Jake and animal suffering

One day in the early morning, more than a decade ago, my dad had just woken up and was about to start the usual routine (showering, dressing, and the rest) before heading to work. Wearing only boxer shorts, he happened to glance out the window, and he spied something terrifying: a red-haired woman being chased by a twitchy, slavering man with a knife in his vile paw and a predatory glint in his narrowed eyes. Immediately, my dad ran out of the house, still clad only in his boxers, and, running and shouting at the man, scared him off. Thus ended the hunt, and thus was that poor woman saved from having her neck ripped open.

The above is not entirely true. The prey was in fact the neighbour’s ginger (and male¹) cat, Jake, and the predator was an also-ginger fox (sex unknown). Jake often came into our house and my mum and I were very fond of him. Dad wasn’t quite so keen, nor was our dog, Sasha, who was visibly jealous when Jake received the loving attention of my mum and me. Even so, without the slightest moment of hesitation, my old dad surged out of the house, nearly naked on a cold morning, to save Jake’s life.

I tell this tale because it is one of my favourite stories about my dad (I wasn’t a witness, but my mum told me about it), showing as it does his instinctive concern for the vulnerable and his equally instinctive willingness to act in their defence. And I made up the bit about the woman and the man because I have been thinking lately about the moral standing of non-human animals in relation to us.

In this I was inspired by reading Professor Steve Stewart-Williams’s excellent 2010 book Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life, in which Stewart-Williams ably shows, as the subtitle has it, How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Thought You Knew. Among other things, this includes demolishing deities and objective morality, but relevant here is how Stewart-Williams dismantles all notions of human exceptionalism. In no objective way, he says, can humans be set apart from our fellow animals. There is no Great Chain of Being, no march of evolution towards the heights of Man, no reason at all, in other words, to think that we have any right to sneer at those we so tellingly label the ‘lower animals’.²

In the realm of morality, too, there can be no hard distinction between human and non-human. As Stewart-Williams puts it:

In practice, it is easy enough to draw a human/animal distinction, and to import this into our moral reasoning. But evolutionary theory shows that this distinction does not have the significance it was once assumed to have… [T]he practice of allocating moral status to human beings, but denying it to any other animal, starts to look arbitrary and unjustified.

And if, like Stewart-Williams, you follow Jeremy Bentham and declare that ‘Suffering is suffering, and…other variables are morally irrelevant,’ then it is difficult to conclude that the difference between a woman being hunted by a murderous man and a cat being stalked by a hungry fox is all that significant.³ Of course, there are many differences between the two situations. The man is likely a psychopath and the fox is just doing what it needs to do to survive and we can’t really apply human law to the wild. But is the net total of suffering any different? Is there any reason to suppose that the cat is any less terrified than the woman, or any less desperate to escape, or any less concerned to go on living? Is there any reason to think my dad’s actions would have been more heroic had he saved a human rather than a cat?⁴ Not unless you accord some mystical quality to human suffering, it seems.⁵

I am never sure how far to take this line of thought. Stewart-Williams cites Peter Singer’s provocative argument that a near-brain-dead baby is not as morally valuable as an adult chimpanzee. Something superstitious in me is uncomfortable taking it quite that far, but I can’t really see any chink in the reasoning—not once you accept that non-humans can be sentient and can suffer and that the avoidance and alleviation of suffering is the very heart of moral theory and practice. Of course, not everyone accepts these points, but I more or less do, and so how can I escape the conclusion that, just as it would be morally justifiable to sacrifice 10 people to save 1,000, it would also be right to sacrifice 10 humans to save 1,000 chimps?⁶

I’m not offering a philosophical treatise here (for that, I recommend Stewart-Williams’s brilliant book), and I know that this is a complex debate. I am simply meditating on what it means for me if I accept this view of the world. Superstitious vestiges aside, I think it is a noble and inspiring view, and it impels—if it does not, indeed, compel—one to place much more weight than one normally would on the lives of our cousins the chimps, badgers, elephants, etc.

I still think there are probably some ways in which humans can suffer uniquely. Ever since hearing it in high school philosophy class, this line from John Stuart Mill’s great work Utilitarianism has stuck in my head and it has always seemed somehow right: ‘It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.’ But on the whole, human and non-human suffering is not very different. That being said, what does one do about it? It would be impossible to alleviate all animal suffering⁷, of course, but surely there are things we as a society and as individuals can do to lessen it a little. Go vegan, perhaps.

Here I have a dirty confession to make: I am a hypocritical meat eater. For a long time, I have pretty much accepted the moral reasoning for adopting a vegan diet, but I have never taken any steps to practice one. I have a friend who is a (very non-pushy) vegan, who cooks delicious vegan food, and with whom I have discussed this subject more than a few times. Yet I still can’t bring myself to convert to the lifestyle. This is not just because of Orwell’s mockery of socialist ‘cranks’, including ‘vegetarians with wilting beards’, in The Road to Wigan Pier, though there is that.⁸

No, I think I have not yet quite fully absorbed the implications of this worldview, not entirely. I understand it, I know it, but I don’t wholly feel it yet, such is the power of anthropocentrism.⁹ But what would you think of me if I said the same about, for example, black people? ‘Oh, I understand that they’re every bit of human as me alright, but I just can’t feel it quite yet, and so I have a bit of a problem giving up my slaves.’ Is this analogy too much? I don’t think so, not if you accept the premises.

Faced with the Holocaust horrors of animal farming and the Mengelian brutality of animal experimentation, how can one not agree with Peter Singer when he says that animal liberation might just be the most important liberation movement in the world right now?¹⁰ Perhaps it always was.¹¹

I find, uncharacteristically, that I don’t have any more words.

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Jake, almost but not quite in the full glory of his limp-wristedness.

1. Though he did have a habit of holding his paw up in what can only be described as a limp-wristed manner.

2. Of course, we are the most intelligent and most cultured animals. But we are not alone in being intelligent and cultured, and anyway, what does that have to do with objectively differentiating us from non-humans? It’s a difference in degree, not in kind, and any clump of organic matter, in the right conditions and with the right accidents, could evolve our capabilities. And, as Stewart-Williams puts it, would not elephants think that having a trunk is the very crest of evolution? Would they not think that there is a deep ontological difference between the trunked and the non-trunked?

Incidentally, Stewart-Williams’s most recent book, The Ape That Understood the Universe (2018), is also well worth reading. It is probably the best introduction to, and argument for the validity of, evolutionary psychology, and it also discusses why we are so especially (not uniquely!) cultured.

3. Christopher Hitchens wrote a typically interesting essay in 2002 on animal suffering, but I think he rather misses the point when he asserts that ‘Rights have to be asserted. Animals cannot make such assertions. We have to make representations to ourselves on their behalf.’

This is true enough, but it doesn’t follow that all talk of animal rights is wrongheaded, as Hitchens seems to think. As Stewart-Williams notes, ‘Rights are not really real; they simply represent decisions we’ve made about how we should treat one another. We can give rights to whomever we want.’ (The question of the reality of rights, human or otherwise, is, as they say, outside of my scope here).

Hitchens is also slightly and unfairly unkind to Peter Singer in this essay, though he does make the very good point that ‘concern with the suffering and exploitation of animals can be expected to arise only in a fairly advanced and complex society where human beings are thoroughly in charge, and where they no longer need fear daily challenges from other species.’

4. In the final episode of the final series of Sherlock, one of the twists is that Redbeard, the long-lost dog of Mr Holmes, is not, in fact, a dog, but a human child—Sherlock’s best childhood friend. Sherlock repressed the memory of the death of Redbeard by thinking of him as a dog who had been put down, but, once we realise that he (Redbeard) was actually a murdered human child, we are meant to feel worse than if he was just a dog. This is very flattering to humans, but now I think: Why is it worse to be a dead dog than a dead human? Rather, why should it be worse that a human child has died than a puppy? What is the difference between losing a human best friend and losing a dog best friend? And is it really more painful for a human mother to lose her child than it is for a dog mother?

In any case, that final series of Sherlock is truly awful, apart from Toby Jones’s brilliant performance as the Jimmy Saville-like serial killer in episode two. But the fact that it should be a twist that a human child, rather than a dog, died (or was murdered) is, I think, quite germane to this discussion. It is also quite telling about our human priorities (whether they be right or wrong). Sure, the writers seem to be saying, it’s one thing if a beloved canine dies, but quite another if a human child does. It’s a perfect instance of anthropocentrism, whether or not you agree with according to mere non-humans any rights, and it repays some attention in this debate.

A question: would you be more willing to strangle a newborn pup rather than a newborn babe to death? Whatever your answer, why? Is there really a moral difference between the two?

I can’t quite remember whether Redbeard the dog vs. Redbeard the kid was murdered or just died, but that is not really the point. The point is: is it worse that a human child rather than a canine child should die? Is it worse that a canine child should be murdered than a human child should be? I don’t think there is any absolute answer to those questions, and I thank the Sherlock writers for pointing this out so forcefully (and so, I think, unintentionally) to me.

5. An interesting counter-argument has just occurred to me. What if the fox is starving, and the cat is its last chance of a meal? More, what if its cubs are starving, too? Then, the cat’s escape means that several sentient beings are doomed to a wretched end. But this is only to put the same point in a different way: the suffering of animals, in this argument, still matters. If this was the case, my dad would have been justified in handing over Jake to the fox, surely? Though that is an uncomfortable thought—sympathy for the fleeing gazelle is much more natural than sympathy with the pursuing lion, even if both stand to suffer one way or the other. In general, though, missing one meal is less likely to hurt a predator, whereas becoming a meal means the end of everything for the prey—a lesson in evolutionary economics, there.

In any case, I think my dad can be acquitted: a suburban fox is unlikely to go long without scraping food from somewhere.

6. Or perhaps, for non-humans, the ratio should be more lopsided. Perhaps 10 humans should only be sacrificed to save a million chimps. As Stewart-Williams notes, evolution forces us to think in sliding scales rather than absolutes. This is a challenge, to be sure, but a necessary one if we want to be truly moral (or knowledgeable about reality).

7. Stewart-Williams is very good on the argument from natural evil against the existence of a (good) God.

8. Despite not being a vegetarian, let alone a vegan, Orwell was very fond of (non-human) animals—and he was quite aware of their capacity for suffering. In the preface to the Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm, he actually claimed this knowledge as his inspiration:

On my return from Spain I thought of exposing the Soviet myth in a story that could be easily understood by almost anyone and which could be easily translated into other languages. However, the actual details of the story did not come to me for some time until one day (I was then living in a small village) I saw a little boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge cart-horse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat.

Here I can’t help but add that Orwell perhaps knew more than he let on about the meaningless distinction between the human and the non-human. Once, having been praised by Tosco Fyvel for how well he cared for his son Richard, Orwell replied, ‘Yes. You see, I’ve always been good with animals.’

9. Should humanism be replaced with sentientism? That’s a rather clumsy coinage, admittedly, but the sentientists do have their points. Still, I think humanism can encompass moral concern for non-humans without having to be rebranded. After all, humanism is not so much anthropocentrism as the recognition that knowledge and morality must be rooted in the non-supernatural—historically, and so far as we know in the universe, meaning rooted in human abilities and activities. It doesn’t follow from the expansion of our moral concerns (or the existence of intelligent aliens) that the word ‘humanism’ and its underlying philosophies should be discarded.

10. In case these comparisons should offend, here is Stewart-Williams’s justification:

A lot of people find the comparison between the Holocaust and our treatment of animals insensitive and deeply offensive. However, the comparison is only offensive if we've decided already that the lives of human beings in the Holocaust are vastly more important than the lives of other animals in comparable situations. And that's what the debate is all about! The point of the comparison is not to trivialize the Holocaust; it is to suggest that the plight of animals is being trivialized. If people want to claim that the comparison is erroneous or inappropriate, they must explain why. Simply to complain that it is offensive is to assume that it is erroneous without first justifying the assumption.

On second thoughts, however, I think comparisons with the Holocaust and slavery are slightly problematic. Is there really a vile, racist (or ‘speciesist’) ideology at work in our treatment of animals? I doubt it. At least, there’s nothing on the same level when it comes to animals. Intentions and ideology, not just consequences, matter when we morally evaluate actions (which is why, for example, the October 7 Hamas attack, which deliberately targeted civilians with appalling war crimes, is morally worse than Israel’s troublingly brutal response, which is not targeted in this way, even though it has killed many more people than Hamas managed to).

For all that, I’ll stand by the comparison so far as sheer suffering goes. And there is something quite sickeningly reminiscent of Nazism in the way we coop up and torture animals because they are, we think, fundamentally inferior to us.

11. Try reading Douglas Adams’s Last Chance to See and tell me you don’t feel sheer disgust at humanity for pushing so many beautiful species to the very verge of extinction, or beyond it. As the naturalist Mark Carwardine, Adams’s travel companion, put it in his contribution to the book:

There is one last reason for caring, and I believe that no other is necessary. It is certainly the reason why so many people have devoted their lives to protecting the likes of rhinos, parakeets, kakapos, and dolphins. And it is simply this: the world would be a poorer, darker, lonelier place without them.