Animal rights and the duty to harm
12d 12m ago by piefed.zip/u/felsiq in philosophy@lemmy.ml from r.jordan.im
cross-posted from: https://piefed.zip/c/philosophy@piefed.zip/p/1556141/animal-rights-and-the-duty-to-harm
I just recently (finally) read this paper thanks to @GnomeGodsGnomeMasters@hexbear.net and as much as it’s a really interesting framework, imo it has serious problems particularly with the Weak Harming Principle B it asserts and I’m curious to hear what anyone here thinks.
If you don’t want to read the 22 page paper (valid, but imo it’s worth it), I’ll summarize the relevant bits below.
TLDR/glossary of the relevant parts:
Harm vs interest: you have an interest in something positive, and are harmed by that being taken from you. Also, you can be harmed by things, and have an interest in that not happening
Trivial harm/interest: something minor to a being, ex getting/not getting a cupcake
Serious harm/interest: something relevant to your ability to enjoy life, like meaningful projects/relationships, species-natural behaviour, loss of limbs
Basic harm/interest: something necessary for your ability to enjoy life, like not being killed or held captive forever in a tiny cellWeak harming principle A: We ought to cause trivial harm to (an) individual(s) when doing so is necessary to prevent a serious (basic or non-basic) harm to (an)other(s).
Weak harming principle B: We ought to cause non-basic harm to (an) individual(s) when doing so is necessary to prevent a basic harm to (an)other(s).
Strong harming principle: We ought not to treat the basic harm of one as equal to or greater than the basic harms of two or more individuals.The problem I have is best shown on page 21-22, where the author says:
Essentially, there are both bad and good reasons for harming. The rights view holds that a wrong reason for harming animals is this: harming will bring about “the best” aggregate consequences for all those affected by the outcome. And, as argued, two acceptable justifications for causing harm are: (1) the harm is non-basic and causing it will prevent another from enduring a basic harm, or (2) the harm is trivial and causing it will prevent another from enduring a serious harm. While we should not appeal to the aggregate of harm to justify harm imposition, we ought to appeal to the magnitude of harm (Regan 1983, 389–390).
They explicitly argue we shouldn’t look at the total harm caused, and instead look only at the magnitude on each recipient, but this plus the Weak Harming Principle B implies some pretty wild shit.
The Weak Harming Principle B alone implies that if it’s necessary to cut off one person’s arms to save another person’s life, we should do it. Under the constraints that the second person’s life ending is a basic harm (they have a life worth living, they wouldn’t die the next day anyway, etc) I think this is a reasonable view even if I’m not sure I agree personally. Pairing this with the “look at the magnitude of harm, not the aggregate” leads to the mildly insane conclusion that if it’s necessary to save that one person’s life, we should cut off every pair of arms on earth.
This isn’t me cherry picking the author for one badly phrased sentence or anything, either - they very explicitly establish that (basic harm of one being) > (serious harm of many beings) more than once throughout the essay, though with significantly less extreme examples than I used.This framework feels really promising to me, other than this (significant imo) hole in it - it seems like the bones of it are correct but it needs another piece or two to be complete. Does anyone have any ideas about what those pieces might be? Am I just missing something in my understanding? I’d appreciate any thoughts
In animal rehab, we have some basic guidelines to what procedures will be performed or not. We can't remove a bird's wing above the elbow in the US, for example, as it's been generally agreed on the lack of balance never gives the bird adequate quality of life.
Other things are more individual judgements, often done by a group of rehabbers, to appraise the chance that even if an operation is successful, if that animal would be able to be returned to the wild. We are not in the business of accumulating animals. All work we do needs to be to make wild animals releasable. If we save an animal's life, but it can't survive on its own, we can't keep it, but it would also be cruel to release a defenseless animal, so they will be euthanized.
They will also be euthanized if treatment is unlikely to ultimately help them. Sometimes that is the only realistic way to reduce suffering if they have critical injuries or degenerative conditions. Things like that are always discussed in a group after going over the state of the individual animal in question. We pool everyone's experience from past situations and see the likely future of the particular being in front of everyone.
In an animal testing situation, usage of animals is minimized or eliminated where possible. It is not a first method of testing products or procedures. I work in pharma and our trainings go over this. Here is a random slide showing the quality of life is considered.
This type of protocol is conducted at the major pharmaceutical I work at now and the other one I was at before this. Everything is minimized as much as possible. I've never met an animal researcher that didn't lovingly care for their subjects. Their sacrifice towards a better future for people and/or animals isn't taken lightly. In some situations, we don't have any better way to test certain things.
Not all test animals are ultimately euthanized, which some people may not know. Sometimes necroscopies are needed to inspect for organ and tissue damage, but sometimes animals are otherwise fine. There are many that get to retire, either to sanctuaries or to the scientists themselves or others. There are even grants available to get lab animals adopted out.
In cases given in the paper, it would still be on a case by case basis. With the individual destroying the medicine or the dog in the boat, I think it would affect people differently if they knew the individual or the dog and how they would react. Restraining the person damaging the medicine has a lot of wiggle room for ways to stop them, but I think a lot of people may be much more tempted to save their own dog vs helping a total stranger. If they have a former stance on animal rights such as the PETA rep that was against the lab rat testing of food additives, seeing where the life raft dog situation would go for them could get quite interesting.
When we start mixing animal rights with human rights, we start getting a lot of moral and even religious aspects brought into decision making. I don't know how much we could get 2 people to agree on anything 10/10 times.
Tagging @GnomeGodsGnomeMasters@hexbear.net in a comment as well, since idk if you’d get notified from the original .world post or a crosspost and your post was how I found this paper lol