Why Is Whaling Wrong

Is It Wrong to Kill a Whale? Over the past three weeks, there has been a continuous stream of ethical examinations and arguments on the controversial whaling issue. After sifting through and deciphering what is significant and what cannot be considered credible, a conclusion was made. This paper will analyze Peter Singer’s consequentialist view and two deontological theories and apply these theories to the whaling issue. In order to decide whether whaling is ethical or not, one must understand different traditional ethical theories. According to the Sep section on Traditional Ethical Theories, consequentialism is the idea that an action is right or wrong based purely on its consequences. More specifically, utilitarianism considers pleasure …show more content…
Deontological ethical theories separate whether an action is “right” or “wrong” from its consequences. Deontologists apply several distinct sets of morals, rules and obligations which include; not to lie, not to steal, not to kill etc., to conclude whether an action is right or wrong. Unlike Singer’s utilitarian view, deontological theories apply these specific morals based on an animals’ distinct intrinsic value, suggesting some animals may have more value than others. This indication of different animals having different levels of intrinsic values becomes difficult when it is hard to interpret what qualifies an animal to have value. According to animal activist Tom Ragan; animals must have sense perceptions, beliefs, desires, motives, memory, a sense of the future, and a psychological identity over time to be considered intrinsically valuable. This still creates complication because there is currently no way to tell if most animals have beliefs, memory or a sense of …show more content…
Utilitarianism is an attractive concept because you are always trying to increase the net pleasure of the world depending on that specific consequence rather than going around with a set of morals that might not be appropriately applicable to every situation. Regarding whaling, if the net pleasure coming from the harvested whale outweighs the net pain in terms of the whale then whaling should be permitted, albeit regulated. In keeping accordance with Singer, the pain and pleasure points of the whale will be measured at the same value, rather than less than, of those for the