Is Utilitarian Ethics Responsible for Extreme ANimal RIghts?

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Going through a lot of work on Utilitarianism, especially modern versions, I found that a considerable quantity of bioethicists are utilitarians and seem to act upon animal rights because of the basic principles of Utility.

According to Utility theory, the level of intelligence, species, abilities etc don't matter, and the only things that are under consideration are pain and suffering, and that all pain and suffering of beings should be considered equally. Anything that feels suffering and pain must be put up for equal consideration. This seems to put a lot of impetus behind the PETA movement of extreme animal rights. They like to compare people beng caged to chickens being caged. This is reprehensible, but in a way, many academics seem to lend credence to their position when they make note of the Utilitarian positions held in myriad bioethics essays. as if they have a justified basis, according to most Utilitarian bioethics essays.

Many of these essays claim it is unnecessary to cause such suffering simply because you like the taste or like the look of chic clothing. To Utilitarians, it wouldn't matter who suffered, just that the suffering existed and wasn't absolutly necessary. In fact, on the new Peta webpage layout, there are various quotes from Animal Rights ethicists, who are overwhelmingly Utilitarians. People such as as John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, and Peter Singer, Sidgwick etc. Speaking of Singer, Peter Singer is responsible for writing a profound piece called Animal Liberation.

In it, he and other ethicsts aren't saying that Humans are equal to other animals, but that their pain and suffering matter just as much as ours, and pain and suffering are what's quantifiable in a utility ethical calculus.

Essentially, most Utilitarian bioethicists follow his lead and consider the universal pain and suffering of all animals in their ethical calculus, and that's why PETA believes that other animals are on a vaguely equal level of consideration. If you cause pain and suffering to other animals, and it's unnecessary for your survival, it is wrong according to them and many Utilitarians. Singer and Mill go into much greater depth with this, but it seems as if PETA draws upon these essays to great effect.

It would also seem justified that you shouldn't force pain and suffering on other creatures simply for your own personal delight, if you don't need to--at least if you follow a Utilitarian ethic.

I also read that these aren't seen as crackpots; they are well respected in the bioethics field and supported by academic EDU websites. I wonder how people get around the Utility calculations, and are they responsible for the madness?

[Surlethe]

According to Utility theory, the level of intelligence, species, abilities etc don't matter, and the only things that are under consideration are pain and suffering, and that all pain and suffering of beings should be considered equally. Anything that feels suffering and pain must be put up for equal consideration. This seems to put a lot of impetus behind the PETA movement of extreme animal rights. They like to compare people beng caged to chickens being caged. This is reprehensible, but in a way, many academics seem to lend credence to their position when they make note of the Utilitarian positions held in myriad bioethics essays. as if they have a justified basis, according to most Utilitarian bioethics essays.

Many of these essays claim it is unnecessary to cause such suffering simply because you like the taste or like the look of chic clothing. To Utilitarians, it wouldn't matter who suffered, just that the suffering existed and wasn't absolutly necessary.

It seems to me this argument rests on a false dilemma: either animals feel pain and suffering to the full extent humans do, or they don't feel any pain and suffering at all. PETA wants you to choose option 1, which is the foundation of their argument; in reality, however, I see no reason there can't be a sliding scale of how much pain/suffering an animal feels at a particular act.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Well, the standard Utility princple rests on equalitiy of consderation. I guss we could take an example of cruelty. I don't know if a dog feels less pain by beating it with a bat than a human would by beating it with a bat. According to Utilitarians, the pain would be equal. It's just as painful to beat a man to death as it would be to beat a dog to death, I think they would think.

That's where I get confused, and I feel that this basic principle is why my ideology is partly to blame for PETA.

I don't know if sentient species feel more pain than other sentient species if they are tortured, beaten, etc. Do humans actually experience pain differently?

[wolveraptor]

Do animal-rights activists oppose the eating of any meat, or do they only oppose inhumane treatment of said animals? The latter is more justifiable, but the former is opposed by the natural food-chain.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Well, a lot of Utilitarian bioethicists oppose cruelty toward animals, but many are also vegetarians because they feel that it's unnecessary to eat animals. They see it as mostly a pleasure thing, not an actual health concern. I would think this wouldn't be true, though.

Then again, even farming kills animals, but how many compared to slaughter I am not sure. I can't find statistics.

However, they always mention that even in "good" food industries, the conditions aren't pleasant and induce suffering on behalf of the animals.

I think Singer and other bioethicists claim that even though it's nature that other animals eat each other for food, humans don't have to do that. To say that you ought to cause suffering by skinning and eating animals for clothes and food because that's the way humans work, would be an IS/ought violation.

It may be the natural state of affairs, but ought you follow it because it is? Can you go from an Is to an Ought? Most ethicists don't think so.

[Civil War Man]

I think Singer and other bioethicists claim that even though it's nature that other animals eat each other for food, humans don't have to do that. To say that you ought to cause suffering by skinning and eating animals for clothes and food because that's the way humans work, would be an IS/ought violation.

Of course, even though Peter Singer opposes killing animals for food, regardless of the method used, he did co-author a book that said it was ethically justifiable to commit infanticide on handicapped babies.

It's one of the problems of utilitarianism, since pain and pleasure are things that cannot be adequately quantified. You can justify just about anything with utilitarianism if you can argue that it will reduce the common suffering. Due to that, a lot of crackpot organizations like PETA will use such a philosophy to further their agendas.

[Darth Wong]

There is nothing about utilitarianism which intrinsically requires people to treat animal suffering the same way they treat human suffering. Where on Earth did you get that idea?

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

There is nothing about utilitarianism which intrinsically requires people to treat animal suffering the same way they treat human suffering. Where on Earth did you get that idea?

That just seems like what a lot of the utilitarian bioethics seem to do, and the ones that do it are lauded by academians as rooted in sound philosophical basis. The example above, with Peter Singer, is specifically noted as 'sound philosophy" when it's taught. They seem to treat all pain/pleasure as equal.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Edit: I cannot wrap my head around why many of them are using Hedonistic Utility, when many of them are actually Preference Utilitarians. It seems like they are using different versions of utility for different situations.

[Rye]

Well, it's easy to apply it from a rational point of view. There's no real reason to limit it to humans and not other animals in light of evolution. Aversion to pain and seeking pleasure are behaviours readily observable in pets, livestock and wild animals, so why should they not be included under hedonistic calculus?

[Tzeentch]

Edit: I cannot wrap my head around why many of them are using Hedonistic Utility, when many of them are actually Preference Utilitarians. It seems like they are using different versions of utility for different situations.

Nah. They're just acknowledging that (especially for animals) pleasure and pain are the subjects of very strong preferences.