Abstract
The suffering of nonhuman animals has become a noted factor in deciding public policy and legislative change. Yet, despite this growing concern, skepticism toward such suffering is still surprisingly common. This paper analyzes the merits of the skeptical approach, both in its moderate and extreme forms. In the first part it is claimed that the type of criterion for verification concerning the mental states of other animals posed by skepticism is overly (and, in the case of extreme skepticism, illogically) demanding. Resting on Wittgenstein and Husserl, it is argued that skepticism relies on a misguided epistemology and, thus, that key questions posed by it face the risk of absurdity. In the second part of the paper it is suggested that, instead of skepticism, empathy together with intersubjectivity be adopted. Edith Stein’s take on empathy, along with contemporary findings, are explored, and the claim is made that it is only via these two methods of understanding that the suffering of nonhuman animals can be perceived.
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Notes
“Animal suffering” is here defined as a holistic affective state with high intensity (see Aaltola 2012).
Not all are as favorable toward this approach. For instance, the skeptic Peter Carruthers maintains that “[i]t really is something of a scandal that people’s intuitions, in this domain, are given any weight at all” (2000, 199).
Using Nussbaum’s reading, Fox and McLean have argued that, within animal experimentation, lack of perception may often lead to similarly monstrous results. In these situations, experiments have allowed researchers’ “perceptions … [to] become shallow and faint; they don’t see what is there to be seen because they ignore their emotional and imaginative responses and what these responses should reveal to them”—they are taking part in a “de-sensitised reading process” (Fox and McLean 2008, 167 and 168).
For Husserl, too, empathy was crucial, for it enables one to perceive others as fellow subjects rather than as physical bodies—empathy forms “our primary form of experience of others, as others” (Smith 2007, 228).
To use Peter Goldie’s words: “Empathy is a process or procedure by which a person centrally imagines the narrative (the thoughts, feelings and emotions) of another person” (Goldie 2000, 195).
Yet, saying this, differences cannot be sidelined, and it is possible that they hide a great deal of animal suffering from human perception (see NRC 2009; Aaltola 2012). Therefore, empathy toward other animals (and other human beings) must always be accompanied by a sense of regard for the specificity of other individuals.
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Aaltola, E. Skepticism, Empathy, and Animal Suffering. Bioethical Inquiry 10, 457–467 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-013-9481-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-013-9481-4