Animal Rights

I support the goal of legal rights for nonhuman animals, but this approach is wrongheaded. Instead of using the 13th Amendment, the original understanding of which did not include animals, proponents should work for a constitutional amendment, or simply for national legislation. Take it to the people.

Statistics

This blog had 2,200 visits during September. That's an average of 73.3 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 78.0.

W. D. Ross (1877-1971) on the Right and the Good

Now when we ask what is the general nature of morally good actions, it seems quite clear that it is in virtue of the motives that they proceed from that actions are morally good. Moral goodness is quite distinct from and independent of rightness, which (as we have seen) belongs to acts not in virtue of the motives they proceed from, but in virtue of the nature of what is done. Thus a morally good action need not be the doing of a right act, and the doing of a right act need not be a morally good action. The ethical theories that stress the thing done and those that stress the motive from which it is done both have some justification, for both 'the right act' and 'the morally good action' are notions of the first importance in ethics; but the two types of theory have been at cross-purposes, because they have failed to notice that they are talking about different things. Thus Kant has tried to deduce from his conception of the nature of a morally good action rules as to what types of act are right; and others have held a view which amounts to saying that so long as our motive is good it does not matter what we do. And, on the other side, the tendency of acts to produce good or bad results has sometimes been treated as if it made them morally good or bad. The drawing of a rigid distinction between the right and the morally good frees us from such confusion.

(W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1988], 156 [italics in original; footnote omitted] [first published in 1930])

Note from KBJ: There are four categories: (1) right and morally good (i.e., doing the right thing for the right reason); (2) right and morally bad (i.e., doing the right thing for the wrong reason); (3) wrong and morally good (i.e., doing the wrong thing for the right reason); (4) wrong and morally bad (i.e., doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason). As examples, I would give the following: (1) abstaining from meat for the sake of the animals; (2) abstaining from meat for health reasons; (3) eating meat because one believes (with, say, Roger Scruton) that doing so redounds to the benefit of the animals themselves; (4) eating meat because one likes the taste.

Statistics

This blog had 1,656 visits during August, which is an average of 53.4 visits per day. The average for August 2010 was 62.7.

Art

W. D. Ross (1877-1971) on the Moral Significance of Pleasure and Pain

[T]he fact that a sentient being is in a state of pleasure is always in itself good, and the fact that a sentient being is in a state of pain always in itself bad, when this fact is not an element in a more complex fact having some other characteristic relevant to goodness or badness. And where considerations of desert or of moral good or evil do not enter, i.e. in the case of animals, the fact that a sentient being is feeling pleasure or pain is the whole fact (or the fact sufficiently described to enable us to judge of its goodness or badness), and we need not hesitate to say that the pleasure of animals is always good, and the pain of animals always bad, in itself and apart from its consequences. But when a moral being is feeling a pleasure or pain that is deserved or undeserved, or a pleasure or pain that implies a good or a bad disposition, the total fact is quite inadequately described if we say 'a sentient being is feeling pleasure, or pain'. The total fact may be that 'a sentient and moral being is feeling a pleasure that is undeserved, or that is the realization of a vicious disposition', and though the fact included in this, that 'a sentient being is feeling pleasure' would be good if it stood alone, that creates only a presumption that the total fact is good, and a presumption that is outweighed by the other element in the total fact.

(W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1988], 137 [first published in 1930]) 

Note from KBJ: Since the concepts of desert and good or bad disposition do not apply to animals (who are not moral agents), their pleasure is intrinsically good and their pain intrinsically bad. (Animals, unlike humans, never deserve to suffer or to be happy, for they are not morally responsible for their behavior.) For beings (such as normal humans) to whom the concepts of desert and good or bad disposition apply, things are more complicated. Pleasure is good when, and only when, it is deserved. Pain is bad when, and only when, it is undeserved. We can say, therefore, that animal pleasure is always good, whereas human pleasure is only sometimes good; and also that animal pain is always bad, whereas human pain is only sometimes bad.

Animal Rights

Tibor Machan makes the common mistake of confusing moral agency with rights possession. One wonders whether he has read any of the literature. Human infants are not moral agents, yet nobody doubts that they have rights. Senile people are not moral agents, yet nobody doubts that they have rights. The severely retarded are not moral agents, yet nobody doubts that they have rights. The insane or mentally ill are not moral agents, yet nobody doubts that they have rights. Machan seems unaware of the distinction between autonomy rights, which only moral agents possess, and welfare rights, which all sentient beings possess. The most prominent welfare right is the right not to be harmed. (Being made to suffer is one type, though not the only type, of harm.) Machan can claim, truly, that animals lack autonomy rights. But then, nobody denies this. His claim, therefore, that animals lack rights is either trivially true (if he means autonomy rights) or false (if he means welfare rights).

Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900) on Animals

We have next to consider who the "all'' are, whose happiness is to be taken into account. Are we to extend our concern to all the beings capable of pleasure and pain whose feelings are affected by our conduct? or are we to confine our view to human happiness? The former view is the one adopted by Bentham and Mill, and (I believe) by the Utilitarian school generally: and is obviously most in accordance with the universality that is characteristic of their principle. It is the Good Universal, interpreted and defined as 'happiness' or 'pleasure,' at which a Utilitarian considers it his duty to aim: and it seems arbitrary and unreasonable to exclude from the end, as so conceived, any pleasure of any sentient being.

(Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1981], bk. IV, chap. I, sec. 2, p. 414 [italics in original] [first published in 1907; 1st ed. published in 1874])

Statistics

This blog had 1,503 visits during July, which is an average of 48.4 visits per day. A year ago, there were 64.6 visits per day.

From the Mailbag

Keith,

I am writing today to ask for your help in raising awareness about the 2011 Walk for Farm Animals, a series of fun, community-focused events taking place in more than 35 cities across North America this fall to promote kindness to animals and raise vital funds to support the lifesaving work of Farm Sanctuary, the nation’s leading farm animal protection organization. Please see below for the press release. Any help you can provide in getting the word out would be deeply appreciated. Photos are available upon request. For more information on the Walk and how to register, please visit walkforfarmanimals.org.

All the best,
Meredith

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “Egg Producers and Humane Society Urging Federal Standard on Hen Cages” (Business Day, July 8):

I’m a vegetarian who turned vegan after coming to terms with the fact that just because I was eating hormone-free, antibiotic-free, even free-range organic eggs didn’t mean that egg-producing hens were living a cruelty-free life.

When I read your article, I was elated. Egg-laying hens may eventually get what is long overdue: enlarged cage space (144 square inches for each bird compared with the current 67 )—even perches, and scratching and nesting areas that allow the birds to express natural behavior. The use of wire cages isn’t being addressed, but should be in the future.

We are headed in the right direction, but need to fight to push the changes through. It could take up to 18 years for them to be phased in, if the law should pass. A factory-farmed egg-producing hen’s lifespan is less than two years.

CLAUDIA SILBERLICHT
New York, July 13, 2011

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “When Fashion Meets Fishing, the Feathers Fly” (front page, June 29), about a new trend of inserting fly fishing feathers in hair:

If you wouldn’t walk around with a cat’s paw or a dog’s tail dangling from your hair, please don’t fall for the rooster feather fad either.

Like the animals that share our homes, roosters experience pain and fear, and they don’t want to die. Many people don’t realize that roosters are confined in tiny cages for most of their lives and killed for their feathers.

There are plenty of ways to get a killer look, without killing animals.

STEVE POST
Holland, Mich., June 29, 2011

Statistics

This blog had 1,873 visits during June, which is an average of 62.4 visits per day. The average for the previous month (May) was 106.0. Readership always decreases during the summer months, when people spend less time at the computer.

Roger Scruton on the Duty to Eat Meat

A great number of animals owe their lives to our intention to eat them. And their lives are (or can easily be made to be) comfortable and satisfying in the way that few lives led in the wild could possibly be. If we value animal life and animal comfort, therefore, we should endorse our carnivorous habits, provided it really is life, and not living death, on which those habits feed. From the point of view of religion, however, the question presents a challenge. It is asking the burger-stuffer to come clean; to show just why it is that his greed should be indulged in this way, and just where he fits into the scheme of things, that he can presume to kill again and again for the sake of a solitary pleasure that creates and sustains no moral ties. To such a question it is always possible to respond with a shrug of the shoulders. But it is a real question, one of many that people now ask, as the old forms of piety dwindle. Piety is the remedy for religious guilt, and to this emotion we are all witting or unwitting heirs. And I suspect that people become vegetarians for precisely that reason: that by doing so they overcome the residue of guilt that attaches to every form of hubris, and in particular to the hubris of human freedom.

I believe, however, that there is another remedy, and one more in keeping with the Judaeo-Christian tradition. We should not abandon our meat-eating habits, but remoralize them, by incorporating them into affectionate human relations, and using them in the true Homeric manner, as instruments of hospitality, conviviality and peace. That was the remedy practised by our parents, with their traditional ‘Sunday roast’ coming always at midday, after they had given thanks. The lifestyle associated with the Sunday roast involves sacrifices that those brought up on fast food are unused to making—mealtimes, manners, dinner-table conversation and the art of cookery itself. But all those things form part of a complex human good, and I cannot help thinking that, when added to the ecological benefits of small-scale livestock farming, they secure for us an honourable place in the scheme of things, and neutralize more effectively than the vegetarian alternative, our inherited burden of guilt.

Furthermore, I would suggest not only that it is permissible for those who care about animals to eat meat; they have a duty to do so. If meat-eating should ever become confined to those who do not care about animal suffering then compassionate farming would cease. All animals would be kept in battery conditions and the righteous vegetarians would exert no economic pressure on farmers to change their ways. Where there are conscientious carnivores, however, there is a motive to raise animals kindly. And conscientious carnivores can show their depraved contemporaries that it is possible to ease one’s conscience by spending more on one’s meat. Bit by bit the news would get around, that there is a right and a wrong way to eat; and—failing some coup d’état by censorious vegetarians—the process would be set in motion, that would bring battery farming to an end. Duty requires us, therefore, to eat our friends.

(Roger Scruton, A Political Philosophy [London and New York: Continuum, 2006], 61-3 [italics in original])

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “Hooked on Meat,” by Mark Bittman (column, June 2):

The other day, I asked the manager of our local chain grocery store why we were offered only Peruvian asparagus in the springtime. Remember when fresh, locally grown asparagus would come in? No longer. Why eat produce that has no flavor? Why not go next door and grab a salty, fatty burger in a bag? It’s so much easier.

Why do we eat so much meat? Mr. Bittman has some strong answers: evolutionary psychology, convenience and propaganda posing as marketing. Might we add all the misinformed diets promoting proteins while vilifying grains and carbohydrates?

Why does the whole world want to eat like us?

Doesn’t it know that our American diet is killing us and our economy? Health care skyrockets out of control mainly because we have no convenient access to fresh produce and tasty, humanely raised meat products.

Americans want to eat the good stuff, but it must be readily available. We’re busy and misinformed.

JANE McCLAREN
Southern Pines, N.C., June 6, 2011 

The writer is the author of “Honest Eating.” 

Editors’ Note: With this letter, we continue a feature in which we invite readers to respond to an interesting letter, in hopes of spurring a dialogue. (The first topic in this series was America’s energy future.) We plan to publish one or more responses, online for now, and the original writer will have a chance to reply. E-mail: letters@nytimes.com

Statistics

This blog had 3,289 visits during May, which is an average of 106.0 visits per day. In April, the average was 152.1. Many of the visits, I suspect, were from students who were looking for term-paper ideas. I hope they didn't plagiarize.

Statistics

This blog had 4,563 visits during April, which is an average of 152.1 visits per day. It's the second-best month ever, in the seven and a half years of the blog's existence. A month ago, the average was 134.9.

Brigid Brophy (1929-1995) on Animals

If I lunched on a pigeon, I should think myself immoral. If you do so, I must in honesty say I think you immoral. But I don’t think my cat immoral. I think him amoral. The whole dimension of morality doesn’t apply to him, or scarcely applies to him.

(Brigid Brophy, "The Darwinist's Dilemma," Critical Society [winter 2009/10]: 15-22, at 18 [first published in 1979])

Note from KBJ: I commend this essay to your attention. It is well written and interesting, and might even change your mind about the moral status of animals.

Statistics

This blog had 4,182 visits during March, which is an average of 134.9 visits per day. There were 124.8 visits per day in February.

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “Lost Cobra May Hide for Weeks, Zoo Says” (news article, March 29):

The sideshow atmosphere surrounding the lost cobra at the Bronx Zoo has yielded online hilarity and supplied material for late-night talk show hosts, but the zoo is never fun for the animals.

By putting animals in zoos, you eliminate all that is natural to them; the zoo is where they live according to humans’ feeding and breeding regimens. Captivity in zoos causes the animals to go mad, exhibiting abnormal behaviors like swaying, rocking back and forth, head bobbing, endlessly turning in circles and even self-mutilation.

The only way to learn about animals is to observe them respectfully undisturbed in their natural environments.

SHARON FEDER
Rego Park, Queens, March 29, 2011