Transcript document
Ethical Issue Animal Rights Ethical Issue: Animal Rights What do you think about the following practices? Shooting live animals with bullets to study the “killing power” of the bullets Fracturing bones of animals to let doctor practice bone healing Collecting bile juice from caged bears. Cutting shark fins from live sharks and release them to the sea Keeping calf in small cage without movement to make the veal tender Clubbing baby seals to death for their fur Keeping large animals in small cages in the zoo Any example of treatment of animals you find objectionable? Animal Rights (2) Why do we have to consider animal rights? Most people find cruelty to animals repulsive If we are cruel to animals, we can be cruel to humans. Ethical arguments Utilitarians: Animals are capable of happiness and suffering. Therefore we ought to consider their well being when we decide our course of action to maximize our happiness and reduce our suffering. Kantians: We should extend our respect for individual human rights to animals, regardless of utility. Animal Rights (3) Should we consider animals our moral equals? No: Morality is a human institution, developed and maintained to improve our own individual and social good. We should only concern the well being of animals if that contribute to our own good. Since sympathy, compassion, and kindness contribute in crucial ways to human good, we should not accept needless cruelty to non-human animals, but we have no obligation to treat them as our moral equals. Since animals do not have moral principles, they have no right to moral treatment. Yes: We should be consistent in our moral principles. We do not treat mentally retarded human differently, therefore we should not treat animals differently because they are not as intelligent or as capable as we are. Second, to claim that only moral agents have rights is unfair and unfounded. This is speciesism. Animal Rights (4) Should we ban all animal experiments? If animal rights people insist that animals and human are morally equivalent, then it is immoral to experiment on animals, and we do not experiment on human, even mentally retarded people. Should animal rights people be vegetarians? Many farming practices are cruel: chickens, pigs, cows, fish are mostly raised in small enclosed space with little room to move. Even if animals are raised humanely, is killing of animals for food moral if they are our moral equivalent? Animal Rights (5) What would a non-speciesist (animal rights person) do about the following? Shooting live animals with bullets to study the “killing power” of the bullets Fracturing bones of animals to let doctor practice bone healing Collecting bile juice from caged bears. Cutting shark fins from live sharks and release them to the sea Keeping calf in small cage without movement to make the veal tender Clubbing baby seals to death for their fur Keeping large animals in small cages in the zoo Animal Rights (6) What would a “speciesist” do about the following? Shooting live animals with bullets to study the “killing power” of the bullets Fracturing bones of animals to let doctor practice bone healing Collecting bile juice from caged bears. Cutting shark fins from live sharks and release them to the sea Keeping calf in small cage without movement to make the veal tender Clubbing baby seals to death for their fur Keeping large animals in small cages in the zoo Discussion Case (1) Examples of medicine developed using animal experimentation Should alternate method be used? Should animals further away from primates be used? Discussion Case (2) In Rwanda, Africa, it was estimated that there are about 250 gorillas remaining. 150 of them are located in a 30,000 acre Parc des Volcans, which serves as their sanctuary. There are a large number of people living in and around that area and they want to convert the park for farming. Should the Government of Rwanda allows conversion of the park to farmland to improve people’s livelihood?