As an animal rights advocate, I’m often asked to “prove” why I think the use of animals is wrong; this is largely a dodge. Folks demanding such proof aren’t usually interested in really considering any particular response, and will instead look for reasons to disagree, and tell themselves that x particular animal use, under y “humane” conditions should be viewed as ethically neutral.
The problem is that there’s ultimately no fundamental justification for either position. You can either agree or disagree on the fundamental question: animals are not ours to use. If you agree, the animal rights case follows rationally from that initial premise. If you disagree, you may hang all sorts of modern scientific (or, more likely pseudoscientific) justifications on that disagreement. We may say nonhumans are “less sentient” or “lack sapience” by way of making a claim that a particular use is justified.
This is flawed at the outset.
We domesticated animals thousands of years ago, and we didn’t make any determination about those animals sapience or sentience when we did it. We simply decided to do it, because we wanted to do it. The justifications for it come after the fact, not before. Given that, any justification for animal use is inevitably going to be weighted in favor of the human’s given use of a given animal. We may hang what seem to be “good” arguments on that to make that use seem rational, but it doesn’t really change anything.
We’re simply making a choice to override an animal’s interests in favor of our own, whenever, wherever and however we may wish, and then coming up with an argument for why that use is justified after the fact. But the situation is rigged: in these cases the conclusion is foregone: there’s no possible objection to use, so any justification has to be viewed in light of that inherent bias. The game is rigged, and we’ve rigged it in our favor, always. Our use of animals is habitual; rationalizing those habits is a secondary (if that) concern.
The animal rights case departs from that position at the premise: no use is ethically justified. Yes, human and nonhuman interests will conflict in places, but that doesn’t have anything to do with setting up a circumstance where entirely optional uses of animals will be perpetuated for the foreseeable future. The animal rights position is an attempt – in many ways an imperfect attempt, given the hurdles we face in getting society to reevaluate its use of animals, but an honest attempt, nevertheless – to readdress the issue of use not from the foregone conclusion that use is going to happen, no matter what, but from the starting premise that none of it is justifiable, and then working to come up with solutions that progressively eliminate that use.
The fundamental premises in either case can’t be argued: they’re both based on a founding assumption: use either is, or isn’t permissible. If it is permissible, the animal rights case says that use will ALWAYS turn animals into property – objects to be exploited, because we’re deciding at the outset that these are not beings with their own interests. We may claim to respect some animal interests – the interest in not suffering “excessively,” perhaps, but that again assumes at the outset that a given use is going to happen no matter what. Our definitions of “excessive” suffering become, therefore, highly elastic and the whole matter is always going to be weighted in favor of the human’s desired use, instead of the animal’s interest in not suffering at all.
If use is not permissible, then it simply doesn’t matter what claimed justifications humans may come up with for those uses – it doesn’t matter if animal testing may cure diseases, or if happy meat may have lived a relatively comfortable life before being killed and eaten – the presumption of permissibility of use automatically overrides the animal’s interest giving automatic preference to the human desire.
People will either wake up to this, or they won’t. But getting ensnared in a side debate with a committed speciesist on justifying the premise is a waste of time. Those persons are never going to make any other determination than permitting animal use. They may advocate for kinder treatment in some cases while such animals are being used (typically before we finally kill them and do something else to their bodies), but that kind treatment isn’t really being done in the interests of the animal – those interests have already been overridden, inherently. Treating animals “kindly” in this context is largely an aesthetic question: We’ll nearly always only do what’s the bare minimum standard of “humane” treatment so we can tell ourselves we’ve done something kind for that animal. But it’s not really about that animal – it’s about justifying the use of that animal to ourselves.
babble 