Introduction:

In a previous post, I discussed an article presented arguments for believing that it is wrong to painlessly kill non-human animals (from here on, I will simply use the term “animal” as synonymous with “non-human animal”). I pointed out what I thought were serious flaws in the author’s arguments, and thus concluded that the author failed to adequately support their conclusion. However, in that post as well as in previous essays I have mentioned that I myself think painlessly killing animals is wrong, at least under normal circumstances. In this post, I will attempt to argue for this claim by appealing to an analogy with one explanation for why killing humans beings is wrong. In addition, I will try to work out some of the practical implications believing this would have.

In the first section, I will clarify what I will be arguing for and try to distinguish this from other ethical views regarding animals. I will also lay out some background information and assumptions that I will draw upon. In the second section, I will give a short discussion of possible explanations of the principle that killing a human being is wrong, and conclude that at least one reason why it is wrong to kill a human being is because doing so deprives them of a valuable future, which I term the DVF principle. In the third section, I will examine whether this account of the wrongness of killing can be applied to animals and will conclude that it can. Having established good reasons to think killing animals is wrong based on analogy to DVF in humans, I reinforce my conclusion by appeal to other intuitive beliefs I think many people share. In the fourth section, I will consider the practical implications my conclusion has for an individual’s dietary choices. Finally, I will consider some potential problems with the arguments I presented and draw my conclusions.

Section 1:

Firstly, I wish to clarify what exactly I will be arguing for. This essay aims to establish the following claim:

W: It is prima facie wrong to kill an animal

I want to emphasize that W does not assert or imply any of the following:

(1) It is always wrong to kill an animal

(2) It is never permissible to eat an animal

(3) Eating animal products is wrong only if killing animals is wrong

W is not the same as (1) as it only asserts that it is prima facie wrong to kill an animal, not wrong in all circumstances. By calling something prima facie wrong I mean that it is wrong unless some reason can be given to show otherwise. Thus, lying is generally accepted to be prima facie wrong, as most people think it is wrong to lie unless you have a good reason to do so (e.g. preventing Nazis from finding the Jews in your attic). Thus, to say killing an animal is prima facie wrong just means that unless there is a good justification, we ought not to kill an animal. Under what circumstances killing an animal is justified is a difficult question, and I will largely not tackle in this post. However, what I want to emphasize is that I am not arguing that it is always wrong to kill animals. Just like the example of lying there seem to be clear cases in which killing is permissible, or even obligatory. These include cases of self defense, when an animal is in extreme pain with little to no chance of recovery, or if killing and eating the animal is necessary for a group of humans to survive. What I want to emphasize is that all these cases seem intuitively permissible, but this intuitive permissibility can be backed up with a justification. Good reasons can be provided for why killing the animal is acceptable, and reasons need to be given for this if the killing is prima facie wrong.

W is also not asserting (2). In fact, W does not in itself imply that eating an animal is wrong. Further steps would be needed to take us from the fact that killing an animal is wrong to eating animal products is wrong, because it may be permissible to eat an animal that died of natural causes or it may be acceptable to eat an animal that was killed by someone else. Analogously, belief that killing a human is wrong does not imply that eating a dead human is wrong, even though most of us would think both are wrong under normal circumstances. I do in fact believe that if we accept W, some other intuitive principles lead us to the conclusion that we ought not to consume animal products, but I will not address those in detail in this post.

Finally, W does not imply that the wrongfulness of killing animals is the only reason why eating animal products is or could be wrong. This is probably very obvious, but I still want to emphasize that someone can consistently believe that we ought not to eat animal products yet also believe that there is nothing wrong with killing an animal per se. They may justify the wrongness of consuming animal products by appeal to the terrible conditions in which animals are typically kept in modern agriculture, or the problematic environmental impact of animal agriculture. For example, there are many arguments against consuming animal products based on the principle that we ought to limit the suffering of animals, and I think these arguments are quite effective in establishing that we ought not to consume animal products. I also think they tend to be stronger than the arguments for W, as the empirical facts and ethical principles underlying them (that animals can suffer and that modern agricultural practices cause large amounts of suffering) are much more firmly grounded than those I will draw upon to justify W. For these kind of arguments, I encourage you to look into the work of Peter Singer in “Animal Liberation” or a previous post of mine giving a short argument for ethical veganism on those grounds.

I also want to stress that W does not imply that the wrongness of the act of killing itself is the only reason why ending an animal’s life is wrong. As discussed above, someone may think that causing animals suffering is wrong. As ending an animal’s life often involves causing suffering in the form of distress or pain, you may think that most cases of killing are wrong because they cause suffering. And I would agree with this. However, this view would be open to the objection that some cases of killing are permissible as they involve little to no pain. An example would be killing an animal virtually instantaneously (with a gun or captive bolt) without it realizing what is happening. In this case the animal would have felt no fear and probably no pain, so the killing would be acceptable if these are the only morally relevant aspects of our treatment of animals.

So, in summary, I will be arguing for the claim that it is prima facie wrong to kill animals. After establishing this, I will try to show how this leads us to conclude that we ought not to eat animal products. I will not be addressing all arguments for ethical veganism, but only a narrow one that appeals to the wrongness of killing.

Before moving on to the main argument, I will lay out some of my general assumptions for this essay. I assume that animals warrant moral consideration i.e they ought to be taken into account in our moral decision making and so are unlike inanimate objects such as rocks or sticks. Furthermore, I assume that this moral considerability involves direct duties to animals: we have duties to animals, not just involving them. By way of contrast, we have no duties to objects such as cars or televisions, though we may have duties regarding them if someone owns these objects as in this case we would have a duty not to damage or take them without permission. I think these two assumptions are fairly widely shared, as I think most people think it is wrong to treat animals in certain ways and it is wrong because of what it does to the animal. For example, it is wrong to be cruel to an animal and this is primarily because of the suffering this causes the victim, rather than it’s effects on the perpetrator or society as a whole. Some may disagree with these assumptions, and think that either animals warrant no moral consideration or that any duties we have to them are indirect, being of the same kind as our duties involving televisions and cars. I will not try to argue against these positions here, as I think their untenability has been established by thinkers far more adept than I. To examine these arguemnts, I would recommend reading Robert Nozick on moral constraints, David DeGrazia “Taking Animals Seriously” and Tom Regan “The Case for Animal Rights”.

The last of my assumptions regards humans, not animals. I will assume the following:

H: It is prima facie wrong to kill a human being

By human being, I mean any human from when they are born until the time of their natural death. I am excluding unborn humans in this principle because whether it is wrong to end their lives is more controversial, and is not central to this essay. I want to emphasize that human being includes neonates, children, adults and the elderly: it is not restricted to “persons” in the psychological sense of a rational being who is self consciously aware etc. I am also including the mentally disabled and mentally individuals in this principle, though I will exclude people suffering from a coma or who are in a vegetative state. I think H is a strong intuitive belief that most people hold, and thus I will assume it for this essay.

Section 2:

In this Section, I will attempt to show how the deprivation of an individual’s valuable future (DVF) is the best explanation for H. In doing so, I will first consider some alternative explanations for H and reject them as incomplete.

H seems intuitively true: it seems prima facie wrong to kill a human being, and this belief is recognized as intuitive and forceful by most people. But what would make this principle true? Why is it typically wrong to kill human beings? Many different explanations have been offered over time, and the options I will discuss are in no way exhaustive. Four possible explanations are:

(4) Killing a human violates their universal right to life

(5) Killing a human being fails to respect them as a person

(6) Killing a human being frustrates their desire to live

(7) Killing a human being deprives them of a valuable future

(4) explains H by claiming that all human beings have a universal right to life. Given this right to life, it is wrong to kill them as doing so would violate their rights. I think this explanation seems plausible, but is inadequate. The problem is that it simply asserts a right to life, but provides no explanation of why humans possess this right. Do humans have a right to life because they are persons or because they have an interest in continuing to live? Do humans have a moral right to life, or only a legal one? While I accept that humans have a right to life, I think that this right requires some kind of explanation which would be offered by the accounts given in (5) – (7). Thus I will turn to examining them.

(5) claims that human beings are persons in the psychological sense, and it is wrong to kill them because doing so fails to respect their autonomy and the inherent value of their personhood. “Person” is here meant in the psychological sense: a person is a being with some level of self-awareness, rationality, capacity to plan for the future and ability to make moral judgements. Persons do seem to have a strong inherent value, and many things we do may be wrong because of how they fail to respect each other as autonomous persons. For example, racism and sexism may be wrong not just because of their immediate negative impact on the victims but because of how they dehumanize a person and fail to treat them as a unique, autonomous being. However, (5) fails to explain H as not all human beings referred to by H are persons. A person is an individual who is rational, capable of forming long term goals and acting for reasons. Neonates and those who are mentally disabled do not fall into this category, so are not persons. But, seeing as it is wrong to kill them, it must be wrong for reasons other than the possession of personhood.

(6) claims that the wrongness of killing is based on the fact that killing frustrating an individuals desire to continue living. (6) could even be more broadly construed as claiming that killing frustrates any long term desires we possess in addition to our desire not to die. Seeing as frustrating people’s desires is typically wrong, and fails to respect their autonomy, this seems to provide an initially plausible account of why killing is wrong. This is further backed up by the fact that our will to live is often one of the strongest desires we have, and thus frustrating it would be extremely wrong, which squares well with our intuition that murder is one of the worst offences. However, this also fails to explain H for reasons similar to that given for (5). Certain humans lack the desire to go on living or lack long term desires, yet it seems intuitive that it would still be wrong to kill them. For example, neonates and the severely mentally disabled may lack the capacity to conceive of their own death or the future to any significant degree. Thus they would lack a desire to continue to live, and therefore (5) would not apply to them. Furthermore, imagine a severely depressed person who currently desires to die and has no other long term desires. This individual will recover from their depression in a week but is currently without long term desires that would be frustrated by their death. If (5) is the only explanation for why killing people is wrong, then it would seem that it is not wrong to kill this person. Yet it once again seems intuitive that it is wrong. Thus, there must be a reason other than (5) for why killing this individual is wrong, so (5) cannot provide a complete explanation of H.

The fourth explanation claims that killing a person is wrong because it deprives them of a valuable future. That is, (7) claims that killing a person is wrong because death harms the person. The harm of death is unlike many paradigmatic cases of harm such as experiencing pain or distress. Rather, the harm of death is a negative or deprivational harm (for a discussion of the negative harm of death see Thomas Nagel’s “Death” or Don Marquis’s “Why Abortion is Immoral”). When we die, we are deprived of all the future goods our life would have contained if we had continued to live. If the good contained in a future outweighs the bad, then I will say that the individual has a valuable future or future of value. Thus, I am claiming that death harms a typical human as it deprives them of a valuable future. (7) is claiming that killing is wrong in virtue of the fact that killing involves harming someone. And this harm is one of the greatest harms that can be inflicted, as it involves the loss of all of the net good the individual would have experienced if they had continued to live.

Now, (7) seems to have many merits over the other explanations. Seeing as children, the mentally disabled and our severely depressed individual discussed above all have valuable futures, (7) would imply that it is wrong to kill them. Furthermore, (7) coheres well with an intuitive explanation of the badness of death, and most of us probably believe that death is typically bad for us. (7) can also explain why some cases of killing a human may be permissible when that individual lacks a valuable future. Think of cases where it is certain that an individual’s future will consist in extreme amounts of pain and suffering with little chance for valuable experiences or actions. This would include people suffering from terminal, incurable diseases or horrific incapacitating injuries. In these cases it seems like it would be permissible to end the individual’s life: to euthanize them. Now, this act of euthanasia may be wrong for other reasons, but (7) does help explain why we often think that ending these people’s lives would be justified, as in these cases there is no future of value to be deprived of. Finally, (7) seems to be better than (6) in that it helps to explain why we have a desire to live, while (6) leaves this as a given. Our desire to live seems to be partly a result of some innate disposition, but also a result of our judgement that continuing to live is a good thing. It is because we judge our future to be a valuable one that we desire to continue to live. If we believed our future was not a valuable one, such as in the cases of terminally ill patients discussed above, we may no longer desire to live and may form the rational desire to die. Thus (7) also provides a good explanation of why we rationally desire to live, and why we may come to lose that desire.

In summary, I consider this fourth alternative to be the best prima facie explanation of H. This is because unlike (4)-(6) it provides a non-arbitrary account of the wrongness of death, it applies to all typical cases referred to in H (especially children, the mentally disabled and the severely depressed), it coheres with a plausible explanation of why death is bad and it explains our attitudes towards euthanasia and continuing to live. However, (7) is not without flaws. Firstly, if killing a person is wrong because it harms them, it would seem reasonable to conclude that the wrongness would be dependent upon how much harm death caused them. But seeing as the harm of death was grounded in the individual being deprived of a valuable future, it would seem that the harm of death is a function of how valuable the future is. But this would imply that killing an elderly person with very little future left or killing a person who will lives a largely miserable life are not as wrong as killing a younger person or someone who will live a very happy life. This seems inconsistent with our belief that, in most cases, killing an individual is equally wrong.

So, we are left with the conclusion that all four of the accounts given seem inadequate as explanations of H. However, we should not become pessimistic. I think the correct conclusion is either that we simply need to tweak these explanations a bit more or accept that the explanation for H will involve more than one of the discussed principles. (5), (6) and (7) all seem to provide intuitive accounts of why killing is wrong in certain cases, though they all have their flaws. Perhaps there is no unitary reason for why killing a human is wrong-maybe there are different reasons in different cases and sometimes multiple reasons in a single case. For example, perhaps killing a child is wrong because it deprives them of a long, valuable future. In contrast, killing a normal adult human is wrong because it fails to respect them as a person, it frustrates their desire to live and deprives them of a valuable future. Thus, we can conclude that all three explanations seem reasonable, and perhaps are all true. In addition, the combination of these claims may together explain why we have a right to life, as asserted in (1).

I am open to the possibility that the faults in (5)-(7) actually suggest there is another, unitary explanation for H that I have not considered. However, even if such an explanation was provided I think we should still accept (7) due to it’s strong support independent of it’s ability to explain H. This support is derived from it’s strong coherence with our other beliefs and it’s intuitiveness. So unless a better, contradictory principle is discovered I think that we can conclude that the following claim is probably true:

DVF: It is prima facie wrong to deprive a human being of a valuable future by killig them

In this section I have discussed four candidate explanations for the wrongness of killing human beings. I have found all of these explanations to have flaws, and have tentatively concluded that the correct account is a combination of three of the proposed explanations. In addition, I have argued that due to it’s strong merits, we have good reasons to accept the principle that depriving a human being of a valuable future is prima facie wrong. This principle would be true even if another, more unitary explanation is given of why killing human beings are wrong.

Section 3:

Now that I have concluded that it is wrong to deprive humans of a valuable future, I will consider whether this is also true of animals. I believe it is. The reason it is wrong to deprive humans of a valuable future is because doing so harms the person: it prevents them from enjoying future good experiences and activities. However, animals also experience good mental states and take an interest in many activities.

Mammals and birds seem to have desires and are capable of experiencing pleasure and pain (for arguments supporting the attribution of desires and pleasure to animals see David DeGrazia “Taking Animals Seriously” and Jonathan Balcombe’s “Animal Pleasure and It’s Moral Significance”). Thus animals can have experiences that are good or bad for them, and will often engage in activities that cause them pleasure or that they have a strong desire to perform. Think of how mammals and birds seem to have a strong desire to eat, and by analogy to ourselves probably enjoy eating. Think also of how many animals are social beings, engaging in pleasant interactions with members of their own or other species. Many animals also play with each other, enjoy basking in the sun and have a strong internal motivation to perform certain natural behaviors such as rooting in pigs or dust bathing in chickens. It may be objected that we cannot know that these animals enjoy these behaviours or have desires which are fulfilled by these activities. However, if we accept that mammals and birds feel pain and this capacity likely evolved to regulate behaviour and enhance survival, it seems implausible that these animals would not also have evolved the capacity for having pleasurable mental states and desires as well.

Thus, I conclude that animals have valuable experiences and engage in valuable activities (i.e activities that they have a strong desire to engage in or that cause pleasurable feelings). In addition, similar to humans, ending an animal’s life prevents the animal from experiencing these valuable states of affairs. Even if these animals live in an eternal present, without conception of the future, ending their life would still deprive them of a future, a future in which they would have been able to experience many pleasurable mental states. I do not think that a being needs a conception of the future to possess a future, and I think that it is reasonable to think mammals and birds have a future in the sense of their mind being psychologically continuous over time. This seems to be supported by these animals possessing temporally consistent behavioral traits (i.e a personality of sorts) and memories, which suggests some kind of psychological continuity. Thus, ending their life would deprive them of a future, and as this future would consist in many valuable experiences, killing them would deprive them of a valuable future.

As animal’s have a valuable future and we deprive them of this future by killing them, it seems reasonable that DVF would also apply to animals in some form. If it is wrong to kill humans because doing so deprives them of a valuable future, and killing animals deprives them of a valuable future, then unless there is some relevant difference between the valuable futures of animals and humans then I believe we should conclude that it is also prima facie wrong to kill animals. Though there are differences between the valuable futures of humans and animals, I do not think these differences are significant enough or sufficiently relevant to justify differential treatment. We do enjoy many goods that animals cannot, such as complex loving relationships or certain kinds of intellectual experience, and these contribute to the badness of our deaths. However, many of the valuable states of affairs we are denied by our death would be more simple pleasures such as eating, playing, having sex, basking in the sun or simply enjoying the freedom to move around. We share these valuable experiences with animals, and thus the differences in our capacities for experiencing valuable things does not seem so wide that we could deny them futures of value. Thus, I conclude that killing animals is prima facie wrong.

This argument can be outlined as follows:

(8) It is prima facie wrong to deprive humans of a valuable future by killing them [premise – DVF]

(9) Animal’s have valuable experiences [premise]

(10) Animal’s possess a future [premise]

(11) Animal’s can possess a valuable future [inferred from 2, 3]

(12) There are no relevant differences between the valuable futures of humans and animals [premise]

(13) If (8) and (11) and (12), then it is prima facie wrong to deprive animals of a valuable future by killing them [premise]

(14) It is prima facie wrong to deprive animals of a valuable future by killing them [inferred from 1, 4, 5, and 6]

I think I have given decent justifications for each step, though I realize that a lot of what I assert is contestable. (14) implies W, and therefore if this argument is succesful I have established that it is prima facie wrong to kill animals. I wish to emphasize that “animals” here must be restricted to those animals who are sentient, and thus capable of valuable experiences, and animals who have a future in the sense of psychological continuity. So this argument does not in fact apply to all animals, despite my use of the term “animals”. I think we can be confident that most mammals and birds would have valuable futures, so it would be wrong to kill them. These are the animals whose treatment is most relevant to our decision making, as they are the main species used in animal agriculture. However, I will leave discussion of the specifics for another time.

Having established W with the above argument, I will now try to provide further support for this principle through it’s coherence with other considered judgements. Before I do this, I would like to emphasize that this is not the only argument that can be given for W. I could have given a more direct argument from the badness of death for animal’s to the principle that killing an animal is therefore wrong, similar to that given for (7) in the previous section. However, I think the above argument is stronger as we can rely upon strongly held considered beliefs about the wrongness of killing humans to reason our way to W.

Firstly, I think W coheres well with the following widely held belief :

(15) An animal’s death is typically bad for the animal who dies.

As I states before, this is because (15) provides independent justification for W. What do I mean by (15)? Let me consider the case of my own dog. It would be bad for my dog if she died: she would be harmed by her death as this would deprive her of all of the goods of her life she would have enjoyed if she had not died. It is partly because my dog’s death would be bad for her that I worry over her dying and take steps to avoid it. It is also largely because my dog’s death would be bad for her that I will grieve when she inevitably passes, as I know that her death means she will no longer be able to engage in all the valuable experiences that typically make up her life, such as going on walks or eating food. Now, it is true that my concern for my dog’s life and eventual grief at her death is partly a result of concern for my own interests. If my dog dies I will no longer be able to enjoy all the activities I love to do with her. I will no longer be able to enjoy the activity of going on walks with her or being amused by seeing her scoff down her food. So in part my concern for her safety is directed towards protecting my own interests, as I wish to continue having enjoyable experiences with my dog. The grief I will experience following her inevitble eventual death is also in part due to my sorrow that I will no longer be able to engage in certain enjoyable activities any more. That is, I will be in part sad about my own loss, rather than my dog’s. In this way concern over her death and sorrow at her passing would be analogous to my worry over my car being stolen or my regret if it was stolen. This concern and regret is not a result of concern for the wellbeing of the car, for it has no wellbeing, but rather concern for how the stealing of my car would negatively impact upon me. However, I think it would be implausible to think that all of my concern or grief is self directed. Just as with the death of a good friend or family member, some of my grief is due to me feeling sorry for myself but a large part is sadness that the individual’s life was cut short and as such they were deprived of a valuable future.

Some people may deny that my concern and grief is a result of my belief that my dog will be harmed by her death. They may argue that I am mistaken in identifying the source of my motives and feelings, and in fact the sorrow is only directed at my own loss, not the dog’s. In response, I can further support my claim with a though experiment. Suppose I return home tomorrow and am confronted by a Ranger who tells me that they believe that dog ran out onto the road and was killed. They explain that they found my dog’s collar next to a mangled body on the road, and the body looks similar to my dog’s. This information would leave me distraught, and I would probably grieve for many months. This could all be consistent with what the challenger claims, for perhaps my sorrow is simply due to my realization that my dog’s death means I will not longer be able to enjoy owning the dog and spending time with her. However, suppose that twenty years down the track I found out that my dog was not in fact killed on that day. Previously lost CCTV footage shows that my dog and a similar looking dog were fighting on the road, and the other dog pulled off my dog’s collar. A car then sped past and struck the other dog, killing it. My dog then ran away. I manage to track my dog through various CCTV footage and find that it ended up on a the doorstep of another person, who took in my dog and cared for her. Visiting this person, I find out that they took care of my dog for ten more years before she died peacefully in her sleep. They tell me that she had a happy life and wanted for nothing. What affect do you think this information would have upon me? I think it would bring me great happiness. I would still feel sorrow that I had missed out on time with my dog, but I would be overjoyed to find out that her life had not been cut short and in fact she had lived out a complete, good life. I may still grieve at her death, but since she was not deprived of a long valuable future by a premature death this grief would be minimal.

I think this thought experiment shows that my challenger is wrong. I grieve because I am denied valuable interactions with my dog AND because my dog is deprived of a valuable future. Now, this does not establish that the belief that my dog’s death is bad for her is true. But I believe comparison to the reasons we think a human’s death is bad gives support to this belief: the premature death of animals and humans is bad because both are deprived of valuable futures by their death. What I am trying to show here is that I think this belief is probably fairly widely held already, and is very intuitive. I think most people who own pet’s would have similar experiences to that described in my thought experiment, so I think many of them would believe that their pet’s death would be bad for the pet. Thus W coheres well with a widely held, intuitive belief: that an animal’s death is typically bad for the animal. This strengthens the case for W, especially since the badness of an animal’s death is what explains W.

W gains further indirect support by other beliefs that cohere with (15). Suppose someone rejects (15) i.e they believe that an animal’s death is not typically bad for the animal. Because it is such a widely held and well supported principle, I will assume that this person believes that causing pain and suffering to an animal is bad for it. This means that the person accepts that pain and suffering is bad for an animal, they just reject that a painless death could also be bad. If anyone accepted these two beliefs together, then they would be led to very counter-intuitive conclusions. Suppose my dog has some kind of disease that is causing her a minimum amount of pain at the moment, such as ingesting a lethal dose of chocolate. She is not currently suffering any pain or suffering and actually enjoyed eating the chocolate. However, the chocolate will soon cause her death and she will suffer during the period as she dies. I have two choices: I can give her a drug that will make her nauseous and vomit or I can euthanize her. If I give her the drug she will suffer from some of the after affects of eating chocolate for a few days and will feel horrible for a while due to the experience of nausea and several instances of vomiting. Thus the first option will cause her pain and suffering, which is bad for her. However, after a few days she will make a full recovery and will be back to living a happy healthy life, probably for another 10 years or so. If I choose to euthanize her, her death will be swift and painless and will occur before the deleterious affects of eating chocolate set in. Thus, if I choose the second option she will die but will experience no pain or suffering.

If we accept that it is bad for an animal to experience pain and suffering but not bad for them to die then this implies that it would be better for my dog to be euthanized, and worse for her to suffer for a short period before recovering. But this is absurd-it is clearly in my dog’s interests to experience some short term suffering in order to continue living a largely good, valuable life. This shows that we should not reject (15), but rather accept that an animal’s death is bad for the animal. Thus, consideration of what we judge to be better or worse for animals provides further support for (15), which in turn supports W.

Another point of support is how W coheres well with our beliefs about when it is acceptable to euthanize an animal. W claims that it is prima facie wrong to kill an animal. I have claimed that W is supported by an argument from analogy with humans and because of (15): an animal’s death is typically bad for the animal. However, we can all clearly think of cases where (15) does not in fact hold. If an animal is suffering from a painful disease that is unlikely to get better, then we may judge that it no longer has a valuable future. As a result, we may conclude that the animal’s death in this case would actually be good for the animal, as it would free it from it’s pain. As such, we would now have a justification for ending the animal’s life, and our killing of the animal would actually be in the animal’s interests. I believe this is generally how pet owners reason when they decide to euthanize their pets: they conclude that the animal no longer has a good life or valuable future, and thus it is the right to end their life. This belief coheres well with (15) and W, which only assert the prima facie wrongness and badness of animal deaths and base this upon the value of an animal’s future.

The final belief that W coheres well with concerns our reasons for thinking pain and suffering are bad. We all agree that pain is bad, and part of the reason it is bad is simply due to it’s inherent qualities. Thus, pain is intrinsically bad, just as pleasure is intrinsically good. However, pain is also extrinsically bad: it is bad because of it’s affect on something else. When we are in pain, we tend to have a reduced ability to engage in activities and projects that we find intrinsically valuable. If I have a tooth ache or a head ache, I may find it difficult to enjoy reading a book or watching a movie. And these activities are good: I consider them valuable in themself or for instrumental reasons. So, being in pain is extrinsically bad in how it prevents me from enjoying the goods that life has to offer. But, death also prevents a being from enjoying the goods that life has to offer. It does this to a much greater degree and in a much more permanent way than being in pain. If we accept that being in pain is bad partly for it’s external relations with other valuable activities and experiences, then we should also accept this for death which bears similar relations to these activities and experiences. Thus, consideration of why pain is bad seems to provide additional support for (15) and thus W. If we accept this account of the badness of pain but reject (15) and W, we would need to provide some explanation of why the extrinsic badness differs in the two cases. While if we accept all three, we have a much more coherent system of beliefs.

In summary, I have argued that if we accept that it is wrong to kill humans because doing so deprives them of a valuable future, then we should accept a similar principle for animals. This is because animals possess valuable experiences similar to that of humans and because many animals have a future of which they can be deprived if they are killed. This principle is further supported by it’s coherence with other beliefs we hold. That is, I am claiming that the following propositions form a coherent, mutually supporting set and this increases the credence we give to W:

W: It is prima facie wrong to kill an animal

(15) An animal’s death is typically bad for the animal who dies.

(16) Humans grieve for the death of their animal companions

(17) It is better for an animal to go through a short period of suffering and live a valuable life than for an animal to avoid all suffering through euthanasia

(18) It is permissible to euthanize an animal if it does not have a valuable future

(19) It is bad for an animal to experience pain or suffering

(20) Pain is bad in virtue of (i) it’s inherent experiential quality (ii) how it prevents the subject of the pain from engaging in positively valuable activities and experiencing positively valuable mental states

Section 4:

In the previous sections I have tried to establish W. But, “what difference does W actually make?” someone may ask. If we already accept that it is wrong to inflict pain and suffering on animals, and we accept that this provides strong grounds for not purchasing animal products, then we would already conclude that we ought to be ethical vegans. This is indeed what I was trying to draw attention to in Section 1: believing W is not necessary for someone to become an ethical vegan. So why does the truth of W matter? I would say there are two reasons, one theoretical and one practical. The theoretical reason is that it is of great intellectual value to discover justified moral principles, and seeing as I think I have established at least the strong plausibility of W, this is reason enough for it to matter. Of course, this appeals only to those who have an interest in purely theoretical investigations in ethics, which may be very few. Thankfully W is not just some unnecessary add on but has practical consequences for the choices we make in purchasing and consuming animal products. I will try to explain why, but to do so I must assume that the gap between recognizing the wrongness of farmers treatment of animals and the obligation not to purchase their products has been closed. There are many ways this gap can be closed, which I will not go into in this post. So I will assume that if someone accepts that it is wrong to cause an animal unnecessary suffering or wrong to kill them, then they will judge that it is wrong to purchase products that result from practices that involve animal suffering and death.

The long time foil of ethical vegans are what could be termed benign carnivores. These are individuals, real or hypothetical, who accept our arguments about the wrongness of causing pain and suffering and accept that because the modern agricultural industry causes pain and suffering we should not consume it’s products. However, the benign carnivore also argues that there are situations in which raising and killing an animal for food would be acceptable. Consider a situation in which we raised an animal on a farm, gave it a nice happy life, and then killed it painlessly and without warning one day in order to butcher it for meat. Since we have caused it no pain or suffering, what we have done does not seem wrong if the above principle is the only one we accept. Furthermore, seeing as humans enjoy eating meat this seems to be a net benefit to everyone overall. So such a “happy farms” would be an acceptable means of meat production. I have talked to many people who accept this line of argument, and I can see why. These happy farms are obviously better than standard modern agricultural methods, and consuming meat that comes from them is preferable to eating meat that comes from factory farms or feedlots. However, if a person also accepts W, this would render the happy farm situation unethical, because now killing the animal would be wrong. The reason is that killing the animal would end it’s life, thus depriving it of a valuable future. Doing so harms the animal, and so seems prima facie wrong.

The benign carnivore could try to claim that killing the animal is in this case justified, as we are raising the animal to feed ourselves. However, seeing as we do not need to eat animal products to live a healthy life and most people living in Western Industrialized countries have easy access to other sources of food, this seems like an inadequate justification. Alternatively, the benign carnivore could claim that the killing is justified by the pleasure we gain from eating the meat from the animal. This is a reasonable argument, though I would reject it because I think the harm done to the animal by ending it’s life would outweigh the very trivial gustatory pleasures we enjoy from eating meat. More needs to be said to fully refute the benign carnivores position, but I leave that for another time. For those interested in these arguments, see Jeff McMahan’s “Eating Animals the Nice Way”.

W could also make a difference for non-meat industries that seem like they could operate without causing undue suffering. Consider the egg and dairy industry. I consider it unethical to purchase their products as their industries contain many practices that cause suffering to animals. Chickens are debeaked at an early age, typically live in overcrowded conditions and are prevented from exhibiting natural behaviors. Dairy cows suffer from high rates of laminitis, mastitis and metabolic conditions due to the strong selective breeding for high milk producers and management practices that are employed on dairy farms. However, perhaps these industries could be run in a mostly modern form without causing these kinds of suffering to the animals. In this case, someone who was an ethical vegan on the grounds of reducing suffering may decide to begin eating eggs and dairy again. However, both industries in their modern form still cause deaths of large numbers of animals. Half of all chickens bred by the laying industry are killed soon after birth because they are males who are unable to produce eggs. In order to keep cows lactating they must become pregnant once per year, leading to large numbers of calves being born each year. However, not all the calves that are born are needed to replenish the herd so most are killed at a young age for veal. As such, both the egg and dairy industries involve a lot of killing, even though they do not produce meat. If we are committed to W, then even without causing significant amounts of suffering and pain these industries will still involve significant wrongdoing. Commitment to W would thus make a difference: we should continue to boycott the dairy and egg industry until it stops implementing practices that lead to huge numbers of animal deaths.

As such W does make a difference in practice: it suggests that we should not support happy farms in which the animal is free of suffering but is still killed and suggests that the egg and dairy industry would still be unethical unless their current practices were radically changed.

Conclusion:

In this post I have argued for W, the claim that it is prima facie wrong to kill animals. I have done this through an indirect route, attempting to show how W is justified by an appeal to analogy with one of the best explanations for the wrongness of killing human beings. I then provided further support for W by showing how it is supported by and supports many of our considered judgments, which together form a coherent set of beliefs. Most important among these was (15): an animal’s death is typically bad for the animal. This premise alone could have been used to argue for W, but I chose to set out an indirect argument to better show the similarities between considerations at play in killing humans and killing animals. I have also tried to show how accepting W has practical implications, for someone who believes that killing animals is wrong should conclude that it is still wrong to eat animal products originating from a humane farm as these farms will still involve animal deaths.

After many months of reflecting on W and the arguments presented here, I am strongly convinced of it’s truth. I hope the credence I give it is justified by the arguments I have presented, and if so I hope I have convinced you of it’s truth as well. However, I am not blind to the issues in the reasons I have provided or the problems that still need to be worked out. So I will discuss them in brief before I conclude this post.

Firstly, I justified W by comparison to explanations for the wrongness of killing humans. In Section 2 I emphasized that I do not think that (7) provides a complete account of H, but I think it is the best account I discussed and I also think it has strong independent merits. Despite this, I know that many reject (7) and provide alternative accounts of the wrongness of killing humans. For some, this is because they reject the idea that death is bad for us: they believe that because death results in our nonexistence it cannot be good or bad for us. I think they are incorrect on this count, but this is an issue I will need to discuss another time. Others reject (7) for different reasons, some of which were outlined in Section 2 though there are certainly other critiques out there. Because I did not consider all of the explanations for H or all of the criticisms that have been put forth against (7), my indirect argument for W is weakened somewhat. To shore it up I would need to examine and critically evaluate all other explanations of H and respond to the numerous objections against (7). I may do this in a future blog post.

Putting aside these issues, my argument for W based on appeal to DVF also faces problems. This argument was set out in Section 3, where I claimed that because animal’s also have valuable futures and there seems to be no relevant differences between the goods a human is deprived of compared to an animal, consistency demands that we judge that killing animals is wrong. I presented the outline of this argument, and did not rigorously justify each step, so it is open to criticism. I need to better support my claims about the goods in an animal’s life being relevantly similar to that of a human’s, and examine more closely my assertion that animal’s have a future in a morally relevant way. In my account, the possession of a future should be understood in a psychological sense, with a being possessing a future if it has some kind of psychological continuity over time so that it makes sense to identify experiences occurring at different times as belonging to the subject. There are difficulties in understanding exactly what kind of psychological continuity animal’s possess, and many philosophers have proposed that it is almost certain that animal’s have less psychological unity over time than humans. This reduced psychological unity should be taken into account, and would discount the net good we would say an animal is deprived of when it dies. Discussions of the impact psychological unity makes to the badness of animal death can be found in David DeGrazia’s “Sentient Nonpersons and the Disvalue of Death”.

Another major issue I did not discuss is how the badness of death for animals compares to that for humans. We intuitively judge that death typically harms a human far more than an animal. But how can we make sense of this using the deprivational account of death. And what implications does this have for our differential treatment of humans and animals? This is a problem that is also discussed in the above paper by David DeGrazia.

Finally, my discussion in Section 5 of the practical implications of accepting W are open to objection. W asserts a prima facie duty, and I accept that killing an animal can be justified in many circumstances such as self defense or when the animal is in extreme, unrelenting, and incurable pain. Because of this, it is possible that someone could accept W yet argue that eating meat is permissible because the benefits of killing the animal outweigh the costs and thus the killing is justified. I offered some reasons against this and expressed my belief that this line of argument fails, but my argument needs to be shored up. I also have not discussed how to bridge the gap that exists between accepting that the treatment of animal’s in agriculture is wrong and believing that you should no longer consume animal products. I have only recently fully understood this gap, and realize it is an important one that needs philosophical argument to close. I originally planned on addressing it in this post, but realized that this would divert too much from the same argument, so in Section 4 I simply assumed the problem had been solved. I may tackle this issue in a future post.

In conclusion, I have presented arguments for believing that killing animals is typically wrong. It is wrong because ending an animal’s life harms the animal by depriving it of all of the goods it would have enjoyed if it had continued to live. I reasoned to this conclusion from considerations of why it is wrong to kill humans, wherein I claimed that the wrongness in this case is partly explained by the harm done to a human by ending their life. I have also tried to show how accepting that killing animals is wrong makes a difference in our everyday lives, as it would weigh against the ethical permissibility of “happy farms” in which the animal’s live happy lives before they are painlessly killed. Though I recognize my arguments are somewhat incomplete, I think the issues are solvable and I find the conclusions I have reached credible and well supported by widely shared considered judgments. I would love to hear whether anyone else felt the same, or whether they disagreed and why.