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Thesis

Breeding dogs for looks that make them suffer is wrong, even though those dogs could not have existed otherwise

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· 6 replies
Animals & environmentAnalyticUtilitarianismDerek ParfitPeter Singer#animal-breeding#animal-welfare#non-identity-problem#pets
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Its coordinates: 3.3.2 Environmental Ethics · 3.3.6 Animal Ethics

Where it stands

A debate motion with a philosophical sting in its tail.

Thesis: Breeding dogs for features that predictably cause them suffering, such as muzzles so short that they struggle to breathe, is wrong, even though the dogs bred that way could not have existed otherwise.

The first half is easy to agree with. Many vets have said for years that some popular body shapes come with breathing difficulties, eye problems and spinal trouble.

The second half is where it gets hard. This is a version of Derek Parfit's non-identity problem. A particular puppy exists only because these two parents were bred. Had the breeder chosen healthier lines, a different dog would exist, not a healthier version of this one. So if the puppy's life is still worth living, who has been wronged? Not the puppy, it seems: the alternative was not existing at all.

For: something can be wrong without making any particular individual worse off. Bringing a creature into existence with avoidable suffering is wrong because of the suffering, whoever bears it.

Against: wrongs need victims. If no dog is worse off than it would otherwise have been, the objection must be about something else: our taste, our profits, or our sense of what dogs should be.

Please mark your side.

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6 replies

For the thesis 4

  1. Anand Kurup

    For Fellow

    For. My Jain neighbours would put it simply: you knowingly arranged suffering. That the sufferer would not otherwise exist doesn't remove the act. You chose this outcome over a gentler one, and the suffering in it is real suffering. Ahimsa looks at what you do, not at whether there is a victim who can complain.

  2. Ethan Mercer

    For Fellow

    For. Parfit himself didn't conclude that non-identity cases are fine. He concluded that our principles were wrong. He proposed that it's wrong to bring about a worse outcome even when no one is worse off. You'd choose the healthier dog for the same reason you'd choose the happier world.

    Bec's point stands as a demand for a line, but it's not an argument for the against side. "Some cases are hard" never shows "this case is fine".

  3. Enkhjin Batbayar

    For Reader

    For. I'm a vet, and I see the herding version of this. Families sometimes ask me how to breed for more milk or finer wool, and I always ask what it will cost the animal in a hard winter. In my experience an animal bred hard for one trait can lose the hardiness the herd needs, and the old herders knew which lines to keep for exactly that reason.

    Nobody says those animals were wronged by being born. But a herder who keeps breeding for the trait, knowing the cost, is doing something wrong, and he usually knows it.

    That puts me closer to Ethan than to Bec. The wrong is in choosing the suffering when a gentler option was available. The puppy that cannot breathe is not the victim of failing to be some other dog. It is the product of someone's choice.

  4. Zsófia Tóth

    For Reader

    For, from a vet who sees these dogs every week. A French bulldog came into our clinic last month for surgery to widen his nostrils and shorten his soft palate, so that he could breathe while walking. He was two years old. His owners loved him and had no idea, when they bought him, that the face they found sweet was the reason he couldn't breathe.

    On the non-identity puzzle I am with Ethan. I don't need the dog to be worse off than some other dog. The suffering is real, and someone chose a course that made it likely when a gentler course was open.

    Bec's challenge is fair, though. I also treat dairy cows bred for yields that cost their bodies a great deal. If I say the breeder of flat-faced dogs did wrong, I have to say what I think of the farms I visit every morning. I'm still working on that.

Against the thesis 2

  1. Bec Doyle

    Against Fellow

    Against, or at least against the reasoning. Every domestic animal and every vine in my vineyard was shaped for human purposes, and plenty of that shaping costs the organism something. If "bred for us, at some cost to it" is the wrong, we have a very large problem that goes far beyond pugs.

    The motion needs to say where the line is. "Predictably causes suffering" is a start, but my dairy-farming neighbours would want to know if it applies to them.

  2. Bec Doyle

    Against Fellow

    Fair, Ethan. I'm not saying pug breeding is fine. I'm saying the against side has a better argument than "no victim", and it's this: the person who forms the right verdict here should also say what it means for breeds we're less sentimental about. I'll stay against until someone does.