Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
to save the man. But here the person doing the saving is not doing anything to B,
but to A, and is simply not intervening in B's situation. Dilemmas pertaining to hu-
mans alone elicit similar intuitions: if I enter a burning plane and can either save a
scientist about to devise an important vaccine or the man sitting at her side, it is ac-
ceptable to save the scientist. Note though, that in such examples the justifications do
not depend on considerations of value: say I save a woman rather than a man be-
cause I happen to prefer women to men. The “saving” scenario justifies many such
choices (or let us say this: unless my saving action is predicated on a bias that is it-
self deemed immoral, I shall probably not be blamed for acting upon such preferen-
ces).
But research raises a different question entirely: Is it justified to sacrifice these
dogs in order to save the old man or to improve his quality of life? Here one is not
merely
refraining
from action but actively harming the less valuable entities. Consider
the thought-experiments designed to embarrass utilitarians: no one has an easy time
saying that it is right to harvest organs from an individual who has a negative or
neutral effect on society if this can save an important scientist. Opposing such har-
vesting does not stem merely from slippery-slope concerns, or our concern with
rights, or our interest to limit the invasive power of institutions. Apart from these,
there is the basic flaw of the reasoning: my having an inferior value relative to some
other being, even if such inferiority can be established, does not justify anyone in
do-
ing
anything to me. And we tend to miss this because we confuse it with the similar
case, which is justified, of aiding the being that we value more, but not doing any-
formal structure: B's inferiority relative to A does not justify anyone in harming B in
order to benefit A. Nothing in the argument depends on the inferior entity being hu-
man. There is, then, no way of limiting this reasoning to humans.
13
A final objection is consequentialist: if it is granted that A is of superior value to
B, and if—as consequentialists hold—maximizing value ought to govern all our moral
transactions, then the superiority claim successfully shows that curtailing the interests
of animals by experimenting on them is morally justified if it promotes the well-be-
ing of the more valuable humans, thereby maximizing overall utility. Three types of
arguments oppose this objection. The first is the set of general objections to con-
sequentialism as such (which I shall not rehash here). Second, since some of our
most radical pro-animal arguments are couched in utilitarian considerations, we may
well suspect that once we begin probing further what “value” and “maximizing” it
should plausibly mean, we will reach precisely the kind of morally relevant properties
that have induced utilitarians like Bentham or Singer to demand a radical reform of
animal-related practice, rather than reconfirm the existing status quo. Third, assume
