No Monkeying Around: Taking Animal Welfare Seriously

(by Jonny)

I've been interested in animal welfare issues about as long as I've been interested in philosophy of mind. Though hardly unanimous within their respective fields, I've long respected a tradition sometimes found in both, a tradition of seriousness and consistency. On the one hand you have the likes of the Peter Singer who sincerely argues for equal consideration of animal welfare based on a logic of non-arbitrariness, accusing those who oppose of “speciesism”. On the other hand you have the likes of Daniel Dennett who argues for a sophisticated empirically informed theory of consciousness and the mind more generally. The two approaches have not always gotten along (see Dennett, 1995). Yet, I'm wondering if there exists a worthwhile position which borrows from both; a position which acknowledges that we cannot simply assume, without further analyses, certain facts about an entity's mental life, particularly conscious experiences (whatever they are exactly), but at the same time demands that where we find good reason for certain assumptions about minds in other creatures, we take them as ethically serious as possible. If we decide that, say a cow's stress in an abattoir is equivalent to a sheep is a equivalent to a human infant, then all other things being equal we ought to treat all parties in the same situation with equal consideration. When deciding how to respond to fellow animals we should not assume a given organism experiences the world just as humans do, nor should we assume all animals are mindless robots- what is required is an empirically informed approach that takes whatever results we do find ethically seriously. This is an admittedly crude position that requires greater development that can be done justice in one post, but I'll lay out some of my thoughts on the matter.

In a Sunday times article from a few years back John Webster writes that,

“People have assumed that intelligence is linked to the ability to suffer and that because animals have smaller brains they suffer less than humans. That is a pathetic piece of logic, sentient animals have the capacity to experience pleasure and are motivated to seek it, you only have to watch how cows and lambs both seek and enjoy pleasure when they lie with their heads raised to the sun on a perfect English summer's day.” (quoted in the Sunday Times, 27 February 2005)

I appreciate what I think is Webster's sentiment. Cows and lambs display behaviour we typically take to signal pleasure and pain, and their dramatically reduced cognitive abilities do not seem to make such inferences void. Yet I think Webster is wrong in claiming that linking intelligence to suffering is pathetic logic. Intelligence is a weasel word, but such associated faculties of memory, conceptualisation and emotional engagement seem to me responsible for a great deal of both pleasure and suffering (I will avoid the awkward discussion about the differences between pain and suffering for now); though importantly it does not imply that all suffering and pleasure depend on a human-level development of each.

I take it that Webster would not find it uncontroversial that bacteria do not require the same level of consideration dogs do when we poke them with sticks. I take it he would admit that fruit flies are not capable of the same emotional turmoil chimpanzees may regularly undergo within their highly social worlds.

I believe the these intuitive differences are the result of cognitive differences between subjects, and that such differences must be respected across species where we have good reason to assume them. Alarm bells will be ringing for some animal ethicists who will already be predicting that I propose some hierarchy of worth. However I am not proposing that there exist degrees of intrinsic value in species relative to their cognitive complexity- rather that certain cognitive complexity just does produce certain kinds and degrees of suffering (and pleasure) that likewise would not be available; and if we are to sensibly respond the relative demands of an organism’s psychology, we must take these relative capacities into account.

Much of the suffering humans seem capable of experiencing is the result of prediction of the future, memory of the past, association between events, a sense of self, an enduring sense of self, varied and unpredictable emotional needs and empathy. In each of these cases it seems that what allows for these experiences are contingent cognitive abilities and cognitive organization (and of course there is no obvious reason not to imagine the possibility of a species capable of experiencing pleasures and pains in ways humans do not, to degrees humans do not.)

Enduring 149 minutes of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen fortunately does not result in the same experience for most animals as it does for all normal human beings. Neither does sitting through three hours of Bach. Even experiences that do not require much developed intelligence, being stroked, raising young, hunting, can intuitively produce very different grades and kinds of experience between species, even individual organisms. The same goes for painful experiences. Bereavement, stress, even “raw pain” itself seems relative to the existence of particular contingent mental capacities. In short, I suggest that we should not assume that all animals must experience the same mental states when treated the same way. We must approach every situation with an open mind and ready to be informed by research. It is not a given that chickens appreciate the taste of food as much as chimpanzees, it is not a given that cows feel as much stress in a slaughterhouse as a human would, nor each case it is a priori obvious that they do not- each example requires careful examination.

It is important that this approach is not disrespectful towards other species. Quite the opposite. It takes a serious and mature empirically informed approach. It does not assume that all animals are little humans. It does not assume that an animal's needs and wants are the same as ours. Its picture of animal mentality and how we should respond does not depend on the imagination of human dreamers on either side of the ethics debate. A cow in a slaughterhouse is not necessarily enduring the experience like a mute, hairy four-legged human would. Neither is necessarily a zombie robot without a care in the world. What it is depends on the contingent state of its cognitive organization, and how we come to know anything about that depends on sober investigation.

Dennett D (1995) “Animal consciousness: what matters and why. (In the Company of Animals)” Social Research, 62 n3 p691(20)