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

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

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 MeatEating

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 110111)

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
108-119
-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)