Ernest Miciak is the chair of the Alberta Veterinary Medical Association’s animal welfare committee. He attended an animal sentience conference March 17-18 in London, England, and is filing a series of reports from the conference.
LONDON, U.K. Ñ There are those who argue that human suffering is more important than animal suffering because animals don’t feel the same way that humans do. Reverend professor Andrew Linzey of the faculty of theology at Britain’s University of Oxford begs to differ.
“Far from being a case based on emotion, there are strong rational considerations for supposing that animals constitute a special moral case, and are deserving of special consideration,” he said in a speech about why animal suffering matters morally during the Compassion in World Farming animal sentience conference in London.
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“By suffering, I don’t just mean pain, which can be defined as adverse physical stimuli. I mean mental and physical pain, shock, fear, foreboding, anxiety, stress, terror. By animal, I mean animals and birds where sentiency, that is the capacity to suffer, can be reasonably supposed.”
A senior research fellow in ethics, theology and animal welfare, Linzey bases his argument on seven supposed differences between animals and humans and what they mean morally:
- Vulnerability Ñ Managed domestic animals are almost entirely vulnerable in relation to humans. They are unprotected, defenceless, non-aggressive and pose no direct or indirect harm. They are almost entirely within human’s power, which increases the case for moral solicitude.
- Incomprehension Ñ Animals experience the terror of not knowing what is happening to them. Their frustration, suffering, deprivation and pain are not softened by intellectual comprehension of the circumstances, which increases the moral significance of suffering.
- Non-consent ÑAnimals cannot give or withhold their consent; they do not sacrifice themselves. Human activity in relation to animals is necessarily coercive. That inability to consent increases our responsibility.
- InarticulacyÑ Animals have no language that humans can understand so we often take this as a factor against their moral status. Linzy used the example of a comatose patient who can, to some degree, be conscious and experience pain. They are a special case deserving special attention. Inarticulacy, which is inability to represent oneself verbally, should make one not less but more deserving of benign moral representation.
- Soullessness Ð There is a long tradition in western culture that has denied that animals have moral significance because they are non-rational. The magic formula from St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas is “no rationality equals no immortality.” Supposing that were true, Linzey said, it follows that animals are not recompensed for unjust treatment and unmerited innocent suffering. And if so, it follows that their suffering is less easy to justify. If they are not to be redeemed to an eternal heaven, their suffering now surely has greater significance.
- Innocence Ñ Animals are not moral agents; they are not capable of free will and responsibility. While some people believe that other human beings deserve pain and are improved by it, as is the case with reformatory punishment, this rationale cannot be applied to animals. Animal suffering is always unmerited, Linzey said.
- Dependency Ñ Humans have taken over animals’ lives; they wouldn’t exist without us. Humans have genetically redesigned their lives, which he said surely must increase our responsibility.
“When analyzed impartially and rationally, these differences that are supposed to justify animal exploitation, … work more in favour of animals than against them. They provide a stronger, not a weaker, ground for extending moral solicitude and this is on the old paradigm where animals have no intelligence, no capacity for sentience.”
