Why Do We Value Humans More Than Nonhumans?

In this episode, David discusses the way that we place different value on humans and nonhuman animals. Why don't animals get the same rights people do, and is this morally correct?

Pragmatic ethics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatic_ethics

Speciecism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciesism

United Kingdom Declares Octopuses, Squids Are Sentient Beings
https://futurism.com/the-byte/united-kingdom-octopus-sentient

Humanism Needs an Upgrade:
https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/07/humanism-needs-an-upgrade-the-philosophy-that-could-save-the-world/

Transcript

Why Do We Value Humans More Than Nonhumans? 

Podcast introduction

Welcome to the Reasoned Intuitions podcast. My name is David Tonner, and I discuss personal ideas on moral issues in modern society and try to come up with improved ways of thinking and behaving, in the hopes of becoming a better person and causing the least amount of harm. As a disclaimer, I'd like to state that I am not an expert in either philosophy, psychology, or anything else, for that matter.

My opinions and positions are provisional and open to change with new information or an improved understanding of the issues I discuss. My intent is not to provide definitive rules or to tell anyone how they should live their life. I merely want to share my ideas and insights, in the hopes that they can be inspirational or in some way helpful.

I employ pragmatic ethics and try to reason from as broad and objective a perspective as possible. Some of my basic assumptions are that unchosen suffering is bad, and we should strive to minimize it. Joy is the most pleasurable sensation, and thus we should strive to maximize it. Empathy is universal, with some exceptions, and it should be the starting point of any good ethical system. 

Intro

Hello, and welcome to the first episode of Reasoned Intuitions. Today, I'm talking about something called speciesism. Speciesism is the fact of according varying moral and practical value to different animals. It means we value nonhuman animals differently than we do people, and also, that we treat different types of animals unequally. Essentially, the characteristics of each species of organism, viewed through a subjective human lens, determine how humans interact with it.

As a disclaimer, I should point out that I, myself, am speciesist.

So, why are people speciesist? Why don't we treat all animals equally? I think there are two main forms of reasoning that have shaped our differential approach to animals:

From a traditional lens, humans are believed to have a soul, whereas other animals are not. And definitely, organisms such as plants and fungi don't have souls either. From a religious perspective, when God created the world and everything that exists in it, he made one animal in his own image—humans. For this reason, from a religious point of view, it is appropriate to treat animals differently than we treat humans.

So essentially, traditional perspectives make it permissible for humans to treat nonhuman organisms in a discriminatory fashion and to exploit them for our uses. In a more contemporary context, we understand that humans have superior intelligence to other animals.

Humans are also understood to be self-aware, meaning that we are aware of our individual separateness from other living organisms. This is not something that most other animals are thought to experience, with a few exceptions.

Some other traits and aptitudes that humans have, and that are considered valuable to our species, which are not present in nonhuman animals, include the ability to create things, for example, to plan ahead, to think about the future, to work cooperatively, to communicate about complex topics, and other things. 

These are, in combination, things that make us distinct from nonhuman animals, and that provide a reason for why we might treat animals differently than we treat each other. There are several factors that determine the value that an animal has to people, the value that we place upon it, and what its life is worth to us. This also means that we adopt different levels of care when handling different animals, and we approach ending the life of an animal differently based on its species, as well as its relationship to us.

For example, just as we would use anesthetics to dull the pain of a person during surgery, we use anesthetics when we're treating specific types of animals, such as our pets, or even livestock, but on the other hand, we don't take this kind of precaution with animals that we consider lower and whose potential for pain or suffering we do not give serious consideration to, such as insects, spiders, or fish.

There are also differences in the general relationships we have with animals. On an implicit level, I think that many, if not most people, have some kind of an unthinking instinctive reflex when encountering specific types of animals. These reflexes vary depending on what animal it is. For example, most people react negatively to insects, spiders, rats, snakes, and especially when we encounter them in the home. What either comes out is a fear reflex or one of disgust. This is often accompanied by the unthinking urge to kill the animal, or just simply to get away from it.

So, while we react with revulsion to some animals, we often have an unthinking impulse to approach and touch animals that we consider cute and friendly, such as small dogs, cats, rabbits, or anything furry, like little rodents. Not all rodents—certainly not rats—but if they're cute enough, we're not afraid of them. We want to touch them and to nuzzle them.

Now, on a different level, more explicitly, if we actually take the time to stop and think about how to react to and deal with animals, we often come up with different conclusions, based on the animal's utility to us, its existing relationship to humans, its resemblance to us. Or, as mentioned earlier, the composition of its body. So furry means fun and cute and attractive.

Scaly and slimy, not so much. To some extent, we also consider the animal's ability to feel pain or suffer, as well as its cognitive capacity. And in this sense, what we are doing is comparing it to us; the closer the animal's reasoning ability to ours, the less likely we are to kill it unthinkingly. These factors influence the way that we treat different animals, meaning, which ones we allow ourselves to destroy and with what amount of care. Do we simply squash them or treat them with some degree of respect before taking their life. 

So how should we approach the question of what rights we give to animals and how we treat them? 

I think we can look at this question from two basic perspectives, a practical one and an ethical one. Practically speaking, it is impossible for people to go through life without inadvertently killing animals. We are literally always killing something, whether it be bacteria, plants, but even insects. Think of the countless insects and other tiny critters you exterminate every time you take a step, let alone when you drive your car down the highway. Your windshield ends up coated in bug juice, and those are all animals that you killed, you vicious murderer!

And this is one of the main reasons I don't think we can grant rights to life to all animals. If we did that, it would literally make life for humans impossible. This means that the concept of granting rights to life, even to all sentient beings, is currently impossible, even ridiculous. Now, on the other hand, we can absolutely give rights to animals, specific to their circumstances.

Living organisms fall into broad categories, starting from domains, kingdoms, all the way down to genera and species. On the level of kingdoms, there are plants, animals, and fungi. We don't consider plants and fungi to be sentient.

What I mean by sentience is the basic ability to feel, to have sensations. So, if we agree that plants and fungi are not sentient, because they cannot feel, the question of granting them any real rights or consideration for the importance of their life on an individual level, isn't realistic or practical. When we talk about animals, then, things start to get a little more complicated, but even there, looking at some of the most basic life forms such as nematodes, we don't currently consider the question of nematode rights to be a realistic or practical one, but as the complexity of the animal increases, so does the applicability of the concept of rights.

For example, household pets and livestock have been granted significant rights in a variety of jurisdictions. There is legislation that specifically protects the rights of certain animals and makes it a crime to hurt or kill them. Some of you may have seen this in the news recently, when the UK declared octopus, crabs, and lobsters to be sentient, which increases the care they must be given when being handled. In some places, great apes have even been granted legal personhood, and that increases the protections they are entitled to.

The other level from which to look at the rights we grant animals is ethical, and in that respect, it's important to look at the animal’s physiological complexity, and more specifically, the existence of a nervous system and its neocortical complexity. What makes the crucial difference here is the animal’s ability to feel pain, also known as nociception, as well as its capacity for suffering. After all suffering is suffering. I mean, humans suffer, animals suffer, and I don't know if there's any good purpose in saying, “while animals do suffer, they suffer less”. As I’m sure you know, there are different degrees of suffering, but suffering is bad no matter what (unless it’s the kind you’ve actually chosen to inflict upon yourself, which is a separate matter). So, if we agree that suffering is something that should be avoided, then it should be avoided for all species equally. 

With all that being said, there's organisms that we casually accept as not possessing sufficient complexity, not to mention the ability to feel pain. And so, we don't need to concern ourselves with their moral rights in the same way that we do with those organisms that we already talked about, that do have the ability to feel pain. The most basic examples here would be, as we said before, bacteria, plants, and fungi, because our current understanding is that they're not sentient; they do not suffer. And again, as with our practical considerations, when it comes to moral aspects of destroying life, this becomes an increasingly thorny topic as that organism’s complexity increases.

So, I think there's some basic guidelines that we can utilize in determining the types of ethical approaches that we take. One of these would be that we must accord rights to animals based on the suffering/joy equation.

Can they suffer? Can they experience joy? An animal that is not sentient, that cannot suffer, requires no rights, in my opinion. Similarly, with an organism that is sentient but not self-aware, meaning that we have no reason to believe that it is cognitively aware of its own individual existence, the rights we grant it must correspond to what the animal requires to thrive and avoid suffering, but nothing more. And then, organisms that are not sentient, in the most basic sense of the word, do not warrant moral consideration. Just as inanimate objects, like tables, rocks, pizzas, don't warrant any moral consideration either.

I recently read an article that I quite enjoyed, called “Humanism Needs an Upgrade”. Humanism is a philosophy that values humanity first and foremost, but the author, Jamie Woodhouse, argues for something called sentientism, which is the idea that we should value all sentient beings.

I'll put a link in the article description for you. So, while my position is that we can't value all sentient beings equally, I feel strongly that we must absolutely give consideration to any organism that has the ability to suffer and do our best to reduce, if not eliminate, the suffering that we inflict upon that organism.

My personal relationship with animals is that, unless it’s hurting me, I don't bother it. There are obviously situations where self-defense becomes necessary: say you're hiking in the woods and there's a bear. And of course, there's insects and other vermin that cannot be tolerated, especially in the home, but even then, I try to do my best to minimize the suffering to the animal. If I have to kill it, I try to do it quickly and painlessly. If I don't have to kill it…so, if I have a mouse in my apartment, for example, I try to capture it without hurting it and then release it outside.

Of course, there's so much more to this topic. I mean, this doesn't cover the full scope of moral considerations when it comes to how humans interact with animals, and I'm hoping to come back to the topic from different angles in later episodes.

For now, thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed the first episode of my podcast, Reasoned Intuitions. I look forward to your feedback.