Animal Suffering - A philosophical Perspective
One image is enough to understand the problem of animal suffering. On my adventure of understanding and sadly feeling the Suffering in existence I run into the philosophical problem of Animal Suffering. We only can think about animals from a human perspective, so it's necessary to understand our philos ophical anthropology before we do so.
On Philosophical Anthropology we question what makes the Human different from the Animal. Because there is a difference. We clearly see the difference from human society to a nonhuman society, but we don't see the Diferencial. A Differential must be a specific aptitude that makes humans different from animals.
The most primitive view is communication. A special apparatus that enables me to express my Ideas. I can speak, an animal cannot.
Therefore, a Dog that speaks must be a human, right?
“Obviously not, but keep on thinking let's see where it goes” - the listener would answer
Imagine for one moment that your dog barks at you and you understand it by your modern hightech gadget bought from a Asian Company with Free Shipping.
(that was too specific)
Besides the fact that you understand everything - he says - the Dogs still are not like a human to you. Or, imagine if a parrot learned how to speak more than 10 000 thousands words (the common amount to become fluent in a language). It not only talks, but also begs you to let him free from his cage in a Zoo.
Any mental healthy person would let it free, but does it become a human?
“No. But this has come too far”
Ok, maybe we should give up on finding the differential between human to animal and find a similarity between both. In this case, the Suffering. Both Human and Parrot would suffer in a cage. The animal as a feeler, and the human as a Thinker.
If that dog could speak, even as an animal. He would certainly yell as much and as equal as a human when in a situation of violence.
We should never weigh up feelings. The strong feels the same pain as the weak and a Crocodile feels the same pain as a crying baby, even with no tears. But in this case, humans suffer more than animals. Because we anticipate and rationalize the pain. We not only Feel but Think the Pain.
The animal's suffering starts when he perceives Pain and ends when he stops feeling it. The humans anticipate the Pain, Feel the Pain and Examine the pain after it. Humans exacerbate the Suffering
On this view one may point that animals can predict the pain for example, on Hume´s quote
“Is it not experience, which renders a dog apprehensive of pain, when you menace him, or lift up the whip to beat him?” (Hume, 1739 pp. 397-398)
I won't deny that the dog predicts the pain of being beaten, but it works in a way as if the human trained him to do so. It's a muscular memory. It doesn't really avoid a behavior predicting the human wouldn't like it, it only tries to defend or run after the bad dog behavior when he sees the human lift up the whip to beat him. It's not a predicted moviment, but a reaction.
We conclude that he doesn't like the pain but still nothing compared to humans who can transcend it and after been beaten for example in his childhood can comprehend the reason in adulthood and understand his mothers goods intentions on beaten him sometimes.
While a mother Cow only feels the birth pain at that specific moment, not before & not after, the mother human predicts it, feels it and complains about it.
Both mothers understand what it is to give birth, It's an instinct. Both bodies are adapted to give birth. But one created a culture on it, facilities and obstetricians.
You may point out animals that do almost the same as humans, but we humans do it to everything and on extremely high levels of conscience. We literally created pills to swallow and avoid pain. Doctors who help us avoid the pain and religious mens to comfort us after the pain.
The suffering is a synthesis between difference and similitude between Human and Animal. Both feel, but one feels and knows that Feels. Think about it and try to avoid it.
The Avoidance of Suffering is so strong in humans, that we evolved from early sapiens to modern sapiens sapiens in the moment we created religion, in other words, in a search to avoid pain we faced the hardest pain ever; the Eternal Pain. Rapidly we conceptualized an antidote, a religion. The tool we have to run from Eternal Pain.
If you want to understand a society you must understand the different ways they use to avoid pain.
For example the amount of information we can extract from a primitive society only by the research of its cemetery. The way a society treats its corpses (tribe members remains) tells a lot about them.
The same goes for animals. Take elephants, for example, they cover their dead and express undoubtedly worry about the corpses. It's beyond an instinct of warding off scavengers. But still nothing compared to human behavior, symbolism and cemeteries.
The care some animals have with their dead brings up the care they have with each other. Protection and kindness are part of an animal's behavior towards other animals.
Here lies another animal and human similitude, both recognize the suffering of the other. But at the same time both makes the other suffer with no mercy.
While animals do that by pure instinct we rationalize about it.
Superior or Equals
After those reflections we only can go two ways - either we are superior or we are equal to animals.
Here lies a problem if we are equal to animals we don't have the duty to save them, just like a lion doesn't have the duty to save the zebra….we are all equals…nature's instinctive beings eating one another. And all the apparent superiority we have on them are metaphysical. We have consciousness but consciousness is a vague, imateral term and should have no place in this discussion since we can't study consciousness to define if they have or not the so-called consciousness of self.
In our attempt to say that animals don't have moral considerations so they can eat one another, so do we can, cuz we are equals. In addition to saying we are equals, humans equal to animals, promotes us to act like animals even toward other humans in the sense we are savages just like them.
But if we are superior instead of saving them we have the right to hurt them, cuz we are superior.
By this superiority we should choose whether to use them or save them. To make them suffer or to make them safer.
You may say
it's impossible without returning primitivism. In the sense we go against animals in many indirect activities.; the pollution of atmosphere and water, global warming, building roads, and cities etc.
OK but it doesn't matter if it is possible or not, but if it's right or not.
I'M not talking about possibilities, I'm talking about rightness.
To say that we are not equal but superior to animals because we have moral considerations is to say that we should take care of them cuz we do have moral consideration.
The same goes for the religious argument that animals don't have a Soul. Cuz if they don't, they are pure material beings in the right of having more of their pure material life even more precious in this material world. If material life is the only thing they have, it makes their life even more precious than ours who have an eternal soul after death.
Some seem to take care of kids or deficients. We are superior in some ways because we can do things they don't but at the same time we are not, so we must take care.
Some philosophers suggest that rational argumentation fails to capture those features of moral experience which allow us to really see why treating animals badly is wrong. Eating animals is wrong not because it is a violation of the animal’s rights or because on balance such an act creates more suffering than other acts, but rather because in eating animals or using them in other harmful, violent ways, we do not display the traits of character that kind, sensitive, compassionate, mature, and thoughtful members of a moral community should display.
To conclude
A number of candidate capacities have been proposed to be the Differential between Animals and Humans
—developing family ties, solving social problems, expressing emotions, starting wars, having sex for pleasure, using language, or thinking abstractly, senses, emotions, consciousness, attention, memory, sagacity, docility, association of ideas, imagination, reason, instinct, social affections, the moral qualities, friendship and loyalty. But none of these activities are unique to humans.
That comes clear, as William Youatt said, that our differences to animals are not in kind but in level.
Enquanto seres humanos conseguem agir acordo com seus desejos, exemplo, fazer algo mesmo sabendo que não é o certo, animais se conformam como máquinas no sentido de que estes não conseguem e insistem em agir conforme desejos ou instinto mesmo se isso os leva à morte, por isso, tão facilmente domináveis. Robôs programados.
References and Inspirations
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-animal/
https://daily-philosophy.com/cooper-quotes-bentham-animal-suffering/
https://www.fondation-droit-animal.org/proceedings-aw/animal-welfare-a-brief-history/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBecXN64fdw&t=285s
