SMU: PHIL-3377 - Animal Rights - Exam #2

SMU: PHIL-3377 - Animal Rights - Exam #2

Carruthers (Main Points/Arguments):

“Against the Moral Standing of Animals”

Carruthers is answering Singer and Regan's argument from marginal cases: if some animals have the same abilities as infants or people with dementia, they deserve the same moral standing (Sept. 23 notes). He grants that animals are sentient but denies they are rational agents, meaning beings that can follow universal rules and weigh the costs and benefits of a rule everyone adopts (pp. 1–2). He then assumes contractualism: moral truths are "human constructions" that come out of a hypothetical agreement among rational agents (p. 2). The contractors choose behind Rawls' "veil of ignorance" (or, in Scanlon's version, can veto rules they could reasonably reject), and they bring no moral beliefs with them, because morality is the output of the contract (p. 3). Every rational agent gets equal standing, since no one would agree to exclude themselves (pp. 4–5). Infants and the senile get standing through the social stability argument: people's attachment to their children and aging relatives is part of human nature, so treating those humans as property would provoke violent resistance (pp. 5–6). Carruthers insists this is not "second class" standing (p. 7). Animals get no such argument: "Humans in, animals out" (p. 8). Activists act on moral beliefs, which the contract rules out. Attachment to pets is neither universal nor deep enough. Assigning someone to represent animals would assume their worth in advance. And Regan's "ignorance of species" fails because, unlike race or gender, species isn't widely agreed to be morally irrelevant (pp. 8–11).

The second half explains why cruelty to animals is still wrong. In the cat-burning teenagers case, the wrong might seem to be offending animal-lovers (p. 11). But Astrid the astronaut tortures her cat where no one will ever know, so offense can't be the explanation (pp. 12–13). Two more cases show that we already judge actions by the character they reveal, even when no one is harmed and no rights are violated: Astrid feeding her dead servant to the cat, and Lazy Jane, the doctor who ignores a man having a heart attack (pp. 13–14). So our duties to animals are indirect. Cruelty is wrong because it shows a cruel character that "is likely to express itself in cruelty towards people" (pp. 14–15). This is a Kant-like view, as the blog notes. Contractors would agree to this rule because humans act on emotion and habit, so they would want people to develop virtues and be judged by them (pp. 15–16). This matches the blog's three reasons why cruelty is wrong: what it shows about your character, the risk that you'll harm humans, and the fact that contractors would forbid it. Carruthers admits this may be culturally local: Western pet-keeping and moral education tie the two kinds of cruelty together in a way other cultures might not (p. 17). We should help an animal "for the animal's sake" as a matter of psychology, but the reason we're required to do so lies in the effects on humans (p. 18).

Argument from Marginal Cases (Singer & Regan):

The argument from marginal cases starts from the fact that abilities vary among humans. "Marginal cases," in the class notes' definition, are "humans at the low end of the ability spectrum. Babies, cognitively impaired people, adults with advanced dementia, etc." (Sept. 23). The argument has three steps: (1) some animals and some marginal cases have roughly the same abilities; (2) so whatever you say about the moral standing of one, you must say about the other; (3) since marginal cases have equal moral standing, so do animals. The point is to show that any trait used to exclude animals (reason, language, self-awareness) also excludes some humans. If we still give those humans full standing, then denying it to animals is just speciesism, bias in favor of our own species, which Singer compares to racism. Singer applies this directly in Animal Liberation Now, ch. 2. He imagines an orphaned infant with severe brain damage whose "cognitive abilities and capacity to suffer are inferior to those of a mouse." If a researcher wouldn't experiment on that infant, then "their readiness to use nonhuman animals reveals an unjustifiable form of discrimination on the basis of species" (Exam 2 packet, PDF p. 207). From this he derives his non-speciesist ethical guideline: an animal experiment is justifiable only if it is "so important that the use of a profoundly brain-damaged human would also be justifiable" (PDF p. 209). This is why the Oct. 28 blog says Singer would do the Aziz Parkinson's research only if it would also be right "to do this research on comparable humans." Singer and Regan use the argument with different theories behind it. Singer's version rests on sentience and equal consideration of interests. Regan's rests on being a "subject-of-a-life" with inherent value (Sept. 25 notes). For Regan, as the Sept. 23 notes and the Oct. 30 blog explain, this leads to rights and to being "categorically abolitionist" about lab research.

Carruthers presents his paper as a reply to "Singer's (1979) challenge," the claim that contractualism "can't consistently deny moral standing to animals without also withholding it from infants and mentally defective humans" (p. 4). His answer is to reject step (2). Standing doesn't depend on abilities at all. It comes from the hypothetical contract among rational agents, and the contractors have different reasons for including different beings. Marginal humans get standing through the social stability argument. People's deep, universal attachment to their infants and elderly relatives means that treating those humans as property would lead to violent resistance, so contractors would include all humans (pp. 5–6). No comparable argument covers animals. Attachment to pets is culturally local and shallow by comparison, and animal activists act on moral beliefs, which can't be brought into the contract (pp. 8–9). So, as the blog puts it, "the fact that some animals have the same abilities as some marginal cases is irrelevant": humans in, animals out.

Carruthers' Contractualism: His conclusions about rational humans, marginal cases, and animals. How would he respond to the argument from marginal cases?

Carruthers assumes "some or other version of contractualist moral theory is correct," on which "moral truths are, in a certain sense, human constructions, emerging out of some or other variety of hypothetical rational agreement concerning the basic rules to govern our behavior" (p. 2). The Sept. 23 class notes add some clarifications. The contract is hypothetical, not real. Only rational agents can make it. It is idealized, and contractualists think people everywhere would agree to the same rules. Carruthers uses two versions of it:

• Rawls: contractors choose rules for their mutual benefit behind a "veil of ignorance." They know all the general facts of psychology and economics but nothing about their own strengths, tastes or social position. Because that situation is fair, the result is fair, "justice is fairness" (pp. 2–3).

• Scanlon: contractors know their own particulars but are guided by the goal of "free and unforced general agreement." Each one has a veto over any rule they could reasonably reject (p. 3).

In both versions, contractors may not appeal to prior moral beliefs. Moral truths "are to be the output of the contract process, [so] they cannot be appealed to at the start" (p. 3). The conclusion about rational humans follows directly. Rules are made "by rational agents for rational agents." Behind the veil, no one would risk excluding themselves, and under Scanlon any rule that excluded some group of rational agents would be vetoed by them. So all rational agents get equal standing (pp. 4–5). This applies to rational agents as such, so even rational Martians, or an animal species that turned out to be rational, would get full standing (pp. 2, 5).

Marginal cases don't get standing automatically, since they can't take part in the contract (p. 5). But the social stability argument gives contractors reason to include them. The contract's goal is "social stability," so its rules must be "psychologically supportable." People's deep attachment to their infants and elderly relatives is part of human nature. A society that treated these humans like property would be "highly unstable," because their loved ones "would surely resist with violence" (pp. 5–6). Carruthers also answers the objection from cultures that abandoned infants or the elderly. Those practices depended on traditional beliefs that can't survive modern critical scrutiny, and they happened in societies on the edge of survival. They also involved withdrawing aid rather than active killing (pp. 6–7). He stresses that this is not "second class moral citizenship." The reasons are indirect, but "the result is the same" (p. 7). That said, rights can differ: a right to autonomy makes no sense for someone who isn't autonomous (p. 6 n.6). Animals, by contrast, have no standing: "Humans in, animals out" (p. 8). He gives four reasons:

1. Violence by animal activists doesn't create a stability argument, because they act from moral beliefs, which the contract excludes.

2. Attachment to pets isn't a universal "fixed point" of human nature. It is shallower than attachment to relatives, so pets can be treated as property, as when the state orders a dangerous dog put down (pp. 8–9).

3. Appointing someone to represent animals would assume their worth in advance (pp. 9–10).

4. Regan's idea of choosing in "ignorance of species" fails. Unlike race or gender, species isn't widely agreed to be morally irrelevant, and the idea doesn't even make sense in Scanlon's version, where contractors know their own traits (pp. 10–11).

Animals therefore have no rights and "make no direct claims upon us." Any wrong done to them is indirect (p. 18).

Peter Carruthers on why animal cruelty is bad; thought experiments in Carruthers, e.g. Ingrid the Astronaut and Lazy Jane the Doctor.

One correction first: the astronaut's name in the text is Astrid, not Ingrid. Carruthers admits his view faces "a serious challenge": most people believe "very strongly indeed" that we can wrong animals (p. 11). He tests three explanations against his thought experiments:

• Teenagers set a cat on fire in a city street (p. 11). Everyone agrees this is very wrong, and a theory that couldn't account for that would carry "a serious black mark."

• Offence to animal-lovers (p. 12) is the first explanation. Carruthers compares it to a couple having sex on a park bench in daylight: the act is wrong only because it's public and upsets others. But this can't explain why burning the cat in a private garage would also be wrong.

• Astrid the astronaut settles the matter (pp. 12–13). She leaves Earth for good with no radio and no chance of ever contacting another human, then tortures her cat out of boredom, using it "for a dart-board." It is still clearly wrong, yet no one can ever find out and be upset.

So the wrong can't be offence to others. And since animals lack standing, it can't be that the cat's rights are violated either.

His own answer is that cruelty is wrong "because of what it shows about the moral character of the actor" (p. 13). Two more cases show that we already judge actions this way even when there is no harm and no rights violation:

• Astrid and her dead servant. Astrid cuts up her dead companion's corpse and feeds it to the cat. No one is harmed, no one will ever know, and the atheist servant had even said she could do what she liked with his body. It is still wrong, because it shows a "disrespectful, inhuman, attitude towards humanity" (pp. 13–14).

• Lazy Jane the doctor. At a medical conference, Jane sips her martini while a man has a heart attack in full view of the bar. Expert help arrives quickly, so her inaction causes no harm, and the man had no claim on her help in particular. She is still wrong, because she shows herself "callous and indifferent" (p. 14).

Applied to animals, "a cruel action is wrong because it evinces a cruel character," and that character is bad because "it is likely to express itself in cruelty towards people" (pp. 14–15). This matches the blog's three reasons (Sept. 25): what cruelty shows about your character, the risk that you will harm humans ("compare Kant"), and the fact that contractors would agree cruelty is wrong.

Contractors would endorse virtues for a practical reason. Humans rely on "quick and dirty" heuristics and emotions rather than calculation, so good dispositions make right action more likely (pp. 15–16). Carruthers admits the link between cruelty to animals and cruelty to humans may be culturally local: Western pet-keeping and moral lessons like "don't pull the cat's whiskers" tie the two together, but where those practices are absent, strangling a dog to improve the meat might not show cruelty at all (p. 17). Finally, a kind person helps an animal "for the sake of the animal" as a matter of psychology, but the reason kindness is required lies in its effects on humans (p. 18).

Donaldson and Kymlicka (Main Points/Arguments):

“Zoopolis Precis”

Donaldson and Kymlicka accept the animal rights theorists' basic claim: "any being with a subjective good, any being who experiences life from the inside, qualifies for certain inviolable rights" (p. 1). Their point is that this "great debate" tells us very little. The blog calls the older view individualistic animalism, where obligations depend only on each animal's "intrinsic moral standing," as with Singer's sentience or Regan's subject-of-a-life. D&K add political animalism: political status matters too (Sept. 25). Their airport example makes the point. Everyone stepping off a plane has the same universal rights; we can't torture or enslave any of them. At passport control, though, they split into citizens, denizens (tourists, students, temporary workers, refugee claimants), and foreigners, each with different rights (pp. 2–3). Citizens' interests determine the public good, while non-citizens' rights only "set side-constraints" on how it is pursued (p. 3). Intrinsic standing therefore "underdetermines" what animals are owed, and animals fall into parallel categories (p. 3). The blog notes that this does not mean animals get the same rights as their human counterparts (Sept. 28).

• Domestic citizens (pets, farm animals). Domestication makes citizenship necessary: we bred these animals into dependence, and as with slaves or indentured laborers, the only just remedy is co-citizenship. D&K reject Francione's call for extinction, arguing that "dependency is not inherently degrading or undignified" (p. 4).

  • Domestication also makes citizenship possible, because these animals can trust and communicate with us (p. 5).

  • Citizenship means equal protection of the law, emergency rescue, health care, and having their interests weighed in public design (p. 5).

  • It includes socialization, which runs both ways and is temporary, not lifelong "moulding" (p. 6).

  • It includes work without exploitation. Collecting manure, sheep grazing among solar panels, humanely shorn wool and backyard eggs are acceptable. Intensively trained guide dogs are exploitation (pp. 6–8). The blog's verdicts: manure and wool YES, chickens MAYBE, guide dogs NO.

Wild sovereigns are animals that avoid humans and live in their own habitats. D&K say traditional animal rights theory's "let them be" does both too little and too much (pp. 8–9). Too little, because it ignores habitat loss, pollution and infrastructure. Too much, because a right to life seems to require stopping predation, leading to absurd ideas like "soy protein worms for birds." Their fix is sovereignty. Wild animals form competent, self-regulating communities, so taking their land repeats the injustice of colonization and terra nullius (pp. 9–10). Predation and food shortages are challenges these communities handle, not signs of "failed states," so we shouldn't intervene (p. 10). Assistance that supports their independence is fine: deflecting an asteroid, rescuing a deer that fell through the ice. In D&K's words, "legitimate intervention supports independent viability; illegitimate intervention creates a state of ongoing dependency" (pp. 10–11). The blog's examples follow this line: no stopping rutting elk or predation, but one-off help (the White Rock Lake eaglet) and fixing harms humans cause (pufflings and light pollution) are acceptable (Sept. 30). For unavoidable spillover risks, D&K borrow fairness principles from human cases: risks must be necessary and proportional, shared equitably, and compensated. That calls for wildlife corridors, redesigned infrastructure and rescue centres (pp. 11–12).

Liminal denizens are opportunistic, agricultural, exotic and feral animals that live among us but aren't part of our community, such as mice, geese and squirrels (pp. 12–13). Two kinds of human denizens serve as models. Migrant denizens may be kept out at first, but "sooner or later they acquire the right to stay." Opt-out denizens like the Amish accept reduced rights in exchange for reduced responsibilities (pp. 13–14). So we may discourage geese from settling in our parks, "although of course we can't kill them or otherwise harm them." Mice have nowhere else to go, so "why should we begrudge them some space in the cellar, or the garage or the garden shed?" (p. 15). Individual animals can move between categories: a stray can become feral, and an injured wild animal can become a permanent resident of a refuge (pp. 15–16). D&K conclude that animal rights must be "differentiated" by relationship, and that citizenship, sovereignty and denizenship "actually do work" in resolving real dilemmas (p. 16).

Page numbers are the précis's own (pp. 1–17), which match how the blog cites it.

Donaldson & Kymlicka (D&K)'s parallel between human political categories and animal categories. Why think of domesticated animals as citizens? What are the rights and responsibilities of animal citizens? How about access to public spaces and restaurants. What are non-exploitative and exploitative animal work?

D&K's parallel starts from the airport example. Everyone getting off a plane has the same universal rights based on "intrinsic moral standing," but at passport control they fall into different political categories with different rights (pp. 1–3). Each human category has an animal counterpart:

• Citizens have the right to enter and live here, to work, to have their interests represented, to vote and to use public spaces. Their animal counterparts are domesticated animals such as pets, cows, pigs and chickens.

• Denizens are tourists, foreign students, temporary workers, refugee claimants, undocumented immigrants and opt-out groups like the Amish. Their counterparts are liminal animals such as mice, geese, squirrels and feral cats.

• Foreigners living in their own countries correspond to wild sovereigns (Sept. 25 & 30 notes).

As the blog stresses, the parallel doesn't mean animal citizens get the same rights as human citizens (Sept. 28).

Why treat domesticated animals as citizens? D&K's answer is that domestication makes citizenship both necessary and possible:

• Necessary: we bred these animals into our community and made them dependent, which "deprived them of any alternative existence" (p. 3). Domestication is like bringing over slaves or indentured laborers: whatever the original intent, "the only legitimate response today" is co-citizenship. Making them extinct, as Francione proposes, would compound the injustice, much as eliminating or deporting African-Americans would (p. 4).

• Possible: domesticated animals can trust humans, communicate their good and live alongside us (p. 5).

Citizens have rights: to live here ("this is their home"), to count as part of "the people" in whose name the state acts, and to have their interests weighed in the public good (pp. 3–4). In practice that means equal protection of the law, emergency rescue in fires and floods, publicly funded health care, and consideration "in the design of public space and institutions" (p. 5). Citizens also have responsibilities, since citizenship is a "cooperative social project" in which everyone contributes according to "ability and inclination" (pp. 6–7). One of these is socialization, which runs both ways: animals learn to control jumping, biting, barking and defecating, and humans learn to respect their animal co-citizens. It should be a temporary stage of development, not a lifetime of treating animals as "permanent children" (p. 6). On public spaces, the text only says animals' interests must count in how public space is designed (p. 5). The class notes take this further with examples of mixed communities that already exist: the street cats of Istanbul (Kedi), cat cafés and South Korea's animal cafés (Sept. 28). The reading itself doesn't discuss restaurants; those examples come from class.

Animal work is permissible only if it upholds the animals' full membership rather than turning them into "a subordinated caste group that exists to serve others" (p. 7). D&K argue that refusing to let animals contribute at all can also deny them citizenship, just as barring Jews from certain professions or Arab Israelis from army service does (p. 6). The difference between use and exploitation is like the difference between immigrants with full membership and "exploited metics" who lack control over their own labor (p. 7). Because domesticated animals are so dependent, they are easy to exploit. So work must be benign or give them "some meaningful opportunity to refuse," and it can't be coerced through "blackmail use of affection, treats, and other inducements" (p. 7).

• Non-exploitative: collecting manure, sheep grazing among solar panels, companionship (p. 7). Shearing wool is mutual benefit, since domesticated sheep can't shed it. Taking some eggs from backyard chickens is acceptable if every hatchling gets a full life (p. 7).

• In between: a dog or donkey guarding sheep on natural instinct, as long as it gets plenty of downtime (p. 7).

• Exploitative: guide dogs and other assistance dogs, which are picked early and "intensively moulded" through training that involves "coercion and deprivation," with their agency "suppressed in order to turn them into effective tools" (p. 7).

D&K also warn that commercialization and the profit motive make exploitation likely, and that it might need to be banned or closely regulated, as with child labor (pp. 7–8). The blog's summary: manure YES, mowing lawns YES, humanely shorn wool YES, chickens for eggs MAYBE, guide dogs NO (Sept. 28).

D&K on liminal denizens: examples like mice, Canada geese?

D&K's liminal denizens are animals that "gravitate towards, and often thrive in, human settlement" but aren't part of our cooperative community (pp. 12–13). Two human models explain their status. Like migrant denizens, we may try to KEEP them OUT, but "sooner or later they acquire the right to stay," and then we must ACCOMMODATE them. Like opt-out denizens such as the Amish, they get reduced rights and reduced responsibilities (pp. 13–15; blog, Sept. 30).

• Canada geese could live in the wild, so we may "actively discourage" them, for example by limiting groomed lawns or letting dogs romp in parks, "although of course we can't kill them or otherwise harm them" (p. 15). The blog adds that we should also accept that geese live in some areas.

• Mice have no wild option, and moving them almost always kills them. We can still keep them out of our kitchens and living spaces with humane methods, but "why should we begrudge them some space in the cellar, or the garage or the garden shed?" (p. 15).

• Feral cats fit the Amish opt-out model. The blog uses SMU's feral cat colony as its example.

D&K on wild sovereigns: examples like rutting elk, struggling Eagles at White Rock Lake, icelandic pufflings

D&K treat wild sovereigns like foreigners in their own countries. We respect their sovereignty, we don't "manage" them, and occasional help is fine (blog, Sept. 30). Wild animals are "competent" self-governing communities, and predation and food shortages are challenges they handle themselves, not signs of "failed states" (pp. 9–10). Legitimate help "supports independent viability," while illegitimate help creates "ongoing dependency and external management" (p. 11).

• Rutting elk: don't stop the fight. We would break up a fight between dogs at a dog park, because the dogs are members of our community. Elk fighting is part of the elk's own way of life, so we leave it alone. The same reasoning applies to predation: we stop our own cats from killing birds, but not wild predators.

• White Rock Lake eaglets: one-off help is fine. One of Nick and Nora's eaglets fledged and couldn't get back to the nest, and police stepped in to protect it. D&K's own examples are rescuing a deer that fell through the ice and freeing a beached whale, which "rarely undermine animal sovereignty" (p. 11).

• Icelandic pufflings: regular help is fine when it fixes a harm humans caused. Light pollution draws puffin chicks off course, so people in the Westman Islands collect them and send them out to sea. This fits D&K's view that we owe wild animals protection from human "spillover" harms like buildings, pollution and roads (pp. 11–12). Wildlife corridors, which address habitat loss, are the blog's other example.

Kagan (Main Points/Arguments):

“For Hierarchy in Animal Ethics”

Kagan contrasts two views. Unitarianism holds that people and animals have the same moral status: "Pain is pain," and similar interests get equal weight whoever has them (pp. 2–3). Singer and Regan hold this view, according to the blog. Hierarchy holds that animals have moral standing but "count in a lesser way," so people have rights animals lack, or stronger ones (p. 4). Kagan sets aside views like Carruthers' that deny animals any standing at all; for him, both camps agree that animals count. His core argument has two premises: (1) the features that ground moral standing "come in degrees," and (2) without "some special explanation," beings with more of those features should count more. So people outrank animals, and some animals outrank others (pp. 6–7). He doesn't say which capacities count. The blog lists candidates, some plausible (sentience, self-awareness, empathy, intelligence) and some not (flying, running fast) (Oct. 2). Kagan insists hierarchy does not justify current practices: "Our treatment of animals is a moral horror of unspeakable proportions," and animals "count for far, far more than we ordinarily acknowledge" (pp. 6, 17). In his view, a just approach to animals will fail unless it admits hierarchy (p. 18).

Kagan then addresses three worrying implications. For each, as the blog frames it, he can either AVOID it (argue it doesn't follow) or LIVE WITH IT (Oct. 5):

1. Superior beings might have higher status than us. He lives with this: it is "humbling" but "not… unacceptable" (p. 7).

2. Marginal cases would have lower status than normal humans. This is a mixed response. Modal personhood, the fact that impaired humans "could have been people," raises their status above animals with similar abilities (p. 8). Practical realism, explained below, may raise it further, because we probably couldn't bring ourselves to treat impaired humans like animals (p. 14).

3. Normal variation: ordinary adults differ in capacities, so they might differ slightly in status. His main reply is to avoid it through practical realism, the idea that moral rules must suit agents with real cognitive and motivational limits (p. 10).

Too many status levels would cause mistakes, so we get a limited hierarchy of about five or six broad categories, with all normal humans sharing one (pp. 11–15):

• persons

• near-persons: dolphins, whales, squid, great apes

• highly intelligent animals: dogs, pigs, parrots

• midlevel animals: rabbits, cows, squirrels

• lower animals: other birds, fish, reptiles

• the lowest: insects, spiders

Status is normally assigned by species, with exceptions for clear outliers, such as a golden retriever on a "supervitamin" who writes poetry, or a snake that thinks like a cat (p. 13). He also rejects having too few levels. Two categories, deontological rules for humans and utilitarian rules for all animals (restricted deontology), would be too pessimistic about what we can tell apart. Practical realism rules out both too many levels and too few (p. 16).

Shelly Kagan's key concepts: Unitarianism, Deontology, Utilitarianism, Hierarchy;  How to add hierarchy to Utilitarianism, how to add hierarchy to Deontology? Which capacities make a difference to moral status? Three troubling implications of the hierarchy view: superior beings, marginal cases, normal variation.

Key concepts

• Unitarianism: there is only one moral status, and everyone with moral standing has it. Similar interests count equally: "pain is pain" (pp. 2–3). The blog names Singer and Regan as unitarians.

• Hierarchy: there are many moral statuses, higher and lower. Animals count, but "count for less" (p. 4). Kagan thinks this is the common-sense view.

• Utilitarianism: the right action maximizes the total good (blog, Oct. 2). A unitarian utilitarian counts animal pleasure and pain "every bit as much" as human pleasure and pain (p. 3).

• Deontology: ethics is a set of duties, such as keeping promises or not harming the innocent, even when harming would produce better results (p. 3; blog).

Adding hierarchy to each theory

• To utilitarianism: weight interests by status. A person's interests "count for more than" a similar interest of an animal's (p. 4). Kagan also suggests adjusting distributive principles such as egalitarianism or a priority view so that animals count less, and some animals count less than others (p. 5).

• To deontology: people have rights animals lack, or stronger versions of shared rights. Rights like "the right not to be harmed, or the right to self-defense" are adjusted to fit each being's status (pp. 4–5). There are two options:

  • Restricted deontology: people have deontological rights, while animals are covered only by consequentialist rules.

  • Weaker deontological standing for animals (p. 16).

  The blog's version: humans get rules like "killing is always wrong," while animals get "kill only when necessary to maximize happiness" (Oct. 5).

Which capacities matter? More capacities mean higher status, and fewer mean lower status, but Kagan "doesn't say" which capacities count (blog, Oct. 2). The class discussion sorted a list of candidates:

• Plausibly relevant: sentience, self-awareness, cooperation, a sense of fairness, empathy, intelligence, making art, appreciating beauty.

• Implausible: flying, running fast, surviving underwater, migrating great distances.

Three troubling implications

The blog frames each one as a choice: Kagan can AVOID the implication or LIVE WITH IT.

1. Superior beings (wizards, gods, superheroes, amazing aliens) would outrank us. Kagan's strategy is live with it: the idea is "humbling" but "not… unacceptable" (p. 7).

2. Marginal cases would have lower status than normal humans. His strategy is mixed:

   • He partly lives with it. They do count for less, which is "difficult" to accept, but the alternatives are worse (p. 8).

   • He partly avoids it. Modal personhood (they "could have been people") and the motivational limits of practical realism raise their status (pp. 8, 14).

3. Normal variation would give ordinary adults slightly different statuses. His strategy is mainly avoid it. Practical realism yields only a handful of broad levels, and normal humans all fall into one level (pp. 10, 15). As a fallback, he notes the differences are trivial enough to ignore in practice (p. 8).

Another crucial Kagan concept: Practical realism. How Kagan uses practical realism in his argument for how many different moral statuses there are. His classification of different species; how Kagan uses practical realism to solve the problems about marginal cases and normal variation; what he says about superior beings; Kagan's animal advocacy.

Practical realism: moral rules should be evaluated "under realistic assumptions about the epistemic and motivational limitations of actual moral agents" (p. 10). The blog's version is that correct principles and categories must be "simple enough to be comprehensible and motivating" (Oct. 2).

How many statuses?

• Not a continuum or 100 categories: more categories make it harder to "identify who goes where," which "radically increases the chances of making a mistake" (p. 11).

• Not just one or two: we can tell more apart than that. Practical realism means being realistic about our abilities as well as our limits, so "too many" levels and "too few" both violate it (p. 16).

• About 5–6 levels (p. 11; blog, Oct. 5).

Classification (p. 12):

1. Persons (humans)

2. Near-persons: dolphins, whales, squid, great apes

3. Highly intelligent: dogs, pigs, parrots

4. Midlevel: rabbits, cows, squirrels

5. Lower: other birds, fish, reptiles

6. Lowest: insects, spiders

Status is assigned by species (or broader groups) because we can't test each animal's capacities. Doing it ourselves would also lead most people to "place animals at far too low a level" (pp. 12–13). Clear outliers are the exception: a supervitamin golden retriever who writes poetry would get person status, and a snake with a cat's capacities would be moved up (p. 13).

Normal variation solved. Status stays "flat or constant" across each broad range, and only one level is "to spare" for the whole normal human range. So all normal adults share one status despite their differences (pp. 9–10, 15).

Marginal cases eased. Practical realism allows individual adjustment down for severe impairment (p. 14). It also pushes status back up in two ways:

• We can recognize modal personhood.

• Motivation: we likely can't bring ourselves to treat impaired humans like animals with the same capacities. The blog notes that a very low status for marginal cases "wouldn't be motivating" (Oct. 5).

Because we're also bad at spotting borderline cases, the optimal rules might place even significantly impaired humans at the same level as everyone else, with "only the most extreme and unmistakable cases" ranked lower (p. 14).

Superior beings. Kagan lives with it: their higher status would be "humbling" but "not… unacceptable" (p. 7). If we ever met them, "we may need to add a few more" levels (p. 11).

Animal advocacy (blog cites pp. 6 and 18). Hierarchy does not defend current practice. Our treatment of animals is "a moral horror of unspeakable proportions," and animals "count for far, far more than we ordinarily acknowledge" (pp. 6, 17). Unitarians have an "easier time" condemning abuse, but that doesn't make them right (p. 6). Kagan even suggests that advocacy may be "doomed to failure" until it accepts that animals count less than people (p. 18).

Using animals as food: factory farming & reformed/humane farming: For turkeys: explain standard factory farming of turkeys + reformed factory farming of turkeys + humane farming of turkeys; What are some of the issues discussed about slaughtering?

Standard factory farming of turkeys (Singer, Consider the Turkey, packet pp. 56–61)

• Breeding: almost all are broad-breasted whites, bred for fast growth and maximum breast meat. At four months, a farmed tom weighs 41 lbs, compared with at most 8 lbs for a wild turkey.

• Leg pain: the weight strains immature legs. A study of turkeys at 13 slaughterhouses found 60% had foot-pad swelling and 25% had arthritis.

• Breast sores: 30% had "breast buttons," sores from lying on litter made caustic by droppings. In Singer's words, "there is no escape from pain."

• Crowding: thousands are packed into each shed, and undercover video shows bloody wounds from aggression.

• Early deaths: about 18 million die before slaughter, which comes at 3–4 months. The species can live 10 years.

• Economics: the industry accepts these losses because "savings in feed costs and time far outweigh the loss of a few birds." Singer's verdict: "Economics overrides the suffering of the turkeys, every time."

Reformed factory farming. The readings don't cover turkey-specific reforms. Singer's suggested fix is breeding for slower growth so the birds' legs can bear their weight (p. 58). The blog's reform examples are general: California's Prop 2 and Prop 12 (space requirements, cage-free hens, no gestation crates) and limits on pig gestation stalls (Oct. 9). Reece warns that reforms like "cage-free" can be misleading. Cage-free hens get about the same space per bird, just in a big shed, where pecking, cannibalism and poor air are common (pp. 66–67).

Humane farming. The blog's humane turkey alternative is Whole Foods' regeneratively raised turkey, set against its tiered humane standards (Oct. 9). Reece is skeptical of humane farming in general:

• Over 99% of US farmed animals live on factory farms, yet 75% of Americans think they eat humane meat (p. 67).

• Even an award-winning pasture egg farm had sick birds: Marek's disease, swollen abdomens and lice (p. 69).

• The idea of "humane meat" works as a "psychological refuge" that lets people justify eating factory-farmed products (p. 69).

Slaughter issues

• Failed stunning (Kristof, pp. 62–65): undercover video suggests some cattle were still conscious when hoisted, bled and skinned. The Meat Institute's standard is that 96% are rendered insensible after one bolt, so about 4% need a second shot. Pigs sometimes suffocate slowly, and chickens are sometimes scalded alive. Kristof's proposal is constant inspector oversight of stunning, which he estimates would cost under a tenth of a cent per pound of beef. His closing contrast: "If you torture one animal, you're arrested… abuse millions… you're hailed for your business acumen."

• Line speeds (blog, Oct. 19): 22 chickens killed per minute per worker, 175 per minute for the whole line, and the Trump administration has proposed raising speeds. The limits are set for human safety, not animal welfare. Kristof says faster lines raise the risk of animals being processed while still alive.

• Humane-farm slaughter (blog, Oct. 9 & 19): at Polyface Farm, one person kills about 4 chickens per minute. USDA rules require pigs and cows to go to regulated slaughterhouses, but chickens can be killed on the farm, and small farms selling on-site are exempt from federal rules.

The Oct. 6 factory-farming post in your PDF stops at "Read more »," so the full turkey section in class may have more than I can see.

Singer - Consider the Turkey (Main Points/Arguments):

“Consider the Turkey - Article”

Singer argues that turkeys raised for meat are "deliberately deformed" birds that live in constant pain because the industry puts profit first (packet pp. 56–61).

• Bred for size: almost all are broad-breasted whites. A 4-month-old tom weighs 41 lbs, compared with at most 8 lbs for a wild turkey, and today's turkeys weigh almost twice what they did in 1960.

• Constant pain:

  • Their weight strains immature legs. At slaughter, 60% have swollen foot pads and 25% have arthritis.

  • If they lie down to escape the leg pain, they get "breast buttons," sores burned into their breastbone by caustic droppings in the litter (30% of birds). As Singer puts it, "There is no escape from pain."

  • Crowded sheds lead to bloody wounds from aggression, which managers ignore.

• The fix exists but isn't used: breeding slower-growing birds would prevent the leg problems. The industry rejects it because "savings in feed costs and time far outweigh the loss of a few birds."

• "A few birds" means about 18 million young turkeys a year that die painfully before slaughter at 3–4 months. Turkeys can otherwise live 10 years.

• Conclusion: "Economics overrides the suffering of the turkeys, every time." This is the life behind the Thanksgiving turkey.

Kristof (Main Points/Arguments):

“Animals that Feel the Slice of the Knife - Article”

Kristof argues that "humane slaughter" claims hide systematic brutality, and that oversight is getting weaker (packet pp. 62–65).

• Undercover evidence: Ian Packer worked undercover at Manning Beef in Los Angeles for Animal Outlook. He filmed cows that seemed conscious while being hoisted, bled and skinned after stunning failed.

• Disputed but credible:

  • The owner, Anthony DiMaria, denies it happens.

  • Experts disagree. Veterinarian Lester Friedlander says some of the filmed animals were alive. Temple Grandin was unsure about some clips.

  • In 2022 the USDA suspended the plant after its sixth incident of incomplete slaughter in about a month.

• Stunning fails by design: the industry standard is that 96% of animals are rendered insensible after one bolt, so about 4% need a second shot or may be processed alive. Kristof has also documented pigs suffocating slowly and chickens scalded to death.

• Getting worse: under the Trump administration, the USDA is cutting "red tape," permanently raising line speeds in some plants, and dissolving inspection advisory panels.

• Scale: about 300 animals are slaughtered in the US every second. Cheap protein comes "at a monumental cost in animal suffering."

• Cheap fix: an inspector constantly watching stunning would cost less than a tenth of a cent per pound of beef.

• Core contradiction: "If you torture one animal, you're arrested… abuse millions… you're hailed for your business acumen."

Jacy Reese (Main Points/Arguments):

“No Humane Meat - Article”

Reese argues that "humane meat" is mostly a myth. The only real solution is to end animal farming altogether (packet pp. 66–71).

• The humane-meat illusion: 75% of US adults think they usually eat humanely raised animal products, but over 99% of US farmed animals live on factory farms (CAFOs). Most consumers are "tragically wrong" about what they eat.

• "Psychological refuge": belief in ethical farming lets people resolve the conflict between their values and their behavior without changing it. The alternatives, quitting animal products or admitting the harm, are unappealing.

• Reforms fall short:

  • Cage-free hens get about the same space per bird, just in a big shed. They suffer pecking, cannibalism and bad air.

  • Pasture-raised flocks face predation and disease from wild animals.

  • Grass-fed beef produces 2–4 times more methane and uses more land, water and fuel than grain-fed.

• Even the best farm failed: an award-winning California pasture egg farm had birds with Marek's disease, swollen abdomens, lice, and problems caused by breeding for heavy egg-laying. It was "not as bad" as a factory farm, but still not a good life.

• Not scalable: truly humane farming would require inspections, live streamed footage, more space, an army of veterinarians, and undoing breeding for fast growth. That would be far too costly to feed about 10 billion people by 2050.

• Conclusion: using animals as food "inevitably leads to mass cruelty because cheap prices and profits will always come before their welfare," so we should oppose animal farming entirely.

He grants one concession: some pasture cattle may seem content, and a bad slaughter day might not outweigh years of good life. But such cases are rare and isolated.

Rachels (Main Points/Arguments):

“The Basic Argument for Vegetarianism”

Rachels' basic argument (p. 70), as the blog lays it out (Oct. 9):

1. "It is wrong to cause pain unless there is a good enough reason… justification is required." A dentist or a children's doctor causes pain for good reasons.

2. "In the modern meat production business, animals are made to suffer terribly."

3. "We could just as easily nourish ourselves in other ways."

4. We prefer meat for its taste.

5. Taste is not "a good enough reason to justify the amount of suffering that the animals are made to endure."

6. Therefore, "we should stop eating the products of this business. We should be vegetarians instead."

The argument has limited application. It says nothing about "old-fashioned family farms" or hunter-gatherers and applies only to people in "modern industrial countries" (p. 71). It is also super simple. It invokes no health claims, value of life, "rights," or ethical theory. It is not just utilitarian, so refuting utilitarianism doesn't refute it. It appeals to a principle "every decent person already accepts" (p. 71). To show it is common ground, Rachels cites the conservative Matthew Scully alongside Singer. He also describes pig confinement: 20 pigs in a 7.5-foot-square pen, tails docked with pliers and no anesthetic to make them more sensitive to pain. And he recounts Michael Pollan's steer No. 534 in a filthy feedlot (pp. 71–73). These facts are not "emotional appeals." They supply premise 2's measure of how much pain there is, which shows that taste can't justify it (p. 72).

Why do so many people, including philosophers and scientists, resist so simple an argument? (pp. 74–77) The blog lists the sources of resistance:

• People don't want to give up meat.

• It's hard to be an outlier when everyone around you eats meat. Rachels compares this to skipping a charity appeal when your friends are all going to the movies.

• People stress human–animal differences.

• People focus on borderline animals like snails and leeches.

He dismisses the "logical gap" objection: opposing cruelty means you should not just want reform but also refuse to take part. No one would buy nice curtains made by torturing humans (pp. 74–75). He also notes that the case against meat is stronger than the case against animal research, which at least serves a serious purpose (p. 75). Scientists like Jonathan Marks stress that ape minds are different from ours, but that is irrelevant. Following Bentham, "The question is… Can they suffer?" Whether an animal can read matters for admitting it to university, not for operating on it without anesthesia (pp. 76–77). Pain science (nociceptors, a central nervous system, endogenous opioids) leaves snails and leeches uncertain. But for pigs and cattle, the evidence is overwhelming that factory farms are "one of the world's great causes of misery" (pp. 77–79). Rachels' advice: vegetarianism "need not be… all-or-nothing." Avoid factory-farmed meat, poultry, eggs and milk first. Free-range eggs, humane milk, and perhaps shrimp may be acceptable, and fish is "not nearly as bad as eating beef." "Focus first on the things that cause the most misery" (p. 79).

James Rachels' taste argument: Lay out the main premises; how this argument differs from arguments made by Singer and Regan; you should be able to articulate a simple objection.

The blog's name for this is the Taste Argument: we need a justification for making animals suffer, and our taste preferences aren't an adequate one (Oct. 14). Rachels states it on p. 70, and the blog numbers it like this (Oct. 9):

1. It is wrong to cause pain unless there is a good enough reason. "Justification is required."

2. In modern meat production, animals are made to suffer terribly.

3. We could just as easily nourish ourselves in other ways.

4. We prefer an animal-based diet for its taste.

5. Taste is not a good enough reason to justify that much suffering.

6. Therefore, we should stop eating the products of this business and be vegetarians.

How it differs from Singer and Regan:

	Singer	Regan	Rachels
Basis	Utilitarianism and equal consideration of interests ("pain is pain")	Animal rights: the inherent value of a "subject-of-a-life"	No ethical theory. It "does not depend on" rights, the value of life, or utilitarianism (p. 71).
Starting point	A contested theory	A contested theory	A "sober, conservative" principle "every decent person already accepts" (p. 71)
Scope	Broad critique of speciesism	Abolitionist about animal use	Limited to factory-farm products in industrial countries. It is silent on family farms and hunter-gatherers (p. 71).
Demand		Absolute	Not all-or-nothing. Free-range eggs, humane milk, maybe shrimp are acceptable. Start with what causes the most misery (p. 79).

Rachels also stays out of the moral-status debate. He never says animals are equal to us, only that they can suffer (p. 77).

Simple objections.

• The inefficacy objection (Budolfson). The argument assumes that buying meat causes the suffering. But one person's purchase makes no difference to how many animals suffer, because of "slack at each link" of the supply chain. So my abstaining prevents no pain, and premise 1 doesn't apply to me.

• The "logical gap" objection (Rachels discusses it, pp. 74–75). Opposing cruelty only shows we should reform meat production, not stop eating meat. Rachels replies that opposing a brutal practice gives you reason not to take part in it. No one would buy nice curtains made by torturing humans.

• The crop-harm objection (Bruckner). Premise 3 overlooks the fact that plant farming also kills field animals. Following the same logic, the least-harm diet is plants plus roadkill, not strict vegetarianism.

Budolfson (Main Points/Arguments):

“Is It Wrong to Eat Meat from Factory Farms? If So, Why?”

Budolfson asks a narrow question: is it wrong for you to eat meat from factory farms? He assumes factory farming is "really bad" (blog, Oct. 14). He sets aside humane meat, staying "agnostic" about it, though his opening corn analogy suggests ethical meat-eating may be possible. If an evil cartel produced most corn with slave labor, you should still be able to buy humane corn from an ethical cooperative (pp. 2–3). His main target is Singer's utilitarian argument, and he answers it with the inefficacy objection. We should agree with Singer that animal suffering is enormous and that taste is trivial. Even so, "an individual's decision to consume animal products cannot really be expected to have any effect on the number of animals that suffer" (p. 4). Two cases make the point vivid:

• Jimmy's You-Hack-It-Yourself Steakhouse: diners cut steaks from live cows. Here your eating clearly causes suffering, so you have efficacy.

• Dumpster diving: eating a discarded steak causes no harm. Even Singer accepts this as "impeccably consequentialist."

The blog adds efficacy examples like hunting, fishing, and ordering a Thanksgiving turkey from a small farm in January. It adds no-efficacy examples like eating meat you didn't order at a restaurant. Budolfson argues that buying at supermarkets and restaurants is like dumpster diving (pp. 4–5). The reason is "slack at each link" of a long supply chain: waste and inefficiency absorb any signal from one consumer (pp. 5–7).

• Ranchers raise as many cattle as their land and budget allow, whatever the price.

• Grazing-permit holders graze the maximum.

• Auction bidders are distracted, irrational, and showing off "machismo."

• Supermarkets don't care about waste.

So Singer's threshold argument fails. On Singer's version, abstaining gives you a 1-in-10,000 chance of saving 250,000 chickens, which equals a certain 25 chickens (blog). Budolfson says there is no such threshold effect (p. 6).

He also blocks two replies. The first is that inefficacy is just the familiar paradox of voting. It isn't. Voters really do collectively cause election outcomes, and people vote for many reasons. Factory farming, by contrast, is caused on the "supply side" by producers and bad government policy. Australia and New Zealand consume animals the way Americans do, yet without the same factory-farm mistreatment (pp. 7–9). The second reply is Regan's complicity in evil argument, "it is wrong to purchase its products." This overgeneralizes. Nearly everything we buy depends on oil companies that "routinely violate significant constraints," so by Regan's logic almost no consumption would be permitted (pp. 9–10).

In part 2, which the blog notes was not in the assigned reading, Budolfson proposes a better test: the degree of essentiality of harm (p. 12). Harm can be contingent or essential.

• Contingent harm: a can of vegetables has a harm footprint from petroleum, but harm isn't essential to it, so buying it is fine. The blog's example is factory-farmed eggs, which involve harm that is "non-essential."

• Essential harm: foie gras requires force-feeding geese (blog). Budolfson's computer example works the same way. A computer is acceptable if harm lies far behind it, but not if its design requires harmful inputs (p. 15).

He argues that most ovo-lacto vegetarians implicitly use this test. They accept eggs and dairy because those "can be coaxed from animals without hurting or killing them," even though factory eggs and dairy may have a higher harm footprint than beef (pp. 13–14). The distinction tracks what is within an individual's control (p. 15). Bottom line (blog): you have no duty to be vegetarian to save animals, because your choices can't save them. You should still avoid essentially harmful foods. Budolfson concludes that this view implies eating factory-farmed meat is "genuinely more objectionable" than eating humanely raised meat (p. 16). That leaves open the question the blog asks: is meat essentially harmful?

Page numbers are the chapter PDF's own (pp. 1–22), which match how the blog cites it.

The causal inefficacy defense: Mark Budolfson's key concepts: efficacy, threshold, essentiality of harm; cases where we have efficacy and lack efficacy; why he thinks Singer's threshold argument is wrong; why we lack efficacy when it comes to FF products; what he means by "slack at each link". Part II of his article - Products that are essentially harmful; Bottomline: What animal products are ethically permissible according to Budolfson?; you should be able to articulate a simple objection.

Key concepts:

• Efficacy: your choice actually prevents or causes animal suffering.

• Threshold: the point where one more purchase tips production, such as one more batch of chickens ordered.

• Essentiality of harm: harm that is necessary to a product, as opposed to contingent or avoidable (p. 12).
  
  

Efficacy vs. none (pp. 4–5; blog):

• Efficacy: Jimmy's You-Hack-It-Yourself Steakhouse, hunting, fishing, and ordering a turkey from a small farm in January.

• No efficacy: dumpster diving, and eating restaurant meat you didn't order.

Against Singer's threshold argument. Singer says abstaining gives a 1 in 10,000 chance of saving 250,000 chickens, which equals saving 25. Budolfson says no such threshold exists, so your effect isn't the average effect (pp. 5–6).

Why we lack efficacy with factory-farm products. Buying at a store is like dumpster diving. One consumer's choices, even over a lifetime, change nothing. The real cause is producers and government policy, not consumer demand (pp. 4–10).

"Slack at each link." Each step in the supply chain absorbs your signal through waste and indifference to demand. Ranchers raise as many cattle as they can afford, auction bidders are distracted or irrational, and supermarkets don't care about waste (pp. 5–7).

Part II. Everything has some harm footprint, so the test is whether the harm is essential. Factory eggs and dairy involve non-essential harm. Foie gras, made by force-feeding geese, involves essential harm (p. 12; blog).

Bottom line. You have no duty to be vegetarian, because you can't save animals. You should still avoid essentially harmful foods. Factory eggs and dairy are permissible, and possibly humane meat too (p. 16). The open question: is meat itself essentially harmful?

Simple objection. Factory farming exists because millions buy its products. If no single purchase mattered, total demand couldn't matter either, so some purchase must trip a threshold. A second option: meat seems essentially harmful, since it requires killing, so Budolfson's own test may rule it out.

Singer - Animal Liberation NOW Chapter 4 (Main Points/Arguments):

“Animal Liberation NOW Chapter 4”

Singer argues that boycotting factory-farm products is the step that "underpins, makes consistent, and gives meaning to" all other animal advocacy. As far as is "reasonable and practical," we should stop buying meat and other animal products (p. 106). This is not a symbolic gesture or a way to keep oneself pure. It reduces animal misery, makes more food available, fights climate change, and lowers pandemic risk. Agribusiness doesn't need our approval, "they need our money," and it will keep using intensive methods "as long as they can sell what these methods produce." Opposing bullfighting in Spain or eating dogs in South Korea is easy, but "we reveal our real values when the issue comes into our own home." Eating chickens bred until their legs can't hold them while objecting to dog-eating is "hypocritical." Boycotters should also be open about their choices. Singer himself went vegetarian within a month of a single lunch conversation at Oxford with Richard Keshen (pp. 106–107). He frankly admits the boycott has been "a dismal failure" so far. World meat consumption rose from 112 to over 300 million tons, mostly because population doubled and poverty fell in Asia, though Germany and Sweden cut consumption by more than 12% (p. 107). He still argues the boycott should continue. An indirect boycott, such as PETA boycotting Air France to stop it shipping lab monkeys, either wins or achieves nothing. A direct boycott of the product itself affects suffering directly, because production "increases or falls directly in response to the demand." Quitting "would only lead to more animals leading miserable lives" (pp. 107–108).

Singer then answers the inefficacy objection that Budolfson later presses: one person skipping a chicken won't change supermarket orders. His reply is expected value. There "must be a threshold" at which orders change. In his example, a supermarket orders chickens in hundreds, so your abstention gives roughly a 1 in 100 chance of being the purchase that cuts the order by 100 chickens. That equals the certainty of saving one chicken, whether the threshold is "a hundred, a thousand, or a million." It works just like choosing a lottery ticket with a 1 in 100 chance of $100 over $1 in cash (pp. 108–109). The blog's version of the same idea uses bigger numbers: a 1 in 10,000 chance of saving 250,000 chickens equals saving 25 (Oct. 14). Two sources give empirical support:

• Animal Charity Evaluators estimates that a plant-based eater spares about 105 vertebrates a year (p. 108).

• Economists Norwood and Lusk find that 100 fewer units bought means 91 fewer hens, 76 chickens, 74 pigs, 68 beef cows and 56 dairy cows, after accounting for lower prices leading others to buy more (p. 109).

Finally, Singer argues that the claim that factory farms are needed to feed the world is "the opposite of the truth," and that this alone makes a case for plant-based eating independent of animal welfare (p. 109). Animals burn most of their feed just staying alive:

• Beef returns only 2.9% of feed calories, so it takes 34 calories in for every 1 out.

• Even eggs, the most efficient, need more than 3 grams of protein fed for each gram returned.

• 77% of soy goes to animal feed, so "it's not tofu that is driving deforestation."

• Farmed animals use nearly 80% of farmland yet provide under 20% of calories.

• Replacing animal foods in the US diet could feed 350 million more people (pp. 110–111).

He adds that industrial fishing is depleting fish stocks and damaging the seabed. It also redistributes food from poor coastal communities, such as those in West Africa, to rich countries (p. 111).

Zangwill (Main Points/Arguments):

“Why You Should Eat Meat”

Zangwill's "Why You Should Eat Meat" is a provocative version of the existence argument (blog, Oct. 16). He claims "If you care about animals, you should eat them… It is your duty" (packet p. 112). His reason is mutual benefit: breeding and eating animals is a long-standing institution in which "we get food… and they get life." Domesticated animals exist only because we eat them. New Zealand's sheep, for example, "would not begin to survive in the wild" (pp. 112–113). The blog lays out his main steps:

1. Some farm animals have quite good lives. This rules out "the worst kind of factory farming," because "Life is not enough; it must be life with a certain quality." Animal rights advocates' focus on pain while ignoring animal pleasure is "bizarre and disturbing." A bad death no more spoils an animal's life than it spoils a human's (p. 113).

2. The practice is mutually beneficial, and animals benefit more than we do. Mass veganism would be the worst disaster for animals "since… an asteroid strike wiped out the dinosaurs," which makes vegans "the natural enemies of domesticated animals" (p. 114). The blog points out the assumption here: six months of good life outweighs being killed at six months.

He then fends off objections:

3. Dogs: "History matters." Dogs were bred as pets and workers, so eating them violates that tradition (p. 114).

4. Humans: we don't owe our existence to being eaten. More fundamentally, humans have rights grounded in rationality, Korsgaard's "normative self-government." A doctor can't harvest one patient's organs to save five, but a vet may sacrifice one stray dog to save five. Against Bentham, "the question is very much 'Can they reason?'" (pp. 115–117). Marginal cases are still rational by their human nature or telos, just as "dogs have four legs" even though some have three (p. 116). Cows, sheep and chickens can't reason, though pigs and apes might, so they lack rights and "we are doing them a favour if we kill and eat them." In his words, the chicken can't ask "Why should I cross the road?" and "We can. That's why we can eat it" (pp. 117–118).

5. Climate: most emissions come from cows and factory farms, which he doesn't defend, and small-scale farming "does not harm the environment much" (p. 114).

Wild animals are outside the argument. Their lives are "an endless cycle of trauma, pain and death," so farmed animals live "almost like a spa," and here "human beings seem to do better than God" (p. 115). The blog asks how Singer, Regan and D&K would reply. It also notes that farm animals reduce wild habitat. Zangwill accepts that because he thinks farm animals are happier, a point the class takes up in Module 6 (Oct. 19).

Nick Zangwill's argument that we should eat humanely farmed animals: “It's not just permissible but a duty”; what he says about the pleasurable lives of humanely farmed animals; what he says about eating dogs and people; you should be able to articulate a simple objection.

"Not just permissible but a duty." Breeding and eating animals is a long-standing, mutually beneficial institution: "we get food… and they get life." Domesticated animals exist only because we eat them. New Zealand's sheep "would not begin to survive in the wild." This "ongoing history of mutual benefit… generates a moral duty," so not eating them "lets these animals down" (packet pp. 112–114). Animals benefit even more than we do, because we could survive as vegans and they could not. Mass veganism would be the worst disaster for animals "since… an asteroid strike wiped out the dinosaurs" (p. 114).

Pleasurable lives. The argument covers only animals with good lives: "Life is not enough; it must be life with a certain quality." That rules out the worst factory farming and includes New Zealand sheep farming (p. 113). Animal pleasure and happiness "may outweigh pain and suffering," and ignoring them is "bizarre and disturbing," a "kind of speciesism." A sad day at the abattoir doesn't make a whole life worthless, just as a miserable human death doesn't (p. 113). Compared with wild animals, some farm animals live "almost like a spa" (p. 115). The blog notes his assumption: six months of good life outweighs the harm of being killed at six months (Oct. 16).

Dogs and people

• Dogs: "History matters." Dogs were bred as pets and workers, so eating them "would violate that tradition" (p. 114).

• People: this is ruled out for two reasons (pp. 115–118).

  1. Humans don't owe their existence to being eaten, and they could survive if "liberated."

  2. Humans have rights grounded in rationality, Korsgaard's "normative self-government." That is why a doctor can't take one patient's organs to save five, though a vet may sacrifice one stray dog to save five. Babies and the cognitively disabled keep their rights because rationality is the human telos, just as "dogs have four legs" even though some have three. Farm animals can't reason, so they lack rights and may be killed "for their benefit."

A simple objection (pick one):

• Giving life doesn't license taking it. D&K's point applies here: bringing children or immigrants into a community doesn't permit indentured servitude "even if they are better off than… had they never… been born." We owe them membership instead (D&K p. 5). Likewise, creating a sheep doesn't give us the right to kill it. Regan would add that killing violates the sheep's rights whatever benefit came before.

• The human parallel. Imagine humans bred for organs who would never otherwise exist and who live good lives until harvested. Zangwill's mutual-benefit logic would seem to approve. He can only block this by appealing to rationality, which brings back the marginal-cases problem. His telos move looks ad hoc: it grants rights to individuals who can't actually reason, simply because they are human.

Bruckner (Main Points/Arguments):

“Strict Vegetarianism is Immoral”:

Bruckner grants that the strongest arguments against eating factory-farmed meat succeed. He argues they fail to show that strict vegetarianism is required, and that their own premises actually make it immoral (packet p. 119). He first lays out the Factory Harm Argument (blog, Oct. 19):

• P1: "Factory farming causes extensive harm to animals." Examples include debeaking, ammonia-filled sheds, gestation crates, castration without anesthesia, and conscious shackling at slaughter.

• P2: "This harm is unnecessary," because we can get adequate nutrition elsewhere.

• C1: Factory farming causes extensive, unnecessary harm.

• P3: "It is wrong (knowingly) to cause, or support practices that cause, extensive, unnecessary harm to animals."

• C2: "Purchasing and consuming meat from factory farms is wrong" (pp. 119–120).

The mistake comes at the next step, the jump to "so eat only vegetables." This is a false dilemma, because vegetables aren't the only alternative. The others are humane meat, hunted meat, and roadkill. Bruckner focuses on roadkill because only roadkill "completely avoids supporting practices that cause harm to animals" (pp. 120–121). He means large, fresh, intact deer, elk and moose, not "the rotting squirrel." He estimates about 2.1 million are killed each year, yielding roughly 41 million pounds of meat, equal to about 80,000 beef cattle (pp. 121–122). He then turns P3 against the vegan using Steven Davis's point that crop farming kills field animals: plowing and harvesting "chop up" rabbits, mice, ground birds and reptiles. Davis's own conclusion, that pasture beef causes fewer deaths, relies on disputed numbers (Lamey). But Bruckner's version doesn't need them: "Picking up road-killed animals does not harm any animals… So on the very standards of the Factory Harm Argument, we are obligated to collect and consume roadkill" (pp. 122–123). The blog ranks three eaters:

1. Omnivores cause the most unnecessary harm: deliberate deaths of food animals plus accidental deaths of field animals.

2. Vegans cause less: only field-animal deaths.

3. Freegans (plants plus roadkill) cause the least.

So the freegan diet is "not just permissible… it's obligatory!" Bruckner also rejects a straw person charge. Singer, DeGrazia, Stuart Rachels and Curnutt all say roadkill is permissible, as in Singer's "[I don't] think there's any problem with [eating] roadkill." Bruckner's point is that by their own premises it is obligatory, not a "don't-care decision" like which shoe to tie first (pp. 123–124).

The Environmental Harm Argument has the same structure and the same flaw. Factory farming's pollution and waste of petroleum, water and land are extensive and unnecessary. But roadkill treads "more lightly on the land" than vegetables do. It needs no land, water, fertilizer or manure management, and it produces no methane from rice paddies. So P3 again requires eating some roadkill (pp. 125–126). Bruckner then answers objections:

• Causal impotence (Budolfson's worry): P3 condemns supporting harmful practices as well as causing them. "Complicity matters." We wouldn't excuse a member of a lynch mob because his abstaining would change nothing (pp. 126–127).

• Opening the floodgates (roadkill will make us crave more meat): this is a slippery slope with no evidence behind it. It is like arguing for celibacy because sex with your partner might lead to infidelity (pp. 127–128).

• Fences instead: fences would be too costly, and today there is roadkill available (p. 128).

• Absurd implications (dumpster diving, eating dead pets or relatives): Bruckner claims only that the vegetarian's premises imply these things. If the implications are absurd, that is the vegetarian's problem, not his (pp. 128–129).

• Health: venison is lean, there are no documented human cases of chronic wasting disease, and only fresh carcasses are in question (p. 129).

• Scavengers: most roadkill goes to landfills anyway, and the leftover parts can be left out for scavengers (p. 129).

• Disgust: this doesn't cancel an obligation, just as cleaning up dog vomit or holding a stranger's bleeding wound may be required (pp. 129–130).

His conclusion is that vegetarians must either accept the roadkill obligation or abandon P3, which would also sink their case against factory farming (p. 130). The class raised further questions (blog, Oct. 19). By this logic, we should forage, eat greenhouse-grown or lab-grown food, and perhaps even human roadkill. Some also feel roadkill is "inherently bound up with death" in a way crops aren't, which ties back to Budolfson's idea of essential harm.

The page numbers above are your packet's (pp. 119–130). The blog cites the chapter's own pages instead: the Factory Harm Argument on pp. 2–3 and the roadkill quote on p. 9.

Bruckner Key Concepts: Freegan, unnecessary harm, accidental deaths; basic moral principle (it's wrong to cause or support the causing of unnecessary harm); why he thinks omnivores violate this basic moral principle the most; why vegans also violate the principle (because of accidental deaths of field animals): You should be able to articulate a simple objection.

Key concepts

• Freegan: someone who eats plants plus food that costs no harm, here roadkill. Bruckner means large, fresh, intact deer, elk and moose, not "the rotting squirrel" (packet p. 121).

• Unnecessary harm: harm "we humans do not need to cause… to gain adequate nutrition," since nutritious alternatives exist (p. 120).

• Accidental deaths: field animals (rabbits, mice, ground birds, reptiles) killed when crops are plowed and harvested (Davis, p. 122).

Basic moral principle (P3). "It is wrong (knowingly) to cause, or support practices that cause, extensive, unnecessary harm to animals" (p. 120). The "support" part means complicity matters even if your own purchase changes nothing (pp. 126–127).

Why omnivores violate it most. Omnivores cause both kinds of harm. They support the deliberate killing and suffering of food animals, plus the accidental deaths of field animals in crop farming (blog, Oct. 19).

Why vegans also violate it. Crops aren't harm-free, so vegans still support practices that kill field animals. That harm is unnecessary, because roadkill is available and "does not harm any animals" (it's already dead). So "we are obligated to collect and consume roadkill" (p. 123). The ranking runs omnivore (most harm), then vegan, then freegan (least). That makes strict vegetarianism immoral and the freegan diet obligatory.

A simple objection (pick one):

• Essential vs. accidental harm (Budolfson's idea, raised in class): roadkill is "inherently bound up with death," while farm machinery kills field animals only by accident. The vegan's harm is avoidable in principle, for example by growing food in greenhouses. So the principle at most requires reducing field deaths, not eating roadkill.

• The scale problem: roadkill would cover only about 0.24% of the cattle Americans eat (Bruckner admits this, n. 9). An "obligation" most people can't fulfill does little to show that vegans act wrongly.

Rollin (Main Points/Arguments):

“Rodeo and Recollection”

Rollin teaches future veterinarians and ranchers at Colorado State, and his question is how to talk ethics with cowboys (blog, Oct. 21). He starts with what rodeo means. It grew out of real ranch work: roping, breaking horses, wrestling steers in order to doctor them. It celebrates survival in a harsh land and "primordial masculine virtues" like strength, courage and independence. It is also the strongest symbol of Western pride against an urban East that caricatures cowboys as "brutal red neck" types. Because those attacks are often ignorant, Westerners have developed a justified "siege mentality" (packet pp. 136–137). Rollin notes that 200+ animal groups once declared rodeo unfixable and demanded abolition. A vice president of one group privately admitted this was "just fund-raising hype," a safe target that brings in donations "and don't make any powerful enemies" (pp. 137–138). Rollin's method is Plato's: with rational adults, "one cannot teach, one can only remind." He calls this recollection, or using judo, not sumo: "I cannot make you believe what you do not believe, but I can make you realize that what you in fact believe is not what you think you believe." Prohibition was sumo and it failed. The Civil Rights Act was judo: Lyndon Johnson knew all Americans already accepted that all humans should be treated equally and that Black people are human, so he "wrote the conclusion large" in law. Picketing medical researchers as "Nazi butchers" is sumo, and it gets nowhere (pp. 138–139).

Recollection only works if there is something to recollect, and with ranchers there is. Rollin calls them the most fair-minded audience he knows, and the worst audience medical-school MD-PhDs. Ranchers are "the last bastion of the ethic of husbandry": putting animals in environments suited to their natures, the "ancient contract" (Temple Grandin's phrase) in which both sides benefit. "We take care of the animals…" his audiences chorus, "…and they take care of us." Factory farming has "broken the fair contract" and "divorced animal productivity from animal happiness" (pp. 139–140). Once Rollin reminds them of this ethic, over 90% of rancher and rodeo audiences agree animals should have legally protected rights (pp. 140–141). His proof is the CSU Rodeo Club. The members began hostile, with the "Shitkicker smirk." After agreeing on a minimal principle, that one should not hurt animals for trivial reasons, they returned from a break to say what was wrong with rodeo: "Everything, Doc." They then asked for help keeping rodeo without violating their own ethic (p. 141). Rollin's vet students went further. They adopted breakaway roping, a technique normally used only in women's events, so "moral reflection… had trumped even their macho cultural attitudes" (p. 142). He then sorts the events:

• Acceptable: rough-stock riding (bulls and broncs), as long as there is no harmful spurring or "hot-shotting" bulls with electric prods.

• Highly problematic: tie-down calf roping. A $100 fine against a $5,000 purse doesn't deter jerking the calf, so ropers who jerk should be disqualified.

• Should be banned: steer tripping. One cowboy described a steer's back breaking "like the crack of a rifle shot."

• Problematic: events that hurt animals or "teach young people to take pleasure in an animal's fear," such as greased pig contests (pp. 142–143).

The blog adds horse tripping, now banned in Texas and about 9 other states. Rollin concludes that husbandry can bridge the "showdown mentality." Rodeo people must recollect their concern for animals, and urban critics must respect rodeo's cultural meaning instead of dismissing cowboys as "moral troglodytes" (p. 143).

Explain Rollin’s admiration for ranchers and cowboys; the rodeo event that concerns him most.

Why Rollin admires ranchers and cowboys

• Fair-minded: they are the best audience he has lectured to, out of about 700 groups. They "hear what you say," while medical MD-PhDs are the worst audience and hear what they expect (packet p. 139).

• "Last bastion of the ethic of husbandry": they still give their animals good care suited to their natures. This is the "ancient contract": "We take care of the animals… and they take care of us." Their kids "got whipped" only for neglecting the animals. Ranchers are among the first to report cruelty, and one cattlemen's president said he'd quit before raising animals "like those veal people do" (p. 140).

• Morally serious: over 90% of them accept that animals should have protected rights, which is more than the general public (p. 138). The CSU vet students adopted breakaway roping, a technique normally used only in women's events, so their ethics overcame their machismo (p. 142).

The event that concerns him most: tie-down calf roping. The calf is jerked to a stop at about 20 mph and flipped. Ranchers easily see the problem: as one put it, he ropes a calf only when it's sick, and "the last thing I need is some rodeo jock running the animal hell for leather" (p. 141). The current $100 fine doesn't deter anyone when the purse is $5,000. His fixes are to disqualify any roper who jerks the calf, or to switch to breakaway roping (p. 142).

Steer tripping is the event he says should be banned outright, but calf roping is the one he singles out as "highly problematic" among sanctioned events (pp. 142–143).

Francione and Charlton (Main Points/Arguments):

“Why keeping a pet is wrong - Article”

Francione (a Rutgers law professor) and Charlton live with six rescued dogs, "non-human refugees" whom they love. They still believe these dogs "should not have existed in the first place," because domestication and pet ownership "violate the fundamental rights of animals" (packet p. 144). They argue that "animal rights" has become meaningless, and they blame Singer. Singer is a utilitarian who "rejects moral rights altogether" and endorses "happy exploitation" such as cage-free eggs and crate-free pork. In their view, he promotes animal welfare, not rights (p. 145). For them, a right protects an interest "irrespective of consequences." A person's right to life protects her even if harvesting her organs would save 10 others. For animals, the core right is the right not to be property: "if animals matter morally… they cannot be property. If they are property, they can only be things" (pp. 145–146). They draw a parallel to chattel slavery. Laws regulating slavery failed because the owner had to win "substantially all of the time" or the institution would collapse. Animal welfare laws fail the same way: when human and animal interests conflict, "the result is preordained." Welfare measures usually just make exploitation more efficient. Stunning, for example, reduces carcass damage. "There is no such thing as 'happy' exploitation" (pp. 146–148). Even without rights, conventional wisdom gets us to the same place. We condemn Michael Vick's dogfighting, bullfighting and fox hunting because pleasure and amusement can't justify suffering. Yet "99.999 per cent" of animal use, food above all, rests on taste alone. So "we are no different from Vick, except that most of us pay others to inflict the harm." Research is the only non-frivolous use, and they reject it too (pp. 148–150).

The bottom line is that substantially all animal use must be abolished. For domesticated animals, that means we "stop bringing them into existence altogether." We should care for those alive now, but breed no more, and "this includes dogs, cats and other non-humans who serve as our 'companions'" (p. 150). The blog summarizes the case against pets in two parts (Oct. 23):

1. Pets are property. The law lets owners use dogs as neglected guard dogs, take them to kill shelters, or have them killed. Most US dogs and cats don't die of old age in loving homes. Calling owners "guardians" changes nothing (pp. 150–151).

2. Domestication itself is the problem, even with perfect treatment. Suppose we banned killing pets and treated them like children. Breeding them would still be wrong. Unlike children, domesticated animals never become autonomous. We bred them to be "compliant and servile," so they remain "perpetually in a netherworld of vulnerability." The relationship "can never be 'natural' or 'normal'," and "they truly are 'animal slaves'… Some of us might be benevolent masters" (pp. 152–153). The blog's contrast: wild ancestors are self-sufficient and avoid humans, while domesticated animals are docile, dependent, and "like perpetual children."

They reply to D&K that human dependence is chosen, or governed by a social contract, and doesn't strip the dependent person of core rights. They also reject any "right to reproduce" for pets and any worry about lost species diversity (p. 153). Their prescriptions, per the blog: stop treating animals as property, rescue from shelters, spay and neuter, and accept that extinction is the ultimate goal. In a just world there would be "no pets at all, no fields full of sheep… no aquaria and no zoos." The question isn't whether exploitation is "humane" but "whether we can justify using them at all" (p. 154). D&K's counter, from the blog, is that "dependency is not inherently degrading or undignified… What matters is how we respond to dependency."

The debate about having pets; Francione and Charlton (F&C) on domesticated animals as pathetic (why?) and extinction as a goal; Donaldson and Kymlicka's alternative view of domesticated animals.

The debate (blog, Oct. 23): should we keep domesticated animals as pets?

• NO: Francione & Charlton, "The Case Against Pets."

• YES: Donaldson & Kymlicka, and Rowlands.

F&C: why domesticated animals are "pathetic." F&C never use that word. Their claim is that domestication leaves animals diminished and helpless:

1. Property. Pets are legally things. Owners can neglect them, dump them at kill shelters, or have them killed, and calling yourself a "guardian" changes nothing (packet pp. 150–151).

2. Built-in limitations. Even if pets were perfectly treated, they would still be "dependent on us for everything." Unlike children, they never become autonomous. They have been bred to be "compliant and servile," so they live "perpetually in a netherworld of vulnerability." They are "animal slaves," and the best we can be is "benevolent masters" (pp. 152–153). The blog contrasts them with their wild ancestors, who are self-sufficient, skilled and wary of humans. Domesticated animals are docile and helpless, hungry for our praise, "like perpetual children."

F&C: extinction as the goal. Domestication "violate[s] the fundamental rights of animals," so we should care for the animals alive now but breed no more (p. 150). In practice that means stop treating animals as property, rescue from shelters, and spay and neuter, with extinction as the ultimate goal (blog). They answer two objections: pets have no "right to reproduce," and domesticated breeds are human creations, so losing them isn't a loss of diversity (p. 153). In a just world there would be "no pets at all" (p. 154).

D&K's alternative: domesticated animals as co-citizens.

• Extinction compounds the injustice. We don't remedy slavery by making African-Americans extinct (D&K p. 4).

• Dependency isn't degrading. "Dependency is not inherently degrading or undignified, and certainly not unnatural. What matters is how we respond to dependency." This draws on feminist and disability theory (p. 4).

• We owe them citizenship. Having brought them into our community, we owe them membership: legal protection, health care, socialization, and work that isn't exploitative (pp. 4–8).

F&C reply that human dependence is chosen or protected by a social contract that preserves core rights, while pets have neither (F&C p. 153).

Rowlands (Main Points/Arguments):

“I wag, Therefore I am - Article”

In "I wag, therefore I am," Mark Rowlands argues that dogs are "natural philosophers." Humans think about the big questions of life, while dogs "live them," and "it is in their lives we find the answers we need" (packet p. 155). His main example is his German shepherd, Shadow. Every weekday Shadow explodes with delight at "Do you want to come with?", jumping, spinning, even trying to leash himself, although the school pickup drive is always the same and nothing interesting happens (pp. 155–156). Some would call this stupidity, but Rowlands sees "the ability to take pleasure in the smallest things in life." Shadow treats any small good as "the best thing that has ever happened to me," which Rowlands calls "a magnificent triumph over cruelty and despair" (p. 157). This answers Camus's "one serious philosophical problem," whether life is worth living. Shadow answers it without knowing there was a question: "What makes life worth the trouble? Everything!" (p. 157). The difference, Rowlands argues, comes from reflection, "a great schism in consciousness" that splits each human into "one who thinks and one who is thought about." That split "robs us of… the happiness that accompanies being whole." Shadow is "a creature of commitment," while we are "creatures of doubt." Philosophy itself "was born in doubt," in Socrates' claim to know nothing (pp. 157–158).

Rowlands then takes up the myth of Sisyphus, usually read as the picture of a meaningless life: endless, pointless repetition, much like a daily commute to the same office (p. 159). Each morning on their Miami canal, Shadow charges the green iguanas off the bank. By the next morning they are back. "The iguanas are Shadow's rock." Yet this repetitive ritual is "one of the most enjoyable" and, Rowlands suspects, "most meaningful parts" of Shadow's life. We can't understand how a Sisyphean life could be meaningful "because we think about such meaning," while Shadow "lives it every day" and so "understands it better than we do" (pp. 158–159). He concludes that "meaning is simply the joyful expression of a nature undivided against itself." A dog has one life and loves it fully. Humans have two, "the life that we live and the life that we think about, scrutinise, evaluate and judge," so a dog "will inevitably love its one life more than we love our two" (p. 160).

For the pets debate, this is the blog's contrast with Francione and Charlton (RR question 2). F&C see domesticated dogs as dependent, impoverished "perpetual children." Rowlands sees a whole, joyful life worth envying and learning from, which makes it hard to say such dogs "should not have existed."

Abbate (Main Points/Arguments):

“Cats - Article”

Abbate targets the "standard 'humane' view," held by PETA and the Humane Society, that cats should stay indoors for their own safety and for wildlife. She argues instead that guardians have a prima facie duty to give cats outdoor access: overridable, not absolute (blog, Oct. 26; p. 455). The duty covers only semi-controlled access. It holds during daylight, away from busy roads, and where no large predators roam by day (pp. 440–441). Her theory is a sophisticated hedonism. Simple hedonism (Singer) counts only the balance of pleasure over pain. On Abbate's view, a merely "life worth living" (net positive) differs from real well-being, which also requires diverse, especially rewarding pleasures (pp. 441–442). She distinguishes two kinds of harm (pp. 443–444):

• Infliction: harm that hurts, such as suffering or felt frustration.

• Deprivation: harm that need not hurt at all. It is the loss of opportunities for pleasure, as in Regan's "contented imbecile." In the blog's example, a dog who never goes for a walk is harmed by deprivation, while a dog who demands a walk and sees other dogs through the window is harmed by infliction.

Cats are only "semi-domesticated." Perhaps as few as 13 genes separate them from wildcats. Toys may satisfy their hunting drive, but territorial behavior (gathering information, patrolling a home range averaging 4.9 acres) can't happen indoors (pp. 444–446). Even an enriched indoor cat therefore "lack[s] well-being" (p. 446). She gives three supporting arguments:

1. Qualitatively diverse pleasures. Indoor cats get mainly repeated bodily pleasures, like Feldman's "Porky," who enjoys endless pigsty pleasures but has low well-being. Cats habituate quickly to toys. Outdoors brings constant novelty: new smells, animals, bark to scratch (pp. 446–449). On lifespan, indoor cats average 15 years against 4.5 for outdoor cats, but well-cared-for house cats with outdoor access live longer. We don't confine humans because cars are risky, and the risks to cats can be minimized (pp. 447–448).

2. Ethological behavior. Physiological (bodily) pleasures come from eating, drinking and sleeping. Ethological pleasures come from "performing certain skilled and controlled behavior," such as foraging, hunting and pigs rooting. They involve "active engagement, cognitive challenge, and control" and "are more pleasurable than bodily pleasures." The proof is that animals keep performing these behaviors even when their needs are met, for example working for food rather than eating food offered free (contrafreeloading). So cats need more than "the environmental endpoints" of their behaviors (pp. 449–451).

3. Evolution. Territorial behavior is time-consuming and crucial to fitness, so it must feel more pleasurable than lounging, or cats would lounge too much (pp. 451–452).

She adds that outdoor cats experience flow pleasures, challenges met with matching skill, which indoor games can't supply. Dangled toys are too easy, and a laser dot can never be caught (pp. 453–454).

Abbate's main conclusion is that an indoor cat may have a longer life but a worse one. It is harmed by deprivation, not necessarily by infliction (blog). She then turns to the objection from wildlife, which she calls the "precautionary approach" (pp. 455–457):

• Housecats are poor hunters. Kitty-cam studies show only 44% hunt, and only 30% of those succeed.

• They mainly kill weak or sick "surplus" animals that would die anyway, so their predation is "compensatory, not additive." Natural deaths are often worse.

• Cat food made by animal agriculture probably kills more animals per calorie, so the "least harm principle" favors letting cats hunt.

• Eradicating cats for harming birds would be speciesist, since humans cause far more harm.

• Instead of anti-predation collars, which frustrate flow pleasures, guardians can offset harm through carcass provisioning, leaving kills for scavengers or donating them to wildlife sanctuaries.

Human hunting is different. Hunting is not innate in humans, it breeds vicious character traits, and human hunters kill healthy "trophies" rather than weak animals (pp. 457–458). If outdoor risks can't be reduced enough, guardians should create rich indoor environments instead (p. 458). The blog leaves two open questions: what Abbate would say about spaying and neutering, and whether her view makes your cat your primary loyalty.

Page numbers are the journal's (Acta Analytica, pp. 439–461), which match the blog's citations.

Abbate Key Concepts: Animal wellbeing, hedonism, physiological and ethological pleasures; infliction and deprivation, prima facie duties; why she thinks cat guardians have a prima facie duty to allow cats outside; why it's just a prima facie duty; what about wild animals who may be killed by outdoor cats?

Key concepts

• Animal well-being: an animal has well-being when it has a positive balance of pleasure over pain and its pleasures are diverse and include ethological pleasures (p. 442; blog). A merely net-positive "life worth living" isn't enough.

• Hedonism: well-being is pleasure minus pain. Simple hedonism (Singer) stops there. Abbate's sophisticated hedonism also gives priority to ethological and qualitatively diverse pleasures (blog, Oct. 28).

• Physiological pleasures: bodily pleasures that come from meeting needs: eating, drinking, sleeping.

• Ethological pleasures: pleasures of "skilled and controlled behavior" such as hunting, foraging, or pigs rooting. They are innate, adaptive, performed even without external reward, and "more pleasurable than bodily pleasures" (p. 450).

• Infliction: harm that hurts, such as suffering or felt frustration.

• Deprivation: harm that needn't hurt, where the animal is denied a source of pleasure. The blog's example: a dog who never gets a walk is harmed by deprivation; a dog who demands a walk and sees other dogs through the window is harmed by infliction (pp. 443–444).

• Prima facie duty: a real duty that can be overridden. It is not absolute (p. 455).

Why guardians have a duty to let cats outside

1. We have a duty to promote our pets' well-being and not harm them (p. 455).

2. Hunting and territorial behavior are ethological pleasures for cats, and they can't be adequately performed indoors.

3. So an indoor cat has lower well-being. It is harmed by deprivation, not necessarily by infliction.

4. The indoor cat "may have a longer life, but has a worse life" (blog).

Why it's only prima facie. The duty is overridden when outdoor access is unsafe: at night, near busy roads, or where large predators roam by day. In those cases, guardians should provide rich indoor environments instead (pp. 440–441, 458).

What about the wildlife cats kill? (pp. 455–457)

• Housecats are poor hunters. Only 44% hunt, and only 30% of those succeed.

• They mostly kill weak or sick animals that "were going to die anyway."

• Cat food from animal agriculture has a higher kill rate per calorie than hunting.

• Remaining harm can be offset by carcass provisioning: leaving kills for scavengers or donating them to wildlife sanctuaries.

Human hunting differs, because hunting isn't innate for humans and human hunters kill the best specimens, not animals already dying (p. 458).

Hess (Main Points/Arguments):

“What If - Article”

Amanda Hess's New York Times Magazine piece, "What if You Could Give Your Dog a Longer Life?" (May 2026), looks at the booming pet-longevity industry (packet pp. 186–187). Its centerpiece is Loyal, founded by Celine Halioua. Loyal is running a clinical trial with more than 1,300 dogs taking a daily beef-flavored pill meant to regulate canine metabolism. If it works, it could be "the first F.D.A.-approved drug for life span extension in any species." Loyal has raised more than $250 million on the promise of "more time with the dogs we love." Around it is a crowded market: Leap Years supplements, Omi Health's "pet-longevity test," a $275 session with a "Longevity Vet," and Fi's A.I. collar. One Fi owner kept paying the fee after her dog died because the app still pinged her that "Luna is with you." If your dog dies anyway, there is cloning. Viagen, a Texas company, charges $50,000 per clone and cloned Barbra Streisand's dog Samantha. There is also cryopreservation: the Alcor foundation holds 124 pets, and terminally ill animals can even be euthanized on site to speed the process (p. 187). Hess explains the boom as the human wellness-and-longevity craze converging with a pet obsession supercharged by Covid. US pet spending rose from $67 billion in 2016 to $157 billion, and some owners will "go into debt for their dogs" (pp. 188–189).

Hess's central point is an "unlikely coalition" between owners who feel "a profound and frantic longing" for more time with their pets and biotech founders whose "deepest aspirations… reach far beyond dogs" (p. 189). The Dog Aging Project (Promislow, Creevy, Kaeberlein) tests rapamycin and treats companion dogs as the new model organism for human aging. Dogs share our homes, our environments and our age-related diseases, and they live short enough lives to study in full (pp. 189–190). Loyal openly pursues a "dogs first" strategy. Halioua says dogs were "a clearly commodifiable idea" that could prove aging is "druggable," making a big dog market that "teased a vast human market down the line." Her tattoo of a worm, a mouse and a Labrador leaves room for the next species, and "There are bets out on whose face it will be" (pp. 192–193). The owners' side is deeply emotional:

• Josh Kadrich: "I don't have kids. This is my baby… Of course I want her to live forever." He calls it "the first drug we've ever trialed against inevitability" (pp. 193–194).

• Ken Friedman: he wants to live longer mainly so he won't die before his dog (p. 195).

• Placebo effects: half the dogs get placebos, yet owners like Erica Reese are sure their dogs are "on it" (pp. 195–196).

Hess ties the trend to the decline of organized religion, falling birth rates, the pandemic's isolation, and "our need to maintain the fantasy that we can delay, even evade, our own deaths" (p. 195). Even success might be modest, perhaps one extra year (p. 196).

Singer - Animal Liberation NOW Chapter #2 - (Main Points/Arguments):

“Animal Liberation NOW - Chapter #2”

The packet has only parts of the 70-page Chapter 2: the opening, the "monkey psychopaths" section, and the closing sections on justification and the way forward (packet pp. 200–215). The page numbers below are the book's own, matching the blog's citations (e.g., Aziz at p. 21).

Singer's subtitle, "no, it's not all about saving human lives," states his thesis. Researchers inflict pain and death on tens of millions of animals each year, and many experiments have "no prospect of leading to important benefits for anyone other than" the researchers or companies involved (p. 1). Nobody knows the true numbers. The US Animal Welfare Act excludes rats, mice and birds, so the USDA counted only about 800,000 animals in 2019. Larry Carbone's data suggest that rats and mice are 99.3% of lab animals, which implies more than 112 million used in the US alone. Singer settles on an estimate of about 200 million worldwide each year (pp. 1–3). He draws mostly on the experimenters' own published reports. These are favorable to the researchers, since suffering goes unreported, and publication bias means that about three-quarters of animals used at Utrecht were never written up. So what readers see is "the tip of the iceberg" (pp. 3–5). The experimenters aren't "especially evil." The chapter is meant to show "the institutionalized mentality of speciesism" (p. 5). His central case is psychopathology research, where "the misery is the point" (blog, Oct. 28):

• Stephen Suomi's NIH-funded lab spent three decades depriving infant monkeys of their mothers, frightening them in "startle chambers," and drugging mothers so infants couldn't nurse. Jane Goodall was "shocked and saddened." The NIH closed the lab only after a year of PETA campaigning (pp. 5–7).

• Harry Harlow, Suomi's mentor, raised monkeys in total isolation. He built "monster mothers" that blasted the infants with air or ejected brass spikes, yet the infants "simply clung tighter." He produced brutal mothers by breeding isolated females on a "rape rack," and some of them crushed their infants' skulls (pp. 7–11). He confined young monkeys for up to 45 days in a "well of despair" to model depression (p. 11).

• Singer's objections (blog):

  1. The experiments told us nothing new. John Bowlby had already shown the effects of maternal deprivation in orphaned children, and on visiting Harlow's lab he remarked there were "more psychopathological monkeys in the laboratory than have ever been seen on the face of the earth" (p. 9).

  2. The research involves endless permutations and repetitions. It "feeds off itself": Gene Sackett found that species respond differently, which undermines any extrapolation to humans, and Deborah Snyder isolated infant chimpanzees simply because few apes had been tested yet (pp. 13–14).

On when animal experiments are justified, Singer rejects saying "Never!" (p. 15). Experimenters ask whether we would let thousands of humans die rather than experiment on one mouse. Singer answers with a counter-case: would they experiment on an orphaned infant with brain damage whose capacities are below a mouse's? If not, using animals "reveals an unjustifiable form of discrimination on the basis of species" (pp. 15–16). He compares this speciesism to racist experiments: the Nazi doctors, Tuskegee, Willowbrook, and Dr. Herbert Green's cervical cancer study in New Zealand. As Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote, "In their behavior toward creatures, all men were Nazis" (pp. 16–19). From this comes the non-speciesist ethical guideline: an experiment is justifiable only if it is "so important that the use of a profoundly brain-damaged human would also be justifiable." People who think all humans have inviolable rights should then conclude that harmful animal experiments are always wrong. Singer is a utilitarian, so he accepts that harming one to prevent similar harm to many can be right (pp. 20–21). His example is Tipu Aziz's Parkinson's research: about 100 monkeys led to deep brain stimulation that helped 40,000 people, later 100,000. If there was truly no other way and suffering was minimized, it "does appear to bring greater benefits than it causes harm" (pp. 21–22). Still, most experiments "obviously fall on the wrong side of the line." As a minimal first step, the US should require ethics committees with the power to refuse experiments whose harms outweigh their benefits, as in Australia and Sweden (pp. 22–24). The blog notes that the current US committees (IACUCs) regulate how experiments are done, not whether they should be (Oct. 28).

Looking ahead, Singer argues that equal consideration would empty the labs, but research wouldn't stop: we would use fewer new products and develop alternatives (pp. 24–25). He rejects the industry claim that life expectancy would be only 42 without animal research. That figure reflected high infant mortality, and McKinley's study found medical interventions explain at most about 3.5% of the fall in mortality from major infectious diseases, with animal research only a fraction of that (pp. 25–27). In any case, benefits don't settle the question: "There is nothing sacred about the right to pursue knowledge." Our existing ban on harmful experiments on non-consenting humans should be extended to other species, with rare, carefully scrutinized exceptions and more use of willing human volunteers (pp. 27–28). The biggest killers, such as diarrhea, malaria and pneumonia, need resources rather than new discoveries (pp. 28–29). Progress has come from campaigners like Henry Spira and PETA, and from the European Parliament's 2021 call to phase out animal experiments. Singer predicts that future generations will view today's labs the way we now view gladiatorial games or the slave trade (pp. 29–31).

Singer's examples of cruel and pointless animal research; examples of seemingly worthwhile research; Singer's position on animal research; the Animal Welfare Act.

Cruel and pointless research. These are psychopathology experiments, where "the misery is the point" (blog, Oct. 28):

• Suomi: infant monkeys separated from their mothers, frightened in "startle chambers," and kept from nursing by drugging the mothers. NIH closed the lab after PETA campaigned against it (ALN pp. 5–7).

• Harlow: total isolation of infants; "monster mothers" that blasted air or shot spikes at them; a "rape rack" to produce abusive mothers, some of whom crushed their infants' skulls; and the "well of despair" to model depression (pp. 7–11).

• Sackett and Snyder: more of the same isolation experiments, run on new species, including infant chimpanzees (pp. 13–14).

• From class (these parts aren't in the packet excerpt): Seligman's learned-helplessness shuttleboxes, PTSD "stress schedules," and LD50 and Draize product tests.

Why Singer calls them pointless:

1. They taught nothing new. John Bowlby had already shown the effects of maternal deprivation in orphaned children (p. 9).

2. They involve endless permutations and repetitions, and differences between species undermine extrapolation to humans (p. 14).

Seemingly worthwhile research. Tipu Aziz's Parkinson's work used about 100 monkeys to develop deep brain stimulation, which went on to help 40,000 and later 100,000 patients. Singer says that if there was no other way and suffering was minimized, it is justified (pp. 21–22; blog).

Singer's position: rarely ethical, but not "never."

• Rejecting all research ("Never!") is too absolute (p. 15).

• Non-speciesist guideline: an experiment is justified only if it would also be justified on a "profoundly brain-damaged human" with similar capacities (p. 20).

• He is a utilitarian, so harming one to prevent similar harm to many can be right (p. 21).

• Most current experiments fall "on the wrong side of the line." As a first step, he wants ethics committees with the power to refuse experiments (pp. 22–24).

• He is skeptical that losing animal research would greatly harm human health. The industry's claim that life expectancy would be 42 without it is misleading, since medicine explains only about 3.5% of the decline in mortality (pp. 25–27).

The Animal Welfare Act (1966, amended several times; blog, Oct. 28)

• Coverage:

  • Lab animals: covered, except mice, rats, birds and cold-blooded animals, which are most animals used.

  • Farm animals: not covered, except during transport. Rodeos aren't covered either.

  • Zoos and aquariums: warm-blooded animals are covered, but birds aren't.

  • Pets: covered in pet stores and during transport.

• Lab provisions:

  • Proper food and housing, enrichment for primates, and exercise for dogs.

  • Pain relief, which can be withheld when "scientifically necessary."

  • No repeat surgeries on the same animal, again unless scientifically necessary.

  • IACUC approval and inspections. An IACUC must include a vet and someone unaffiliated with the researcher. Unlike human-subject review boards, it requires no consent and no benefit to the subjects.

• Critique: the Act regulates how experiments are done, never whether the benefit to humans outweighs the harm (the "balance question"). The UK and EU do weigh this balance, which is why they ban cosmetic testing.

Engel (Main Points/Arguments):

“The Commonsense Case Against Animal Experimentation”

Engel notes that most arguments against animal experimentation follow either Singer's utilitarianism or Regan's rights theory. Defenders such as Carl Cohen and Richard Vance dismiss these arguments by rejecting the underlying theories (pp. 215–216). Engel calls this "self-serving sophistry." Every ethical theory has flaws, so the same move could "justify" slavery: "Until someone can provide me with clear moral reasons for abolishing slavery, I will continue to own and exploit slaves" (p. 216). He instead builds a consistency argument from commonsense premises the reader already accepts. It is "not predicated on the wrongness of speciesism," on animal equality, or on animal rights, and it is compatible even with valuing humans more than animals. In the blog's words, it "starts from obvious ethics, makes non-obvious factual claims" (pp. 216–217; Oct. 30). He focuses on biomedical research. If animal testing is wrong even for potentially life-saving drugs, it is wrong "a fortiori" for floor wax or shampoo (p. 217). The undisputed principles are:

• P1: "It is wrong to intentionally harm conscious sentient animals for no good reason."

• P2: It is wrong to cause them to suffer for no good reason.

• P3: It is wrong to kill them for no good reason.

Even Cohen and Carruthers endorse these (p. 218). They entail P4–P6: it is wrong to perform harmful, painful or lethal experiments on animals for no good reason. Since virtually all biomedical experiments are harmful and ultimately lethal, everything turns on one question: is there a good reason? (pp. 218–219).

Engel's answer is no, because of the extrapolation problem (blog). LD50 tests vary wildly across species. Nicotine is lethal at 53 mg/kg in rats, 9.2 in dogs, and 0.9 in humans. Knowing a rat LD50 "is no more useful than knowing whether the number of blades of grass in your front yard is odd or even" (pp. 219–220). He describes four kinds of misleading results, along two "vectors," safety and efficacy:

• False negatives (drugs that test safe in animals but harm humans):

  • Thalidomide stayed on the market for five years awaiting animal "confirmation," and more than 10,000 babies were born without limbs.

  • DES, Isuprel (3,500 deaths), and Opren had similar histories.

  • Vioxx was safe and even protective in animals, yet in humans it caused about 320,000 heart attacks and strokes, about 140,000 of them fatal (pp. 220–222).

• False efficacy predictors: 22 spinal-cord-injury drugs worked in animals and none worked in humans. Overall, 92% of drugs that pass animal testing fail in human trials, roughly half because they are toxic and half because they don't work, which is "barely better than flipping a coin" (pp. 222–223).

• False positives (drugs safe for humans that harm animals): Tylenol, Advil, aspirin and fluoride all harm some species. Penicillin kills guinea pigs, so "Luck—and luck alone" saved it, because Fleming happened to test it on rabbits (pp. 223–224).

• False inefficacy predictors: proven cancer drugs failed in mice 63% of the time. For every FDA-approved drug, 588 are dropped without ever being tested on humans, so animal research may be "keeping us sick" (pp. 224–226).

The blog applies the same reasoning to apparent successes. When COVID vaccines or Aziz's brain stimulation worked in monkeys and then in humans, Engel would call it "just luck." There are better alternatives: human tissue in vitro, stem cells, in silico computer models, and microdosing, where human volunteers receive less than 1% of a pharmacologically active dose (pp. 226–228). He concludes that even someone who cares only about humans should oppose animal research. Since we also accept P1–P6, and there is "no good reason" to use such an unreliable method, consistency requires recognizing these experiments as wrong and abolishing them (pp. 228–229).

The blog presents a counterpoint from Larry Carbone, a lab vet. Veterinarians extrapolate between species all the time, evolution supports doing so, research is inherently probabilistic, and the alternatives also fail to extrapolate sometimes. If Carbone and Singer are right that some research is useful, the hard ethical question returns: are we entitled to use animals for human gain? (Oct. 30).

Engel's commonsense case against animal research; what is the commonsense principle he invokes?; the extrapolation problem; how Carbone responds to arguments like Engel's.

Engel's commonsense case

• He doesn't rely on Singer's utilitarianism, Regan's rights, or anti-speciesism. Instead, he starts from principles everyone already accepts, so consistency forces the conclusion. In the blog's words, he "starts from obvious ethics, makes non-obvious factual claims" (pp. 216–217; Oct. 30).

• The steps (pp. 218–219, 229–230):

  1. Harmful, painful or lethal experiments on animals are wrong if there is "no good reason" for them.

  2. Virtually all biomedical experiments are harmful and ultimately lethal.

  3. Animal research is too unreliable to count as a good reason, and better alternatives exist.

  4. So these experiments are wrong and should be abolished.

• This holds even if you value humans more than animals. Engel's view is "stop all animal research" (blog).

The commonsense principle

• (P1)–(P3): "It is wrong to intentionally harm / cause to suffer / kill conscious sentient animals for no good reason." Even defenders of animal research like Cohen and Carruthers accept this.

• (P4)–(P6) apply it to research: it is wrong to perform harmful, painful or lethal experiments for no good reason (pp. 218–219).

The extrapolation problem. Results in one species don't reliably carry over to humans (pp. 219–226; blog).

• LD50 tests: nicotine kills at 53 mg/kg in rats, 9.2 in dogs, and 0.9 in humans. Knowing the rat figure is "no more useful than knowing whether the number of blades of grass in your front yard is odd or even" (p. 220). The blog's analogy is chocolate, which is harmless to us but toxic to dogs.

• False negatives (seemed safe in animals, harmed humans): thalidomide, which left more than 10,000 babies born without limbs, and Vioxx.

• False positives (harmed animals, safe for humans): aspirin, Tylenol, and penicillin, which kills guinea pigs.

• Overall failure rate: 92% of drugs that pass animal tests fail in human trials.

• Successes are "just luck" (the blog's gloss): when COVID vaccines or Aziz's deep brain stimulation worked in monkeys and then in humans.

• Alternatives: human tissue in vitro, stem cells, computer models, and microdosing in human volunteers (pp. 226–228).

Carbone's response. Carbone is a lab vet, mostly for mice and monkeys. His article "The Utility of Basic Animal Research" responds to critics like Engel, though he names Greek and Greek and LaFollette and Shanks rather than Engel himself.

• Vets extrapolate between species all the time. He treats an itchy hedgehog the way he would treat a dog with ringworm (p. S12).

• Evolution supports extrapolation. Mice, dogs and humans inherited homologous pancreatic islets that regulate blood glucose (p. S12).

• Research is probabilistic, not one-to-one prediction. Even identical twins can react differently to the same drug. Knowledge comes from pooling many subjects statistically (p. S13).

• Failures teach something. Science is cumulative and "dialectical." When mouse stem cells repaired mouse hearts better than human cells repaired human hearts, researchers went back and found that the heart attack itself impairs marrow cells. That turned the "failure" into new knowledge (p. S14).

• The alternatives also fail to extrapolate. In vitro studies, computer models, epidemiology and human volunteer studies are all imperfect models (p. S15).

• Bottom line: animal research "appears still to hold utility." But utility alone doesn't make it morally acceptable. A separate "speciesism justification," that harming animals for human benefit is morally permissible, is also needed (pp. S12, S15).

The blog draws the lesson: if Carbone and Singer are right that some research is useful, we still face the hard question of whether we are entitled to use animals for human gain (Oct. 30).

Carbone (Main Points/Arguments):

“The Utility of Basic Animal Research”

Carbone is a lab veterinarian, "mostly a mouse and monkey doctor," and a former zookeeper. His whole career "has relied on applying what we know about one species of animal to the care of another." He treats an itchy hedgehog the way he would treat a dog with ringworm, and he consults dog and human medicine to treat monkeys (p. S12). He argues that this cross-species extrapolation "fits with evolutionary theory," because shared ancestry gives humans and other animals medical continuities. Mice, dogs and humans inherited homologous pancreatic islets that regulate blood glucose, so studying diabetic dogs or mice should tell us about humans (p. S12). He says animal research is justified only if two conditions are both met:

1. The speciesism justification: harming animals for human benefit must be morally justified.

2. The utility justification: the research must produce "useful, empirically valid knowledge" that "could not reasonably be obtained through other means."

Neither condition alone is enough. Carbone defends only the second. He explicitly does not defend the morality of using animals (p. S12). He rejects arguing by lists, whether of successes or failures. Dogs helped discover insulin in the 1920s, but that doesn't prove they were necessary then or are needed now. Thalidomide and Vioxx went wrong, but that doesn't prove animal research is useless (p. S13). Against Greek and Greek he makes two points. Their key case involves a woman who died from an antibiotic that her identical twin took safely, and they treat this as showing that extrapolation is a "disaster." Carbone says this misunderstands medicine, which is probabilistic. No drug is 100% safe, and knowledge comes from pooling data from many subjects (animals, people, cell cultures, computer models) statistically, not from one-to-one prediction (p. S13).

LaFollette and Shanks present "the stronger" challenge. Given the sheer volume of research, some animal studies will produce accurate results about humans, a "shotgun effect." But unexplained differences between species, such as pigs, cats and humans each metabolizing phenol differently, make it hard to know which results to trust (pp. S13–S14). Carbone grants that blindly trusting evolution would be "folly." He argues they misread actual practice in two ways (p. S14):

1. Knowledge is cumulative. A trained researcher reads the literature and chooses an appropriate animal model. She isn't "throwing darts at the wall in an unlit room."

2. Research is "dialectical." Choosing a model isn't like betting on a racehorse, where you win or lose once. Failures send researchers back to the lab. In his example, mouse stem cells repaired mouse hearts better than human cells repaired human hearts. Reworking the mouse model revealed that a heart attack itself impairs bone-marrow cells, so the "failure" produced new knowledge about inflammation.

No animal is a perfect model of a human. When human findings don't match animal data, that calls for "reexamination of the animal data, not its wholesale rejection" (p. S14). Animal studies are one part of a larger "edifice" that also includes cell cultures, human volunteers, epidemiology and computer models. All of these are imperfect models that risk missing knowledge or "finding" false knowledge (pp. S14–S15). Carbone concludes that animal research, "when intelligently designed and conducted with skill, appears still to hold utility." But utility "does not in itself make the practice morally acceptable" or show that it is worth the animal suffering (p. S15). The blog draws the same lesson: if Carbone and Singer are right about the utility of some research, we still face the hard questions of whether we are entitled to use animals for human gain and, if not, whether we should stop (Oct. 30).