Comparable Harm and the problem of the lifeboat

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Comparable Harm and Equal Inherent Value:
The Problem of Dog in the Lifeboat
Gary L. Francione
Rutgers Law School
This essay is dedicated to my canine companions, Bandit, Stratton, Emma, Tedwyn, and Robert, who will always have a safe place in my lifeboat.

Introduction
In The Case for Animal Rights, Tom Regan posits the following hypothetical: five survivors-four nonnal adults and onenormal dog-are on a lifeboat. There is room in the boat only forfour, and one of the occupants must be thrown overboard. Regan maintains that his rights theory provides an answer to the problem. Although death is a harm for the dog, Regan argues, death would be a qualitatively greater loss, and, accordingly, a greater harm, for any of the humans: "To throw anyone of the humans overboard, to facecertain death, would be to make that individual worse-off (i.e., would cause that individual a greater harm) than the harm that would be done to the dog if the animal was thrown overboard.") It would, on Regan's view, be morally obligatory to kill the dog. Further, Regan claims even if the choice is between a million dogs and one person, it would still be obligatory under rights theory to throw thedogs overboard. This notion of comparable harm is not unique to Regan although different theorist~ use it in different ways. Other theorist~ who subscribe to some version of animal rights share Regan's view. For example, Joel

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Feinberg argues that although animals have rights, the rights position is consistent with holding "that an individual human life as such is a thing of far greatervalue than an individual animal life assuch."2 This view is also shared by those who work outside the rights paradigm; indeed, one of the few points of similarity between Regan's rights theory and the utilitarian theory of Peter Singer is that although both rely heavily on nonnative notions of equality, both appeal to the notion that some beings have qualitatively different and ultimately morevaluable experience for purposes of resolving conflicts between beings who have moral standing. For example, Singer argues that "we can make sense of the idea that the life of one kind of animal possesses greater value than the life of another; and if this is so, then the claim that the life of every being bas equal value is on very weak ground"'3 Reliance on notions of comparable value and harm byRegan, Feinberg, and Singer has occasioned critical reactions by friend and foe alike. For example, philosopher S. F. Sapontzis, who argues in favor of including animals as members of the moral community, takes issue with the hierarchical status of humans implied by the notion of comparable harm. Humans undoubtedly can experience things that animals cannot, but the opposite is true as well: "Wecannot enjoy the life of a dog, a bird, a bat, or a dolphin."4 Accordingly, we cannot use species alone to make judgments of

PHILOSOPHY
81
Between the Species

Summer & Fa/l1995

Comparable Harm and Equal Inherent Worth: The Problem ofDog in the Lifeboat

relative harm to resolve conflicts between humans and nonhumans without being guilty of the very speciesism that is the foundation ofanimal exploitation. Peter Carruthers, who rejects the moral standing of animals, similarly bases his argument in very large part on Regan's and Singer's willingness to argue that human experience is such that humans generally suffer greater hann than do animals when humans are foreclosed from satisfying opportunities. Carruthers argues that we have a common-sense moral view that human life cannotbe weighed against animal life that is so strong that even Regan and Singer affirm the validity of this view. Carruthers maintains that the moral theory that is most comfortably consistent with this common-sense view is some form of contractualism that would exclude animals from the moral community because animals are not rational agents. 5 Ironically, one of Regan's most vocal critics is Singer,...
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