QuestionsDo animals matter as much as we do?The animal's pain is like ours: one does not slaughter mother and young on the same day
Do animals matter as much as we do?A duty of compassion

The animal's pain is like ours: one does not slaughter mother and young on the same day

The mother and her young (Maimonides)

Moses Maimonides 1138 · 1204Jewish physician and philosopher: of God we can say only what he is not, and the finest praise is silence.
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What it claims

We have a duty of compassion toward animals: their pain is real, comparable to ours, and we must avoid it even when we kill them for food. All the more must we take care not to cause grief to our fellow human beings.

Why

A mother's love for her young comes from a faculty animals share, not from reason: so her pain is like ours.

The same idea through history
Moses Maimonides1190Guide of the Perplexed, III, 48: the thesis presented here. To explain two commandments of the Law (not to slaughter mother and young on the same day, to send the mother away before taking the nestlings), Maimonides invokes the animal's pain.
Arthur Schopenhauer1840Later, Schopenhauer makes pity the foundation of morality and extends it to animals. Maimonides says nothing about the foundation of morality: he only gives the reason for a commandment.
In short

"The animal's pain is like ours: one does not slaughter mother and young on the same day" is an argument by Moses Maimonides (Guide of the Perplexed, III, 48 (c. 1190), 1190) on the question "Do animals matter as much as we do?" (answer: a duty of compassion). Its claim: We have a duty of compassion toward animals: their pain is real, comparable to ours, and we must avoid it even when we kill them for food. All the more must we take care not to cause grief to our fellow human beings. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P5). AskPhilosophy presents 4 objections, 4 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Guide of the Perplexed, III, 48 (c. 1190)
Valid with an implicit premise

In the Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides looks for the reason behind each commandment of Jewish law. Why is it forbidden to slaughter an animal and its young on the same day? His answer is simple: so that the young is not killed in the mother's sight. The animal mother would suffer greatly, since a mother's love for her young does not come from reasoning but from a faculty most animals have as much as we do. Between a man's pain and an animal's, in this respect, there is no difference. Maimonides does not say we cannot eat meat: he says we must kill in the easiest way, and that if the Law spares animals this grief, we must spare it all the more to people.

P1A mother's love and tenderness for her young do not come from reasoning but from imagination, a faculty most animals have as much as man.
P2So there is no difference, in this respect, between a man's pain and an animal's: the animal mother who sees her young killed before her eyes feels very great pain.
P3The Law forbids slaughtering the animal and its young on the same day, so that the young is not killed in the mother's sight: that is the reason for the commandment.
P4The Law takes account of these pains of the soul in quadrupeds and birds: to feed oneself, the animal must be killed, but it must die in the easiest way and not be tormented.
P5 · implicit premiseA pain the Law spares the animal is a pain that matters morally: so we have a duty not to inflict it when we can avoid it without giving up what we need, such as food.
Therefore we have a duty of compassion toward animals: their pain is real, comparable to ours, and we must avoid it even when we kill them for food. All the more must we take care not to cause grief to our fellow human beings.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P5, the computer finds a case where the animal suffers as much as we do, where the Law spares it, but where this creates no duty for us: the Law would then be a mere rule, with no moral value.
The argument is valid with the hidden premise P5. If the animal's pain is as great as ours (P1, P2), and if the Law cares about it (P3, P4), we still have to say that this grounds a duty for us: that is P5. Maimonides does not state it in general terms; he practises it by looking for the reasons of the commandments. The objections target P5 and P2.
Analogy. Imagine having to take a child from its mother in front of her for a necessary operation. It can be done, but one will avoid doing it under her eyes if one can do otherwise. Maimonides says the animal mother deserves the same care, because her attachment is no less.

Objections

4

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

The Talmud (Berakhot 33b), reported by Maimonides 500 · attacks premise 3

According to a Talmudic teaching, one who says in his prayer "Your mercy reaches the bird's nest" is silenced. This expresses one of the two opinions: the Law has no motive but the mere will of God, with no reason of pity. The commandment is then not founded on the animal's pain.

Maimonides replies
Maimonides (answer) 1190
Maimonides replies that this teaching must not be held against him: it is the opinion of those who think the Law has no motive but God's will, and he follows the other opinion, according to which the commandments have reasons one can look for.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: Maimonides himself acknowledges that the question is debated within the Jewish tradition. His choice (commandments have reasons) is famous but was not unanimous. An open point.
Immanuel Kant (Doctrine of Virtue) 1797 · attacks premise 5

Kant refuses to make animal pain the source of a duty toward the animal: judging by reason alone, man has duties only toward man. Cruelty to animals is wrong, but only because it dulls our compassion, which is useful to morality between humans. Our duties regarding animals are indirect.

a defender replies
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1797, after the author's death (1204).
Jeremy Bentham (note in the Introduction to the Principles of Morals) defender of the argument · 1789
Bentham, eight years before Kant, sets aside the criterion of reason: a full-grown horse or dog is far more rational than an infant. And if it were not so, it would change nothing: the question is not "can they reason?" nor "can they talk?", but "can they suffer?".
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: the disagreement is about what grounds a duty. For Kant it is reason; for Bentham as for Maimonides, the capacity to suffer is enough. The debate is very active today.
René Descartes (Discourse on Method, V) 1637 · attacks premise 2

For Descartes, what animals do does not prove they think: it is nature acting in them according to the arrangement of their organs, like a clock. It does not follow that their pain is of the same kind as ours. (In a letter of 1649 he specifies that he does not deny them sensation, but thought.)

a defender replies
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1637, after the author's death (1204).
T
The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness defender of the argument · 2012
Scientists gathered at Cambridge declare that convergent evidence shows that non-human animals have the neurological substrates of conscious states, along with the capacity for intentional behaviour.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: the idea of animal machines is now nearly abandoned in science. What remains is whether their pain is of the same nature as ours; Maimonides affirms it for one precise case (the mother and her young) without extending it to all pains.
Peter Singer 1974 · attacks the conclusion

Singer starts from the same observation as Maimonides: the capacity to suffer is the only defensible boundary for concern for others' interests. But he draws more: rearing and killing animals to eat them sacrifices their most important interests to our mere pleasure of taste, and he asks us to give it up. Maimonides stops at a gentle slaughter and leaves intact the fact of killing to eat.

Maimonides replies
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1974, after the author's death (1204).
Maimonides (man's natural food) 1190 · Maimonides (earlier text)
For Maimonides, man's natural food consists of vegetables and the flesh of animals, and the need for good food requires that the animal be killed. He concludes that the Law only requires death to be as easy as possible, without torment.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: Maimonides judges meat necessary for good food, which defenders of animal equality dispute today. The disagreement is therefore less about pain than about what may be done to a being who suffers as we do. An open point.