SE - Animal Issues Flashcards
Situation ethics - teleological
Situation Ethics is a teleological theory so it believes the rightness of an act isdetermined by its end.Moral goodness is rooted in theconsequences of our actions.
In Fletcher’s system, the idea that morality is relative tothe situation.
Weshould avoid words like’always’, ‘never’ and ‘perfect’.
Jesus’ agapeic love’relatives theabsolute, does not absolute therelative.’
Fletcher + SE
-not always easy to see where the theory takes us.
-issue is that of ‘personalism’. By definition, Fletcher’s situation ethics is concerned with persons.
-Agape love in the Bible is also primarily concerned with persons.
-This does not mean that animal interests will be of no concern in SE but it does mean that generally human interests will be put first.
-Many who do agree with SE do see animals as being included in God’s love.
-Agape love is inclusive rather than exclusive, and there is no intrinsic reason why it should not apply to animals as objects of human care.
-in life and death situations, most situation ethicists would put human life before animal life.
(own interpretations of how agape love might be applied to particular situations regarding animals.)
Fletcher quote
“We are always commanded to act lovingly, but how we do it depends on our own responsible estimate of the situation”.
Situation Ethics
Intensive farming
Fletcher asks us to make agapeic calculations
- What end to we see and what means do we use to obtain them?
- What motive is behind our act?
- What are the foreseeable consequences?
The use of animals as food would seem to be a habit as old as humanity itself.
Hunting for food went on for thousands of years before the development of agriculture.
Some may argue the human digestive system is adapted to eating meat, so it would seem natural for humans to use animals as food.
relativistic ethic, situation ethics might argue that it depends on the situation since no actions are intrinsically right or wrong.
Even cannibalism could be justified as loving in certain circumstances, so meat eating is not intrinsically wrong.
differing views about whether animals are deserving of agape, but the principle of personalism implies that the needs of people would override any suffering of animals in this situation (personalism).
Two main factors affection SE view on intensive farming
- First, the introduction of intensive farming of animals means that ‘hunting animals for food’ has changed to ‘exploiting animals for food’, since the methods used in factory farming are almost universally exploitative, cruel and unjust.
- Further, the mechanisation of agriculture has contributed to a huge population increase globally.
What do the two factors mean?
-These two factors are mutually reinforcing, since continual population growth fuels the need for intensive farming, so the cruelty to animals increases on a massive scale.
-Current estimates are that about 795 people million globally are undernourished, having insufficient food to lead an active and healthy life. This is particularly true in less economically developed countries, where around 12.9% of the population is undernourished.
-Some who follow situation ethics would argue that the most loving thing to do in this global situation is to increase intensive animal farming and the mechanisation of agriculture, since this puts persons first. They might argue that the spectacle of starving children is worse than the practice of intensive animal farming.
-However, other situation ethicists could argue that this is not loving, because the calculations maximise misery rather than love, and look for short-term rather than long-term solutions to the problem.
However, with many people already starving, if meat is not produced there will be many deaths in the short term and therefore improvements in the mass-production of animals and use of resulting waste products could be more loving options.
Fletcher cloning
-Fletcher himself was involved in cloning research and had clear views on bio-ethics.
-he advocated the use of animals in scientific procedures as the means to the end of human welfare, and as a pragmatic way of saving human lives by the development of vaccines for the major diseases that cause so much human suffering.
-Animal testing is used to test vaccines so that, when used on humans, they do not make the injected patient ill due to a fault in the biological engineering of the vaccine. If we say that the human welfare is the end, and we look at the animals as the means to that end, then it provides a clear justification that animal testing is for the greater good of the human race.
Surveys
Various surveys in the UK show a fairly steady support for the use of animals in scientific experiments (80%) for developing cures for major diseases such as diabetes, HIV / AIDS, cancer, coronary artery disease and stroke.
-Some people at the same time stress the need for the adequate control of pain for the animals concerned.
-Most people who support SE would probably agree with both these points as the most practical, effective and agapeic ways of addressing the general problems of human diseases.
Xenotransplantation - SE
Fletcher’s SE is directed at persons. For most people animals do not qualify as persons in the strict sense, although for others they do. Individual agapeistic judgements need to be made
Counter claim - peter singer
-Who is to be helped?” is an important question for Fletcher. In this instance all those people requiring organs. Human persons are in need.
-agapeic calculus here needs to be future-looking, since the technology does not yet exist in usable form.
-The most likely donors are pigs (body organs are a similar size) and pigs are readily available (whereas chimpanzees are an endangered species). The calculus would also have to consider the possibility of transmitting infections from donor to recipient. There is risk but Fletcher says there always is with ethical considerations.
-Some situation ethicists will of course insist that as beings with social and cognitive functions, other animals qualify as persons, so donors should be dead or consenting humans. That does not solve the problem, since there will probably never be sufficient human donor organs available to meet demand although countries are changing their donation policies to ‘opt-out’ as opposed to ‘opt-in’. Humans could be the only pragmatic source of human organs.
Blood sports
-It is likely that most situation ethicists would not put the interests of humans before those of animal species in cases where human pleasures are gained at the expense of animal pain and suffering. Limitations on blood sports have been enacted in many parts of the world.
-In particular, the nature of the human pleasure can be said to degrade those who take part in blood sports, for example, because it may damage the character, perhaps lead to other forms of violence, and desensitises people into allowing people to inflict pain for pleasure.
-There is arguably nothing agapeic about blood sports. This quotation comes in various forms, but Oscar Wilde described the occupation of the English country gentleman galloping after a fox as. ‘the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible’. Its ban in England, Wales and Scotland would appear to support the view that fox-hunting is unethical.
Counterargument BS
A situation ethicist probably could construct a case that fox-hunting is agapeic. Foxes repeatedly do great damage to stocks of chicken and lamb. It is also less unloving than factory farming and it could be argued it preserves the environment. However, this is questionable, due to the savage and cruel nature of the ‘game’, where animals can be ripped apart.
Counterargument cloning
Some argue, however, that it can never be loving to subject an animal to the kinds of test experimentation requires. Moreover, although it is claimed that pain controls for animals are extensive, this is often disputed. Here is one of the comments from the PETA (UK) website:
“For example, mice had tubes inserted into their brains, then were subjected to major organ damage and surgical mutilation, starved and deprived of water for days, and forced to run on treadmills to avoid electric shocks. When no longer needed, animals were killed using disturbing methods such as carbon dioxide poisoning in gas chambers or decapitation of infant rats with scissors.” (PETA)
Counterclaim - intensive farming
-In a situation in which the human need for food could be met by vegetarianism, the suffering of animals used for food would need justifying. It is not intuitively loving to kill an animal if it is not necessary to do so. The provision of animals for food presently often involves mass production of animals (factory farming); the consequences of this for human welfare may be considered harmful and so unloving.
-For example, it leads to increased populations which in turn creates a greater demand for meat – this is an unsustainable vicious cycle; also, pollution increases with meat production.
-The fact is the meat industry contributes to human starvation, since, for example cattle consume around fifteen times more grain than they can produce as meat and it could be seen as more loving to abandon intensive animal farming, in search for more productive methods. Factory farming of animals should therefore be abandoned in favour of the production of crops.
-new technologies should be developed for growing meat in laboratories, where the meat does not come from any kind of animal. Solutions such as these are pragmatic and treat animals as objects of loving concern.
