INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE: OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH ANIMALS

Bob Corbett
Fall 1999

Below are some of the issues which we will discuss.

1. This will be an exploration rather than a course which maintains a particular position.
2. Originally I thought this was going to be a course on the ethics or morality of our interrelationship with animals. As I've worked on preparing it the thrust has shifted from:

   The moral question: What ought we do? Or, how shall we behave?

   To

   A question of: What IS our relationship to animals?

   I think there is a great deal of confusion about this issue in the literature.

3. Three main positions.

   THE FIRST

   1. Name: Animal Use Position (The view here described is widely held and recognized. However, I don't think there are many well-known and respected defenders of this common view.)
   2. Fundamental Principle: Animals are there for our use -- We may do with them what we wish.
   3. General attitude and behavior: Animals exist around us and are for us to use. They are part of the "found" capital of the planet. We may work them, eat them, use them for clothes, enjoy them in the world of captivity or the wild, tame them for pets or just rid ourselves of them as we wish.
      

      Not many people I know would articulate this position, yet most people I have ever met seem to live at least some of their lives within this principle.

      This position is consistent with some limitation on our use of animals, but those limits are related to OTHER HUMANS.

      • Laws against cruelty to animals on the grounds that such public cruelty is detrimental to our sensibilities and may make such cruelty to humans more likely.
      • Health: keeping chickens or pigs in the city may be seen as a health danger to humans.
      • Protecting certain species may be in the long-term interest of humans.

   THE SECOND

   1. Name: Animal Welfare.
   2. Fundamental Principle: Humans have a moral obligation to take decent care of animals and protect their interests. This principle is rooted in a notion of paternalism or more specifically stewardship.

      This is a stewardship imposed by either God or nature.

   3. Characteristics of this position: Contemporary animal welfare positions tend to be strong on animal advocacy, aiming to protect animals at every level. It is not easy to separate the actual activities of this group from the next group.

   THE THIRD

   1. Name: Animal Rights.
   2. Principle: Animals have natural rights to fair and decent treatment rooted in the very beings of the animals themselves, not rooted in human interest.
   3. Characteristics of this position: The contemporary animal rights movement is rooted in the work of Peter Singer. It is based on a principle of Utilitarianism which holds that pain is pain whether it is human pain or the pain of an animal.

      The Utilitarian mandate is: Do those acts which create the least amount of pain possible. The pain of humans and animals is not essentially different.

4. Consistency.

   If we each look to our own treatment of animals I would think that few people act with any great consistency toward animals except, perhaps, those in the first school. Rather, we seem to often be inconsistent, perhaps believing we should interfere to protect animals from being maltreated while at the same time sanctioning the killing of animals to be eaten.

   One of the important questions seems to me to be: how consistent ought we be? My initial intuition is that while a carefully considered position toward animals needs to be worked out, and that many of our views on animals seem to come to play from habit, tradition and rather unthinking intuitions, nonetheless, I tend to think that even an adequate analysis will not provide a fully consistent position in relation to these three positions. A philosophical analysis may help in bringing clarity to some of these issues.

5. Who are the animals?

   We use the word "animal" is a rather loose sense. There is one sense in which we would clearly refer to a creature as an "animal" (Dog, cat, bear, horse, lion, elephant). Yet other creatures that are not clearly "animals" in this first sense, come under the concerns of people in any of the three categories above. (Reptiles, birds, insects are examples that come immediately to mind.)

   Within this area of confusion there may be differences which will bear on our relationship with them depending upon the status as:

   1. Domestic vs wild.
   2. Farm animals vs pets.
   3. What I will call "mainline" animals and birds.
   4. Mainline animals and reptiles.
   5. Mainline animals and insects.
   6. Zoo animals and wild animals.
   7. Animals for food and clothing vs other animals.

6. Particular issues.

   Some of the concerns that those focusing on animals raise are:

   1. Eating animals.
   2. Processes of raising animals for slaughter.
   3. Processes for slaughtering animals for eating.
   4. Using animals for experimentation for medicines.
   5. Using animals for experimentation for cosmetics or food stuffs.
   6. Using animals for clothing.
   7. The keeping of pets.
   8. The keeping of animals in zoos.
   9. Protecting animals in the wild.
   10. Protecting species or sub-species.
   11. Animal intelligence.