Animals And Us

Whether or not one loves animals is, I guess, largely determined by how many of these lovable creatures one has around oneself during childhood. Growing up as I did with a pack of snappy dogs, one Labrador and two Spitzes, I have long harboured the secret prejudice that people who do not love dogs should be sent away to a 'correction centre' where the love of dogs will be carefully infused into them. At the same time, however, I have also struggled with a certain view called 'anti-species-ism', usually held in ecological circles, according to which human beings do not have any special status with respect to animals. Such ecologists believe that those who are 'species-ists' will justify the mistreatment of, and even extreme cruelty towards, animals with 'ideological' appeals to human 'needs' and 'reasons'.

Though I share with the 'anti-species-ists' their fears and concerns in this connection, I do believe that there are distinctive features that we human beings have that are absent in animals. In saying that there is a 'gap' between the human world and the animal world, however, we need not think of our distinctive cognitive or moral capacities as something that has descended upon us from high. Indeed, we should think of animals and ourselves as more or less contiguous points on an evolutionary spectrum. Nevertheless, there are certain characteristics --- such as the ability to use language in ever-new ways, self-reflexivity, awareness of mortality, and possession of a vast range of (inherited) skills --- that are specific to human beings.

This leads me sometimes towards a thought-experiment. If tomorrow an international panel of 10 doctors were to assure me that the only way ahead to find a cure for (human) cancer was by carrying out a live experiment on my dog Toffee, would I agree to it?

I do not think there is any easy answer to questions such as these. Though today my answer to this question would be 'No, I would not agree', I am aware that this would be largely influenced by the fact that I have personally never known any friend dying of cancer. If, on the other hand, I were to have spent a year caring for someone who was agonisingly wasted away from within by cancer, I just might agree to allow the doctors to go ahead with that experiment. In other words, there is a certain sense in which I am indeed a 'species-ist' : in border-line cases such as these, forced to choose between the removal of human suffering and the affliction of a loved dog, I would, albeit hesitatingly, choose the former.