PSY1HAE Topic 18: How Human Brains Determine Right from Wrong PDF

 Topic 18: How Human Brains Determine Right from Wrong and why do some people think animals have it, When you have completed this topic, you but not cars or dinner sets? It is not really the will:...

 Topic 18: How Human Brains Determine Right from Wrong and why do some people think animals have it, When you have completed this topic, you but not cars or dinner sets? It is not really the will: fact that something is an animal that makes it worthy of our concern. A dead tiger is still an be familiar with the concept of animal, but we don’t worry about hurting it like ‘welfare’, and with how complex it we might worry about hurting a live puppy. can be to determine what things Being alive is also not generally the core have a welfare about which humans characteristic in terms of us deciding what we should be concerned. should care about. If it were, we would need to be able to explain why we should be equally concerned about tigers and not always make decisions about cockroaches, and most of us are not. what we should care about by appealing to authorities like the law and religious leaders. In the last topic you learned about animal advocacy groups and considered the fact that millions of people support groups that want our society to make substantial changes to how we treat animals. If we listened to the abolitionist groups, we would completely stop using animals in agriculture, science, and medicine, If being an animal is not the critical factor, and and stop keeping them in zoos or even as pets. nor is being alive, then the big issue for us to Welfarist advocacy groups do not insist that we think about in this topic is not why we should stop these activities completely, but do maintain care about animals in particular (and maybe that we should be treating animals a whole lot some more than others), but the broader issue better than is currently the case. of why we should care about anything at all, Attitudes toward animals in the general public including other humans. If we can solve this are more varied still. Some people are not dilemma, then we can see where animals fit in concerned about the treatment of animals at all, relation to other things. seeing animals as consumable resources, much We are going to consider several different like iron ore or test tubes or vegetables. Other approaches to answering the question of how people are a bit concerned about the welfare of we decide what matters. First, we will briefly animals, but not enough to really act on this revisit the legal standing of animals. We will concern. Others are just plain confused and consider not how our legal system works in don’t really know what to think. relation to animals, but whether our legal Given this state of affairs, such large differences system can tell us what we should be concerned of opinion, one might ask why some people about. Second, we will consider whether our think we should be concerned about the welfare religious beliefs can help us decide how animals of animals. What is this concept we call ‘welfare’, should be regarded. Using the law to guide our behaviour But what does this tell us about animals? Surprisingly little! As we learned previously, Let us start by asking the following question: If most laws relating to personal injury, death, or you care about animals, is this because the law property damage do not apply to any species tells you that you should? Think about this for a other than our own. A human cannot be charged minute. Are you nice to animals because some with murder of an animal or theft of an animal’s law says that this is how you should act? possessions. This is not even remotely possible, since animals, under our current laws, do not have possessions. A pet dog does not legally own its collar, its food bowl, its bed, its offspring, or its body, and any attack on these things by another dog or by a human is unfortunate but not illegal, unless the attack is intentionally cruel or against the legal interests of the human owner of the dog. Consider a family of beavers who spend many years building a home on a disused piece of farmland. They are not considered to have any property If you answered yes to this question, think about rights. Similarly, no human can be charged with how you would treat animals if you moved to a murdering goldfish, kidnapping cows, or country that had no animal protection laws. stealing a log belonging to a lizard. This is Would throwing a horse off a cliff to provide because animals, other than humans, are not someone with a good photo opportunity be the legally considered persons. ‘right’ thing to do? How about skinning a living animal just to see its reaction? Hopefully not! These examples demonstrate that something other than the law is guiding your psychological beliefs about what is right and what is wrong concerning how animals are treated. If you answered no, how would you explain your answer? Most people deny that they are concerned about animals simply because of existing laws, even though all developed countries do have laws that tell us more or less what we should be concerned about, and that also give us some idea of how concerned we Strangely enough, this was not always the case. should be. That we should be very concerned Throughout history, there were times when strict about other humans, for example, is made quite rules governed human conduct regarding at clear by the type of punishment associated with least some animals, as well as their conduct being found guilty of crimes like murder, assault, towards us. If you click here, you can read an and even slander. We should also be concerned, amazing story about a pig and her five piglets, although perhaps less so, about stealing or who were prosecuted for murdering a five-year- damaging property belonging to other people. old boy in France in 1457. The sow was found In most developed countries it is illegal to steal guilty and sentenced to be hung, while the another person’s goods, labour, or even ideas. piglets were judged to be innocent. It is also illegal to intentionally damage someone else’s car, house, iPhone, or prized collection of garden gnomes.  Animals Act (POCTA). Some of these Acts define ‘animal’ as any live member of a vertebrate species. Others include some invertebrates, such as crustaceans or cephalopods, or exclude some vertebrates, such as fish. Does this mean that we should care about the welfare of fish and cephalopods in some parts of Australia but not others? Even within states, there are sometimes marked differences in how we are expected to treat wild and tame animals of the same species. It is routine in Australia for farmers to poison There are groups in existence today who argue wild rabbits that compete for crops. It is also that at least some animals, mostly primates, do common for farmers and park rangers to shoot have all the characteristics required for them to or poison dingoes and wild dogs. Anyone found be legal ‘persons’ (Bryant, 2008; Francione, poisoning a pet rabbit or dog, using the same 1993). If some animals gain legal recognition as chemical, or shooting their pet animals because persons, this will only partially resolve the issue they are no longer wanted, could be subject to of how we should treat them, and it will not tell prosecution. us anything at all about how we should treat the vast majority of animals, which are unlikely to ever be reclassified as legal persons. For this, we could turn to modern animal welfare statutes, which do tell us that we should be concerned about the treatment of a whole range of animals. Most countries have anti-cruelty laws of some kind, usually based in property law. Historically, people were not allowed to harm animals because it would cause harm to their owners. Increasingly, laws are being drafted to protect the interests of animals themselves. POCTA Acts also vary in the way that cruelty is Most developed countries now accept that their defined. Most include some kind of reference to citizens have some kind of legal responsibility prohibiting unnecessary pain being inflicted on to care for the welfare of nonhuman animals, an animal, but then encounter the problem of even if these animals legally belong to humans. having to define the words ‘unnecessary’ and ‘pain’. In most Australian states it has been This is a fairly good indication that we should be illegal since 2004 to dock dogs’ tails, but it is concerned about animal welfare, but there perfectly legal to dock the tails of sheep. When remains one major problem with using current the lambs are still quite young their tail is cut off laws to guide our behaviour towards animals. using a sharp blade or tight rubber band This problem arises because humans create laws because this is believed to prevent accumulation – basing them on what they believe to be true. of faeces and subsequent infestation by This is problematic because, as we have already maggots. No anesthetic or analgesia is applied, established, what humans believe depends very but farmers are not charged with cruelty much on where and when they live. because the industry standards say that the As an example of how differences in what procedure is ‘necessary’. In the United States, humans believe can affect how animals are some dogs still have their ears cropped. This treated legally, consider the situation in procedure has been illegal in Australia for many Australia, where we have several states, each of years because it is believed to be cruel – causing which has its own Prevention of Cruelty to unnecessary pain. It is perfectly legal, on the other hand, to trim the beaks of young chicks we believe it is wrong to murder other people with hot blades and clip the teeth of young pigs and make laws to reflect this belief, so we need to prevent them from hurting each other in to first decide what we believe about animals intensive farming situations. Pigs, cows, and and then make up laws to suit. sheep routinely have sections of their ears Using religion to guide our behaviour removed for the purposes of identification. If human laws are subject to the vagaries of social change, then maybe there is a higher power that we can consult to find out whether we should be concerned about animals or not. This has been a popular strategy in our recent past. Millions of people have used religion as a way of resolving issues concerning what they should care about and how they should act. Is this how you make your decisions? As you can probably guess by now, there are problems to confront when we try to use religious beliefs to guide our thinking about animals. Although tail docking of dogs is illegal in countries like Australia, there are still many countries that have not banned this practice. On the internet you can find arguments for ending the practice of tail docking in dogs as well as arguments supporting the practice. Existing laws, then, are not that useful in thinking about whether we should be concerned about the welfare of animals, and if so, what exactly this means in practice. What they are good at is setting minimum standards for the care of animals after a society has decided what The first big problem is that many religious these should be. The same is true for lots of teachings are inherently ambiguous. Take the different moral issues. It was not so long ago simple commandment ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ from that women were not permitted to vote, and that the Ten Commandments of Judeo-Christian slavery was legal in some parts of the United faiths. What does this mean exactly? Does it States of America. Even now, there is frequent mean that we should not kill anything, including debate about the legality of abortion and plants and animals? Does it mean we should not voluntary assisted dying for the terminally ill. kill other people? Does it refer only to other The laws regarding these issues are liable to people who believe in the same religion as we change at any time because all laws are created do, or live in the same country, or the same state by humans and necessarily reflect the beliefs of or the same village? Does it only refer to people those making the laws, which are always subject who are innocent of committing heinous crimes? to change. Our current laws could easily be Does it refer only to killing people directly, with wrong about a whole lot of things, so we do not a knife or gun, or do we kill people when we fail want to depend on them too much to decide to share our science, or medications, or natural what is right and what is wrong regarding our resources with them? Can we kill in self-defence, treatment of animals. A better strategy is for us or to protect our family? What about to protect to decide what we believe first (using the best our assets or our pets? There are no clear available evidence to support our beliefs), and answers to these questions. then make laws to reflect these beliefs. Just as The ambiguity in religious teachings turns out to be quite a problem in relation to the issue of animals. Many passages in the Bible, especially the Old Testament, were interpreted by religious leaders to indicate that animals were created expressly for the benefit of humans. Consistent with this, one of the great Catholic theologians, Saint Thomas Aquinas, writing in about 1250, argued that there is no sin in killing animals for because are put on earth for humans to use in any way they see fit. Going further, he argued that the only reason the Bible sometimes seems to suggest that humans should be nice to More recently, a very influential theologian, animals is because cruelty to animals is likely to Andrew Linzey devoted his career to arguing lead to cruelty to humans. If you honestly that the Bible has been misinterpreted with believe that animals don’t count at all in a moral respect to our obligations towards animals. sense, then you might wonder why Aquinas Linzey believes that Christian theology provides believed that cruelty to animals is likely to lead convincing grounds for respecting animal life to cruelty to humans, but the fact is that this was because everything in creation has irreducible a very influential and long-lasting point of view. value, simply by virtue of it being a gift from Even in the middle of the 19th Century, the God. Therefore, mistreatment of anything on Pope refused permission for a Society for the earth, whether animate or inanimate, is a sin Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to operate in against God, with humans and animals being Rome, arguing that to do so would imply particularly important because they are filled ‘incorrectly’ that humans had moral duties to with the spirit of life, God’s spirit. According to ‘lower’ creatures (Singer, 1985). several books written by Linzey (1997, 2009a, Rather than that being the end of things, 2009b), animals may be killed or used by however, it is important to acknowledge that humans, provided it is acknowledged that this is there is another side to the Christian story. Many a morally significant matter and provided the influential Christians have promoted animal use is necessary. This word ‘necessary’ is always welfare, arguing that even if animals were put a difficult one to work with, but Linzey is careful on earth for our benefit, we have an obligation to make clear what he means. Killing of any to treat them kindly because God gave us spirit-filled organism can be psychologically responsibility for overseeing His Kingdom with justified by Christians, Linzey claims, only if their compassion and mercy. Arthur Broome, for own survival requires it. example, an Anglican cleric, was instrumental in Since this requirement is rarely fulfilled in forming the very first Society for the Prevention modern societies, Linzey’s view, if adopted, of Cruelty to Animals, in London in 1824 (Anon, would have substantial implications for the way 1972). Albert Schweitzer, meanwhile, writing in animals are treated. Note however, that the main the 1950s, argued that a fundamental principle point of introducing Linzey here is not to argue of Christian morality should be that it is that his views are more or less correct than inherently good to maintain and cherish life and competing ones, but to show that, even among evil to destroy it. experts from within the same religion, people vary a great deal with respect to how they believe animals should be treated. This is a major problem with using religion to justify decisions about animals. If these experts’ interpretation of the Bible is socially constructed just like other beliefs, changing to suit when and where the experts live, it means we can never be sure they are correct. This means that we really need to decide what is right and wrong independently of their teachings. Added to this problem of different viewpoints within a religion is the fact that most people are aware that many different religions exist. This was not an issue when we lived in isolated social groups where everybody shared identical religious beliefs but, thanks to globalisation, improved communications, and the extensive travel that many of us undertake, this is no longer the case. Once we know that there are many religions in the world, all of them believed by their supporters to be valid, and once we know that they do not necessarily agree about how animals should be treated, it becomes important to think about what is right and wrong independently of one’s religious beliefs. Many religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, share the view that one powerful God created the world and all things in it, and that Many Westerners would be horrified by these He made humans special in some important constraints, but the point is not that one religion way. Other religions, like Jainism, Buddhism, and is better or worse than another. Instead, the Hinduism, focus on the interconnectedness of all issue is that if one religion says that we may not things. Although animals are generally regarded harm animals under any circumstances, another as ‘lower’ on the scale of things by followers of says that we are permitted to exploit animals for these religions, because it is believed that the our own benefit only if doing so is necessary for souls of people may be reborn as animals and our own survival, and yet another says that any vice versa, a core human value is kindness and concern for animals is fundamentally misguided, kinship towards ALL living things. As a then how do we know which one is correct? And consequence, many people who follow an what do we do about all those people in the Eastern religion go out of their way not to harm world who choose not to follow a particular any living creature. Jain monks, for example, eat religion? Do these people have any obligations no living organisms, cannot work in industries towards animals, or do our obligations differ where animals are exploited, and may even wear depending on our religious beliefs? face masks so that they do not accidentally Do you think our religious beliefs are important inhale and kill bugs. From an animal welfare to the animals affected by our behaviours? perspective this sounds idyllic, except that the Probably not, but the bottom line for us is that, Jain monks are also non-interventionist and see if we cannot be sure that our interpretation of suffering as an important part of life—one of the religious artefacts like the Bible is correct, and stepping-stones to self-improvement and we know that millions of people in the world enlightenment. Therefore, they tend not to treat follow quite different religions than we do, or no animals that are sick or injured, may not religion at all, then we really need to make up interfere if someone is engaging in terrible our own minds about how to treat animals, cruelty, and would not humanely kill an animal, independently of religion. We can then adopt even if it was enduring great suffering. the approach of Linzey, reinterpreting an existing religion to ensure that it stays in touch To clarify your thinking about the important with cultural developments. issue of whether we should care about animals or not, we investigated whether we can use Using science to guide our behaviour appeals to authority to decide what we should If laws and religions cannot tell us how we care about, using the legal system as a first should treat animals, maybe science offers an example and organised religion as a second. alternative. Certainly, science has played a What we found out is that these approaches fail significant role in changing how we feel about to fully provide answers. If you happen to be animals, by showing us that at least some concerned about animal welfare, then you can animals are sentient. This means that they are use the law or your religious beliefs to justify capable of feeling pain and suffering, much like your concerns. There are loopholes in these we do (Webster, 2006). Quite possibly, you belief systems, however, such that, if you are thought about sentience as you made your looking for an excuse not to be concerned about decisions about which things had a welfare. The animals, they will serve that purpose equally fact that something is capable of suffering well. The problem with using existing authorities definitely seems important, but we can still ask to justify our beliefs, is that we no longer live in why this is the case. Why is the fact that isolated family or social groups within which something is sentient the critical factor in there is only one shared reality. In our determining whether or not we should care sophisticated world, we all know that authorities about its welfare? This is an issue we will come can be wrong. Laws and religions rely on back to in the next topic, but it is not the kind humans for their construction and/or of question that science is good at answering. interpretation and they vary across time, place, Summary and culture, just like other socially constructed forms of knowledge. References and/or supplementary resources Anon. (1972). The history of the RSPCA. http://www.animallaw.info/historical/articles/arukrspcahist.htm Bryant, T. L. (2008). Sacrificing the sacrifice of animals: Legal personhood for animals, the status of animals as property, and the presumed primacy of humans. Rutgers Law Journal, 39(2), 247‐ 330. Francione, G. L. (1993). Personhood, property and legal competence. In Paola Cavalieri & Peter Singer (Eds). The great ape project: Equality beyond humanity (pp. 248–257). Fourth Estate Publishing. Linzey, A. & Cohn-Sherbok, D. (1997). After Noah: Animals and the liberation of theology. Mobray. Linzey, A. (2009a). Creatures of the same god: Explorations in animal theology. Lantern Books. Linzey, A. (2009b). Why animal suffering matters: Philosophy, theology, and practical ethics. Oxford University Press. Singer, P. (1985). The animal liberation movement: its philosophy, its achievements, and its future. Old Hammond Press. Webster, J. (2006). Animal sentience and animal welfare: What is it to them and what is it to us? Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 100(12), 1-3.