Do animals have an interest in life? Lawrence E. Johnson a a

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2 Australasian Journal of Philosophy Vol. 61, No. 2; June 1983 DO ANIMALS HAVE AN INTEREST IN LIFE? Lawrence E. Johnson Peter Singer poses the question of whether killing animals -- as distinguished from causing them pain - violates their interests.1 Suppose we raise animals in such a way that they are able to live a life which is pleasant and more or less natural, then slaughter them painlessly. Would this be to fail to respect their interests? Singer is inclined to think that this would not violate their interests. While they would not experience future pleasures, they would not exist to experience the deprivation. Not existing, they would have no interests to be respected or violated. To treat (normal) humans in this fashion, on the other hand, would be to violate their interests, since they have a desire to continue to live, whereas animals presumably have neither selfconsciousness nor a conception of future time. Of course, killing an animal in the midst of a pleasant life would reduce the amount of pleasure in the world, but we could make up for that by replacing slain animals with other animals living happy lives. (Certainly we would replace them if we desired to remain in the farming business.) This would answer utilitarian objections concerned with the maximisation of interest satisfaction, with beings seen as more or less interchangeable bearers of interests to be satisfied. Singer does not intend this to be a justification of the utilisation of animals as normally practiced, to be sure, since most contemporary methods of animal husbandry involve significant degrees of pain. Still, it might perhaps do for a free-range chicken operation where a chicken would meet a painless death after a pleasant life. Michael Lockwood, quoting an unpublished paper by Christina Hoff, 2 raises the point that to endorse such a practice would seem to imply that we must then condone practices which, at least intuitively, appear much more objectionable. Let us suppose that one were to buy a puppy to serve as a family pet. The family delights in the companionship of the young dog, playing with it, sharing walks and outings, and enjoying its affection. When it comes time for their annual vacation they destroy the dog painlessly, since it would be inconvenient to take it with them or otherwise to make provision for it. On their return they acquire another pet, making this an annual practice. Perhaps they engage the services of 'Disposapup Ltd.', a commercial organisation which provides healthy well-bred puppies of good disposition, 1 Peter Singer, PracticalEthics, Cambridge, 1979, pp , and 'Killing Humans and Killing Animals', Inquiry 22, nos. 1-2, Summer, Michael Lockwood, 'Singer on Killing and the Preference for Life', Inquiry 22, nos. 1-2, Summer, 1979, pp , quoting Christina Hoff, 'Human Lives and Animal Lives', unpublished. 172

3 Lawrence E. Johnson 173 house-trained if one wants them a bit older, and which attends to the annual disposal professionally and painlessly. There seems to be a high degree of parallelism between this practice and that of painless farming, insofar as in both cases the animals live pleasantly and die painlessly to further human interests, and are replaced in due course by other animals living similarly pleasant lives. If we do not violate the interests of animals in the one case, it would appear to follow that we would not be doing so in the other. Yet intuitively, the Disposapup procedure seems objectionable, if not down-right disgusting. Does objecting to such a practice rest on more than an emotional prejudice? If so, what are the grounds? Do animals have an interest in continuing to live? What are the implications for painless farming? Certainly it seems like a dirty double-cross to enter into a relationship of trust and affection with any creature which can enter into such a relationship, and then to be a party to its premeditated and premature destruction. (This charge would evidently not apply to the painless farming operation.) Still, it would be a morally objectionable double-cross only if Disposapup violated the interests of the double-crossed. If the redundant dog does not have an interest in remaining alive, then its interests would not be violated nor the dog betrayed. (Moreover, it would not do to argue, in a Kantian fashion, that such behaviour, while not improper in itself, is objectionable because it encourages bad habits in our treatment of humans. Kant believed that cruelty to animals was to be discouraged for that reason, and one might wish to discourage programmatic pet disposal on similar grounds. Our behaviour toward animals is only contingently and loosely related to our behaviour toward humans, however, particularly if we believe that what harms humans does not harm animals. If that were the only objection to Disposapup, it would be better to let it go with a admonition to remember that humans are not dogs.) I wish to argue that many animals as well as humans do have an interest in remaining alive, except under some extreme circumstances, and that preference utilitarianism does not provide an adequate account of interests. As a subsidiary point I wish to argue, given that animals have such an interest, that it is a morally objectionable betrayal of trust to treat the family pet in the way suggested. I shall briefly consider this point before turning to the main point. If animals do have an interest in remaining alive, and if the Disposapup procedure amounts to a breach of faith, this would account for the intuitively perceived difference between premature pet disposal and painless farming. I believe that the former is a breach of faith, holding that an obligation relationship need not be formalised. Dogs can, after their fashion, feel affection, obligation, expectation, and trust. If we encourage such feelings in any beings, human or otherwise, we have, I believe, entered into a tacit and morally significant undertaking which entails obligations on our part. 3 The fact that the dog cannot understand or conceptualise all of 3 I discuss this point somewhat further in my 'Can Animals be Moral Agents?', under submission. In fact, I would hold that whenever we encourage some being to trust in our

4 174 Do Animals Have an Interest in Life its interests does not diminish our burden of trust. If anything, the opposite. Double crossing the family dog would, then, be morally objectionable - if it does have an interest in remaining alive. Whether or not one accepts this argument, however, the key and independently important question is whether animals do have an interest in remaining alive. First, let us note some ways in which killing people would affect people's interests. For one thing, it would cause other people to worry whether their own number was to come up soon, occasioning a great deal of anxiety. Moreover, people close to the slain would suffer the pains of bereavement. One must conclude, then, that killing people ad lib would violate interests. Killing dogs and chickens, on the other hand, would not normally violate interests in this way, as they would not be as aware of what was going on. However, this evaluation concentrates on the negative effects on survivors rather than on the interests of the slain. If the deceased were killed painlessly and without prior fear, these considerations would give no reason for concluding that their interests had been violated. More to the point, as far as the victims are concerned, is that people are self-conscious, have a conception of the future, and normally have a desire to continue to exist. We can therefore argue that if people have such a desire, they thus have an interest in having their desire fulfilled, and thereby an interest in staying alive. Killing them would violate this interest. Chickens and dogs, on the other hand, are presumably intellectually incapable of entertaining these desires. Preference utilitarianism would conclude that killing people contrary to their desires would therefore violate their interests, even if it were done painlessly and unexpectedly, while the killing of chickens or dogs in such a way would not violate their interests. This reason for not killing people seems too weak to many, since our interest in continuing to live is taken only as one interest among many to be calculated into the utilitarian cost-benefit analysis. That we are self conscious and desire to continue to live is held by some to provide a basis (with what other factors?) for a right to life which at least normally overrides other preferences. Again, we can evoke a Kantian style respect for autonomy. On any of these grounds, though, self consciousness and a desire to continue to live are of central importance. That they are of great importance I would heartily agree, but I must argue that there is more to this matter of interests than these reasons take account of. As an illustration of why I think there is more it it, consider the following case. Let us suppose that I am in contact with a young man, nineteen years old, who is extremely despondent because his girl friend has dumped him. It appears to him that life is meaningless without her and could never be anything but miserable. Accordingly, he is determined to end it all by leaping from the tallest building on the university campus. While I would concede that suicide can be a rational alternative for some people under some circumstances it would appear to me that I should interfere in this case were good intentions, we thereby assumed obligations, even if the other party (a baby? a cat?) does not recognise obligations to us.

5 Lawrence E. Johnson 175 I in a position to do so. Not only should I try to talk him out of if, I ought, failing that, to forceably restrain him until he can see things in a clearer perspective. To do so would be to violate his autonomy and to act contrary to his desires concerning the continuation of his life. There are, to be sure, incidental reasons why I should do so. I would probably be sparing his friends and relations considerable grief, should he have any friends or relations, and I would be relieving the groundsmen from having to deal with a disagreeable mess. More to the point, though, it would seem to me that it would be in the young man's interests to frustrate his desire to terminate his life. If this were so, this would mean that violating his autonomy and frustrating his desire would be in his interests. How could that be? Evidently, if there is any force to this example, we need to take a closer look at this business of interests. We would do well to ask how interests and desires are related - and what they have to do with the person or other being said to have them. We might well start by noting that integration of desires or interests evidently has something fairly central to do with it. One would suppose, for instance, that the desperate rejected lover was allowing a desire to escape his misery and frustration to overcome a desire to live, and that what he really needs is to sort out his desires, and means of achieving them, so that they are compatible with one another and with his surrounding situation. Evidently, while our desires are necessary for our happiness, they are no reliable guides as to how it may be achieved. (Thought to bear in mind: if we are not so good at recognising what is in our interests, what justification can we give for requiring that a dog recognise an interest before we concede it has it?) So, do we have an interest in life? Does even a happy person have an interest in staying alive? Suppose we were to unexpectedly and painlessly kill a happy person (replacing that person in due course with another happy person). Suppose too that that person desired to remain alive, and suppose even that this desire was one of the ones which contributed to the person's balance of happiness. Now, the mere fact that he or she has a desire to live does not necessarily mean that continuing to live is in that person's interests, though while they live it may be in his or her interest to have the desire as one component of a balance of happiness. After all, what one desires might not be in one's interest even though the desiring of it might be. Moreover, we might argue that so long as one is not killed, neither one's interests nor one's desires have been violated, and that when one is dead, one has neither interests nor desires to be violated. Singer is concerned to deny the force of such an argument. He suggests a version of preference utilitarianism according to which, he claims, such conclusions would not follow. 4 In this version, we make the plausible move of taking a person's interests to be what, on balance and after reflection on all the relevant facts, a person prefers. [Perhaps he should say 'would prefer'.] 4 Singer, Practical Ethics, pp

6 176 Do Animals Have an Interest in Life According to preference utilitarianism, an action contrary to the preference of any being is, unless this preference is outweighed by contrary preferences, wrong. Killing a person who prefers to continue living is therefore wrong, other things being equal. That the victims are not around after the act to lament the fact that their preferences have been disregarded is irrelevant. This version of utilitarianism has the advantage of being a more general formulation which allows for the possibility that pleasure may not be the be all and end all. It should be noted that this line has recourse not just to the subjective, but to the subjunctive. Quite plausibly, the emphasis is not directly on what a person prefers, but on what one would prefer if one had reflected on the relevant facts. These may, of course, be very different things. To assume that humans do have an interest in life, according to the preference utilitarian criterion, Would be to assume that they would, knowing all the relevant facts and reflecting on them properly, have a preference for continuing to live. This would be to assume, too, that they would not merely prefer, from such an enlightened viewpoint, to have the preference while alive, as contributing to their overall balance of happiness. This can be distinguished from having a preference in that enlightened state to actually continue to live. An intuitive conception of interests as contributing to the quality of life would be satisfied by the preference for having the preference while alive, with the added element in having the preference in its own right not evidently contributing to the quality of one's life. Yet death would violate only the latter of these possible enlightened preferences, if it violated either. (As well, of course, we must distinguish both of these preferences from preferences not to fear death, feel pain, have other people upset, and all that.) It is not absolutely certain that even most people would, under those unusual conditions of enlightenment, have the preference for continuing to live, as distinguished from other preferences, for it is possible that having such a preference is a matter of ignorance or illusion. If so, there would be nothing wrong with a suitably discreet Disposaperson procedure, as well as Disposapup. Let us assume, however, that humans would have such a preference. Would this warrant the conclusion that humans do and animals do not have an interest in life? It would follow from the above that animals which are not self conscious, or which do not have a conception of the future, would not have an interest in continuing to live. In fairness, of course, before we disregarded an animal's possible interest in life we would have to ascertain that it was not only linguistically incapable of expressing such a preference but also inteuectually incapable of entertaining it. There is still a question or two about whether this really is being quite fair to animals. Is it unfair to animals to require that they should be capable of intellectually recognising their interests by having conscious preferences? Even the preference utilitarian criterion does not demand that we actually be aware of our interests, but only that we would be aware of them, were we aware of the facts and thinking about them clearly.

7 Lawrence E. Johnson 177 It does no good, though, just to suggest that an animal would have a preference for continuing to live if it could entertain such a preference, for then it would be a person and not what it is, while a human can have an enlightened preference without being what it is not. What I do suggest is that the preference utilitarian criterion is biased towards humans because humans tend to conceptualise things quite a lot, while other animals do not do so as much. It may be that we conceptualise our interest in continuing to live because that is one thing we do with interests, while other animals act in accordance with their interests in other ways. My question is whether interests are to be equated with what would be enlightened preferences, or whether we would have those preferences, or some of them, because what would be preferred is in our interests. Meeting the preference utilitarian criterion, I suggest may be a sufficient condition for being an interest, but not a necessary condition. Often, no doubt, we just have a preference, and whatever is preferred is thereby in our interests ('performative preferences', we might say). Still, I shall argue that some of our preferences, or what would be preferences, are, or would be, preferred because what is preferred does happen to be in our interests. Consider that old utilitarian standby, pain. It appears much less believable to me that pain is contrary to our interests because we prefer not to experience it, than that we prefer not to experience it because having the experience is contrary to our immediate interests (though it may be a means of avoiding something worse). Suppose I had a young being which had just been painlessly born or hatched. Having had no experience of pain it could have no concept of pain, and therefore no preference to not experience it. Moreover, it could not form such a preference on the basis of more facts and clear thinking because it could not conceptualise it. I thereupon decide to give it a concept of pain by applying a hot iron to a sensitive portion of its anatomy, claiming moral innocence on the grounds that I was not violating even a would-be preference. This cruel act is palpably wrong, but it is difficult to fault it on the preference utilitarian criterion without dipping dangerously far into the subjunctive. To maintain the adequacy of that criterion in the face of such a case would require us to make something like the claim that the being which had not experienced pain would have a preference for not experiencing it if it were thinking clearly and were given the relevant facts and, with them, a concept of pain. (How would we give it - through a painful experience?) that would be skating on thin ice. To exclude dogs, chickens, embryos, and the like, from having would-be preferences for life, we would have to maintain that would-be preferences count only if they would be preferred by beings which could have the necessary concepts while remaining the sorts of beings which they are now. We could hypothetically expand their store of concepts or experiences, but not their intellectual capacity. Now, having to refer not only to hypothetical preferences, but to hypothetically given concepts as well, suggests to me that preferences are not the most basic factors. Evidently, some would-be preferences would be what they would be because they spring from the nature of the preference hayer. The preference utilitarian who

8 178 Do Animals Have an Interest in Life recognised the cruelty of the proposed act would have to say that we knew ahead of time that the proposed act was wrong given the nature of the recipient of the act. Hot irons cause pain to such beings, and pain, at least of that variety, entails a preference for not having it. If there would be a being capable of feeling pain but intellectually incapable of forming preferences, that would be a poor excuse for tormenting it, but the presumption is that there could be no such being. (Perhaps some pains, such as erotic pains, are pleasant, or at least bring greater pleasure with them, but we are concerned with the unambiguous cases.) Such pain, then, according to this defence of preference utilitarianism, is contrary to our direct interests because we necessarily form contrary preferences. I maintain that this is back to front, that we form preferences against feeling pain because painful feelings are immediately contrary to our interests. No matter how urgently or necessarily the pain entails the preference, the pain is still not the preference but only its cause. The preference may be a good reason to believe that the sensation is painfui, or we may have to reason the other way in a given instance (as with beings which have never yet felt pain), but it is the pain which is a violation of interests, the preference being that our interests not be violated. Even if the violation of our preference stings us, the pain stings more. Thus far I have argued that interests are not the same as preferences, and that in some cases we have preferences because of our interests. (This is not to deny that we often have interests because of our preferences, whatever is preferred being in our interests because it is preferred. No doubt many of our favourite things, activities, etc., would be instances of this. Moreover, as Mill and others have pointed out, it is in our interests to have preferences other than those focusing on our basic interests. Still, we can get muddled in our preferences, preferring that which is not in our interests. Even with the clearest thinking, though, preferences sometimes do not constitute our interests, but only entail them.) This makes some distance between interests and preferences, but I must pry them even further apart if I am to answer the title question in the affirmative, for I must argue that animals can and do have an interest in life even if that interest does not entail even a wouldbe preference. I shall now argue that it is possible that an animal can have an interest in life which does not entail a would-be preference, and then I shall argue the case for animals having an interest in continuing to live is as viable as the case for humans having an interest in continuing to live. The first part is easier at this stage, given that preferences and interests are not to be simply conflated, and given that sometimes we have preferences because they follow from our interests. We now have to ask whether a being can have an interest which is not constituted by a preference, and which the being cannot conceptualise to the point of forming a preference about it. Primafacie, there is at least the possibility that while an interest may entail a corelative wouldbe preference by a person who has the interest, a similar interest may not entail a corelative preference by an animal which cannot conceptualise such

9 Lawrence E. Johnson 179 a preference. Now, pain, presumably, can be conceived in some form by any being which can feel it, but we cannot just assume that all interests must manifest themselves so directly and conceivably. Obviously an interest must make some sort of a difference to whatever being has the interest, which must be a sentient being - my car has an interest in having its oil filter changed only in a metaphorical or derivative sense - but it is begging the question to just assume that the being must be able to conceive of the interest which makes the difference to it. Something may make a difference to us without our being able to conceive of it. Suppose, to focus on our central question, that an animal did have an interest in continuing to live. It could act in accordance with this interest quite successfully by instinct or in pursuit of things it can conceive of (food, pain avoidance, etc.), without conceiving of the interest it was acting in accordance with. After all, humans can further their happiness without thinking about pursuing happiness at all. The preference utilitarian criterion, I maintain, unfairly stacks the deck. Now, I want to ask whether animals, or some of them, really do have an interest in continuing to live. My strategy will be to first return to the question of whether humans have an interest in continuing to live, and if so, why. I shall argue that if the human interest in continuing to live is merely constituted by the preference for doing so, this reason will not bear the weight asked of it. On the other hand, I shall argue, if the preference does not constitute the interest, but is preferred because of the interest, any plausible reason for holding that humans do have such an interest would apply to some animals as well. If the human preference for continuing to live is constituted by our preference for doing so, it presents a case which is quite unique among our preferences. In the case of any other preference we might have, such as that for food, the absence of pain, or Balinese oil paintings, we can experience either the satisfaction of the preferences or its not being satisfied, as the case may be. If having an unsatisfied preference is bad, one can only avoid that (while one lives) by changing or satisfying the preference. On the other hand, while one can experience the satisfaction of one's preference for continuing to live, one can never experience its non-satisfaction. Indeed, when we are dead we have no preference to be non-satisfied. Why, then, ought we to respect someone's preference for continuing to live? It might be noted that if someone is killed there is not the good of there being a satisfied preference for continuing to live, but on Disposaperson principles we can rectify the difficulty by bringing about another person with a similar preference. The argument that we should honour a preference for continuing to live because continuing to live is necessary for that person's attaining the satisfaction of other interests can be met on similar grounds. Where there is no life there are no unsatisfied preferences. Again, we can evoke the replacement gambit. Too, it should be noted that this argument could be used in favor of killing someone to avoid their getting a severe disappointment. (Fantasy: the next time I flunk a student, instead of a felt-tipped marking pen I use a revolver.) According to Singer, recall, 'the fact that the victim is not around after

10 180 Do Animals Have an Interest in Life the act to lament the fact that their preferences have been disregarded is irrelevant'fl He does not say why it is irrelevant, but presumably, unless we are to recognise the interests of non-existent people, the point is that what violates the victim's preference when I commit murder is not his or her death or my having caused it, but my act causing it, an act which I undertake during the last moments of the victim's life when he or she is still around to have preferences. Certainly, this version conforms with our common intuition that there is, at least normally, something wrong with killing people. Too, it puts the moral emphasis directly on the act of killing (or allowing to die), rather than on the consequences, which would be problematic. Still, not putting emphasis on the consequences seems somewhat odd for what is a version of utilitarianism. More to the point, it does not work if it is supposed to be a reason for concluding that animals do not have an interest in not being killed. If we interpret the preference utilitarian criterion in this way, focusing on the act leading to death performed while the victim, however briefly, yet lives, we can argue that killing animals, however painlessly, is as much a violation of preference as it is in the case of humans. After all, the point is not simply whether one has a preference against the act, but whether one would have such a preference if one were as aware as one could be of the relevant facts. Someone may resent my pushing them from the path of a rapidly moving train, until they understood why, or they may have no preference against my giving them poison if they do not know that is what it is. Now, while we assume that animals have no concept of being dead, they generally tend to have strong dislikes for acts leading to that result, or would if they knew more about it. Any hunter or fisherman will tell you that animals learn fast about that sort of thing, and develop extremely strong aversions. A dog may not know that the gas chamber would kill it, but if it witnessed live dogs going in and dead ones coming out, it would soon acquire a very strong preference for not going in. It may have no concept of self, future, or death, but it has or would have, a strong preference against any sort of thing leading to its death, and that is what counts according to this scheme. It might be objected that an animal does not understand the result of the process, while humans do, that animals form their aversions only in ignorance, or by instinct. That does not cut any ice, though. Whatever the reasons for our basic preferences might be, whether instinct, further knowledge, or something else, it is our basic preferences which count on our given premises. So, if on the one hand, we interpret the preference utilitarian criterion as militating against killing on the grounds that death violates a preference for continuing to live, the argument works for neither humans nor animals, as the dead have no preferences. If, on the other hand, we interpret it as militating against death causing acts on the grounds that such acts violate the would-be preferences of those yet living,it militates against such actions directed toward animals as well as those directed toward humans. If we take our preferences as constituting our interests, then, the most we 5 /b/d.

11 Lawrence E. Johnson 181 can say is that if humans have an interest in continuing to live, then so do at least most of the higher animals. We may not even say that much if we concluded, on the basis of the first interpretation, that neither humans nor animals have an interest in continuing to live. Still, there would then be no reason here against the suitably surreptitious murder of the unloved, the only moral wrong in that case being indiscretion. That it would sanction the capricious murder of harmless hermits seems to me to be sufficient reason for rejecting that one. That preferences constitute interests seems, in my view, to be only slightly less unbelievable. At the least, it seems counter-intuitive that there is no more to our interest in continuing to live than a would-be preference against an act of which we may never know, and the result of which is irrelevant. It seems much more plausible that the act leading to death should be wrong because of the end result - that it is death which is significant. Still, intuitions are not always the most reliable of guides. There is another, more substantive, point I would raise here. Given that preferences are the primary factors, I would ask why we should make reference to wouldbe cases of knowing the relevant facts. In most cases, obviously, it is because we might otherwise be dissatisfied with the overall consequences in terms of our various preferences, but that can hardly be the case when it comes to death causing acts. If I give someone a suitable poison in her favourite drink and she prefers, in ignorance, to drink it, she would have no dissatisfied preferences thereafter. It would seem that in applying the preference utilitarian criterion in this way we are really giving tacit recognition to the significance of consequences. If so, we should look seriously at the possibility that we have, or would have, preferences because of our interests. If I am wrong in my reservations, and meeting the preference utilitarian criterion is a necessary and sufficient condition for being an interest, then, by the preceding arguments, animals have as much claim as humans to an interest in continuing to live. Let us now consider the possibility that we have an interest in continuing to live, and that we do not have the interest because we do have, or would have, a preference for continuing to live, but have the preference, if we do have it, because of the interest. If this were the case, it would seem at least possible that an animal might have a similar interest, but not have such a preference because it was unable to conceptualise it. If it is not possible that an animal could have an interest, of that variety, in continuing to live, this would have to be because of something unique to humans. Presumably, unless we were to attach a great deal of moral significance to naked skins or opposable thumbs, that factor would have to live in the human intellect. Indeed, something along those lines seems to me to be implicit in the preference utilitarian criterion. This, of course, would slot in very nicely with the philosopher's prejudice that we live to conceptualise, rather than conceptualise to live. Whatever this additional factor is, it cannot be another interest of ours, for we would have no unsatisfied interests when dead. Rationality or any other noble human quality, taken as being of value, does not mean that we have an interest in survival (though others might have an

12 182 Do Animals Have an Interest in Life interest in our survival). At most, it might mean that if we did have an interest in continuing to live, our interest should be given priority. I suggest it would be useful to not think of persons or animals as living and having interests as if those were separable things, and to not phrase our questions in such terms. Living is not something which a living being can stop doing while remaining what it is, and interests are not something which we can have or change like clothing. (To be sure, some of our more peripheral interests, like my interest in seeing a particular movie, do not make much difference, but the more central an interest is, the more central it is to what we are.) A person or animal, we must remember, is not just a thing (which has things), but is a complex on-going process as well, a life, encompassing various complex psychological and biological sub-processes traversing time and different bits of matter, events, and states of affairs, incorporating thoughts, feelings, memories, pleasures, pains, urges, preferences, and all the rest of us. The animal/person/life process does not just have interests; where our interests lie is, I believe, inherent in the process itself. What I take to be interests are those things which contribute to the overall effective functioning of the process as a whole. Nutrition is one interest. It is not that we eat because we have an interest in or preference for avoiding the pangs of hunger, rather, we are organised in such a way as to feel the pangs because we have an interest in nutrition. Moreover, it would appear that pleasure and pain are only part of the story. After all, there are such things as useful pains and harmful pleasures. Even seeking to gain the greatest net amount of pleasure is an inadequate approach, as Mill discovered to his cost, for pleasure and pain are only aspects of the whole being. While pleasure provides much of the pay-off in the good life, it is the well being of the whole person/animal/life process which counts. What I take to be our basic interest, then, is our overall health, using the term, in more than a medical sense, to cover our general integrated effective functioning. Health in this broad sense would be something we might call 'well being' or 'happiness' (in a sense going beyond simple pleasure), or what Aristotle called Eudaimonia. Obvious questions would be what counts as effective functioning, arid does this rest on a value judgment about what ought to be the case? I admit that I cannot give a detailed account of what good health amounts to, and that considerably more needs to be said on the subject. Still, neither can physicians or biologists give a complete account of physical good health. In either case, though, I would take it that what an effective balance would be is an empirical question. In both cases, it leads to a satisfaction we can feel, if not give an account of. Now, that we ought morally to recognise the interests of other beings, taking health in this sense as the basic interest, is not something which is logically provable, but as a moral principle it seems to be at least as evident as those principles based on pleasure or preferences. More so, I should think, insofar as pleasure and preferences only deal with part of our nature. Moreover, I would note that taking health as our basic interest provides a certain amount of support for the preference utilitarian criterion, as far as it goes. Given that we had the relevant facts and could think about them

13 Lawrence E. Johnson 183 clearly, what we would prefer would contribute to our overall health, though in fact we might not be able to conceive what our interests are. Our central question is whether animals, and indeed, humans, have an interest in continuing to live. I answer in the affirmative, given the conception of health as our basic interest. I claim that a person or animal is not just a body with an internal state of affairs, any more than a wave traversing the sea is just its current amount and shape of water. Both are ongoing processes. Disruption of the life process, I maintain, is unhealthy and therefore contrary to its interest, a point which would apply to animals as well as to humans. But why should we rec0gnise the interest of a healthy ongoing life process in going on? It can be argued that once terminated, a healthy life process has no more interests than it has preferences. It is not there to have anything. This objection, too, would apply to the cases of humans and animals alike, and is adequate against the first interpretation of preference utilitarianism. I believe that it is not adequate against a position which takes health, in the total sense, as our basic interest, in that a living being is a future oriented process as well as a presently existing thing. We have a future as well as a present, and our progressing toward the future is central to what we are now. To respect the interest of a life-process then is to respect it as a way of proceeding into the future. Save when our preferences are validated by our interests, our preferences are not violated by the non-existence of the preferrer. Our preference for continued life ought to be respected, or at least considered, not because it is a preference but because what is preferred is in our interests. I would conclude, then, that animals do have an interest in continuing to live. The Disposapup procedure would therefore violate the basic interests of the family pet, and would amount to a breach of faith. This would be more objectionable than killing another animal. Any healthy animal, has an interest in continuing to live, though, and this should be considered for what significance it has. This is not to say that setting a mousetrap amounts to premeditated murder. While equal interests are to be treated equally, this is not to say that one interest in continuing to live is equivalent to any other interest in continuing to live, for these are matters of different sorts of lives and must be evaluated accordingly. I would hold that my interest in not being bothered by a fly outweighs the fly's interest in continuing to live. That, of course, is to make a value judgment, and I cannot give a formula for evaluating lives and interests. (I am, however, sufficiently conceited to think that my own life process is of a much higher order than that of a fly.) Painless farming would be more problematic. Killing animals for meat would not be a double-cross, but it would violate their interest in continuing to live. How important those interests are is debatable. My account of health as a basic interest is admittedly incomplete, and would not be uniformly agreed to, complete or otherwise. Be that as it may, whether we appeal to health, pleasure and pain, preferences, or rationality, there is no possibly viable reason to hold that humans have an interest, as such, in continuing to live which does not provide an equally good reason for holding

14 184 Do Animals Have an Interest in Life that some animals also have an interest in continuing to live. Finally, and more adventurously, I conclude that animals do have an interest in continuing to live. Flinders University Received March 1982