Those who agree with animal rights as well as those who adhere to Utilitarianism will not eat animals, but for different reasons. Vegetarians & vegans disagree with using animals in such a way that is not consistent with treating them as beings with inherent worth. To a person who agrees with animal rights, using animals as a means to an end (in this case dinner), is a violation of the animal (a being) right to respect. A Utilitarian will abstain from eating animal products as long as the process that is used to raise them involves a net balance of suffering. If animals live happy, stress-free, natural lives before they are painlessly killed, the Utilitarian may not object to their use as food.
Unfortunately, there are no where near enough slaughter houses (if any remaining) that treat animals with respect before killing them.One large advocate for animal rights in slaughter houses was Temple Grandin.
Temple Grandin's Website
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Applying Said Ethics
Let's apply a scenario here. Imagine that a large boat is sinking. There is a life boat that can save 4 of the beings on board. Five of the beings on board reach the life boat. Four people and one dog. You have to throw one being overboard. What is the ethical Utilitarian approach to this?
This is very complex, for in the Utilitarian viewpoint a range of variables must be taken into consideration. A utilitarian must take into account the pain or suffering of everyone affected, not just immediately present; therefore we have to assume all survivors on the life boat lost all of their family and friends on the sinking boat. This way, the only being affected is the one getting thrown overboard. Also, we must assume that whoever is being thrown overboard is killed painlessly with a lethal injection before being dumped in the ocean. This way, no being's death will be more painful than the other. For a Utilitarian, the being who is least happy now & is not likely to be particularly happy throughout his life should be thrown overboard.
So, who should be thrown overboard?
(Highlight below for answer)
Since dogs are generally easily satisfied, this generally means that one of the humans should be thrown overboard. To an Utilitarian, it is not the species of the beings capable of contributing to the overall happiness of the moral universe, but the amount they contribute that matters.
"If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration. No matter what the nature of the being, the principle of equality requires that its suffering be counted equally with the like suffering of any other being." -Peter Singer
This is very complex, for in the Utilitarian viewpoint a range of variables must be taken into consideration. A utilitarian must take into account the pain or suffering of everyone affected, not just immediately present; therefore we have to assume all survivors on the life boat lost all of their family and friends on the sinking boat. This way, the only being affected is the one getting thrown overboard. Also, we must assume that whoever is being thrown overboard is killed painlessly with a lethal injection before being dumped in the ocean. This way, no being's death will be more painful than the other. For a Utilitarian, the being who is least happy now & is not likely to be particularly happy throughout his life should be thrown overboard.
So, who should be thrown overboard?
(Highlight below for answer)
Since dogs are generally easily satisfied, this generally means that one of the humans should be thrown overboard. To an Utilitarian, it is not the species of the beings capable of contributing to the overall happiness of the moral universe, but the amount they contribute that matters.
"If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration. No matter what the nature of the being, the principle of equality requires that its suffering be counted equally with the like suffering of any other being." -Peter Singer
Application of Utilitarianism in Regards to Animal Rights
"In order to satisfy the human taste for flesh, over five billion animals are slaughtered every year in the United States alone. Most chickens, pigs, and calves raised for food never see the light of day. These animals are often so intensively confined that they are rarely able to turn around or spread a wing.
The conditions under which animals are kept and the ways in which they are used by factory farmers, experimenters, furriers, commercial developers, and others, tend to disregard the fact that animals are living." (A Companion to Ethics- 343)
So what does this have to do with Utilitarianism?
Utilitarianism is an egalitarian position (all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities) that hold the belief all beings affected by an action must be considered equally. The equality which is important for this view is not the equal treatment of individuals, but the ability to suffer.
All like interests are counted regardless of skin color, sex, religion, or species.
The conditions under which animals are kept and the ways in which they are used by factory farmers, experimenters, furriers, commercial developers, and others, tend to disregard the fact that animals are living." (A Companion to Ethics- 343)
So what does this have to do with Utilitarianism?
Utilitarianism is an egalitarian position (all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities) that hold the belief all beings affected by an action must be considered equally. The equality which is important for this view is not the equal treatment of individuals, but the ability to suffer.
All like interests are counted regardless of skin color, sex, religion, or species.
Utilitarians lead to humans to be treated like animals – their logic can make no differential between the live of a human and a sheep
A good man is one who strives to maximize the sum total of happiness and the good society is the society that seeks to maximize that sum total.
Indeed if a contented idiot is as good as a contented philosopher, and if a contented sheep is as good as a contented idiot, then a contented fish is as good as a contented sheep, and a contented beetle is as good as a contented fish. Where shall we stop?
In utilitarian morality, a driver who swerved to avoid two sheep and deliber- ately killed a child could not be considered a bad man, since his action may have increased the amount of happiness in the world. This result is contrary to every ethical intuition we have.
- Richard Posner
We’ll always have a shortage of time to make the calculations before we have to act, we’ll have a shortage of relevant information, we’ll be biased by our own interests and cognitive errors, we’ll have weakness of will, we’ll never know how our actions might influence things in the long-run (especially as precedents), and it just generally will always be too hard to accomplish, so as to be useless.
Maybe that cold, careless, calculating robot could implement the utilitarian software directly, but the human brain certainly can’t; especially not for the thousands of choices that need to be made daily. It would be utterly paralyzing, and almost always go badly. You see, this entire time you’ve been thinking that utilitarians have to calculate utility directly, you’ve been swiping at a straw man Utilitarianism, a misconception about what is going on.
- Peter Hurtford
Utilitarianisms Moral Conflict
Suppose there is a doctor about to perform an operation on a female patient. The patient is unconscious; under general anaesthetic. Suppose that the doctor is considering raping the woman. And the doctor is assured that he can: make sure he does it without physically harming her and that no one will ever find out about it, apart from him, not even the woman. Suppose he also knows that both he and the woman are healthy; they do not have any sexually transmitted infections and the doctors knows that the woman is infertile, so she will not be able to become pregnant. In this situation the doctor is considering the moral status of the act of raping this woman.
What does utilitarianism tell him? Clearly, no one is going to ever suffer. That is assured. And he, the doctor, will derive pleasure from the act. Therefore, not only does utilitarianism tells us that the act of raping the patient is not immoral, it tells us that, in fact, the act is positively moral because it increases the happiness of the doctor. The doctor, under utilitarianism, would actually be morally obligated to rape this woman.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)