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Virtues and Animals: A Minimally Decent Ethic for Practical Living in a Non-ideal World

Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics volume 27, pages 909–929 (2014)Cite this article

Abstract

Traditional approaches to animal ethics commonly emerge from one of two influential ethical theories: Regan’s deontology (The case for animal rights. University of California, Berkeley, 1983) and Singer’s preference utilitarianism (Animal liberation. Avon Books, New York, 1975). I argue that both of the theories are unsuccessful at providing adequate protection for animals because they are unable to satisfy the three conditions of a minimally decent theory of animal protection. While Singer’s theory is overly permissive, Regan’s theory is too restrictive. I argue that a minimally decent animal ethic requires a framework that allows for context-dependent considerations of our complex human–animal relationship in a non-ideal world. A plausible theory which exemplifies this new ethic is virtue ethics.

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Notes

  1. See Singer’s (1975) Animal Liberation and Regan’s (1983) The Case for Animal Rights, which are considered to be the two most influential works on animal liberation.

  2. For the sake of simplicity, I will often use the term “animal” to refer to nonhuman animals in this paper

  3. This idea of building an animal ethics around “common sense” principles is also found in Engel (2001), Sapontzis (1987), DeGrazia (1996) and Clark (1977)

  4. Thank you to Nathan Nobis who enlightened this discussion and provided this example in personal conversation.

  5. Although one might point out that going to rodeos, circuses, and so forth brings about an important human good, such as pleasure or entertainment, the suffering of these animals still is not necessary because we could achieve similar pleasure or entertainment through some other activity, like going to a comedy show, watching a movie, and so forth. Since we have these other sources of entertainment, rodeos are not necessary for entertainment; it is just one, among many, opportunities for entertainment. Also note that there might be different conceptions of what counts as a significant good depending on one’s cultural values. While I am sympathetic to this point, I will assume that there are at least a few obvious “goods” that are not significant, irrespective of one’s culture (such as gustatory pleasure or entertainment).

  6. This description just touches on the basic atrocities that nonhuman animals endure daily on a factory farm; the list of factory farm atrocities is quite extensive and great length would be required to capture the whole picture. For a more thorough description, see Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation.

  7. This argument is referred to as “the impotence of the individual” or the problem of causal impotence.

  8. Shafer-Landau (1994, 96–98) also puts forth a similar version of this ethical principle: one must refuse support of essentially cruel practices, if a comparably costly alternative that is not tied to essentially cruel practices is readily available, and so does DeGrazia (1996, 285): make every reasonable effort not to provide financial support for institutions or practices that cause or support unnecessary harms.

  9. Although Frey (1983, 197–203) and Regan (1983, 221) point out that preference utilitarianism is not necessarily even committed to this conclusion, since this theory would give weight to not only the preference of nonhuman animals, but also to the preferences of those involved in the raising and killing of animals (farmers and slaughtering operations), those involved in the food business, such as food retailers and fast-food restaurants, the leather goods and wool industries, those involved in advertising the products of animal agriculture, and so forth.

  10. Note that Singer responds to this problem of the “impotence of the individual” by claiming that “there must be some point at which the number of vegetarians make a difference to the size of the poultry industry. There must be a series of thresholds, hidden by the market system of distribution, which determine how many factory farms will be in existence.” Yet, as Regan (1983, 225) points out, relying on talk of a “threshold” makes the rightness of what vegetarians do contingent upon the decisions of those who eat meat, who very well can demand more meat in order to offset the effects of the boycotts of vegetarians. This paradoxical nature of moral obligation provides non-vegetarians with an opportunity to avoid any moral obligation to become vegetarian: they can simply eat more meat in order to negate the collective effect of vegetarians.

  11. It is estimated that over 10 billion animals are killed each year in the United States alone (USDA 2011).

  12. In this paper, I will bracket the issue of whether or not nonhuman animals indeed meet the requirements for right bearers, and furthermore, I will bracket the issue of what sort of capacities are required in order to be a rights holder (such as sentience or more refined cognitive capacities). I take for granted that animals do indeed meet the requirements to be right holders, and from there, consider the consequences of attributing rights to them.

  13. The Humane Society of the United States (2013) reports that animals with poor temperament and health are the first to be euthanized. What we can conclude from this is the following: we should not spend a significant amount of funds to cover the medical costs of one animal in poor health (even if she would live a decent life with adequate treatment) because these funds could be used to help a greater number of animals.

  14. These numbers come from a 2013 report from the Humane Society.

  15. Boonin also considers and debunks the flawed argument that spaying and neutering dogs and cats is done to benefit the individual animals who undergo these procedures. Due to space constraint, I cannot address these arguments in this paper.

  16. See Palmer (2010) for an in-depth discussion regarding the positive duties of assistance that are owed to domesticated animals.

  17. These numbers come from a 2013 report from the Humane Society.

  18. By exploring the virtue of justice, one might also illustrate that virtue ethics can provide an account as to why one should not consume meat even if the animals are humanely raised and killed painlessly. As Nussbaum (2007) points out, nonhuman animals have capacities beyond sentience, such as forming social networks, pleasures of moving and eating at will, mobility, play, and so forth and they are harmed when these capabilities are thwarted. Keeping this in mind, we can argue that it is an issue of justice when we deny nonhuman animals the opportunity to embrace and exercise their capabilities at some threshold level (Nussbaum 2007, 381). Yet, for the purpose of this discussion, I only intend to provide a minimally decent account of an animal ethic, which only requires that we proscribe an individual from eating animals who were subjected to unnecessary pain and suffering.

  19. Note that a virtuous person is one who continuously develops her moral sensibility (practical wisdom), thus a truly virtuous person is able to discern the best course of action in cases of conflict. Also note that that in some situations, there might not be just one “right” response; there might be two equally tragic actions that one must choose between. In this case, the virtue ethicist does her best to discern what to do in such a situation (also, there might be situations where there are two equally good options in the sense that two different sets of goods could be realized).

  20. Although I have argued that virtue ethics provides a minimally decent framework for an animal ethic, I do not claim that virtue ethics is the only suitable framework for an animal ethic. I leave open the question of whether there might be other ethical frameworks which can satisfy the three requirements of a minimally decent animal ethic put forth in this paper.

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Acknowledgments

This will be complete if accepted for publication.The author would like to thank both Franco Trivigno and Susanne Foster for their careful feedback on an earlier draft of this paper.

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  1. Marquette University, 912 N 76th Street, Wauwatosa, WI, 53213, USA

    Cheryl Abbate

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Abbate, C. Virtues and Animals: A Minimally Decent Ethic for Practical Living in a Non-ideal World. J Agric Environ Ethics 27, 909–929 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-014-9505-z

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Keywords

  • Philosophy
  • Animal ethics
  • Virtue ethics