Notes cover several examples/case studies which can enrich your answer Definitions Definitions Values Ethical concern and dilemmas ADR in rape cases Alcoholism Bans Bio-ethics Capital Punishment … According to Regan, any being that is a subject-of-a-life is a being that has inherent value. The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (PCA) Act, 1960, was enacted to prevent the infliction of unnecessary pain or suffering on animals and to amend the laws relating to the prevention of cruelty to animals. Since the animals we rear for food would not exist if we did not eat them, it follows that killing these animals can be justified if the animals we rear for food live good lives. Animal rights means that animals deserve certain kinds of consideration, which is in their best interests, regardless of whether they are useful to humans or an endangered species and regardless of whether any human cares about them at all. However, the contractors know enough about themselves to know that they are not animals. When we raise animals for food, regardless of how they are treated and how they are killed, we are using them as a means to our ends and not treating them as ends in themselves. While plants, animals, and human beings are all capable of taking in nutrition and growing, only animals and human beings are capable of conscious experience. Theoretical understanding of animal ethics: Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR) amendments, Theoretical understanding of animal ethics. Environmental ethics and their importance Environmental ethics is that part of philosophy that explains the ethical relationship between human and natural environment. The government said that research had clearly established. “Eating Meat and Eating People”. The argument from analogy is also used in answering the difficult question of exactly which animals are sentient. [Ethics] E3/P2: Foundation Values-Empathy & Compassion towards the Weak + Case studies & Descriptive Questions [Ethics] E3/P2: Foundation Values-Empathy & Compassion towards the Weak + Case studies & Descriptive Questions ... “Man is a rational animal“, said Aristotle. Most people accept an account of the proper moral status of animals according to which the interests of animals count directly in the assessment of actions that affect them, but do not count for as much as the interests of human beings. However, we have no reason to believe that animals have higher-order thoughts, and thus no reason to believe that they are conscious. I also cannot harm animals in public simply for fun since doing so will upset many people, and I have a duty to not cause people undue distress. There has been an exponential increase in fully vegan restaurants in cities like Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Goa. This ability is manifested by our wills. Since the marginal cases have this property, they would be granted a full and equal moral status on this suggestion. However, they believe it is wrong not because of the harm to the cat, but rather because of the effect this act will have on me. Wilson, Scott. If being rational (or autonomous, or able to speak) is what permits us to deny direct moral status to animals, then we can likewise deny that status to any human that is not rational (or autonomous, able to speak, etc.). Actions such as lying, breaking a promise or killing someone are more serious than social faux pas. These duties extend not simply to the duty to refrain from harming the property of others and the duty to not offend animal lovers. The attributes of rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness confer a full and equal moral status to those that possess them because these beings are the only ones capable of attaining certain values and goods; these values and goods are of a kind that outweigh the kinds of values and goods that non-rational, non-autonomous, and non-self-conscious beings are capable of attaining. “Do Animals Feel Pain?”. Relying on the principle of parsimony in scientific explanation (commonly referred to as Occam’s Razor) Descartes preferred to explain animal behavior by relying on the simplest possible explanation of their behavior. What place should non-human animals have in an acceptable moral system? Of course, not all indirect theorists accept these results. According to theorists of this kind, there can be no legitimate reason to place human beings and animals in different moral categories, and so whatever grounds our duties to human beings will likewise ground duties to animals. © 2021 Animal Ethics Animal Ethics is a 501(c)(3) public charity. This, according to Aristotle, is “natural and expedient” (Regan and Singer, 1989: 4-5). On this line of thought, if one kind of being regularly eats another kind of being, then the first is said to be higher on the food chain. Robert Nozick labels the bad effects of such an act moral spillover, and asks: Why should there be such a spillover? If indirect theories are correct, then we are not required to take the interests of animals to be directly relevant to the assessment of our actions when we are deciding how to act. According to Kant, morally permissible actions are those actions that could be willed by all rational individuals in the circumstances. If we are to apply the Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests, we will be forced to cease raising animals in factory farms for food. There are general opinions that animals do have a moral status and how they are treated should be subjected to ethical consideration. These theories have had a long and varied history; however, the relationship between contractualism and animals was not really explored until after John Rawls published his A Theory of Justice. Perhaps they should not be counted as marginal for that reason. According to Regan, the only property that is common to both normal adult human beings and the marginal cases is the property of being a subject-of-a-life. In order to implement the Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests in the practical sphere, we must be able to determine the interests of the beings that will be affected by our actions, and we must give similar interests similar weight. He relies mainly on magazines published by the factory farm business for these facts). Therefore (most) animals have direct moral status. It covers the study of animal physiology, treatment and prevention of diseases among animals. Regan believes it is a mistake to claim that animals have an indirect moral status or an unequal status, and to then infer that animals cannot have any rights. In this article, we have discussed the Ethics UPSC syllabus, preparation strategy, and the booklist to follow for securing a great score in this paper. Donations are tax-deductible to the full extent allowed by law. The significance of having a right, however, is that rights act as “trumps” against the pursuit of utility. But the limitations of applying utilitarianism to animal research is that one cannot measure the pain and benefit of the tests and compare them accurately. “Speciesism and the Idea of Equality”. Welcome to Let's Crack UPSC CSE, your one-stop solution for UPSC CSE preparation. Direct and indirect calorimetry. It is one of the optional subjects offered by the UPSC for the civil services mains exam. This is considered to be important because beings that can act morally are required to sacrifice their interests for the sake of others. The implications these sorts of theories have for the proper treatment of animals will be explored after that. Singer defends this principle with two arguments. It must be claimed instead that being human is, in itself, a morally relevant property. Evolutionary considerations are not conclusive either, because it is only pain behavior, and not the experience of pain itself, that would be advantageous in the struggle for survival. Likewise, hunting for sport, using animals in rodeos, keeping animals confined in zoos wherein they are not able to engage in their natural activities are all condemned by the use of the Principle of the Equal Consideration of Interests. Although Rawls argues for this conception as a conception of justice, others have tried to extend it to cover all of morality. The conflict between Values and Ethics. (A higher-order thought is a thought that can take as its object another thought.) There is one property that is immune to this line of argument, namely, the property of being human. When the rights of different individuals conflict, then someone’s rights must be overriden. Rather, it is simply his assessment of how intelligence or rationality is distributed among human beings that is mistaken. Regan argues for the claim that animals have rights in just the same way that human beings do. Since animals have no wills at all, they cannot have good wills; they therefore do not have any intrinsic value. Election, Ethics & Legal. Given these considerations, Regan concludes that we must radically alter the ways in which we treat animals. By focusing on interests themselves, Utilitarianism will license the most horrendous actions. A theory is a Kantian theory, then, if it provides an account of the properties that human beings have and animals lack that warrants our according human beings a very strong moral status while denying animals any kind of moral status at all. Ultimately denying moral status to animals, these theories may still require not harming animals, but only because doing so causes harm to a human being’s morality. There are two reasons for this. No selective breeding for any reason other than the benefit of the animal. If being cruel to an animal will make us more likely to be cruel to other human beings, we ought not be cruel to animals; if being grateful to animal will help us in being grateful to human beings then we ought to be grateful to animals. If we are justified in denying direct moral status to animals then we are justified in denying direct moral status to the marginal cases. The fact that a severely cognitively disabled infant can feel pain seems to most to be a reason to refrain from harming the infant. The personhood classification has been supported both on philosophical grounds and as a means of improving protection from abuse and inhumane captivity. Our vision is to orient the readers to grasp the facts objectively and analyse critically. These animals exist on the borderline of our moral concepts; the result is that we sometimes find ourselves according them a strong moral status, while at other times denying them any kind of moral status at all. The first is a version of the Argument from Marginal Cases; the second is the Sophisticated Inegalitarian Argument. Tom Regan’s seminal work, The Case for Animal Rights, is one of the most influential works on the topic of animals and ethics. It provides for punishment for causing unnecessary cruelty and suffering to animals. ethics syllabus for UPSC Mains Examination.. In other words, Feinberg invokes yet another instance of the Argument from Marginal Cases in order to support his position. For example, animals that are raised for food in factory farms live lives that are full of unimaginable pain and suffering (Singer devotes an entire chapter of his book to documenting these facts. If that is what grounds rights, then what is needed is a discussion of the moral importance of that ability, along with a defense of the claim that it is an ability that animals lack. Once the actual number of marginal cases is appreciated, it is then claimed that it is not counter-intuitive to conclude that the remaining individuals do not have a direct moral status after all. Regan argues for his case by relying on the concept of inherent value. However, Regan believes this is clearly unacceptable: any being with inherent value cannot be used merely as a means. Please enter your username or email address to reset your password. In other words, unless it is wrong in itself to harm the animal, it is hard to see why such an act would lead people to do other acts that are likewise wrong. However, if someone does so they must give up the claim that human beings are above animals due to the fact that human beings are more intelligent or rational than animals. Refinement: A decrease in any unnecessary pain inflicted on the animal and adapting experimental procedures to minimise suffering. The first argument is The Argument from Marginal Cases; the second is an argument against the Kantian account of indirect duties to animals. This means that plants, being inferior to animals and human beings, have the function of serving the needs of animals and human beings. Therefore, it is estimated that they are being compared when deducing whether a test is morally right or wrong. Two common arguments against indirect theories have seemed compelling to many people. The subject matter includes animal rights, animal welfare, animal law, speciesism, animal cognition, wildlife conservation, wild animal suffering, the moral status of nonhuman animals, the concept of nonhuman personhood, human exceptionalism, the history of animal use, and theories of justice. First, they could reject the claim that the indirect theorist’s explanation of the duty is unsatisfactory. It includes animals at earlier stages of their development i.e. This may be done in a series of steps. “On Being Morally Considerable”. A virtuous person is said to hold qualities such as respect, tolerance, justice and equality. According to Aristotle, there is a natural hierarchy of living beings. The most well-known type of consequentialism theory is. India has long been touted as the vegetarian capital of the world. This sort of reasoning has been used to justify such practices as experimentation that uses animals, raising animals for food, and using animals for our entertainment in such places as rodeos and zoos. Carruthers begins by noting that not all human experiences are conscious experiences. The mechanistic explanation of behavior does not apply to human beings, according to Descartes, for two reasons. This status does not bestow upon animals the same democratic rights, duties and freedoms as humans. “Rights, Interests, and Moral Equality”. Cigman, Ruth. Care and Death of Pet, exotic animals are empathetic while feral and consumption based animals are neglected. India’s top educators will be teaching you daily on this channel. This article covers these dimensions. In news: Several aspects of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (PCA) Act need reconsideration. “Indirect Duties to Animals”. Since the contractors are self-interested, but do not know who they are, they will accept rules that protect rational individuals. Animal ethics is a complex subject. The Three Rs principles are now widely accepted by many countries and are used in any practises that involve the experimentation of animals. Keywords animal rights, ethics of difference, Derrida, Freud, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty Since this sort of behavior is natural, it does not require any further moral justification. Second, human beings are capable of the kind of speech that expresses thoughts. This means that if it is your duty to carry out a task, it is morally right regardless of the consequences, and if you fail to do your duty, you are morally wrong. If someone argued that the basis of human equality rested on the possession of a property that did not admit of degrees, it would not follow that some human beings have that property to a stronger degree than others, and the sophisticated inegalitarian would not be justified. Second, philosophers have argued that whether or not a being will have rights will depend essentially on whether or not it has some other lower-order property. Singer also condemns most experimentation in which animals are used. In 1938, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of US established the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to ensure the testing of drugs on animals before marketing of the product, to confirm that it would have no harmful implications on humans. We aim to reach the readers with more crispness, preciseness and relevance. Home / All Courses / UPSC Answer Writing Practise Submission 131 students Overview Curriculum Instructor Dear Aspirant, please submit your answers, using the form below. Singer attacks the views of those who wish to give the interests of animals less weight than the interests of human beings. Peter Carruthers has suggested that there is another reason to doubt that animals are conscious Carruthers, 1989, 1992). A failure to do so is nothing other than speciesism, or giving preference to the interests of our own species merely because of they are of our species. So if these marginal cases of humanity deserve rights, then so do these animals. Wilson, Scott. Instead, they will choose rules that protect, first and foremost, rational, autonomous individuals. Singer describes that principle as follows: The essence of the Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests is that we give equal weight in our moral deliberations to the like interests of all those affected by our actions (Singer, 1993: 21). Non-self-conscious beings are not harmed by their deaths, according to Singer, for they do not have an interest in continuing to exist into the future. Frey, 1980; Francis and Norman, 1978). Singer argues that we might be able to justify killing these sorts of beings with The Replaceability Argument. The moral community is not defined in terms of the intrinsic properties that beings have, but is defined rather in terms of the important social relations that exist between beings. It states that “an action is right if and only if it produces a better balance of benefits and harms than available alternative actions”. Moral equality theories extend equal consideration and moral status to animals by refuting the supposed moral relevance of the aforementioned special properties of human beings. Such properties as being human or having human DNA do not admit of degrees, but, as already mentioned, these properties do not seem to be capable of supporting such a moral status. Therefore, it follows that the racist is not morally objectionable merely because of his views on how rationality and intelligence are distributed among human beings; rather he is morally objectionable because of the basis he uses to weigh the interests of different individuals. His moral principle that assigns moral status on the basis of intelligence or rationality is not what has led him astray. This does not mean that Regan takes rights to be absolute. However, there are some properties which only human beings have which have seemed to many to be able to ground a full and equal moral status; for example, being rational, autonomous, or able to act morally have all been used to justify giving a stronger status to human beings than we do to animals. For example, public outrage is strong when knowledge of “puppy mills” is made available; the thought here is that dogs deserve much more consideration than the operators of such places give them. Singer also condemns experiments that are aimed at preventing or curing human diseases. No zoos or use of animals in entertainment. There is a wide range of ethical assessments regarding animals used in research. Since these relationships are what constitute our lives and the value contained in them, we are required to give greater weight to the interests of human beings than we do to animals. On indirect theories, animals do not warrant our moral concern on their own, but may warrant concern only in so far as they are appropriately related to human beings. Animal ethics requires rethinking both identity and difference by focusing on relationships and responsivity. Lexicon for Ethics, Integrity & Aptitude for IAS General Studies for UPSC mains GS Paper 4: In the present transforming society there is a need of good public Administration. According to Descartes, there are two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive kinds of entities or properties: material or physical entities on the one hand, and mental entities on the other. Likewise, duties with regard to animals can exist for these reasons. Animals can feel pain and their interests must be taken into consideration. For example, experiments used to test cosmetics or other non-necessary products for human beings cannot be justified if we use the Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests. This also has been used to justify such practices as experimentation on animals, raising animals for food, and using animals in such places as zoos and rodeos. Another way to escape this line of argument is to deny the second premise (Cf. Many people have found this to be a very unsatisfying account of the duty. Francis, Leslie Pickering and Richard Norman. They will not adopt rules that give special protection to animals, therefore, since this would not further their self-interest. Instead, each such being must be treated as an end in itself. Likewise, we could easily program robots to engage in pain-behavior, but we would not conclude that they feel pain. Although human beings do satisfy their interests by eating meat, Singer argues that the interests the animals have in avoiding this unimaginable pain and suffering is greater than the interests we have in eating food that tastes good. Cohen, Carl. Since it is possible to explain animal behavior without reference to inner episodes of awareness, doing so is simpler than relying on the assumption that animals are conscious, and is therefore the preferred explanation. City Attorney; Elections & Campaign Finance; Ethics & Lobbyist; Emergency Services. Some animals are privileged than others, causing inequality in treatment. He argues that if we attempt to extend such unequal consideration to the interests of animals, we will be forced to give unequal consideration to the interests of different human beings. Its mission is to promote non-speciesist ethical approaches in … However, a flaw is that people’s opinions of a virtuous person are very subjective, and thus, can drastically affect the person’s moral compass. Rather, we also have a duty to refrain from being cruel to them. Animal: any live non-human vertebrates (that is fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals encompassing domestic animals, purpose-bred animals, livestock, wildlife) and cephalopods. Examples of negatively valenced episodes of awareness are pain, suffering, depression, and anxiety. One of the earliest and clearest expressions of this kind of view comes to us from Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.). At present no digital platform is available in the country for farmers managing livestock including buying and selling of disease free germplasm in all forms (semen, embryos, etc). So although the action may not infringe any rights…it remains wrong independently of its effect on any animal lover (Carruthers, 1992: 153-54).
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