat. Whether you should do so, all things considered, is independent of your religious beliefs. It requires that you examine your beliefs about pain and suffering and draw a connection between your actions and various states of the world. It’s within your power to reduce the amount of pain and suffering in the world. Do think it through—for the sake of the animals.

Dispelling Confusion About Animal Rights

I am constantly amazed and disappointed by the poor quality of thought about the moral status of animals. Sometimes I think meat-eating makes people’s minds shut off. I’ve decided to begin a series of blog entries that address the most common confusions and fallacies. Stay tuned!

Don't Kill the Whales

Here is Greenpeace's page on whaling. Here are the lyrics of the Yes song "Don't Kill the Whale," from Tormato (1978):

You're first—I'm last
You're thirst—I'm asked to justify
Killing our last heaven beast
Don't hunt the whale

In beauty—Vision
Do we—Offer much
If we reason with destiny, gonna lose our touch
Don't kill the whale

Rejoice—They sing
They worship their own space
In a moment of love, they will die for their grace
Don't kill the whale

If time will allow
We will judge all who came
In the wake of our new age to stand for the frail
Don't kill the whale

CETACEI

John Tuohey and Terence P. Ma on the Animal-Liberation Movement

Animal Liberation [1975; 2d ed., 1990] has played an important role in shaping the animal rights movement in the United States. [Peter] Singer’s work is recognized as central to the movement’s effort to claim legitimation on the contemporary scene. This legitimation remains, fifteen years after the publication of Animal Liberation, largely absent from the movement. The principal success of the movement seems to have more to do with the rise of sentimental attachment to animals due to their movement from the farm to the urban household than it does with a clear and compelling philosophical logic. The flaw in Singer’s approach is that he seeks to establish the equality of animals with humans on the level of characteristics where he finds similarities, rather, and more appropriately, than on the level of nature where there are real distinctions.

(John Tuohey and Terence P. Ma, “Fifteen Years After ‘Animal Liberation’: Has the Animal Rights Movement Achieved Philosophical Legitimacy?” The Journal of Medical Humanities 13 [summer 1992]: 79-89, at 88 [footnote omitted])

Modern Meat

Have you seen this PBS documentary?

Meat-Eating and Health

Vegetarianism is good for the animals and good for you. See here.

Feminism and Vegetarianism

Carol J. Adams is a feminist and a vegetarian. She has written many books at their intersection, including The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (New York: Continuum, 1990). See here for details.

Meat-Eating and Rape

As many of you know, I stopped eating red meat (beef, pork, venison, &c) in early 1981. I gave up turkey, as planned, on the last day of 1981. Since then, the only animal products I've ingested are chicken, fish, and eggs. (I've been allergic to dairy products since 1972.) A couple of years ago I stopped eating chicken. More recently still, I ruled out eggs from confined hens. As of today, the only animal products I ingest are (1) fish and (2) eggs from free-roaming hens.

Do I live up to my moral standards? No. But I'm close, and that should count for something. A few years ago, in correspondence with several philosopher friends, I was taken to task by one of them for continuing to eat chicken and fish. He couldn't believe I hadn't gone all the way (cold turkey, whole hog). He said it was preposterous for me to think I was doing well. "Imagine someone saying that he commits only an occasional rape," he said. The implication, of course, is that rape is unacceptable. It's not good enough to reduce the number of rapes one commits (unless the reduction is to zero).

One virtue of my friend's analogy is that it brings individual animals into the picture. The flesh one eats comes from individual animals, not from a species, a population, or a collection. Each rape is an affront to the dignity of a distinct person. Each act of consuming steak, hamburger, or a chicken leg is an affront to the dignity of a distinct animal. We tend to think of chicken as a mass term, like peanut butter, but it refers to body parts of individual chickens.

My friend's criticism stung me, and it has bothered me ever since. Am I no better than the rapist who "cuts back" on the number of victims? Does my sense that I'm doing better than most people and better than I once did rest on sand? Am I deluding myself?

I don't think I'm deluding myself, and I hope I'm not deluding myself by thinking that I'm not deluding myself. Suppose I were a rapist, and suppose I had been raping five women a month for many years. If I cut back to two women a month, I'd be doing better than I was. There are fewer victims. Clearly, I should not be raping at all, but raping twenty-four women a year is morally better than raping sixty a year. Would my friend disagree?

He would probably say, "You shouldn't be raping any women!" But I can agree with that without giving up my belief that I'm doing better now than before. The two judgments—one comparative and one noncomparative—are compatible. My friend seemed unwilling to address the comparative claim. He's a purist. To him, there are just two choices: (1) rape at will and (2) don't rape at all. By analogy, (1) eat as much meat as you want, of whatever types you want, and (2) don't eat meat at all.

There's a lot of purism (my term) in the animal-liberation movement. Anyone who hasn't purged animal products from his or her diet is viewed with skepticism (at best) or animosity (at worst). I wonder why this is. Why not celebrate each incremental movement toward veganism? After all, most of us grew up eating meat. Is it reasonable to expect people to eliminate animal products from their diets overnight, or even over the course of a year? There's a learning curve, for one thing. Vegetarian diets require new cooking skills and a better understanding of nutrition. There's also this brute fact: People enjoy the taste of meat. Perhaps they shouldn't (if that makes sense), but they do; and we're talking about changing lifelong habits. Dietary habits are especially difficult to change, since food plays such an important role in our rituals and identities. (I'll write about that in another post.)

If you're a vegan, like my friend, be reasonable. Rape is abominable. But it's better for one woman to be raped than for two to be raped. This doesn't justify or excuse the rape; it simply compares two states of the world in terms of the individuals that compose those states. Eating only fish is better than eating all meats. Eating only eggs from free-roaming hens is better than eating just any eggs. It seems like common sense, but then, philosophers are not long on common sense.

Conservatism and Animals

I'm a longtime defender of animals. I'm also a conservative. If these attributes were incompatible, I'd be in trouble. But they're not. Qua conservative, I value tradition. But the presumption in favor of tradition is rebuttable. If a tradition harms others, the presumption is overridden. All of the following traditions harm others: human chattel slavery, bullfighting, bear-baiting, rodeos, zoos, and hunting. Any good conservative can and should oppose these oppressive institutions. Here is an essay on conservatism and animals. Thanks to Khursh for the link.

Festival of the Oxen

One of my readers, Khursh, sent a link to this. I had never heard of it. I'm sorry I now know of it.

My New Stinker

Shelbie, my stinkin' monkey, is a year old today. See here for details.

Bear-Baiting

As a conservative, I accord a presumption to tradition (the way liberals accord a presumption to individual liberty). But presumptions, by their nature, are rebuttable. Here is a tradition the presumption in favor of which is rebutted.

Stephen Budiansky on Animal-Rights Groups

The extreme abolitionist agenda of the animal-rights groups has made little headway in the past decade, and if anything there has been something of a societal backlash against their more outrageous and criminal acts. The generally favorable press coverage of animal-rights groups that prevailed in the 1970s and early 1980s began to shift in the late 1980s, and that trend has continued in the 1990s, with journalists exercising far more critical scrutiny of the groups' claims, tactics, and motives. The animal-rights groups have made almost no progress in their abolitionist campaigns against animal agriculture and pet ownership—perhaps unsurprisingly, given the popularity of dogs, cats, and steak.

(Stephen Budiansky, The Covenant of the Wild: Why Animals Chose Domestication, with a new preface [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999 (1992)], vii-viii)

Christianity and Vegetarianism

I just posted an entry on this topic over at AnalPhilosopher. See here.

Carruthers Online

Peter Carruthers, a prominent philosopher now teaching at The University of Maryland, is the author of the controversial book The Animals Issue: Moral Theory in Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), in which he argues that animals do not have rights. I just discovered that this book is available online, free of charge. See here.

Persuading Libertarians

What, if anything, does libertarianism (the political morality, not the doctrine of freedom of the will) say about animal rights? For an essay by a libertarian trying to persuade his fellow libertarians that nonhuman animals matter, morally, see here.

Vicki Hearne on Animal Rights

People who claim to speak for animal rights are increasingly devoted to the idea that the very keeping of a dog or a horse or a gerbil or a lion is in and of itself an offense. The more loudly they speak, the less likely they are to be in a rights relation to any given animal, because they are spending so much time in airplanes or transmitting fax announcements of the latest Sylvester Stallone anti-fur rally. In a 1988 Harper's forum, for example, Ingrid Newkirk, the national director of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, urged that domestic pets be spayed and neutered and ultimately phased out. She prefers, it appears, wolves—and wolves someplace else—to Airedales and, by a logic whose interior structure is both emotionally and intellectually forever closed to Drummer, claims thereby to be speaking for "animal rights."

She is wrong. I am the only one who can own up to my Airedale's inalienable rights. Whether or not I do it perfectly at any given moment is no more refutation of this point than whether I am perfectly my husband's mate at any given moment refutes the fact of marriage. Only people who know Drummer, and whom he can know, are capable of this relationship. PETA and the Humane Society and the ASPCA and the Congress and NOW—as institutions—do have the power to affect my ability to grant rights to Drummer but are otherwise incapable of creating conditions or laws or rights that would increase his happiness. Only Drummer's owner has the power to obey him—to obey who he is and what he is capable of—deeply enough to grant him his rights and open up the possibility of happiness.

(Vicki Hearne, "What's Wrong with Animal Rights: Of Hounds, Horses, and Jeffersonian Happiness," Harper's Magazine [September 1991]: 59-64, at 64)

Joel Feinberg on the Rights of Animals

Now, if a person agrees with the conclusion of the argument thus far, that animals are the sorts of beings that can have rights, and further, if he accepts the moral judgment that we ought to be kind to animals, only one further premise is needed to yield the conclusion that some animals do in fact have rights. We must now ask ourselves for whose sake ought we to treat (some) animals with consideration and humaneness? If we conceive our duty to be one of obedience to authority, or to one's own conscience merely, or one of consideration for tender human sensibilities only, then we might still deny that animals have rights, even though we admit that they are the kinds of beings that can have rights. But if we hold not only that we ought to treat animals humanely but also that we should do so for the animals' own sake, that such treatment is something we owe animals as their due, something that can be claimed for them, something the withholding of which would be an injustice and a wrong, and not merely a harm, then it follows that we do ascribe rights to animals. I suspect that the moral judgments most of us make about animals do pass these phenomenological tests, so that most of us do believe that animals have rights, but are reluctant to say so because of the conceptual confusions about the notion of a right that I have attempted to dispel above.

(Joel Feinberg, "The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations," chap. 8 in his Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty: Essays in Social Philosophy [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980], 159-84, at 166-7 [italics in original] [essay first published in 1974])

Ursus Arctos Horribilis

Here is a site devoted to the grizzly bear, a magnificent (but threatened) creature.

From the Mailbag

Keith,

I quickly scanned the essay on fishing [see the post of 24 March, infra]. He raises some interesting points, but I am not sure a scientific, neurological approach is correct. It would imply that any torture or mutilation is OK as long as there is no pain. Like most other issues, there are some very clear extremes and a huge unclear grey area where everyone argues where to draw a line. Issues of animal rights are more properly addressed in the abstract than with science. Science is easily co-opted, as witness the Nazi atrocities.

I read the essay on bullfighting [see the post of 23 March, infra]. My father traveled in Mexico and was an "affectionado." I have never had an interest in bullfighting and do consider it cruel. Psychologically it can be classed as operant conditioning. Despite the author's romanticizing, the bull is tortured, conditioned, and confused until it stands still and allows itself to be slaughtered. In the cases where the torero does the kill recibiendo the bull is essentially under conditioned control to follow the cape so that he lowers his head as he passes to provide the opening for the sword. It has the same morality as the old Roman gladiator contests and serves much the same function, with great amounts of rationalizing. I have heard it presented as a morality play. Bullshit (pun originally unintended but kept).

I think it is possible to be cruel to animals even if they don't feel pain. There are two forms of cruelty, intentional and unintentional. The first is easy to condemn, the second takes more work and frequently involves considerable re-education and discussion. As I said earlier this week, I have a lot of confused areas. I work on them as opportunity presents itself.

Bill

An Exchange

I received this letter from a reader:

Keith: Since I started reading your blog I have been thinking about what you write and tried to place it in context to my own ideas about the world etc. One of the most important things you have said is that human and non-human animals are essentially the same and therefore we ought to treat animals with the same reverence that we treat humans in a just society. One of the most important thinkers of the 20th century I believe is Ludwig Von Mises, a giant in economic thought who should have received a Nobel prize. He said this: "Reason's biological function is to preserve and promote life and to postpone its extinction as long as possible. Thinking and acting are not contrary to nature; they are, rather, the foremost features of man's nature. The most appropriate description of man as differentiated from nonhuman beings is: a being purposively struggling against the forces adverse to his life." This quote got me thinking about what you have said. We may have essentially the same features that other mammals have but the one distinguishing feature of humanity is the ability to reason and think about ways that use nature to better our lives. How does this make us the same as animals? Thanks. Joe

Here is my reply:

24 March 2004, 9:01 A.M. Joe: I never said that humans and animals are alike in all respects. Obviously, they're not. But then humans aren't alike in all respects. The principle of equality is not a factual claim; it's a normative claim. It says that in all morally relevant respects, humans are equal. What I'm saying is that humans and animals are alike in certain morally relevant respects, the main one being that they are sentient (understood as having the capacity to suffer). Suffering is suffering, whether it's in a human body or an animal body. If it's bad, as I'm sure you believe it is, then it's bad wherever it occurs, not just when it occurs in a human body. Just as it would be racist to discount or disregard the suffering of other races, it's speciesist to discount or disregard the suffering of other species. kbj

Enjoy!

Do Fish Feel Pain?

Here is an interesting essay about fish and fishing. Warning! It's not for the faint-hearted.

Bullfighting

Here is a short essay on bullfighting in Mexico. I know bullfighting is traditional in certain cultures, and as a conservative I respect and value tradition, but this tradition is no different, morally, from slavery, which degrades human personality. The presumption in favor of tradition is rebutted in this case, just as it is in the case of human chattel slavery.

Josephine Donovan on a Feminist Ethic for the Treatment of Animals

[Carol] Gilligan, [Sara] Ruddick, [Estella] Lauter, [Paula Gunn] Allen, [Rosemary Radford] Ruether, and [Marilyn] French all propose an ethic that requires a fundamental respect for nonhuman life-forms, an ethic that listens to and accepts the diversity of environmental voices and the validity of their realities. It is an ethic that resists wrenching and manipulating the context so as to subdue it to one's categories; it is nonimperialistic and life affirming.

It may be objected that this ethic is too vague to be practicable in decisions concerning animals. My purpose here, however, is not to lay out a specific practical ethic but, rather, to indicate ways in which our thinking about animal/human relationships may be reoriented. Some may persist: suppose one had to choose between a gnat and a human being. It is, in fact, precisely this kind of either/or thinking that is rejected in the epistemology identified by cultural feminism. In most cases, either/or dilemmas in real life can be turned into both/ands. In most cases, dead-end situations such as those posed in lifeboat hypotheticals can be prevented. More specifically, however, it is clear that the ethic sketched here would mean feminists must reject carnivorism; the killing of live [sic] animals for clothing; hunting; the trapping of wildlife for fur (largely for women's luxury consumption); rodeos; circuses; and factory farming; and that they must support the drastic redesigning of zoos (if zoos are to exist at all) to allow animals full exercise space in natural habitats; that they should reject the use of lab animals for testing of beauty and cleaning products (such as the infamous "LD-50" and Draize tests) and military equipment, as well as psychological experimentation such as that carried out in the Harlow primate lab at the University of Wisconsin; that they should support efforts to replace medical experiments by computer models and tissue culture; that they should condemn and work to prevent further destruction of wetlands, forests, and other natural habitats. All of these changes must be part of a feminist reconstruction of the world.

Natural rights and utilitarianism present impressive and useful philosophical arguments for the ethical treatment of animals. Yet, it is also possible—indeed, necessary—to ground that ethic in an emotional and spiritual conversation with nonhuman life-forms. Out of a women's relational culture of caring and attentive love, therefore, emerges the basis for a feminist ethic for the treatment of animals. We should not kill, eat, torture, and exploit animals because they do not want to be so treated, and we know that. If we listen, we can hear them.

(Josephine Donovan, "Animal Rights and Feminist Theory," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 15 [winter 1990]: 350-75, at 374-5)

From the Mailbag

Dear Keith,

I came across your website a few weeks ago, I can't remember from where or how naturally, but ever since I've been reading your posts daily. It is so nice to come across someone who has fair arguments, inspiring posts and not to the point of extremism.

The post you made on Dec. 27th, Becoming a Vegetarian (or Demi-Vegetarian), really got me thinking. I gave up all red meat a year ago this month, and sometimes, sadly, I still get those intense cravings for a cheeseburger. Deep down I know I would never eat one. When someone around me is eating one, I will look at it and wish for a bite, but then will realize that it is the last thing I want. Before reading your post I always felt like a hypocrite for calling myself a vegetarian and still longing for a bite of meat, but maybe this is normal. Like you, I still eat chicken and turkey, though with time and self-discipline, it will stop. Weird thing is, it's not that I even want to eat poultry, half the time I'm picking at it and putting it to the side for someone else who will usually ask me what's wrong with the chicken and then snicker when I say "nothing."

Another post that you made that got me thinking was about zoos and the horror they cause animals. On my own weblog, psycheoflove.com, I posted a small story of what I witnessed at the Phoenix Zoo in Arizona that completely changed the way I view zoo and animal welfare. Leaving the zoo that day two years ago I was so disturbed by what I had seen and the way people reacted to these animals, these animals who are there simply for their amusement and entertainment, who look so bored and alone behind their cages, I wept on the way to the car thinking and knowing that this just was not right at all. What is there that we can do though? It feels no matter how much I try to tell people or inform people, no one seems to really care for the treatment of animals, or believe that it doesn't matter . . . they're "just animals." The article about the beautiful 13 year old gorilla was terrible. Watching the video they put up, showing the police officer so determined to shoot it was painful to watch.

Bear with me.

Many years ago, when I was around eight or nine, I believe that is when I had my first moment of realization that animals deserve fair treatment, and what animal cruelty was. I practically ran away from home when I witnessed my step-father beat my dog and I could not believe the pain it caused the dog, as well as me. Ever since that moment I cannot stand to view an animal being mistreated in any form.

Ok, hopefully this e-mail has not bored you too much. All of this is to say that I, as well as many others, appreciate your website and the articles you share. It's really wonderful to know there are people like you who do care about the animals of the world.

Many blessings to you,
Jennifer

A Good Old Boy

It's been almost five years since Huckleberry died. I think about him every day. Here, for those of you who missed it, is his story.

Animal Rights

My Australian friend Dr John J. Ray over at Dissecting Leftism mentioned me in a post about animal rights. See here. He says he can't see any basis for rights other than contract; and since nonhuman animals can't contract, they can't (and hence don't) have rights. But this can't be the correct account of rights, for many humans can't contract. Some (e.g., infants and the severely retarded) have never had the capacity to contract. Others (e.g., the comatose and the senile) have had the capacity but lost it. I don't want to push this line of thought, though, because John might bite the bullet and say that these humans lack rights.

I see no conceptual barrier to ascribing rights to nonhuman animals. In other words, it's no contradiction to say (for example) that Sophie and Shelbie, my canine companions, have rights. So the question is whether they have rights (and, if so, which). That, of course, depends on what one takes rights to be. If rights are valid claims, as Joel Feinberg says, then animals have rights, for they have valid claims. We should also ask whether we're talking about moral rights or legal rights. Animals clearly have many legal rights. John must know that. (Actually, he does seem to concede this in his post.) In my opinion, animals should have more legal rights than they do, and one day, I am confident, they will—especially if we keep working at it in their behalf. Animals have more legal rights in Sweden than they do in the United States, which is why you see so many animals swimming toward Sweden. Just kidding about the swimming part.

Whether animals have moral rights depends on one's moral theory. According to my moral theory, deontological egoism, they do. According to Tom Regan's moral theory, they do. According to utilitarianism, they don't. But then, not even humans have rights according to utilitarianism, except in a manner of speaking, and in that manner of speaking, so do animals. (Read your Bentham.) Whether contractarianism (social-contract theory) leaves animals out in the cold remains a matter of dispute. Some say yes; some say no. In my view, any moral theory that precludes animal rights is to that extent unacceptable.

NOAZ Ark

I just discovered a wonderful organization devoted to the abolition of zoos, which are morally abominable. See here. Animals are not resources for our use, consumption, disposal, or entertainment. They are fellow travelers, entitled to the same respect we accord human beings. Only someone who thinks animals are objects, with no moral status whatsoever, could eat them, experiment on them, hunt them, or confine them for purposes of display or entertainment. By the way, if you're a Christian and think animals exist for your use, you either haven't read your Bible or don't understand it. See here.

Dale Jamieson on the Immorality of Zoos

Zoos teach us a false sense of our place in the natural order. The means of confinement mark a difference between humans and animals. They are there at our pleasure, to be used for our purposes. Morality and perhaps our very survival require that we learn to live as one species among many rather than as one species over many. To do this, we must forget what we learn at zoos. Because what zoos teach us is false and dangerous, both humans and animals will be better off when they are abolished.

(Dale Jamieson, "Against Zoos," in In Defense of Animals, ed. Peter Singer [New York: Harper & Row, 1986 (1985)], 108-17, at 117)

Abolish Zoos

Here is a sad story from today's Dallas Morning News about a 300-pound gorilla that escaped from its cage in the Dallas Zoo, injured several people, and had to be shot to death by police. Zoos are wrong. They should be abolished. See Dale Jamieson, "Against Zoos," in In Defense of Animals, ed. Peter Singer (New York: Harper & Row, 1986 [1985]), 108-17.

Marian Stamp Dawkins on Animal Suffering

Let us not mince words: Animal welfare involves the subjective feelings of animals. The growing concern for animals in laboratories, farms, and zoos is not just concern about their physical health, important though that is. Nor is it just to ensure that animals function properly, like well-maintained machines, desirable though that may be. Rather, it is a concern that some of the ways in which humans treat other animals cause mental suffering and that these animals may experience "pain," "boredom," "frustration," "hunger," and other unpleasant states perhaps not totally unlike those we experience.

This would appear to put scientists in a dilemma. If we insist that such subjective language has no place in science and that the mental states of nonhuman animals cannot be studied empirically, then we opt out of all debates about animal welfare, leaving the formulation of laws and regulations concerning the treatment of animals to those (often nonscientists) who may have no such scruples. On the other hand, if we feel that laws and regulations should be based on scientific knowledge about the animals . . . , we may feel we have a duty to step into these muddy waters and say what we can, even if we then risk being called unscientific. The purpose of this . . . article is to argue that we do not, in fact, have to choose between scientific respectability and practical considerations. A middle way is possible. We can acknowledge the genuine difficulty of ascertaining what a nonhuman animal feels and yet attempt to attain a scientific understanding of its feelings. Indeed, we should do so not only because we will thus promote the welfare of animals but because the study of subjective feelings is properly part of biology.

(Marian Stamp Dawkins, "From an Animal's Point of View: Motivation, Fitness, and Animal Welfare," Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 [March 1990]: 1-9, at 1 [citation omitted])

Do Animals Have Rights?

Carl Cohen is a professor of philosophy at The University of Michigan and an outspoken opponent of the idea that nonhuman animals have rights. Here is one of his essays.

Of Wolves and Men

Here is a New York Times editorial about the hunting of wolves in Alaska. This topic has especial meaning to me, because I wrote a lengthy essay on the legal status of wolves in Michigan when I was in law school. (I wrote it for a graduate history course.) By the way, if you haven't read Barry Holstun Lopez's magnificent book Of Wolves and Men (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978), please do. It changed my life. It'll change yours, too. I guarantee it.

From the Mailbag

Hope you don't mind that I referred readers to your blog.

I represent the local Salem Humane Society and another local group, Angels for Animals. Your site is a great source for many of the issues we address.

Regards,
Robert L. Guehl, JD, LLM
Salem OH

Raping Animals

If rape is sexual intercourse without an individual's consent, and if nonhuman animals (like underage humans) are incapable of consenting, then sexual intercourse with a nonhuman animal is rape (or the moral equivalent thereof). Here is an interesting news story in which a Dutch politician reaches that conclusion. (Thanks to Norm Weatherby for the link.)

Ownership Versus Guardianship

Dr Mylan Engel Jr sent a link to this essay, which may be of interest to readers of this blog. Thanks, Mylan! By the way, I hope you've read Mylan's essay "The Immorality of Eating Meat," a link to which appears on the left side of this blog. It's the best thing I've read on the moral status of nonhuman animals, better even than Peter Singer's Animal Liberation (1975).

Euthanasia

Euthanasia is a good, easy, or gentle death. (The word derives from the Greek words "eu," good, and "thanos," death.) The central case of euthanasia involves a person who is terminally ill, in great pain, and desirous of dying. Hastening the person's death is a release from misery. The motive of the person doing the euthanizing is benevolence. We say that we're doing it for your own good—because we love you. A synonym for "euthanasia" is "mercy killing."

Suppose we find a healthy, happy orphan. If we put him or her to death because (1) no individual is willing to provide the necessary care and (2) society is unwilling to allocate the resources for such care, is it euthanasia? Clearly not—even if the death itself is quick and painless. The orphan, by hypothesis, is healthy and happy and will, with adequate care, live a long life.

So why do we call it euthanasia when healthy, happy dogs and cats are put to death? We're not doing it for their benefit. We're not doing it because the only alternative to death is a life of unmitigated misery. We're doing it because we—individually and collectively—are unwilling to pay for the care they need.

Why do we call it euthanasia when it's not? I think it's because we're hiding the ugly reality from ourselves. We don't like to think that we're killing healthy, happy animals simply because we'd rather use the resources for other purposes, such as entertainment and fashionable clothing. The word "euthanasia" assures us that we're doing it for the sake of the animals.

I'm not arguing, here, for increased funding, although I believe it's scandalous that an affluent nation such as ours doesn't provide for its feline and canine companions. I'm arguing for honesty. If we're unwilling to provide for dogs and cats, let's say so. Let's stop implying, by our terminology, that we have no choice. We do. We're making a bad choice.

"Peaceable Kingdom," by Adrian Belew, from Mr. Music Head (1989)

When I wake up in my tree
wake up in my bedroom tree
a little girl and a parakeet
are singing to me

My, oh my, what a peaceable kingdom
why would I ever wanna leave
leave a peaceable kingdom

And when I wake up on the floor
on the carpeted forest floor
all of the squirrels in their conifers
are saying to me

My, oh my, even if you had a set of wings
why would you ever wanna fly
from a peaceable kingdom

oh my, oh my, what a peaceable kingdom
why would I ever wanna leave
leave a peaceable kingdom

It's quiet at night
when the monkeys retire
so we lay down our faces
by the fireplace
and sing softly
what a peaceable kingdom

Factory Farms

Here are some images from inside factory farms.

James Serpell on Interspecific Friendship

Human friendships share many features in common with certain social relationships in other species, particularly among non-human primates. The requirement, however, that friends should value the relationship itself above and beyond the gratification of personal ambitions, seems to be unique, and is uncharacteristic of analogous relationships among animals living under natural conditions. Human friendships, and the particular rules of conduct associated with them, probably evolved in the face of increasing social pressures which necessitated the formation of durable, reciprocal alliances with individuals other than kin or sexual partners. Since such alliances are expected to last a long time, perhaps for the lifetime of the individual, the process of friendship-formation places the emphasis on mutual liking, trust and compatibility, rather than on the prospect of immediate or even deferred material gains.

Despite the apparent absence of true friendships among animals, humans are able to derive many of the social and emotional benefits of friendship from relationships with animals, especially dogs, cats and other household pets. Perhaps because they involve other species, and therefore appear superficially counterfeit, such relationships between humans and animals have been largely ignored by ethologists and social psychologists. This is, perhaps, regrettable, since their particular differences and similarities may reveal a great deal about both the meaning and the limits of friendship.

(James Serpell, "Humans, Animals, and the Limits of Friendship," chap. 7 in The Dialectics of Friendship, ed. Roy Porter and Sylvana Tomaselli [London and New York: Routledge, 1989], 111-29, at 127-8)

Ambrose Bierce

Fork, n. An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth. Formerly the knife was employed for this purpose, and by many worthy persons is still thought to have many advantages over the other tool, which, however, they do not altogether reject, but use to assist in charging the knife. The immunity of these persons from swift and awful death is one of the most striking proofs of God's mercy to those that hate Him.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Our Feathered Friends

United Poultry Concerns is devoted to changing our beliefs about and behavior toward chickens, turkeys, and other fowl. See here.

Beef

If you eat beef, you're supporting this industry.

Dogs, Cats, and Other Deities

If you live with (or for) a dog or a cat, you will enjoy this. Thanks to Jean Robart for the link.

Upright Eating

Looking for vegetarian recipes? See here. Do it for your health. Do it for the animals.

All Animals Are Equal

If you haven't read this essay by Peter Singer, please do. It was originally published in 1974 and became the main argumentative chapter of Animal Liberation a year later. Singer argues that speciesism is analogous to racism, which is, of course, wrong. Is he right?