THE RIGHTS OF ANIMAL PERSONS
Interviewer: C.Vaughan

David Sztybel is a Canadian ethicist specialising in animal ethics. Dr Sztybel develops a new theory of animal rights which he terms "best caring ethics," as outlined in “The Rights of Animal Persons.” Many of the questions we asked him in this interview, he has as a philosopher asked himself at his own web page. His own website address is: http://sztybel.tripod.com/home.html. He has a new book coming out in the future so keep an eye out for this new and refreshing thinker on the topic of animal rights.

Abolitionist: Why did you write “The Rights of Animal Persons” and how did you identify the need to make the case you eventually did make for animal rights?

I would not feel the need for that case were I satisfied with the efforts of my fellow philosophers in taking such a stand. Unfortunately, I saw gaping logical holes in their accounts, and not only does that not make for good theory, but it is not very good for animals either. For example, although Tom Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights (1983) is a pioneering masterpiece that put animal rights theory on the intellectual agenda, and although it contains many valuable trains of thought, it sits squarely on the shoulders of a kind of “reflective intuitionism.” Intuitions are basic beliefs one has for which one cannot give a reason. There are problems with such a view. There are competing ethics for the treatment of animals, both for liberation and against. Each has its own respective “reflective intuitions.” So if Regan is asked why his intuitions are right and those of others are wrong, he must loop in hopeless circles and say he “intuits” his own intuitions to be uniquely right and others’ to be wrong.

What are your views on animal welfarism and what you eventually termed animal illfare and why did you think it necessary to make a distinction between welfarism and illfarism?

Really I was led to the conclusion that standard usages of animals, even when strenuous efforts are made to treat them “kindly” or “humanely,” are not part of “animal welfare” in any true sense, but rather animal illfare, was based on my analysis in terms of Levels of Oppression. It became apparent to me that nonhuman sentient beings are routinely subject to very major to extreme forms of harm. If this were the lot of humans, even if efforts were made to “soften the blows,” we would say those humans were not doing “well” at all, but came to a bad fate. Imagine someone saying “welfare” is secured for humans being vivisected “gently,” or a past advocate for the “humane” treatment of human slaves being called, say, a “black welfarist.” Such a suggestion is outrageous. No, I’m convinced that humans do well when good things are given them and no avoidable harm, and I am not prepared to use a speciesist standard of welfare with regard to other sentient beings. When someone would have said “fare thee well” in Elizabethan times, for some reason they would not have had it in mind that the person being given such a good wish be vivisected or eaten, however “nicely” (leave aside the qualm that vivisection was not yet part of the social imagination in Shakespeare’s day).

Why didn’t you further differentiate animal welfarism to be classified for individual animals and animal illfarism for mass animals trapped inside the animal abuse industries agenda?

I distinguish in a footnote of the essay [#39] between six kinds of “animal welfare,” all distinctive enough, although some of them might overlap. Technically, each of these senses of “animal welfare” can apply to an individual animal being treated according to the given type, to a group of animals, or indeed to nonhuman animals as a general rule, so it was not necessary in my opinion to make the further differentiation. Some individuals or groups are treated according to the highest kind of animal welfare which harmonizes with full-blown animal liberation.

That said, I realise that Professor Gary L. Francione, for example, distinguishes between “micro” animal welfare, which addresses individuals, and “macro” animal welfare, which is about large groups of animals whose fate is supposed to be governed by laws. As you know, he would give a thirsty cow in the slaughter yards some water, but opposes any so-called “welfarist” law that would mandate water for cows in such situations. You will recall his reasoning that unlike helping the individual animal, the “welfarist” law would supposedly condone speciesism. Now that is very odd, coming from Gary, since you will also remember he would approve of a law banning hot-iron branding of cattle, although such an amendment would equally become a part of speciesist laws. This goes beyond “the pot calling the kettle black”—it is more like a pot denouncing another pot for being a pot! But I digress into the subject of another of my papers, “Animal Rights Law.”

If thinkers discriminate against animals on the basis of, say, rationality rather than species, are they still speciesists?

They might be speciesist or they might not be. On the one hand, if I ask an engineer to figure out a good design for a deck on uneven ground, I would ask her rather than a nonhuman animal, discriminating partly on the basis of certain kinds of educated intelligence. That is not speciesist but just sensible, a benign form of discrimination or sorting things out by relying on judgments based on relevant criteria. On the other hand, a great many speciesists have tried to protest that they renounce speciesism and never discriminate (obviously in the sense of *oppressively* discriminate) against animals on the basis of species, but rather on the basis of the supposition or possible fact that animals have little or no rationality, language use, self-awareness, political participation, etc. Actually I think many animals have various degrees of these things, and we need to approach such questions with utter intellectual and moral humility. However I think I have shown, in “The Rights of Animal Persons,” that these thinkers are in fact speciesist because taking into account my Levels of Harmful Discrimination, I show that these “humanists” would treat animals at the Levels of Very Major or Extreme Harmful Discrimination, but would treat equally rational, intelligent, etc. mentally disabled humans at the Levels of either No Harmful Discrimination or Minor Harmful Discrimination. This disparity then is not due to the mental capacities so commonly cited against other animals, but is only based on species. Additional rationalizations are sometimes given as to why mentally disabled humans and other animals should be treated differently, but I think I show those chains of “reasoning” to be nothing more or less than ignorant chains of oppression.

Does speciesism exist?

Well, on the basis of the analysis I refer to, and indeed further reasoning, I would have to say definitively “Yes.” The further reasoning that is needed, beyond the analysis just indicated, includes, for example, a refutation of ethical egoism and skeptical nihilism in ethics. This might sound too theoretical or abstract to some activists who simply demand an end to speciesism or that we treat animals “with compassion.” But think about it: if ethics can only be based on self-interest, as the ethical egoists say, since people cannot be counted on to be altruistic, then animals do not reliably fit into schemes of human self-interest in a way that is favorable for the animals. Also, if skeptical nihilism is true, then “anything goes” in ethics, at least at the level of abstract theory although not necessarily pragmatically. And if anything goes, then factory farming or vivisection is OK too. If these theories are right, then a dismissal of animal interests is not speciesist, but also right--or at least not wrong. So refuting such hostile theories is necessary to make a comprehensive case against speciesism. This I try to do in my book, which still “wants” publication.

Do traditional animal rights theories or the ethics of care or utilitarianism provide adequate animal liberation ethics as each claims?

In short: no. In “The Rights” I show that traditional rights theories do not even logically entail rights, much as I suggested earlier that Regan’s intuitionism, for example, does not require rights as we can equally “intuit” any number of other anti-rights theories to be right. I show that similar remarks are applicable to the five other major kinds of rights theory: based in Kant’s ethics, Alan Gewirth’s theory, that of John Rawls, and also rights theories based in compassion and tradition. I think I also show that ethics based in sympathy, empathy, or compassion is all too logically ambiguous, among other difficulties. Finally, utilitarianism does not secure rights in any strong sense. It leaves individuals open to being vivisected if “the greater good” is thought to outweigh that of an individual. Those animals are not “liberated.”

Can a new approach, the best caring ethics theory of rights, provide a better basis for animal liberation ethics which reflects the strengths of competing views in ethics but not their weaknesses?

I certainly hope so! But it is not just a yearning: I have shown how the results of best caring ethics seem to embody just such traits. I show this in much better detail in the book, but “The Rights” at least hints in this direction. Also, I assert that the independent justification for best caring ethics is something to be reckoned with, although I will not reproduce it here (hopefully the reader will be interested enough to check it out to the extent that it is given in the article!).

Should all sentient beings be granted legal personhood?

Again, I hope I do not sound too dogmatic when I say: “Unequivocally yes.” It has been proven by the tides of history that persons tend to be awarded rights, and non-persons tend to be denied rights. Therefore, since I argue on the basis of best caring ethics that animals deserve rights, as part of providing the optimum in caring for all sentient beings, if it is intelligible to award personhood or rather to recognize it, then it should be done as part of facilitating animal rights. I show that it is more than intelligible, since to me it is compelling that animals have genuine personalities, that if we had their experiences they would immediately be counted as “personal experiences,” and that they should count as “ends in themselves” in the Kantian sense, which is Kant’s criterion of counting as a person rather than a thing. “Ends in themselves” just refers to not counting as a mere means, or as someone who is exploited (or neglected) with a disregard for his or her dignity.

Is Peter Singer's utilitarianism truly a form of animal liberation, or is it speciesist contrary to its intent?

Well there is no doubt that Singer meant not only to profess animal liberation and anti-speciesism in his book Animal Liberation and other places. He intended to form a new foundation for these ideals in theory and social practice. To me, “animal liberation” is a general term that means liberating all animals who can be liberated: all sentient beings in other words. Yet as I have argued, Singer’s utilitarianism renders animals vulnerable to harmful exploitation in the form of vivisection or other abuses where the interests of the many might outweigh those of the few, such as where masses in a coliseum might have a roaring delight that “outweighs” the quiet misery of two animals prodded into fighting to the death. Moreover, if, as I argue, speciesism means arbitrary and harmful discrimination on the basis of species, or on the basis of characteristics associated with species, then I think clearly he is a speciesist. He is prepared to say vivisection of animals and mentally disabled humans can be defended because they are less intelligent, etc., as the kinds of beings they are. In the case of the nonhuman animals this is a species-trait. Yet that is not the “best caring” thing to do for these individuals, who are no less entitled to best caring as part of doing what is best in general for this sentient being, that sentient being, you, me, and all of the individual sentient entities there are in our moral sphere. This is arbitrary and harmful discrimination based on species characteristics—-ergo speciesist. I develop this case more rigorously in “The Rights” and also my yet-to-be-published book.