More Advance Praise for Universal Animal Rights: from Dr. Stephen Kaufman

"Universal Animal Rights is an important book that, I hope, will get the attention and respect it deserves. Previous attempts to defend animal rights have been far more powerful than arguments against animal rights, but Szytbel demonstrates that animal rights theories have had holes that left defenders open to philosophical attack. His “best caring ethic,” though perhaps not the final word in animal rights theory, is a major advance. Those of us whose fundamental notions of right and wrong tell us that harming innocent creatures is wrong will be grateful to Szytbel for providing a compelling rational ethic that can speak to people who do not share our intuitions or basic values."

Stephen R. Kaufman, M.D.

Chair, Christian Vegetarian Association

Author: Guided by the Faith of Christ: Seeking to Stop Violence and Scapegoating and Good News for All Creation: Vegetarianism as Christian Stewardship

Assistant professor, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Dept. of Ophthalmology

A Chart to Help Clarify Fundamentalism versus Pragmatism

Tables are often very useful learning tools that can map out a lot of complex information in a way that is straightforward and easy to understand. My article, “Animal Rights Law,” and many previous blog entries, discuss the fundamentalism versus pragmatism debate, which centres on the question of whether ‘welfarist’ suffering-reduction laws are acceptable from an animal rights perspective. Some people might have trouble seeing how animal rights pragmatism has an overall justification in the context of my theory of seeking what is best for animals. The following chart accounts for this idea and also explains the false ethical appeal of fundamentalist approaches. This is only a tool however and is not a substitute for an accounting of all of the complexities involved, which really requires a book I’d like to write. However, clarifying some of the overall ideas will help to provide a schema that lets all of the details better fall into place.

FURTHER READING ON ANIMAL RIGHTS INCREMENTALISM

A Selection of Related Articles

Sztybel, David. "Animal Rights Law: Fundamentalism versus Pragmatism". Journal for Critical Animal Studies 5 (1) (2007): 1-37.

go there

Short version of "Animal Rights Law".

go there

Sztybel, David. "Incrementalist Animal Law: Welcome to the Real World".

go there

Sztybel, David. "Sztybelian Pragmatism versus Francionist Pseudo-Pragmatism".

go there

A Selection of Related Blog Entries

Anti-Cruelty Laws and Non-Violent Approximation

Use Not Treatment: Francione’s Cracked Nutshell

Francione Flees Debate with Me Again, Runs into the “Animal Jury”

The False Dilemma: Veganizing versus Legalizing

Veganism as a Baseline for Animal Rights: Two Different Senses

Francione's Three Feeble Critiques of My Views

Startling Decline in Meat Consumption Proves Francionists Are Wrong Once Again!

The Greatness of the Great Ape Project under Attack!

Francione Totally Misinterprets Singer

Francione's Animal Rights Theory

Francione on Unnecessary Suffering

My Appearance on AR Zone

D-Day for Francionists

Sztybel versus Francione on Animals' Property Status

The Red Carpet

Playing into the Hands of Animal Exploiters

The Abolitionist ApproachES

Francione's Mighty Boomerang

Dr. David Sztybel Home Page

Uniting against All Oppression: the Need for a Reliably Anti-Oppressive Moral Theory

It is very common to meet animal rights activists affirming that they oppose not only the oppression of nonhuman animals. They also support humans either actually or potentially downtrodden by racists, sexists, homophobes, ableists, ageists, and others of their ilk. However, obviously, we need a theory that is up to the task of mirroring this concern to shore up solidarity against tyrannical discrimination. That is, we require a system of ideas that totally and unambiguously rules out all forms of oppression. Surprisingly or not, all of the main traditional ethical theories come up short in this key practical and theoretical department.

Here is a list of the most prominent ethical theories discussed in my forthcoming book, Universal Animal Rights: Winning the Ethical Debate. Each of the theories has been used to defend exclusively human interests. Animal ethics scholars have largely copied these theories into the animal liberation realm, thus not providing much original, theoretical inspiration for anti-oppression advocates beyond the important demand of extending justice to other animals. I will presently illustrate how each framework can be used to rationalize oppression against both humans and other animals. To be clear, typical proponents of these theories are not oppressors and do not approve of oppression. I am only saying that their theories do not logically rule out oppression, which is a severe logical deficiency for practical and theoretical ethical purposes. Consider the following:

1. Intuitionist rights theory. Rights are based on an intuition, or a fundamental belief that does not admit of justification, that rights-holders have a dignity, inherent value, and so forth, and therefore have rights. People can easily have an ‘intuition’ that females, blacks, the poor, and so on have less dignity that needs respecting than elites. In the book, I show that all of the theories below rely on intuitionism too, even if it is not explicit.
   
2. Traditionalist rights theory. Rights are based in tradition. But oppression has its own traditions.
   
3. Compassion-based rights theory. Rights on this outlook are to be based on compassion. If someone lacks sympathy, then ethics based in sympathy simply does not work. Appealing to sympathy as a general principle (instead of looking to a particular person’s sympathy) will not have a different result unless one no longer appeals to any given person’s sympathy, but one argues that some forms of sympathy are generally better or worse than others. But that makes the good the fundamental consideration, not sympathy per se. Basing equal rights on sympathy will fail in key cases unless of course one is ‘preaching to the converted’, who already hold liberationist sympathies.
   
4. Kant’s rights theory. Rights are based in Kant’s idea that an acceptable moral principle can be universalized for all rational moral agents. All oppressors would universalize their particular views.
   
5. Gewirth’s rights theory. Uses Gewirth’s notion that everyone needs rights to freedom and well-being, and the principle of generic consistency requires that we extend our consideration to rights-holders generally. Oppressors agree that people need freedom and well-being to act, and that all kinds of beings should be treated in a consistent manner. (Similar remarks apply to a principle of equal consideration of interests, such as Singer’s, Francione’s, or Dunayer’s, that merely requires treating like cases alike unless there is a ‘good’ reason to the contrary. What an oppressor intuitively views as a ‘good’ reason is different from what liberationists see as ‘good’, but one cannot merely beg the question against competing senses of ‘good’, or assume what needs to be justified. Yet intuitions structurally do not admit of justification, and are logically helpless to settle conflicts between intuitions about the good or anything else.)
   
6. Rawls’ rights theory. Frames principles of rights or justice in ‘the original position’, an imaginary time when we are spirits, not yet born, and we do not know if we will be born rich, poor, ‘white’, ‘black’, male, female, and so on. This restriction of knowledge, known as ‘the veil of ignorance’, is meant to rule out all forms of harmful discrimination. Rawls claims that everyone in the original position is merely self-interested. However, someone who is truly self-interested would not submit to forming principles in the original position. And someone who is a sexist, racist, or homophobe believes that they are inherently superior either ‘naturally’ or perhaps in a way favoured by God, and will believe that they cannot possibly be born as one of these ‘inferior’ beings (or else it would not be the same sort of being that is born), so there is allegedly no danger in framing sexist, racist, or homophobic principles in the original position after all, among supposedly ‘morally good’ people who can be ‘trusted’ to legislate ethics. After all, one must be ‘morally competent’ to form moral laws.
   
7. Utilitarianism. What path in the future maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain for everyone? Or maximizes preference-satisfaction and minimizes preference-frustration? Even if, say, all pleasures and pains are counted without regard to race, sex, sexual preference, and so on, in some societies it is possible that most feelings, desires and preferences are generally molded along conservative, oppressive lines, and that in such a society, it would present the ‘greatest good’ to oppress in a particular manner. Or perhaps one could aim for an oppressive society in which feelings, preferences, and desires vindicate certain forms of oppression. The latter—going from a liberationist to an oppressive society—is much harder to argue for convincingly in utilitarian terms, but much of the point of an ethic is to get oppressive societies to change, and utilitarianism does not self-evidently demand such a change in a thoroughly oppressive society as argued. Oppression usually happens when oppressors outnumber or can mold the oppressed anyway. Also, startlingly, most utilitarians are exclusive of most beings with interests. That is, most utilitarians now are ‘humanists’, or what animal liberationists would call speciesists. Only the interests of humans need to be maximized on the most common utilitarian frameworks, although the interests of animals need to be considered in a so-called ‘humane’ fashion. Since the predominant logic of utilitarianism thus permits exclusivity, there is nothing to stop a utilitarian from only seeking to maximize the interests of the rich, so-called ‘whites’, heterosexuals, and so on, only needing a ‘humane’ treatment of those who are denied equal consideration. These remarks do not apply to ‘indirect utilitarianism’, which advocates ‘forgetting’ about being a utilitarian and just aiming for society’s ethics in general, but obviously some societies are oppressive to emulate, and indirectly approximating maximum utility, as the above shows, can be very hazardous indeed from an anti-oppressive standpoint.
   
8. Ethical egoism. This claims that ethics can be based on pure self-interest, and it is rational to universalize rules against harming for example since otherwise other citizens may harm oneself. However, a purely selfish person might perceive that they can treat certain members of an underclass harshly and not be unduly at risk for harm oneself so long as power, security forces, and segregation are exerted in certain ways. It is also unclear whether someone who only really cares about ego would feel either obliged to care about those whom the self would oppress, or required to refrain from indulging pet prejudices, be they oppressive or perhaps other.
   
9. Virtue ethics. Oppressors always think that their way is more ‘virtuous’, and that self-styled ‘progressives’ are really ‘vicious’ in certain ways. Virtue ethics is really based on intuitionism, and the intuitions of oppressors are hardly liberatory.
   
10. Moral skepticism. This outlook permits any way of life whatsoever, including oppressive ones.
    
11. Pragmatism. This facilitates whatever ‘works’ for society. Oppressors have no problem implementing protocols that chiefly ‘work’ only for themselves.
    
12. Ecoholism.This set of theories judges moral right and wrong based on what contributes to the flourishing of environmental wholes such as nature, the biosphere, ecosystems, and so on. Such theories do not settle debates over animal—including human—relations at an individual level, though, and so are ambiguous as to oppression. Indeed, a surprising number of ‘deep green’ thinkers are extreme right-wingers who believe in letting nature take its course in a harsh, social Darwinist fashion.
    
13. Spiritual Ethics.Thinking clearly in this capacity calls us back to the ethical theories listed above (and indeed beyond them all). Or being dogmatic about one’s intuitions as to divine preference, for example, permits any kind of oppressive stance whatsoever.

Another special consideration of utilitarianism—the most complicated theory of the lot on this particular question—seems to be in order. Do utilitarian considerations of pleasure or preference-satisfaction (or their opposites) need to employ a standard of the equal consideration of interests that would inherently rule out all forms of oppression? All that the equal consideration of interests means for utilitarians is that your pleasure or preference counts regardless of your sex, so-called ‘race’, sexual preference, and so on. However, the scenarios noted above do consider everyone’s interests and give them equal weight when they are comparable, only the interests of the oppressed are outweighed by the aggregate of interests in society anyway. Utilitarianism’s equal consideration of interests cannot be tied to equally good outcomes for everyone (such as my own theory of best caring pretty much guarantees in terms of basic rights) without giving up the utilitarian theory itself. Outcomes need to be decided by aggregate utilities on the theory in question. Similarly, equal consideration of interests cannot be used to secure individual dignity against aggregated interests since the vulnerability of such dignity is a well-known feature of utilitarianism itself. Utilitarians are committed to the equal consideration of utility-units, not necessarily of sentient beings. Indeed, as we have seen, exclusive utilitarians who perceive that some sentient beings are superior in dignity do not even seek to maximize everyone’s interests in the first place.

In other work, I have noted that the rights frameworks, the ethic of care, virtue ethics, and pragmatism can all be logically reducible to, say, utilitarianism or ethical egoism. This creates ever more of a real problem for ruling out all oppression as I have argued.

In any case, all traditional ethical theories are intuitionist, including utilitarianism. So even though it might not seem plausible for a more enlightened society to backtrack into a flagrantly oppressive society in utilitarian terms, more fundamentally for utilitarians and others, an ethic is deemed right if it conforms to one’s intuitions. And oppressive beliefs illustrate the true fundamental opinions of oppressors without any doubt. Intuitionism unwittingly valorizes these fundamental notions of those who would oppress. As for the intuitions of the ethic of care, if oppressors are asked, in formulating their ‘caring’ intuitions, if they care as much about the oppressed, one would hear a resounding ‘No!’ Obviously, I am not arguing that the oppressive, often superiorist intuitions resorted to in responding to the above theories are right, only that they cannot be objected to as intuitions by those same fourteen theorists without complete hypocrisy. That is because the theorists in question all uniformly rely on intuitionism.

It would be deplorable if all of the chief ethical views out there are logically reducible to the logical outlines of oppressive societies. Plenty of liberationists are willing to walk the walk of opposing all oppression, but the above views fail to give people the means to talk the talk as convincingly as could be. We need not only good thoughts and deeds, but good systems of thoughts concerning deeds. Many or most moral theorists have anti-oppressive good intentions, but these are not only not good enough, but they do nothing at all in satisfying demands for theoretic rigour. All the fame of the above most favoured theories, their proponents, and associated institutions will do nothing at all to save these views in question from their own logic or lack of it.

When will activists generally wake up to these facts of reasoning? However, we should not despair. It is not the case that all views can be co-opted by oppressors. In championing what is best for each and every sentient being, and systematically ruling out all harms, best caring (defended elswhere, especially in my forthcoming book) can never logically be reduced to any form of oppression. The logic of best caring can only be used to try to reduce oppression itself in a completely global sense that is never reliant on unreliable ‘intuitions’.

Best caring agents of the world unite!

New Home Page

OK, so I got carried away with "the science of duty" theme (that is the literal meaning of deontology) by entitling my home page thus in recent days. It is perhaps funny because it is understandable that a deontological moral theoretician would do that even though nonscholars would never have heard of the idea. But we can speak of the science of ethics more generally, with other aspects than just duty. Also, as dramatic as it is to finally succeed in a science of duty unlike previous neo-Kantian frameworks (intuitionist as they are), a much more universal appeal for scholars and activists is predicted in the form of Winning the Animal Rights Debate, the new title of my website. I think this one, accompanied by new copy, is here to stay, and it is in keeping with my soon-to-be-published book, Universal Animal Rights: Winning the Ethical Debate. Enjoy!

Last in the Crisis Series: Transcending Logically Incoherent Definitions of Speciesism

As a side-note, some will have noticed my renaming my website "The Science of Duty," which is the meaning of "deontology." "Liberation Unlimited," the previous title, while a noble idea, does not reflect certain unavoidable limitations in the way that I would like. The new title also captures something distinctive in what I am doing.

Note that technically this would be Crisis #7 in the crises listed in blog entry (37). I am skipping Crisis #6, and reserve addressing that and the remaining crises I listed to my upcoming book, Universal Animal Rights.

Joan Dunayer, in her book, Speciesism, takes to task, for their inadequate definitions of speciesism, the two most well-known writers in animal ethics: Peter Singer and Tom Regan. Singer defines speciesism as “a prejudice or attitude of bias towards the interests or members of one’s own species and against members of other species.” (Singer, 1990, p. 1) She rightly objects that this definition only allows favoring the human species over nonhuman species, but humans can also favor one nonhuman species over another, such as more humanlike creatures (e.g., chimpanzees) over other species, or domesticated animals over wild animals (Dunayer, 2004, p. 2)—or, I would add, wildlife over domesticates. She also observes that Singer defines speciesism in another context as a preference for humans simply on the ground of species, (Singer, 2003, p. 23) but this is like saying that racists only discriminate on the basis of so-called “race,” as opposed to (supposedly) associated characteristics such as skin color. (Dunayer, 2004, p. 2) She is right that it would be wrong to discriminate on the basis of skin color just as it may well be wrong to discriminate on the basis of characteristics supposedly associated with certain species, such as superior rationality. She notes that Regan also defines speciesism merely as favoring humans, (Regan, 2001, pp. 170, 181) although, as I readily concede, speciesism is not necessarily limited to that. I believe she is right that a precise and functional definition of speciesism is required for ethics, and she makes some good points against previous definitions. However, I do not find that her own attempt to define “speciesism” is always more successful or rigorous than the efforts of her intellectual predecessors.

Dunayer defines speciesism as: “A failure, in attitude or practice, to accord any nonhuman being equal consideration and respect.” (Dunayer, 2004, p. 5) I would mount five criticisms of this concept:

1. A stone is a “nonhuman being,” so according to this definition any granting of unequal consideration to a pebble is “speciesist.”
   
2. If she insists that stones are not of any living species and are therefore ruled out (although not, I would add, by her actual definition), it must be conceded that plants are nonhuman beings of different species, and so her definition logically requires that we not discriminate against them either (which is certainly not her actual position). In her book she routinely refers to “nonhuman rights” instead of animal rights when she means “nonhuman animal rights,” but again her language, on the face of it, refers to the rights of rocks and roses (which again she does not mean—but she should say what she means).
   
3. She observes, in agreement with the philosopher, Paola Cavalieri, that speciesism could “be used to describe any form of discrimination based on species.” (Cavalieri, 2001, p. 70). Yet veterinarians routinely discriminate treatments or foods for animals on the basis of species. It is unjust—and frequently harmful—discrimination that is the problem in oppression, not just any form of discrimination.
   
4. Her definition is oddly anthropocentric, or it only allows for speciesist discrimination against nonhumans. However, there are important cases of arbitrary and harmful discrimination against human animals:
   
   1. a misanthrope may revere nonhuman animals while detesting human beings and so discriminate against humans in a speciesist fashion; or
      
   2. a thought experiment sometimes used in animal ethics is that an alien species could conquer Earth and enslave humans or eat them, etc., which would also arguably be speciesist.
5. Finally, built into her definition is the strong presumption that all nonhuman beings, by which she actually means nonhuman sentient beings, morally need to be given equal consideration in all contexts, and she seems to imply that if it came to a choice between saving a human or a grasshopper, both would have to be equally weighted—however I develop this last line of criticism in my book.

I anticipate my book, which will be out there in about five months’ time, by defining speciesism simply as unjust discrimination on the basis of species or species-characteristics. These characteristics may be real or only alleged. This should capture all true cases of speciesism and not encompass other forms of discrimination that are not speciesist. Some will immediately question whether justice applies to those of other species. However, justice involves equitable allotments of benefits and protections (i.e., no one could coherently state that inequitable benefits/protections are just). Benefits and protections can fully meaningfully apply to nonhuman sentient beings, so a refusal to be equitable in this respect is therefore precisely the willful negation of equity, or inequitable—ergo unjust. Speciesism is not just a case of being nonequitable, as we may be in deciding the fate of rocks, since equity does not logically apply to stones. It is a category mistake to apply equity to stones. However, equity does apply to beings with interests, otherwise it could not apply to human interests. So negating equity for beings with interests is an arbitrary refusal or unwillingness to be equitable, or a negation of logically applicable equity, and so is inequitable. Being nonequitable to stones is not a vice, but being inequitable to sentient beings is. Justice does straightforwardly apply to beings of other species even if someone is simply unwilling to apply it.

Justice, or equitable allotment of protections and benefits (the highest form of justice on best caring is championing the best for each and every sentient being), is not the same as equal consideration, a concept favoured by Peter Singer, Gary Francione, and Joan Dunayer, for example. Equal consideration means treating like cases alike unless there is a good reason to do otherwise. However, any ethical theory can provide equal consideration, including ethical egoism, which also has an intrinsic reason to deny favorable treatment to animals—i.e., it is not in the interest of human egoists. We cannot deny this to be a “good” reason without simply begging the question against the theory. Yet ethical egoism, for all of its equal consideration, is unjust, since it is manifestly inequitable to seek to benefit and protect ego above all, and only to benefit/protect others in essentially self-serving ways. Ethical egoism is just only if inequity is justice.

It might be objected that speciesism is a form of oppression rather than injustice. However, oppression is conceptually linked to injustice. To oppress linguistically derives from “pressing down” upon others. Yet although defending against an attacker may “press down” upon that individual, it is not necessarily oppressive since it is not automatically unjust to defend against violence. Or it is not unjust to suffer unavoidable pain at the hand of a surgeon. So oppression is actually essentially linked not only to harm but also to injustice.

Speciesist discrimination need not even be harmful, at least in any straightforward sense, since it would also be speciesist to exercise favoritism in the dispensation of benefits. As well, not all harmful discrimination is unjust, such as when we punish a criminal. It may not be unjust, as well, to judge or discriminate arbitrarily, e.g., with respect to a medical patient’s line of treatment, which we might only be able to guess at, in trying to discriminate what is best, among other possible paths for treatment (note that guessing involves arbitrariness). My definition of speciesism, unlike Singer’s and Regan’s, accounts for:

1. unjustly favoring certain nonhuman species over others;
2. discrimination based on species characteristics;
3. ruling out as unacceptable, unlike Dunayer, equality for gravel and grass—let alone (in all contexts) grasshoppers;
4. rejecting speciesist misanthropy; and
5. ruling in as acceptable many forms of beneficial species-discrimination.

We therefore have, through careful thinking, a concept of speciesism that we can use in the animal rights debate which survives all known objections, unlike earlier conceptions.

Works Cited

Cavalieri, Paola. 2001. The animal question: why nonhuman animals deserve human rights. 2d ed. Translated by Catherine Woollard. New York: Oxford University Press.

Dunayer, Joan. 2005. Reply to a self-proclaimed speciesist. Vegan Voice 14 (September-November).

Dunayer, Joan. 2004. Speciesism. Derwood: Ryce Publishing.

Regan, Tom. 2001. The case for animal rights. In Carl Cohen and Tom Regan, The animal rights debate. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Singer, Peter. 2003. Animal liberation at 30. New York Review of Books, 15 May: 23-26.

Singer, Peter. 1990. Animal liberation, 2d ed. New York: Avon Books.

Two Announcements

I have two announcements.

First, the title of my book, now due out in October, is a secret no longer, nor is the name of my publisher. My book is announced on the website of Palgrave Macmillan (one of the most prestigious academic book publishers) dedicated to a new book series by the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. The title is: Universal Animal Rights: Winning the Ethical Debate.

Second, Part 2 of my essays on animals an normative sociology has been published. This essay has some special features:

1. The first ethical system ever truly to use the scientific method of gathering evidence for hypotheses, or so I argue. Best caring is given its most rigorous defence yet in print (the book will of course offer considerably more).
   
2. A very extensive critique of intuitionism (although the book goes further). Any ethic that relies on intuitionism is propaganda, or exploiting what people already believe. For example, Francione propagandizes that we ought to avoid unnecessary suffering, as countless laws state. However, this approach does nothing to justify this principle, making it propaganda, or comfortably getting people to extend what they already happen to believe IF the audience agrees. In fact, one of the overarching goals of philosophy is to justify beliefs, not play on them, as the form of propaganda persuasion goes. Of course the intuitionist approach can rationally leverage nothing against competing intuitions of other theories. This is a particularly apt example since Francione prejudicially appeals to an animal rights sense of "unnecessary suffering." He ignores the traditional, different sense of that phrase (see my blog entry for July 28, 2007). It is as though he is playing "peek-a-boo" and only sees the animal rights sense, covering his eyes against the other sense (recall his claim, cited in the earlier blog entry, that animal exploitation is unnecesary suffering in whatever sense one uses the phrase in question).
   
3. A hint of how I go about the task of answering skepticism in ethics; most animal ethics people do not even tackle this fundamental issue.
   
4. Showing how sociology can be done powered by a liberationist ethic.
   

Enjoy, and peace be with you!

Crisis # 5b: Failing to Object Decisively to Other Theories

It is a great problem not only when philosophers lack a sufficient justification of their own views. My earlier remarks on intuitionism in ethics, among others, suffice to illuminate this problem. It is also problematic when philosophers deal in unconvincing objections to other theories. Here I will use Tom Regan as an example. Many consider him to be the greatest animal rights philosopher, and admire The Case for Animal Rights (1983) not least of all since it considers views that compete with animal rights and tries to refute them.

Ethical Egoism

Regan objects specifically to ethical egoism, in The Case for Animal Rights, p. 190, in that such self-orientation involves no direct duty to mentally disabled humans. However, it merely describes ethical egoism to note that that it does not involve a direct duty to animals or mentally disabled humans. Someone who agrees with the theory would have no problem with this feature. Regan, then, is surreptitiously relying on the fact that many people would find such a result to be counterintuitive, and so his criticism is based on intuitions after all, with all of the problems that such an approach entails. Instead of showing that ethical egoism is mistaken, he is merely assuming as much.

Perfectionism

Consider now Regan’s objections to what he calls “perfectionism.” Perfectionism values above all those with talents or excellences. Regan notes, p. 234, that perfectionism may result in a caste-like system based on talents. However, that would not be offensive to perfectionists such as Nietzsche. Or, Ibid., Regan argues that favoring more perfect people means giving people credit for a “natural lottery”—no one has control over what talents they have. However, perfectionists might not care where talents come from, but admire them anyway, much as we favor certain kinds of weather regardless of its origin. He objects, Ibid., p. 262, that perfectionism does not treat others as if they have a welfare, and thus inherent value. However, a perfectionist such as Aristotle would acknowledge that “natural [human] slaves” have a welfare. Slaves are just entitled to less welfare, according to Aristotle, and on that view these slaves would have either no inherent value or else a lesser degree of it.

Regan gives two reasons for shifting gears and now favoring egalitarianism: (1) people with less virtue (or overall good as superiorism would have it) would be treated with “injustice” and would not be able to complain about it because they “deserve” it, and (2) it would be hard to judge degrees of inherent value. (pp. 236-237) He simply declares dogmatically, with no other justification offered: “Such an interpretation of justice is unacceptable.” (p. 237) However, (1) begs the question. The perfectionist would insist that yes, people with less virtue do deserve less moral consideration. As for (2), it may be true so far as it goes, but if it is the truth (and Regan is again begging the question assuming that perfectionism is not right) then the best we can do is to estimate degrees of inherent value and thus prefer to save humans over squirrels in dilemmas for example, without being able to pin any absolute numbers to such a preference.

Utilitarianism

Regan objects to Peter Singer’s utilitarianism, his greatest theoretical rival, and also his greatest competition for intellectual leadership of the animal liberation movement. However, Singer can easily reply to most of these criticisms. Regan objects that utilitarianism can justify racism, sexism, or speciesism (Case, pp. 227, 313). Singer can reply that these practices are ruled out because of the suffering and unequal consideration of interests that these forms of oppression cause. Regan objects that economic interests in exploiting animals are irrelevant, but this begs the question against utilitarianism’s consideration of this factor, and Singer can add that if meat-eating were banned, the overall stress of career changes would be outweighed by the immense suffering that is inflicted upon animals raised for flesh-eating. My own ethic’s ruling out of aggression—not based on intuitions as is Regan’s approach—does however suggest that certain professions are indeed unethical.

Regan takes exception to utilitarianism’s viewing of individuals as mere receptacles of value (p. 205), but Singer plausibly maintains that individuals are inseparable from their experiences, unlike wine in relation to a cup (Peter Singer, ‘Animal Liberation or Animal Rights?’ Monist 70 (January 1987): 8). Singer also concedes Regan’s key points in The Case for Animal Rights that animals are subjects-of-a-life with inherent value, are not mere things, have preferences and a welfare, and are not to be used as mere means. (Ibid., p. 6) A utilitarian can state that someone used in invasive experiments is not being used as a mere means because their interests are fully considered—they are simply outweighed. Sumner indicates that “utilitarians are committed to believing that it is a good thing (a gain) when an individual life goes well and a bad thing (a loss) when one goes badly.” (L. W. Sumner, review of The Case for Animal Rights, by Tom Regan, Nous 20 (September 1986): 431-32) However, Sumner also warns: “It is not obvious on the face of it that respect for the inherent value of individuals is entirely insensitive to global cost/benefit considerations. Regan simply makes this so by stipulation.” (L. W. Sumner, ‘Animal Welfare and Animal Rights’, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 13 (May 1988): 167) Obviously I am not the only one to notice that Regan misfires objections at other theories. There are still more objections to utilitarianism that just don’t fly.

Regan alleges that Singer faces a dilemma: that the principle of equal consideration of interests is either a basic principle, or else is derived from the principle of utility. He claims that making the equality principle basic undermines the idea that the principle of utility is basic. Yet Regan’s contention overlooks the fact that the equal consideration of interests is part of what is constitutive of Singer’s utilitarianism, so, after all, the equality principle is perfectly consistent with utility as a basic principle. The other supposed horn of “Singer’s dilemma,” that it may not maximize utility to consider interests equally, is unintelligible, since given that the equality principle of Singer’s helps to constitute utilitarianism, one cannot even calculate maximal utility without presupposing an equal consideration of interests. If some interests are to be favored more than others in a given action according to utilitarian reckoning, that is a result that still depends on treating equivalent interests equally (for example, someone who really is interested in a course of study may be granted a seat in a course that is refused to someone who is known to have a much lesser preference for studying the given subject). Here Regan is confusing the equal consideration of interests in calculating which act maximizes utility (which is what the utilitarians assert and is untouched by Regan’s remarks), and whether it is most utile to equally promote all interests in the final analysis (inequality can be equitable, Singer would no doubt agree). Regan tediously elaborates this misguided criticism in pp. 211-218 of The Case for Animal Rights. Regan resists the idea that the equality principle could be a “formal principle” because it is possible to have moral principles, such as Kant’s, which do not include Singer’s equality principle. However, the formality requirement must be that Singer’s utilitarianism presupposes his equality principle (which it does), not that all moral theories presuppose it. Why must all ethical theories agree with Singer’s? This is never made clear because it cannot be: it is way off-base.

Regan’s main objection to rule utilitarianism in The Case for Animal Rights, p. 252-55, is that moral agent A might be envious if moral agent B is favored by rules against harming, but cognitively disadvantaged humans who are barely aware may not envy others because they would not know what they are missing. But rule utilitarianism is not based on envy. It seeks to maximize the welfare of everybody, including cognitively disadvantaged humans. So this objection is entirely beside the point.

In my blog entry for July 7, 2009, we have already seen that Regan has unsuccessful objections against medical vivisection, and that his theory actually seems unwillingly to conduce towards such a kind of practice.

Animal ethics does not just require justifying one’s own theory of animal ethics (although that in itself is a mighty task), but also ruling out the competition (another formidable challenge). This Regan and other philosophers fail to do in my opinion. I use Regan as an example, but could easily expand this study to look at the work of other thinkers. By contrast, good criticisms will show that the premises do not entail the conclusions drawn, or logically entail absurdities, or are essentially arbitrary or even unintelligible. Those are the sorts of criticisms that I mount in my forthcoming book on animal rights ethics.