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• W2051275866 abstract "This large volume deals with the very difficult and controversial question of whether animals should be treated by humans as they have been treated up to now or like human beings, only a little bit worse. The author discusses this question from several viewpoints: human and animal psychology, evolutionary biology, culture and law. The book is full of descriptions of mental experiments that lead to paradoxes and show all the inconsistencies of our approach to animals. I particularly like the author’s description of how, in biological laboratories in the United States, mice are divided into three categories (pages 28–29): good mice, bad mice and feeders. The good mice are bred and used for experiments, they are under the protection of government agencies and we are obliged by law to behave really nicely toward them. The bad mice are free-living in the same laboratory (presumably because they were able to escape from their cages), and they are pests which can be killed in a very cruel way without any protection. If we feed a mouse to a snake, the status of the mouse depends on whether we are studying the snake or the mouse (e.g. the behaviour of the snake when catching a mouse or the behaviour of the mouse when attacked by a snake). In the former case the mouse does not enjoy any protection, since it is nothing but food (in spite of being a mammal, under special protection by law); in the latter it is considered to be a good mouse and is fully protected. In this book there are dozens of such descriptions of legal and cultural inconsistencies, with an attempt to clarify the subject and find general rules on how much can we use animals to promote our interest. As a backdrop for our relations to animals, the author gives descriptions of evolutionary theory, the structure of primate societies, the methods and aims of science, human and nonhuman cognition. He also discusses other issues concerning human relations with animals: scientific experiments with animals, eating of humans and nonhumans, keeping pets and zoo animals. A large part of this book is devoted to a discussion of the views of two philosophers, Tom Regan and Peter Singer, prominent advocates of the so-called ‘animal liberation movement’. While Petrinovich highly praises the writings of these two authors, he nevertheless disagrees with many of their statements and represents a more liberal approach to the utilization of animals. I think that mammals and birds are very similar in their morphological structures and reactions to human beings. They react to pain in a way that looks very similar to our reactions. Therefore, cruelty toward these animals, and possibly other animals too, can make us accustomed to cruelty toward humans. To avoid this, we should do everything possible to prevent all kinds of cruel treatments of animals. Unfortunately, in this book, I did not find a clear discussion of the influence of cruel treatment of animals on human behaviour toward other humans. I believe this problem is crucial for animal welfare. There are other important topics missing which one would expect in a book of this size. First, why has the concept of animal welfare and animal liberation been raised in the second half of the 20th century in highly developed, prosperous countries? I get the impression that proponents of animal liberation basically rely on one strong argument: the analogy of human treatment of animals with racism and sexism. But since analogy alone is a weak and deceptive way of reasoning, what are the other reasons as to why animal liberation and welfare has become a popular issue now? And is the welfare of animals important also in poor countries with high human mortality due to hunger and the lack of human welfare? Second, which creatures within the animal kingdom deserve to be treated humanely? This problem is only briefly mentioned in the discussion of Regan’s views (page 349). Earthworms and houseflies are animals, but they do not seem to be an object of animal liberation. These are issues worth extensive discussions which the author has not undertaken, confining himself to some general statements about conscious and not conscious creatures. Third, is not refraining from cannibalism, both in humans and in other animals, a way to avoid parasites and contagious diseases? The author discusses the phenomenon of cannibalism extensively but not this important aspect. I do not quite understand why Darwin and the Darwinian theory of evolution are recalled in this book. This theory is quite well presented in an introductory chapter but its application later is questionable. By citing others, with whom the author seems to agree, he writes (page 217): ‘Animals of all species show a clear preference for their own kind: They associate and mate with their own species; they fight alongside their own kind against members of foreign species to secure resources; and they defend the young of their own species. Any species that did not show preference for its own kind would become extinct.’ From the point of view of contemporary evolutionary theory and modern behavioural ecology, the above statement is obviously false. Evolutionary theory does not know any mechanism that would allow selection of characters for the good of a species. The idea of evolution for the good of a species is an old, superficial and false concept based on a misunderstanding of Darwin’s writing and the mechanism of evolutionary processes. We can in fact expect less competition between members of different species that use dissimilar resources than between members of the same species competing for identical resources. Therefore, all arguments based on the above quotation should be rejected from a discussion aspiring to be scientific. If one wants to use scientific arguments for avoidance of cruelty toward animals, one should rather employ reciprocal altruism: in a world full of cruelty we ourselves do not feel safe. And if this cruelty is directed toward other human beings, we are even less safe. This seems to be why we favour members of our own species. The author uses evolutionary optimization to justify a utilitarian approach toward animals (page 192). However, the fact that modern evolutionary theory uses optimization and considers both the costs and benefits does not imply that optimization can justify our moral choices toward animals or our other moral standards. It is both the naturalistic fallacy and a misunderstanding. Evolutionary optimization is attained by the mechanism of natural selection and not by conscious choices of individual plants or animals. It is only our convenient way of predicting characters and behaviour of plants, animals or micro-organisms. Apart from these shortcomings, the book may be useful to those engaged in animal welfare or in the use of animals. It contains plenty of information, many references and a broad discussion. I doubt, though, that scientific inquiry and scientific reasoning alone can form our moral relations towards animals. Moral standards depend on our system of values, traditions, standards of life, economic development and other factors that have to be taken into account when making rules for animal welfare." @default.
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• W2051275866 title "Darwinian dominion. Darwinian Dominion: Animal Welfare and Human Interest. By L. F. Petrinovich. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA. 1998. 431 pp. Price $31.50, ISBN 0-262-16178-8." @default.
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