Conclusions - Killing Happy Animals: Explorations in Utilitarian Ethics - page 139

How do Total Utilitarianism and Prior Existence Utilitarianism eval-
uate such practices of killing and replacing animals? When consid-
ering whether it is permissible to kill an animal that could otherwise
have had a pleasant future, Total Utilitarianism takes into account the
effects of that choice on the welfare of the existing animal, which one
considers killing. It also takes into account the effects of the choice on
the welfare of the possible future animal that would be brought into
existence if and only if the other animal would be killed. Provided that
the life of this newly created animal contains at least as much welfare
as the future life of the killed animal would have contained, killing and
replacing the animal yields as much welfare overall as letting the animal
live. In such a case, Total Utilitarianism would in principle allow for the
killing and replacement of an animal. Prior Existence Utilitarianism, in
contrast, does not take into consideration the possible welfare of the
contingent animal that may live if and only if the other animal will be
killed. According to Prior Existence Utilitarianism, bringing into exist-
ence another animal cannot compensate for the welfare loss, which is
caused by killing an animal. Thus, these different utilitarian views have
different implications concerning the permissibility of killing.
Total Utilitarianism accepts the Replaceability Argument, as explained
above. It accepts that it is permissible to kill an animal that could other-
wise have had a pleasant future, provided that another animal, whose
life is at least as pleasant as the killed animal's future life would have
been and which would not otherwise have existed, is put in the killed
animal's place. Furthermore, the killing should not have any uncompen-
sated negative side effects. The Replaceability Argument does not only
hold for those animals that are typically used for human consumption.
Those who accept the Total View, and thus the Replaceability Argument
must accept that it holds for all animals, including human beings.
Peter Singer has tried to restrict the scope of the Replaceability
Argument by arguing that the more future-directed projects a being
has, the less replaceable it is. Those beings who have many and strong
future-directed desires are called 'persons', whereby Singer points out
that personhood - and therefore also replaceability - comes in degrees.
When animals such as pigs, cows, chickens and fish are ascribed person-
hood, or at least given the benefit of the doubt in this respect, as Singer
proposes, those animals would be excluded from replaceability. This,
however, works only if one accepts Singer's account of welfare and his
'moral ledger model'. This means that one needs to accept a desire-
satisfaction account of welfare and assume that unsatisfied desires have
a negative effect on welfare, which can only be neutralized in case the