Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
that all this leads the defender of EABT to a strange result: the inferior and instru-
mental value of animal life gets potential animals some benefits over less fortunate
potential human animals. Animals get to exist, flourish, and die, whereas potential hu-
mans are so valuable that they cannot exist at all.
This outcome is surprising, but one can still swallow it. Being special has its limit-
ations, and not existing, even when such existence is in one's interest, is one of
them. But the surprising result calls for thoughts about the valuation of life that lead
to it. The thought-experiments above could be construed in ways that turn the lives
of potential exploited children or cloned organ donors into partly pleasant ones. Since
such practices do benefit their potential victims, explicating what is morally wrong
with them relates to the ambivalence of “worth”: short of extreme scenarios, most
lives are worth living from the perspective of the potential beings who live them
(since some positive experiential value overrides no value). At the same time, life's
value is not determined solely through this internal perspective. Virtually all lives are
worth
living, yet, some lives
should not
be lived. This dual evaluation of life's value
is not restricted to human lives. No one holds that it is justified to bring animals to
the world in order to torture them to death after they lead several years of pleasant
living. Raising animals for food need not be similar to torturing them. But the torture
analogy shows that it is insufficient to point out the prudential benefit a practice has
for the purpose of its evaluation, since such evaluation involves a second,
qualitative
component that EABT leaves out. Apart from the quantitative and qualitative dimen-
sions (that is, whether a life is or is not lived and its quality), there is also what
may be called a “teleological” dimension: some qualitatively reasonable lives should
not be lived since some ends for lives that are lived morally pervert or present a
misrecognition regarding what having a life means (the case of the euthanized pup-
pies exemplifies this, or consider leading a pleasant but radically illusory life from
beginning to end—a
Matrix
scenario). When the triple aspect of life's evaluation is
recognized, it is no longer sufficient to point out the benefit of living from the stand-
point of the animal. One also has to factor in qualitative and teleological dimensions
of such lives. This undermines the EABT argument that rests on prudential considera-
tions alone.
The problems of employing EABT do not end there. EABT also prescribes a too
conservative stance with regard to factory-farming, a stance that Hare and Scruton
would not like to adopt since both wish to see factory- farms reformed. By reducing
to a minimum the price of raising animals and thus making meat cheaper and afford-
able for many consumers, factory-farms enable many more animals to exist than the
number of animals raised through traditional farming methods. Stop factory-farming
