ATS1371, Life, Death and

Morality
Week 7
Reader: sections 3.4-3.6
Linda Barclay

Speciesism
Racists discount the interests of the unfavoured
racial group
Sexists discount the interests of women
Speciesist discount the interests of nonhuman
animals.

Speciesism
Hair colour, genitalia, skin tone, intelligence, are
all irrelevant features that should not affect
whether a persons interests are treated equally

So too, (most) of the biological differences

between human animals and nonhuman
animals are also morally irrelevant.

Speciesism
But do animals have interests?
Sure! An interest in avoiding pain, for example
An interest in life? Defer for the moment

Although maybe not all of the interests that

many human beings have.

A Question
According to the PoE, would it be
a. worse to slap a baby than a horse?
b. worse to slap a horse than a baby?
c. equally to slap the horse as to slap the baby?

PoE and equal treatment again.

PoE does not mean equal treatment
There are numerous ways in which creatures
differ from one another, which affect not only
what interests they have, but the strength of
their interests
Egs: Prisoner of war and captured wild animals

Consequences for common practices

Eating animals
Animal experimentation
(see Singer pps 53-58)

Human and nonhuman animals

If, after weighing the relevant interests, you
think it is morally acceptable to engage in a
certain activity (eg experiment on rats) then
you should be equally prepared to engage in
that same activity with a human being with the
same interests as those of the rat
-eg an infant, or severely cognitively impaired
human being

To the hypothetical question about saving

thousands of people through experiments on
limited number of animals *sic+.would
experimenters be prepared to perform their
experiments on orphaned humans with severe
and irreversible brain damage if that were the
only way to save thousands?...If experimenters
are not prepared [to do this] their readiness to
use nonhuman animals seems to discriminate
on the basis of species alone (Singer p. 57-58)

Killing Animals
Do animals have an interest in continued living?

Recall: this is to ask whether animals are persons

Persons have an interest in continued living,
both because they have such a preference, and
many future-orientated preferences as well

Are Animals Persons?

Much contentious evidence
Read Singer pps 94-104

Again, the charge or speciesism:

we should reject the doctrine that killing a member of
our species is always more significant than killing a
member of another species. Some members of other
species are persons; some members of our own species
are notSo it seems that killing a chimpanzee is, other
things being equal, worse than killing a human being
who, because of profound intellectual disability, is not
and never can be a person (Singer p.101)

A (tricky!) Question
According to PoE, it would be worse to kill
(a) A chimpanzee than a severely intellectually
impaired newborn baby
(b) A severely intellectually impaired newborn
baby than a chimpanzee
(c) Hard to say

Killing nonpersons
There are two ways of reducing pleasure/happiness:
(a) Making a happy creature less happy (causing it pain,
taking away its fun)
(b) Killing a happy creature
Action (a) makes someone worse off, action (b) does not.
So if (b) is wrong, it is only wrong because it reduces the
amount of happiness or pleasure in the world as such

What about nonpersons (merely

conscious life)?
What is bad about killing the merely conscious
being is the end of a set of pleasurable
experiences
So killing a merely conscious being is wrong
because it reduces the amount of pleasure in
the world

The Total View and Replaceability

It is as if sentient beings are receptacles of
something valuable , and it does not matter if a
receptacle gets broken so long as there is
another receptacle to which the contents can be
transferred without any getting spilt (Singer, p.
106).

Further Consequences of the Total

View
If you think it is wrong to kill a merely conscious
but happy being because it reduces the amount
of happiness/pleasure in the world.
you should think it equally wrong to fail to
bring such a being into existence, for that too,
would increase the amount of
pleasure/happiness in the world!

Consequences of the Total View

The consequences of adopting this view:
-for contraception
-for population growth
World One: 1,000,000 people with 80 units of pleasure =
80,000,000 units of pleasure
World Two: 100,000,000 people with 10 units of pleasure = 1
billion units of pleasure

A Question
Ted and Alice want a male child. The child Alice
gives birth to is female. They drown it in the
bath and try again. According to the Total View,
what Ted and Alice do is

(a) Morally wrong

(b) Morally permissible

Replaceability and Meat-Eating

Is there a utilitarian argument for meat-eating?
Meat-eating ensures that there are many more
happy/pleasurable lives in existence than there
would be otherwise!

Singer against the meat-eating

argument
This argument assumes of course that we can eliminate all the
harmful and uncomfortable practices of farming, which may
not be possible
And we have to put aside the environmental reality as well!
Why not get rid of all the humans and replace them with
much larger numbers of happier mice and insects?
Humans at a similar mental level are replaceable as well: the
creation of organ clones (Singer, p. 107)

The Prior Existence View

Perhaps the total view is not the only option
available to the utilitarian regarding the ethics of
killing.

According to the Prior Existence View an action

is right insofar as it maximizes the utility of
those beings who already exist, and those
beings who will exist no matter what action one
takes.

The Prior Existence View

On the prior existence view you want as much utility as
possible too (this is still a utilitarian view after all!)
but you are only interested in putting it into the
containers you already have. You dont have any reason
to create containers, and destroying containers would
almost invariably be a bad idea, because it would give you
fewer containers to put the stuff in (Reader, pps 71-2)

A Question
Bob and Carol are deciding whether or not to
have a child. Any child they have will have a very
happy life, and their own happiness levels will
be unaffected either way. Bob and Carol decide
not to have a child. According to the prior
existence view, their decision not to have a child
is
(a) Morally acceptable
(b) Morally wrong

The Prior Existence View

Can explain why what Bob and Carol do (refrain
from having a child) is morally acceptable, but
why what Ted and Alice do is morally wrong.

This seems like a good outcome..right?

Rubella and delayed conception.come back to
next week

The Prior Existence View

Climate Change
Business as Usual ie use cheap energy to give
ourselves and our children the best life possible
-things will of course be much worse for future
generations than a policy of sustainability (where
we bear the costs of more expensive energy, a little
less travel, less meat)
-Future generations have no complaint against us if
we adopt Business as usual. Had we adopted
Sustainability they would not have existed!

What is wrong with this justification of Business as

Usual? On the prior existence view, it is difficult to
see what could be wrong with it. The prior
existence view tells us to do what is best for those
who exist, or will exist anyway, and following
Business as usual does that. ..The example shows
that to focus only on those who exist or will exist
anyway leaves out something vital to the ethics of
this decision. We can, and should, compare the
lives of those who will exist with the lives of those
who might have existed, if we had acted different
(Singer pps 110-111)

Are Animals Replaceable?

Bert and Catriona (who dont let their dogs
breed); Theodore and Agatha (who do, but then
drown the puppies)

On the prior existence view, what T and A do is

wrong
But what if they were breeding frogs instead?
Bees?

Replaceability for merely conscious

life, prior existence for persons?
This is what Singer appears to suggest pps 108119
-Warning very heavy-going!

Essential take-home message: Singer suggests

that the preferences of persons are not the
kinds of things that can be replaced (other
preferences, and experiences as such, can be)