# Animal Rights - Animals, Right!? - Orwell, "Shooting an Elephant"


# Animal Rights - Animals, Right!? - Orwell, "Shooting an Elephant"

## Intro - 100 animals are killed in labs every minute (for science) - 8 billion chickens are killed for food in the U.S. alone (for food) - Do animals have rights?

## Some distinctions - killing / torturing (chickens can be killed without suffering) - torturing for money / torturing for knowledge (civet cats are tormented for profitable product, baboons tortured for scientific research) - animal rights / human virtues (it might be virtuous to be conscientious with your car, coffee table, and clothes even the object of your care don't have rights) - early death / natural death (100% of all animals die eventually)

## Shooting an Elephant - Orwell living in India as a sub-divisional police officer - He (and the Empire) were hated by the local Burmese, though he agreed with them against the Empire >"One day something happened which... was enlightening... gave me a better glimpse than I had before of the real nature of imperialism--the real motives for which despotic governments act." (796)

- The escaped elephant was destroying property and it killed one local - Orwell was called - He asked for an elephant rifle, just as self-protection while he assessed the situation - The Burmese saw the rifle and hypothesized that he was intending to kill the elephant - A crowd amassed - With 2,000 people behind him all expecting him to shoot the elephant, he decided to shoot the elephant - He did, the locals harvested the meat and tusks, and he received mixed reviews from his fellow Brits

### Motive >They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly.

### Motive >And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man's dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd — seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.

### Motive >To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing — no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man's life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.

### Motive >And afterwards I was very glad that the coolie had been killed; it put me legally in the right and it gave me a sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant. I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.

### The Act >But I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have. It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to. (Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal.)

### Discussion * Was it wrong to shoot the elephant? * Is it "murder"? * Is it worse to kill a large animal? (even for food) * Is it better to kill rats and mice and frogs? (only for science)

### Research Animal Deaths - Koalas: 2 - Maccaques: 13 - Possums: 24 - Horses: 28 - Australian marsupials: 38 - Dogs: 172 - Rabbits: 1345 - Guinea pigs: 2913 - Mice: 421,704

### Discussion * Your questions?

# A Defense of Animal Rights

### Singer, Animal Liberation - Equality between blacks, Spanish-Americans, LGBT - Equality between men and women was the "last remaining form of discrimination" until it wasn't - Equality between mankind and animals is the "last remaining form of discrimination" - Sounds like parody.. but so did other movements

### Male Female Differences - Men and women are relevantly similar (in rationality) and so should have voting rights - Mankind and animals are not relevantly similar and so should not have same rights - Mankind and animals do have _some_ differences

### Proportionality > "The extension of the basic principle of equality from one group to another does not imply that we must treat both groups in exactly the same way, or grant exactly the same rights to both groups." > "The basic principle of equality is equality of consideration..." - Equality (sameness) vs. justice (proportionality)

### Equality as Fact vs Value - Objection: equality is not a fact, human beings differ in needs, abilities, sizes, shapes, intellects, morality, etc. - Response: "We have no absolute guarantee that these abilities and capacities really are distributed evenly, without regard to race or sex... There do seem to be certain measurable differences between both races and sexes." - "There is no need to pin the case for equality to one particular outcome of this scientific investigation" - Equality is a moral ideal, even in the face of factual inequalities (individually or across races, sexes, intelligences, etc.)

### Equal consideration of suffering - Equality of consideration in accounting for needs - The question is not "can they talk" but "can they suffer?" (Bentham) - "Species-ism" gives greater consideration to one's own species

### Equality of animals and humans - We kill and eat animals according to taste - We also experiment on them for knowledge and scientific research - "There seems to be no relevant characteristic that human infants possess that adult mammals do not have to the same or a higher degree"

### Philosophy - Species-ism in philosophy - Criticizing what others take for granted -- have they done this? - Frankena says all humans are equal to each other and unequal to all non-humans because (a) thinking, (b) feelings and desires, and (c) enjoying the good life.

# A Critique of Animal Rights, Cohen

### Discussion * Your questions?