Carruthers now, in his seventh chapter, finally makes a concrete statement

on the moral value of respect to animals. First, he must make further

distinctions between rightness and wrongnessintroducing the concepts
that some actions are not wrong in the sense that they harm a rational
agent, but that they reflect poorly on the moral character of the actor. Moral
character is important in that it predisposes a rational agent toward
performing right actions. Things like honouring the dead, helping people
although others are also able to help, and treating animals with compassion
do not fall under the umbrella of utilitarianism (honouring the dead has no
real net benefit, other people may have already helped, taking the burden of
beneficence from us, and animals are not rational agents and therefore
cannot directly benefit society by being treated with compassion), but they
do fall under the virtue of beneficence. Beneficence is important because
rational agents must feel a certain drive to help out, or even enjoy helping
out, their fellow rational agents in order to regularly perform that duty. We
often see this virtue of beneficence extolled in parenting books, where
parents are encouraged to enable their children to help out the people
around them (donating part of their allowance to charity, bringing food to the
homeless, accompanying their parents to local charitable events like
homebuilding etc) so that they learn how good it feels. Children are often
selfish creatures, not seeming to fully understand the personhood of even
other children sometimes (not wanting to share with them or understanding
that they are hurting them in rough play), and these efforts are supposed to
mitigate that by setting a good example. Carruthers also revisits this closer
to the end of the chapter, pointing out that it is often animals (generally
pets) that children first learn to respectit is wrong to pull out the cats
whiskers because it hurts the cat.
Rational agents should be predisposed to help those in need, and to hold the
good of society in high regard. By helping the people who are not in grave
dangerpaying someones bus fee or holding open a door for someone with
their hands fullwe demonstrate that we are the type of people who are
ready to help when its really needed. Humans are an innately social species,
and need positive attachments to others in order to truly thrivewe must be
able to depend on our neighbours to help us in times of need, and we
demonstrate that dependence by helping out our neighbours when they are
the ones in need. Utilitarianism is interested solely in consequencean
action is wrong if its consequence is harmful, and an action is right if its
consequence is beneficial, but this leaves an enormous grey area in which an
action may not have harmful or beneficial consequences. For example, not
holding a door open for a man carrying a heavy bag of groceries in each
hand isnt necessarily harmful in most circumstances, and it isnt
significantly beneficial if you were to hold open the door. (Carruthers doesnt
really use a special term for these problems, so Ill use the fitting colloquial
term dick move.) Its a dick move because not holding the door causes the
man brief annoyance, but he is in most cases perfectly capable of putting
down one of the bags he is carrying and opening the door himself.

Contractualism, however, actively discourages dick moves, because being a

dick in minor circumstances doesnt imply that you will take the right path of
action in a more pressing circumstance.
But on to animalsbuilding up ones virtue of beneficence directly includes
ones compassionate treatment of animals. Its also a dick move to kick a
stray cat in the road, even though it doesnt directly harm any rational
agents, so it isnt wrong. But if youre they type of person who would kick a
stray cat, who is to say you wouldnt kick a child? And if you perform the dick
move of hitting and injuring a deer with your car, then driving off and
allowing it to suffer in pain, then who is to say you wouldnt watch a human
suffer in pain and ignore them? This need to treat animals with compassion is
amplified by our sympathy for them (especially pets or cute animals, and
many people are more likely to be compassionate toward a kitten than a
snake, but we will address this later in the semester). Carruthers claims that
our sympathy for animals is simply a side effect of our sympathy for
humanstreating our fellow rational agents with compassion tends to
broaden to include treating all living things with compassion.
But animals do not, under this logic, receive any kind of moral standing. They
are still non-rational, and the suffering or death of an animal is therefore not
as urgent as the suffering or death of a humans. Animals simply do not have
the same potential of beneficence as a humanthe death of a human may
end that persons promising research into a cure for cancer, the
assassination of a world leader may lead to war and the deaths of thousands
of soldiers but running over a stray cat on the way to work does not have
such consequences. The stray cat had little, if any, beneficial potential. The
importance of an animals suffering therefore, is negligible compared to the
suffering of a person. And it does not always imply that a person is more
likely to be cruel in all cases of causing animal suffering or death. Carruthers
first brings forth the example of a laboratory technician whose job includes
directly causing the suffering of lab animals. We cannot assume that they are
worse people because of their frequent exposure to animal suffering, nor can
we assume that of people who work on factory farms, slaughter livestock, or
hunt. In the majority if these cases, the wrongness of causing animal
suffering is mitigated by the fact that these people make their livelihoods
upon it. Animal suffering provided them with a job, which in turn provides
them with a salary, which they need to support their families. And few
people can fault them for thisworking in a slaughterhouse does not, in the
minds of the majority of people, correlate with a higher degree of cruelty to
other people. At any rate, most of the activities of these jobs and activities
are out of sight of the general public. Our rapidly urbanizing culture is, in
general, blissfully unaware of the suffering of most animals in laboratories
and farms. Carruthers points out that for most of us our only direct contact
with animals is with pets. We are unaware even of the general biological
needs of livestock and lab animals, and perhaps could not even identify
suffering if we saw it.

Here, Carruthers switches abruptly to the breaking down of humans into

categoriesrational and non-rational, male and female, black and white
and tells us why this is morally wrong and cannot be used to take away
moral rights enjoyed by all humans. Animals are a different matter entirely
from the senile and the non-rational human, Carruthers says, because they
still look like a human. If it is a dick move to harm a cat, it is surely just
wrong to harm an elderly senile person, because that is a direct correlation
to the harm of a healthy, rational person. If it looks like a rational person, will
become a rational person (as in the case of a baby), or has been a rational
person (as in the case of a senile person or a corpse), then it is afforded the
moral significance of a rational person. This excludes the possibility, then, of
sexist or racist systems being permissible under contractualism, because all
races and genders are equally distinguishable as rational people.
There is no way to protect all animals for suffering under contractualism,
because that would have negative repercussions upon rational society. This
would destroy the livelihood of the farmer and the rancher, hold back
valuable medical research, and certainly cause massive influx of wild animals
into human-occupied lands as their populations expand without the check of
hunting (causing expensive property and crop damage). And we certainly
cannot think it moral to attempt to change the very worldview of every
person who believes they benefit from the acts of hunting, farming, or eating
meat. There is, then, a certain moral worth to the suffering of some animals.
And why even bother worrying about animal welfare when human welfare is
so awful? When poverty, malnutrition, and crime negatively impact the lives
of rational agents, why waste the time arguing about the suffering of
animals, who are non-rational by nature?
Carruthers seamlessly rationalizes the suffering of food and lab animals, and
makes a very persuasive argument. But his entire argument relies on the fact
that people accept that animals are non-rational and therefore have no moral
right to be protected from suffering. This is by no means a universal
worldview, and many pet owners would put themselves at risk in order to
save their pets life, as many activists might face direct bodily harm or
restriction of freedom in protesting the treatment of livestock. It must be said
that though humans are rational by nature, their behavior is not reliably
rational, especially in regard to animals. People have left their fortunes to
their cats in their willsis this inherently a dick move because the cat has no
use of money and therefore its a pointless gesture, or is it inherently morally
wrong because that money could have gone toward cancer research and
saved hundreds of lives instead? Carruthers brings up insane examples to
argue about, like Astrid either in space or on an ocean raft throwing darts at
her cat or chopping her dead grandfather into small chunks. But, as is often
the case, truth is stranger than fiction, and even the shocking philosophical
quandaries Carruthers conjures up are not quite as difficult to solve morally
than the weird things that happen in day-to-day life. Though he operates
only under the rules of contractualism, further consideration is necessary to

define the rules that may be made from beyond the veil of ignorance in
these cases.