Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
than the human. Excusing this outcome by contending that humans deserve more than
animals is undercut by violating the moral principles that underlie acceptable applica-
tions of the justification from greater desert. Such justifications rely either on deflat-
ing ownership rights of the party being dispossessed or on benefiting the weak at the
expense of the strong, and avoiding making the giver worse off than the receiver.
Neither of these applies in the case of research.
But is it reasonable to extrapolate from human-human morality to human-animal
morality? Imagine a critic saying this: “Even if the logic of greater moral desert does
not carry over smoothly from humans to animals, this proves nothing. It is hardly
surprising that such moves work differently in human moral contexts than when one
is thinking about animals. But nothing important is to be inferred from this trivial
and expected fact. Animals should be sacrificed to save humans because humans de-
serve more. Happily, analogous reasoning from greater desert cannot be applied to hu-
mans, but research on animals is a different matter and should go on.” This objection
is convincing only until one recognizes that it cannot be restricted to an apology for
animal-based research. It can, for example, unproblematically be used by someone
who would like to torture animals: “In human-human contexts,” the sadist will say,
“we regard as basic the need to avoid cruel actions that harm others in order to de-
rive pleasure. But why should we be anthropocentric and suppose that “harming” or
“deriving pleasure” or “cruelty” retain their meaning or “moral logic” when one
moves from humans to animals? One should not be cruel to humans but may direct
cruelty to animals, so long as one will not turn to look for human victims later.” The
numerous differences between sadists and scientists should not obfuscate the manner
by which the objection we are scrutinizing now recycles the same improbable move:
if research advocates may appeal to a discrepancy between human and animal-related
application of moral terms, sadists can do so too.
In response, my opponent will reinvoke the degrees view of moral con-siderability
we encountered earlier: animals have some moral standing, enough to safeguard them
against sadism, but not enough to prevent experiments, and this is because “humans
deserve more.” My argument regarding the usual moral logic of greater desert cannot
then carry over from human to nonhuman contexts as I tried to do, since my human
examples concerned subjects of identical moral standing, whereas the move to entities
of lesser status modifies the probable application of such terms. But the problem with
this countermove is that it recycles the same reasoning that failed above when trying
to justify research through greater importance. Lesser moral standing does not hook
onto lesser protection or its equivalent, “greater desert,” since no argumentative links
bind degrees of moral standing (or degrees of “desert”) with particular conduct re-
strictions.
