This hypocrisy exists because we generally don’t tend to think much about animal ethics. To shed more light on the subject, we cover different stances when it comes to animals and ethics. Animals and humans are equal in moral status The argument against extending moral status to animals is that unlike humans, animals are
Which she then reasons why ethically animals should not be given equality due to it being absurd. Examining each animal’s capacity to reason, suffer, emote, use language, make tools, or exhibit some other trait presumed to define what it means to be human is irrational. Therefore, rather than basing rights off of those traits make it a vulnerability discourse. There are two main animal equality arguments, Peter Singer’s Utilitarian theory, and Tom Regan’s moral recognition theory. Singer argues, “human preference for humans rests on an unsupportable biological distinction vis-a`-vis all other animals”.
Utilitarianism, otherwise known as consequentialism, is an ethical framework that considers actions morally correct or right is their outcomes or consequences: A person’s actions are considered moral if the outcome brings out the greatest and most amount of good. Even if a person has good intentions to conduct the action, a utilitarian would not consider this morally significant if the consequences are not positive. Something is “good” if it fulfills an entities base desires but their pleasures are also part of the equation; utilitarianism can become quite complicated when one must consider all the desires of everyone affected, equally considering each one individually. The Animal welfare philosopher Peter Singer, has several ideas regrading
Are animals as important as human beings? Peter Singer answers this question in his article “Animal Liberation.” Singer supports the idea that animals are as important as human beings. People should stop seeing animals as a means of satisfying human wants and see the animal as equals. Exploitation of animal will stop when humans will accept that it is unnecessary. It is hard to understand why an animal should be used to conduct research which is aimed at finding medicine for the human disease (Singer) .
If the animals had those feelings, then they should have respect. People think that animals should be respected, not exploited, not exploited because of the selfishness of humans. Tom Regan said, “Animals are subjects of life just as human beings are, and a subject of a life has inherent value. They are. .
In the articles of Jeremy Rifkin, Victoria Braithwaite, and Ed Yong, there's a deep research and debate whether animals should be given the right to have human rights or not. All authors include their perspective on the issue and provide scientific evidence. However, I believe that there should be a separation of rights between animals and humans because there is no biological basis for drawing the line. Giving the right to apes, what factors exclude other mammals like dogs, cats, and birds. In Jeremy Rifkin’s article, “A Change of Heart about Animals”, proves his statement that many of our fellow creatures also “feel pain, suffer and experience stress, affection, excitement and even love..”.
Opponents of animal experimentation argue that it only considers human advantages. Miller points out that people use animal only in their self-interest and the sense of self-gain such as education and biomedical research (2). In terms of education, people use animals, especially frogs, to understand human’s body systems. Moreover, in regard to biomedical research, people use animals as product testing to confirm that there is no dangerous side effect. Therefore, people are likely to use animals for egoistic reasons.
To respect or morally consider someone, we should take into account their ability to be affected by our actions, and in doing so they must be conscious (Animal Ethics). If that can be agreed on, we must respect any individual who has the capacity to benefit or be harmed by our actions including animals. Therefore, it is our duty to make sure we do not harm and discriminate against
So this simply means that the animals can feel pain and experience pleasure, therefore they should have the same status as human and deserve equal treatment as human. This drives home the point that human beings should not have the right to harm, kill, or treat animals merely as a means to achieve their own goal or to further their knowledge. So according to these, anything that has something to do with the suffering of the animals that is caused by men should be abolished and these include experimentation with
As a moral theory primarily concerned with well-being, utilitarianism grants moral protection to most non-human animals, given that they have interests related to pleasure and suffering. However, it is not clear how these interests apply to the morality of killing when no suffering is involved. This has led some to suggest that we have grounds to oppose the mistreatment of animals but not their killing (Singer, 2011). However, many find this conclusion puzzling as we normally regard death as worse than mild suffering (McMahan,