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Journal of Medicine and Philosophy


A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine
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Animal Research, Non-vegetarianism, and the Moral Status of Animals - Understanding the Impasse of the Animal Rights Problem
Hon-Lam Li

To cite this Article: Hon-Lam Li , 'Animal Research, Non-vegetarianism, and the Moral Status of Animals - Understanding the Impasse of the Animal Rights Problem', Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 27:5, 589 - 615 xxxx:journal To link to this article: DOI: 10.1076/jmep.27.5.589.10322 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1076/jmep.27.5.589.10322 Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article maybe used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. Taylor and Francis 2007

Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 2002, Vol. 27, No. 5, pp. 589615

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Animal Research, Non-vegetarianism, and the Moral Status of Animals Understanding the Impasse of the Animal Rights Problem
Hon-Lam Li
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong

ABSTRACT
I offer some reasons for the theory that, compared with human beings, non-human animals have some but lesser intrinsic value. On the basis of this theory, I rst argue that we do not know how to compare an animal's claim to be free from a more serious type of harm (e.g., death), and a human's claim to be free from some lesser type of harm (e.g., non-fatal morbidity). For we need to take account of these parties' intrinsic value, and their competing types of claim. Yet, there exists no known way for making such comparison, when a human's intrinsic value is higher than that of an animal, whereas the type of claim an animal has is morally weightier than the type of claim a human has. Second, I explain why utilitarianism is unhelpful in making such comparison. Third, in the case where some animals can be sacriced for saving a larger number of humans, it is crucial to ask whether animals have the right to life, and I argue that this question is more perplexing than we might think. My conclusion is that the various difculties mentioned above have a deeper source than we have so far acknowledged, and that this reects that the moral reality is less tidy and more complex than many theories portray. Keywords: animal research, animal rights, undecidability, inter-species comparison of utility, intrinsic value, moral status, non-vegetarianism, preference utilitarianism

For helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper, I am grateful to Joseph Chan, Sin-yee Chan, Ruiping Fan, Joe Lau, Win-chiat Lee, Yuan-kang Shih, Peter Singer, Bonnie Steinbock, Kai-yee Wong, Allen W. Wood, the Editor of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, an anonymous referee, and especially John G. Bennett. I also thank Jonathan Chan, Chen Te, Raymond Geuss, and James Grifn for useful discussions. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at The International Conference in Bioethics at National Central University (Taiwan) in June 1998, The Saturday Ethics Group in Hong Kong in October 1999, and The International Conference on Applied Ethics at The Chinese University of Hong Kong in December 1999. I would also like to thank the audiences on these occasions for helpful comments. Address correspondence to: Hon-Lam Li, Ph.D., Department of Philosophy, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong. E-mail: honlamli@cuhk.edu.hk

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I believe one should trust problems over solutions, . . . and pluralist discord over systematic harmony. Simplicity and elegance are never reasons to think that a philosophical theory is true: on the contrary, they are usually grounds for thinking it false . . . . Often the problem has to be reformulated, because an adequate answer to the original formulation fails to make the sense of the problem disappear. It is always reasonable in philosophy to have great respect for the intuitive sense of an unsolved problem, because in philosophy our methods are always themselves in question, and this is one way of being prepared to abandon them at any point. (Nagel, 1979, pp. xxi). Rather than proposing a solution to [the problem], I shall try to explain what it is, and why a solution is so difcult to achieve. This result need not be thought of pessimistically, since the recognition of a serious obstacle is always a necessary condition of progress . . . . (Nagel, 1991, p. 3). I. INTRODUCTION Until relatively recently, discussions of ethics have generally focused only on human persons. Ethical issues such as euthanasia, pornography, capital punishment, and world hunger only concern human persons. However, with the increasing prominence of issues such as animal rights and abortion, in addition to human persons, other beings are involved. This is a signicant change, because the ethics dealing with problems involving only human persons is ill-adapted for problems involving not only human persons, but also other beings: such as non-human animals and human fetuses.1 In this paper, I shall examine the problems of animal research, nonvegetarianism, and the moral status of animals. I shall argue that the intrinsic value2 (or moral status) of a non-human animal is typically less than that of a normal human adult. As to the problems of animal research and nonvegetarianism, I shall try to explain what they are, and why at present there appears to be no satisfactory solution. Because of the lack of space, I shall be able only to describe various views on the moral status or intrinsic value of animals very briey and sketchily, in sections II to IV. In sections II and III, I consider anti-speciesism and speciesism. In section IV, I argue for the view that human beings and non-

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human animals have intrinsic value or moral status, albeit to different degrees. In section V, I argue that if intrinsic value is a matter of degree, then the problem of animal research to prevent non-fatal human morbidity and the problem of non-vegetarianism would seem difcult to resolve. Section VI discusses some exceptional cases in which the method of approximation can be used to achieve resolution of certain problems. In section VII, I consider whether utilitarianism is a way out of the impasse, and argue that it is not. Finally, in section VIII, I consider whether we are justied in sacricing nonhuman animals in medical research to save more human lives. I argue that this issue would depend on whether non-human animals have rights, and try to show why it is such a perplexing issue. II. ALL-OR-NOTHING ANTI-SPECIESISM The starting point of the problem of animal rights is clearly the question concerning the moral status or intrinsic value of non-human animals.3 There are three types of view on this issue, two of which hold that intrinsic value, or moral status, is all-or-nothing. The rst type of all-or-nothing view to consider is an anti-speciesist view. We may call it all-or-nothing anti-speciesism. One view holds that all human beings and non-human animals have equal inherent value.4 Another more plausible view maintains that all human beings and some non-human animals have equal inherent value.5 Tom Regan's inuential theory is of the latter type. Regan holds that some non-human animals and all humans, except possibly permanently comatose human beings (Regan, 1983, p. 246), have equal inherent value. For him, higher animals, such as mammals, are ``subjects-of-alife''. This term refers to (the human and non-human) animals that have beliefs, desires, perceptions, memory, preference, experience, individual welfare, and psychological identity over time (p. 243). Regan believes that all subjects-of-a-life have inherent value equally, and all those of equal inherent value have equal rights.6 To reach such a surprising conclusion, he starts from Kant's view that all moral agents have equal inherent value. He argues that if this were not true, then it would lead to the pernicious ``perfectionist'' view that those having greater inherent value can treat those having less inherent value in an unjust way, as slave-masters treated slaves. Since this consequence is morally repugnant, all moral agents must have equal inherent value. Regan then argues that this equal inherent value must be extended to very young

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children and the mentally enfeebled because they too can suffer as much as human moral agents (pp. 183, 240). Further, he argues that since these human non-moral agents are relevantly similar to non-human mammals, any refusal to extend equal inherent value to the latter would be speciesist (Regan, 1985, p. 23). So Regan concludes that all subjects-of-a-life have equal inherent value and hence equal rights. My chief criticism of Regan is that there exists a more plausible alternative to his view. This alternative view holds that one's inherent value is the inherent value of one's capacity for experiencing life (or experiential capacity). This view would maintain that a normal human adult has greater inherent value than a dog, which in turn has greater inherent value than a sh, because of their differing experiential capacities. The only reason Regan (1983) has for rejecting this line of reasoning is that he thinks that this would lead to pernicious perfectionist views. But his reasoning seems dubious. The pernicious perfectionist consequence that those of greater inherent value can exploit or otherwise treat as a mere means those with less inherent value simply does not follow. As he acknowledged in an earlier paper, normal people have greater inherent value than the severely mentally enfeebled (Regan, 1978, pp. 136139).7 He rightly said that as long as a being has some inherent value, it cannot be exploited or otherwise used as a mere means by those of greater inherent value (Regan, 1978, p. 138). So the pernicious perfectionist consequences do not seem to follow. Moreover, if we are faced with saving either a normal human being or a dog, but not both, we should save the former. The most plausible explanation seems to be in terms of the human's greater inherent value, in comparison to the dog's.8 III. ALL-OR-NOTHING SPECIESISM Another type of all-or-nothing view maintains that whereas a human being has intrinsic value, non-human animals do not have any intrinsic value or moral status. In substance, this view is diametrically opposed to anti-speciesism. R.D. Guthrie (Guthrie, 19671968) and Carl Cohen (Cohen, 1986) are proponents for this view. We may call this type of view all-or-nothing speciesism. All-or-nothing speciesism is correct in holding that human beings have intrinsic value, but seems unjustied in denying non-human animals any intrinsic value or moral status at all. Guthrie thinks that non-human animals

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are amoral beings, and that a wild wolf killing a wild deer is ``not subject to moral analysis'' (Guthrie, 196768, p. 53). Because a non-human animal is an amoral being, Guthrie reasons, it is illogical to treat it as an amoral being at the same time. Hence, we should treat a non-human animal as an amoral being, that is, to treat it amorally. Thus every time we bite into a pork chop, we need not ``cringe in sin'' or feel guilty (Guthrie, 196768, p. 55). The crux of Guthrie's argument is really that because a non-human animal is not a moral agent, it is therefore excluded from the realm of moral concern. This line of reasoning seems too quick, however, because it is based on an ambiguity in the term ``moral being.'' In one sense, Guthrie uses the term ``moral being'' to mean a moral agent. In this sense, since a wild wolf is not a moral being and is incapable of acting morally, what it does to a wild dear is not subject to moral appraisal. In another sense, Guthrie uses the term ``moral being'' to mean a recipient or object of moral concern. These senses of ``moral being'' are clearly different. A being that is not a moral being in the rst sense can be a moral being in the second sense. An infant is a clear example: It is not a moral agent, but can be a recipient or object of moral concern. Thus, Guthrie's argument that purports to show that we need not cringe in sin when biting into a pork chop is a result of his commission of the fallacy of equivocation.9 Moreover, I take it that virtually everyone would agree that we should not cause any unnecessary pain to animals. If this is correct, then at least to this extent we should treat them morally. I shall offer an account as to why we should not cause any unnecessary pain or suffering to non-human animals in section VI below. This account is based on the view that most non-human animals have some intrinsic value. I shall discuss Carl Cohen's view in section VIII below. IV. THE MATTER-OF-DEGREE VIEW Contrary to the above types of view is the view that intrinsic value or moral status is not all-or-nothing, but a matter of degree. We may call this view the matter-of-degree view. Although the structure of this view is different from that of an all-or-nothing view, this view is in substance in-between the two types of all-or-nothing views discussed above because it maintains that whereas human persons have intrinsic value or moral status, non-human animals do have some lesser intrinsic value or moral status. R.G. Frey (1988) and Bonnie Steinbock (1978) are proponents for this view. Of all three types of view, the most plausible one is the matter-of-degree view.

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We know that there is a wide range of conscious life among different species of animals: at the higher end of the range, self-conscious life, and at the lower end, mere sentient life and even non-sentient life. If consciousness itself is a product of evolution, and if all species are the results of more-or-less gradual evolution, then a more-or-less continuum of differing levels of consciousness is what we would expect. Human beings have the capacity for the highest level of conscious life in the animal kingdom, and their conscious life is also the richest. Their lives are richer and at a higher level than those of chimps and gorillas, and chimps and gorillas in turn have a richer and higher level of conscious life than birds and reptiles. And birds and reptiles have richer and higher levels of conscious life than sh, shrimps, and crabs. At the lowest end are amoebae, bacteria, and virus, which are probably not conscious at all, and accordingly their lives have no richness at all. Animals have various capacities, some of which are intrinsically valuable and some not.10 The intrinsically valuable capacities of an animal are those that enable it to experience life, such as the capacities for experiencing pleasure and for having a ourishing life.11 As Frey observes, (1) the intrinsic value of a life is a function of its quality, (2) the quality of a life is a function of its richness, and (3) the richness of life is a function of its scope and potentiality for enrichment (Frey, 1988, p. 193). In other words, the intrinsic value of a life is its capacity for experiencing life, or experiential capacity. The capacity for experiencing conscious life is an intrinsic good, even if one's life turns out to be full of sufferings.12 Compared with other living things, a human being is capable of having a richer life, such as listening to music, writing a book, and discovering about the universe. Even if we suppose the view, held by Paul W. Taylor,13 that humans are not in fact superior to other living things is correct, it does not follow that human life is not richer, or does not have more intrinsic value, than the lives of other species. To take an extreme example, it seems clear that a human life is richer and more intrinsically valuable than that of an amoeba. Even compared with a dog's life, a human life is still richer, for a human can mold her own life, and can participate in activities and projects that enrich her life. Though a dog can do things that a human cannot, there is no reason to think that all species must have equal intrinsic value. I hope to have sketched some brief reasons for the matter-of-degree view and against its rivals, in this and the preceding two sections. The main

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arguments of the rest of this paper are premised upon the matter-of-degree view. V. ANIMAL RESEARCH AND NON-VEGETARIANISM: THE TWO-VARIABLE PROBLEM The main thesis of this paper is that we have difculties in solving the central problems of animal rights despite the fact that the easy cases have solutions.14 The central problems are as follows. First, when we sacrice the lives of animals not to save human lives, but merely for the sake of improving the quality of human lives, questions arise as to whether we are justied in doing so or not. One example is animal research that aims at preventing or curing non-fatal human diseases. Another example is using animals as a source of food. Second, when we sacrice the lives of animals in medical research in order to save more human lives, it is not clear whether we are justied in doing so because it is not clear whether non-human animals have the right to life. These two problems, I shall argue, have no obvious solutions at present, though in part for different reasons. Let me put forward the structure of the rst problem and its besetting difculties, as I see them. (I shall consider the second problem in section VIII.) In many traditional moral questions, such as those concerning the limits of freedom of speech, only human beings are involved, and we only need to consider the competing claims of the parties involved. In deciding whether people have the right to defame others as a special case of the right to free speech, for instance, we take account of the pros and cons of allowing defamation versus the pros and cons of prohibiting it. In other words, we have to weigh and compare the claims of potential defamers versus those of potential victims. In this way, we can in principle arrive at the solution. Unfortunately, in questions that involve non-human animals, the traditional method of weighing and comparing the competing claims becomes inadequate. The reason is that besides considering (1) the relative moral weight of the competing types of claim in question, we also need to consider (2) the intrinsic value or moral status of the competing parties, namely, the intrinsic value of human beings (whether human patients beneting from animal research, or human non-vegetarians) and that of non-human animals. Here, a human being and a non-human animal have different intrinsic value, or moral status.15 It will become obvious that this is a crucial consideration to the issue

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of animal rights. Let me say for now that in the traditional moral problems involving only competing claims of human persons, we need to consider the variable of competing claims only. But in cases involving not only human beings, but also non-human animals, an additional variable of intrinsic value (or moral status) needs to be considered as well. I shall argue that, because of this additional variable, we do not know how to make the comparison of competing claims between humans and non-human animals in many cases. Obviously, in some cases, comparison of claims between humans and nonhuman animals does not pose any difculty. If either a normal human adult or a dog is to die, it is morally preferable that the misfortunate occurs to the dog, because less intrinsic value would be lost. One situation in which a solution is available, is where one of the two ``variables'' is held constant. Since either one of the two variables may be held constant, let us consider both cases. First, consider the case in which the variable of competing types of claim is held constant. For instance, in the case of either saving a normal adult human's life or a dog's life, but not both, the variable of competing types of claim (i.e., life versus life) being held constant, it is the human's intrinsic value versus the dog's intrinsic value that determines the solution. A solution is therefore possible. Second, consider the case in which the variable of intrinsic value (or moral status) is held constant. For instance, if we could choose to save either one stranger from injury, or another stranger from being killed, then we should choose to save the latter. Here the variable of intrinsic value being held constant, the relative moral weight of competing types of claim determines the outcome of the issue. A solution is again possible. It is clear that if one of the two variables is held constant, the problem can in principle be solved.16 It does not follow that only if one variable is held constant can the problem be solved for the following reason. Suppose either a normal adult human is to be killed, or a dog is to become injured, but not both. It is surely better if the dog is to become injured than if the human is to be killed. In this case, no variable is held constant, but both variables intrinsic value as well as type of claim are on the human's side. So if the human's claim defeats the dog's claim when both claims are of the same type, then a fortiori her claim will defeat the dog's claim when both variables are on her side. However, if either a normal adult human is to be injured, or a dog is to be killed, which would be worse? We can conceive of a party's claim to consist of two variables, (x, y) where x indicates its intrinsic value and y indicates the moral weight of its type of claim. Thus, we can conceive of a normal adult

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human's claim to be saved from injury as, rstly, her intrinsic value, and secondly, the claim to be saved from injury (abstracted from the fact that it is a human's claim). Similarly, we can conceive of a dog's claim to be saved from death as its intrinsic value and the claim to be saved from death (again abstracted from the fact that it is a dog's claim). My claim is that, apart from some exceptional cases to be considered in the next section, we know how to compare the claims of two animals of different species, only if (1) one variable is held constant or (2) both variables are on the side of one of the parties. This means that if one party has higher intrinsic value, whereas the other's claim belongs to a morally weightier type of claim, then, apart from some exceptional cases, we do not know how to make the comparison at present. Thus, given that a human person has higher intrinsic value than a dog, and also given that the (dog's) claim to be saved from death belongs to a morally weightier type of claim than the (human's) claim to be saved from injury, we do not know whom to save, if we can only save one of them. This is because the human has higher intrinsic value, whereas the dog's claim belongs to a morally weightier type of claim. I believe the problem at present has no satisfactory solution for the following reason. We need to take into consideration the human's intrinsic value and the type of claim of which her claim is an instance, as well as the dog's intrinsic value and the type of claim of which its claim is an instance. That is to say, we need to compare a normal adult human's injury with a dog's death, and then decide which, objectively, is worse. But we do not yet have any ethical calculus or conceptual apparatus to compare (1) the morally less weighty type of claim of a normal adult human who has certain intrinsic value, and (2) the morally weightier type of claim of a non-human animal of lesser intrinsic value. This type of case is very common. On example is animal research that aims at alleviation of human pain, or that enhances the quality of human lives. It is an animal's claim to life versus a human's claim to be free from pain17 (or some non-fatal disease). Another example is the problem of whether we are morally permitted to have steak for dinner. We do not need to have steak for survival but we like its taste. So here, it is a cow's claim to life versus the nonvegetarian's claim to good taste.18 On the above issues of animal research and non-vegetarianism, advocates of animal rights only discern the difference between the moral weight of the claim to life and that of the claim to some lesser good (such as alleviation of pain, or taste). Those on the opposite camp, on the other hand, only focus on the difference between beings of higher intrinsic value and those of less

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intrinsic value. However, neither view is the full truth, because each is only partially valid. Yet we can also say that both views have to be taken into account. The problem is that these partially valid perspectives seem incommensurable and cannot be combined. (I shall consider the question of whether both variables can be combined in the last part of section VII.) The result is that the above problems of animal research and non-vegetarianism are undecidable, because they do not have a determinate solution. We may call this the two-variable problem, and the thesis that these cases are undecidable the undecidability thesis. This explains why at present we do not know how to resolve the conict between the variables. If I am right, the impasse in the above problem of animal research and non-vegetarianism has a deeper source than we have so far acknowledged. The undecidability thesis has implications not only for animal research and non-vegetarianism, but also for similar situations, such as cases in which animals are killed so that human beings can have benets of a lesser type. For instance, minks and foxes are killed so that some people can wear their furs. Pigs are skinned so that those who received burns of a non-fatal type in a re can heal more quickly. Rabbits are caused great pains before becoming blind so that we can have shampoo that does not irritate our eyes. VI. APPROXIMATION AS A WAY OUT Despite the undecidability thesis, we might be able to nd ways out of the impasse in exceptional cases. One way out is by way of approximation. When scientists and mathematicians encounter in their research a factor which is so small in dimension, compared to other relevant factors, as to be negligible or trivial, they make approximation when doing so enable them to make progress in their research. There is no reason why ethicists cannot make approximation in similar circumstances. One type of approximation is justied when the benet gained by human beings is so little as to be negligible or trivial. This is so because deeming certain claim of a party to be negligible is, on a rst approximation, tantamount to wiping it out from our consideration (analogous to scientists considering certain things to be so small, comparatively speaking, as to be negligible). And the contrary claim, being the only claim under consideration, must therefore win out. One such example is the causing of unnecessary pain or suffering to animals. Pain or suffering caused to an animal is unnecessary, if the corresponding benet

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to humans is negligible.19 Because such negligible benet can be deemed to be nil, we should not cause animals any such pain or suffering. Some vegetarians also purport that our benet in consuming meat is negligible or trivial. Assuming that including meat in one's diet has no other benets than the pleasure of taste, Peter Singer, for one, has tried to convince us that our interest in tasting meat is negligible or trivial. If he is correct, then nonvegetarianism would be morally wrong. For if tasting meat is deemed to have negligible or trivial value for humans, then killing animals for their meat on a rst approximation would be tantamount to killing them for nothing. However, many people, including some sympathetic to animal rights, do not agree with Singer that consuming meat has trivial or negligible value for humans.20 We can also deem certain sufferings to be as bad as death. When the suffering is so painful, incapacitating or dehumanizing that one will consider it almost as bad as death, approximation can be made. For instance, Mary suffers from a certain disease. It does not threaten her life, but causes her severe and continual pain and as a result she is unable to think or work. For her, thinking and working are essential parts of life, without which life would be meaningless and not worth living. Therefore, Mary considers her disease to be almost as bad as death. Thus, if we can save either a dog's life, or Mary from such severe condition, but not both, we should save Mary, on the ground that not saving her would be as bad as death for her. In a different type of case, we can make approximation not about the moral weight of a claim, but about the intrinsic value of one side concerned. For instance, if a useful experiment requires the sacrice of oysters, one can argue that the intrinsic value of oysters is approximately nil, and that such an experiment is justied. Another example concerning the approximation of intrinsic value is this. Suppose we can save either a chimp from injury, or a gorilla from death, but not both. Who should we save? A chimp is more intelligent and has a greater experiential capacity than a gorilla, but only slightly. However, there is a big difference between injury and life. So we should save the gorilla. I do not have a general theory of how, or in what circumstances, we should deem either certain benet to be trivial, or certain harm to be almost as bad as death, or certain intrinsic value to be equal to another intrinsic value. However, it seems that cases eligible for the method of approximation represent only a relatively small fraction of all cases. If so, this would mean that many cases of animal research and non-vegetarianism are still plagued by the two-variable problem, and appear to be undecidable.

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VII. IS UTILITARIANISM A WAY OUT? Someone might object: ``Utilitarianism can render all types of claim to be commensurable. The moral weight of all human and non-human claims can be reduced into either: (1) pleasure and pain, or (2) happiness and unhappiness, or (3) the satisfaction of preferences.'' Since this is an important challenge to my view, I shall consider such a view at three different levels, namely, at the levels of (1) practical feasibility, and (2) theoretical possibility, of inter-species comparison, and at the level of (3) moral signicance of any such comparison. First, even assuming that there is no theoretical problem in inter-species comparison, I question whether any such comparison whose result is not already obvious can really be carried out according to utilitarianism in practice. I admit that there are cases in which the result of comparison is obvious. If we can either save a dog's life and a normal adult human's life, but not both, utilitarianism will tell us that saving the human's life will maximize utility and hence is the right thing to do. But we do not need utilitarianism to tell us that this is what we should do. In fact, on my view, as well as on any other view, this is what we should do. Now can utilitarianism tell us whether we should save a dog's life or a normal adult human from injury, if we can save only one of them? On my view, and on many people's view, (1) if the human's injury is negligible or trivial, we should save the dog's life, and (2) if the human's injury is very serious, we should save the human from injury, because we can rely on the method of approximation. There is no reason why a utilitarian cannot arrive at such results by means of approximation. But can a utilitarian achieve more than that? Can she resolve the problem as to whether saving the dog's life, as opposed to saving the human being from injury, would maximize utility? Or in other words, can she carry out in practice the inter-species comparison between the dog losing its life and the human getting injured? My challenge is that utilitarianism is not useful in practice, because it cannot resolve the difcult cases in practice.21 Now, I want to challenge the very theoretical possibility of inter-species comparison of utility (aside from some obvious cases where we can use the method of approximation), on the ground that there does not exist a common denominator to make such comparison possible. Let me explain this point with an easy case. Assume that a sh is only a receptor of pain and pleasure, and has no higher or other experience. My question is, how can we make interspecies utility comparison between a human being and a sh? We can imagine

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a governmental proposal to turn a small lake (full of sh) into a landll on which to build a marine museum (because there is no other site available), and in the process, all the sh will be killed. Is there any way to take account of and compare (1) the pleasure which would be enjoyed by the sh if they were still around, plus the pain experienced when they are killed, and (2) the utility enjoyed by all who visit the museum. The hedonistic theory can fully take account of the pain experienced by the sh as well as the pleasure that would be experienced by them if they were not killed. But it cannot fully take account of the utility or benets enjoyed by those who visit the museum, because their benets (such as knowledge and other experience) cannot be reduced into pleasure and pain. This is a familiar point,22 and I need not belabor it.23 The crucial point is the less familiar one as to whether preference utilitarianism can enable us to carry out inter-species comparison of utility.24 I have grave doubts about the view that preference utilitarianism can enable us to do so. The rst major problem concerns whether a sh has preference of any kind. To have a preference for x, as Donald Davidson rightly argues, is to have a certain propositional attitude, or ``evaluative attitude'', about x (Davidson, 1986, pp. 197, 203). To have an evaluative attitude such as having a preference involves several capacities. First, one would have to be aware of the alternatives, and this implies that one knows what the alternatives are. Second, one has to be able to compare these alternatives and, third, to be able to make a choice among them. All of these capacities require a certain degree of intelligence and self-consciousness. Can a sh have such an attitude? I doubt it, because if, as I assumed, a sh is a mere receptor of pain and pleasure, then ex hypothesi it cannot have any of these capacities. Even if this assumption is relaxed, it still seems that a sh is not self-conscious or intelligent enough to have these capacities. Now it might be objected as follows. First, there is surely a broader sense of the word ``preference'' such that even a sh can be said to prefer life to death, health to sickness, and pleasure to pain. Second, even if lowly creatures such as clams, shrimps, and sh do not have preferences, surely all mammals (and perhaps even birds and reptiles) are self-conscious and intelligent enough to have preferences, and so inter-species comparison is still very meaningful and applicable to a whole range of situations. As to the rst objection, I have three counter-arguments, and the second and third of them also serve as counter-arguments to the second objection. First, I agree that it is better for a sh to stay alive than to be eaten, and to stay healthy

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than sick, and to have pleasure than pain. But unless a sh has the capacity for evaluative attitude, it cannot have preference, because it is one thing to say that it is better for x (or in the interest of x) to  rather than to , but quite another thing to say that x prefers -ing to -ing. For instance, it is better for a ve-year-old child (or it is in his or her interest) to attend school than to stay in the playground day after day, but he or she may prefer what is not in his or her interest. So I am not denying that there is something which is in the interest of a sh or a ve-yearold child. All I am denying is that (1) the interests of the ve-year-old child should be equated with his or her preferences, and that (2) the interests of the sh can be expressed in terms of preferences, let alone be equated with them. Second, suppose that I am wrong about this, and that a sh does prefer pleasure to pain.25 We still need to worry about whether a sh has all the relevant preferences. We can consider a non-human mammal, which clearly has preferences. But does it have all relevant preferences. Suppose a dog can have either ve intensely pleasurable years of life, or ten moderately pleasurable years of life, before it dies. Does it have a preference? The answer would seem to be no, because though a dog is capable of having preferences, it is not capable of having any preference about these options. For in order to have a preference in this case, a dog must understand the meaning of these options, but we can assume that a dog does not have such understanding. I am not saying that there is no correct answer as to which alternative is better for the dog, or which is in its interest. There probably is such an answer, but the range of preferences a dog is capable of is not sufcient for deciding all (answerable) questions concerning its well-being. Third, can a sh have cardinal preferences? Unless the preferences of a sh form a set of cardinal preferences, there is no way to maximize utility (or preference satisfaction) between a sh and a human being. And it seems impossible to obtain a set of cardinal preferences of a sh. This point also serves as a reply to the second objection that non-human mammals (and perhaps even birds and reptiles) clearly have preferences. If non-human mammals only have preferences in the ordinal sense, but not in the cardinal sense, clearly no utility maximization is possible. In order to form cardinal preferences, one would need to nd out one's utility function, dened in terms of preference and probability, as von Neumann and Morgenstern suggest (or something that plays a similar role). But it is clear that, with the possible exceptions of the primates, other mammals simply do not have the capacity to work out their von Neumann-Morgenstern utility functions. Even if I am wrong about this suppose they have such utility functions but are merely

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unable for us to spell them out26 still there is no theoretical way to proceed to inter-species comparison without having their utility functions in hand. My point is that the von Neumann-Morgenstern utility function (or something that plays a similar role) of a dog is a necessary condition for interspecies comparison between a human and a dog if we are to maximize preference satisfaction between them. Even if we have such utility function of a dog, it does not mean that inter-species comparison is possible. One problem is that this utility function was invented for intrapersonal comparison, not interpersonal comparison. Even if we have the utility functions of Mary and her dog, there is no non-arbitrary common point on these two functions to make the comparison meaningful.27 Suppose again that I am wrong, and that inter-species utility comparison is possible. Suppose we have evidence to infer that a human's preference to  is stronger or more intense than a dog's preference to . Does it mean that the human preference to  should be given priority over the dog's preference to ? A preference utilitarian would say so. Here is my challenge to preference utilitarian at yet another level. I am not now challenging the possibility of inter-species comparison, but rather the moral signicance of inter-species comparison based on the strength or intensity of preference. Thomas Scanlon argues that while we can make all sorts of interpersonal comparisons of wellbeing between persons, such as according to how much gold each has, the moral basis on which such a comparison is carried out is often open to criticism (Scanlon, 1991). I believe that a fortiori a similar point can be made about inter-species comparison of preferences. It is doubtful that we can draw anything of moral signicance from the fact that a human being's preference to  is stronger or more intense (or, for that matter, is weaker or less intense) than a non-human mammal's preference to . Scanlon convincingly argues for the following points. First, individuals do not take the fact that they have a certain preference to be a ground-level reason for choosing one thing over another. More commonly, people prefer one outcome for a reason, and this reason, which is the ground of preference, is also the ground of choice. This is because things are normally not valued because they are preferred but, rather, preferred because they are judged desirable for some other reason.28 Second, Scanlon argues, the moral weight of a preference depends on its content and our assessment of it rather than our sense of the bare strength of the person's degree of satisfaction or dissatisfaction (Scanlon, 1991, pp. 3637). A fortiori, it seems to me, Scanlon's point would apply to inter-species preference comparisons. We cannot obtain the moral weight of preferences

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held by a human and a non-human mammal by comparing the strengths of the preferences alone. If a tiger has a stronger preference to devour Mary than her preference to stay live, does it mean that it is objectively better that the tiger devours Mary? It would seem not, if only because the weakest preference of a tiger may be stronger than the strongest preference of a human, perhaps by virtue of their biological make-up.29 Clearly, Scanlon's point that the moral weight of a preference cannot be equated with its strength severely undermines preference utilitarianism. Further, inter-species comparison is more difcult to carry out than interpersonal comparison, because the former comparison purports to bridge a larger gap than the latter comparison. Some utilitarians argue that when we compare the relative value of experiences or desires, we rely on our imagination to imagine what having those experiences or desires might affect a life, and base on our imagined possibilities we judge their relative merits. However, as Thomas Nagel powerfully argues, while we can imagine the subjective experience of other people, we simply cannot imagine very clearly what it is like to be a creature that is biologically very remote from us (Nagel, 1974; 1986, chap. 6). If Nagel is correct, then inter-species comparison according to this utilitarian approach are practically if not theoretically impossible in many cases.30 Now there is a further issue in my approach to the two-variable problem that I need to address. The fact that the moral weight of an animal's claim is a function of two variables by itself does not imply (nor do I claim) the impossibility of solving the problem, provided there is a way to combine the two variables. I do not see any way to combine them, but of course that does not mean there is no way to do so. Someone may argue that we can build in the intrinsic value of a being into its claims, before comparing its intrinsic-valueladen, or weighted, claim. Some utilitarian may argue: ``All intrinsically good things are psychological states. Each such state will be the state of some creature or other. Total utility will then be a weighted sum of the utilities of each creature capable of having such states, the weights reecting the differing intrinsic value of the creatures. The morally correct thing is to maximize the total utility.''31 Obviously the weighted sum of utility and intrinsic value would be some measure of the moral weight in question, and no one can deny that. Having said this, apart from the obvious problems as to how to measure utilities and intrinsic value between species, the crucial objection to this approach is that it is not clear why intrinsic-value-weighted claims, formulated in the last

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paragraph, can solve the problem. It is not clear why the (mathematical) product of utility and intrinsic value would give the denitive, or correct, measure for the moral weight of claims in question. Why should not the denitive measure be the product of utility and the square of intrinsic value, for instance? One might say that both are measures of the moral weight in question with slightly different emphasis on the two variables. However, it is absolutely crucial to arrive at a denitive measure, because we are trying to nd guidance as to whom to save in a dilemma and two different measures may give contrary guidance. To see this point, consider the following example. Suppose, according to the ``weighted-sum'' method, the disutility of a man getting injured is 20 units, whereas that of a dog getting killed is 22 units. Does it mean that the objectively correct thing to do is to save the dog from death rather than the man from injury? It does not seem conclusive or denitive because, for one thing, the feeling of indeterminancy still persists. For another, suppose one uses the slightly different method of measuring the product of utility and the square of intrinsic value, and (since the dog's intrinsic value is lower than the man's) this method would give a different result. For example, assume that the intrinsic value of the man and the dog to be 1 and 0.4 respectively. Whereas the disutility of the man's injury remains 20 units, the disutility of the dog's death becomes 8.8 units. What does this show? I think this shows that we need to have a denitive measure combining utility and intrinsic value, but that there are not sufcient grounds for thinking that either of these measures discussed is denitive. Now although I have been trying to show that at present we do not yet know of any satisfactory solutions to the two-variable problem, I do not want to predict that denitely there will be no solution to it. I am only trying to explain what the problem is, and why a solution appears to be unavailable. As Nagel says, this ``need not be thought of pessimistically, since the recognition of a serious obstacle is always a necessary condition of progress'' (Nagel, 1991, p. 3). Our understanding of where the problem lies, is a rst step toward nding the solution. VIII. DO ANIMALS HAVE RIGHTS? In section V, we considered the two-variable problem, and I argued that it leads to the undecidability thesis. Let us now turn to animal research that saves human lives. Notice that the undecidability thesis is inapplicable here, because

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the variable of type of claim being held constant (i.e., both the human and the non-human animal both compete for life), the human's higher intrinsic value means that her claim, all things considered, is morally weightier.32 Moreover, sacricing a small number of non-human animals might save a larger number of human lives. So it looks as though we are justied in sacricing a certain number of non-human animals for research that can save at least the same number of human lives. But do non-human animals have rights, such as the right to life?33 This question of whether non-human animals have rights is vitally important. When dealing with the two-variable problem in section V, we treated the issues of animal research and non-vegetarianism as if they were structurally similar to the question of whether to save a non-human animal or a human, that is, as if they were only a matter of comparing the competing claims between a human and an animal. In fact, an important dimension to these issues (which I have not discussed so far) is whether animals have rights, such as the right not to be killed, harmed, or otherwise used as mere means to ends. In the case where we choose to save either a normal adult human or a dog, but not both, it does the dog no injustice if we save the human. No deontological grounds are relevant, and hence consequentialist reasoning alone is adequate. In the cases of animal research and non-vegetarianism, however, we are using animals as mere instruments, and whether we have done them injustice depends on whether they have the rights not to be killed, harmed, or used as mere instruments.34 I shall rst discuss Carl Cohen's argument that purports to show that animals do not have rights. He denies that non-human animals can have any right on the following grounds: A right, properly understood is a claim, or potential claim, that one party may exercise against another . . . [Rights] are in every case claims, or potential claims, within a community of moral agents. Rights arise, and can be intelligibly defended only among beings who actually do, or can, make moral claims against one another. Whatever else rights can be, therefore, they are necessarily human; their possessors are persons, human beings. (Cohen, 1986, pp. 4589) A right-holder, according to Cohen, must have certain capacities in order to have rights. He does not claim originality for his view, because he says that the attributes of human beings from which this capacity arises have been pointed out by various great philosophers. It is described as ``inner consciousness of a

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free will'' (St. Augustine), ``the grasp, by human reason, of the binding character of moral law'' (St. Thomas), ``the self-conscious participation . . . in an objective ethical order'' (Hegel), and ``the universal human possession of a uniquely moral will and the autonomy its use entails'' (Kant) (Cohen, 1986, p. 459). ``Human beings are self-legislative, morally autonomous. [But] [a]nimals . . . lack this capacity for free moral judgement. They are not of a kind capable of exercising or responding to moral claims'' (Cohen, 1986, p. 459). Cohen's argument involves two steps. First, in order for a being to have a right, it must be able to exercise this right, that is, to be able to make claims against others who are right-holders. Second, this ability to make claims against others is supposed to require moral autonomy. Neither step is obvious, but Cohen does not purport to explain either step. I suppose Cohen's rationale behind the rst step is that unless one has the capacity for making claims against another right-holder, there is no point in ascribing any right to one. I nd this rationale doubtful. If a representative of x can make claims on x's behalf, then even if x lacks the capacity for making claims itself, Cohen has not provided any basis for denying x's status as a right-holder. A limitedliability company (which is a legal person) is one example, which literally does not have the capacity for making claim. However, since it has representatives who can make (and receive) claims on its behalf, it can have rights (and liabilities). Similarly, in the common law, one's right of self-defense can be exercised by one's parents or close relatives. So even if one happens to be a child or even infant, one's right of self-defense is not defeated simply because one is not capable of advancing one's claim.35 There are certain rights, such as the right to vote, which everyone would agree it does not make sense to attribute to an infant or a non-human animal. The ground for this is presumably that they lack the capacity for voting, a capacity that presupposes autonomy.36 On the other hand, there are certain rights which do not require autonomy. These are the rights not to be killed, raped, or assaulted, etc. These rights are ``protective rights,'' which act as a shield to protect one's body against unwanted external intrusions. This shield is operative all the time, for autonomous and non-autonomous human beings. If I am correct so far, then having a protective right, unlike having the right to vote, does not imply that the right-holder must be autonomous. Therefore, even if infants and non-human animals do not have the necessary capacity for exercising rights, it does not mean that they cannot have such rights. In Cohen's view, an infant would not have the right to life, because he or she is

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not autonomous. I realize that this is a controversial area, but it seems to me that Cohen's view would be contrary to our moral intuition about the right of self-defense (discussed above), and also contrary to the common law.37 I suggest that to have a protective right, the right-holder need only have the capacity to have interest, not autonomy; however, having a right to vote would be another matter. If I am correct, then Cohen's argument fails. Even if Cohen fails to convince us about his purported necessary condition for having rights, it does not follow that non-human animals have fullled the sufcient conditions for having such a right not that we know what the sufcient conditions are. The rst problem concerning whether animals can have rights has to do with our ignorance of, or at least the lack of consensus about, what the sufcient conditions for having rights involve. To say the least, what constitutes the sufcient and necessary conditions for having rights is highly controversial. Apart from this, the main difculty in determining whether animals have rights, or which species have rights, stems from the fact that various species are similar to, and different from, human beings to different degrees.38 The spectrum from sh to reptiles, to birds and mammals is rather wide-ranging. The difculty, then, involves how to demarcate the spectrum of all sentient animals into those who are right-holders and those who are not, without arbitrariness. I nd this hopelessly difcult. In other words, if the matter-of-degree view is correct, the spectrum of creatures from sh to human beings represents a continuum of intrinsic value. To determine which type of creatures have the right to life, and which do not, will surely involve a certain degree of arbitrariness. Since arbitrary solutions are not good philosophical solutions, the issue of whether non-human animals have rights has remained unsolved. This is also the reason why three important philosophical problems have remained unsolved. They include the problem of personal identity, in which memory is a matter of degree but personal identity is all-or-nothing. The problem of whether a human fetus is a human being is another example, because a fetus grows continuously, but whether it is a human being is supposed to be an all-or-nothing matter. Finally, the search for the denition of knowledge is another instance. Justication of belief is a matter of degree,39 but knowledge is supposed to be all-or-nothing (Unger, 1975, chap. 2). If I am correct, the question of whether animals have rights, or which species have rights, has a similar structure. This issue does not seem any easier to resolve than those of personal identity, the moral status of human fetuses, and knowledge.

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IX. CONCLUSION In this paper, I have performed three tasks. First, having sketched some reasons for thinking that the matter-of-degree view is more plausible than its rivals, I argued that we do not yet know how to deal with the two-variable problem, and hence that the questions of whether animal research that prevents non-fatal morbidity, and non-vegetarianism, are justied is undecidable at least at present. Second, while many philosophers who champion ethical vegetarianism are utilitarians, I argued that utilitarianism and in particular preference utilitarianism cannot resolve the two-variable problem. Finally, in regard to life-saving animal research, I considered the question of whether non-human animals have rights, and I showed that this question is not any easier to resolve than the issues of personal identity, the moral status of human fetuses, and knowledge. Those who accept the all-or-nothing views would have an easier time solving the problem of animal rights for the following reasons. First, neither anti-speciesist, nor speciesist, all-or-nothing views would lead to the twovariable problem or the undecidability thesis. For in assuming that non-human animals either have intrinsic value equal to that of human persons, or have no value at all, the two-variable problem leading to the undecidability thesis is thereby reduced into a one-variable problem, which is solvable. But such reduction is premised upon implausible all-or-nothing views, which I rejected in sections II and III. Second, because anti-speciesism regards non-human animals as having the same intrinsic value or moral status as human beings have, the deontological problems concerning life-saving animal research and non-vegetarianism are again solvable. For deontological constraints against killing or harming people would also be applicable to the case of killing or harming non-human animals. And hence both of these practices would have to be banned. If, on the other hand, one embraces speciesism, then again the issues are solvable, for both life-saving animal research and non-vegetarianism would be morally acceptable, on the grounds that non-human animals have no moral status or intrinsic value whatsoever. As I have said, since anti-speciesist and speciesist all-or-nothing views are implausible, the fact that the issues of animal rights would have been solvable if they were plausible is unhelpful. I do not know whether nor do I suppose that the problems of animal rights are in the end undecidable. But I hope to have shown why there appears to be no satisfactory solution to these problems,

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at least at present. The ``solutions'' offered by various writers so far are less than convincing at best, and unbelievable at worst, because either all-ornothing views have been assumed, or else those holding a-matter-of-degree views40 fall short of providing a convincing solution. One reason why all-or-nothing views fail is that the moral reality is less tidy and more complex than they portray. In philosophy, views that take short cuts (e.g., some forms of reductionism) often achieve solutions by cutting the reality down in size or scope. The residual reality is manageable. But the desire for solutions and simplicity is satised at great costs, because the problem attacked is no longer the original one. As Thomas Nagel observes, ``[s]implicity and elegance are never reasons to think that a philosophical theory is true'' (Nagel, 1979, p. x). As he also points out, ``one should trust problems over solutions, . . . and pluralistic discord over systematic harmony'' (Nagel, 1979, p. x). At the very least, Nagel is correct about the issue of animal rights. For the all-or-nothing views are forms of reductionism that cut down the moral reality in size, that is, by cutting down a two-dimensional issue into a one-dimensional one.
NOTES
1. I argue that traditional ethics is not adequate for solving the problem of abortion in Li, 1997. 2. Intrinsic value, being an end-in-itself, is opposed to instrumental value. Yet, there are different sorts of intrinsic value. When we say that a work of art has intrinsic value, we mean it has value-in-itself. But such value is derived from the fact that beings like us appreciate works of art. Following Joseph Raz (1986), this sort of intrinsic value can be called derivative intrinsic value. On the other hand, a human being has value regardless of the existence of any other beings which might appreciate her presence. And this sort of intrinsic value can be called non-derivative intrinsic value. In this paper, I shall be talking about non-derivative intrinsic value only. 3. By `intrinsic value', I mean non-derivative intrinsic value. See Note 2. Moreover, I shall not distinguish between ``non-derivative intrinsic value'' and ``moral status'' in this paper. 4. Paul W. Taylor is an important proponent for this view. He holds that every living organism has a good of its own and it can be harmed or beneted by our actions (Taylor, 1981). To say that a living thing possesses inherent value is to say that its good is deserving of the concern and consideration of all moral agents, and that the realization of its good has intrinsic value. For Taylor, all living things have inherent value simply because they are members of the Earth's community of life. Further, all living things possess the same inherent worth because no species is ``higher'' or ``lower'' than, or ``superior'' or ``inferior'' to, any other species. Taylor's view seems to me implausible for it implies that all living beings for instance, a bacterium, a plant, and a human person have the

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same inherent value. Plainly, this cannot be correct since a human person must have higher value than a bacterium. Moreover, Taylor does not address the troubling issue of how to balance the competing claims of different types of being. For instance, are we morally justied in eating vegetables? 5. I am hesitant about including Peter Singer here for two reasons. First, he is a utilitarian, and supports the case for animals only to the extent that this will maximize utility. Thus, he is an unreliable supporter for animals because his egalitarianism of all (human and non-human) animals or anti-speciesism can get ``trumped'' by his utilitarianism, when the two are in conict. More important, he may not believe that intrinsic value is all-or-nothing. 6 In an analogy to explain what inherent value is, Regan says that one is to one's experiences as a cup (or receptacle) is to its content (Regan, 1983, p. 236). This means, for Regan, while one's experiences have value, one who leads a life has inherent value that is not reducible to, nor commensurate with, the value of one's experiences. Moreover, one's inherent value cannot be earned, nor does it depend on one's utility to others. It is also independent of one's being the object of anyone else's interests (p. 237). 7. This seems to me a plausible view, but unfortunately one that he no longer maintains. See Regan, 1983, p. 412, n. 3. My only major disagreement with Regan (1978) is that I believe the greater inherent value of a normal adult human consists in her greater experiential capacity rather than her moral virtues (as Regan said in 1978). 8. Regan's rescuing of his position can be found in Regan, 1983, pp. 324-5. His view is that we should save the normal human instead of the dog on the ground that the human is harmed to a greater extent than the dog, because of the opportunities of satisfaction that death forecloses (Regan, 1983, pp. 324-5). But this has the counter-intuitive consequence that, if a life boat does not have enough room for everyone, we should throw overboard the elderly before everyone else. 9. Tom Regan uses the term ``moral patients'' to refer to those subjects-of-a-life that are not moral agents. Though they are not moral agents, they can be objects of moral concern because they can suffer as much as moral agents do. See Regan, 1983, esp. chaps. 5 and 7. 10. The capacity to absorb water, to be carried around easily by human beings, and the capacity to engage in photosynthesis are not morally relevant, nor are many others one can think of. 11. In a sense, any living organism can ourish in that they all can multiply in number. This is clearly not the sense of ourishing I am talking about. A person with many children may not have ourished (in the relevant sense); an accomplished artist with no children is likely to have a ourishing life. So to say that one has ourished is not to describe one biologically. 12. My view here is similar to Regan's view that one's inherent value is independent of the experiences one actually has. 13. In Taylor's view, ``various nonhuman species have capacities that humans lack. There is the speed of a cheetah, the vision of an eagle, the agility of a monkey. Why should not these be taken as signs of their superiority over humans?'' (Taylor, 1981, p. 474.) For fuller discussion of Taylor's view, see Note 4. 14. If one is attacked by a wolf, one would be justied in killing it. Another instance is the case in which we can save either a normal adult human or a dog, but not both; we should save the former. 15. I am using these terms interchangeably, though I am aware that, for some authors, they do not mean the same thing.

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16. Of course, in order that the problem can be solved in principle, we have to assume that it has no other difculties, such as the presence of deontological constraints that might complicate the issue. 17. Here I do not mean some extreme pain over a long period of time, which may be as bad as death. I consider such a case in section VI below. 18. To explain this point further, we can use the following analogy as a heuristic device. We can, in mathematics, solve an equation with one variable (e.g., 2x 8); but we cannot solve certain equations with two variables (e.g., 2xy 8), because there is one unknown too many. The moral analogue in the animal rights problem is as follows. We can solve the problem of competing claims in which (1) two entities of different intrinsic value have claims of the same type, or (2) two entities of the same intrinsic value have claims that are not equally morally weighty, or (3) when both variables are on the side of one the competing parties. In (1) and (2), one variable is held constant and hence in effect eliminated. However, we do not know how to solve the problem in which two beings of different intrinsic value compete for types of claim of contrary moral weight. That is, when an intrinsically more valuable being makes a morally less weighty claim whereas an intrinsically less valuable being makes a morally weightier claim, we do not know how to deal with the problem, because there is one unknown too many. Note that the above analogy is not a perfect one, because whereas we do not know what the solution to the animal rights problem is, the equation ``2xy 8'' has innitely many solutions. But I think the point of the analogy is clear and worth making, namely, that no satisfactory or unique solution exists without eliminating one of the two variables, and in this sense both cases are undecidable. Thus, the utilitarian axiom that every person is to count for one is not only important in its own right, but is also a vital premise without which (or something that plays a similar role) no maximization of utility could possibly begin. For by assuming that everyone is equal, utilitarianism assumes everyone's intrinsic value to be equal. This allows utilitarianism to hold ``one variable'' constant, and thereby in effect eliminate it from ``the equation''. 19. Another sufcient condition for unnecessary pain or suffering is when there exists another way to achieve the same benet without causing so much pain or suffering to the animal. 20. The rst reply takes issue with Singer with respect to his assumption that including meat in one's diet has no other value than taste. The Chinese people, for example, have for centuries held the belief that consumption of meat is good for health. The chief aim of obtaining expensive food, such as birds' nest, shark ns, and abalone, is for keeping good health. Their belief may or may not be correct, but cannot be assumed to be false. One can also take a more speculative line by arguing that humans are omnivores, animals that by nature would feed on both plants and meat, and that to deprive them of meat is to deprive them of half of their diet. And if we believe in the theory of evolution, we may infer that there should be some benets for omnivores to consume not only plants but also meat just as carnivores must eat only meat, whereas herbivores must feed on only plants. Now I am not saying that this view is correct, but only that this is an empirical issue and needs to be explored. The second reply is that even if consumption of meat is for the satisfaction of our taste buds, it does not follow that such activity has negligible or trivial value. It is somewhat surprising that Singer, a preference utilitarian, would try to ignore many people's preferences to include meat in their diets. Some of these preferences could be very intense. Even for a non-utilitarian, the pleasure of consuming meat, like various other types of pleasure (such as sexual pleasure), cannot be deemed to be have negligible or trivial value. Moreover, many cultures were built on their food cultures. I am not suggesting that

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21.

22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36.

non-vegetarianism is justied, but only that it is unlikely to be repudiated by our deeming the value of taste to be negligible. Utilitarianism has no clear advantage over the methodology of relying on approximation. But utilitarianism is not the same as the method based on approximation. The former purports to sum up benets to many parties involved (as in a case where one can sacrice an animal in research to save a number of people from pain), whereas the latter is basically an approach of one-to-one, or pair-wise, comparison. In fact, it is well-known that both the utilitarian theory of pain and pleasure, and that of happiness and unhappiness, are problematic because many things that humans value cannot be reduced into these terms. If the main difculty with hedonistic utilitarianism is that too many things cannot be reduced into pain or pleasure, then the same can be said of the utilitarianism based on happiness and unhappiness. Peter Singer, a preference utilitarian, believes that preference utilitarianism can do so (Singer, 1999). One might object that we should ascribe preferences to a sh based on its behavior. But it can be replied that unless a creature has evaluative attitudes, its behavior is not sufcient for grounding preferences. We can use someone's behavior as evidence for ascribing preferences to her, but that is only because we know that she has evaluative attitudes. An amoeba or bacterium may ``behave'' in certain way upon stimulus, but clearly we are not justied to impute preferences to it. A dumb and deaf person still has von Neumann-Morgenstern utility function, even if he or she is unable to inform us about it. For a similar point on interpersonal comparison, see Allan Gibbard, 1986, esp. p. 177. For further discussion of this and related issues, see Scanlon, 1998, chaps. 1, 3. See also Scanlon, 1975. I thank Joe Lau for pointing this out to me. I thank John G. Bennett for urging me to take this approach more seriously. What is argued here also applies to the case in which consumption of meat can save human lives, as in a case of shipwreck, where the only source of food available is non-human animals. By ``the right to life'' here and henceforth, I mean the right not to be killed. The issue of whether non-human animals have rights is important in regard to the signicance of the undecidability thesis. For if non-human animals have such rights, then apart from the undecidability as to whether to save a dog's life or a human from injury, the thesis has little relevance in regard to non-vegetarianism and animal experimentation, since an animal must not be used as a mere instrument. On the other hand, if a non-human animal does not have any right, we can use it for medical experiments that save human lives, though the undecidability thesis still applies in most cases of non-vegetarianism. (For the exceptional cases of non-vegetarianism in which the undecidability thesis does not apply, see Note 32.) So it is important to nd out whether non-human animals have rights. There seems no reason why morality should not follow the common law in regard to the right of self-defense. I am not saying that this is Cohen's position. Cohen's view is not only much more sweeping in scope, but he seems to think that in order to have a right, one must be able to make claims against others. And this view of his is different from the view that certain rights (such as the right to vote) require autonomy.

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37. Two remarks. First, there are obvious connections between the right to life and the right of self-defense. For one thing, the right of self-defense appears to be grounded on the right to life. Second, the view I discuss here is Cohen's view in Cohen, 1986. His most recent view is that infants, but not animals, have rights, on the grounds that x has rights if x belongs to a kind whose normal adults have rights. I cannot go into discussing his recent view here, highly implausible as it seems. But see Cohen's view and Regan's critique of it in Cohen & Regan, 2001, chap. 5 and pp. 275279 respectively. 38. I disagree with Regan's claim that it is the similarity, rather than the difference, between humans and non-human animals that is more important. This seems to beg the question. 39. We can say that Einsteinian physics is more justied than Newtonian physics, which in turn is more justied than Aristotelian physics. 40. Bonnie Steinbock's seminal paper on animal rights is full of interesting ideas (Steinbock, 1978). However, she holds a view similar to Carl Cohen's on the necessary condition for having rights. She argues that humans are morally autonomous, can reciprocate, and have the desire for self-respect whereas animals do not have these capacities, and therefore that humans are in a privileged position compared to animals. Hence animal research that involves animal suffering is justied, she argues, if that is the only way to save human beings from crippling diseases (Steinbock, 1978, p. 438). There are two areas in which Steinbock's view is wanting. First, her view on the necessary condition of having rights is problematic (see discussion of Cohen's view in section VIII). Second, even if it can be assumed that non-human animals do not have rights, then while I would agree that we can sacrice them to save humans from ``crippling pain'' (via the method of approximation), it is not clear whether animals can be sacriced for curing lesser pain or diseases. Despite his valuable paper on intrinsic value (Frey, 1988), R.G. Frey is an act-utilitarian who argues that (1) rights do not exist, and (2) even if rights exist, non-human animals do not have them because they do not have interests (Frey, 1980). I cannot go into discussing him here, but both claims seem to me implausible.

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REFERENCES
Cohen, C. (1986). The case for the use of animals in biomedical research. In: T.A. Mappes and J.S. Zembaty (Eds.), Social Ethics (1997, pp. 458466). New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Originally in The New England Journal of Medicine, 315, 865870. Cohen, C., & Regan, T. (2001). The animal rights debate. Lanham, Maryland: Rowland & Littleeld. Davidson, D. (1986). Judging interpersonal interests. In: J. Elster and A. Hylland (Eds.), Foundations of social choice theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frey, R.G. (1980). Interests and rights: The case against animals. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Frey, R.G. (1988). Moral standing, the value of lives, and speciesism. Originally in Between the Species, 4 (1988); reprinted in: H. LaFollette (Ed.), Ethics in practice: An anthology. Blackwell, 1997, pp. 139152. Gibbard, A. (1986). Interpersonal comparisons: Preference, good, and the intrinsic reward of a life. In: J. Elster and A. Hylland (Eds.), Foundations of social choice theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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