Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Quote on animals by DAVID INGLIS, JOHN BONE & RHODA WILKIE





Even as we try to think objectively about what animals are
like, we are burdened with the need to justify our moral
relations with them. We kill animals for food; we use them
as experimental subjects in laboratories; we exploit them
as sources of raw materials such as leather and wool; we
keep them as work animals--the list goes on and on.
These practices are to our advantage, and we intend to
continue them. Thus, when we think about what the animals
are like, we are motivated to conceive of them in ways that
are compatible with treating them in these ways.
If animals are conceived as intelligent, sensitive beings,
these ways of treating them might seem monstrous.
So humans have reason to resist thinking of them as intelligent
or sensitive.
DAVID INGLIS, JOHN BONE & RHODA WILKIE, Nature

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