Deck 12: Animal Welfare

Question 1

In 2015 and 2016 in the United States alone, more than 18 billion animals, including cows, pigs, sheep, and lambs, were slaughtered for food.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

Animal rights activists waged a highly effective campaign against the practice of seal hunting, an activity that constituted the heart of Canadian Inuit culture and identity. The campaign devastated the Inuit economy and created a host of health, social, and cultural problems for them. Thomas Aquinas would almost certainly have sided with the Inuit.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

Suppose you believe it would be just as wrong to hurt, eat, cage, or hunt an animal as it would be to do the same to a human. What theory could you use to justify your belief?

A) an anthropocentric theory
B) Regan's rights theory
C) Singer's theory
D) the theory suggested in the book of Genesis

Answer 3

B

Question 4

Mary Anne Warren says that human lives have greater intrinsic value than animal lives because human lives are worth more to their possessors.

Question 5

Virtually everyone thinks that being cruel to animals-unnecessarily causing them pain or misery-is

A) sometimes permissible.
B) wrong.
C) right.
D) relative to the animal's intelligence.

Question 6

To say that an animal has moral status is to say that

A) it is alive and sentient.
B) it is an object of direct moral consideration or concern.
C) it is worthy of moral concern because of its relationship to others.
D) there are no limits to the amount of suffering that can be inflicted on it.

Question 7

In Britain, thousands have protested for and against scientific animal testing, with each side trying to make its case in the streets and in the media. What plausible utilitarian argument could scientists and others make in favor of the testing?

A) Animal testing produces greater net benefits to society than not testing. The pain suffered by test animals is more than offset by the cures and treatments that the tests help develop.
B) Animals are to be used for the benefit of humankind, so whatever suffering the test animals endure is permissible.
C) Animals and humans have equal inherent value. Because humans should not be kept in cages, experimented on, and otherwise abused, neither should animals.
D) Humans have infinite moral worth, but animals have little or none. So, it is permissible to use animals in the service of humans, just as it is permissible to use a hammer to build a house.

Question 8

Consider the practice of scientific experimentation on animals, in which, for example, the benefits gained from the research greatly outweigh the suffering involved. In this case, a Singer utilitarian may want to condone the research, and a Regan animal rights advocate would want to abolish the research.

Question 9

The traditional attitude toward animals is that

A) animals have rights and therefore have inherent value.
B) animals deserve the same level of consideration that we give to human infants.
C) an animal is owed moral respect as a source of food or companionship.
D) an animal is merely a resource that humans may dispose of as they see fit; an animal has instrumental value only.

Question 10

If it's wrong to cage a human being, then it's wrong to cage a nonhuman animal. Zoos that exist solely for the sake of entertaining visitors are wrong, as they keep nonhuman animals in cages against their will. This view is most likely to be held by

A) Jeremy Bentham.
B) Mary Anne Warren.
C) Tom Regan.
D) René Descartes.

Question 11

According to Peter Singer, if a man and a pig were both experiencing intense pain, we must assume that

A) the man's pain should be taken more seriously than the pig's.
B) the man's pain should be taken as seriously as the pig's.
C) the man's pain should be taken less seriously than the pig's.
D) only the pig's pain should be taken into account.

Question 12

Those who hold the traditional attitude toward animals believe that cruelty to animals is bad, but only because the Bible explicitly speaks against it.

Question 13

Both Peter Singer and Jeremy Bentham hold that utilitarian calculations must take into account the pleasure and pain of all sentient creatures.

Question 14

It was the philosopher Thomas Aquinas who said, "It is no wrong for man to make use of [animals], either by killing them or in any other way whatever."

Question 15

Our moral common sense suggests that accidentally running over a man with our car is morally worse than doing the same to a rabbit. Tom Regan would

A) agree with our common sense, due to his belief that animals are not equal to
Human beings.
B) disagree with our common sense, due to his belief that animals have the same
Rights as human beings.
C) agree with our common sense, due to his belief that consequences matter only
When those affected are human.
D) disagree with our common sense, but only when the net consequences of running
Over the rabbit are negative.

Question 16

The claim that animals have no moral standing because they do not have the kind of strong family relationships exhibited by humans has been undermined by

A) popular culture.
B) philosophy.
C) science.
D) politics.

Question 17

The claim that merely having the DNA of the human species gives beings moral considerability has been undermined by

A) studies of animal anatomy.
B) DNA research.
C) the logical possibility of animals existing on other planets.
D) the logical possibility of creatures who have full moral status but no DNA.

Question 18

Tom Regan argues that humans are experiencing subjects of a life; nonhuman animals (normal, fully developed mammals) are nonexperiencing subjects of a life.

Question 19

Suppose your friend is an animal rights advocate for the same reasons that Peter Singer is (utilitarian calculations). She thinks our system of meat production should be abolished, but by her own lights, her utilitarianism could sanction

A) the current system of meat production supplemented with greater production of plant-based foods.
B) meat production in foreign countries.
C) a cruel but quick form of meat production.
D) a humane form of meat production.

Question 20

In order to be logically consistent, a person who believes that animals have rights would also have to hold the view that animals have the same moral rights that humans do.

Question 21

For both Jeremy Bentham and Peter Singer, what makes a being worthy of moral concern, what requires us to include it in the moral community, is its ability to ________.

Question 22

According to Peter Singer, those who do not give equal moral consideration to both human and nonhuman animals are guilty of ________.

Question 23

Today almost no one believes, as ________ did, that animals are equivalent to windup clocks, mechanisms without feelings.

Question 24

When an animal is entitled to a kind of moral respect that cannot be overridden (or cannot be overridden easily), it is said to have ________.

Question 25

The philosopher ________ helped engender the animal rights movement by arguing that something was very wrong with the traditional attitude toward animals and their treatment.