Animals: Give and Take

It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to understand why slavery is wrong. It just takes a little empathy. Even if you are unsure as to whether your slaves are entirely as intelligent and human as you are it takes a special kind of studied ignorance to believe that they are incapable of at least a good approximation of suffering. When white slave owners were faced with the disconcerting prospect of seeing a Negro stood on a public platform being more eloquent than they could ever be the battle for slavery was as good as lost. Clearly these were people and they were capable of suffering and they were capable of understanding.

When we today look at animals we can clearly see that they are capable of suffering. The attitude that we often see from fishermen that fish can't feel pain, what they experience is just a signal and an instinctive response is clearly as lame as the stories of the man who tells you his clumsy wife is always walking into door handles late on a Saturday night. We aren't stupid enough to fall for that. Of course animals feel pain and respond to it. Pain is a stimulus and the brain responds to it. It is possible that our species is the only species that really experiences pain and that all other species only act as if they experience pain but that is stretching credulity considerably. Pain being appreciated as a severe negative feeling which focuses the brain upon the cause of the pain and any damage done to the body in such a way as the animal is likely to respond appropriately to the damage, to any on-going damage and to avoid the chances of repeating such events in future is such an obvious approach that it makes perfect sense as the design ethic behind nervous systems. Any animal with a nervous system is likely to experience pain as well as merely detect it and process it. The existence of a sensory nervous system implies the ability to suffer pain not merely to detect it and act upon the information. If pain wasn't generating suffering, if it wasn't actually painful, then animals would regularly be seen ignoring it but obliviousness to pain is not something that is frequently encountered in biology

How much an animal suffers pain is another matter. It does not follow that all animals have the same capacity to suffer. To me it seems reasonable to assume that the capacity to suffer is proportional to the size of the personality. A little blob of a few cells has no personality and has no capacity to suffer. A human foetus with a kitten-sized brain would have a capacity to feel pain and a capacity to suffer, similar to that of a kitten. It would not be capable of brooding on pain and suffering in the same way that an adult chimpanzee would be able to do. Similarly a street beggar would be capable of greater suffering than the chimpanzee and, this really is risking liberal heresy, I suggest that a better-educated person with a bigger perspective on life would be capable of even greater suffering than the street beggar who has never known life be much bigger or richer. You may tease me for it but I suggest that Paris Hilton has a greater capacity to suffer than a prawn.

The alternative viewpoint, that all nervous systems are capable of suffering to the same extent may be as sound logically but accepting such a principle would require such a change in the way that we lived our lives as to be entirely untenable. Of course this is a logical fallacy and not a sound basis of philosophy, but come on, be reasonable, if we accepted this idea we would starve to death. Even an organic vegetarian diet involves the killing of dozens of meso-organisms, each one according to this concept capable of being overcome by pain, dread and the fear of death and every bit as worth taking into consideration as the person who nibbles the lentils they want to nibble. That way lies madness. Call me a nutter or a speciesist if you want but I would suggest to you that Paul McCartney is worth more than the lives of a few thousand insects and mites. His own actions clearly demonstrate that he agrees.

The way I see it animals are people too, but less so. In most cases so much less so that we really don't need to concern ourselves with them at all. Personality is not an all or nothing thing. The idea that only Jews were people might have seemed reasonable back in the days when Genesis was a popular fireside tale but we have long ago cast aside such notions. We rightly treat as bloody primitives who absolutely will have to change their ways those tribes who use the same word for people of other tribes as they use for meat. Cultural relativism my arse. People will have to acknowledge that all people are people and eating people is wrong, any tribes that don't accept this are, to me, fair game to be machine-gunned from helicopters. However, just before I go out and stock up on ammunition I think I should get back on track here. Primitive people can be made to understand that other people don't like being eaten and they take umbrage at it. The history of contact with primitive people teaches us that primitive people can be civilized, at least we can get them to understand the basic rule that eating other people is a no-no. That is because people are smart enough to understand how to make contracts, including social contracts and grasping the idea of laws. This is a fundamental distinction between people and other animals.

Other animals cannot be relied upon to be smart enough to understand, make and stick to contracts. No matter how many generations we keep them in the house there is always that little bit too much wolf inside a dog to be perfectly confident that he won't eat the baby. We cannot make proper contracts with our pets, we cannot hope to make any contracts with the whole of the animal kingdom.

The idea that I won't eat you if you won't eat me is quite a simple one to grasp. People can grasp it. Animals can't. If you decide not to eat animals that is a one sided agreement that no animal is a party to. Animals cannot agree not to eat you and they don't treat you any different because of your self-imposed restriction. A flock of sheep will respond identically to a vegetarian and a man who has had three lamb chops for breakfast, animals do not react to vegetarians like they do to St Francis in children's story books. Being a vegetarian and a fan of animals is rather like being a fan of a reclusive star: they don't know and they care even less.

The way I look at it if there's nothing in it for me to stop eating meat, and clearly in the absence of the possibility of joining in some great panzoological political consensus I don't see what I have got to gain except a feeling of smugness, I don't see why I should bother. All living things exploit their environment in some way, drawing in food and excreting waste products at the very least even if they don't actively feed off sentient animals so the scope for smugness is limited.

We cannot make deals, contracts or societies with animals. We have no prospect of ever having a relationship of equals with them because they can't understand our ways and never will be able to. There is a limit to the ever widening circle of compassion. We have moved out from considering just the family, just the band, just the tribe, just the nation, just our co-religionists now we have our circle of compassion expanded to cover all of humanity. It is also reasonable to wish it could go wider. It is reasonable to wish to include thinking machines and intelligent aliens. There is no reason why we would not be able to grant full citizenship to intelligent, thinking and caring aliens and machines and to treat them as being just as real and important as people as members of our own species. However there are no other species on this planet with the mental faculties necessary to qualify for such a status. Some animals are smart enough and capable enough that it would be prudent for us to give them special respect well in advance of other species but falling short of granting them the status of people. The great apes are obvious candidates as we are great apes ourselves. Other highly intelligent species that are not related to us should also be given enhanced respect, recognizing that they have a capacity to dread and suffer which is similar to that of a small human child. In this category I would include the smarter cetaceans, especially dolphins, and elephants. Personally I would not feel comfortable eating anything smarter than a pig, which is setting the bar quite high, pigs are smarter than dogs, but then again bacon and pork are so delicious. Sheep of course are clearly stupid enough to be given little more consideration in eating than a mushroom.

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Animals: Give and Take

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© 1999 - 2010 by Martin Willett.

mwillett.org: Debate Unlimited