Existence , Breeding , a , nd Rights : The Use of Animals in Sports Donald Scherer

Standardly, philosophical arguments about the quality of treatment human beings owe nonhuman animals! rest on two bases. Peter Singer is famous for arguing from the capacity of animals to feel pain to the conclusion that since almost none of the pain human beings cause animals is necessary, almost none of it is morally justifiable (Singer, 1989, pp. 78-79). Singer rests his case on the premise that who suffers pain does not affect the badness of the suffering, so that, without strong justification, the infliction of pain is universally wrong (Ibid., pp. 77-78). Tom Regan is equally famous for his argument that the beliefs and desires which normal one year-old mammals clearly have give those animals rights to life and humane treatment (Regan, 1983, pp. 81, 84-86; also, Chapter 9, esp. p. 351). Human beings who regularly thwart animal desires merely for their own pleasure clearly violate those rights. It will be a simple corollary of Singer's and Regan's arguments that most uses of animals in sports are wrong. Pain is intrinsic to the life of animals raised for fighting each other; death is an intended statistical regularity in hunting and trapping; and most animals bred for racing are killed at the conclusion of their racing days. Against these lines of argument one frequently encounters a certain objection. It is argued that since the animals for fighting, hunting and racing exist only because they have been bred for such human uses, human beings are justified in so treating them. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate this line ofobjection, or to speak more precisely, to evaluate the two distinct objections implicit in this line. For the objection may be either that