Non-Anthropocentrist Environmental Ethics: Notes on Singer's "All Animals Are Equal"

Notes on Peter Singer’s “All Animals are Equal”

Preliminary stuff: Peter Singer is a NAP (non-anthropocentrist). Therefore, he believes that other things besides humans are also worthy of direct moral consideration. In Singer’s case, these other things are (all) sentient creatures.


Brief summary: An exploration of the proper basis of equality among humans leads to the conclusion that animals, as well as humans, are deserving of “equal consideration of interests”.


Basic progression of the paper:

Historically popular reasons given for why women, and members of all races in general, should be treated equally to men, but animals should not:

-Reason 1: They all share at least one or more (putatively significant) trait that animals do not (e.g., they are all capable of making rational decisions). Therefore, men and women should be treated equally, while animals should not.
-Notice the key underlying principle: **equal possession of a relevant trait merits equal treatment.**

-Criticism 1: Granted, men and women have many traits in common, and that animals do not share some of these traits that are shared between men and women. It is also granted that this is a legitimate basis for some differences in treatment (except for some special cases. More on that later). However, this doesn’t support a basis for not treating animals and humans equally.
-There are also differences between men and women. This provides reason to think that these differences should ground differences in (some) rights between men and women. (E.g., women can bear children, while men cannot. So, women will have rights pertaining to reproduction that don’t apply to men).
-Therefore, the equal sharing of a trait doesn’t ground (i) equal treatment in every respect; nor does it ground (ii) equal rights.
-But if not, then it can’t justify the proposal that men and women should be treated equally, but animals should not.

-By the way, what does the equal sharing of a trait justify?
-Answer: equal consideration of interests.
-But “equal consideration for different beings may lead to different treatment and different rights.” (. 475)

Criticism 2: There is no trait by which every individual human is equal to every other (e.g., intellectual ability, moral capacities, capacity to experience pleasure or pain, etc.). But if not, then if we follow this particular argument for equality, we should conclude that humans aren’t deserving of equal consideration, which is absurd.

Reason 2: (Revision of reason 1) While each individual member of the human species does not equally share a relevant trait, each race and sex does equally share such traits. That is, there is no race or sex, taken as a whole, that has a relevant trait that the others lack, or otherwise fail to share to an equal degree (say that the underlying racial and sexual equality of traits has an underlying genetic basis)

Criticism 1: This reason doesn’t answer the opponent of equality who argues, say, that all and only those who have an IQ greater or equal to 100 should be given equal treatment.

Criticism 2: This is an empirical claim that could turn out to be false. Now suppose that, after careful investigation, it turns out that there isn’t an equal statistical distribution of degree of trait possession across races and sexes. Suppose, further, that this inequality has a genetic basis in the differing races and sexes. By reason 2, we should conclude that the races and sexes aren’t relevantly equal, and are therefore not worthy of equal consideration. But this consequence is absurd.

Criticism 3:
-Preliminaries: normative vs. descriptive facts:

-Descriptive facts are facts about how things are (or are not). E.g., the fact that it is sunny today in Riverside is a descriptive fact about how things are today in Riverside.

By contrast,

-Normative facts are facts about how things should be (or should not be), whether or not they are that way. E.g., the fact that people shouldn’t torture babies for fun is a normative fact about how babies should (or in this case, shouldn’t) be treated. It is not a fact about how babies are treated, nor does it depend upon such facts.

-The “is/ought” fallacy (or the naturalistic fallacy ): This fallacy occurs when someone makes an inference from a descriptive fact to a normative fact. Or, in other words, they make an inference from the way things are to the way things ought to be. E.g., the claim that it’s morally permissible to be unduly selfish (the normative claim) because it’s in our nature to be selfish (the descriptive claim) is an instance of the “is/ought” fallacy.

-Back to the criticism: The principle of equality is a moral fact about how certain beings should be treated, and all moral facts are normative facts. Furthermore, the claim in reason 2, about genetic equality, is a descriptive fact about how certain beings are. But then the argument for equal consideration based on genetic equality is an instance of the “is/ought” fallacy.

From the preceding point, we see that statements about equality are normative statements about how certain beings should be given equal consideration, and as such, they can’t be grounded in descriptive facts about the abilities of various beings (or kinds/species of beings).
-**So we may now define the principle of equal consideration with precision: “The interests of every being affected by an action are to be taken into account and given the same weight as the like interests of any other being.” (p. 476)**

**We have seen, then, that facts about the lack of certain sorts of abilities in a being cannot be the basis for not giving equal consideration to the interests of that being.**

**But if not, then we have no justification for ignoring the interests of animals.**

A key implication of the preceding: Speciesism is morally wrong.
-Speciesism is “a prejudice or attitude or bias toward the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species.” (p. 276)
-The basis of the wrongness of Speciesism is the same as that of racism and sexism, viz., excluding members of a biological group on the basis of the lack of some trait. For we have seen that all such trait-based prejudices are untenable.

Currently (and throughout most of history), most people are speciesists. This is immoral, and must therefore stop!

Jeremy Bentham saw that the principle of equal consideration of interests entailed that all animals are worthy of equal consideration. He also saw the true basis of determining whether a being should be given such consideration. The basis is this: **having the capacity for suffering and/or enjoyment.**

So, a being is worthy of equal consideration of interests if, and only if, it has the capacity for suffering and/or enjoyment.

Why this criterion isn’t arbitrary and unjustified, like the other criteria of trait-possession: Because
-(i) the principle of equal consideration is about fairly considering the interests of certain sorts of beings.
-(ii) But the capacity for suffering and/or pleasure is a necessary prerequisite for having interests at all.
-It doesn’t make sense to say that non-sentient beings (like dirt and rocks) have “interests”.
-By the very nature of the case, it is in the interest of every sentient being that it experience enjoyment and avoid suffering.
-To be capable of suffering and/or enjoyment just is to have interests; or at least that is the most basic level of having interests. It’s the “threshold” for having interests.

An objection from speciesists: Animals are not sentient (i.e., they aren’t conscious). Rather, they are unconscious automata. Therefore, they are incapable of experiencing suffering and/or enjoyment. But if so, then they aren’t worthy of equal consideration of interests. We may therefore treat them as we wish.

Reply 1: Common sense tells us that animals suffer. Obviously, if I “stick a sharp knife into the stomach of a dog, the dog will feel pain.” (p. 478)

Reply 2: The basis for our belief that animals can experience pain is the same as the basis for our belief that other people experience pain: we infer it from their behavior.
-Of course, it’s logically possible that they don’t feel pain, since it’s an inference from behavior to pain states (we can’t “look inside their heads”, as it were, and “see” what they’re experiencing, after all!).

-But so what!! This is equally true of other humans. We can’t look inside their minds to see what they’re experiencing . Rather, we have to infer the existence and nature of their experiences, based on observation of their behavior. So if we deny that animals have pain (because we can’t see what they’re experiencing directly), despite certain sorts of (putative) pain behavior (howling, wincing, increased heart rate, etc.), then we have to deny that other people have experiences on the same basis.

Reply 3: The physiology of animals is remarkably similar to that of humans. So, since the latter provides the underlying physical basis for human pain, it is highly probable that the former provides the underlying physical basis for animal pain.

Objection: human brains are much more complex than animal brains. Perhaps this increase in complexity is required for conscious experience. If this is right, then since animals don’t have similarly complex brains, we might conclude that they aren’t conscious, and so they can’t experience pain and/or pleasure.

Reply: No. The underlying physical basis for “impulses, emotions, and feelings are located in the diencephalon, which is well-developed in many other species of animals, especially mammals and birds.” (p. 478). The extra complexity of human brains provides the underlying physical basis for higher forms of thought and reason, not pleasure and pain.

Reply 4: Denying conscious experience violates Ockham’s Razor (i.e., illegitimately postulating more entities than are strictly required to explain the relevant phenomena). For we already know that our own conscious experience is the basis of our own behavior. So, if we say that the (putative) pain behavior of animals is caused by something else besides their conscious experience, then we are multiplying explanations beyond what is strictly required to explain the phenomena of animal behavior.

Objection: Only language-users can experience pain. However, animals can’t use language. Therefore, animals can’t feel pain. There are two versions of this objection:
-1) Ludwig Wittgenstein: one can’t meaningfully attribute conscious states to beings that can’t use language.
-Reply: Maybe language is required for “higher” levels of consciousness (e.g., abstract reasoning and thought), but it’s not necessary in order to feel pain.

-2) The best evidence we can have that a being is in pain is if they tell us. But animals can’t tell us anything, since they can’t use language.
-Reply: (i) the expression of emotion and feeling doesn’t require the capacity for language. All animals and humans best express feeling through certain characteristic bodily behaviors. This is true, for example, for expressing joy, sadness, fear, anger, and so on. (iii) If this objection is taken seriously, then we would have to deny that we have sufficient evidence that human infants can experience pain(!), since they can’t use language, either. But this is absurd.

Sub-conclusion: Therefore, we have no good reason to deny that animals can feel pain. But if not, then the principle of equal consideration applies to them, and so we must give their interests equal consideration.

Note: this does not mean that the interests of humans aren’t normally more important than those of animals. They usually are.
-Normal, healthy adult humans have a much higher capacity for suffering and enjoyment. For example, humans can anticipate when something horrible is about to happen to them. This can lead them to experience intense dread, which is a form of suffering. They can also delight in things by just thinking about them, without being overtly stimulated in any way. Thus, humans frequently experience suffering and enjoyment without being physically harmed or stimulated – and much more frequently than any animal. So, while both the interests of animals and humans always deserve equal consideration, the interests of humans often win out. For the intensity and depth of normal human experience of suffering and enjoyment often surpasses that of animals.

-On the other hand, sometimes the lack of more sophisticated levels of consciousness (which id true of animals)makes suffering worse for them. For example, animals often experience intense dread when they are physically constrained by humans. For they usually can’t tell the difference between being constrained for harmless reasons (say, a wild animal being placed in a traveling container for the purpose of taking it on board an airplane), and being constrained for the purpose of being killed by a predator. But if so, then being constrained can cause them to experience intense dread as well. Since humans can tell the difference between different purposes for constraint, they usually don’t feel such dread when constrained.

Key implication #1 of Singer’s view: From the principle of equal consideration of interests, and from the fact that animals experience suffering (and therefore have interests), it follows that, at least in some cases, the interests of animals will take precedence over the interests of humans.
-E.g., in some cases, where a baby is born with severe mental defects, so that their capacity for suffering and enjoyment are less than, say, a gorilla, the interests of the latter will take precedence over the former.

Key implication # 2 of Singer’s view: On the morality and immorality of killing humans and animals: If we are to avoid being speciesists, then we must abandon the sanctity of life view of humans.
-The sanctity of life view: The view that it is always wrong to take an innocent human life.
-The argument that the sanctity of life view entails Speciesism: Suppose a couple have a child that is born severely retarded, and whose capacity for the conscious experience of suffering and enjoyment is less than, say, a healthy pig (e.g., the infant lacks self-awareness, it is unable to recognize people, etc.). Suppose further that the couple hold to the sanctity of life view, and are therefore unwilling to terminate the infant’s life (suppose that such a thing is legally permissible in such extreme circumstances). Finally, suppose that such people have no hesitation about killing the healthy pig mentioned earlier. Now, again, the pig has a more robust conscious life of suffering and enjoyment than the infant. So, since the only reason why the couple thinks it permissible to kill the pig, but impermissible to kill the infant, is because the latter is a member of the species Homo sapiens, it follows that they are speciesists. So, the sanctity of life view entails Speciesism.