The Morality of Killing Animals: An Investigation in Utilitarian Ethics.
Research Questions
The ethics of killing non human animals remains an unsolved problem in utilitarian ethics and has generated heated debate amongst ethicists in recent times. It is now widely accepted that the interests of non-human animals matter from a moral perspective, but for many philosophers such interests are limited to those relating to suffering and pleasure, and do not include an interest to on go on living.
In order to discover whether there is something intrinsically wrong with killing non-human animals, we must begin by looking more broadly at the morality of killing in general, whether it is wrong and under which circumstances. Here, preference utilitarianism …show more content…
Most of us do not think that adult humans are replaceable, but do we have good reasons to support it? For classical utilitarians the difference between conscious and self-conscious beings is not in itself relevant (Singer, 2011: 91), whereas preference utilitarianism relies on self-consciousness to reject replaceability. Self-conscious animals exist in a biographical sense, with future plans and desires, and cutting their lives short would prevent the fulfilment of any such plans and desires. Nonetheless, this idea has been contended too (Hart, 1980) and the question remains …show more content…
On the one hand, discerning whether is it wrong to kill animals could also elucidate the ethics of killing humans, especially the so called 'marginal cases', where a human's capacities are similar to those of non-human animals. If animals are replaceable, then we need to give reason why the same does not apply to certain humans, such as those with cognitive impairments. On the other hand, providing an answer to the question of how we should measure the amount of pleasure in the world would not only help clarify the question of killing, but would also illuminate the debate about population, a controversial issue in utilitarian ethics, where none of the answers we have seem entirely satisfactory. Here, the 'prior existence' view states that we lack any moral obligation to future generations, which has practical implications when thinking about issues such as climate change. Whereas the 'total' view commits us to increase the population to boost the total amount of pleasure, even if the average of happiness per person decreases. This, however, leads to what Parfit (XXXX) has called the 'repugnant conclusion', a crowded world in which each person is just on the limit of being miserable, but still the total sum of happiness is higher than in a world with fewer people with higher levels of
Research Questions
The ethics of killing non human animals remains an unsolved problem in utilitarian ethics and has generated heated debate amongst ethicists in recent times. It is now widely accepted that the interests of non-human animals matter from a moral perspective, but for many philosophers such interests are limited to those relating to suffering and pleasure, and do not include an interest to on go on living.
In order to discover whether there is something intrinsically wrong with killing non-human animals, we must begin by looking more broadly at the morality of killing in general, whether it is wrong and under which circumstances. Here, preference utilitarianism …show more content…
Most of us do not think that adult humans are replaceable, but do we have good reasons to support it? For classical utilitarians the difference between conscious and self-conscious beings is not in itself relevant (Singer, 2011: 91), whereas preference utilitarianism relies on self-consciousness to reject replaceability. Self-conscious animals exist in a biographical sense, with future plans and desires, and cutting their lives short would prevent the fulfilment of any such plans and desires. Nonetheless, this idea has been contended too (Hart, 1980) and the question remains …show more content…
On the one hand, discerning whether is it wrong to kill animals could also elucidate the ethics of killing humans, especially the so called 'marginal cases', where a human's capacities are similar to those of non-human animals. If animals are replaceable, then we need to give reason why the same does not apply to certain humans, such as those with cognitive impairments. On the other hand, providing an answer to the question of how we should measure the amount of pleasure in the world would not only help clarify the question of killing, but would also illuminate the debate about population, a controversial issue in utilitarian ethics, where none of the answers we have seem entirely satisfactory. Here, the 'prior existence' view states that we lack any moral obligation to future generations, which has practical implications when thinking about issues such as climate change. Whereas the 'total' view commits us to increase the population to boost the total amount of pleasure, even if the average of happiness per person decreases. This, however, leads to what Parfit (XXXX) has called the 'repugnant conclusion', a crowded world in which each person is just on the limit of being miserable, but still the total sum of happiness is higher than in a world with fewer people with higher levels of