Kyiv’s First Strike Inside Russia with US Weapons Prompts Stern NATO and Kremlin Warnings
Reply
Author Archives: Exposing the Big Game
Against human exceptionalism
In a tight spot, you’d probably intuit that a human life outweighs an animal’s. There are good arguments why that’s wrong
Uganda, 1958. Photo by George Rodger/Magnum
is clinical associate professor of environmental studies, affiliated professor of bioethics, medical ethics, philosophy and law, and director of the animal studies MA programme at New York University. He is also on the executive committee at the NYU Center for Environmental and Animal Protection and the advisory board for the Animals in Context series at NYU Press. He is co-author of Chimpanzee Rights (2018) and Food, Animals, and the Environment (2018), and the author of Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves (2022).
Edited byPam Weintraub
3,100 words
Listen here 20:49
Brought to you by Curio, an Aeon partner
Listen to more Aeon Essays here
Save
Post
Share
This January, a 57-year-old man in Baltimore received a heart transplant from a pig. Xenotransplantation involves using nonhuman animals as sources of organs for humans. While the idea of using nonhuman animals for this purpose might seem troubling, many humans think that the sacrifice is worth it, provided that we can improve the technology (the man died two months later). As the bioethicists Arthur Caplan and Brendan Parent put it last year: ‘Animal welfare certainly counts, but human lives carry more ethical weight.’
Of course, xenotransplantation is not the only practice through which humans impose burdens on other animals to derive benefits for ourselves. We kill more than 100 billion captive animals per year for food, clothing, research and other purposes, and we likely kill more than 1 trillion wild animals per year for similar purposes. We might not bother to defend these practices frequently. But when we do, we offer the same defence: Human lives carry more ethical weight.
But is this true?
Most humans take this idea of human exceptionalism for granted. And it makes sense that we do, since we benefit from the notion that we matter more than other animals. But this statement is still worth critically assessing. Can we really justify the idea that some lives carry more ethical weight than others in general, and that human lives carry more ethical weight than nonhuman lives in particular? And even if so, does it follow that we should prioritise ourselves as much as we currently do?
Join over 250,000+ newsletter subscribers
Our content is 100 per cent free and you can unsubscribe anytime.
Daily: A daily dose of essays, guides and videos from Aeon+Psyche
Weekly: A week’s worth of big ideas from AeonSubscribe for free
I’m already subscribedPrivacy policy
Ethicists sometimes offer capacities-based arguments for ranking species according to a hierarchy. For example, in How to Count Animals, More or Less (2019) Shelly Kagan argues that we should assign human interests extra ethical weight because we have a higher capacity for agency and welfare than other animals. I have cognitive capacities that a pig lacks, so I have interests that they lack. I also have the capacity to experience happiness and suffering more intensely than a pig does, so I have stronger interests related to my welfare than they do.
Ethicists also offer relationship-based arguments for species hierarchies. For example, in ‘Defending Animal Research’ (2001), Baruch Brody argues that we should assign human interests extra ethical weight because we have special bonds and a sense of solidarity with members of our own species. According to this view, we should ‘discount’ the interests of nonhuman animals for the same reason that we should ‘discount’ the interests of future generations: we have special duties within these categories that we lack across them.
In response to these and other such arguments, some ethicists contend that we should reject species hierarchies entirely. For example, in Fellow Creatures (2018) Christine Korsgaard argues that it generally makes no sense to ask whether a human or a pig has a better life, because each species of animal has a different form of life, and we can evaluate each life only against the standards set by that form of life. Comparing humans and pigs is, literally, like comparing apples and oranges.
If anything, we increasingly have grounds for prioritising nonhuman animals
While I think that this rejection of species hierarchies is worthy of consideration, I want to defend a separate idea: even if we accepted a species hierarchy on capacities-based and relationship-based grounds, it would still not follow that our current stance of human exceptionalism is acceptable. We would need to think carefully about how much ethical weight different animals carry rather than simply assert that we take priority. And when we do, we might be surprised by what we find.
In particular, if we take our own arguments for human exceptionalism seriously, then the upshot is not that we always take priority but rather that we sometimes do. And when we consider the scale of nonhuman suffering and death in the world and the extent of our complicity in this suffering and death, we can see that human exceptionalism has it backwards: if anything, we increasingly have capacities-based and relationship-based grounds for prioritising nonhuman animals.
To be clear, my goal here is not to argue against a strong form of human exceptionalism, according to which humans necessarily matter more than nonhumans. If you think that any human interest, no matter how minor, takes priority over any nonhuman interest, no matter how major – that, for instance, scratching a single human itch takes priority over preventing 100,000 elephant deaths – then there are good arguments against your view, but they will not be my focus here.
My goal is instead to argue against a moderate form of human exceptionalism, according to which humans contingently matter more than nonhumans. If you are among the many who think that we take priority over other animals because of our ‘higher’ capacities and ‘stronger’ relationships, this is wishful thinking. There are too many nonhumans, and our lives are too intertwined with theirs, for that to be plausible. This ‘moderate’ view is not as ethical as you think.
Let’s examine these arguments for human exceptionalism one by one, starting with the capacities-based arguments.
Yes, I have a higher capacity for agency (that is, self-determination) than nonhuman animals. I can step back from my beliefs, desires and actions, and ask whether I have reason to endorse them. As a result, I can use evidence and reason to set and pursue long-term goals. In contrast, a worm is only able to do what seems natural from moment to moment, without ever stopping to assess these choices.
Why does this difference matter? Plausibly, agents have a wider range of interests than non-agents do, all else being equal. It would be bad for you to keep me in confinement, since I need to be able to set and pursue my own goals to live well. In contrast, it might not be bad for you to keep a worm in confinement (with proper care), since all they need is, say, air, moisture, darkness, warmth, food and other worms to live well.
I also have a higher capacity for welfare (that is, happiness, suffering and other such states) than many nonhuman animals. Since I have a more complex brain than a worm does, I can experience more happiness and suffering at any given time. And since I have a longer lifespan than a worm does, I can also experience more happiness and suffering over time – provided, of course, that I live a reasonably full life.
Why does this difference matter? Plausibly, beings with a higher capacity for welfare have more at stake than beings with a lower capacity for welfare, all else being equal. Even if it would be bad for you to keep a worm in confinement, it would be still worse for you to keep me in confinement. Each day of confinement would harm me more, and I would also have more days of confinement overall.
My own view is that these capacities-based arguments are reasonable, as far as they go. Setting priorities requires considering how much everyone has at stake in any given situation, and our capacities are part of what determines how much we have at stake. But these arguments fall far short of establishing even a moderate form of human exceptionalism. Human and nonhuman capacities overlap substantially, and setting priorities requires considering other factors, too.
African elephants have about three times as many neurons as humans, and they have comparable lifespans
First, we might not always have a higher capacity for agency than other animals. We all lack the capacity for rational reflection early in life, some of us lose this capacity later in life, and some of us never develop this capacity at all. Meanwhile, many nonhuman animals have the capacity for memory, emotion, self-awareness, social awareness, communication, instrumental reasoning and more. Human and nonhuman agency thus overlap substantially in practice.
Moreover, even when we do have a higher capacity for agency than other animals, this difference might be smaller than we think. Our views about agency are anthropocentric, in that we treat human agency as the standard against which all forms of agency should be compared. But while human agency is certainly impressive, nonhuman agency is impressive too. And if we studied nonhuman agency on its own terms, we might discover forms of self-determination that humans lack.
Likewise, we might not always have a higher capacity for welfare than other animals. If our welfare capacity is a simple function of our brain complexity and lifespan, then some nonhumans might have a higher welfare capacity than humans do. For example, African elephants have about three times as many neurons as humans, and they have comparable lifespans. So, based on this way of making comparisons, these animals have a higher welfare capacity than us.
Moreover, even when we do have a higher capacity for welfare than other animals, this difference might once again be smaller than we think. For all we know, our capacity for welfare might not be a simple function of our brain complexity and lifespan. We are still early in the study of animal minds. And while it might be that, say, twice as many neurons equals twice as much welfare capacity, it might also be that the difference in welfare capacity is larger or smaller than that.
In short, the capacities-based arguments fail to vindicate even moderate forms of human exceptionalism. If we think that humans can have strong interests even when we lack the capacity for rational reflection (as, of course, we should), then we should think that nonhumans can too. And if we give humans the benefit of the doubt in cases of uncertainty about how much happiness and suffering we can experience (as, again, we should), then we should do the same for nonhumans.
Other factors are relevant to how we set priorities, too.
For instance, even if a human has more at stake than a nonhuman in general, they might not have more at stake in particular cases. Suppose you can either save a human from a minor injury or save a pig from a major injury. In this case, it might be that you should save the pig.
Similarly, even if a human has more at stake than one nonhuman, they might not have more at stake than many nonhumans. Suppose you can either save a human from a minor injury or save 1,000 pigs from minor injuries. In this case too, it might be that you should save the pigs.
Finally, morality is about more than benefits and harms, at least in practice. We would never permit doctors to breed humans for their flesh or organs, since the rights of the ‘donors’ would trump the benefits for the recipients. Why not think that the same can be true for nonhumans?
This all raises serious doubts about human exceptionalism. We regularly impose major burdens on nonhumans in exchange for minor benefits for humans. The ‘harm’ to humans of eating plants instead of animals is nothing compared to the harm to an animal of being factory farmed.
We also regularly impose burdens on very many nonhumans for each human who benefits. We probably kill at least a trillion farmed and wild animals, not including insects, for food each year. This is more than the total number of humans who have ever existed – killed every year.
And we regularly use nonhumans in ways that we would never permit ourselves to use humans. This is not simply a matter of us saving ourselves instead of saving them (though we do that too): this is a matter of us exploiting and exterminating them on a global scale.
The upshot is clear. Even if we think that beings with a higher capacity for agency and welfare take priority over beings with a lower capacity for agency and welfare, all else being equal, we should still be sceptical that this difference justifies anything like our current behaviour.
But what about relationship-based arguments for human exceptionalism, which focus on how we relate to humans and other animals?
Many people believe that, at least in practice, we have both a right and a duty to prioritise ourselves and our communities. I should take care of myself before I take care of you, and I should also take care of my family before I take care of yours. And if we can exhibit this kind of partiality in the context of smaller groups such as families, perhaps we can do the same in the context of larger groups such as species.
In fact, some ethicists believe that the analogy holds not only for species but also for other large groups, like generations. They argue that we can ‘discount’ the interests of nonhuman animals and future generations, in part because we have closer relationships within these categories than beyond them, and in part because full impartiality for all sentient beings from now until the end of time would be too demanding.
This kind of argument is partly about our personal interests. If we allow morality to be too impartial, then our personal interests would carry very little relative weight. But they should carry at least a moderate amount of relative weight, both because we have a right to take care of ourselves and because we need to do that to take care of others. So, we should allow morality to be somewhat partial to create space for self-care.
This kind of argument is also partly about our relationships. We have special duties in the context of special relationships. I should take care of my family before I take care of yours because I have special bonds within my family. And the same can be true for larger groups like species and generations. So, we should allow morality to be somewhat partial to create space for our relational duties, too.
But even if we accept that these claims are true and that they extend to groups such as species and generations, we should still reject our current stance of human exceptionalism. There are many more individuals across species and generations than within a single one. And our lives are increasingly linked across species and generations in ways that have important implications for our interests and our relationships.
Suppose that I do, in fact, have a duty to take care of my family before I take care of yours, all else being equal. Does it follow that I can treat your family however I like? Of course not. It would be wrong for me to take food from your family to provide food for mine, particularly if my family already has much more food than yours does. It would also be wrong for me to kill your family so that I can provide my family with human flesh to eat instead of, say, rice and beans.
Deforestation, factory farming and the wildlife trade are hurting us right now
These points apply across species and generations, too. Humans are taking resources away from nonhuman animals and future generations, even though we already have much more than they do in many ways. We are also killing hundreds of billions of nonhuman animals for food each year in ways that impose health and environmental threats on future generations too – even when we have access to humane, healthful, sustainable plant-based alternatives.
Furthermore, many policies that would benefit nonhuman animals and future generations would benefit us, too. As the WHO’s One Health framework reminds us, human, nonhuman and environmental health are linked. We need to phase down industries such as deforestation, factory farming and the wildlife trade, not only for nonhuman animals and future generations but also for ourselves: waste, pollution, infectious diseases and other hazards from these activities are hurting us right now.
We should keep in mind that we have relational duties across species and generations, too. Many of us care about members of other species and generations: I dare anyone to try to matter to me more than my dog Smoky, and many parents feel the same way about their children, grandchildren and so on. And when our practices harm nonhuman animals and future generations, we have a relational duty to reduce and repair these harms whether we care about these individuals or not.
In short, relationship-based arguments fail to vindicate current forms of human and generational exceptionalism. Even if we have a right or duty to take care of ourselves and other current humans, we still need to treat nonhuman animals and future generations much better to accomplish that goal. We also need to treat them much better for their own sakes, especially when our activity is harming them. Our relational duties extend much farther than we might have thought.
When we weave these threads about capacities and relationships together, we reach a surprising conclusion: we should not only prioritise ourselves less but should perhaps not prioritise ourselves at all in some cases. After all, even if we discount the interests of nonhuman animals and future generations, these populations are still so large, and our practices are still impacting them so much, that their interests might still carry more ethical weight than ours do in the aggregate.
And when we weave the biological and generational arguments together, we reach an even more surprising conclusion: we should prioritise not only current nonhumans and future humans but also, and especially, future nonhumans. For instance, when we assess the impacts of the climate crisis, we should assign a lot of ethical weight to the impacts on other species. Which populations will expand and contract, and what will follow for the welfare of individual animals?
Granted, there might be a limit to how much we can prioritise current and future nonhumans at present, since we currently lack the knowledge, power and political will that we need to help them at scale. So we might need to prioritise ourselves now to be able to prioritise them later.
But even if we accept this pragmatic argument, we should still prioritise nonhuman animals much more than we do now. We are already capable of harming nonhuman animals much less and helping them much more, and in many cases, making these changes would benefit us, too. We should also keep in mind that there is a path dependence to how history unfolds. For better or worse, our successors will inherit the world that we create. So if we want our successors to have more impartial priorities, then we need to work to develop more impartial priorities, too.
The upshot is that we need to rethink our relationship with other animals from the ground up. When setting priorities across species, we have a responsibility to follow the best information and arguments where they lead, rather than assume a self-serving conclusion from the start.
And when we take our thumbs off the scales, we can expect the scales to shift. We should already be treating nonhumans much better and, eventually, we might even need to prioritise their interests and needs over our own. We should start preparing for that possibility now.
Dog Breeder Fined $35 Million for Animal Cruelty as 4,000 Beagles Saved
Bird flu found in second Iowa flock in a week
Applications Open For 2024 Public Alligator Hunting Season
Four men to appear in court after illegal fox hunting
Choose wisely…
‘Doctor Death’ dog fighting ring monsters jailed for running brutal blood-sport
‘Ban hunting, trapping of mountain lions, bobcats’
Anti-bullfighting president Gustavo Petro wins 12-year political battle
BOGOTA, Colombia––Gustavo Petro, president of Colombia, on May 28, 2024 appeared to win a 12-year fight to ban Spanish-style arena bullfighting.
The 166-member Colombian House of Representatives voted 93-2 to ban bullfighting by the start of 2028. The vote in the 102-member Colombian Senate was reportedly 96-2.
The last remaining formality needed to make the three-year phase-out of Spanish-style arena bullfighting official is Petro’s signature on the legislation, a foregone conclusion.
Then mayor of Bogota, the Colombian capital city, Petro in 2012 banned bullfighting at the city-owned Plaza de Santa Maria stadium, which had hosted bullfights since 1931.
“No torture is regulated; it is prohibited!”
Petro had offered to allow the Taurine Corporation, leasing the stadium for bullfights, to switch to promoting so-called “bloodless” Portuguese-style bullfighting, but the Taurine Corporation refused.
Elected president of the nation in 2022, Petro allowed the bullfighting industry no such option this time around.
“Ours is a country that says that no torture is regulated; it is prohibited,” Bogotá member of the House of Representatives Juan Carlos Losada told media.
“We became a less violent and more civilized society today. We took a quantum leap in respect for life,” Losada exulted.
Gustavo Petro, President of the Republic of Colombia. (Facebook photo)
“Children will no longer be exposed to this spectacle”
Agreed Cali city councilor Terry Hurtado, who has worked to ban Spanish-style arena bullfighting for more than 25 years, “This ban is a huge victory for organizations that have worked to transform society and reject violence against animals.
“I feel relieved that in Colombia, bulls and horses, who also participate in bullfights, will no longer be tortured, and that children will no longer be exposed to this spectacle.”
Reported Adry Torres for the Daily Mail, “Valle del Cauca representative Christian Garcés, who opposed the bill, attempted to introduce a measure to find an alternative solution, stressing that the ban would negatively impact workers.”
The Santa Maria bull ring in Bogota.
(Flickr photo)
Earlier Bogota ban was overturned by court
But relatively few workers will be affected.
“In Colombia,” said Torres, “fewer than two dozen municipalities continue to hold these events, although the annual bullfights in the western city of Manizales still draw tens of thousands of spectators.”
The Colombian prohibition of Spanish-style arena bullfighting may yet meet judicial opposition.
The Bogota bullfighting ban imposed by Petro was judicially overturned in 2016, after Petro was succeeded as mayor by Enrique Penalosa, who is now a member of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.
“The constitutional court ruled that bullfighting was part of Colombia’s cultural heritage and couldn’t be blocked,” explained Joshua Goodman of Associated Press on January 22, 2017, soon after bullfighting resumed at Plaza de Toros La Santa María after a four-year hiatus.
Tear gas
On that occasion, Goodman reported, “Hundreds of protesters clashed with riot police and harassed spectators. Police had to fire tear gas to control the protesters, many of whom shouted ‘murderers’ and ‘torturers’ while spitting and sometimes coming to blows with spectators nervously making their way to Bogota’s 1930s-era brick bullring.
“There were several arrests,” Goodman said, “as tensions ran high in what at times seemed a reflection of deep social divisions between wealthy, well-dressed spectators who had expected a booze-filled, fun afternoon and a crowd of mostly young, angry protesters screaming obscenities at all who passed before them.”
Mayor Enrique Penalosa told Goodman that “while he sides with animal rights activists who consider the bulls’ slow, agonizing death in front of an audience a barbaric throwback, he had no choice but to enforce the high court’s ruling.
Penalosa emphasized to Goodman that he supported legislation then before the Colombian congress to prevent state resources from being used to finance bullfights, while allowing each municipality to decide for itself whether to allow bullfighting.
Bullring collapse
An incident interpreted by many Colombians as an omen that bullfighting should end was the June 2022 collapse of an improvised temporary bullfighting stadium in El Espinal municipality, Tolima state, southwest of Bogota.
A child, two women and a man were killed, with at least 500 people injured, Tolima governor Jose Ricard Orozco told reporters.
Nine of the injured fled the stadium collapse into the area itself, and were charged by a bull. Other bulls escaped into the city.
Pope banned bullfights in 1567
Attempts to stop Spanish-style arena bullfighting as pointless cruelty have been made, detailed the late Michael A. Ogorzaly (1948-2006) in The Case Against Bullfighting (2006) since 1567, when Pope Pious V in the papal bull De salute gregis dominici forbade bullfighting as an entertainment “more proper of demons than humans.”
Pope Pious V excommunicated emperors, kings and cardinals who would not ban bullfights, and clerics who attended bullfights, and excluded bullfighters from Christian burial.
Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Gasparri affirmed in 1920 that, “The Church maintains His Holiness Pious V s condemnation of such bloody, shameful shows.”
Monsignor Mario Canciani reiterated the Vatican position in 1989.
Vatican theologian Marie Hendrickx reiterated it yet again in 2000 in the semi-official Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.
Bullfighting ban lifted in Mexico City
In theory, no Catholic nation should permit bullfighting now.
Yet bullfighting on January 28, 2024 returned to Plaza México in Mexico City, the world’s largest bullring, six weeks after the Mexican Supreme Court of Justice on December 6, 2023 lifted an injunction that had suspended bullfighting since May 2022.
A May 2022 local court ruling had held, responding to a petition from the human rights organization Justicia Justa, that bullfights violate Mexico City residents’ rights to inhabit a healthy environment free from violence.
While the five-justice Mexican Supreme Court of Justice panel that overturned the May 2022 ruling did not explain themselves, they appeared to have accepted an argument from lawyers representing the National Association of Fighting Bull Breeders that the only human rights issue involved was their own right to stage bullfights.
(Beth Clifton photo & collage)
Uruguay, Nicaragua, Catalan
Uruguay, a somewhat smaller South American nation located on the Atlantic coast between Brazil and Argentina, banned bullfighting in 1912.
No other nation in which Spanish-style arena bullfighting had ever become established passed a bullfighting ban until July 2010, when the Nicaraguan legislature prohibited bullfighting by a vote of 74-5.
Catalonia, the Catalan-speaking eastern region of Spain, banned Spanish-style arena bullfighting in 2010, effective on January 1, 2012.
The last bullfight in Barcelona, the Catalan capital city, was held in 2011.
Banner used by Catalonian nationalists opposed to bullfighting.
(Catalunya Accio flag, Beth Clifton collage)
Spanish court overturned Catalan bullfighting ban
“The decision was part of the growing movement against bullfighting,” explained Ciaran Giles of Associated Press, “but it was also seen as another step in the Catalan government’s push to break away from Spain.”
On October 20, 2016, however, the Spanish Constitutional Court, the highest court in Spain, voted 8 to 3 to overturn the Catalonian ban on arena bullfighting.
“The Catalonian ban is unconstitutional, the court argued,” wrote Antonio Lorca for the Madrid newspaper El Pais, in an English text translated by George Mills, “because bullfighting had been declared part of Spain’s cultural heritage in national laws introduced in 2013 and 2015.”
Despite the court ruling, Spanish-style arena bullfighting has yet to resume in Catalonia. Some events in which locals torment and chase bulls may continue in rural communities.
COVID-19 did what lawmakers could not
The government of the Spanish island province of Majorca, also with a strong separatist movement, in July 2017 banned Spanish-style arena bullfighting, but exempted Portuguese-style “bloodless” bullfighting.
Bullfighting resumed in 2019, however, at the 95-year-old Coliseo Balear in Majorca, also by direction of the Spanish Constitutional Court.
COVID-19, killing nearly 122,000 Spaniards, on March 14, 2020 brought a complete three-month shutdown of bullfighting and related events throughout Spain, including cancellation of the Feast of Saint Fermin week of bullfights, preceded each day by the “Running of the Bulls” at Pamplona.
But the suspension of bullfighting was lifted on condition that bullrings could only be filled to one third of normal capacity, approximately as large a crowd as any attracted anyway, and that bullfights could only be held outdoors, as they are anyway.
According to the Statista.com information service, only 129 bullfights were held in Spain during 2020, but the total rebounded to 1,546 in 2022, the most since 2018, but still barely 40% as many as the 3,651 bullfights held in Spain in 2007.
The number of bullfights held in Spain has dropped in 12 of the most recent 15 years for which Statista has data.
Ed Boks: time for U.S. to ban rodeo, too
Observed Ed Boks, formerly animal control director in five cities including New York City and Los Angeles, in his blog Animal Politics, “Colombia’s decision to ban bullfighting is part of a broader movement against the practice in Latin America and beyond. Countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, and Uruguay have already prohibited bullfighting, while it remains legal in Ecuador, France, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, Spain, and Venezuela.
“U.S. legislators should follow Colombia’s lead by banning rodeos,” Boks recommended. “Both bullfighting and rodeo share a history of subjecting animals to unnecessary stress, pain, injury, and death for the sake of entertainment.
“Just as Colombia has recognized the inherent cruelty in bullfighting, it is time,” Boks concluded, “for the U.S. to acknowledge and address the similar ethical concerns present in rodeo events.”
