From The Human Context, Summer 1972, 407-412
Animals, Men and Morals: an Enquiry into the Mal-Treatment of Non-Humans, edited by Stanley and Roslind Godlovitch and John Harris, London, Victor Gollancz, 1971, 240 pages, £2.20.
Reviewed by Richard Keshen, Balliol College, Oxford.[i]
This book seeks to change radically the framework of our thinking about animals. The contributors write from a spectrum of disciplines, but the book as a whole constitutes a coherent moral argument. I shall tie the threads of this argument together by showing how Animals, Men and Morals answers the following three questions: (1) why is our relationship to animals of much greater moral importance than is conventionally thought? (2) Is our treatment of animals morally justified? (3) Why is our relationship to animals as it is?
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Why is the issue of much greater moral importance than is conventionally thought?
This question is answered, in the first place, by the factual articles which make up the first quarter of the book. These articles deal with modern methods of raising animals for food and using them in the production of clothing and cosmetics and in scientific experiments. They demonstrate, in a manner impossible to deny, the extent to which animals suffer for the purposes of human beings. And, say the authors, if great suffering does not make an issue worthy of moral consideration, what does?
Few people are aware of the pain and emotional distress that results from our commerce with animals. Of course, many people have some idea, however vague, that animals caught in traps suffer, that monkeys induced with psychoses are not the happiest of creatures, and that a slaughterhouse is far from being the most pleasant of places. But people seldom dwell upon these images, usually weak and untrue to the facts at any rate, for very long.
Ruth Harrison, the author of the first article, sits on a government commission whose purpose is to investigate modern farming techniques. The statistics the commission has gathered reveal that over 86 per cent of laying hens in Britain are kept battery cages. On average, battery cages, usually no more than 11 ft square, contain three birds. In the vast majority of such cages seen by the commission the birds were unable to stretch their wings, and in no cases were they permitted to walk about in the open. It was recommended to the House of Commons that it be made mandatory for cages be large enough to allow birds to stretch at least one wing, but this was defeated on the grounds that it was impracticable.
In 63 out of 70 veal units visited by a group of veterinarians, it was found that pens were not wide enough to allow calves to lie down, extend their legs, groom themselves or turn around. Calves are kept in this way so that they do not develop muscles on their legs, thus guaranteeing the extra tenderness characteristic of veal meat. The veterinarians’ report had no effect on the government. One MP declared: “Turning around may not be advisable from the point of view of the animal”. Harrison emphasizes that the kind of techniques now so widely used in the rearing of broiler chickens, laying hens and veal calves are becoming increasingly popular with big-business farmers who raise beef cattle and pigs. The number of animals raised in the kind of intensive units described by Harrison must be reckoned in the many millions.
So, too, many millions of animals per year are slaughtered for clothing and cosmetics, and used in scientific experiments. Lady Dowding’s article presents detailed first-hand observations, mostly from people such as trappers and others directly involved, of what goes on when animals are killed or otherwise used in the clothing and cosmetic trade—what fur animals undergo when they are trapped, seals when they are slaughtered, whales and alligators when they are killed, civet-cats when they are raised for their perfume, and so on. Having read these descriptions, one cannot but feel that most of us have only the barest knowledge of the great many, and often darkly ingenious, ways animals are used in the production of our clothes and cosmetics; and our imaginings of what we do know, if we think of these practises from the point of view of the animal at all, are utterly divorced from reality.
During 1969 in Britain animals were used in five and a half million experiments. There is an annual turnover of a quarter of a million monkeys in American laboratories. Richard Ryder, a clinical psychologist, has documented from scientific journals a number of experiments that have been done on animals. As he says, if only a small percentage of these experiments cause great distress (in reality, claims Ryder, the percentage is far from small), then the number of animals who suffer in scientific laboratories must still be very considerable. I choose at random two from the more than fifty experiments Mr. Ryder cites:
V. Brady placed monkeys in restraining devices and gave them electric shocks every twenty seconds during six-hour periods. After 23 days monkeys began to die suddenly of stomach ulcers (Scientific American, 1958).
N. Worden reports on 57 puppies born of starved mothers. Twenty-eight of these pups died soon after birth and the survivors showed the following abnormalities . . . (Fox and Saunders, Abnormal Behaviour in Animals, 1968, chapter 16).
These articles from the first quarter of Animals, Men and Morals are meant to establish that a great number of animals suffer extreme pain and emotional distress for the purposes of human beings. Seeing that this is the way things are, the question can be asked: Is it right? The fact of great suffering, then, is the primary reason why, according to the authors, the present state of our relationship to animals ought to be questioned and subjected to moral scrutiny. Two other reasons follow from this primary one.
These two reasons consider the facts of our treatment of animals from the perspective of humanity’s self-interest, when “self-interest” is broadly defined. The first reason, discussed by Stanley Godlovitch, is that if our practices regarding animals are morally unjustified, whether it is because we are blinded through narrow self-interest, muddled thinking or weakness of will, then, seeing the extent of suffering involved, these practices must be considered degrading to us as human beings. We are morally degraded, argues Godlovitch, when we unjustifiably treat other living beings as mere things. Of course many people would want to say that this does not apply when it is non-human living beings that are implicated. But this is precisely the issue in question, according to Godlovitch.
Patrick Corbett approaches the issue from another angle. He argues that human well-being, including our survival as a species, lies in developing a harmonious relationship with nature. But such a relationship, Corbett argues, requires that we overturn our present exploitative use of animals.
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Is our present relationship to animals morally justified?
This moral question, around which Animals, Men and Morals revolves, is examined from several different viewpoints. For example, the issue of raising animals for food is considered in one article; the question of scientific experimentation on animals in another; and several articles discuss the general philosophical issue of animal rights. I shall not be able to recount all of these arguments. I can guarantee, however, that anyone who has given thought to the issue, and believes that conventional practices regarding animals can be easily defended, will find in these articles proof that the defence is not so straightforward as at first she thought. It will be worthwhile to examine one central argument against continuing within our present moral framework regarding animals which, though in different forms, runs through a number of the articles. The argument has two closely connected parts.
a).We do not believe it right to raise members of our own species for food, kill them for their skins or use them in painful and fatal experiments. In short, our treatment of other species of animals is radically different from our treatment of members of our own species. Now in order for this difference in treatment to be morally justified it must correspond in some relevant way to differences between animals and humans. Of course no one wishes to deny that animals and humans are different, but so are cats and dogs, or rats and monkeys. The question is not whether animals and humans are different, but whether amongst these differences there are any sufficient to justify what we do to animals but do not believe it right to do to humans. Several articles use this question as a probe to criticize philosophers who have denied basic rights to animals.
Consider first Roslind Godlovtich’s critique the legal philosopher, H. L. A. Hart has argued that freedom from constraint (provided that what one does is not harmful to others) is a basic natural right. However, he grants this right only to humans, denying it to animals. The reason he gives is that it is only humans that can impose upon themselves moral obligations. Godlovitch points out that, in terms of what Hart wants to establish, the capacity to assume obligations is not a relevant difference between animals and humans. Surely, she argues, those who properly possess the natural right of freedom from constraint are precisely those that are capable of suffering from constraint. But in this respect animals and humans are the same: both are capable of suffering from constraint. The capacity to impose upon oneself obligations, even if it is a unique human characteristic, is a red herring. It is as if Hart took it as self evident that animals should be excluded from the basic right to freedom from constraint, and then set out to find a way to justify what he accepted without question at the outset.
Language and rationality are the most common ways philosophers have used to distinguish humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. Leonard Nelson considers these characteristics as a way of excluding animals from the sphere of moral rights. Perhaps the first thing to notice about the qualities recommended here is that studies in ethology and the success that a number of psychologists have had in teaching chimpanzees sign language show quite dramatically that the language or rationality criterion is far from clear-cut. However, even if we do accept these properties as our species’ distinguishing characteristics, do they constitute a difference that should be used to justify the difference in treatment we accord humans and animals? If we were debating whether to make other animal species full-fledged members of our universities, the differences in question might be relevant. However, these differences hardly seem relevant if what we are trying to do is justify our practices of raising animals for food, killing them for their skins or causing them pain in scientific experiments. For the reason we do not consider it morally justified to do these things to our fellow humans quite obviously has very little to do with our belief in their rationality or ability to speak, but rather a great deal to do with our belief that human beings suffer pain, enjoy being free to engage in various pleasurable activities and, in general, have interests which, provided they are not harmful to others, we think they have a moral right to pursue. But the capacity to feel pain, the enjoyment of pleasurable activities and the possession of interests are all things which most animal species share with Homo sapiens. Leonard Nelson argues that if it is these qualities, as appears to be the case, which make us believe it morally wrong to constrain, inflict pain upon or kill other members of our own species, then, since other animal species have these same qualities, it follows that we ought not to do these things to the other species of animals, either.
b) The second part of the argument can be seen as an answer to an objection that might be made against the first part. It might be argued that, although it is true that animals, like humans, feel pain, have physical and emotional needs, pursue interests, etc., humans nevertheless have the moral right to use animals for their own ends because the quality or value of human life is so much greater than the quality of animal life. In order to see whether this argument is morally cogent, we must ask the question which Leonard Nelson puts in the following words: “…we have to ask whether we would consent to be used as a mere means by another being far superior to us in strength and intelligence”. He answers that we would not. We need to dwell on this argument a little more.
Suppose, then, that some alien came down to earth, and that this alien was so much more intelligent and sophisticated than we humans that he regarded us in a way analogous to the way we humans regard animals. Unfortunately, not only is the alien more intelligent and sophisticated than us, he is also far and away more powerful. Assuming that he realizes that we, like him, are sentient beings with an interest in living and subject to pain, would we think it morally right if he were to raise us for food—even though he could get food elsewhere—kill us for clothing, or perform painful experiments on us? If we answer “No” to this question, as probably nearly everyone would, then we must also admit, if we are to be consistent in our moral thinking, that we have no right to use animals for our own ends on the grounds that we think our lives in some way more valuable than theirs. As another contributor, making this same point, says:
We have no better reason for enslaving the other animals than that we can: we are more powerful. And that cannot pass for a sufficient reason unless we also accept that anyone who can is morally entitled to enslave and exploit other humans for so long as he can get away with it . . . . That I like the flavour of mutton no more entitles me to kill a sheep than a taste for roast leg of human would entitle me to kill you. To argue that we humans are capable of complex, multifarious thought and feeling is no more to the point than if I were to slaughter and eat you on the grounds that I am a sophisticated personality able to enjoy Mozart, formal logic and cannibalism whereas your imaginative world seems confined to True Romances and tinned spaghetti.
In the two parts of this argument I have made explicit a line of thinking which runs through a number of the more philosophical articles in Animals, Men and Morals. It is a general argument which, if justly considered, must, I think, make it less easy for someone to brush aside, as most people do, the notion that animals ought to have basic moral rights.
But, of course, most general moral principles are open to exceptions on the grounds of overriding reasons. Once we accept the basic principle that animals, like humans, ought to be treated, except in extenuating circumstances, as ends rather than means, the moral burden shifts to the question of what is to count as extenuating circumstances. On this question the contributors take a strong and consistent line.
If we are to take our moral principle seriously, then the killing and raising of animals for clothing, cosmetics or food ceases to be morally justifiable, since none of these practices can be justified as extenuating circumstances. Lady Dowding makes it clear that there is a large range of clothing and cosmetics that are not derived from animals. If, as she shows, modern humans can clothe themselves without causing pain or death to other animals, then a desire for a fur coat or leather shoes, made at the cost of an animal’s life, can hardly count as an extenuating circumstance to a moral principle which says that the life and well-being of animals ought to be respected.
The same holds for eating meat, and especially meat which comes from intensive units, where the suffering inflicted upon animals is very great. John Harris, a philosopher at Manchester University, argues that humans can flourish perfectly well without meat. Indeed, many important nutritionists have adopted vegetarianism as healthier than a meat diet. There are a good number of non-animal foods which contain more protein than meat and at the same time do not contain those elements in meat which are not of positive worth, and are even detrimental, to our health. To the argument that we must raise animals and use intensive farming methods in order to feed the world’s population, Mr. Harris replies that it takes much less land and money to feed people on a vegetarian diet than on a meat diet.
Another argument that is sometimes used to justify the use of animals for the production of food is that if we did not raise these animals for their meat they would not exist in the first place. Harris finds this argument rather perverse, since it is quite clear that farmers, and especially farmers who use intensive rearing methods, do not raise cattle, hens and pigs in order to prevent these species from becoming extinct. Besides, if farmers cease to raise animals for slaughter, and if people are concerned not to let farm animals become extinct, there is no reason why the species involved could not be protected from extinction in a nature reserve, argues Harris.
What of the argument that it is natural for humans to kill other animals for food since in the wild animals kill each other for food? Harris argues that humans differs from other animals precisely in his capacity to weigh up their actions on moral grounds, and, if their moral sense dictates, to not follow the habits of their ancestors or the law of the jungle. Harris says:
The supporters of these arguments from natural behaviour tend to be rather selective with the facts they present to support their thesis. For example, it is sometimes pointed out that our human ancestors in pre-historic times ate meat; and, indeed, the evidence supports this claim. But it also indicates that they ate one another; yet I have never heard this used as an argument in favour of cannibalism. By looking at our history and prehistory [and, Mr. Harris might have added, the behaviour of animals in the wild] we may explain, but cannot justify, our present habits.
A full article in this volume is devoted to describing the alternatives available to experimentation on living animals. The author of this article is. Terence Hegarty, who does agricultural research for the British government. Hegarty describes what has been done with tissue cultures, organ systems, computers, dummies and educational films as replacements for the use of animals in experiments and in the teaching of science. Of the many successes he cites, perhaps the most interesting is that having to do with the thalidomide controversy. One of the major factors behind the thalidomide tragedy was that scientists working with the drug on animals declared it safe for human consumption. That it was not safe for human consumption shows that the results of animal experimentation cannot with certainty be applied on the human level. What is of particular interest here, however, is the discovery that, if scientists had done their thalidomide research on tissue cultures rather than living organisms, they would have been much better able to predict the tragic consequences this drug has for humans. Mr. Hegarty claims that there is much greater potential in the alternatives-to-living-organisms such as he describes than is being exploited at present. Animal life is treated so cheaply in the science world, according to the author, that little time, money or energy is given over to exploring these alternatives.
This is precisely why, according to Brigid Brophy, we are such hypocrites on the question of animal experimentation. We say we value the lives and well being of animals, but that the interests of humanity or (much less convincingly) science itself constitute an overriding reason for causing what often turns out to be immense suffering and usually death. Brophy does not wish to deny that there could sometimes be a genuine moral dilemma here. But if people whole-heartedly care about a moral dilemma, and do not just hypocritically say they care about it, then this shows in the way they take serious steps to make sure the dilemma does not arise: “The moral thing to do with a moral dilemma is to circumvent it”. We might pose the moral dilemma, “If you had to run over a dog or a person, who would you run over”? to show that we value people more than dogs. But really, the true moral to this dilemma is better traffic control and better care for dogs so that they aren’t left to wander the highways. Similarly, the true moral to the dilemma of experimentation on animals is the development of alternatives to the use of animals. “Even in its own terms, society has not justified experimentation on animals as necessary”, argues Brophy, “unless the same quantities of money and thought spent on animal experimentation are spent on seeking and developing alternatives to the use of animals in scientific experiments”. But this is something scientists and society are not close to doing, according to Brophy.
That we ought to think of other animal species as possessing basic moral rights, and that we ought to respect these rights, is the rational point of view according to the argument I have outlined. Our interest in clothing, our taste for a certain kind of food or our desire to accumulate scientific knowledge are not adequate moral grounds for abrogating these rights. But animals are treated everywhere as mere means for the sake of pleasure, profit and the accumulation of knowledge. Even when people admit their moral distaste for the trap, the battery cage, the slaughterhouse or the way animals are used in science, they seldom translate this moral distaste into concrete action. These facts, then, lead us to ask our third and final question.
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Why is our relationship to animals as it is?
Of course, self interest is the main thing that makes us shut our eyes to the pain, emotional distress and interests of other species of animals. We like to wear leather and expensive furs, eat meat, hunt and conduct scientific experiments. Some of these preferences go very deep into our psychological natures. This is especially true of those aspects of our relationship to animals, such as hunting, which involve violence. Maureen Duffy, a dramatist and novelist, argues, with the help of some fascinating documentary material, that “we have always used animals not simply for practical purposes but as metaphors for our own emotional requirements, and it’s this that we are unwilling to give up by considering them as creatures with rights and lives of their own”. One way Duffy defends this point is by tracing through the explicit sexual symbolism in a number of old hunting ballads. She argues, “No one who has seen a hunt, a bull fight or even a pet-owner doting on his pet can doubt that there are many elements in our relationship to animals which reflect deep psychic mechanisms in the human mind”.
Duffy’s argument is further supported by Michael Peters, a social anthropologist, who discusses the integral part animals play in the culture of primitive societies, and in this way he sheds light upon a number of modern practices involving animals that have their roots in our primitive pasts. If our present relationship to animals can partially be explained through showing how it reflects unconscious psychological and cultural aspects of humanity, as it surely can be so explained, it is also true that simple selfishness, the refusal to cast our sympathies as widely and consistently as they should be cast, has a lot to do with why our commerce with animals is as irrational and cruel as it is. But selfishness is not something the human ego readily attributes to itself, and so it constructs conceptual defence mechanisms. For example, in an interesting part of his article Peters discusses some of the ways social scientists and philosophers have tried to define “humanity”. He concludes that part of the significance behind their (often obsessive) search for the defining characteristic of humanity lies in one of its social functions, which has been to rationalize human’s disinclination to extend moral rights to other species of animals.
Stanley Godlovitch believes that our attitude to animals has a great deal to do with the way we have gone about classifying items in the world. This belief was prompted by a Canadian cabinet minister’s justification of the yearly slaughter of baby seals in Canada’s north. His justification consisted in stating that seals were, after all, meant to be used by human beings. This could be seen by the fact that their skins make perfect coats and hats. Mr. Godlovitch finds this kind of argument absurd, though it is, he believes, a line of reasoning which permeates our thinking about animals. In order to reveal the fallacy at the bottom of this type of thinking, he takes us on a philosophical excursus into the field of concepts related to the notion of teleology. At one point, in summing up the importance of a particular distinction Godlovitch says:
We have come to regard animals, like houses and chairs, as constituted by their utility-value to us. We have, in our eagerness to classify the world, taken it for granted that one may ask of a natural process : What is the reason for this entity’s having come to exist? and, assuming the meaningfulness of such a query, answered it with : In order that we may benefit.
Bertrand Russell criticized the pragmatist doctrine of truth as being too human-centred. He said that the pragmatists, in their theory of truth, displayed cosmic impiety, and that this mental attitude was one of the greatest dangers of modern times. Godlovitch might well say that humanity’s attitude to the rest of nature demonstrates natural impiety which, since it too is abnormally human-centred, is really a species of cosmic impiety. Natural impiety, therefore, is a symptom of the danger in modern thinking which Russell believed so serious, a danger whose essence lies in our inability to see that that which is not-human may possess value in its own right and does not necessarily derive its value through being useful to the human species.
David Wood, who teaches social philosophy at Warwick University, describes the means by which society hides from itself the unpleasant side of our relationship to animals. There are the euphemisms: “cull” (which suggests the plucking of flowers) for kill, “beef” and “pork” for cow and pig, ”meat” for flesh, and so on. Slaughterhouses, poultry-packing stations and the animal houses of medical schools are kept well away from the public gaze, and this practice has the tacit consent of the public themselves. For what they want, and what they are given through packaging and other forms of disguise, according to Wood, is a product which has as few traces as possible of its origin in animal death. And then there are the advertisements that paint mythical pictures of piglets wearing trousers and tunas wearing waist-coats, trying to sell themselves to food companies so that they can have the honour of ending up on some human being’s plate.
Wood has a good eye for detecting the social mechanisms by which people hide unpleasant practices from themselves. He is also interesting, and even entertaining, on the kind of excuses people use when they have been brought around to half-admit that their ethical position regarding animals cannot be morally justified. His experience in discussing this issue has led him to classify moral escapists into hard-nosed cynics, woeful hypocrites, weak-willed stragglers and evasive intellectuals. Wood’s phenomenological characterization of these groups, in terms of concepts like authenticity and self-enactment, is insightful and, within the limits he sets himself, theoretically satisfying. The moral of his article is similar to that in the articles by Stanley Godlovitch and Mike Peters: our relationship to animals, in spite of the cruelty and vast waste of life it involves, is able to run along so smoothly because we are successful in disguising our selfishness behind a mask of self deception.
Conclusion
The issue to which this book directs itself is, I believe, a much underrated moral problem. If I am correct in believing the problem an important one, then Animals, Men and Morals is an important book, since it is the only book on this subject which might, through the depth and clarity of its reasoning, awaken people to the urgency of the issue. For this reason I have adopted the approach of tracing a unified argument through the thirteen contributions. If this argument is correct, then the framework of our thinking about animals and their relationship to the human context requires radical change.
[i] In preparing this review for my website in May 2017, I have made minor stylistic corrections and clarifications.