In the News - Animal Aggression

In Lauren's In the News presentation today, she contrasted the violence to humans by animals, and the vilence to humans by animals. At the hear tof this is a question of ethics--do we view other living beings, such as animals, as equal to humans at a moral level. At the surface, it seems obvious that we can treat animals differently and still consider themselves moral beings. Although they feel pain, they don't have the intellectual capacity to know that what is happening to them is a moral question, so one could say that this obviates any kind of moral issue.

But one could also argue that ethics is precisely about how we act when we are not required to do so by the reciprocity of effecting another human being. The recent issues of food safety in China is an obvious moral issue becuase the melanine added to the baby food caused kidney stones and even death among infants. And when we make decisions about our environment or our laws, it is easy to see how such decisions will affect other human beings. But perhaps our greatest mroalchallenge is when there is no obvious moral trade-off--when we do good, not because we have to, but because we choose to. To treat animals with the dignity and respect we offer to other human beings would elminate the extreme abuses of animals, but it might make us all a bit more human as well. Who's to say that curbing violence toward animals wouldn't also curb violence toward other humans?