Friday, September 13, 2024

Animal experimentation

We have an intuitive line as to where the suffering in animal’s life is so great compared to the goods in it that when we are able to do so, we euthanize animals when the suffering causes the value of the animal’s life to fall below that line. On the other hand, the life of an animal that falls above this line is a life that is a benefit to the animal.

It seems to me that this intuitive line could be a helpful discernment criterion for animal experimentation. Animals that are used for experiments are often bred for that purpose. Thus, they wouldn’t exist absent the practice of experimentation. It seems, hence, that experiments where the stresses on the animals make the animal’s life fall below this intuitive line are very easy to justify: the animals are benefitted by the practice, even if the experiments do impose some suffering on the animal. It seems plausible that such experiments could thus be justified by the intrinsic value of the knowledge gained for its own sake, or even by pedagogical benefits for students.

On the other hand, if the stresses in the animal’s life are such as to make their life fall below the line, then stronger justification is needed: the prospective benefits of the research need to be rather more significant.

I don’t know how good we are at discerning where that line goes. People with pets and farm animals do make hard decisions about this, though, so we seem to have some epistemic access to the line.

(I do think that it is permissible to be much more utilitarian about animal life than about human life. I certainly would not generalize what I say above to the case of humans.)

2 comments:

SMatthewStolte said...

Could any parts of what you have said be generalized to humans, and if so, which parts?

I have some concerns about the ways we think about the continued lives of organisms (plant, animal, or human) benefiting those very organisms. (I’m certain that water and sunlight benefit a petunia, but I just get confused about what it would even mean to ask whether its life benefits it.)

Suppose Smith found his life not to be worth living on utilitarian grounds but nevertheless was convinced by rational argument that his life had an inner worth such that (a) his death would count as a real loss for the cosmos (and be a rational ground for mourning), (b) it would be good for him to continue living, and (c) it would be morally wrong for him to take his own life. Then, when Smith died (of natural causes after much suffering), the thought occurred to some of Smith’s loved ones that (d) there was some benefit to Smith in dying, since now his suffering was finally over. Would (d) be compatible with (a), (b), and (c)? And if not, would it be consistent with any part of (a), (b), and (c)?

Alexander R Pruss said...

I think very little of this generalizes to humans.