Animal Ethics and the Problem of Direct Conflict: Why Current Theories Can’t Offer Solutions

Abstract

ABSTRACT Contemporary theories on animal ethics, particularly utilitarian and deontological accounts, can provide clear answers to questions of how animals should be considered ethically when humans and animals have different interests at stake. However, both accounts are unable to provide solutions in cases where both parties have a similar basic interest at stake; for example in direct, unavoidable conflicts for the same food, land or resources, seen when elephants destroy crops, baboons raid farms etc. By exploring Singer’s utilitarian view and Regan’s deontological accounts in detail, I will demonstrate that these approaches cannot solve conflicts of this kind since both parties are weighted equally. This will serve to highlight the importance of reconceptualising animal ethics in terms of an ethically relevant quality that can be held in degrees, and that an individual can have more or less of.