The Moral Equality of Humans and Animals

Mark H Bernstein

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137315250
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Received opinion has it that humans are morally superior to non-human animals; human interests matter more than the like interests of animals and the value of human lives is alleged to be greater than the value of nonhuman animal lives. Since this belief causes mayhem and murder, its de-mythologizing requires urgent attention.

1

On the Relative Unimportance of Human Interests

1.1 Setting the stage

Ordinary thought includes the evaluation that humans are more worthy than nonhuman animals. Perhaps at the very margins of humanity and animality exceptions loom, and so we can allow that our commonsense judgments have room for permitting that in very extreme cases – say in the case of the human being Hitler and the animal being a good-natured, clever chimpanzee – the usual hierarchy between human and animal significance gets reversed. For the time being, let us bracket these possible outliers, and concentrate on what is undoubtedly accepted as folk wisdom: humans morally matter more than animals.

What makes me so certain that, as a matter of course, we think of humans mattering more than animals? In part, simply because this is the dominant answer that I have received when asking thousands of students – and quite a few non-academics – which of these two groups matter more. More significantly, we consistently allude to this hierarchy in justifying many of our common practices. Some 11 billion animals are annually killed in factory farms in the US; no humans are similarly used. Several hundred million animals are annually hunted in the US; no humans are similarly exploited. Vast numbers of animals (precise statistics are impossible to come by since the accounting procedure is, shall we say, lax) are tortured and murdered in animal experiments; no humans are so treated. Virtually without exception, when apologists of these institutions are queried for their warrant to exclusively use animals in these circumstances, the answer is some variant of the idea that humans are morally more important creatures than nonhuman animals. We are told that humans matter more, and that this disparity between the significance of humans and animals morally underwrites practices that virtually everyone would find abominable if nonhuman animals mattered as much as humans.

What do we mean when we assert that humans matter more than animals? My experience suggests that this terrain is exhausted by two claims. First, people tend to explicate the difference of moral significance between humans and animals in terms of the difference between the consideration (concern, care, or attention) that human interests and animal interests deserve. So, as a first pass, consider Jack and Wulfie both in pain, and sharing an equal interest in having their respective pains alleviated. To claim that humans matter more than animals is to say that, all else being equal, or special circumstances aside, Jack’s interest in having his pain relieved deserves privileged consideration relative to Wulfie’s interest in having his pain mitigated. Second, people tend to explicate the disparity between how much humans and animals matter in terms of the difference between the value of human and animal lives. So, to say that humans matter more than animals is to say that human lives are more valuable than animal lives, or that humans are more valuable creatures than animals. As a first pass, consider a situation in which only Jack or Wulfie can be saved from death. If all else is equal, to claim that Jack’s life is more valuable than Wulfie’s is to say that one ought to save Jack rather than Wulfie in these very stylized and orchestrated circumstances.

Codifying these two claims a bit more formally with, I hope, minimal corruption of their ordinary intent, we have, respectively, the considerability of interests principle (CI) and the value of life principle (VL).

(CI) The interests of humans deserve (are worthy of, merit, warrant, justify) preferential consideration relative to the similar interests of (nonhuman) animals.

(VL) The lives of humans are more valuable than the lives of (nonhuman) animals.

Let us refer to the conjunction of (CI) and (VL) as the human superiority thesis (HST). I believe that (HST) is doubly false; both (CI) and (VL) are false or, somewhat more cautiously, that we have good reasons for thinking both of them false. I remain sufficiently optimistic (naïve?) to believe that in the real world a convincing case against both (CI) and (VL) would have enormous implications. Here is a preliminary test of my faith. Ask a carnivorous friend if she would forsake factory-farmed products if she firmly believed that animal interests and animal lives were (at least) as significant (where this significance is cashed-out by (CI) and (VL)) as human interests and human lives. Or ask a self-described rational hunter if he would abdicate his early morning activity if he were convinced in the falsity of (CI) and (VL). Or, finally, ask your local college vivisector if she would end her invasive animal procedures if she came to be persuaded that neither (CI) nor (VL) is true. My hope is that answers in the affirmative would follow all of these questions, and that such answers are solid indicators that a persuasive case against (HST) really would motivate changes in behavior.

While it may be obvious that the notions of interests, preferential concern and the value of life require elucidation, the very idea of being human (as well as its ‘trouser’ concept of being nonhuman) probably requires most attention. The difficulty arises from the frequent equivocation of the use of the term by both laypersons and professional philosophers. Perhaps in the most natural understanding of ‘human’, the term refers to a particular species; ‘human’ is synonymous with ‘homo sapien’. To be labeled a human, in this sense, is an exercise in biological taxonomy. Since species identity is determined or fixed by DNA structure, assuming a one-to-one correspondence between DNA structure and species identity, and allowing ‘H’ to denote the DNA structure that determines membership in the species homo sapien, we may claim that necessarily all and only humans have DNA H.

While I intend nothing controversial by what I take as little more than reporting about a commonsense usage of ‘human’, there are tricky cases of categorization. Should we think of human corpses as human (i.e., are the dead bodies of members of the species homo sapien, homo sapiens?) or is it more accurate to speak of these corpses as (merely) remains of humans? Are chimeras – individuals created from some human and nonhuman genetic material – partly human and partly nonhuman, or are they individuals of some newly inaugurated species? These issues are probably verbal (which is not to say unimportant) and so portend no substantive difficulties, but in any case we will bracket discussion of these gray areas. Our uncertainty about classifying some individuals should not shake our confidence about the species membership of others. Under the fairly safe assumption that you are a product of a human mother and father (and not, say, a product of a human mother and Martian father), I am certain that you were born human. I am equally certain that Wulfie is not human but a member of the canis lupus species; he is a dog, an individual who, although sharing the animal kingdom with humans, is a member of a different species which itself is defined in terms of nonhuman DNA D.

I here leave it as an open question whether an individual can alter its species identity over time. At one time, received opinion had it that human sexual identity was an essential feature of all humans; if Sam were born a male, he could not remain a human and exist as a female, and if Samantha were born a female, she could not remain a human and exist as a male. We now know that we were wrong, and that one can continue to exist as the same human individual through changes of sexual identity. Sam maintains his (human) identity even after his trip to Denmark (although Sam may now, after becoming a female, may opt to go by the name ‘Samantha’). Perhaps, in similar fashion, Jack can maintain his individual identity during a species-altering operation when he becomes a dog; perhaps Wulfie remains Wulfie even in becoming a human. For all I know, Kafka’s Gregor Samsa prefigures some strange new world. But whether or not these (currently) science-fiction scenarios can be exemplified in the real world, the biological conception of species identity endures; one’s species membership at any particular time is uniquely determined by the individual’s DNA sequence at that time.

We can index both (CI) and (VL) to this ‘species’ sense of ‘human’, the sense where ‘human’ and ‘homo sapien’ are synonyms, just by making the point explicitly.

(CIS) The interests of humans (i.e., homo sapiens) deserve (are worthy of, merit, warrant, justify) preferential consideration relative to the similar interests of (nonhuman) animals (i.e., non homo sapiens).

(VLS) The lives of humans (i.e., homo sapiens) are more valuable than the lives of (nonhuman) animals (i.e., non homo sapiens).

Compare this ‘species’ conception of human with a second, perhaps less common but by no means unique reading that we may call the ‘kind of life’ or ‘person’ understanding of ‘human’. To characterize someone as human in this sense is to refer to a kind of life that an individual is currently leading, where this kind of life is associated with the kind of life typically and normally led by adult humans. We employ this ‘person’ conception when we speak of someone who suffers from severe Alzheimer’s disease as not being human anymore. In describing someone in this way, we aren’t denying that he is still a human in the species sense – it isn’t as if we have come to believe that he no longer has DNA H and so is no longer a member of the species homo sapien – but rather are saying something along the lines that he no longer lives the kind of life that we think of as both typical and normal for an adult homo sapien. Imagining our homo sapien as being no longer able to reason, remember what he had for breakfast just a few hours ago, or recognize his own parents and children provides us with a situation in which the withholding of the appellation ‘human’ makes perfect sense.

Just as a member of the human species may not live the ‘person’ kind of life, it is at least conceivable that an individual who is not a homo sapien lead a ‘person’ kind of life. At least if we identify the ‘person’ kind of life with cognitive or psychological capacities, there is no reason to rule out, a priori, that some nonhuman animals either actually already lead such lives – perhaps some of the other great apes or dolphins – or in certain circumstances under particular conditions could be justifiably characterized as leading the ‘person’ kind of life. This characterization is not an exact science; in ordinary parlance, ‘the person kind of life’ does not refer to a stable set of dispositions awaiting our discovery, but rather speaks to a fluid group of capabilities. Vague as the categorization is, we can call those individuals, regardless of species membership, who lead lives of persons, ‘persons’. We can understand both (CI) and (VL), then, as referring to persons. Let’s make this indexing to a kind of life rather than a species identity explicit.

(CIP) The interests of persons deserve (are worthy of, merit, warrant, justify) preferential consideration relative to the similar interests of (nonperson) animals.

(VLP) The lives of persons are more valuable than the lives of (nonpersonal) animals.

A bit more of the distinction between these two ways of indexing (‘relativizing’) of (CI) and (VL) will later be made, but for our present purposes we need only be alert to the fact that these two ways that are frequently used to express (HST) should not be conflated. As long as we are clear whether by ‘humans’ we are referring to a members of a particular species or are referring to persons (i.e., those who are identified in terms of living a particular kind of life), we should be able to evade verbal pitfalls.

1.2 What do we mean when we say that human interests are more significant than animal interests?

The notions of ‘interests’, ‘similar interests’, and ‘(deserving) preferential consideration’ are essential ideas in (CI), and any articulation of these concepts must satisfy one substantive restraint. Since I understand (HST) as a thesis that is implicitly, if not explicitly, held by most people, it would be confusing, at best, were I to begin an investigation of (CI) with a technical – and so non-ordinary – explication of its central lexicon. ‘Interests’ and ‘preferential consideration’ are largely terms of ordinary language, and although philosophers are entitled to sharpen our common concepts, they need to exercise caution to avoid precisifying a part of our everyday idiom into unrecognizable bits of jargon. At the end of the day, then, my accounts of the key vocabulary implemented by (CI) had better cohere quite closely with our pre-philosophical understanding of what these words mean. I have failed if after my ‘conceptual analysis’ many of those who accept (CI) have the following reaction: ‘Well, if that’s how you understand “interests” and “preferential consideration” [i.e., ‘if that’s the meanings you assign to “interests” and “preferential consideration”’], then, of course, I agree that (CI) is false. But my acceptance of (CI), and the acceptance of (virtually) all of us who endorse (CI) relies on different – and we insist the ordinary – ways of explicating these key terms’. My failure still may be instructive; it may yet be interesting to discover that assigning certain meanings that aren’t too far removed from the attribution assigned by ordinary language to ‘interests’ and ‘preferential consideration’ results in a consensus to reject (CI). Nevertheless, this possibility provides little solace, for the fact would remain that I have not engaged the real issue. At best, I would have achieved some marginally interesting feat without giving any reasons for anyone to change their assessments of the relative significance of human and animal interests.

I use ‘interests’ as we use it in the common expressions, ‘exercising daily is in Stacy’s interests’ and ‘eating 3 pounds of meat per week is opposed to Stacy’s interests’. The former can be paraphrased as ‘exercising daily enhances Stacy’s welfare (or well-being)’ and the latter paraphrased as ‘eating 3 pounds of meat weekly diminishes Stacy’s welfare (or well-being)’. In common parlance, what is in one’s interests is what is good for that individual. What is in one’s interests improves one’s welfare; one is made better off (advantaged, benefited) in having one’s interests satisfied. What is opposed to one’s interests is what is bad for that individual. What is opposed to one’s interests diminishes one’s welfare; one is made worse off (disadvantaged, harmed) when one’s interests are opposed.

We can, and should, remain neutral regarding any substantive account of interests; my remarks about interests are intended to allow for various theories to speak to the kinds of items that can be good or bad for an individual. To get a firmer grip on this, it is worth briefly reviewing the three theories of interests that dominate the philosophical landscape. Mental-state or experientialist theories situate well-being in the mental states of individuals. Roughly, one is doing well to the extent that one undergoes pleasant and satisfying experiences. Three colloquialisms capture the gist of mental-state accounts; ‘you are doing as well as you think you are’, ‘it [i.e., your well-being] is all in your head’, and ‘what you don’t know can’t hurt you’.

Desire or preference theories of well-being locate welfare in the satisfaction or fulfillment of individuals’ significant desires; one is doing well to the extent that the desires that are of greatest importance to an individual are satisfied. The significant difference between mental-state and desire theories can be gleaned by considering the case of Jones who desires that his son have a happy marriage. As it turns out, his son does have a wonderful marriage but, unfortunately, Jones never becomes aware of this. On the desire theory, Jones’s welfare is improved, for one of his most important desires has been satisfied. On mental-state theories, however, since Jones never becomes aware of his son’s marriage and so never experiences any feelings of pleasure or satisfaction from his son’s marriage, his welfare remains unchanged.

Finally, there are perfectionist or objective-list theories that claim that an individual’s well-being is a matter of exemplifying a particular list of perfections or ‘objectively valuable’ properties. What qualities belong on this list – what qualities are perfections – vary among proponents of this account, but a representative list may include courage, wisdom, honor, and magnanimity. The simplest way to discern the uniqueness of objective-list theorists is to imagine some property on a list – and so a property, the possession of which to perfectionist lights makes one better off – that is neither experienced nor the object of the individual’s desire. We can imagine Sue who receives no feelings of pleasure or satisfaction from the fact that she is courageous, and does not desire to be courageous, and yet, as life turns out, is very brave. In such a case, only the objective-list theorist would judge Sue as having an improved welfare than she would have had, had her life contained no bravery.

For our purposes, both apologists and critics of (CI) assume not only that humans and nonhuman animals have interests, but that they are, oftentimes, commensurable; interests can frequently be measured against each other, in the sense that, on many occasions, we can confidently assess that a human (animal) has a greater interest in X than an animal (human) has in X, or even that a human (animal) has a greater interest in X than an animal (human) has in Y.¹ In the same way that it is intelligible to compare the seriousness (importance, significance) of interests of different humans (or, indeed, of comparing the seriousness of different interests relative to the same human), both parties to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  On the Relative Unimportance of Human Interests
• 2  On the Relative Unimportance of Human Life
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index