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13 The Commonsense Case against Animal Experimentation Mylan Engel Jr. As this volume illustrates, most arguments for the immorality of animal experimentation take one of two forms. Either they follow Peter Singer’s lead and maintain that most animal experiments are morally unjustifiable on utilitarian grounds;1 or they follow Tom Regan’s deontological rights-based approach and insist that virtually all of the animals experimented on in research facilities around the country possess the very same properties that confer rights on humans, and therefore, experimenting on these animals is wrong because it violates their rights.2 When confronted with Singer’s and Regan’s arguments opposing animal experimentation, proponents of animal experimentation tend to casually dismiss these arguments by rejecting the ethical theories on which they are predicated. These dismissals take roughly the following form: “Singer’s preference utilitarianism3 is irremediably flawed, as is Regan’s theory of moral rights. Since Singer’s and Regan’s arguments against animal experimentation are predicated on flawed ethical theories, their arguments are also flawed. Until someone can provide me with clear moral reasons for not experimenting on animals, I will continue to experiment on animals as I see fit.” Consider two examples. In an effort to defend animal experimentation, Carl Cohen (2001a and 2001b) goes to great lengths to try to show, contra Regan, that nonhuman animals lack rights and that, therefore, it is permissible to experiment on them (as if the latter followed from the former). In an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association , Richard Vance admits that: “Both [Tom Regan and Peter Singer] are exceptionally good philosophers in the analytical tradition. They provide sophisticated defenses of their positions” (1992, 1715). However, Vance rejects their defenses of the immorality of animal experimentation because he rejects the analytical ethical tradition on which they are based. As Vance 216 Chapter 13 sees it, Singer’s and Regan’s arguments against animal experimentation ultimately fail because of the limited nature of the philosophical tools they use. Their ultimate theoretical weaknesses are extremely common among analytical ethicists. Unlike more substantive ethical traditions (for example religious or ethnic traditions), analytical ethics cannot draw on a rich array of sources—canonical texts, authoritative readings, overlapping (even contradictory) platitudes, interpretative communities, and the like. In comparison with such traditions, analytical ethics is abstract and thin. Despite claims of rational consistency, no analytical model has been able to claim adequacy. (1715) A moment’s reflection reveals the self-serving sophistry of such a reply. Since no ethical theory to date is immune to objection, one could fashion a similar reply to “justify” or rationalize virtually any behavior. One could “justify” slavery as follows: An opponent of slavery might appeal to utilitarian , Kantian, or contractarian grounds to establish the immorality of slavery. Our fictitious slavery proponent could then point out that all of these ethical theories are flawed and, ipso facto, so too are all the arguments against slavery. Our slavery proponent might then assert: “Until someone can provide me with clear moral reasons for abolishing slavery, I will continue to own and exploit slaves.” The speciousness of such a “justification” of slavery should be obvious. No one who seriously considered the brutality and inhumanity of slavery could think that it is somehow permissible simply because all current ethical theories are flawed. But such specious reasoning is often used to “justify” the equally brutal and inhumane breeding, confining, infecting, injuring, mutilating, maiming, blinding, torturing, and killing of animals in animal experiments.4 My aim in the present chapter is to block this spurious reply by providing an argument for the immorality of animal experimentation that does not rest on any particular highly contentious ethical theory. Rather, it rests on commonsense moral beliefs that we all share. Before turning to these beliefs, a few prefatory observations are in order. First, unlike other arguments for the immorality of animal experimentation , my argument is not predicated on the wrongness of speciesism,5 nor does it depend on your believing that all animals are equal or that all animals have a right to life; rather, it is predicated on several commonsense moral principles which you no doubt believe.6 The significance of this argumentative strategy is two-fold: First and most important, all effective argumentation must start with premises one’s interlocutor accepts.7 The reason Singer’s and Regan’s arguments sometimes fall on deaf ears is that their arguments do not start with premises their readers share. In...

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