Jes Lynning Harfeld

Philosophical Ethology: On the Extents of What It Is to Be a Pig

Answers to the question, “What is a farm animal?” often revolve around genetics, physical attributes, and the animals’ functions in agricultural production. The essential and defining characteristics of farm animals transcend these limited models, however, and require an answer that avoids reductionism and encompasses a de-atomizing point of view. Such an answer should promote recognition of animals as beings with extensive mental and social capabilities that outline the extent of each individual animal’s existence and—at the same time—define the animals as parts of wholes that in themselves are more than the sum of their parts and have ethological as well as ethical relevance. To accomplish this, the concepts of both anthropomorphism and sociobiology will be examined, and the article will show how the possibility of understanding animals and their characteristics deeply affects both ethology and philosophy; that is, it has an important influence on our descriptive knowledge of animals, the concept of what animal welfare is and can be, and any normative ethics that follow such knowledge.

Animal welfare, consumer behaviour, and public policy

This paper investigates the normative aspects of animal food production and retailing and takes as a presumption that food consumers deliberately choosing animal-welfare products act normatively (on a moral basis) and thereby include values that either supervene or supplement the values of product price, taste, nutrition, etc. The animal welfare aspect of a given product is a ‘credence attribute’ and can as such not be directly experienced via the product. Thus, information external to the product becomes the only conditions from which to evaluate the product and motivate possible behaviours. There is, however, a well-documented attitudinal ambivalence in food product shopping where we experience inconsistencies between what could be defined as general citizen attitudes or values on the one hand and consumer behaviour patterns on the other. In other words, in anonymous studies people will generally claim a higher level of concern for animal welfare than is subsequently obvious from the sales records of grocery stores. There is, however, also a measurable connection between costumers’ willingness to pay (extra) and moral imperatives derived from values about animal welfare. The paper will focus on analysing the relation between the animal welfare related ethical values of consumers and some of the extents and limits of consumers’ ethical actions. It will, furthermore, normatively evaluate the concrete social systems of urban life – economic, political and cultural – which constitute the environmental extents and the limits of individual consumers’ abilities for ethical deliberation. Thus the main question becomes: What is the connection between the consumers’ ability for ethical deliberation (what we with Aristotle could call phronesis) in food choices and the cultural, economic and political framing of consumer deliberation? This question leads to a normative and constructive sub-question which asks what kind of systems of public policy a society needs in order to positively enable the individual consumer to deliberate phronetically. In other words: how do we create a society with genuine possibilities for ethical consumerism?

What is animal happiness?: What is animal happiness?

Today, we see a growing concern for the quality of life of nonhuman animals and an accompanying call for viable means of assessing how well animals thrive. Past research focused on minimizing negatives such as stress, while more recent endeavors strive to promote positives such as happiness. But what is animal happiness? Although often mentioned, the term lacks a clear definition. With recent advances in the study of animal emotion, current interest into positive rather than negative experiences, and the call for captive and domesticated animals to have good lives, the time is ripe to examine the concept of animal happiness. We draw from the human and animal literature to delineate a concept of animal happiness and propose how to assess it. We argue that animal happiness depends on how an individual feels generally—that is, a typical level of affect.