Davies, B. orcid.org/0000-0003-4612-7894 (2017) Utilitarianism and animal cruelty: further doubts. De Ethica, 3 (3). pp. 5-19. ISSN 2001-8819
Abstract
Utilitarianism has an apparent pedigree when it comes to animal welfare. It supports the view that animal welfare matters just as much as human welfare. And many utilitarians support and oppose various practices in line with more mainstream concern over animal welfare, such as that we should not kill animals for food or other uses, and that we ought not to torture animals for fun. This relationship has come under tension from many directions. The aim of this article is to add further considerations in support of that tension. I suggest three ways in which utilitarianism comes significantly apart from mainstream concerns with animal welfare. First, utilitarianism opposes animal cruelty only when it offers an inefficient ratio of pleasure to pain; while this may be true of eating animal products, it is not obviously true of other abuses. Second, utilitarianism faces a familiar problem of the inefficacy of individual decisions; I consider a common response to this worry, and offer further concerns. Finally, the common utilitarian argument against animal cruelty ignores various pleasures that humans may get from the superior status that a structure supporting exploitation confers.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2017 The Authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ |
Keywords: | Agricultural, Veterinary and Food Sciences; Animal Production; Biological Sciences; Disputed aetiology and other |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > Department of Philosophy (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 20 Dec 2023 16:31 |
Last Modified: | 20 Dec 2023 16:31 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Linkoping University Electronic Press |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.3384/de-ethica.2001-8819.16335 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:206843 |
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