Phenomenology Applied to Animal Health and Suffering

Ethology, 2008

Can suffering in non-human animals be studied scientifically? Apart from verbal reports of subjective feelings, which are uniquely human, I argue that it is possible to study the negative emotions we refer to as suffering by the same methods we use in ourselves. In particular, by asking animals what they find positively and negatively reinforcing (what they want and do not want), we can define positive and negative emotional states. Such emotional states may or may not be accompanied by subjective feelings but fortunately it is not necessary to solve the problem of consciousness to construct a scientific study of suffering and welfare. Improvements in animal welfare can be based on the answers to two questions: Q1: Will it improve animal health? and Q2: Will it give the animals something they want? This apparently simple formulation has the advantage of capturing what most people mean by 'improving welfare' and so halting a potentially dangerous split between scientific and non-scientific definitions of welfare. It can also be used to validate other controversial approaches to welfare such as naturalness, stereotypies, physiological and biochemical measures. Health and what animals want are thus not just two of many measures of welfare. They provide the definition of welfare against which others can be validated. They also tell us what research we have to do and how we can judge whether welfare of animals has been genuinely improved. What is important, however, is for this research to be done in situ so that it is directly applicable to the real world of farming, the sea or an animal's wild habitat. It is here that ethology can make major contributions.

Affect theory is a subfield that encourages us to think about how we interact with each other and the world along registers that are not reducible to language. This has suggested to some scholars that affect theory can also be used to better understand the experience of animals. This article explores a merger between affect theory, animal studies, and the lifeworld tradition of phenomenology. The upshot of this is a way of seeing how animals, like humans, have rich religious worlds that are shaped by pre-linguistic textures of affect. This perspective indicates that animals can be thrown into a state of trauma by being deprived of these lifeworlds. In light of this, the essay considers the ethical implications of the modern factory farm system, particularly the practice of mass confinement.

Applied Animal Ethology

This book presents an outline of a biological approach to the new science of animal welfare. In a direct no-nonsense style, Dawkins systematically reviews and critiques the variety of means proposed to assess the presence and extent of suffering in animals. While the author's own expertise concerns the welfare of intensively-housed farm livestock, the principles set forth in this volume are equally applicable to laboratory and zoo animals, as well as domestic pets. After a general introduction to the numerous misunderstandings and biases that characterize less rigorous approaches to questions of welfare, Dawkins presents (Chap. 2) a concise summary of recent research into the subjective experiences of animals, since these are considered germane to the animal's capacity for suffering. In addition to the familiar work of Koehler on the ability of birds to count, and the increasingly-controversial studies by the Gardners and others on the use of sign language by apes, the author summarizes the intriguing work of Herrnstein et al. on "concept formation" in pigeons. These birds can be trained to respond selectively to photographs depicting specific objects, such as trees, whether these occur as the main subject, or only incidentally in the photo. Yet objects of similar appearance, such as celery stalks, are not mistaken for trees. Such work does reveal a type of concept-formation, or at least class-recognition, in these birds. Gallup's studies of self-recognition by chimps viewing their own mirrorimages are reviewed, unfortunately prior to the work of Epstein, Lanza and Skinner (Science, 212: 695-696,1981), who showed that similar behavior can be produced by pigeons under appropriate reinforcement schedules, thus obviating the need for explanations based on "higher" cognitive properties. Yet, as Dawkins rightly points out in another context, such critiques do not constitute a wholesale condemnation of the concept of animal awareness per se, but rather a challenge to scientists to refine their methods in attempting to study awareness. Such questions are of general interest to life scientists, regardless of the applied issue of animal suffering to which Dawkins refers them and, as such, her first two chapters are excellent companions to Donald Griffin's book "The Question of Animal Awareness" (Rockefeller University Press, 1976,198l). The remaining chapters of the book are largely devoted to a point-bypoint critique of the use of physiological and behavioral indices of welfare. Whereas her treatment of Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome is rather elementary, her coverage of the growing behavioral literature is more com

Food Ethics, 2017

The paper discusses the potential for recognizing animals as autonomous individuals through a critique of the handling of suffering of terminally ill companion animals. To this end, it offers three distinct reflections on animal suffering through immanent readings of the painting The Death of the Stag (1786) by Benjamin West (1738–1820), a personal experience with caring for a dog dying from cancer, and a thought from Theodor W. Adorno’s Negative Dialectics (1966). Neither developing a coherent theory of animal suffering nor ethical or medical recommendations for the handling of terminally ill companion animals, an open dialectics between individualizing and reifying tendencies in suffering is drawn out by way of these reflections. As a consequence, the paper argues that the euthanizing of terminally ill companion animals as preemptive measure to avoid suffering undermines the individuality of animals and deprives humans of an experience of the animal as an autonomous other. By confronting these three instances with each other, the paper concludes that enabling animals to face up to a terminal illness, at least up to a certain point, rather than to prevent such struggle, recognizes them as autonomous individuals in their own rights. Thereby, finally, also a window opens up to realize our own semblance to animals.

1989

Science and Christian Belief, 2016

Considerable effort and ingenuity is expended on developing theodicies in response to the problem caused by evolution in terms of pain and suffering in creation and the fact that God is good and His creation is good. From a physiological and neurological perspective, it is clear that many creatures experience pain. However, pain is an essential part of the evolutionary process being clearly adaptive, potentially preventing a worse outcome for a creature, namely death. A more difficult question is that of suffering. It will be shown that the question of animal suffering is identical to the issue of sentience and the “hard problem” of consciousness. After reviewing the evidence for animal consciousness and then suffering, we conclude with a brief reflection on why Christians should treat animals well.

Animal Sentience, 2016

Ng (2016) restates his case for the importance of wild animal suffering (1995). Nevertheless, he suggests that the most effective way to reduce nonhuman suffering overall is to give short-term priority to the suffering of farmed animals. It is not clear that Ng puts forward a successful case. Our current efforts to prevent animal suffering overall should also include raising awareness of wild animal suffering now as well as promoting research on safe and feasible ways to prevent wild animal suffering in the future.

Phenomenology and the Non-Human Animal: At the Limits of Experience, 2007

As Max Horkheimer wrote sixty years ago, Modern insensitivity to nature is indeed only a variation of the pragmatic attitude that is typical of Western Civilization as a whole. Only the forms are different.

Christian Apologetics Journal, 2015

An essay discussing the implications of Thomas Aquinas' view of the animal soul for the 'problem of animal suffering'.

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