Humane Society University

Ethics and Animals

Lectures

Discussion Questions

Paper Assignments

These lectures are intended to provide background to the readings, highlight important issues in the readings, introduce readings, and raise questions for each week.

Week 1: Intro to Ethics, Intro to Logic and Intro to Ethics & Animals

Week 2: What Are (Some) Animals Like? Animal Minds and Harms to Animals

Week 3: In Defense of Animals: Some Moral Arguments

Week 4: Objections to Defenses of Animals and Defending Animal Use

Week 5: Wearing and Eating Animals

Week 6: Pets; Zoos, Hunting, Racing, and other Uses of Animals

Week 7: Experimenting on Animals, Animals in Education

Week 8: Activism for Animals

Week 1: Intro to Ethics, Intro to Logic and Intro to Ethics & Animals

Note: this first lecture is longer than the rest.

Overview:

Discussions of animal ethics are more fruitful when approached after an exposure to general thinking about ethics and methods of moral argument analysis. Theories of animal ethics are typically extensions or modifications of theories developed for addressing more familiar (and often less controversial) questions about human-to-human ethics. Therefore it is important to be familiarity with these theories and methods. These online readings will introduce students to the more influential moral theories and methods of moral argument analysis, and we will read the introductions to our texts on animal ethics.

Moral Questions

In this course we will attempt to reasonably answer moral or ethical questions concerning the treatment and use of animals.[1] Some of these questions are general[2], e.g.:

· Morally, how should we treat animals?

· Which uses of animals, if any, are morally permissible, and which are morally wrong?

· Do we have any moral obligations toward any animals? What is the extent of these obligations? Why do we have these obligations (if we do)? What is it about (various kinds of) animals that makes them such that how we treat them matters morally?

· Are there different obligations toward different animals? Might certain uses of some animals be morally permissible, whereas using other animals in similar ways would be wrong? (E.g., might some experiments be wrong if done on chimpanzees, whereas morally permissible, or perhaps “less wrong,” if done on mice?

· Morally, should we be concerned only with certain kinds of animals, e.g., those who are conscious and have feelings? What about insects? What about unicellular organisms? On what basis do we decide?

Other questions deal with specific uses of animals, e.g.:

· Is it morally permissible to trap and skin animals for their fur in our society, where alternatives to fur coats are readily available? If we lived somewhere where there were no such “alternative” means to keep warm would that make a difference to the morality of using animals for their fur?

· Is it morally permissible to raise and kill animals to eat them in our society, where nutritious alternatives to animal foods are readily available? If we were somewhere where there were inadequate non-animal foods would that make a difference to the morality of using animals for food?

· If it could be known, with certainty, that some experiments on animals would save the lives of many human beings (or even just one?), would these experiments be morally permissible? If there was only a slight chance that these experiments would lead to such benefits, or no chance, would this make a difference to the morality of these experiments?

While everyone has answers to these questions, we are not interested in anyone’s mere “opinions” or “feelings” about how they should be answered. We want to find out which answers are backed by the best moral reasons or strongest moral arguments, i.e., the arguments that we have the strongest reasons to believe are sound. We want to know why we should accept some answers to these questions and reject others. To do this we will attempt to improve out skills at reasoning morally.[3]

What the Question Is Not: Not “Morally Right,” but Morally Permissible and/or Morally Obligatory

One might think that the core questions in animal ethics are whether various uses of animals are morally right or morally wrong. This is not quite correct. Effective moral reasoning requires the clear and precise uses of words. Thus, when a word is ambiguous (i.e., has more than one meaning), we must identify these meanings and make it clear what meaning we are using. That way everyone knows what exact thought we have in mind when we make claims using that word: we’re on the same page and can communicate effectively. And we can think about whether what we are saying is true or false and supported (or supportable) by reasons and evidence or not.

This applies to the use of the word ‘right,’ as in morally right, because the word is ambiguous. Examples show this. Suppose you saved a drowning baby by pulling her out of bathtub. This was easy for you, not risky, and had you not been there the baby surely would have drown. If someone says, “Your saving that baby was morally right,” this person probably means to say that your saving that baby, in these circumstances, was morally obligatory, morally required, or a moral duty: if you had not saved the baby, you would have done something wrong or morally impermissible.[4]

Consider another example. Although you are a person of average income, you send $1000 a month to famine relief organizations to help starving children. Someone says, “Your making these donations is morally right.” Here this person probably does not mean to say your making these donations are morally obligatory, morally required, or a moral duty. Unlike the bathtub case, the common (but perhaps mistaken[5]) view is that your not donating would not be wrong or morally impermissible. So, this person probably means to by saying, at least, that what you do is morally permissible, i.e., not wrong or not morally impermissible. She might also mean that it is not merely permissible, but more positively good beyond that, but definitely not morally obligatory.

With these distinctions in mind, we can stop using an ambiguous word – “morally right” – and instead use these more precise terms categories for morally evaluating actions:

1. morally permissible: morally OK; not morally wrong; not morally impermissible; “OK to do”;

2. morally obligatory: morally required; a moral duty; impermissible to not do it; wrong to not do it; “gotta do it”;

3. morally impermissible: morally wrong; not permissible; obligatory to not do it; a duty to not do it.

We might also add a category “between” the permissible and the obligatory for actions that are positively good, virtuous or admirable, and thereby morally permissible, but not obligatory: e.g., some argue that vegetarianism is in that category, and if this is correct then arguments for the conclusion that vegetarianism is morally obligatory are unsound. This category might be described as the “supererogatory,” meaning beyond the call of duty or what’s morally required.

Thus, the core questions in ethics and animals are what moral categories specific uses of animals fall into – morally permissible, morally obligatory, or morally impermissible or wrong – and, most importantly, why. Again, the reasons given for why we should think, e.g., that some use is permissible and another use is wrong, or whatever conclusions anyone advocates, are our main interest.

What the Questions Also Is Not: Not (Necessarily) Animal “Rights”

A second possible interpretation of the core questions of animal ethics is that they are about whether animals have “rights.” On this view, to ask whether various uses of animals are morally permissible or not is just to ask whether animals have rights or not. It is very common for these two notions to be equated, but they shouldn’t be, for a variety of reasons.

Legal Rights: Not the Issue

First, the term ‘rights’ is multiply ambiguous. One kind of rights are legal rights. Legal rights are such that, in theory, if they are violated, somebody can be punished by the criminal system. Legal rights are “man made” and vary by time and location: the legal rights women have in the US differ from the legal rights women have in, e.g., Afghanistan. To figure out what legal rights animals have is often easy: just check the law books. There you would find that there are few laws that protect animals from harm: they have few legal rights.

Legal rights are not of much interest to us as ethicists, however, because what’s legally permitted need not be morally permissible: e.g., slaveholding in the US South hundreds of years ago was legal yet immoral; and what’s legally required may not be morally permissible: e.g., the legal requirement that drugs be “tested” on animals might be an immoral requirement. Although legal standards can be sometimes seen as a highly imperfect expression of a society’s general views on what’s moral and immoral, we will generally not discuss the law beyond our readings’ occasionally observations that animals have few legal rights.

Moral Rights: Not Necessarily the Issue

A second possible kind of rights are moral rights. What are moral rights? Later lectures will address some common misunderstandings and resulting confusions about moral rights, but the most important reason to not equate the questions of what uses of animals are permissible and whether animals have moral rights is this: although this might sound odd to some people, it’s possible that many uses of animals are wrong even though animals have no moral rights. Various uses of animals might be wrong for other moral reasons besides their having rights, so even if animals have no rights, it doesn’t immediately follow that harmful animal use is morally permissible. Equating the two issues conceals this possibility.

Again, the core questions in ethics and animals are what moral categories we should think specific uses of animals fall into – morally permissible, morally obligatory, or morally impermissible/wrong – and the reasons why we should think this. Thinking in terms of moral rights can make the issues more confusing than they have to be.

Some Basic Concepts about Arguments: Introduction to Logic

To attempt to try to figure out which moral views about animals are correct, we will try to find out which views are supported by the best reasons. To do this, will identify and evaluate arguments. The Rachels, Pryor and Feldman readings give excellent overviews of what arguments are and what makes arguments good and bad.

An argument is a conclusion that is supported by premises. The premises should lead to the conclusion, forming a “chain” of reasoning: this makes the argument “logically valid” (a technical term with a precise meaning that differs from how non-philosophers often might use the term). In a valid argument, since the premises lead to the conclusion (and this chain of reasoning is clearly identifiable), if the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true as well. When an argument is valid and the premises are true, then the argument is sound (and the conclusion is thereby true, given the definition of “valid” and the fact that the premises are true). If the argument is valid and, with good reasons, you think the premises are true, then you should think the argument is sound. We want to find sound arguments and reject unsound ones.

Our main concern is finding the arguments, understanding what exact conclusion(s) is being defended and what exact premises are given in its favor. We have to figure out whether the premises lead to the conclusion, i.e., is valid, or if we can “tweak” the argument by adding premises to make it valid. We then try to figure out if it is sound. Here are three rules for carefully identifying arguments:

1. Make the stated conclusion(s) and premise(s) precise in quantity: is something said to be true (or false) of all things (or people, or animals, etc.), or just some of them (and if so, which ones?)?

2. Clarify the intended meaning(s) of unclear or ambiguous words in conclusions or premises.

3. State (any) assumed premises so that the complete pattern of reasoning in an argument is displayed and it is clear how the stated premise(s) logically leads to the conclusion.

Other important logical tools are that of necessary condition(s), sufficient condition(s), necessary and sufficient condition(s), and counterexamples. (See Pryor especially). The importance of these concepts for animal ethics will be apparent as we work through the issues.

Moral Principles as Premises: Introduction to Ethics

Moral arguments often have a moral principle as a premise. We will attempt to figure out if these premises are true. Moral principles often assert that an action having some feature(s) is a sufficient condition(s) for that action being morally wrong, permissible, or whatever. E.g., here are two possible moral principles:

(A) If an action causes pain, then that action is morally wrong.

(B) If an action benefits someone and harms nobody, then that action is morally permissible.

(Can principle A can be refuted, i.e., shown false, by counterexamples? Is principle B true? How would we try to figure that out?). Moral principles might also claim that an action having some feature(s) is a necessary condition for that action being morally wrong, permissible, or whatever, e.g.:

(Can principle C be refuted, i.e., shown false, by counterexamples?). Moral principles are often justified by appeal to moral or ethical theories. A moral theory attempts to answer these kinds of questions:

· What makes morally right actions right and wrong actions wrong? (Or, what makes permissible acts permissible, obligatory actions obligatory, etc?)? What is it about actions that gives them the moral status (permissible, obligatory, etc.) that they have?

· What’s the basic, fundamental, essential difference(s) between permissible and impermissible actions? What features of actions mark that divide?

· What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for an action being permissible, obligatory, etc.?

Before looking at influential theories developed and refined by philosophers, it is useful to start by developing your own moral theory (or theories). Here is one method to do that:

Make a chart with three columns. In the left column, make a long list of actions (and we can use character traits too, if you’d like) that you think most people would think are obviously wrong or bad. In the right column, make a long list of actions or character traits that you think most people would think are obviously morally permissible, obligatory or otherwise good. In the middle, list any actions that come to mind but don’t fall into either category. Share your list with others to compare, change, revise, etc.[6]

Now ask, what is it about the wrong actions on your list that makes them wrong? Why are they on the “wrong” list? What is it about the right/good actions that makes them right or good? Why do they belong on that list? What moral hypotheses best explains this? Your answers here could result in your revising your initial judgments, if you see that some emerging moral principles are inconsistent with any initial judgment.

A complementary approach is this:

Describe how animals are treated in, e.g., the food industry, the fur industry, in experimentation, etc. Would treating (any?) human beings in these ways be morally permissible, or would this be wrong? What moral hypotheses – about what makes wrong actions wrong – best explain why this is so, e.g., why it would be wrong to treat humans in these ways?

These exercises might result in you developing basic theories that are similar to many influential moral theories that have been developed over the last few centuries, if not longer. Thinking for yourself can lead to many of the same moral insights many of the philosophical “greats” have had.

Rachels and Regan discuss the (arguably) more plausible moral theories last, after they discuss and sometimes argue against the (arguably) inferior theories. Here are the theories they discuss:

· Relativism & Moral Skepticism (Rachels, “Short Introduction” 2-3; Rachels “Basic Points About Arguments,” 22-27)

o Rachels argues relativism and skepticism are false.

· Divine Command Theory (Rachels “Short Introduction” 3-5)

o Rachels argues the divine command theory is false and even that religious believers should not accept it. (See below on religion and ethics).

· Virtue Theory (Rachels, “Short Introduction” 5-6); “Cruelty-Kindness” (Regan, 217)

o Regan argues that a kind of virtue theory, which he calls the cruelty-kindness view, is mistaken.

· Natural Law (Rachels, “Short Introduction” 6-8). Not a very popular theory any more outside of some Catholic contexts.

· Contractarianism / the Social Contract (Rachels “Short Introduction” 8-10); Regan (214-216). (Regan also discusses Rawls’ improved version of contractarianism; Mark Rowlands modifies this theory to argue in defense of animals.)

o Regan argues that contractarianisms are false.

· Utilitarianism (Rachels “Short Introduction” 11-14; Regan 217-220)

o Regan argues that utilitarianism is false.

· Immanuel Kant’s Ethics (“Short Introduction” 17-19); “The Rights View” (Regan 220-223), which is developed out of a modification of Kant’s 2^nd Categorical Imperative; Regan has a broader view of who should be treated as “ends in themselves.”

· Altruistic Ethical Theories (Rachels “Short Introduction” 10-11): a broad category of ethical theories; they contrast with “egoistic” theories where the only intrinsic moral concern is for yourself and how your actions affect your own interest.

· Ethical Theories that Require Impartiality (Rachels “Short Introduction” 14-16): a broad category of ethical theories; contrasts with “partialist” theories that allow special preference to family and friends.

Animal advocates typically argue that the moral theory(s) that best explain how we ought to treat human beings (especially vulnerable human beings: the very young and very old) have positive implications for animals. Whether their arguments are sound, we shall see.

Religion and Ethics: A Brief Comment

Ethical issues are sometimes addressed in the context of religion; indeed it’s often assumed that the two are inseparable. For this course we will reject this assumption, largely for the reasons that Rachels presents, following Socrates. Their reasoning is this:

If some religious text, authority, or even God makes a moral judgment (e.g., about whether some use of animals is morally permissible or not, or any other moral topic), then either there are reasons that justify that judgment or not. If there are no reasons supporting that judgment, then it is arbitrary and should not be accepted. If there are reasons, however, then those reasons are what justify the judgment, not the fact that some authority says so, and we should be able to identify and evaluate those reasons directly.

In sum, “Because I said so!” is not a good reason to believe something, unless whatever is said is supported by reasons. Nevertheless, there are many religiously-motivated animal advocacy organizations and thinkers and the suggested readings and web pages reference them.

Introduction to Animal Ethics

Finally, we will read the prefaces and introductions to our main texts. They are all interesting; Singer’s is especially important to the historic development of the animal movement. We can use Regan’s “cat case” and its variants as a unifying theme for inquiry. We will try to determine which broad view below is supported by the best moral reasons:

A. Any (or almost any) use of animals is morally permissible; there are no moral obligations to animals.

B. Seriously harming animals (e.g., causing them pain and suffering, killing them, etc.) is morally permissible provided they are housed in comfortable cages.

C. Seriously harming animals is permissible provided they are housed in comfortable cages, treated gently and killed painlessly.

D. Seriously harming animals is typically morally wrong, even if they are housed in comfortable cages, treated gently and killed painlessly.

Discussion Questions

1. For many ethical issues, a good place to start is to reflect on “common views” about the issues. Suppose you surveyed a range of people about the moral questions that these lectures open with. What are some of the most common answers that would be given? What reasons would you often hear in favor of these answers? Are these reasons generally good reasons or not? Why?

2. Based on the readings about logic and arguments, explain (i) what an argument is, (ii) what makes arguments good or bad (e.g., explain the concepts of validity and soundness), and (iii) what one does to try to show that an argument is sound or unsound (e.g., explain the concept of a counterexample). If you have any other questions about what arguments are and how to identify and evaluate them, ask them here. We will be practicing identifying and evaluating arguments throughout the course.

3. Complete the moral theory building exercises above. What does your moral theory (or theories) look like? According to your theory(s), what is it about wrong actions that seem to make them wrong, and what is it about morally permissible / obligatory / good actions that make them like that? What follows from your theory (or theories) for how human beings should be treated? What follows for animals (and which animals)?

4. Which moral theory (or theories) that Rachels and Regan discuss seem best, i.e., most likely to identify the (approximate) truth about the nature of morally permissible and obligatory actions? Which seem worst, i.e., false? Why?

5. What observations do you have about the Prefaces, Introductions and Prologues to each of the books on animal ethics? What strikes you as interesting, provocative, controversial and otherwise worthy of comment and reflection?

Of course, always feel free to raise any other questions, observations, criticisms and any other responses to the week’s readings and issues.

Papers start week 3.

Week 2: What Are (Some) Animals Like? Animal Minds and Harms to Animals

Overview:

If any animals have minds, and thus are conscious, then they can be harmed, and thus how they are treated raises moral issues. And, arguably, there are moral obligations towards animals only if they have minds, so questions about animal ethics very much depend on what animals are like. This week we will get an overview of the scientific and philosophical literature on whether any animals are conscious, whether any are sentient (i.e., capable of sensation or feeling, especially of pleasures and pains), and so whether various species of animals have minds and, if so, what their mental, psychological and/or emotional lives might be like. We will discuss how anyone could know or reasonably believe some claim about animals’ minds.

Being Specific About Species

In the first lecture on logic, I made these two suggestions about identifying arguments:

· Make the stated conclusion(s) and premise(s) precise in quantity: is something said to be true (or false) of all things (or people, or animals, etc.), or just some of them (and if so, which ones?)?

· Clarify the intended meaning(s) of unclear or ambiguous words in conclusions or premises.

These suggestions are relevant to thinking about animals’ minds since the category of “animal” is extremely broad: “animals” range from unicellular organisms, insects, invertebrates, vertebrates, birds, and to mammals of different kinds, including primates (like human beings). Since there are millions of species of animals, so when investigate whether animals’ have minds, the natural questions are, “Which animals?” or, “What do you mean by ‘animals’? Which animals are you referring to?”

Sometimes we forget to notice that these same questions should often be asked about human beings’ mental lives. The mental lives of, e.g., newborn babies, five year olds, “normal” adults, cognitively disabled individuals, and Alzheimer’s patients surely differ greatly. So if someone says that (all) animals don’t have minds like human beings’ minds, we should ask which human beings, since many some, if not, many animals have mental lives comparable to, if not richer than, many human beings’ minds. That’s a possibility: whether we should think its true, of course, depends on what the research shows about the varieties of animals’ and humans’ minds and mental capacities.

Our readings primarily focus on mammals and birds, although there is some discussion of fish, invertebrates (such as octopi) and even some research on insects. But, again, it seems likely the minds of different mammals (if any have minds) are also different: e.g., a mouse’s mental life is likely quite different from a chimpanzee’s (especially if that chimp has been taught sign language). Additional research on different kinds of animals’ minds will be discussed in later sections of the course: e.g., research on the minds of chickens, cows and pigs will be discussed in the sections on animal agriculture; rats and mice, cats, dogs and primates in the sections of animal experimentation, and so on.

How Do We Know? Arguments from Analogy & Inference to the Best Scientific Explanation

Epistemology is an area of philosophy that asks how we know things and what it is for a belief to be reasonable and supported by good evidence. How might we know that any animals have minds, or reasonably believe any such claims? We can call this question “The Epistemological Problem of Animal Minds.”

Before we think about this (hard) problem, it’s worthwhile to mention that philosophers (and some psychologists and neuroscientists) worry about a more general (hard) problem called “The Epistemological Problem of Other Minds” regarding humans’ minds. The problem is that each of us only has “direct access” to our own perceptions, thoughts and feelings: we cannot directly “see” that anyone else is conscious and has a mind. All we see is external, overt behavior (including speech) and, presumably, somehow infer from this behavior that another individual has thoughts, feelings and perceptions somewhat like our own. Perhaps this inference is not consciously made, but how else could we know that other people have minds?!

Believe it or not, this question has troubled philosophers for millennia and there is no widely accepted answer. Many philosophers argue, however, that we know that other people have minds either by reasoning by analogy or by reasoning from the best explanation of some phenomena, in this case the overt behavior.

To reason by analogy is, most simply, to reason like this:

· Thing 1 has these characteristics a, b, and c;

· Thing 2 has characteristics a & b;

· Thing 2 is relevantly similar to Thing 1;

· Therefore, probably Thing 2 has characteristic c too.

Or, even more simply: “These two things are similar in the relevant ways, so therefore what is true of one is probably true of the other.” The strength of an argument from analogy depends on how similar to two things are: the more similar, the stronger the analogy, obviously, and more likely the conclusion is to be true.

To respond to the “Problem of other Minds,” someone might reason, “I behave these ways, have this kind of biology, and I have a mind. Other people behave in similar ways and have similar biology. Therefore, they probably have minds too.” It’s important to observe that we apparently often use the same kind of kind of reasoning about animals’ minds, as our authors demonstrate.

The second common pattern of reasoning about minds is an argument from the best explanation:

· There is some event that requires explanation.

· Explanation or hypothesis E best explains that event (i.e., is a better explanation than other candidate explanations in that it makes sense of more of the data/observations, allows predication, is simpler, fits with pre-existing knowledge, etc. )

· Therefore, probably E, and what’s entailed by E, are true.

This pattern of reasoning is often applied to animal behavior: an animal does something (e.g., reacts in some interesting way to new surroundings); we try to figure out if this reaction would be better explained on the hypothesis that (a) this animal is a mindless automaton or (b) this animal has a conscious mind (or some other explanation, perhaps with greater details than [b]). How this reasoning will work out very much depends on the details of the case, but it’s important to note that we use this pattern of reasoning to investigate both humans’ and animals’ minds.

A Source of Doubts: Necessary Conditions for Having a Mind

Many who argue (or have argued, in the case of historical figures) that animals don’t have minds often claim that there is (or are) necessary condition(s) for having a mind, animals lack that necessary condition, and therefore they are mindless. So, some have claimed that a being has a mind only if, e.g., that being has language, and argued that animals are mindless since they can’t speak. Critics tend to challenge these claims by either arguing that that (some) animals meet this necessary condition, or by arguing that it’s false that this condition is a necessary one: a being can have a mind even if it lacks this condition. They also tend to point out that that many such principles imply that human infants are mindless, which seems to be false (and perhaps must be false, since such infants do learn language, and that can happen only if they have minds already, before having language).

These are a few central concepts to keep in mind while reading the interesting and informative readings this week.

Discussion Questions

6. For many philosophical issues, a good place to start is to reflect on “common views” about the issues. Suppose you surveyed a range of people and asked them what the minds or mental lives of various species of animals are like, whether (any) animals are conscious, can feel, can think, can reason, have emotions and so on. What are some of the most common answers that would be given? What reasons would you often hear in favor of these answers? Are these reasons generally good reasons or not? Why?

7. There are historical and contemporary doubts that any animals possess minds. Summarize these doubts. Explain whether these doubts are reasonable or not, in your view. (This question might overlap with #8 below)

8. What are animals’ minds like, according to most contemporary scientists and philosophers? What kind of mental states do (any) animals have, e.g., beliefs, desires, memory, reasoning, planning, expectations for the future, self-awareness, emotions, etc.? Summarize the research, focusing on different mental states for different species or kinds of animals, if appropriate.

9. How would one know or reasonably believe some claim about the mental states of animals? Explain what kind of reasoning processes and evidence philosophers, scientists and “ordinary people” appeal to when they argue that animals have minds.

10. What is it to “harm” someone? Can (any) animals be harmed? If so, which kinds of animals? How can they be harmed? Explain and defend your answers.

Of course, always feel free to raise any other questions, observations, criticisms and any other responses to the week’s readings and issues.

Papers start week 3.

Week 3: In Defense of Animals: Some Moral Arguments

Overview:

This week we will survey the most influential “theories of animal ethics,” i.e., general theories that attempt to explain the nature and extent of our moral obligations toward animals, which have been used to argue in defense of animals. As we will see, these theories are often extensions or developments of the moral theories that have been developed to explain how humans ought to treat other human beings. These thinkers often argue that the moral theory (or theories) that best explain the nature and extent of our moral obligations to human beings (especially vulnerable ones, such as babies, children, the mentally challenged, the elderly, and so on) have positive implications for many animals as well. Thus, they often argue that there are no relevant differences between the kinds of cases to justify protecting human beings but allowing serious harms to animals and, therefore, animals are due moral protections comparable to at least those given to comparably-conscious, aware, sentient human beings.

General Theories and Particular Cases

This week will get an initial presentation of three of the most influential methods of moral thinking for human to human interactions that have been extended to apply to human to animal interactions, i.e., how humans ought to treat non-human animals.

These perspectives are, first, a demand for equality or equal moral consideration of interests (developed by Peter Singer; however he sometimes describes his ethical theory as a form of utilitarianism, although his book Animal Liberation does not presuppose it); second, a demand for respect of the moral right to respectful treatment (developed by Tom Regan); and, third, a demand that moral decisions be made fairly and impartially and the use of a novel thought experiment designed to ensure this (developed by Mark Rowlands, following John Rawls, the most influential political philosopher of the twentieth century).

We want to try to focus on these theories in themselves and their implications for animals “in general,” without so much focus on what they imply for particular uses of animals, e.g., for food, fashion experimentation, entertainment, and other purposes. This attempt to make things a bit more abstract and general might seem forced, and we will surely understand the theories more deeply more when we see them applied to particular cases. Nevertheless, we want to try to evaluate these theories as true or false, well-supported or not, on their own terms.

Arguments from Paradigm Cases: Inference to the Best Moral Explanation

Earlier we saw that scientists (and philosophers) sometimes use a pattern of reasoning known as inference to the best explanation to explain non-moral phenomena, e.g., the existence of minds. Ethicists use this form of reasoning also, although what is usually being explained is some clear moral intuition, or a moral judgment that nearly everyone agrees on (and seemingly for good reason). Again, the pattern is something like this:

A moral judgment – J – seems true, and what makes it true requires explanation.
Moral explanation or hypothesis T best explains the truth of J (i.e., T is a better explanation than other candidate explanations in that it makes sense of more of the data/observations/similar moral intuitions, allows us to make other moral judgments (thus enabling a kind of prediction, perhaps), is simpler, fits with pre-existing knowledge, etc. )
Therefore, probably T, and what’s entailed by T, are true.

Singer seems to use this pattern of reasoning, starting with the widely accepted moral judgments that racism and sexism (and other prejudices) are wrong. He gives an analysis of what racism and sexism are – they are not easy to define – and gives an explanation for why they are wrong, arguing that this explanation is a better explanation than some rival explanations. He then argues that this explanation, which appeals to the principle of equality of consideration of interests, has positive implications for animals. Since many animals have interests, the prejudice t<