Yeah but throughout a lot of western philosophy animals have been seen as totally incapable of feeling and thought. I had a philosophy professor (a year before his retirement) who was proclaiming just that.
As someone who also has visited seminars in ethics and animal ethics I will now recite the train of thought of Prof. Fink from Oxford:
That is obviously bullshit. Animals have feelings and thought (and we have the behavioral studies to show this to some degree). Yet we are not in a pixar movie and the animals don't have human-like interior worlds — but that doesn't mean they don't have their own variants that could be deep and rich in their own ways (or not, who knows).
Ethically the question for everyone of us is: Given a being that is very likely to experience feelings and though; given we don't know how deep the inner world of that being is — what is the right way to treat such a being? Do we assume it won't notice anything and treat it accordingly? Or do we side with caution and treat it carefully till we know more?
Of course to make things even more complicated the society we live in (in the form of previous generations) has made some of those choices for us already. So it might seem more normal to treat animals as if they have no feelings, because that is what we grew up with. But just because our ancestors did it that way doesn't mean it is ethically the right thing to do. Especially since we, unlike our ancestors, life in a world where survival without eating meat is not only possible, but doesn't come with huge downsides.
Many would say we are allowed to herd, hold and slaughter animals because we are more intelligent than them, and because they lack the inner life. But if an alien race or an AI came by that was more intelligent than us and had a richer inner life, wouldn't they then be right to do the same to us? Ethical systems should be universally applicable, not just when it suits us.
One could make all of this less complicated by ditching right and wrong and just asking who is stronger. But that isn't the kind of thinking that built the societies whose fruits we are all enjoying in the form of working division of labour, developed technologies, etc.
From a cold utilitarian POV, ideas of justice and equity only need to be applied to those wo will, do, did, or might contribute to the common good (and the ones emotionally close to these), and would not do that if they weren't well treated. That is not the case for animals.
In fact, that is, I believe, a pretty good description of how things are. The treatment of animals will improve, if it does, by moving into the "emotionally close" group.
There is a lot going on in what constitutes "common good" here. The standard "ethical" vegan position would contend that the happiness of animals count among intrinsic common good.
I meant a definition of "common good" from, again, a cold utilitarian POV - providing goods and services (but including decidedly social ones like child bearing, taking care of the elderly and such)
That's not what's commonly understood by utilitarianism, by the way. If said activity to render goods and services does not result in increased total happiness or average happiness, after factoring in externalities, many utilitarians do not consider that a "good" activity.
(via Wikipedia) for example, Bentham, the first formulator of says that utility is
> That property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness ... [or] to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered.
but the question is open as to whether or not the happiness of animals is included in it. So just as exploitation of many to a great degree for services like a relatively small increase in comfort of few (as in chattel slavery) would be negative utility for Bentham, the suffering of animals for food would be considered negative utility to the utilitarian animal rights advocate.
As someone who also has visited seminars in ethics and animal ethics I will now recite the train of thought of Prof. Fink from Oxford:
That is obviously bullshit. Animals have feelings and thought (and we have the behavioral studies to show this to some degree). Yet we are not in a pixar movie and the animals don't have human-like interior worlds — but that doesn't mean they don't have their own variants that could be deep and rich in their own ways (or not, who knows).
Ethically the question for everyone of us is: Given a being that is very likely to experience feelings and though; given we don't know how deep the inner world of that being is — what is the right way to treat such a being? Do we assume it won't notice anything and treat it accordingly? Or do we side with caution and treat it carefully till we know more?
Of course to make things even more complicated the society we live in (in the form of previous generations) has made some of those choices for us already. So it might seem more normal to treat animals as if they have no feelings, because that is what we grew up with. But just because our ancestors did it that way doesn't mean it is ethically the right thing to do. Especially since we, unlike our ancestors, life in a world where survival without eating meat is not only possible, but doesn't come with huge downsides.
Many would say we are allowed to herd, hold and slaughter animals because we are more intelligent than them, and because they lack the inner life. But if an alien race or an AI came by that was more intelligent than us and had a richer inner life, wouldn't they then be right to do the same to us? Ethical systems should be universally applicable, not just when it suits us.
One could make all of this less complicated by ditching right and wrong and just asking who is stronger. But that isn't the kind of thinking that built the societies whose fruits we are all enjoying in the form of working division of labour, developed technologies, etc.