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What Do We Owe Our Fellow Creatures?
Thursday, February 2, at 1 p.m., U.S. Eastern time
While philosophers have widened the debate over who is entitled to justice to include members of minority groups and women, they have not adequately asked whether the concept of justice extends to nonhuman animals. Some thinkers have argued that our ethical obligations extend only to rational beings, and that the only reason we should treat animals well is to preserve our own ability to behave morally. Others have said that any sentient being deserves a life that contains more pleasure than pain -- as long as protecting that life results in a net gain for society as a whole. But aren't other issues relevant to the quality of an animal's life, issues such as free movement, dignity, and affiliations with other animals? And can the suffering of laboratory animals, for example, be justified because it may help other people and animals?
In this week's Chronicle Review, the philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum offers another approach to thinking about the moral status of animals, which she calls the "capabilities approach," a theory of justice that she has previously developed for the human case.
"It is a waste and a tragedy," she writes, "when a living creature has an innate capability for some functions that are evaluated as important and good, but never gets the opportunity to perform those functions."
Ms. Nussbaum argues that each nation should adopt Constitutional guarantees protecting animals as subjects of political justice and guaranteeing them treatment "in accordance with their dignity." Courts and legislatures should then interpret precisely what that means. We also need international accords, she says, to prevent cruelty to animals and the destruction of their habitats.
What are the implications of Ms. Nussbaum's argument for a range of issues, like scientific research, the production of food, and more? Do you agree with her?
» The Moral Status of Animals (2/3/2006)
Martha C. Nussbaum is a professor in the philosophy department, the law school, the divinity school, and the college at the University of Chicago. Her book Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership has just been published by Harvard University Press.
Karen Winkler (Moderator):
Hello and welcome to this week's Colloquy Live. Today we'll spend the hour talking about what rights animals have - to justice, a rewarding life, and flourishing according to their capabilities. I'm Karen Winkler, a senior editor with The Chronicle Review, and I'll be your moderator today.
I want to thank our guest, Martha Nussbaum, a professor at the University of Chicago, for joining us. She recently published a new book extending her philosophic approach to justice to include justice for people with disabilities, justice across national boundaries, and justice for nonhuman animals. Martha, would you like to start us out with a few introductory comments about the topic of justice for animals?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
Hello, I'd like to thank the Chronicle very warmly for making this space available to discuss the important topic of animal rights.
For about 20 years, I've been working on an approach to basic political entitlements that is called the "capabilities approach," and is also known as the "human development approach." My early work on this approach was done in an institute called the World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER) of the United Nations University, in collaboration with economist Amartya Sen, who won the Nobel Prize in 1998 for his work on poverty and development. Sen has focused on the economic aspects of the approach, I on its philosophical aspects. Development agencies used to measure well-being in terms of Gross National Product per capita, ignoring the distribution of goods (sometimes GNP can be quite high when the poor are doing very badly), and ignoring the importance of goods such as health and education that are not well correlated with GNP. Today, the Human Development Reports of the UN Development Programme measure welfare in a new way, by looking at some key "human capabilities." The capabilities approach says that the right question to ask is, "What are people actually able to do and to be?" -- in various areas judged to be important.
I have used this approach to develop a theory of basic justice, in a series of articles and then in my book Women and Human Development (2001), where I focus particularly on gender justice.
In my new book, I develop the approach further. And I consider three issues that all involve large asymmetries of power between the parties. This has meant extending the approach in a variety of ways, particularly where the well-being of animals is concerned.
It's important to know that a lot of people are now working on various aspects of the capabilities approach, including its implications for environmental issues. Look up the Human Development and Capability Association on the Web and you'll find that there is a lot going on. This is an international organization founded three years. Sen was its first President, and I am now its second. I am always eager to get more people involved, including critics of the approach, whose arguments often help us make progress, more than the arguments of enthusiasts!
Question from Terry Schoeps:
I strongly agree. To get this to the legislative level, what are some scenarios you envision as to ~how~ we might get there? Our society is currently so closed to humane education and mocks animal rights, even in the supposedly neutral news media. I feel overwhelmed when I consider what a colossal undertaking this would be.
Martha C. Nussbaum:
You might like to look at the book Animal Rights that I edited with Cass Sunstein, where some lawyers make some very good suggestions. One important issue is evening out protections. Domestic animals and working animals are currently reasonably well protected by law, although states vary and the protections are not always well enforced. Animals raised for food and animals used in experiments have no such protections. We need to raise public awareness so that the public will not tolerate the current treatment of animals in those areas.
A second related issue is getting more information out to consumers. We have a project at our law school that is working on that. We think that many people would pay somewhat more for animals raised in a humane manner, if the information were made readily available to them on a label. The success of Whole Foods demonstrates that. So, we are working on a label that could be made mandatory for all meat. That would be a big step, and over time, I believe, it would make the factory-farming industry reform itself.
A third issue is establishing legal "standing" for animals so that there is some way of contesting nonenforcement of current laws. Just as people with mental disabilities now can claim their rights through a guardian, so, too, it ought to be possible for animals to claim their rights; but actually it is not possible, and so underenforcement of existing laws is widespread. On a larger scale, several European nations have enacted ambitious laws regulating the food industry and other areas of animal treatment: Look up the Austrian law for a model of what can be done.
Question from Judith Shapiro, Barnard College:
It is not clear to me that the "rights" approach is as effective as approaches like that advocated by Matthew Scully, in his book Dominion. He invokes concepts like mercy and stewardship. What are your views on this? I ask not as a believer, but as an anthropologist.
Martha C. Nussbaum:
Hello, Judith, great to hear from you! In my view, the idea of stewardship suggests inferiority and dependence. Men were taken to be the stewards of women when people believed that women were inferior and could not make decisions for themselves. The idea that we are stewards of animals similarly connotes the idea that they are lower, and of course that idea is deeply rooted in the Judaeo-Christian tradition.
I'd rather say that animals are different from humans in many ways, and that some of those ways make it reasonable for humans to make decisions on their behalf in some cases, but that doesn't really mean stewardship. Some animals are utterly independent of human beings, though in today's world humans have to protect their habitats if the animals are to be able to flourish. Other animals have evolved in a symbiosis with human beings and depend on human care for their flourishing. But even those animals (domestic animals) are not inferior, any more than a child is inferior to an adult. Animals are agents, striving to live a flourishing life. Left to their own devices, they will act and strive, and it is that idea of an active being, an agent whose strivings deserve respect, that I believe to be well captured by my capabilities approach. (This approach is one species of a rights-based approach, but it lacks some of the problematic features of many rights-based conceptions: For example, it doesn't hold that rights are just prohibitions against interfering state action, and it insists that positive action is required to protect all the capabilities. But that's an issue for another time.)
As for mercy: in my view mercy is a characteristic of a sentence meted out for wrongful conduct. A merciful judge is one who gives a lighter sentence than the one that is strictly applicable. (That is not just my view, but that of Aristotle, Seneca, and many other thinkers about the topic.) But what does that have to do with our relationship to animals? Most animals are not capable of deliberately wrongful conduct, so the very idea of first holding them accountable and then giving a lighter sentence does not seem to me to make sense. Compassion of course does make sense, but compassion is perfectly compatible with the protection of rights. Indeed in some cases we might think that true compassion requires the protection of rights. If someone were to say, "I have great compassion for the suffering of the slaves," but failed to care about giving slaves freedom and political and civil rights, I would be inclined to doubt the quality of that person's compassion.
Question from Nick Ferreira, Wolfson College, Oxford:
What counts as a violation of an animal’s dignity? Is it only human actions, or also the behaviour of other animals and harsh environmental factors? Does a zebra pulled down by a pack of wild dogs in the bush suffer an infringement of its dignity? How about a pride of lions that starves to death during a natural drought? The behaviour of animals in the wild seem to pose a problem for your view, especially you say that the focus is “on the individual creature”. What are we to say of the male leopard, which will do his best to kill and eat his own cubs? Since those cubs “never get to move around, enjoy the air, exchange affection with other members of their kind,” is their marauding father violating their dignity? Isn’t such behaviour better understood as natural, evolutionarily driven, and non-moral?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
You ask a very important question, on which I spend a lot of time in the book. In my view (as you rightly conjecture), it is just as much a violation of an animal's dignity to be ripped apart by another animal as to be ripped apart by a human. However, the conduct of the other animal is not wrongful and unjust in the way human such conduct would be, because a predatory animal cannot be expected to learn to control its predatory instincts. (Where dogs and other domestic animals do damage, I would say that there is wrongful conduct, namely that of the owners, who either exacerbate or fail to control the dog's predatory tendencies. Courts typically agree, holding owners responsible when a dog kills another dog.) Where animals are living beyond human control, it is a tough question how far humans should intervene. Surely we should intervene to protect animal habitats, and usually the destruction of such habitats is our fault anyway. I think we might also intervene to control animal population size through contraception, as is already happening in some instances. We don't need to introduce wolves to reduce the elk population in a gruesome and violent way, if we work on contraception for elks. Where animals are under human control, as in parks or zoos, then I think that we do have a responsibility to give an animal some outlet for its predatory instincts, so it won't have the pain of frustration, but this can typically be done without feeding it a live other animal. I discuss in the book a case from the Bronx Zoo, which has found that giving a tiger a weighted ball to claw and catch works well, and they don't have to give the tiger a little gazelle. You are quite right that all this behavior is to be seen as natural, but my approach cautions against nature-worship. Nature is sometimes good and often very bad. Morality, not nature, supplies the standard.
Question from Pedro Madeira, King's College London:
Dear Martha Nussbaum, We've got the strong intuition that animals who live in the wild ought to be left to fend for themselves. Do you think you can account for that intuition and still hold on to moral individualism?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
First of all, I don't hold on to "moral individualism" as James Rachels defines it, and he is the one who popularized this phrase in the context of animal rights. What he means by "individualism" is that the species of an animal has no moral relevance at all, only its individual endowment. I argue that the species does have moral relevance, since an animal's possibilities of flourishing are defined by the species community to which it belongs. For Rachels, there is no difference between a severely retarded human being and an animal with similar capacities. For me there is a huge difference, because a human being can only marry, have children, participate in politics, etc. with other human beings. Such a human being does not have the option of living a happy life with chimpanzees. What I conclude from this is that expensive efforts to teach children with mental disabilities to read, use language, etc., are amply justified in the human case, whereas teaching chimps language, while fun and interesting to us, is not important for them, since language use is not an important part of flourishing as a chimpanzee. Now to your real question. There is no "wild" any more. Every animal habitat is pervasively influenced by humans. We'd better face up to that, and take responsibility for the influences we exert. There is no alternative of "leaving things to nature." There are only two alternatives: responsible care for habitats, and irresponsible care. Responsible care, in my view, means not only trying to keep things "as they are," whatever that means; it also means thinking up new interventionist strategies, importantly including contraception, that can protect animals from suffering. Not all animals' suffering is caused by humans, but even when it isn't, we are on the scene and we would be negligent if we did nothing about it.
Question from Michael D. Mehta, Professor of Sociology, University of Saskatchewan, CANADA:
As someone personally concerned with animal welfare, I became an ova-lacto vegetarian three years ago. As a former body builder, this was a significant shift in mindset for me. I am now convinced that a life without meat is better for my health, the environment, and of course for animals. How do we extend your thinking on animal rights to the topic of vegetarianism?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
With Bentham and Peter Singer, I think that the most important issue is the infliction of pain and various other harms on animals during their lifetime. If an animal had a reasonably long and happy life, and then died a painless death, then it seems to me much more questionable whether its death is a serious moral wrong. You might look at an excellent article on this point by the philosopher R. M. Hare, called "Why I am only a Demi-Vegetarian," in a volume called Singer and His Critics. Here Hare says that his main concern is to get information about how the animal lived and whether its death was really painless. If he can answer those questions to his satisfaction, he'll eat meat. Singer replies that this seems a sensible ethical position, but that for him, since he's an international activist, he has to have a simpler policy. My own policy follows Hare's: I do eat fish that are decently treated (mostly wild salmon), and although I am not totally comfortable about this I do feel that at my age, running distance races, I need the protein that fish provides. Occasionally, I eat some other free-range animal (e.g. a free-range turkey from Whole Foods on thanksgiving). One reason why we are working so hard on consumer information at our law school is that we think many if not most consumers would pay more for animals that were decently treated during their lifetime, and that this alone would represent a major victory. I think this is an issue that individuals have to work out for themselves. Perhaps, though, we can all agree that factory farming is a horrendous moral wrong and should be done away with.
Question from Professor Gary L. Francione, Rutgers University School of Law:
Your “capabilities” approach, which requires better treatment of animals based on particular interests, militates in favor of better animal welfare. Indeed, this sort approach has been discussed in the animal welfare literature for years now. Putting aside the practical difficulties in determining the nature of these interests, your approach ignores the fundamental moral issue: Whether we necessarily fail to accord justice to sentient nonhumans by ~using~ them, however “humanely,” in ways in which we would not use any human (irrespective of particular capabilities). As I have argued elsewhere, there are serious difficulties in claiming that sentient nonhumans are indifferent to whether we use and kill them as long as we do not inflict suffering on them in the process. In short, “humane” slavery is still slavery. If nonhumans have any “fundamental” rights, then they surely must have the right not to be treated exclusively as human resources, even if we treat them better. The “capabilities” approach addresses matters of the treatment of nonhumans; it does not address the more fundamental question concerning the use of nonhumans.
Martha C. Nussbaum:
Hi Gary, first of all, I have the greatest admiration for your work. And, as I have said, the question you raise is one that troubles me, and will go on troubling me. I can see myself coming to a more radical position. Right now, though, I'm with Singer and Bentham in thinking that the main issue is quality of life and painless death. If an animal really has a decent life (e.g. a fish swimming around in the wild) and then dies a really painless death, then it's just not clear to me that this is tantamount to slavery. The ways we may use an animal do vary with the species of animal and its capacities. Rachels was right on this point: an animal that does not have the capacity for autonomy is not harmed by not being given autonomy. If a rabbit does not have free speech, that is not a harm either. Even if a chimp is not taught the use of language, though we know chimps can learn language, I don't think that's a harm, because language use is simply not central to chimpanzee flourishing. So, it is too simple to say, Let's never treat animals in ways that we wouldn't treat a human. Each animal deserves the right to flourish according to its own capacities. Bentham and Singer think, plausibly, that the fact that animals don't have future-related interests affects whether painless death is a harm for it. I agree -- up to now. But of course, as I say, I am still pondering this, and someday I may think differently.
Question from Robin Thatcher:
In Pennsylvania pets are considered property. The owner has the right to do with that property as he or she sees fit (as long as there is no violation of animal-cruelty law). We must accede to the owner's wish when an animal is presented for euthanasia. It is not up to our people (or any volunteer) to second guess the owner's wish.
If an animal surrendered to the SPCA becomes the SPCA's property, and it has the right to euthanize it under this agreement, shouldn't the same agreement work to protect an animal from euthanasia if a good quality of life is still viable for the animal?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
In my view, animals should not be considered property in the sense you describe. That conception, while not incompatible with laws protecting animals from cruelty, gives far too much control to the owner, as you point out. I would rather see our relationship with domestic animals reconceived along lines suggested by current legal arrangements for people with mental disabilities: They are not allowed to make certain sorts of decisions without a guardian, but they are regarded as having rights, and the duty of the guardian is to protect those entitlements. That prompts the sort of inquiry that you rightly want, namely one about the best interests of the creature involved. I heartily agree that an animal should not be euthanized at the whim of the owner; instead, we should consider the whole quality of life of the animal. If we reconceive decision-making in that way, then I guess it may be all right to continue to buy and sell animals. The important thing is that buying doesn't give "owners" limitless scope to please themselves: They have to consult the interests of the animal.
Question from Kathyf Kobyljanec, John Carroll University:
What do you mean by your response to Kings College, London in regard to animal suffering not caused by humans, ie an example?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
Throughout the world's history, climate change and other natural events have inflicted harm on animals, in many cases causing the extinction of species. The difference is that today we are able to stop such 'natural' changes from harming animals, because we are omnipresent in the world. So, even if we notice that it is a natural event, such as an earthquake or a fire not caused by humans, that is causing animal suffering, we don't need to sit idly by and do nothing.
Question from Emily Wade, University of Texas:
Would legislation stemming from the capabilities approach outlaw farming, killing, and eating nonhuman animals in societies in which nutritious alternatives are readily available? Would "free-range" or "organic" farming make any difference?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
It would certainly outlaw farming. Killing and eating seem to me more complex. As I said to a previous questioner, if an animal has a decent life and then dies a painless death, I'm with Jeremy Bentham and Peter Singer in thinking that it's not clear there is any grave moral wrong here, given that animals typically do not have interests that extend way into the future, or fear their own deaths. I recommend (as to the other questioner) R. M. Hare's excellent article "Why I am Only a Demi-Vegetarian," in the collection SINGER AND HIS CRITICS, which emphasizes the importance of good life and painless death. Of course I'm aware that this position of mine is controversial, and others have some arguments in favor of banning all meat-eating that I will continue to ponder very seriously.
Question from Gene Claburn, retired:
Considering the flagrant history of rampant violation of individuals of other species by individuals of our own species (together with the extensive economic interests of many members of our species in perpetuating extensive cruelty to other animals) and the extreme rarity of individuals such as Bentham, Singer, and yourself, on what possible basis might you have any real hope of seeing human behavior change in the direction you suggest? To imagine, for instance, a body of lawmakers such as the current U.S. Congress or a court such as the current U.S. Supreme Court coming anywhere remotely near the empathetic sensitivity toward members of other species exhibited by the Indian court to which you refer is utterly out of the question. While a tiny percentage of us care enough to worry over many fine points of this field of ethics, clearly most people consider the very idea of such thoughts to be only a silly joke. I do feel that this attitude of the vast majority of human beings is more easily explained by the course of our evolution to our current state than your thoughts or mine. I have a really hard time imagining that our species at large is ever likely to get where you and I and the small number of others with similar concerns would so strongly prefer. Even if you make, as you seem to be doing, excellent progress in understanding how we ought to act, how are you going to change enough of us so drastically?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
Your question already contains the seeds of my answer. You note that in India there is greater sensitivity. This cultural variation suggests that insensitivity to animals is not the result of biology, but, rather, of our culture. Richard Sorabji argues well that in the ancient Greco-Roman world there was also much more sensitivity to animal suffering than there is now. What happened, in his view, was that the most hostile school on this point, Stoicism, happened, for unrelated reasons, to exercise more influence than the more animal-friendly schools. But I'd add the strong influence of a Judaeo-Christian heritage that tells us that humans are above animals and can have dominion over them. (Not that there aren't many examples of fine sensitivity to animals in that tradition as well.) So this variation give us hope that changing our culture will change these judgments. Already in the eighteenth century, a burgeoning literature about animals began to stop some of the cruel practices then allowed, such as bear-baiting and cock-fighting. In my lifetime we've seen the demise of fox-hunting in Britain, and a good deal of progress in protecting domestic animals from cruelty. Austria and Italy have recently passed sweeping new laws that affect factory farming and other practices. I believe that what makes the difference is getting the information out, and giving people alternatives. When people (a) know how the animals they eat suffer and (b) have sensible alternatives, such as meat raised under humane conditions, they will make human consumer choices. Whole Foods, the Body Shop, and others are successful because of this. We need a lot more like them.
Karen Winkler (Moderator):
Just a reminder. We're about half-way in our Colloquy. Keep your questions comming.
Question from Erfan Sabeti, Lancaster University:
Dear Professor Nussbaum, Do you find common religious teachings in favor of animal rights? best regards,
Martha C. Nussbaum:
Hi Erfan, How wonderful to hear from you. I am so glad that you are doing well in England, and let me take this opportunity to say publicly that the treatment of people of the Bahai religion in Iran is an international horror and scandal that is much too little discussed. Maybe you'll write back and tell people what the Bahai religion says on this issue: I'm sure that it says good things. Buddhism has very interesting teaching in favor of animal rights, and the first Buddhist emperor of India, Ashoka, started to promulgate laws prohibiting at least some cruelty to animals (though he continued to eat meat). Hinduism has interesting teachings also, but is uneven, protecting cows but not all sentient creatures. Many Hindus, however, apply the teaching more broadly and are vegetarian. In the Western tradition, vegetarians have sometimes linked their arguments to Christianity: Gandhi, when in England, belonged to a radical Christian vegetarian community, and in South Africa he encountered other such Christians. Other British defenders of animal rights, however, were religious skeptics or atheists: Bentham, Mill, George Bernard Shaw (who was a vegetarian). Good luck in your work.
Question from Frank Forman, U.S. Department of Education:
No philosopher seems to have cogitated over the fact that pain and pleasure have distinct neurological mechanisms. Philosophers regard pain as negative pleasure, and to find out the total pleasure in a situtation, one merely adds up the pleasures and subtract the pains. But you hint also that they maybe they should not always be treated as opposites. But even so, somehow a choice (actual or moral) will get made, and it won't be to hold pain (or pleasure) as an absolute first value (like Rawls placed liberty ahead of equality). You balk at utilitarianism for just that failure to place an absolute value on a soveriegn, dignified individual. However your problems with utilitarianism are resolved, what about pleasure and pain? They are not in fact opposites. Should the philosopher be interested in the evolutionary history of the separate mechanisms? How should the difference get acknowledged in moral philosophy and in making moral choices? (Hint: We don't in fact make irrevocable choices so much as a succession of New Year's resolutions.)
Martha C. Nussbaum:
You raise a very important philosophical question, and one that is even thornier than you suggest. Utilitarians typically treat pleasure as a feeling, varying only in intensity and duration; they treat pain as a similar feeling. But ever since the time of Plato philosophers have expressed doubts about this analysis. On one plausible view, which I accept (and so too did Mill, thus breaking away from Bentham) pleasures vary in quality as well as quantity: the pleasure of reading a book is different in quality from the pleasure of going for a swim. Aristotle already suggested this: he said that pleasures supervene on activity, perfecting or completing it. So the whole idea of maximizing pleasure doesn't make a lot of sense. There is a lot of good discussion of how we should analyze pleasure in the philosophical literature: I'm particularly fond of an older book that gets too little attention, Justin Gosling's PLEASURE AND DESIRE. Also good is C. C. W. Taylor's commentary on Plato's PROTAGORAS in the Clarendon Plato Series. Gosling and Taylor have a large difficult book on pleasure in antiquity, but I rather prefer the things they published separately. As for pain: it's at least a bit more plausible to think of pain as a single feeling, but probably that isn't adequate either. There are surely qualitative differences between bodily and mental pain, and there may possibly even be non-conscious forms of pain. (When we're afraid of death, that fear is often lurking beneath the level of conscious awareness, and I think it's not too odd to think that it brings pain with it, a kind of tension and destruction of alacrity and enthusiasm.) So, we need to go on working on this problem, and I think the Greeks give us help still.
Question from Jamin Carson, East Carolina University:
Some who do not believe that animals have rights argue that a right is a justifiable claim to something, e.g., life, liberty, etc. and that such rights for animals would be impossible to maintain given that human existence would tacitly violate these rights. For example, in order to survive humans must use the environment in some way and this use inevitably results in harming animals if only indirectly. So if animal rights can be violated even on a very small level, so that humans can live, how can animals have rights at all? Rights, by definition, are inalienable.
Martha C. Nussbaum:
Well, much depends on what rights we think animals have and what we think humans need. I don't think that animals have rights not to be killed. As I said to Gary Francione, I think that a painless death after a decent life is morally ok. That being my position (right or wrong), I can easily imagine a world in which humans don't violate the rights of animals. But suppose I had Prof. Francione's tougher position: even then, I can imagine a world in which people don't eat meat. It is quite easy to imagine. I spend a lot of time in India, where a large proportion of the population is vegetarian, and you can see right away that this is perfectly possible. In the ancient Roman world, there was widespread vegetarianism, and the Romans seem to have done quite all right. As we are able to make more non-animal protein sources available through agricultural technology, it will become more and more possible. I think that the whole idea that humans must inevitably exploit animals is just false.
Question from tom zipp case western reserve university school of medicine:
What about non-Western sources (religious or philosophic) to support this approach?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
Yes, see my answer to Erfan Sabeti on Hinduism and Buddhism, and I hope he'll write back concerning the Bahai faith.
Question from Campbell MacQueen, Howard University School of Divinity:
Thank you very much for the exciting, important work you are doing in behalf of animals.
I will be graduating this May with a MA in Religious Studies and a concentration in social ethics. Is it possible to be part of your work? Do you have any suggestions on how to get involved?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
I'm delighted to hear of your interest. Our work in the Law School (outside of my own personal scholarship) focuses on consumer information. We have a donor who is funding a project that, right now, is trying to develop a label that gives consumers information about the treatment of animals sold for food. Unfortunately, we employ only our own students in this project. There are, however, so many good organizations working on animal issues. Some focus on habitat, some on legal developments. What I suggest you do first is to look at the collection Animal Rights, where there are quite a few articles by lawyers that talk about concrete strategies. Then you could contact one of those people, once you know what kind of project and/or organization interests you.
Question from Michael Gottsegen, Harvard:
You suggest that you manage to avoid a thoroughgoing naturalism, which you prove by citing those forms of natural human behavior that you exclude from your definition of flourishing. But on what basis do you exclude behaviors that Nietsche or Schopenhauer, for example, would endorse as requisite both for the flourishing of the endowed individual and as requisite for the flourishing of the human species? It seems to me that you need (and in effect employ) a Kantian, or Judeo-Christian, principle of respect for the individual that undergirds a universalization procedure that cannot be read off nature, or off the evidence of what might happen to consititute individual flourishing (which might not be in any way compatible with the flourishing of others). IN effect, you assert a right of all beings to a level of flourishing that is expressive of their nature and yet generally compatible with the flourishing of all other beings. That universalization principle is integral to your argument but doesn't seem warranted by the argument from flourishing alone. So what are the grounds of this universalization move?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
Having already argued, in an earlier book, that the very existence of human potential gives rise to moral claims that this potential should be developed and not wasted, I then argue that animals have the same properties that were relevant in the human argument: agency, and striving after flourishing. (Aristotle is my main historical guide here.) So there is no morally consistent way to claim the right to flourish for humans only and deny it to animals. (I've already argued that rationality is not the ground of human entitlements.)
Question from Ross Miller, Ph.D.; philosophy & religion editor, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers:
I read with interest your online article, and am interested in knowing if you deal in your book with the idea of suffering (human, non-human animal) as a legitimate good--perhaps a summum bonum, but perhaps not--and how you propose reconciling (rendering as just) it with treatments which are seen to cause harm or discomfort. Is our moral evaluation to be guided by scales/continuums? Certain absolutes?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
I don't think suffering is good. Sometimes it may be a necessary condition for something that is good (physical fitness, but also friendship, love, having children), but I can't imagine why one would say it's good in itself.
Question from Brenda Foster, GCF Inc.:
How is your suggestion different from existing state legislation protecting animals, fish and public land through the department of the environment and natural resources?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
States vary, but most protect domestic animals quite well, working animals reasonably well, but animals used for food virtually not at all. Law sometimes protect endangered species, but not on humane grounds: the same sort of creature can be tortured without end, if it is numerous enough. And of course the factory food industry brings into existence huge numbers of creaturees whose only purpose is to be tortured and then eaten. Those practices are not banned, and are barely regulated at all.
Question from Richard T. Hull, SUNY at Buffalo:
You say that sentience is a requirement for moral standing. The implication of this is that trees and other non-sentient organisms have no moral standing. Yet there is something noble and valuable about the giant sequoia, the grandfather oak, the bristlecone pine that arguably should be recognized by an adequate theory of justice. How can the value of non-sentient organisms be recognized philosophically?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
I think we do have duties to protect the environment, but I would not call these issues of justice. I take a lot of time spelling out what makes something an issue of justice for me, but the presence of agency and striving, including sentience, is at the heart of it. If we destroy a beautiful tree, that is perhaps wrong, but I don't think that it's an injustice to that tree. But I think that people who hold the capabilities approach may differ on this question, and I have already invited younger workers on the approach to develop alternative positions.
Question from Gary Francione, Rutgers University:
Martha, would it be permissible to kill and use a human with transient global amnesia (or who otherwise lacked the same sense of the past or future as a "normal" human) as, say, a forced organ donor if this were done painlessly? Gary
Martha C. Nussbaum:
Gary, If this human being utterly lacked the capacity to form projects that extend over time (this means lacking the capacity for love and friendship, and so forth), then I think we're basically talking about someone in a persistent vegetative state, and I don't see anything against euthanasia for such a person (really non-person), whether the organs are used or not. But amnesia, as you know, doesn't disrupt the capacity for such temporally extended projects, nor is it usually irreversible. So, much depends on the detailed description of the case.
Question from Michael Gottsegen, Harvard:
Given your capabilties approach, is it morally permissible to prevent our domestic pets from breeding -- at least once in their lives -- so as to enjoy the actualization of that inborn capacity?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
It's a tough question. Austria is correct, in my view, to outlaw practices such as declawing, that are just for the convenience of humans and inhibit characteristic animal behavior. But neutering and spaying seem to me different: they can actually improve the quality of life of individual animals, particularly males (who are less likely to be mauled in fights), and they also make it less likely that unwanted young animals will be left to starve or be abused. On balance, it would be nice to give every female animal a chance at one litter, and this can be done. But male neutering has to be done earlier, and I am (not all that confidently) in favor of allowing it.
Question from Jamie McCarthy, Midwest Avian Adoption & Rescue Service, Minneapolis, MN:
While I strongly agree with your position that animals have inalienable rights just as humans do, and that these rights ought to be protected by society's laws, I have trouble convincing most lawyers of this. They see the law as a system designed by and for humans. How would you address this limited and limiting view?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
You can work on them from two different directions. On one side, you can convince them that animals have capacities relevantly similar to human capacities that are now protected by law. This is Steve Wise's strategy in his excellent book RATTING THE CAGE, and he one of the legal pioneers in this area. On the other side, you can remind them that the capacity for adult human decisionmaking is not required in order for a being to have rights, even under current law. Infants, children, and people with severe mental disabilities already have rights, though of course they need to be represented by a guardian to claim those rights. You can point out that the lack of such arrangements in the case of animals leads to ridiculous anomalies: when laws against cruelty aren't enforced, nobody has standing to demand their enforcement
Question from Sally, Oxford University:
There is a big debate here about using animals as the subjects of scientific tests. What do you think? If animals should not be used to make better the lives of humans, then is it wrong to use animals to (possibly) cure terrible (human) diseases? Thanks.
Martha C. Nussbaum:
I spend a whole section of the chapter on that difficult issue. I think our goal should always be to develop research techniques that do not require inflicting pain on animals. Computer simulation holds great promise. And if we say to ourselves continually that our existing practices are morally bad, we will have firm incentives to push quickly in that direction. Meanwhile, we should certain ban entirely the needlessly cruel treatment of research animals; we should ban all animal research that is frivolous (e.g. cosmetic testing, or psychological tests that are motivated by curiosity rather than the prospect of curing disease); and we should make sure that there is a very good reason to think that research will confer important benefits. One reason I'm not in favor of stopping all research immediately is that animals, as well as humans, benefit greatly from it.
Question from Paul Eckstein, Bergen Community College:
I was struck by your suggestion that on a capabilities view, a capability may have different aspects relevant to moral treatment. You used the example of the tiger at the Bronx Zoo as a way of illustration. Could this be applied to human beings as well? If, for example, we find that the exercise of competitive instincts in humans is essential to flourishing, could we perhaps restrict such exercise to, say, sports or other kinds of game-playing, such that winding up with winners and losers has no appreciable effect on the quality of life of the losers, while banning such activities from the spheres of politics and economics, where the flourishing of losers winds up being sacrificed, as comparable to the case of the small prey of the tigers?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
Absolutely, and I think we already do. That is what sports in school are all about, teaching kids a non-destructive outlet for competitive tendencies. We've made progress here over time: it used to be ok for kids to mock and humiliate the opposition, but now we tend to teach values of respect and decency. We've also learned to reward kids who don't happen to excel in sports, by giving them rewards for effort. We need to go much further in this direction, however, given the centrality of athletic achievement in our society. One helpful thing would be to broaden the menu of sports offered in schools, so that people who can do endurance things (distance running and swimming), or who are good at yoga, will have outlets, as well as those who are good at basketball and field hockey. I now do a lot of distance running, but I spent my childhood in utter humiliation because I was bad at team sports. This does have an "appreciable effect on the quality of life of the losers," so we need to attend to it!
Question from Cara Gillis, UC Irvine:
I've recently been trying to extend a capabilities approach to the case of animals. My argument is, roughly, that we have a duty towards beings in general to respect (and potentially promote) the capabilities necessary for functioning. Our obligations in the case of humans seem more obvious, given that we have fairly intimate knoweldge about both the functions and capabilities of humans. On the other hand, there seems to be problems in determining 1) how we ought to give an account of the capabilities and functions of non-human animals, and 2) what happens when capabilities come into conflict. I.E. when capabilities required for animals and non-human animals are in conflict?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
These are some of the questions I spend time on in my book. I think it is indeed hard to know what capabilities we should be promoting in the case of animals, and many errors have been made by humans thinking badly. But let's face it: it's hard to know about the capabilities of humans too, even our own. In both cases, what's required is close observation combined with empathy. I don't think that in principle knowing what it takes for a dog to flourish is any more difficult than know what it takes for another human (or oneself) to flourish, and people who live closely with animals are good at this. People have all too rarely spent that kind of time with animals "in the wild," but when they do (as in the wonderful essay by primatologist Barbara Smuts in the Coetzee Tanner Lecture volume), they know all they need to know to make sensible recommendations. As for conflict, that's a problem in the human case too, and what we should do is to work for a world in which all beings have a decent shot at flourishing, on all the parameters of capability we select. When (as now with research, see other answers above) there are pervasive conflicts, that's a sign that our world is morally defective and needs more work!
Question from Dan Cudahy:
If there is no moral wrong in “painlessly” killing a non-human animal, why would there be any moral wrong in “painlessly” killing human one?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
The answer given by Singer and Bentham, which I tentatively accept, is that humans have a very different relationship to the future. We form projects that extend into the future, which are frustrated by premature death. We also have the capacity to imagine and fear our own deaths. For creatures who lack these capacities, death is not the same sort of harm, if a harm at all. I think we need to do much more work on the question when and why death is bad for a human being. Epicurus and Lucretius still have not been fully answered. But I've just told you some of the things that I say on this point (in THE THERAPY OF DESIRE, the chapter on Lucretius on death). Those reasons don't seem to apply to animals. If we find that some animals, perhaps dogs or apes, do form temporally extended project and do fear death, we would have some good reasons to think that killing an animal of that kind (apart from euthanasia) is morally bad.
Question from Ralph Acampora, Hofstra University:
Given recent developments of your thinking vis-a-vis animal ethics and the like, have you any thoughts as to implications for eco-philosophy--in particular, would the citizen-of-the-world ideal you champion in earlier work have to be revised or complemented by an inhabitant-of-the-earth conception for human self-identity?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
At a recent meeting of the Human Development and Capability Association, I told the young people working on the approach that there are 5 positions one could take in response to the question, "Whose capabilities count?" 1. Only human beings count as ends, other creatures only as means. 2. Human beings, and other creatures insofar as they are relata in valued relationships with human beings. (This is the position of Women and Human Development.) 3. Human beings and animals. (My current position.) 4. Human beings, animals, and plants. 5. We drop the focus on individuals altogether and think in terms of ecosystems. I said that I didn't have knock-down arguments in favor of stopping at 3, rather than moving to 4 or 5, though some things I said in a reply above about justice and agency seem relevant. I invited the young scholars to work out all these approaches, and the arguments among them, and I hope this will happen.
Question from Sue Leary, Alternatives Research & Development Foundation:
Our foundation funds research into alternative methods of biomedical research, product testing and educational demonstrations, and has provided a million and a half dollars in private funds to universities in the U.S. Your response to a previous question was that availability of alternatives would signal that a culture has options and we have found that to be the case, although it is very gradual. As an academic who is probably sensitive to academic freedom issues, what do you think needs to happen to influence university researchers to adopt alternatives? Do you address the intersection of appropriate science policy and justice for animals in your book?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
I address it only a little at the end, but luckily we have a donor at our Law School who is supporting further work on this question. After our work on product labeling (see above) we're moving on to research. I think that donors can do a lot to make a difference here, so more power to you! The development of alternatives is one of the crucial steps in getting the scientific community to take these ethical issues seriously.
Question from Professor Darian Ibrahim, University of Arizona Rogers College of Law:
Hi Professor Nussbaum: to follow up on your response to Professor Francione, I think a problem (that Singer recognizes, to some extent, in Animal Liberation) is that it is practically impossible to give animals a painless life and death if they are treated as mere means to ends, especially in the case of producing food in a global economy. The factory-farming model, however morally objectionable, is the only model that is economically sound, as James Rachels and others have noted. These practical problems must influence the theoretical approach and militate toward not using animals at all – don’t you agree? Also, Singer and Bentham argue that animals have no future-related interests, but, as Francione argues, does this not involve a question-begging reliance on a humanocentric notion of self-awareness? Thanks for your thoughts.
Martha C. Nussbaum:
I think you're right about the way in which factory farming is inseparable from ethical harms, but I don't think this is the only thing that can work economically. Prior to the Depression, corporate executives would have said, and did say, that protections for workers, of a type that is now mandatory under law were incompatible with economic solvency. People always make such claims. But they were wrong. People can do business ethically and do very well. Much credit goes to pioneers who, without legal compulsion, go against the tide and succeed -- the Body Shop, Whole Foods, etc. As for Francione's point, I don't think that the notion of self-awareness is objectionably humanocentric, and I do agree (see above) that it probably protects some animals, such as dogs, apes, and possibly others.
Question from Jennifer DeHaven, American University:
Ms. Nussbaum, Thank you for offering your time and thoughts on this important issue. If I understand correctly you argue that labels should be placed on meat (and animal products) that would inform the consumer as to the living (and dying) conditions of that animal. My concern is that those who really have no other choice than to purchase products that have come from animals who have been raised in far from humane conditions will still not have the ability to ‘do the right thing.’ For example, I am sure we have all seen the 'log' of ground beef in the grocery store that is by far the least expensive simply because it has come from a large farming complex with a much lower overhead than an organic or free-range facility. In many cases those consumers who are on a very limited budget are forced to purchase those goods that are not only worse for their health but are certainly worse for the environment and the non-hubeing community. How would you propose to address this problem?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
The first step would be to get the information out there. Then I think we'd see an upsurge in people buying the humanely raised product. At that point, its price would begin to come down. After a while (I'm betting) we'll find that such products would be within reach of poorer people. Don't forget, too, that many of the world's poorest people, e.g. Hindu vegetarians in India, eat no meat at all.
Question from Jamie McCarthy, Midwest Avian Adoption & Rescue Service, Minneapolis, MN:
Further to your response on killing animals for the purpose of human consumption. With the sheer numbers of humans on the planet, wouldn't the systematic slaughter of wild animals for food constitute genocide? I think beyond the point of just reflecting on their life and death, what about their innate right to continue to exist and thrive as a species?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
In the book I say that what seems unjust is harm inflicted on actual creatures. Species may have scientific or ethical value, but apart from the harms inflicted on their members (which of course are usually great, when one is becoming extinct) they don't have ethical value.
Question from Justine Dymond, University of Massachusetts Amherst:
How can we know if a non-human animal has experienced a painless death? And does the "capabilities approach" allow for length of life as a consideration? In other words, is it wrong to end a wild salmon's or free-range turkey's life when it would have otherwise continued to flourish?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
We can know only if we trust a legal regime or a corporation (e.g. Whole foods) to tell us the truth, or if, with R. M. Hare (see above) we personally witness our fishmonger conking the fish on the head deftly with his mallet. Trustworthy information is crucial. As for length of life, you've hit on one of the issues that puzzles me the most. I do think that animals are entitled to reach adulthood, which would mean that all killings of very young animals should be prohibited. I thinkt that for some animals, the ones that I've said have a sense of the future and form ongoing relationships, length of life does make a difference: so a dog should be euthanized only when its quality of life has become incompatible with its dignity. Right now I think that the salmon and the turkey aren't in that category, and so we needn't wait till they're on the verge of death. In general, we need to ask whether longer life is better even for humans, and if so, why. But it's a question that troubles me.
Question from Corinne Painter, Michigan State University:
Thank you for participating in this discussion; I think it is extremely important. Assuming you can answer this in brief fashion, what is your argument that the presence of agency (self-directed action?) and striving, including sentience, are morally relevant criteria for deciding which kinds of beings belong to the moral community?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
Well, you should look at what I say in the book and see whether you agree. What makes an issue an issue of justice is a difficult intuitive question, and my argument is really based on a series of appeals to our intuitions, and is thus rather vulnerable. But one has to start somewhere, and for me the question of justice is conceptually bound up with the idea of agency.
Question from Karen Winkler:
I'm afraid that's all we have time for. We've already run a bit over, and I apologize for not being able to get to all our questions. Martha, any final thoughts?
Martha C. Nussbaum:
I want to thank you all for your very illuminating questions, from which I've learned a lot, and for your passionate involvement in this issue, which will surely make our world a better, more just world in the future.