Biology Reference
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with the particular animal's welfare, she should hypothetically release it from captivity
as soon as possible. Unlike dogs or horses, the release of which either is not feasible
in most areas (horses) or appears to compromise their welfare, mice, hamsters, and
chinchillas on the whole express no particular attachment to human contact (unlike
dogs) nor seek their company (unlike some cats). And so, a particular, welfare-based
justification from nonexistence can succeed only if one is willing to accept the im-
plication that the same welfare considerations that justify bringing the particular anim-
al into existence also undermine maintaining an AAT-based relationship with this par-
ticular animal, since releasing it is overall better for it.
FURTHER OBJECTIONS (AND CONCLUSION)
Animals cannot be excluded from moral consideration. This means, among other
things, that there is a moral obligation to circumvent either-or conflicts of interest
between humans and animals. This obligation undermines speciesist or utilitarian ob-
jections to my general claim regarding AAT. In our context a speciesist rejoin-
der—upholding the wrong kind of speciesism—would boil down to saying that since
human interests are more important than the interests of animals, various forms of ex-
ploitation (such as the forms of AAT that utilize rodents, birds, dolphins, reptiles, and
monkeys) are morally permissible. Apart from relying on a fallacy that I have re-
peatedly underscored in this topic—the illegitimate move from superiority to
harm—the move cannot be marshaled in the context of AAT. The question is not
whose interests are more important, but whether a particular conflict of interest can
be avoided. Since the either-or nature of the question of some forms of AAT is a
mirage, speciesism is continuous with abrogating forms of AAT that involve exploita-
tion and can be easily superseded by other forms of therapy, including forms of non-
exploitative AAT.
Utilitarian objections to the foregoing conclusion are similar, basically contending
that the overall good achieved in a world in which exploitative forms of AAT occur
is greater than the overall good within a world that excludes such therapeutic options.
Unpacking “overall good” shows that, in the AAT context, there are three possible
variants of the utilitarian claim, two of which are speciesist, the third liberationist.
The two speciesist variants of this utilitarian argument would hold that human in-
terests are more important than animal interests. They would differ on what “more
important” should mean in practice, the first variant holding that any human interest
categorically trumps any animal one. The second variant maintains that some human
utilitarian objection—which is actually continuous with classical utilitarianism—is that
human and nonhuman interests count equally, yet it may be the case that some dis-
