Practical Ethics: The Bottom Line

“There’s no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They’re all animals.”— Washingtonian magazine, 8/1/86

The above quote is from Ingrid Newkirk and i use it to introduce the topic of concentration for this entry because it think it summarises essentially the basis of the animal rights fight and justifiably so. No matter what distinction we give ourselves due to our evolution and what not, doesn't take away from the fact that we are all animals and the biologists (myself included) will attest to that; that's why we are in the animal kingdom of classification.
Mattew Silliman may have giving us the qualification of being active moral valuers; we have the ability to value and be valued in return and Tom Regan may have distinguished us with the credentials of being moral agents but when the dust settles, we are all animals and posses inherent values thus shouldn't be treated as some "means to ends"; to borrow Kant's terminology.
Peter Singer in his essay; " Practical Ethics" brings out a very interesting point when he questions why we can't use human beings of the same consciousness level as mice in researches and as food as we do to other animals. This may seem absurd to the average reader but we can nonetheless see the validity in his remarks! Take Regan's moral agency and moral patients principles for example, where he qualifies non-human animals, children and disabled( mental, social, physical) adults as moral patients. We see from these comparisons that children and infants as well as rabbits and mice are all valuable equally so why don't we use children or retarded people as test subjects? Why do we resent stem cell research ( potential humans used for research) and have no qualms with hundreds of mice or guinea pigs subjected to torture daily? Better yet, why do we resent the thought of eating human flesh (cannibalism) but celebrate our achievements with feasting tables filled with meat choices of numerous varieties except human that is ?

Moral Status: Agents,Patients and or Quasi-agents!

Tom Regan did a splendid job in identifying what Mattew Silliman once called " Moral Valuers" as "Subjects of a life" (SOAL), but he took it a step further as he further qualified SOALs as either being moral agents or moral patients. Moral agents according to Regan "have the ability amongst others to bring impartial moral principles to bear on the determination of what, all considered, morally ought to be done and, having made this determination, to freely choose or fail to choose to act as morality, as they conceive it, requires". In contrast, he defines moral patients as "those who lack the prerequisites that would enable them to control their own behavior in ways that would make them morally accountable for what they do. In other words, moral agents can do wrong whereas moral patients can't cause harm since they can't do what is wrong!
As Regan expatiates, moral agents include fully conscious mature humans while most non-human animals, children and or handicapped(mental, social or physical) adults classify as moral patients. Some non-human animals as we have come to learn from media exposure or personal experiences due to intensive training have moved a step up from being just moral patients evident in their prowess in acquiring and communicating in human language; no matter how limited it may be. This special group of patients can't be awarded moral agency just yet especially since these abilities are products of external factors much more than internal mental capacities and for such a new term t describe them; quasi-moral agents.
At the forefront of these classification scheme is animal rights activist Steve Sapontzis; author of "Morals, Reasons,and Animals". Quasi moral agency may seem as a very gigantic step from moral patiency but it just goes to show us how very much alike non-human animals are to children and i don't think any mature fully conscious moral agent out there will support labs testing shampoo products or new drugs and medications on 5 year olds.

The Morality of the Life-Boat Riddle.

Ever heard of the riddle " What do you do or who do u save when you have three people and a dog to put on a lifeboat that can only take three people (the dog counts as one person) at once?" Well as a kid, that riddle meant nothing more to me than just a riddle and as such i relied on my common sense to provide me an answer. Nonetheless, if placed in such a situation,most of us wouldn't hesitate to leave the dog out of the life-boat so as to save the three humans.
Not until a few days ago, i would have still applied "common sense" and saved the three people but now i think i know better! The answer to this riddle entails more than just common sense, it is a moral question; one which treads on the fine line between inherent values of humans and non-human animals alike, one which addresses the concerns of doing whats better for the few or for the many and most importantly one which talks of the principles of morality.
As Regan points out in his theory on animal ethics from the book " The Animals Ethics Reader", the inherent value of humans and non-humans or humans and humans or better yet non-human and non-humans alike shouldn't be evaluated as to which is or more importance or what not only when and only when they are in direct conflict with each other-like in the life boat scenario. According to Regan, the life of a dog and that of a human should be considered of equal importance based on their inherent values except when, one has to be sacrificed for the other to live and for times like these, he beckons we call on the miniride or worst-off principles.
Usually i present answers or my thought on my blogs but this time i think i will do it differently, i think i will ask questions and hopefully, you guys answer them or at least voice your opinions on the matter. Taking the miniride and worst off principles, could there be a situation in which a human's life could be of less importance? Is there a possibility where a dog's life due to the miniride or the worst off principle could be important enough to replace that of a human on the life-boat?

Pain, Suffering and Hope

Recently, the world of sports found itself involved in an age old battle; one involving the "euthanasia of animals" and like all such conflicts many people were saddened and others questioning. Babaro, a highly trained race-horse was euthanised sometime last month after successive surgeries to treat his broken leg failed. It was agreed upon by his owners, trainers and doctors that this was the right thing to do; the same people who a few months back were willing to see him recover and weren't ready to part ways with him, bringing me to my question of concern.
When do we call it a day and resolve to intentionally killing an animal to put it out of its "suffering"? This decision has plagued the medecine field for as long as i can remember and affects but human and non-human patients alike. The very definition of euthanasia (the intentional killing of a human and in some cases other animals) suggests cruelty but is it really cruel to "pull the plug" as they say on a family member diagnosed as being clinically dead (vegetative state) or killing a pet who may have been a victim or some tragic event.
When push comes to shove, this decision is a difficult one be it a human or non-human animal and for once i have no clue on what camp i will favor in this instance! We all want to be optimistic that some miracle might happen but when the dust settles, reality reares it "ugly" face and the truth becomes evident.

Equality and Categorizations

As i read through Silliman's second and third installments in his book sentience and sensibility, i came across the idea of equality within categories and equalities between categories introduced by one of his characters; Manuel. This stirred up some thoughts in my head and i decided to make it the topic of my next blog entry.
Why do we have to categorize things into different groups? As a scientist, or better yet a student in field of science, i understand that grouping plants and animals under kingdoms,phylum, orders, families and so on help us identify and study them but i don't see why we have to let this segregation affect our moral value and thus morality! We,differentiate these organisms and to some extent support speciesism; organisms on higher evolutionary levels like the angiosperms (flowering plants) and vertebrae (vertebrates) tend to take their evolution as synonymous to superiority. This is topic for a different conversation and maybe a different blog so back to my focus here.
Manuel; one of Silliman's characters in his book talks of equality within categories rather than equality of categories and i disagree with the former and agree with the latter because i think the former to some degree justifies or supports speciecism and is against all what animal ethicist and other equal right activists stand for. To my understanding, equality within categories talks of treating all members of lets say the Canis familiaris (domestic dogs) be it a poodle, pitbull, German Shepard, terrier, retriever and what ever specie we keep as company equally. Meanwhile, equality of all categories at least to my understanding talks of treating members of the the Canis familiaris (domestic dogs) and the Canis lupus (wolves) fairly.
If this is the case then why does an individual of Manuel's stature; one who talks of sentience for rudimentary organism and value for plants and inanimate talk of or at least support subjective equality? Shouldn't we be in favor for an equality that treats all species of the dog fairly, shouldn't we support equality for all animals and not subject some to laboratory usage (guinea pigs and mice) and hold others ( cats and dogs) dear to our hearts? Better yet, why do we even have these categories? Why don't we regard dogs (wolves, foxes, domestic dogs and even hyenas), cats ( domestic cats, lions, jagaurs, sabre-tooths and cheetahs) and mammals (whales, humans, horses, bats) simply as what they are; ANIMALS and treat all equally!!!!

Value

The term value has different meanings to different people in various fields of study but what they all have in common is that value is somewhat synonymous with worth. Value can be instrumental; the kind of value we give to inanimate objects like cars, houses and other "material" possesions. Instrumental value in other words is subjective and thus the value of an object differs from person to person.
The value i am interested in is termed Moral Value and like most things, it is very difficult to define or explain. Silliman in his book Sentience and Sensibility sort of defines moral value as; " pro-active valuing by conscious sentient beings". By this Silliman means moral value is exhibited by moral valuers who value others and in so doing have value themselves. Danney Ursery defined moral value as " value consisting of a moral judgement and moral rule" and by this Ursery reinstates the basis of morality; how are actions or judgements fits in with the general public or the very next person.
Similarly i try to look at moral value as any other value with a sense of morality to it; basically an aesthetic, knowledge-based or instrumental form of value alongside a sense of right and wrong. By this i mean that moral value involves judging the morality of what we consider valuable; is it right or wrong to place value on my car over my sister? Is it rationale to place value on the things we do for the reasons we do?
What differentiates moral value from all other values we might come up with is the fact that it is intrinsic; valuers have no control over this form of value like they might over aesthetic or instrumental value. As organisms with intrinsic moral value, we can't be voided of our value even if other values do not deem us valuable. The source of moral value is also a topic of great debate but that's a topic for a later description.