ETHICS

CHAPTER 2 Worksheet C

STUDENT’S INFORMATION

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 Chapter 2
Utilitarianism

Intended Learning Outcome

Within the chapter, the pre-service teacher (PST) must:
1. discuss the basic principles of utilitarian ethics;
2. distinguish between two utilitarian models: the quantitative mode of Jeremy Bentham and
the qualitative model of John Stuart Mill; and
3. Apply utilitarianism in understanding and evaluating local and international scenarios

Time Element: Week 7-8

Direction: Provide answers for each item. DO NOT delete any element on this worksheet.
Answer the questions right after each item or provide another page where your answers can be
found. Upon submission, include the worksheet with answers in the same document. Only one
document in .doc file type shall be submitted; do not make it into a PDF or JPEG file type.

Project
Animal Rights and Welfare
Peter Singer, in his book Animal Liberation, argues that animals are equal candidates for
moral respect; this does not mean equal treatment as it does equal consideration. While Rene
Descartes argues that animals are incapable of feeling pleasure and pain because they do not
have any minds, Bentham and Mill argues otherwise. For them, animals are capable of feeling
pleasure and pain and are thus too be included in whatever moral deliberation we are to make,
especially when the decisions we make affect them. The animal’s capacity for suffering is a
vital characteristic that entities them to equal consideration. While animal intelligence is
another moral issue to confront, it cannot be denied that animal behaviorists have established
that animals do feel physical pain. While other researchers simply dismiss this as act of
anthropomorphizing, the vast research on animal consciousness is worth considering at this
point. Should animals have moral rights?
Utilitarianism recognizes that animals do feel physical and emotional pain. But this does
not mean that we are not allowed to cause animals pain. When causing animal pain obtains a
greater happiness to the majority of humans and nonhuman animals, then doing so to sentient
creatures can be morally permissible. For this reason, utilitarians nowadays rarely use the term
animal rights as they do talk about animal welfare. If human rights, according to Bentham, are
“nonsense upon stilts,” then the same is true with animal rights. These rights are not absolute
especially when it would be detrimental to the society. Mill do talk about rights to security,
liberty, and justice, but he also argues that “particular cases may occur in which some other

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social duty is so important, as to overrule any one of the general maxims of justice.” This can
mean that, as a utilitarian, the pain and pleasure of nonhuman animals must be taken into
consideration when there are no concerns that would justify their pain for the sake of the
greatest happiness of the greatest number. In this case, when animals are used for the
development of household products and cosmetics, they are condemned by utilitarians.
However, when they are used for medical experimentation that can lead to cure for a
debilitating or terminal illness, they are acceptable to utilitarian. Do you agree with this?
1. Go online and look for an instance where animal rights and welfare can be considered
an issue. What is the issue that you have identified? Detail your findings and opinion
below. Check on the arguments presented by Peter Singer, Joel Feinberg, Steve
Sapontzis.

- A pair hacked open a pregnant dog on June 25th, 2019. Jonathan sliced up a pregnant
poodle with a simple kitchen knife and a pair of scissors inside their Novaliches Q.C.
house while his wife Evangeline filmed the surgery. The pair said the dog was operated
to rescue the puppies, but critics stated they should have taken the animal to an animal
clinic right away. Although the couple's purpose is to preserve the puppies, I believe that
this action is extremely wrong. They lack the necessary competence to do the
procedure. They may cause complications and injury to the pet, and even if they are
attempting to assist, this will not solve the situation; rather, it may exacerbate it. This
behavior could be deemed harsh to animals. Using an ordinary kitchen knife to perform
a caesarian section is equivalent to torturing a woman during childbirth. I believe that all
living animals, particularly dogs, sense pain.

In the debate over animals and ethics, Peter Singer has had a significant impact. In both
the United States and Europe, the publication of his Animal Liberation signaled the start
of a growing and increasingly powerful movement.

Singer criticizes individuals who believe that animal rights are less important than human
rights. He claims that if we try to apply such uneven regard to animal interests, we will
be driven to do the same to human interests. This, however, contradicts the intuitively
plausible and widely held belief that all people are equal. Singer thinks that we should
apply the same concept of equal respect to animals.

All that is required for a creature to have a right, according to Joel Feinberg, is for the
being to be capable of being represented as legitimately pursuing its own interests.
Feinberg believes that the assumption that a being must be competent to represent
itself is too strong, because it would exclude infants, the elderly, and other marginal
situations from the class of beings with rights. To put it another way, Feinberg uses the
Argument from Marginal Cases to support his point of view.

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 Furthermore, Steve Sapontzis presents three arguments for not performing routine
dissections on animals. To begin, dissection is not required to achieve broad scientific
education aims. Specialists whose profession requires dissection skills could be trained
without killing animals particularly for that purpose. Second, pupils are taught to have
negative attitudes toward animals by killing and dissecting them for no reason. Third,
moral considerations cannot justify murdering and dissecting animals but not humans;
as a result, such treatment of animals constitutes discriminatory exploitation of the weak
by the powerful.

2. In view of Bentham’s and Mill’s assertion of the greatest happiness of the greatest
number, do you think that animal rights and welfare should even be a concern in the
Philippines where millions of Filipinos below the poverty threshold are struggling to have
a descent lives? Is the concern for animal rights and welfare a first world problem?
Explain comprehensively.

- In light of Bentham and Mill's assertions of the greatest happiness of the greatest
number, I believe that animal rights and welfare must be a concern in the Philippines,
regardless of poverty levels. Animal Rights is a problem that only exists in the first
world. We are all concerned about animal welfare. It's a minor distinction. The goal of
Animal Rights is to convert humans to veganism and then use the legal system to
defend animals from humans.

Humans and animals of various varieties have symbiotic interactions, according to

Animal Welfare. This type of interaction can range from family members to predator-
prey. Even the welfare of the animals we eat is crucial to their and our health. How we
handle the environment has a positive or negative impact on us all. Mistreating animals
is so harmful to humans even in the poorest places of the world. The definition of
mistreatment is a major point of contention between the two. Eating animals is
considered cruel by AR. Animal rights activists on the extreme end of the spectrum urge
the isolation or modification of predators to prevent animals from devouring each other.
Meat must be consumed. Only a small percentage of the world's population is rich
enough to avoid eating meat.

Finally, I believe that animal rights are critical in ensuring human equality. Although
animal rights should not take precedence over human rights, certain circumstances
necessitate their euthanasia. These regulations apply to both pets and stray animals.
People are killed by animals who invade civilization. However, the truth is that we are
obtaining more land as humans, which includes a portion of the forest and its
environment. Animal rights are critical in order to safeguard animals from such dangers.

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 3. Consider other topics within the realm of animal rights welfare. Select one and give an
initial presentation of the significance of discussing this topic. Consider too if trees and
other elements of nature should also be given rights; check the paper of Christopher
Stine entitled “Should Tree Have Standing? Towards Legal Rights for Natural Objects.”

- We know that in our ecosystem animals exist for their own reasons. They aren't here
to be eaten, worn, experimented on, bet on, tortured for our entertainment, or hunted
by humans looking for trophies to impress everyone. Both rights and obligations are two
sides of the same coin. The two are inextricably linked. The right here is the right to
exist, and the duty is the organism's role. Every species in nature has a purpose and has
the right to exist in sufficient numbers to maintain the natural balance and perform its
functions effectively. The role is played intuitively by the animal's own being and
existence in lower species, such as plants and animals lower in the tree; the role is
actively played by higher creatures, such as primates, particularly Man. Nature works as
a brake and a controller when a role's boundaries are broken. The human has the most
responsibilities because he or she is at the top of the tree.

However, in the case of this human animal, with his so-called "conscious intelligence,"
he is the only animal that can and does consciously exceed his function on a regular
basis, infringing on the space and roles of Nature's other creations and causing a major
upheaval in the natural order. Humans are the only species capable of unrestricted
exploitation and brutality to other animals in the name of their own rights - the freedom
to satisfy their own needs, wants, and even luxury.

"Should Trees Have Standing?" by Christopher D. Stone was published in 1972. - Natural
Objects Legal Rights". This article is still used whenever legal rights and natural objects
are discussed nowadays. Stone proposed in his article that natural objects such as
woods, oceans, rivers, and other natural objects be given legal rights. To put it another
way, to the natural world in general. Natural objects do not have the right to seek
redress on their own behalf, because this is neither unavoidable nor wise. Saying that
streams and trees can't have standing because they can't speak isn't an adequate
response. States, estates, infants, incompetents, municipalities, and colleges all lack the
ability to speak.

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