Animal suffering

A cat suffering through a bad pun

A common argument for awarding animals moral rights is based on the notion of animal suffering. Since animals can suffer pain, some argue, they have moral rights. Thus we are morally obliged to prevent animal suffering. This conclusion is often directed at supporting the animal rights movement, and opposing the maltreatment of animals in the production of meat for human consumption, or animal testing.

Arguments such as this raise interesting questions surrounding how we view the relationship between humans and animals. Due to considerations surrounding human consciousness (see previous post - the Explanatory Gap), it might be tempting to place human beings in a fundamentally different category to animals, and use the fact that we are intellectually, morally and sociologically ‘transcendent’ as evidence for this. However, many supporters of the above argument (most notably Peter Singer) swing to the opposite extreme. On account of our common evolutionary origins, Singer argues, we are fundamentally just highly developed animals and nothing more. To discriminate against animals thus amounts to ‘species-ism’ - something analogous to racism. It is on these grounds that animals should be awarded moral 'rights'.

Perhaps Singer is right, and only through a misplaced sense of worth do we assume that we have transcended the evolutionary order. However, consider an unwelcome consequence of this reductive view. It would seem to follow that, since animals have moral rights on account of their ability to suffer, we have a duty to do all in our power to prevent animal suffering (apart from in extreme cases, where there are over-riding moral grounds not to do so). This would include actively intervening in nature to prevent one animal causing another animal to suffer. On this basis, we might accuse David Attenborough and his team of gross moral indecency for not intervening when sitting back and watching a lion hunting an antelope.

The advocate of animal rights cannot appeal to the old dictum ‘let nature run its course’ here to rule out this case, as on their view, human beings are as fundamentally part of the natural order as lions or antelopes. Since we have an obligation to prevent animal suffering, why not intervene? The case is especially forceful if one argues that, on the whole, there is more suffering overall in the (non-human) animal kingdom than good.

I (and I’m sure many others) don’t agree that we are morally obliged to intervene to save antelopes from lions - it’s a bizarre and impractical thing to suggest. But since we would ordinarily feel morally obliged to help a suffering human in need, and given Singer’s view that there is no fundamental moral difference between humans and animals, where and how can we draw the line?