In Search of Consistency: Ethics and Animals [Human–Animal Studies] Part 10 pptx

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For this reason, triage is not representative of contemporary Western

morality regarding the protection and preservation of innocent human

life. We must look elsewhere.

Perhaps sentience will be helpful in determining who will live and

who will die in our particular lifeboat scenario. To explore this pos￾sibility, we must alter our constituency: we will replace the naked

mole rat with a daisy. Is the life of this newcomer equally precious?

Must it be preserved and protected along with the life of the needle￾clawed bush baby and the naked mole rat?

Sentience is a morally relevant criterion in Western law—causing

serious unnecessary physical suffering to innocent human beings is

illegal. One is not allowed to starve or beat up dependents, whether

children, the elderly, or “pets.” But pain and suffering are not rele￾vant with regard to the preservation and protection of human life.

The case of Matthew Donnelly (the physicist with cancer) provides

an apt example. He suffered terribly, to the point where he did not

wish to live any longer, yet he was kept alive against his wishes. In

contrast, Baby Theresa could not feel anything. She suffered not one

twinge, not one moment of anxiety, not one second of hunger. She

was not capable of suffering. Yet medical professionals maintained

Baby Theresa even at the expense of other children who might have

lived if they had the organs of this failing, anencephalic infant, organs

that her parents wished to donate so that other families might pre￾serve their beloved children. Many individuals are kept alive in Western

hospitals who can feel nothing, anencephalic infants and innumerable

brain-dead patients, while each day, for want of food and medicine,

human beings who can feel and think and function, suffer and die. In

fact Western nations do not choose to allocate resources in order to

protect against suffering. Nor do we make choices in order to pre￾serve the lives of those who can suffer in favor of those who can￾not feel anything.

The Minimize Harm Maxim is an extension of morality regard￾ing the preservation and protection of innocent human life. Human

life is preserved even if such medical efforts increase suffering. Life

is sustained even if that life suffers terribly in the process, even if

preserving that life causes others to suffer and die as a result. As it

turns out, the daisy will stay on board just as surely as any other

passenger.

Western medical practice, rooted in Western morality that pro￾tects and preserves the life of every innocent human being, does not

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allow any human being to die so that others might live. While many

innocent human beings die of simple neglect—malnutrition, infec￾tion, diseases for which there are cures—because funds and efforts are

focused elsewhere, medical practice does not permit the loss of any

innocent human life that might be preserved. Our responsibility for

those that die of want, of neglect, is no less because they do not lie

in a hospital bed, but exploring such cases is beyond the scope of

this work.

Western law protects innocent human life. The legal system and

medical practice reflect a Western morality that holds human life to

be precious to a degree that seems beyond calculation. The Minimize

Harm Maxim, rooted in morality with regard to protecting and pre￾serving human life, also provides no means by which to make dis￾tinctions between one life and another. As anencephalic infants aptly

demonstrate, no innocent human life is allowed to die or be killed—

even for the sake of other innocent human lives—if they might go

on living. While there are many cases in which individual doctors

permit patients to die, or even help them to do so, such cases remain

off the books. Law requires that each innocent human life be allowed to

persist for as long as possible.

For the sake of consistency and impartiality, in light of casuistry,

the life of each living entity on our unique lifeboat is as precious as

every other. The harm of exterminating any one of these five enti￾ties is equal inasmuch as the life of Baby Theresa is no more or less

morally considerable than the life of any other patient in the hos￾pital where she lived and died. The Minimize Harm Maxim, an

extension of contemporary Western morality with regard to the preser￾vation and protection of human life, does not discriminate between

the lives of a naked mole rat, a spectacled elephant shrew, a hyrax,

and a needle-clawed bush baby . . . even that of a daisy. Contemporary

Western ethics provide no means by which to decide who will live

and who will die on our bobbing lifeboat.

Conclusion

Western morality, as evidenced by medical practice and law, protects

every innocent human life. In the absence of any morally relevant

distinction between all human beings and all other living entities,

consistency and impartiality require the application of this same strin￾gent morality to all life forms.

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The Minimize Harm Maxim is a utopian moral theory, rooted in

consistency, extending morality between human beings to all other

living beings that have not been shown to be different in morally

relevant ways. Idealistic theories often seem extreme and unlikely,

but the Minimize Harm Maxim stands as a model of what we ought

to do if we are to be consistent and impartial. If the Minimize Harm

Maxim seems unreasonable, then our only recourse, if we are to

maintain consistency, is to reconsider our current moral ideals with

regard to protecting and preserving innocent human life.

CHAPTER TEN

REVIEW AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

We have explored the work of four prominent scholars. Although a

critical analysis is offered for the best-known and most respected pro￾tectionist theories available, this work attests to and affirms the value

of the contribution that each of these scholars has made to the ongo￾ing process of seeking and establishing a more consistent, compas￾sionate morality. We have also explored an idealistic protectionist

theory based on consistency and impartiality, the Minimize Harm

Maxim. In this final chapter, we look back to the previous chapters,

and forward to what might lie ahead in the field of anymals and

ethics. What fundamental concepts have been further explored and

developed? What possible directions might be beneficial for future

work in protectionist ethics?

A. Overview

1. A Conspicuous Problem

Protectionism is an “idea that is easy to ridicule but hard to refute”

(Ryder, Animal 332).

In the West, both civil law and accepted morality protect human

conatus, the urge “to preserve our existence as persons” (P. Taylor “Inherent”

25). Predominant Western morality holds the strong conviction that

there is no legitimate reason to deny moral standing to any human

being; ideally, each human being is maintained even at tremendous

expense to society. But we do not extend this protection to anymals,

and there is a conspicuous absence of any morally legitimate reason

for treating human life differently from how we treat all other life￾forms. Moral philosophers have as yet been unable to establish any

satisfactory morally relevant difference between anymals and human

beings—one that would justify denying basic protection to other

species while maintaining such stringent protection for human life.

Yet Western ethics, as revealed in the actions of most people, per￾sist with this flagrant inconsistency. The lives of anymals remain

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almost completely unprotected. “Current legal consensus seems to

be that nearly any human interest can in principle qualify as an

acceptable justification for animal use . . . Whether there is a moral

consensus in society to this effect is more doubtful” (Orlans 317). As

a result, in the United States, “given the quantity of non-human ani￾mals suffering, the extent to which they are suffering, and the rea￾son they are intentionally made to suffer . . . animal liberation is the

moral imperative of our time. Our . . . focus should be on ending

the suffering as efficiently and quickly as possible” (Ball 4). We are

living in a time of great moral reckoning, a time of moral reflection

leading to eye-opening moral imperatives previously overlooked. We

are, slowly, bit by bit, coming to see that our treatment of anymals

in relation to our treatment of human animals constitutes an unjustified,

flagrant inconsistency. Some have come to see that those who cling

to the maximum moral significance of human beings while denying

such significance to anymals have no philosophical leg to stand on.

We can either accept anymals into the fold or deny full moral

significance to certain human beings. Tom Regan writes:

[T]he moral beliefs we accept cannot all be true if they include two

or more inconsistent beliefs. This much, too, seems clear: our com￾mitment to search for and, when we find them, to address such incon￾sistencies offers a fair indication of the seriousness with which we

respond to the challenge to develop an informed, thoughtful moral

outlook. (Defending 101)

Western morality is currently inconsistent; we are inconsistent in our

treatment of life and in our expressed “respect for life.” Peter Singer

notes:

People often say that life is sacred. They almost never mean what they

say. They do not mean, as their words seem to imply, that life itself

is sacred. If they did, killing a pig or pulling up a cabbage would be

as abhorrent to them as the murder of a human being. When people

say that life is sacred, it is human life they have in mind. But why

should human life have special value? (Writings 125)

Indeed, what is so important about us in a universe of such beauty

and diversity? Why do we persist with—and even defend—this

flagrantly immoral status quo? The cases of Baby Theresa, Tracy

Latimer, Matthew Donnelly, and Samuel Linares (let alone jellyfish

babies) make a startling contrast with the indifference we show toward

the lives of stray pets, anymals exploited for science and the farming