Anthropocentrism And Consequentialism
A discussion of values
According to Hume’s Law (Hedenus, Persson & Sprei, 2016), the facts alone presented above cannot be used to judge the situation or to deduce possible moral rules. It is therefore necessary to base the discussion on a system of values. Of the three systems discussed during the course, I believe that anthropocentrism with a notion of consequentialism is what is currently applied by advocates of animal experiments.
Anthropocentrism focuses on human beings and is concerned with their well-being. This is sometimes extended to include future generations which might not even be born yet. When we focus on current and subsequent generations and especially on the well-being of the individual, the development of drugs is the morally …show more content…
This would then violate, the focus on the well-being of the human individual. Animals, on the other hand, are considered to have instrumental value to human beings. It can be in form of companionship, as a food source or even as a means of being able to acquire comprehensive measurements of a drug’s effect without endangering humans. Surely, the well-being of some people will be affected by the existence of animal testing. This is where ideas from consequentialism enter, with which it can be argued that, since the suffering of humans due to untested drugs would potentially be much larger than the emotional distress some people feel toward animal experiments, testing on animals is nonetheless the morally right thing to do.
To moderate unnecessary cruelty, ethical approval has to be given before the execution of an animal experiment2. This is a small step towards biocentric or zoocentric ethics, admitting that animals have an intrinsic value and a certain restricted right to well-being. However, as long as the researcher can argue that the experiments have a scientific purpose and have the potential …show more content…
It is therefore, that I find these latter additions of biocentrism very essential to prevent humanity from raising itself too much above other animals.
As an alternative system of value, I find ecocentrism interesting to discuss. The basic underlying value is that all species, now considered as a whole, matter (Hedenus et al., 2016). If considered in its strong form, ecocentrism only cares about the well-being of species. This makes it hard to motivate the development of drugs at all, as long as they are not such that they could keep the human species from extinction. One might even be morally obliged to develop drugs for other species than humans, if diseases threaten their collective continued well-being. This might sound very appealing to some, but it is rather unlikely that such a radical point of view can lead to reasonable rules guiding day to day live in animal research.
As a compromise one could consider a weaker form of ecocentrism, which is still based on species, but also separately attaches value to each particular individual of any species. Now it
According to Hume’s Law (Hedenus, Persson & Sprei, 2016), the facts alone presented above cannot be used to judge the situation or to deduce possible moral rules. It is therefore necessary to base the discussion on a system of values. Of the three systems discussed during the course, I believe that anthropocentrism with a notion of consequentialism is what is currently applied by advocates of animal experiments.
Anthropocentrism focuses on human beings and is concerned with their well-being. This is sometimes extended to include future generations which might not even be born yet. When we focus on current and subsequent generations and especially on the well-being of the individual, the development of drugs is the morally …show more content…
This would then violate, the focus on the well-being of the human individual. Animals, on the other hand, are considered to have instrumental value to human beings. It can be in form of companionship, as a food source or even as a means of being able to acquire comprehensive measurements of a drug’s effect without endangering humans. Surely, the well-being of some people will be affected by the existence of animal testing. This is where ideas from consequentialism enter, with which it can be argued that, since the suffering of humans due to untested drugs would potentially be much larger than the emotional distress some people feel toward animal experiments, testing on animals is nonetheless the morally right thing to do.
To moderate unnecessary cruelty, ethical approval has to be given before the execution of an animal experiment2. This is a small step towards biocentric or zoocentric ethics, admitting that animals have an intrinsic value and a certain restricted right to well-being. However, as long as the researcher can argue that the experiments have a scientific purpose and have the potential …show more content…
It is therefore, that I find these latter additions of biocentrism very essential to prevent humanity from raising itself too much above other animals.
As an alternative system of value, I find ecocentrism interesting to discuss. The basic underlying value is that all species, now considered as a whole, matter (Hedenus et al., 2016). If considered in its strong form, ecocentrism only cares about the well-being of species. This makes it hard to motivate the development of drugs at all, as long as they are not such that they could keep the human species from extinction. One might even be morally obliged to develop drugs for other species than humans, if diseases threaten their collective continued well-being. This might sound very appealing to some, but it is rather unlikely that such a radical point of view can lead to reasonable rules guiding day to day live in animal research.
As a compromise one could consider a weaker form of ecocentrism, which is still based on species, but also separately attaches value to each particular individual of any species. Now it