Why is cruelty immoral

Read more: Illegal hunters are a bigger problem on farms than animal activists — so why aren't we talking about that? Beyond psychological research, we can look to institutions for evidence that this sort of bifurcated view is widespread, as we have argued elsewhere. For example, when animals are used in scientific experimentation, researchers are mainly expected to show the benefits outweigh the costs: a utilitarian standard.

So we tend to be more utilitarian about animals than about humans. Think about your family dog. Would your conscience allow you to kill her to save five other dogs?

For an example, consider the way the fishing industry treats bycatch as disposable. Such a view is defended by world-renowned Australian philosopher Peter Singer , among many others. And famous philosophers such as Tom Regan have argued a vast range of animals ought to be seen in that way.

Currently, many of us see most animals as mere things, the way fishermen typically see bycatch. And this might continue into the future.

Despite their differences from humans, animals are conscious individuals with their own welfare, and so do matter in themselves.

Her humanity is precisely the problem. Men, she proposes, have come to expect certain things from women—attention, admiration, sympathy, solace, and, of course, sex and love. Catalysts for such attacks include refusal of marriage, sex, and romance.

Then, there are so-called family annihilators, almost always men, who kill their families and, typically, themselves. Manne delves into the case of Elliot Rodger, who, in , went on a killing spree, targeting people at random, after he was denied entry to a sorority house at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He slew six people and injured fourteen more before killing himself.

For Manne, such violent episodes are merely an extreme manifestation of everyday misogyny, and she extends her analysis to catcalling, attitudes toward abortion, and the predations of Donald Trump.

Nor are the mechanisms she identifies confined to misogyny. The philosopher Martha C. As a philosopher, Manne grounds her arguments in more technical literature, and at one point she emphasizes the connection between her position and the Oxford philosopher P.

Moreover, in being capable of rationality, agency, autonomy, and judgment, they are also someone who could coerce, manipulate, humiliate, or shame you. In being capable of abstract relational thought and congruent moral emotions, they are capable of thinking ill of you and regarding you contemptuously. In being capable of forming complex desires and intentions, they are capable of harboring malice and plotting against you. In being capable of valuing, they may value what you abhor and abhor what you value.

They may hence be a threat to all that you cherish. I can resent someone, but I can also feel shame at how I treated him or her. Because the meat business is so huge, the indirect participation or non-participation of an individual in any wrongful acts that the industry may carry will not influence the continuing of those acts.

Since an individual's acts do not cause or encourage the wrong-doing to take place, they are not themselves morally wrong. Virtue ethics regard the motivation and character of a person as crucial to whether an act is good or bad. A morally good act is one that a virtuous person would carry out, and a morally bad act is one that they wouldn't. People who participate in a system that treats animals cruelly, and that kills animals to provide trivial pleasures to human beings, are behaving selfishly, and not as a virtuous person would.

Since their behaviour is not virtuous, their behaviour is morally wrong, whether or not it has any effect on whether people continue to raise and kill animals for food. One must refuse even symbolic support of essentially cruel practices, if a comparably costly alternative that is not tied to essentially cruel practices is readily available.

Search term:. Read more. This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets CSS enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets CSS if you are able to do so. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Find out more about page archiving.

This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Find out more about page archiving. Ethics guide. Why animals don't need 'rights'. This article explains the position that animals don't need rights in order to be protected. On this page Why animals don't need 'rights' Page options Print this page. Why animals don't need 'rights' Some people believe that animals don't have rights or that even if they do, those rights should count for less than human wishes.