Is a Humane Killing Ethical?

by Scott Berjot-Stafiej

My name is Scott Berjot-Stafiej. I am a volunteer for the Center for Inquiry—New York and general advocate of science, critical thinking, and assorted other buzz words with which the readers of RS most likely associate. Recently, my good friend Michael DeDora wrote an article called "Vegetarianism: moral stance or mere preference?" I deeply respect Michael and yet, as is the case with many of the people I respect, I sometimes disagree with him. The following article underlines that disagreement in regard to being a vegetarian.

Let me begin by stating that Michael and I agree on the vast majority of our ethical stances — vegetarianism included. Both of us view ethics to principally affect questions of well-being; both of us believe it is important for the ethical system by which we live to be internally consistent; and as vegetarians, we don’t view our ethical values to be human centric.

Like Michael, I see no shortage of reasons to be vegetarian. One may point to problems with the meat industry’s treatment of workers, negative environmental effects caused by meat production, or even arguments from an economic perspective. While these are potentially poignant and important points, they are not my primary motivation for vegetarianism. My motivation, and the argument to which I will restrict this article, is merely the value I believe we should attribute to many non-human animals (here on out, just animals).

I chose the title question of this article — Is Humane Killing Ethical? — because, according to Michael, one may promote animal quality of life and, in a humane way (i.e., with a minimum amount of mental or physical suffering), kill animals without substantial ethical qualms. I disagree.

Michael summarizes his argument as follows:

"Kant argued that every human being is deserving of respect (i.e., moral concern) because of its cognitive faculties — its autonomy, ability to reason, make free choices, and plan for the future. Vegetarians would have us expand this to non-human animals. But there is no reason to suppose that animals have such capacities, and I see little reason — judging from scientific evidence and philosophical thinking — to give them the benefit of the doubt."

My first disagreement comes from what I believe to be an unintentional over-simplification. What I assume Michael means with the above statement is that animals exhibit the mentioned capacities to a lesser degree than humans, not that they don't exhibit them at all. Virtually all of the traits described may be found to some degree in the animal kingdom: dolphins have been known to hoard trash at the bottom of a pool when there was the prospect of future reward for gathering it; certain fish have shown memory of a year or more and have used memory of negative experiences to develop ways of becoming less easy to catch; ravens make tools; rats solve puzzles; many mammals socialize, etc. While it is relatively certain that most animals have a far less defined sense of self, it is, I believe, scientifically uncontroversial to say that many animals have the ability to reason and make projections at least to a degree.

The next question, and where I believe the substance of our disagreement lies, is “how should we respond to a difference in degree for each of the cognitive faculties Kant (and Michael) views to be worthy of moral concern? To simplify our discussion, I’ve framed what I view Michael’s argument to be using the following symbols:

Reason (R) + Enjoyment/Happiness (E) + Suffering (S) + Projection (P) = Value of Life/Rights attributed to Life (V)

or

R+E+S+P = V

(Note: If readers feel like singing the RESP acronym in their heads to a certain tune by Aretha, they will not be alone.)

The first thing I’d like to point out about this ethical equation is that, in our current ethical system, different rights are attributed to an entity based upon each variable. Relatively few rights are attributed based upon R, for example. It’s not because I can think critically, that I can marry my wife or own a house. We don’t get out of our cars at intersections and solve rubric’s cubes to determine who has the right of way. However, we may grant someone the right to vote based upon their mental faculties (however low we may set the bar for those faculties). Each variable within the equation comes with different ethical considerations.

If we explore the variables of RESP by adjusting them in degree, we may see how our sentiments regarding the right in question — the right to life — are affected within our current ethical system. If someone, for example, has congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP — an inability to feel pain), do we put into question their right to make decisions about their life? No, we do not. To even raise the question would seem silly. A person with CIP has the same ownership of his/her life as a person without.

What about one’s ability or inclination to project into the future? Do we value the particularly ambitious or hopeful over those hedonists who live only for the moment? Again, no.

Adjusting or even removing the other two variables yields the same result. Thus, we find that the RESP equation is sufficient in determining many rights (i.e., quality of life, social freedoms, etc), but it is not effective in determining the right to life even in our current ethical system. Thus, it seems a new variable must be proposed to account for our current ethical values.

What I feel Michael has neglected in this ethical equation is a sentient being’s will to live. I will argue here that the mere desire to continue existing justifies us granting the right to do so. Since RESP cannot fully account for those we currently grant the right to live, it should not matter that a chicken has no capacity to reflect, “I’ll never see my eggs hatch” or “I’ll never teach my son to crow,” when being herded for slaughter. If a sentient creature has some range of experience, however different in scope or degree that experience may be from our own, we should attribute to it the right to continue that experience should it so desire (all else held constant).

That caveat — “all else held constant” — is important for reasons my wife quickly underlined to me. After I explained my argument, she commented, “what about cockroaches? They’re sentient to a degree; do you think we should kill them?… If you stop killing cockroaches I may, in fact, divorce you.” This point is salient not only for the health of my marriage, but also because the will to live is not the only consideration once we attempt to apply our ethics practically. While respecting the will to live would, in fact, grant cockroaches the right to life in theory, other ethical considerations such as hygiene and human communal well-being could arguably trump a cockroach’s life.

Similarly, if there is a starving village in some under-developed country, and a pig is the most cost and time effective means of solving that issue, then I would say turn on the grill and have a BBQ. The point of my argument is simply to demonstrate that animal life has an ethical value in itself, when divorced of other considerations. That value should, where possible, be weighed. This value alone, I would argue, is sufficient to claim that everyone in a developed nation should be a vegetarian.

Michael worries that “vegetarianism risks degenerating from a moral stance to the level of preference," but the base assumptions of any ethical system always boil down to a societal preference, no matter the justifications we assign them. We, as a society, prefer to live in a system that increases well-being and diminishes suffering; this is not a morally relativist stance. It is merely a recognition that the vast majority of people are referring to well-being when they make noises about ethics. In the same way, when we make similar noises in regard to the right to life, I argue that what we are really talking about is the value of a creature’s will to live.

We could arbitrarily limit our sphere of ethical consideration in regard to this question to the human species. However, I find no coherent reasons for doing so. If what we are valuing, in fact, is RESP and the will to live, as I argue we are, then we should recognize those values wherever we find them. Not doing so would be to ignore the long history of ethical progress.

Throughout the history of philosophy, we look out at the world and say, “that being is more like me than I have previously recognized, and thus, I should grant it rights in so much as it has the capacity to appreciate that right.” We extended equal rights to women and racial minorities; we have begun extending the right to marry to sexual minorities; etc. While I would not argue for the “desegregation of a barnyard” or “access to university level education for all schools of fish” — precisely because animals don’t have the capacity to appreciate such rights — awarding animals a basic right to live due to their inherent desire to do so, and not due to secondary considerations, seems to me the next expansion of our sphere of consideration.

In closing, I’d like to thank Massimo and Michael, for providing me the opportunity to disagree with them.