QuestionsDo animals matter as much as we do?Refusing to count animals is refusing to count serfs: a practice that causes animals more pain than it gives men pleasure is immoral
Do animals matter as much as we do?Their suffering counts equally

Refusing to count animals is refusing to count serfs: a practice that causes animals more pain than it gives men pleasure is immoral

Mill against Whewell on animals

John Stuart Mill 1806 · 1873An action is right if it increases happiness, but not all pleasures are equal.
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What it claims

A practice that causes animals more pain than it gives man pleasure is immoral. Mill is ready to stake the whole question on this one point.

Why

Excluding animals because they are not "our own" is the reasoning that once excluded slaves and serfs.

The same idea through history
Jeremy Bentham1789Bentham writes that the question is not "can they reason?" but "can they suffer?". Mill defends this passage against Whewell, who quotes it to mock utilitarianism.
John Stuart Mill1852Mill answers William Whewell, the Cambridge moral philosopher. He turns the "tie of humanity" argument against him: it is the one the slave-owners and the nobles used.
Peter Singer1974Singer takes up the comparison with yesterday's exclusions (racism, sexism) and gives it the name "speciesism".
In short

"Refusing to count animals is refusing to count serfs: a practice that causes animals more pain than it gives men pleasure is immoral" is an argument by John Stuart Mill ("Whewell on Moral Philosophy", Westminster Review, 1852 (Dissertations and Discussions, II, 1859, pp. 482-485), 1852) on the question "Do animals matter as much as we do?" (answer: their suffering counts equally). Its claim: A practice that causes animals more pain than it gives man pleasure is immoral. Mill is ready to stake the whole question on this one point. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

"Whewell on Moral Philosophy", Westminster Review, 1852 (Dissertations and Discussions, II, 1859, pp. 482-485)
Valid with an implicit premise

In 1852 William Whewell attacks Bentham's utilitarianism. To ridicule it, he quotes the passage where Bentham asks whether animals should not count, since they can suffer. For Whewell this shows the doctrine to be absurd: we owe concern to men because we are bound to them by a tie of human brotherhood, and we have no such tie with animals. Mill answers with irony. The same reasoning, he says, would have justified the slave-owning planters and the feudal nobles, who felt bound to those like themselves and to no one else. He is ready to stake the whole question on one point: is a practice that causes animals more pain than it gives man pleasure moral?

P1Whewell refuses to count animals for one reason: we owe concern to men because they are human, bound to us by a "tie of human brotherhood", and we have no such tie with animals.
P2This is the reason once given for excluding others. Slave-owning planters and feudal nobles felt bound by brotherhood to the men of their own group, and not to slaves or serfs. By Whewell's standard, they were right.
P3A standard that would have justified slave-masters and nobles is a "superstition of selfishness": valuing others' pleasures and pains in proportion to their likeness to ourselves is not a moral reason.
P4 · implicit premiseIf the "tie of humanity" does not count, an animal's pain counts like any pain, since the question is not "can it reason?" but "can it suffer?". A practice that causes more pain than it gives pleasure is then immoral.
Therefore a practice that causes animals more pain than it gives man pleasure is immoral. Mill is ready to stake the whole question on this one point.

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 P4, the computer finds a case where Whewell's standard is set aside, a practice causes more pain than pleasure, and it is nonetheless not judged immoral, for instance because other considerations (rights, freedom) permit it.
The argument is valid with the hidden premise P4. P1 gives Whewell's standard, P2 shows that this standard would have justified slavery and serfdom, P3 concludes that it is bad. P4 takes the last step: once that standard is set aside, pain and pleasure have to be weighed. Without P4 we only know that Whewell has no good reason to exclude animals, not yet that a particular practice is immoral. Objections target P2 (is the comparison fair?) and P4 (is pain the only thing that counts?).
Analogy. In a village, it is decided that only people born there count when sharing the water, because they are "from here". Mill asks: is that a reason, or only the name of a prejudice? If it is a prejudice against strangers, why not against animals?

Objections

3

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

C
Carl Cohen 1986 · attacks premise 2

The question is not one of likeness but of kind. Humans are of such a kind that they may be the subject of experiments only with their voluntary consent. Cohen calls himself a "speciesist" and holds this position essential to right conduct: refusing the distinctions between species leads to misjudging one's obligations. The comparison with slaves therefore fails.

a defender replies
No reply possible: objection raised in 1986, after the author's death (1873).
Peter Singer defender of the argument · 1974
Singer takes up the argument from marginal cases: there seems to be no relevant characteristic that human infants possess that adult mammals do not have to the same or a higher degree. If "kind" justifies different treatment, one must say which property grounds it, and the humans who lack it end up on the same side as the animals.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Mill could not answer Cohen, who wrote more than a century after him. Cohen answers this kind of argument with the idea of kind: humans who cannot exercise certain faculties still belong to a kind of which those faculties are characteristic.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: a basic open disagreement. Some make species a moral category, others ask for the precise property that grounds it. Each camp finds that the other does not answer its question.
Bernard Williams 2006 · attacks premise 2

In "The Human Prejudice" (an essay published in 2006, after his death in 2003), Williams argues that giving special weight to humans is not a prejudice of the same kind as racism. The human point of view is the one from which we judge; there is no neutral standpoint from which all beings would count alike. The comparison with slaves and serfs is therefore too quick.

a defender replies
No reply possible: objection raised in 2006, after the author's death (1873).
James Rachels defender of the argument · 1990
Rachels defends moral individualism: what justifies a treatment is each individual's own qualities, not its species. He concludes that animals count according to what they are, just as a person is judged on their qualities and not on their group.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Williams wrote more than a century after Mill. His essay was not read in full for this site (see the source). The discussion is about whether we can judge from a point of view that is not human.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: an open point. It is debated whether the human point of view is a prejudice to correct or the only possible starting point for morality.
Peter Carruthers 1992 · attacks premise 4

If morality is an agreement between rational beings, animals have no direct rights: only rational agents receive them. An animal's pain does not count in itself, but through what it says about the one who inflicts it. Applied to Mill (our application; Carruthers does not discuss this text): slaves and serfs were rational agents, whom the contract had to include; so the comparison does not carry over to animals.

a defender replies
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1992, after the author's death (1873).
M
Mark Rowlands defender of the argument · 1998
Rowlands turns Rawls's contractualism around: behind the veil of ignorance, one does not know whether one will be human, so prudent contractors would also protect animals. He draws rights for them from this (Animal Rights: A Philosophical Defence).
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Mill did not know Rawls's contractualism and could not answer. Carruthers admits, in the same book, that duties toward animals exist, but indirect ones, through the character of the person who mistreats them.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: an open point. The disagreement is over what a fair contract must include: only those who can make the contract, or all who can be harmed.