The Moral Equality of Humans and Animals

169 Pages·2015·2.703 MB·English

by  Mark H. Bernstein

The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series
Series editors: Andrew Linzey and Priscilla Cohn
Associate editor : Clair Linzey
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the ethics of our treatment
of animals. Philosophers have led the way, and now a range of other scholars
have followed, from historians to social scientists. From being a marginal
issue, animals have become an emerging issue in ethics and in multidiscipli-
nary inquiry. This series explores the challenges that animal ethics poses, both
conceptually and practically, to traditional understandings of human–animal
relations.
Specifi cally, the series will:
• provide a range of key introductory and advanced texts that map out ethical
positions on animals;
• publish pioneering work written by new, as well as accomplished, scholars;
and
• produce texts from a variety of disciplines that are multidisciplinary in char-
acter or have multidisciplinary relevance
Titles include:
ANIMAL SUFFERING: PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURE
Elisa Aaltola
ANIMALS AND PUBLIC HEALTH
Why Treating Animals Better Is Critical to Human Welfare
Aysha Akhtar
ANIMALS IN CHINA
Law and Society
Deborah Cao
AN INTRODUCTION TO ANIMALS AND POLITICAL THEORY
Alasdair Cochrane
ANIMAL CRUELTY, ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOUR, AND HUMAN AGGRESSION
More than a Link
Eleonora Gullone
ANIMALS IN THE CLASSICAL WORLD
Ethical Perspectives from Greek and Roman Texts
Alastair Harden
POWER, KNOWLEDGE, ANIMALS
Lisa Johnson
THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS
Andrew Knight
AN INTRODUCTION TO ANIMALS IN VISUAL CULTURE
Randy Malamud
CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY AND THE STATUS OF ANIMALS
The Dominant Tradition and Its Alternatives
Ryan Patrick McLaughlin
POPULAR MEDIA AND ANIMALS
Claire Molloy
ANIMALS, EQUALITY AND DEMOCRACY
Siobhan O’Sullivan
AN INTRODUCTION TO ANIMALS AND SOCIOLOGY
Kay Peggs
ANIMALS AND SOCIAL WORK
A Moral Introduction
Thomas Ryan
ANIMALS IN SOCIAL WORK
Why and How They Matter
Thomas Ryan ( editor )
AN INTRODUCTION TO ANIMALS AND THE LAW
Joan Schaffner
KILLING HAPPY ANIMALS
Explorations in Utilitarian Ethics
Tatjana Višak
POLITICAL ANIMALS AND ANIMAL POLITICS
Marcel Wissenburg and David Schlosberg ( editors )
Forthcoming titles
ANIMAL THEOLOGY AND ETHICS IN INDIAN RELIGIONS
Anna S. King
ANIMALS AND ECONOMICS
Steve McMullen
ON NOT EATING MEAT
Sabrina Tonutti
T he Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series
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The Moral Equality of
Humans and Animals
Mark H. Bernstein
Purdue University , USA
© Mark H. Bernstein 2015
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
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Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
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in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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ISBN: 978–0–230–27662–8
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
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country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bernstein, Mark H., 1948–
The moral equality of humans and animals / Mark H. Bernstein,
Purdue University, USA.
pages cm. — (The Palgrave Macmillan animal ethics series)
ISBN 978–0–230–27662–8
1. Ethics. 2. Animal welfare – Moral and ethical aspects. I. Title.
BJ1031.B465 2015
179(cid:2)9.3—dc23 2015018316
In memory of my father Louis, my mother Matilda, and my
friend Knish; and for all those who have needlessly suffered
from having been born members of nonhuman species.

Contents
Preface: The Human–Animal Relationship viii
Acknowledgments xii
1 On the Relative Unimportance of Human Interests 1
1.1 Setting the stage 1
1.2 W hat do we mean when we say that human interests
are more significant than animal interests? 6
1.3 Does the cosmos inform us that human interests are
more significant than animal interests? 18
1.4 S hould humans consider human interests as more
significant than animal interests? 39
2 On the Relative Unimportance of Human Life 67
2.1 Setting the stage 67
2.2 The disvalue of death argument 72
2.3 Why your death is less important than you think 91
2.4 The problem with valuing capacities 111
2.5 From preservation to creation 128
2.6 Mill’s argument 133
Conclusion 146
Notes 147
Selected Bibliography 150
Index 151
vii
Preface: The Human–Animal
Relationship
I love my dog Wulfie.
Reflection on this indubitable truth served as one motivation for
this monograph, for in loving Wulfie the way I do, I conceive of his
interests and life as significant as any of those of the humans I love.
I believe this motivation is reasonable, justifiable, and generalizable.
My thesis, baldly stated, is that the interests and lives of nonhuman
animals are as morally important as the interests and lives of fellow
humans.
I recognize how radical most will find this position; few people
believe that the interests of nonhuman animals are as worthy of
concern as those of humans, and fewer still believe that the lives
of animals are as significant as the lives of humans. Even among
philosophers, who tend to spend more time thinking about these
issues than laypersons, my thesis finds relatively few supporters.
While there are some thinkers who believe that the interests of
humans and animals deserve equal consideration, there are precious
few who depart from the general consensus that, from a cosmic or
thoroughly impartial perspective, human lives are more valuable
than lives of nonhuman animals. I am swimming against a powerful
and entrenched tide.
This book scarcely merits a readership if it amounts to nothing
more than an expression of an idiosyncratic contrarian. That we
have been mistaken in our assessment of the relative importance of
human and animal interests and lives had better matter. It does.
Consider the fact that some 11 billion (that’s ‘billion’ with a ‘b’ to
appropriate the language of the late Carl Sagan) animals are killed
annually in the US in factory farming. Since there are slightly more
than 300 million people living in the US, there are about 35 animals
killed each year for every adult and child in the US, but perhaps
even worse than the terrible and premature deaths that await most
of these creatures are the ‘lives’ chickens, cows, and pigs endure in
preparation for slaughter. I will spare you the details of how these
viii
Preface: The Human–Animal Relationship ix
animals are raised, transported, and murdered – feel free to read
my W ithout a Tear for some of the grotesque details – but there can
be no doubt that i f we believed in my thesis, that is, i f we believed
that, respectively, the interests and lives of nonhuman and human
animals were on a par, the public outcry would be unprecedented.
Imagine we discovered that humans were being intensively farmed
in a rural area of Pennsylvania, that there were tens of thousands
of humans being confined to the point of immobility, fed a ‘diet’
consisting of scraps of bone and antibiotics served with the sole
purpose of fattening the inmates, transported hundreds perhaps
thousands of miles in cramped and freezing conditions, and killed
by means that often resulted in excruciating painful exterminations.
I take it that we would be morally outraged and unexceptionably
demand for the immediate abolition of this practice. Without the
pervasive supposition that humans have greater moral significance
than animals – that animals just don’t m atter or c ount as much as
humans – we would, and should, have similar attitudes toward the
actual institution of factory farming as we would to our fictional
case. The stakes, then, are large.
This is not a mawkish tract. There will be no references to ‘cuddly’
dogs or ‘cute’ cats. While these omissions are not consequences of
believing that dogs are not cute nor that cats are not cuddly (in fact, I
believe quite the contrary), I forbear making these fuzzy allusions to
these furry animals not because they are, in some way, untoward or
insidious, but simply because my argument does not require them. In
recent years, feelings have received bad press. We are told that argu-
ments that employ ‘appeals to sentimentality’ are evasions, perpetu-
ated because authors of such tactics lack ‘tough-minded’ reasons for
their views, and so revert to ‘tender-hearted’ ploys playing on the
emotions of others. There is some sense but much nonsense in this
diatribe, but best we don’t become embroiled in this debate if we
need not; we needn’t, so we won’t.
I can anticipate, being involved in these questions for over 30 years,
what people’s immediate reaction will be when hearing about the
publication of this book. Most, of course, will yawn; it is a very rare
book that garners any significant attention, and there is no reason
to think that mine, regardless of the urgency of its subject matter,
will prove the exception. Bracketing this majority response, virtually
all others will be either openly antagonistic or highly skeptical. Few