The Ethical Dilemma Flashcards
What is the Contractarian view?
The basic contractarian idea is that ethical obligations originate in mutual agreements or contracts between people. Animals neither create nor have moral duties. We, however, may have indirect ethical obligations towards animals, because they can matter to other humans. If you have agreed with a family that you will look after their cat while they visit relatives in Canada, you should do just that. Hence, the cat is indirectly protected by your agreement.
What is the Utilitarian View?
Activities which have an adverse impact on the well-being of animals may be justified if, all things considered, they lead to a net increase in welfare (for humans or other animals). Killing animals (e.g. for food) may be justified if the farming conditions are not detrimental to animal welfare and the killing is humanely performed.
What is the Relational View?
The relational view is really a group of associated views. What these views have in common is an emphasis on the ethical importance of relationships between animals and human beings, and between and among humans.
In one view, our duties to animals depend on whether they are close to us or not. So we have special duties to domestic animals because they are in our care, although generally speaking we do not have duties to wild animals.
Another view focuses on the way in which our treatment of animals might affect our treatment of humans. Thus treating an animal badly is wrong because it reflects a moral attitude that may lead a person to treat humans badly as well.
What is the Animal Rights View?
Defenders of animal rights believe that fixed ethical rules place limits on our treatment of animals: there are some things that we are not permitted to do to an animal whatever the circumstances. This idea, of a non-negotiable prohibition, is what people are getting at when they talk about “animal rights”.
It is one thing to say that animals have rights, and another to say what these rights are. This means that the animal rights view comes in more or less radical forms.
What is the Respect for Nature view?
Advocates of respect for nature believe that we have a duty to protect not just individual animals, but the species to which they belong – and, in particular, the integrity of each species.
For those who hold this view, the problem, when a species becomes extinct, is not just that there is a loss of resources or reduction in recreational opportunities. It is that the species in itself is of value, and it no longer exists.
Again, because the preservation of species is in itself morally good, we should respect nature and its rich genetic structures. We should not genetically modify species, since that involves disrespectful interference.
A similar view can, of course, be taken about more established ways of interfering with the nature of animals, including traditional selective breeding.
