Bateson, P. (2005) Ethics and Behavioral Biology
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Bateson, P. (2005) Ethics and Behavioral Biology. Advances in the Study of Behavior, 35, 211- 233. This is the original of the published article, kindly shared by the author. Ethics and Behavioral Biology PATRICK BATESON SUB-DEPARTMENT OF ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, CAMBRIDGE CB3 8AA, UNITED KINGDOM I. INTRODUCTION Behavioral biologists and experimental psychologists regularly encounter critics who feel that no animal should be affected adversely by what scientists do in the course of their research. Some scientists may find the vehemence of those who hold such views infuriating, puzzling or distressing. They may also sympathise with some of what they hear since most of them also care about the welfare of animals. Behavioral biologists in particular often become interested in animal behavior because of their love for animals. They may also assume that those colleagues who do not care for their subjects are likely to be in the wrong job. This assumption stems from the belief that their own effectiveness as scientists derives from being sensitive to the state of the animals they study. Conditions in the laboratory must be good and treatment of animals in the field must be considerate, if only because frightened or maltreated animals simply will not do most of things in which behavioral biologists are interested, such as court, play, explore, and solve difficult problems. Scientists may be as confused about their own feelings as they are by the emotions of those people who bear down on them with such moral indignation. In this article I shall examine some of the ethical positions that lie behind the confrontations in the hope that some readers at least will find themselves helped by an explicit treatment of the issues. I am not a philosopher and, indeed, sense that some ethical dilemmas are best resolved by not thinking about them too much. Even so, I do not propose to end the analysis of the ethical uses of animals in quite such an insouciant manner. To do so would be to surrender the moral high ground to those who have a hostile, one-dimensional view of the ethics of using animals in research. The moral landscape is much more complicated and interesting than certain critics of behavioral biology and experimental psychology seem to realise or, at least, are willing to accept. Nevertheless, those of us who study animal behavior have to resolve somehow the tension between our science and the responsibility that we have for the animals in our care. I shall consider how that might done so that our science makes real contributions to the public good while, at the same time, we treat our animal subjects with the respect and consideration that many of us feel they deserve. II. ORIGINS OF ANIMAL LIBERATION AND ANIMAL RIGHTS 2 Beyond simple intuitions, two major streams of thought have fed into the strongly held view that animals must be treated well and, as an eventual goal, must not be used in research at all. One of these is the utilitarian position deriving from Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. The costs and benefits of different actions are to be considered and weighed against each other in order to decide what is the ethically appropriate behavior. Since the moral decision depends on outcomes of possible actions this approach is often referred to as “consequentialist” or “extrinsic” (Reiss, 1993). The other position, influenced strongly by the writing of Immanuel Kant, is that certain morally-based actions are absolutely good or bad in themselves and should not be influenced by cost-benefit calculations. Certain rights and freedoms are especially regarded as fundamental. This position is called “non-consequentialist”, “intrinsic” or “deontological” (from the Greek word deon for duty). The two philosophers who have had the biggest impact on the subject of animal use are Singer (1990), representing the utilitarians, and Regan (1983), representing the rights and freedoms position. They are by no means the only ones and, although their views are conventionally presented as the starting point for any modern discussion, many other ethical positions exist. Indeed, any one person may hold several alternative views at the same time, causing confusion when an attempt is made to nail down exactly where they stand. Nevertheless, it is entirely proper to begin with the two big names since their writings provide much of the intellectual impetus for the attacks on those scientists who use animals in their research. The essence of Singer’s thinking is that a person’s act is right if - and only if - its consequences are better than or at least as good as those of alternative acts open to that person. This is plainly utilitarian in that the moral decision rests on some kind of weighing against each other of the conflicting outcomes. Singer expresses good and bad outcomes in terms of preferences. Living subjects’ interests are expressed in terms of what they prefer and if their preferences are thwarted a wrong has been done to those subjects. Singer believes that when animals are the subjects of an action, their interests should be taken into account just as those of humans would be. He argues that by degrees the civilised world has been ridding itself of sexual and racial discrimination and now it should rid itself of discrimination against other species. Humans who are moral agents affecting other individuals should consider animals as moral subjects even though animals may never be capable of becoming agents. The analogy is with very young children or with people who are so disabled intellectually by injury or disease that they cannot make moral decisions yet are worthy of moral consideration. Since a moral decision rests on weighing up alternative outcomes, Singer could see ways in which experiments on animals might be justified. The preferences of human subjects may outweigh those of animal subjects. Tough judgements are often expressed in terms of thought experiments (sometimes called fantasy dilemmas). Consider four people and a large dog in a life-boat which is too low in the water to be safe. Do you throw overboard a person or the dog to safeguard the others? Five lives are at stake and, even though the dog may be regarded as morally valuable as each person, it is considered to have less premonition of its own mortality than the people - so the dog is sacrificed. By the same token, if the subject in question were a human passenger suffering from Alzheimer’s disease rather than a dog, the senile person would be thrown overboard. 3 The solutions to such dilemmas are shocking and often grate against intuition in such a way that they suggest more is at stake than some straightforward metric of preference. Singer would argue that it is necessary to move towards a morality based on rationality rather than rely on gut feelings. Even so, the old utilitarian slogan of the greatest good for the greatest number is often opposed by the argument that those individuals who benefit are different from those who suffer. Furthermore, measuring ‘good’ or in Singer’s case ‘preference’ is virtually impossible. Far from being rational, it is seen as an unsatisfactory basis for making practical moral decisions. And when it comes to animals, which animals? Does a rat have the same status as a moral subject as a chimpanzee? Does an ant have the same status as a rat? Does an amoeba have the same status as an ant? By contrast with Singer, Regan takes the view that certain actions are absolutely wrong. He shares Singer’s view that animals should be treated as moral subjects but disagrees with him that actions that might adversely affect their welfare can be justified by their beneficial consequences for humans or other animals. Animals have inherent rights that should be respected as much as those of humans. Which animals? Regan understands the problem of continuity from simple to complex mental existence and suggests that the cut-off should be between those animals that are “subject of a life” and those that are not. What is meant is that rights are granted to those animals that have beliefs, desires, perceptions, memories, a sense of the future, feelings of pleasure and pain accompanying a rich emotional life, an ability to initiate action in pursuit of desires and goals and a psychological identity over time. Anybody who deals with animal behavior will recognise at once the difficulty of identifying animals that might qualify for rights in the Regan sense. So here again the views of a prominent philosopher are difficult to implement in practice other than by abandoning further thought and pressing for outright abolition of all animal experiments. More seriously for the integrity of his position, Regan retreats from his absolutist views with a series of special considerations that inevitably lead to a utilitarian position and to the view that animals can be used for human benefit after all. He would sacrifice a dog to save his own child. At the most fundamental level, the whole issue of rights is fraught with difficulty. Midgley (1983) pointed out that rights are part of an implicit contract with the social community; people accept conventions on which the smooth functioning of society depends and these lead inevitably to the need to honour commitments. In short, rights bring with them responsibilities with the caveat that the very young and the very disabled are exempted - an issue to which I shall return. Even the most fundamental human right to life may be waived in emergencies and the irony can be that those in authority who risk the lives of others may not themselves be at risk and, worse, they may have concocted the case for sending other people to their deaths.