Abstract for Societas Ethica 2008 – Philosophical Ethology and Eudaimonia in Agriculture ______
Philosophical Ethology and Eudaimonia in Agriculture
In an Aristotelian approach to ethics one of the main concerns is to characterize the essence of what it means to be a human being, so as to better develop an understanding of what is good for human beings (Aristotle 1976). Similarly it is the aim of this article to establish outlines for a more complete framework of animal ethics by a thorough descriptive exercise into the fundamental nature of farm animals. Such an exercise will draw on theories and knowledge from several scientific backgrounds and in the article this knowledge will be gathered and analyzed under the term ‘philosophical ethology’1 (Massey 1999). The analysis will draw on a wide range of interdisciplinary natural, social and humanistic sciences. This will include reflections on the basic and applied studies of both classic and cognitive ethology, as well as behavioural ecology (Allen & Bekoff 2007). But since the article endeavours to show that a natural description of the various physical aspects of the individual farm animal, including cognitive abilities and an exhaustive account of the behavioural aspects of the animal’s life, cannot truly encompass a philosophically valid characterization of farm animals and farm animal life, a further dimension must be added. Thus it will be argued that a proper and comprehensive description must inevitably – also in the tradition of Aristotle – understand farm animals as living beings already and always situated in a social/relational context; i.e. understanding the animal as zoon koinonias.2 The examination of this context is rooted in sociobiology (Wilson, E.O. 1975, Wilson, E.O. & Wilson, D.S. 2007) and sociophysiology and these theories’ investigations of animals situated within a social framework that is both species relative and interspeciesly connected (Alcock 2001, Dawkins 1989). Finally a thorough understanding of animals in the agricultural realm must inherently include the field of anthrozoological research into human-animal interaction and interdependency (Swabe, 1999, Serpell 1986). One of the first modern theories concerning the philosophical description of animals with an ethical analysis as an objective comes from the founder of utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham. He essentially defined an animal to be within our ethical area of consideration by its ability to experience pain and pleasure and he accordingly identified the ethical good with the maximization of pleasure and the minimization of pain (Bentham 1989). With this characterization animals were inherently inserted
1 ‘Ethology’ is the branch of biology dealing with animal behaviour. 2 ‘Fellowship being’ or ‘social being’. Derived from the term ’koinonia’ (κοινωνία) meaning ‘community’ or ‘fellowship’. This is a paraphrase over the Aristotelian concept of ‘zoon politikon’ (ζ ον πολιτικόν) which refers to man as a social being – a being of the (inherently) human ‘polis’.
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Abstract for Societas Ethica 2008 – Philosophical Ethology and Eudaimonia in Agriculture ______
into an ethical sphere – not as an appendix to or in any necessary way reliant on humans – but in their own right as intrinsic “ethical patients.” Another aspect of Bentham’s and modern utilitarians’ (Singer 1990) assertion is the dismantling of the wall of categorical difference between humans and animals; a wall with a foundation in many of our belief systems as well as in the sciences (Swabe 1999, Steiner 2005). Within Bentham’s framework we can say, that every sentient being counts as one and none as more than one, and that the irrelevant discrimination on the grounds of not being human is mere speciesism. This article supports similar criticism of a speciesistic attitude towards animals in general and to agricultural animals in particular. Speciesism however is a way of thinking that, when confronted and shown inept, often give rise to another parallel misconception. Because, even though we may concur that animals are not per definition or intrinsically set apart from humans as beings in the world or in ethical consideration, it would be an anthropomorphic misunderstanding to think of them as entirely ‘like us’. They are in a very concrete sense not like us, and this is a point well to remember when addressing issues of animal life and animal ethics. An Aristotelian approach to animal ethics will agree that suffering has a part to play in an adequate theory. As Aristotle points out, there is no way you can flourish or live ‘The Good Life’ – eudaimonia – on the torturers bench. But to consider suffering and its opposite, the experience of happiness or joy, to be the single yardstick against which we judge ethical wrongs and rights is to oversimplify the entire matter and not take into account the complexity of animal life – of the entirety of animal being. It is the article’s aim to unfold and describe this complexity and show its ramifications within the ethical considerations and theories covering animals in the food production sector. Thus the ethical theory, that this article sets forth, has two intertwined properties: Firstly, to distinguish between the relevant limitations of ethical consideration – a sort of lowest common denominator – and secondly, to explore the upper limits for the unfolding of positive natural farm animal life; a farm animal eudaimonia. To this end I will avail myself of Aristotle’s philosophy applied to modern biological theories and to some extent rely on Martha Nussbaum’s neo- Aristotelian theory of capability as an ethical concept (Nussbaum 2006).
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Abstract for Societas Ethica 2008 – Philosophical Ethology and Eudaimonia in Agriculture ______
Selected bibliography
Alcock, John – The Triumph of Sociobiology – Oxford University Press, 2001 Allen, Colin & Bekoff, Marc – “Animal Minds, Cognitive Ethology, and Ethics” – in The Journal of Ethics – vol. 11, 2007 Aristotle – Ethics – Penguin Books, 1976 Armstrong, Susan & Botzler, Richard (ed.) – The Animal Ethics Reader – Routledge, 2003 Attfield, Robin – Environmental Philosophy: Principles and Prospects, Ashgate Pub.ltd., 1994 Bentham, Jeremy – “A Utilitarian View”, in Animal Rights and Human Obligations (ed. Singer + Regan) – Prentice Hall, 1989 Dawkins, Richard – The Selfish Gene – Oxford University Press, 1989 Fox, M.W. – “Philosophies and Ethics in Ethology” – chapter 4. in Fraser, A.F. (ed.) Ethology of Farm Animals – Elsevier Science Publishers B.B., 1985 Massey, Gerald – ”Zoological Philosophy” in Philosophical Topics vol. 27 no. 1, 1999 Nussbaum, Martha C. – Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership – Harvard University Press, 2006 Rollin, B. – Farm Animal Welfare. Social, Bioethical and Research Issues – Iowa State University Press, 2003 Sagoff, Mark – The Economy of the Earth – Cambridge University Press, 1988 Serpell, James A. – In the company of animals: A study of human-animal relationships – Cambridge University Press, 1986 Singer, Peter & Mason, Jim – Eating – What we eat and why it matters – Arrow Books Ltd., 2006 Singer, Peter – Animal Liberation – New York, Avon Books, 1990 Singer, Peter – “Ethics and Sociobiology” in Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 11, no. 1, 1982 Steiner, Gary – Anthropocentrism and its discontents: The moral status animals in the history of Western philosophy – University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005 Swabe, Joanna - Animals, disease and human society: human-animal relations and the rise of veterinary medicine – Routledge, 1999 Thompson, P.B., Matthews, R.J. & van Ravenswaay, E. – Ethics, Public Policy, and Agriculture – Macmillan Publishing Company, 1994 Wilson, Edward O. – Sociobiology, The New Synthesis – Harvard University Press, 1975 Wilson, Edward O. & Wilson, David S. – “Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology” in The Quarterly Review of Biology, vol. 82, no. 4, December 2007
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