VE - Anima Issues l Flashcards
Aristotle and animal rights
Animals do not have the same rights as humans as they are beneath them in the hierarchy.
Humans are the only rational beings who are capable of understanding morality.
The purpose of animals is to be used by humans to help them reach eudaimonia.
Only humans can reach eudaimonia – animals do not have the same “telos” as humans.
Aristotle and VE
-Aristotle is of course the source of Aquinas’ hierarchy of souls in which plants are for animal use and animals for human use. Cows eat grass and humans eat cows.
-There were no factory farms in Aristotle’s times and no scientific procedures in the modern sense, but Aristotle did dissect animals as part of his own investigations into animal behaviour.
-As we said about Aquinas, this hierarchical approach has dominated European thinking for a long time – in the case of Aristotle for more than 2,300 years.
-His whole approach to animals is based on his teleological view that all things have a final end – a reason which governs their existence, what they do and what they can achieve.
Species? Does VE subscribe?
Many modern ethicists would argue that Virtue Ethics does not subscribe to speciesism and that animals should be treated in the same way that people are treated. This is because being virtuous applies to every action, not just those undertaken against humans.
Can we justify discrimination against non human animals?
-Because of the way virtue ethics conceives of ethical thinking, it would be difficult to use it to justify discrimination against nonhuman animals.
-After all, any plausible virtue ethic will consider cruelty and indifference to the suffering of others to be vices.
-Likewise, it will consider compassion, kindness, and sensitivity to be important virtues. Virtue ethicists could argue that humans’ typical treatment of animals, such asanimal exploitation, exhibits serious vices of character.
Intensive farming
-Given Aristotle’s hierarchy of souls he would have had no problem with humans eating meat since animals exist for the sake of humans.
-In a modern context, however, it is not clear how Aristotle would have reacted to the methods of intensive animal farming.
-factory farmed chickens.
-This is only one small part of the mass of animal suffering caused by intensive farming. The sum-total is unimaginably
Example of factory farmed chickens
-These unfortunate animals live in crowded and filthy conditions.
-It is estimated that around 60% of chickens are produced in industrial systems, in some of which they are fed drugs to encourage abnormal growth.
-They can become so heavy that their legs break; they live in their own filth, unable to turn around; the overcrowding makes them aggressive, so many have untreated body sores.
-Male chicks cannot produce eggs so are useless to the egg industry, so a common treatment is that they are thrown into trash bags and left to suffocate, or else they are ground up alive.
Compassion - Intensive Farming
-perhaps the main virtue we need to consider is that of compassion.
-Compassion cannot be compartmentalised so that we talk about compassion just for humans: you are either a compassionate person or you are not.
-If you are, then compassion must apply to all animals, human and non-human. Factory farming of animals is not even remotely compassionate.
Counterclaim - Intensive Farming
-We might reply that the virtues must be directed towards persons, and not towards animals, but again, if Aristotle were to be brought back to life and given a tour of the conditions under which factory-farmed animals live, what could he point to in such conditions that could lead a person to develop a virtuous character?
-If these are the conditions human’s subject animals to, could it lead humans to the cruel treatment of other human beings?
Cloning
-Aristotle himself used animals in his own scientific research, so quite clearly he would regard such procedures as compatible with a virtuous character.
-Aristotle insisted that the highest thing in us is reason, that is, our intelligence – our intellect Ethi – we use our intelligence to do science, to discover what the world is really like, and there can be no achievement of reason greater than that. Using animals in scientific procedures extends our intellect and increase knowledge, and so is virtuous on that level.
-benefits of scientific research include the ability to develop drugs and medicines to control diseases such as HIV/AIDS and cancer. The same is true with animal cloning, which has the potential for controlling specific diseases and conditions in animals, thereby improving animal health.
Counterclaim - cloning
-However, one of the biggest objections to using animals for scientific experiments is that animal pain is not always properly controlled, primarily because some researchers do not care about the suffering of the animals.
-Some argue the very fact of using animals in this way can lead researchers to be cruel.
-At the very least, then, a person of good character would insist upon the control of pain by anaesthetics, since this would be the minimum requirement of the compassion that should be felt for animal suffering as well as for the humans who benefit from the research.
Other VE - cloning
-Other virtue ethicists would object that the use of animals in scientific research is not compassionate at all.
-It is obviously done without the consent of the animals; there is no regulation to avoid experiments being duplicated in different parts of the world; and there are now a number of alternative technologies that are at least as effective as the use of research animals.
Rosalind Hursthouse
-Rosalind Hursthouse argues that the experiments on other animals are generally not necessary: the benefits of these experiments are out of proportion to the suffering they cause:
“Just as the exercise of virtues such as charity, generosity, justice, and the quasi virtue of friendship, necessarily involve not focusing on oneself and one’s virtue but on the rights, interests, and good of other human beings, so the exercise of compassion and the avoidance of a number of vices, involves focusing on the good of the other animals as something worth pursuing, preserving, protecting, and so on.”
Organ transplantation
Most of the arguments concerning the use of animals in scientific experiments apply also to the use of animals as a source of organs for transplants:
-Aristotle’s approval of scientific research.
-His emphasis on the development of useful knowledge.
-The compassion shown to humans who might survive through organ transplants.
-The callousness to animals by judging that their lives are expendable.
-The callousness shown towards those in society who are distressed at the prospect of using animals in this way.
Blood Sports
-It would be difficult to find convincing arguments against blood sports in Aristotle’s writings, since hunting was a common Greek pastime and was a source of food.
-In terms of the modern debate, hunting animals in public will upset and offend some people, as is the case with fox-hunting, where the general disquiet about hunting foxes has led to a ban on the practice in England, Scotland and Wales.
-Some people judge a by his or her treatment of animals, for example, in terms of the consideration shown to animals that cannot defend themselves. Participation in blood sports suggests to some a lack of consideration for humans as well as for animals.
-Some might appeal to the virtue of temperance, arguing that experiencing pleasure at the expense of other beings is not conducive to developing a good character.
Rosalind Hursthouse - Blood Sports
Rosalind Hursthouse argues that blood sports show the vice of ‘callousness’.
