Norcross's Fred Thought Experiment: Is It Morally Wrong?

Norcross’s Fred thought experiment is an imaginative scenario in which he tries to draw a comparison to factory farms in the United states to discuss the morality of them. In his scenario, a man named Fred is on trial for torturing puppies. Fred’s defense is that torturing the puppies provides him with a pleasure to taste the goodness of chocolate, the sense in which he can’t attain any other way due to an accident that happened to him. Although ridiculous, the story is analogous to factory farms in a moral sense. The question now becomes, is Fred’s behavior morally wrong? If his behavior is wrong this means that buying food from factory farms are morally wrong as well. I am going to argue that Fred’s behavior is morally wrong using Immanuel Kant’s thoughts on duties to animals. …show more content…
Kant says that our treatment of animals is analogous to human nature and that treating animals in inhumane way damages the duty to mankind(Kant,1). Using Kant’s logic, if you perform an inhumane action to an animal it is morally wrong (because of the indirect duty to humanity).Fred performs inhumane actions to his puppies and is cognizant of them, therefore his actions are morally wrong. Some may argue against this point because they do not believe that animals have nothing to do with humanity and that they are just simply means to an end. If this were true, my argument will not stand. To counter this objection, I would bring up scenarios where people, who at a young age tortured animals ,grow up to be murderers, or other violent and evil people. In contrast, people who grow up loving animals and caring for them, end up having a more loving personality that reflects the way they treat other humans. These situations aren’t just a coincidence, our feelings towards animals shape our feelings and actions towards