ENSAIO MODELO - Nº07
“If [an animal] suffers, there can be no moral justification for disregarding that suffering, or for refusing to count it equally with the like suffering of any other being. But the converse of this is also true. If a being is not capable of suffering, or of enjoyment, there is nothing to take into account.”
Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (1975).
In the excerpt above, Peter Singer claims that the suffering of a living being must always be considered as equal to a proportional suffering in another living being, whatsoever it is. He provides the cases of non-human animals, in which the manifestation of pain and suffering is quite evident. Thus, according to him, such suffering should be “take into account” to the same extent it would be if it were felt by a human. In addition, Singer claims that the converse, namely, the affirmation that there is no “moral justification” to take objects that do not feel any pain or pleasure into account, is also a truth. Nevertheless, Singer’s idea of moral seems to be founded upon a maxim of maximizing happiness (pleasure and absence of pain), hence it would be reasonable to call him utilitarianist, at first glance, but there is a key point in which his moral differs from Stuart Mill’s.
In this essay, I intend to defend the thesis that, along with happiness, there are other factors that need to be considered to formulate a consistent moral theory. Notwithstanding, I also intend to defend the eating of animals in our current condition, but avoiding their suffering and gradually starting the production of synthetic food. Firstly, I will present Stuart Mill’s ideas on Utilitarianism extracted from his homonymous work and then I am going to outline the differences between his philosophy and the one defended by Peter Singer. Secondly, I will present criticisms on Utilitarianism as such and how they can be solved with an adaption on the very basis of it, by introducing the Ethics of Virtues as a complement to its fundaments. Finally, I will discuss whether the vegetarianism is, in fact, suggestable.
- Classic Utilitarianism
Jeremy Bentham proposed the theory of UTILITARIANISM in the 17th Century, which had as a maxim: the pursuit of happiness and avoidance of unhappiness — those terms are studied in the most simple denotations, happiness as pleasure or absence of pain and unhappiness as pain or absence of pleasure. The word “Utility” from which utilitarianism is derived, however, manifests here an unusual significance, universal happiness. We use to think in utility as the fulfillment of only one individual — or small group of individuals — instantaneously, our common notion of utility tells us that, sometimes, the happiness of a person is related to the unhappiness of another. Nonetheless, in utilitarianism, the happiness that guides one’s action is not their own, but the collective amount of happiness of all sensible beings. Bentham studied this amount in a very mathematical way and thought it would be possible to find out whether an action is good or bad, only based on its consequences. Bentham’s consequentialism is quite simple: actions that tend to increase happiness or decrease unhappiness are good, while the ones that do the converse are bad. The only factor of this amount was the length of the pain or pleasure.
In spite of Bentham’s studies, the great name associated with the Utilitarianism is John Stuart Mill, who gave to it a new skin. For explanative matters, let us understand Mill’s thinking as an answer to a flaw in Bentham’s theory. Imagine that you could choose between the life of a fish and the life of a king, with the unique condition that the life of this fish could be eternal, whereas the life of the king would be finite. The king’s life would be much more pleasant to a person than the fish’s one, however, according to Bentham’s fundaments, we ought to choose fish’s life, for, no matter how tiny is the pleasure of living as a fish, we could extend it forever. That is the point in which Stuart Mill’s theory diverges from his predecessor’s, he claims that there are “better pleasures” and “worse soreness”. For example, he will say that the pleasure obtained by reading a book is better than the one obtained by having sex; he did not say that founded on religion or traditional morals, but because everyone able to feel pleasure on these two activities would choose the first one as better. If someday, they began to prefer the second one would be because they are no longer able to feel pleasure in the first activity. To clarify, between two given pleasure, the better one is the one you can feel pleasant along with the other. Mill himself would say, it is better to perceive the problems of the world as a wise man than ignore them as a stupid one and if that stupid man disagrees, is because he had only seen his own standpoint, whereas the wise man saw both. It is better to be an unpleasant man than a happy pig. This phrase can sound rather violent if you do understand its real meaning, the pleasures pursued by non-human animals will always be inferior pleasures. Therefore, the murdering of animals would be morally justified, for they would make it possible for men to feel superior pleasures. How exactly Singer disagrees with that?
- Animal Liberation
“If [an animal] suffers, there can be no moral justification for disregarding that suffering”, this phrase establishes a great distinction between Singer’s thinking and the classic theory of Utilitarianism. According to him, the suffering of an animal must be treated equally to a human’s, hence, you cannot kill — or provide pain — to an animal with the motivation of increasing human pleasure. By this analysis, the very nature of a being would always be something unalienable and that is the answer to the aforementioned question. A human would never feel real pleasure by being anything rather than a human; the same way a fish would never feel pleasure to be anything rather than a fish. How we can see, the quantification of happiness, in mathematical terms, was abandoned in nowadays philosophy, we have admitted that we cannot quantify those abstract concepts. Singer still thinks in happiness as the maximum fundament of moral “if a being is not capable of suffering, or of enjoyment, there is nothing to take into account”, but he also defends a sort of justice in the analysis of happiness among different beings. Since the life of a pig is based naturally in reproduction and prolongation of its own life, the happiness provided by feeding and having coitus is so meaningful to them as the happiness we acquired by establishing a family, or studying is to us. At this point, I do agree with Singer, the equity among all living beings is a strongly suggestable law. Nonetheless, utilitarianism still is not a perfect theory.
- Ethics of Virtues
Well, if you ask a person if she would like to live in a locked box in which all the kinds of pleasures would be provided to her during her lifetime, she would probably refuse it after thinking upon it properly. This is known as the Sensation Machine argument, which says that most of the people would prefer to live its life (with happiness and unhappiness) than to live in a simulacrum filled with eternal pleasures. The reason for that is the fact that there are other qualities someone should pursue besides happiness in its life. Another criticism that can be raised upon Utilitarianism is the inexorability of its laws. For example, if someone gives all its money to charity, it would obviously increase the amount of happiness in the world, but it would destroy its life. From a similar standpoint, if you have humans in a cave, along with other animals, and nothing else to eat, those humans should morally die. By eating the other animals they would be putting their (humans) own pleasure upon theirs (animals).
The greatest problem here is the fact that this radicalization of Utilitarianism is not universalizable. If every person sacrificed its own happiness for universal happiness, all humanity would be unhappy. Therefore, we have to understand that the Utilitarianism on its own cannot be taken to its final consequences. The complement of it would be, then, the Ethics of Virtues. Aristotle was the first one to study the virtues; according to him, every kind of person should pursue the virtues that most fit into its essence. For example, if you are a warrior, you have to be brave, confident and loyal. The essence of things was not only in job, but in every state of spirit, thus, you have to pursue virtues as a friend, as a father/mother/brother, and, more than everything, as a person. However, how do we find out what sort of virtues does a person good? In the Elements of Moral Philosophy, written by James Rachel, it is established two simple rules to define whether something is moral or not:
I: it must be founded in very good reasons.
II: it has to be universalizable.
Those conditions are the minimum one moral system has to accept. Since then, by those rules, we can find out some universal virtues, such as not lying. The veracity of information is the basis of human communication, if no human maintained a duty with telling the truth, it would be over and so would be our whole civilization. Therefore, stands clear that honesty is a universal virtue. Other virtues are friendship, loyalty, courage and so on… Aristotle used to say that virtues are the middle terms between addictions. For example, courage would be fighting against fear, but not subject yourself to some situation that will certainly kill you. Thus, it would be somewhere between cowardice and temerity.
The great problem of Aristotle’s theory is his own time’s prejudice. He claimed that a woman should be lovely, docile and submissive; today, we know that those qualities do not make a woman better and cannot be considered virtues. If we use these rules to find virtues for our actions, we can then organize them by using the principle of maximum happiness. That is what I meant by complementing Utilitarianism with the Ethics of Virtues: we can choose between two virtues by applying its maxim. If we could tell a terrible truth to a friend, and possibly destroy them, or lie in order to comfort him, the Ethics of Virtues would never be able to tell us what to do, for you cannot confront two virtues, but if we use Utilitarianism, we can find a solution by analyzing which action will bring more happiness to all of us.
- Vegetarianism
It is clear that by killing animals, we are providing them pain and such action is not based on any particular virtue. Nonetheless, would it be morally correct to kill plants? We have no evidence that plants do feel pain, however, since insofar as I am concerned animals can also be killed without any physical pain, so the pain we are discussing here is the own idea of taking over the liberty of a particular being. By killing an animal, we are taking off its right to living and if we kill a plant, we are doing the same thing. At this point, we accomplished something quite important, the difference between killing a plant and an animal is on the immediate pain of killing it; so, if we are able to kill animals without providing them pain, it is morally the same as killing a plant.
By this conclusion, we could only eat synthetic food, but since it is not available to most people, all of them should starve. It is not a good conclusion. To fix that we need to understand an idea that I am going to call Cosmic Moral. Such idea can be expressed in a simple phrase: “Life finds a way”, every species on our planet fights daily against extinction, except for us, because we do not understand ourselves as animals anymore. We are also animals, that is why we have to eat other animals and plants if it is the only thing available. If every species on our planet stop eating one another to survive, all life would be extinct. However, we have the ability to kill our food without making them suffer, so that is our duty and maybe, if someday we could provide synthetic food to everyone, we could finally stop killing other living beings and the virtue of equity among all life would be restored.
SINTETIZANDO -
Autor da citação: Peter Singer(1946-)
Posição em relação ao autor: Discordância Parcial
Tese do ensaio: Defender que a felicidade não é o único fator a ser considerado para formulação de uma teoria moral consistente.
Autores usados em suporte: Aristóteles (384 a.C-322 a.C) e James Rachels (1941-2003).
Autores usados em contraposição: John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) e Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832).
Bons estudos!
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