(pseudonym)
There is widespread agreement that coercive force may be used to prevent people from seriously and wrongfully harming others. But what about when those others are non-human animals? Some militant animal rights activists endorse the use of violent coercion against those who would otherwise harm animals. In the philosophical literature on animal ethics, however, theirs is a stance that enjoys little direct support. I contend that such coercion is nevertheless prima facie morally permissible. I defend this contention by arguing (a) that from the point of view of common sense morality, it is prima facie permissible to use coercive force to prevent puppies from being wrongfully mutilated and (b) that this point clearly extends to other kinds of animals and to other kinds of seriously harmful practices. I then show that there is, as a result of (b), presumptive moral justification for some of the highly controversial instances of direct action undertaken by the Animal Liberation Front and similar groups of militant animal rights activists. I close by arguing that pragmatic considerations override most proposals to undertake direct action, even when the proposed actions are prima facie morally permissible. Indeed, I conclude that although the use of violent coercion to prevent harm to animals may occasionally be ultima facie permissible, its use is in tension with (and tends to undermine) the broader agenda of the animal rights movement.
There is widespread agreement that coercive force may be used, even by non-state actors, to prevent people from wrongfully inflicting serious harm upon others. But what about when those others are non-human animals? Some militant animal rights activists endorse the use of coercion—understood to include violence, threat of violence, and physical restraint—against those who would otherwise seriously and wrongfully harm animals.
Here is an argument for my position: It is prima facie morally permissible to use coercion to prevent puppies from being seriously and wrongfully harmed. There is no morally salient difference between puppies and other mammals. Thus, it is prima facie morally permissible to use coercion to prevent mammals from being seriously and wrongfully harmed. When mammals such as cows, pigs, sheep, and mice are turned into food, clothing, or experimental research subjects, they are, in most instances, seriously and wrongfully harmed. Thus, it is prima facie morally permissible, in most instances, to use coercion to prevent mammals such as cows, pigs, sheep, and mice from being turned into food, clothing, or experimental research subjects.
In what follows, I take premises (2) and (4) for granted (although considerations adduced in sections three and four support these premises).
In section three, I respond to objections focused on the putative limitations and artificiality of my initial cases. I do this by describing several additional cases, some hypothetical and some actual (including an instance of direct action carried out by the Animal Liberation Front), and arguing that the use of coercion is prima facie permissible in all of them. In section four, I review and rebut two objections to the use of coercion against institutions and individuals engaged in wrongful animal experimentation. In section five, I argue that pragmatic considerations weigh heavily
The first premise of my argument states that it is prima facie morally permissible to use coercion to prevent puppies from being seriously and wrongfully harmed. Before I defend this premise, some terminological clarification is in order.
First, I use ‘prima facie morally permissible’ to denote actions that are permissible absent the presence of overriding moral reasons. Thus, to say that action
Second, I define ‘coercion’ as the use or threat of violence (understood broadly to include forceful physical restraint and imprisonment) against persons or their property with the purpose of altering what the targeted individuals are able or willing to do. This definition is stipulative. There is a significant philosophical literature devoted to the analysis of the concept of coercion.
For this reason, I will also not attempt to analyze or theoretically define ‘violence’, ‘threat’, or ‘serious harm.’ The instances of violence, threat making, and serious harm discussed below are paradigm cases. Thus, there is no need to provide definitions that settle debates about marginal cases. I also leave ‘wrongful harm’ at the intuitive level, although I believe that the harms discussed in the cases below all satisfy a sufficient condition for the harm to count as wrongful—namely, that it is inflicted for no good reason.
I include violence against property in my definition of coercion in order to sidestep another linguistic debate. Some animal rights activists think that only sentient beings can be the targets of violence. They conclude, on that basis, that property damage counts as nonviolent activism.
In several places, especially in sections four and five, I use the phrase ‘coercive direct action’ to describe the forms of violence under consideration. My use of the modifier ‘coercive’ conforms to the stipulative definition of ‘coercion’ presented above. I use ‘direct action’ to refer to a broad class of social protest activities that, roughly, violate the legal and/or community norms governing such activities; examples include: the heckler’s veto, sit-ins, traffic blockades, trespassing protests, sabotage, property destruction, arson, and street fighting. I will not attempt to further analyze or define ‘direct action.’ I use the phrase because it is part of the common lexicon of militant animal rights activists. These activists typically describe their animal rescues and acts of property destruction as instances of direct action, which they contrast with more conventional forms of protest.
In the essay “Puppies, Pigs, and People,” Alastair Norcross produces a rather memorable thought experiment centered upon a dispossessed chocolate lover named Fred. Norcross writes:
“…Fred…receives a visit from the police one day. They have been summoned by Fred’s neighbors, who have been disturbed by strange sounds emanating from Fred’s basement. When they enter the basement they are confronted by the following scene: Twenty-six small wire cages, each containing a puppy, some whining, some whimpering, some howling. The puppies range in age from newborn to about six months. Many of them show signs of mutilation. Urine and feces cover the bottoms of the cages and the basement floor. Fred explains that he keeps the puppies for twenty-six weeks, and then butchers them while holding them upside-down. During their lives he performs a series of mutilations on them, such as slicing off their noses and their paws with a hot knife, all without any form of anesthesia. Except for the mutilations, the puppies are never allowed out of the cages, which are barely big enough to hold them at twenty-six weeks. The police are horrified, and promptly charge Fred with animal abuse…”
While Norcross uses the story of Fred to draw an analogy between mutilating puppies and consumer support of factory farming, I should like to use it to defend the first premise of my argument. Once again, this premise states: It is prima facie morally permissible to use coercion to prevent puppies from being seriously and wrongfully harmed. Notice that the intuition that Fred
Anyone who thinks that the state should be able to detain, imprison, or otherwise interfere with people to stop them from seriously and wrongfully harming puppies is
Although there is a strong presumption against the use of coercive force by private citizens, this presumption is overridden in cases where its use prevents significant harm to which a victim is not liable and has not consented. For instance, we judge that it is permissible for a civilian to forcibly disarm and detain an intoxicated gunman who is attempting to perform trick shots in a densely populated area. When we reflect on cases in which coercive interference by private citizens can be used to prevent significant harm to puppies, we reach similar conclusions.
To see this, consider two variations of Norcross’ thought experiment:
It is pre-theoretic because it is not inferred from and does not rest upon a prior commitment to any particular normative ethical theory. Someone who has never thought about moral philosophy in a systematic way can still be expected to arrive at this judgment when reflecting upon cases F2 and F3 (I grant, of course, that they are unlikely to
The conclusion that Jim’s behavior in F2 and F3 is prima facie permissible is a judgment of common sense morality insofar as it is embedded in a collection of widely shared and confidently held moral attitudes.
Now, it is clear enough that Jim’s behaviors in F2 and F3 are coercive. In the first case, he uses physical force to alter what Fred is able to do. In the second, Jim uses the threat of serious and violent harm to influence Fred’s behavior. Thus, our judgments about F2 and F3 are sufficient to provisionally justify a reading of premise (1) that includes the behavior of private citizens within its scope.
Even if premise (1) is justified, however, it does not follow that
By contrast, it is not morally permissible to undertake a campaign of killing arbitrarily chosen victims in order to somehow prevent the mutilation of puppies. Nor is it permissible to threaten extreme retributive violence against the family members of someone who is in the business of wrongfully harming puppies. Thus, since there are limits on the kinds of coercion common sense morality will countenance, we should consider an additional case before concluding this section. This case is designed to prompt reflection about the permissibility of property damage, which is one of the main forms of coercion employed by militant animal rights activists.
When Fred leaves for work the next morning, Jim breaks into his house, rescues the puppies in his basement, and then destroys Fred’s equipment, files, research notes, and everything else that appears to support the ongoing project of puppy mutilation. Then, he breaks a sewage pipe. This floods the basement with rancid water and renders it unusable for the foreseeable future.
Common sense morality grants prima facie permission to necessary and proportionate vigilantism that pre-emptively targets property that will be used to inflict serious and wrongful harm on others. Those who do not trust their initial judgment about F4 (perhaps because it involves animals or because it involves preventive property damage) should consider another case in which property is destroyed to prevent its use in the perpetration of serious wrongdoing.
To sum up: Our common sense judgments about F2, F3, and F4 justify the claim that it is prima facie morally permissible for private citizens to use coercion to prevent puppies from being seriously and wrongfully harmed. In particular, they show that in some circumstances, it is prima facie permissible to (a) use necessary and proportionate physical violence, (b) threaten necessary and proportionate physical violence, and/or (c) destroy property in order to defend puppies against both immediate and distant threats of serious and wrongful harm. And, given premise (2), they show that the same is also true with respect to other kinds of mammals.
Cases F2, F3, and F4 elicit judgments that support the general claim—expressed in the first premise of my argument—that it is prima facie morally permissible, even for private citizens, to use coercion to prevent puppies from being seriously and wrongfully harmed. Nevertheless, I expect some people will object that cases F2–F4 are too limited to serve as the fulcrum for the rather contentious and quite general conclusions drawn in this paper. After all, in these cases the species of animal harmed remains the same, as does the purpose of inflicting the harm, and the setting in which the harm is inflicted. Others may object that cases F2–F4 are too artificial. After all, most of the
In this section, I address these two objections. In the process, I establish the prima facie moral permissibility of at least some of the highly controversial instances of coercive direct action undertaken by militant animal rights activists. I first describe variants of F2, F3, and F4 in which species, purpose, and setting are modified. I argue that these new cases are analogous, in the morally relevant respects, to cases F2–F4. They should therefore elicit moral judgments equivalent to those elicited by F2–F4. I then describe an actual case (Iowa Select) in which animals were seriously and wrongfully harmed for the sake of human benefit. Since Iowa Select is comparable to
To begin, suppose Fred learns that virtually all mammals will excrete the flavor enhancing hormone he desires, as long as they are mutilated in just the right way. Consequently, he obtains several additional species to mutilate. Now consider the following case:
I recognize that some people may be hesitant to extend robust moral consideration to squirrels. Thus, it should be noted that squirrels do not lack the morally salient properties that puppies possess. They are sentient animals that are physiologically comparable to puppies. And, like puppies, they are cognitively flexible creatures capable of solving novel environmental problems.
Of course, as Norcross notes, some people claim that “puppies count more than other animals, because [human beings] care more about them.”
There is much that could be said here about the challenge of grounding significant moral distinctions upon the fickle emotional sensibilities of humankind. I will just note that those who advance this view are subject to a variant of the Euthyphro dilemma. Either humans have good reasons to care more about puppies than other mammals or we do not. If we have reasons to care more about puppies than other mammals, then it is those reasons, rather than our sympathies themselves, that account for puppies’ special moral status. Of course, if we have such reasons, then we should expect them to be articulable. I am not aware of any such reasons that have been clearly identified or articulated. Alternatively, if there are no good reasons to care more about puppies than other mammals, then humankind’s special concern for puppies, though undeniable, is groundless. Groundless sympathy, however, hardly provides justification for disparate treatment or disparate moral consideration.
Now suppose that Fred mutilates the puppies in his care for a purpose other than to obtain a flavor enhancer. It is clear enough, given our judgments about F2–F4, that coercive intervention is prima facie permissible in cases where Fred’s purpose is to produce a marginal benefit that can be readily obtained by alternative means. Thus, if Fred’s new purpose is to produce, say, a fur coat, then he is still liable to defensive harm. And the use of coercion to stop him from mutilating puppies remains prima facie permissible.
However, what if Fred’s new purpose is to produce an extremely significant benefit that could not be obtained by other means? With this possibility in mind, consider the following case:
Despite these considerations, Jim’s coercive interference in F7 is prima facie morally permissible. On reflection, it should be clear that the setting and context in F7 have significant, though indirect, bearing upon the moral calculus. Note, first, that Fred’s worthy aim does not, by itself, preclude him from being liable to defensive coercion performed on the puppies’ behalf. This is because many unjustifiable and wrongful harms are imposed on innocent victims by those who sincerely but
To see this, suppose the following detail is added to the description of case F5: the reason Fred is planning a mass shooting is that he sincerely believes it is the only way to prevent an imminent and catastrophic attack by the space aliens who have infiltrated the apparatus of local government. Since Fred’s noble purpose—to prevent a society wide catastrophe—is based on a set of transparently unreasonable beliefs, it does not justify the harms he plans to impose on others and, importantly, it does not shield him from being liable to defensive harm.
If Fred’s hypothesis in F7 met basic standards of scientific rationality, then surely he would be able to convince a colleague to test it in an academic or commercial laboratory. Thus, the setting and context in F7 provide strong evidence that it is unreasonable for Fred to believe that puppy mutilation is a necessary evil. And, this, in turn, is strong evidence that Fred’s behavior is wrongful (even if he manifests no ill intent). Indeed, when Jim peers into Fred’s basement window, he is justified in concluding that Fred is not acting on a reasonable belief that harming puppies is necessary for the production of a significant medical breakthrough.
Review of case F7 provides support for the conclusion that it is prima facie permissible for private citizens to use coercive force against those who would otherwise seriously and wrongfully harm animals, regardless of the aim or purpose of the harm imposed. Even so, we might wonder whether Jim’s intervention in F7 would still be prima facie permissible if Fred were conducting his research in a setting that did not immediately undermine our confidence about whether it is reasonably believed to be necessary.
Consider, then, the following case:
A whistleblower in Fred’s lab leaks this information to Jim, who quickly concludes that something must be done. That night, he breaks into Fred’s lab and rescues the puppies. In the process of conducting the rescue, Jim destroys Fred’s lab equipment, records, and computers. As he departs, Fred breaks a sewage pipe, which renders the lab unusable for the foreseeable future.
Again, we have a case in which Fred is seriously harming puppies
Nevertheless, I suspect that some readers will find that the location change in F8 makes it more difficult to arrive at a clear view about the permissibility of Jim’s coercive intervention. Indeed, this location change yields two significant concerns—one having to do with the possibility that Fred’s experiments are not wrongful and the other having to do with the downstream social effects of using coercion against public intuitions and their representatives—that are absent in cases F2–F7. Although these concerns warrant a reply, I will wait to address them until section four.
At any rate, the conclusion that coercive intervention is prima facie permissible in hypothetical cases F6–F8 is significant. It undermines the objection that cases F2–F4 are too limited to support broad generalizations about the prima facie permissibility of using coercion to prevent harm to animals. We have seen that even when species, purpose, and setting are varied, it is still prima facie permissible to use proportionate and limited coercion to defend the interests of animals. Furthermore, we are now well positioned to make comparisons with the many actual cases in which animals are seriously and wrongfully harmed for human benefit.
To this end, consider the following example:
The practices of Iowa Select Farms are consistent with standard intensive confinement agricultural practices.
By parity with our judgements about F2–F8, we should judge that it would be prima facie permissible for a bystander to use necessary and proportionate coercion to interfere with the mass extermination of pigs in Iowa Select. Absent countervailing moral considerations, it is permissible to use threats, proportionate nonlethal physical violence, and property damage to prevent a barn full of pigs from being slowly suffocated and roasted alive simultaneously. And given Iowa Select Farms’ record of serious wrongdoing, preventive property damage that aims to stop them from acquiring more pigs also appears to be prima facie permissible. Furthermore, since similar kinds of gratuitous abuses occur throughout animal agriculture, it is reasonable to conclude that there are
Here is one such case:
Elkton shows that some instances of coercive direct action undertaken by the ALF are prima facie morally permissible. This is the most important conclusion of the present section. Although branded as a terrorist group by governmental and media organizations, some of what the ALF does is, absent countervailing considerations, morally licit.
I will not defend the claim that all or most ALF actions are prima facie permissible. Whether or not any particular instance of coercive direct action is prima facie morally permissible will depend on the details of the case. Some of these details concern whether or not the coercion is proportionate and whether the individuals targeted are liable to defensive harm. Even so, I will not attempt to identify principles of proportionality for or liability to coercive direct action.
Clearly, bystanders—for instance, relatives of the proprietors of fur farms who have no stake in fur farming—are not liable to be harmed by the ALF. And sending mail bombs, after the fashion of Theodore Kaczynski, to people who do business with factory farms is not proportionate. Still, my aim here is not to figure out the relevant limiting principles. It is, instead, to show that common sense judgments about a range of cases, both hypothetical and actual, support the conclusion that some forms of coercion, including forcible rescue and destruction of property, are necessary, proportionate, and prima facie permissible when used against those who would otherwise seriously and wrongfully harm animals.
This conclusion, despite its modesty, is quite significant. For one thing, it makes clear that radical animal rights activists are not (or at least need not be) committed to principles, theories, or ideologies that extend beyond common sense morality. Rather than adopting an alien moral code, they are taking certain widely accepted judgments and principles to their logical (and demanding) end. Furthermore, as I will discuss in section five, this conclusion demonstrates the need for animal rights activists to engage in frank and open conversations about the aims of their movement. Finally, it shows that there is a need for the state to recognize the moral standing of animals used for human benefit and revise its laws accordingly. For if the state will not or cannot protect its most vulnerable inhabitants, some citizens will prima facie justifiably do so in its place.
I claim that coercive intervention is prima facie permissible in case F8, where Fred is mutilating puppies in a university lab as part of a research project that he knows will not produce the beneficial medical knowledge it was designed to secure. As noted above, there are two serious objections to this claim. First, there is the possibility, however remote, that the harms Fred inflicts in F8
In this section, I reply to these objections. In doing so, I aim to defend a specific claim about F8, which is important to my cumulative defense of direct action,
I begin with the first objection. Since Fred’s puppy mutilation in F8 is part of a grant funded research program conducted out of a state university laboratory, perhaps it is not unreasonable to believe that it is
Common sense morality permits coercive interventions that prevent others from being
I will not address the question of where to set the threshold for likely benefits. This is because I do not think that animal experimentation—as a going concern, rather than the subject of idealized thought experiments—
Animal experimentation’s explicit purpose is to produce instrumentally beneficial knowledge. Given its poor record of producing such knowledge, the burden of proof is on those who think Fred’s behavior in F8 is
It is worth noting, at this point, that for those who agree with me about the general epistemic unreliability of animal experimentation, nearly all animal experiments are going to look an awful lot like F8; that is, they are going look analogous to the many other cases in which serious harm is unnecessarily imposed on animals. As we have seen, coercive intervention is prima facie permissible in such cases. Thus, I think there is an argument to be made for the view that nearly everyone who experiments on animals is liable to be defensively harmed.
Nevertheless, having clarified my views on animal experimentation, I will not attempt to defend them any further. I acknowledge that my position is controversial even among those who are otherwise prepared to extend significant moral consideration to animals.
Of course, some people who agree that Fred acts wrongly in F8 will still balk at the suggestion that Jim’s coercive intervention is prima facie permissible. This is because, to return to the second objection mentioned above, they worry that using coercion against public-serving institutions (and the individuals embedded within them) could have very bad results. Indeed, they think the use of coercion in cases such as F8 threatens to undermine the rule of law, democratic norms, and/or basic social trust. On the assumption that we should not do things that seriously elevate these threats, it is not prima facie permissible for Jim to coercively intervene in F8.
Why should we think the use of coercive direct action could have these bad effects? The most immediate answer is that, in a democratic society committed to the rule of law, citizens use legislative processes to resolve substantive moral and political disagreements.
In reply to this objection, I should first like to acknowledge that it is very difficult to identify the conditions under which a member of a democratic society may permissibly violate the law in the service of promoting the good, preventing harm, or ensuring that justice is done. I think this is one of the most important challenges in political philosophy. For this very reason, however, I do not think there are
There is, for instance, widespread support for the use of nonviolent civil disobedience—which is, by definition, a form of illegal direct action—as a means to protest against social injustice.
That civil disobedience is sometimes permissible is the default position among political philosophers. Once this is granted, however, it becomes difficult to see why there should be a blanket prohibition (or something thereabouts) on using illegal coercive measures to defend animals. Why is one form of lawbreaking permissible (and perhaps even laudable) while the other is not? Those who would insist that there is a blanket prohibition on coercive direct action owe us an answer. And the answer cannot be that coercive direct action (a) involves law breaking for the purposes of addressing a controversial moral/political cause or (b) that it has the potential to incentivize additional law breaking and/or threaten social trust. As noted above, these are features of many justifiable acts of civil disobedience.
For instance, the 1963 Birmingham campaign—organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to protest against racial segregation in Birmingham, Alabama—had both of the aforementioned features. The campaign employed marches, sit-ins, and other forms of illegal assembly aimed at advancing the locally controversial cause of desegregation. And it provoked a response that seriously threatened the stability of the social order; members of the Ku Klux Klan and other opponents of desegregation set off several bombs that year, including one at the 16th Street Baptist Church (a meeting place for civil rights activists) that killed four children.
Perhaps, then, the morally relevant difference between civil disobedience and coercive direct action is that the latter is violent. It is not implausible to think that violent acts harm their targets more than civilly disobedient acts and are thereby more likely to provoke further violence in response. This idea, however, does not withstand scrutiny. Although a physical attack on one’s person or property is undeniably harmful, a sustained campaign of nonviolent harassment can be significantly worse. Indeed, one can easily imagine many cases where civil disobedience would be more harmful to more people than the use of constrained and proportionate coercive force.
Compare wrestling Fred to the ground and tying him up to, say, staging a year of road-blocking protests in front of his place of business. Such protests will not only have significant adverse effects on Fred, they will also have significant adverse effects on innocent, non-liable customers, pedestrians, and owners of adjacent businesses. When civil disobedience significantly harms non-liable innocents, however, it may be even more likely to produce socially destabilizing and disproportionately violent responses.
Alternatively, perhaps the relevant moral difference between civil disobedience and coercive direct action is that the former, unlike the latter, demonstrates deference to the rule of law. This is because civil disobedients expect and accept punishment for their illegal behavior. Indeed, appealing to examples of justifiable civil disobedience from the US civil rights movement, some philosophers have claimed that a lawbreaker’s willingness to accept punishment is a necessary condition on her illegal behavior counting as civilly disobedient.
Satisfaction of the acceptance condition no doubt enhances the expressive power of civilly disobedient acts. One cannot very easily dismiss the sincerity of a disobedient citizen who makes a public demonstration of accepting sanction for his crimes. Nor can one easily dismiss his actions as an attack on the rule of law itself. Those who publicly and willingly submit to punishment appear to demonstrate fidelity to the rule of law and to the basic conflict resolution procedures that are partly constitutive of a democratic political community.
By contrast, the militant animal rights activists who use coercion against universities and other public-serving institutions typically seek to evade sanction. Thus, their actions do not satisfy the acceptance condition. Does this show that they pose a challenge to the rule of law that is distinct from the challenges posed by justified civil disobedience? And, does it show, in turn, that there is a clear and significant moral difference between lawbreaking
I think not. For one thing, philosophers of civil disobedience disagree about whether satisfaction of the acceptance condition is a necessary (or even typical) feature of justified acts of civil disobedience. Indeed, several of the most prominent figures in the civil disobedience literature—including Kimberly Brownlee, David Lefkowitz, and Piero Moraro—reject the acceptance condition.
Suppose it is granted, however, that justified acts of civil disobedience must meet the acceptance condition. This
Given the points made above, it is inconsistent to hold that civil disobedience is permissible while endorsing blanket prohibition of coercive direct action. Although I recognize the risks that attend to its use, I see no strong reason to conclude, in advance of case-specific contextual details, that it is impermissible to use coercive direct action to intervene in the moral and political disputes that emerge in a democratic society. Instead, I maintain that its moral permissibility is sensitive to the circumstances of the situations in which it is deployed. And, as we have seen, some situations involving the abuse of animals render prima facie permissible the use of necessary and proportionate coercive interventions. Of course, I should remind the reader that the conclusion I defend is, by design, a rather limited one; I hold that it is prima facie permissible (in most instances) to use coercion to prevent animals from being seriously and wrongfully harmed. This view is compatible with the possibility that most coercive actions undertaken for this purpose are not ultima facie permissible.
For all that I have said in the preceding paragraphs, I accept that the potential for coercive direct action to damage to the rule of law and the social order yields prima facie reasons against its use. And it is possible that these reasons are so weighty that they often end up overriding the prima facie reasons in favor of such action. I am inclined to think otherwise. However, as I argue in the next section, there are additional considerations that may rule out the ultima facie permissibility of many prima facie permissible instances of coercive direct action. It would not undermine any of the central claims of this essay to allow a couple of additional speculative considerations to serve as reasons for
When evaluating the use of coercive direct action by participants in the animal rights movement, two important questions emerge. First, what is the basic goal of those who undertake coercive direct action for the sake of animals? Second, is coercive direct action an effective way to achieve that goal? If the goal is simply to reduce harm to animals in an immediate and substantive way, then coercive direct action will often be an effective measure. If, however, the goal is to motivate others to embrace an animal rights worldview or to convince political communities to adopt policies consistent with that worldview, then use of coercion is much less likely to be effective.
I presume that most animal rights proponents share both of these goals. When we consider whether to undertake coercive direct action, however, it appears that the goal of preventing immediate harm is in tension with the goal of producing an animal friendly future society (and thereby preventing serious and wrongful harm to animals in the long term). This is because coercive direct action tends to reinforce negative stereotypes about animal rights activists; namely, that such individuals are violent, antisocial, holier-than-thou, and so forth. Recent empirical studies suggest that even people who are inclined to support a given social movement (or who see themselves as sharing its values) will nevertheless fail to align their behaviors with that movement due to negative stereotypes about its activist leaders and/or an inability to sympathize with its extreme tactics.
For these reasons, animal rights activists must seriously consider whether the short-term gains of coercive direct action can justify its costs. In many cases, I think they cannot. For instance, actions such as writing graffiti, engaging in minor property damage, and issuing anonymous threats to medical researchers are likely to bolster negative sentiments about the animal rights movement without producing substantive countervailing benefits for animals. In view of the above considerations, I propose that animal rights activists should not consider using coercive tactics, even when prima facie permissible, unless (a) it is reasonable to think that doing so will come at little cost to the broader animal rights movement or (b) it is reasonable to think their use will prevent harms so significant that the broader movement can bear any resulting costs.
I will not attempt to systematically adjudicate the question of which instances of direct action have satisfied conditions (a) or (b). It is likely, however, that some have satisfied one or both of these conditions. For instance, small-scale rescues of animals from fur farms often fail to generate significant media coverage, perhaps because they tend involve limited numbers of animals and limited property damage. Since these actions do not find their way into national or global news cycles, they are unlikely to discredit or damage the broader animal rights movement. Thus, they may satisfy (a).
I began this essay by presenting an argument for the conclusion that it is prima facie morally permissible, in most instances, to use coercion to prevent mammals such as cows, pigs, sheep, and mice from being turned into food, clothing, or experimental research subjects. After using section one to clarify my terms, in section two I defended the first premise of my argument—namely, that it is prima facie morally permissible to use coercion to prevent
First, it suggests that many instances of coercive direct action undertaken by the Animal Liberation Front (and other militant animal rights activists) are prima facie morally permissible. I am not aware of any work in animal ethics, aside from the polemical writings of Steve Best, that explicitly argues for this claim or even conditionally defends the actions of the ALF.
When warnings go unheeded and pleas for mercy are ignored, many conscientious individuals will not stand by. They will instead gravitate toward militant resistance. And this suggests, third, that animal ethicists have a responsibility to carefully scrutinize the case for using coercive direct action to defend animals. There remain significant questions about when, if ever, coercive direct action is ultima facie permissible (or perhaps even required) and how to address the inherent tensions between using force to stop immediate abuses and activists’ long-term goal of promoting an animal rights worldview. With these questions in mind, I offer this essay as an invitation to further conversation. My hope is that others will join me in addressing the moral complexities of militant direct action.
I would like to thank five colleagues for providing invaluable feedback on this paper. Many of their suggestions have been incorporated into the text. Nevertheless, since the views defended here may provoke significant backlash, it seems inadvisable to name these people. Indeed, several of them have expressed reasonable concerns about having their names directly linked to this paper.
When I use ‘animal rights’, the term ‘rights’ is not meant to be philosophically substantive or to assume any particular theory or characterization of moral rights. For instance, I use ‘animal rights movement’ as a mere paraphrase for “the movement to secure moral recognition for and prevent wrongful treatment of animals.”
Aside from Steve Best, no contemporary philosophers have, to my knowledge, directly and explicitly defended, even to a limited degree, the moral permissibility of using coercion against those who would otherwise seriously and wrongfully harm animals. See Steve Best, “It’s War,” in
I purposefully use the phrase ‘inclined to oppose’ rather than more direct language. This is because both Singer and Regan have been guarded in their pronouncements on this subject. For their tacit opposition, see, for example: Peter Singer, “Introduction,” in
In what follows, I use ‘animal’ to pick out all and only mammals, although I often use the former term for stylistic reasons. I restrict my argument to mammals because doing so makes its key premises easier to defend. This is because there is widespread agreement that mammals are sentient. Furthermore, it is not uncommon to assign them some degree of self-awareness (although this is a more controversial position). Both of these attributes are ordinarily taken to be sufficient for possession of moral status.
Support for premise (2) can be found in numerous philosophical works, including: Peter Singer,
Alastair Norcross, “Puppies, Pigs, and People: Eating Meat and Marginal Cases,”
This literature begins with Robert Nozick, “Coercion,” in
For more on this linguistic debate, see: Steve Best and Anthony Nocella, “Introduction,” in
For instance, although they claim to use only nonviolent tactics, one prominent group of militant activists operate under the name Direct Action Everywhere. Their website is
Norcross, “Puppies, Pigs, and People,” 229.
Although there is debate about the details, there is a near consensus that animals should receive some degree of legislative protection. For instance, a recent Gallop poll shows that only 3% of Americans believe that “animals don’t need much protection from harm and exploitation, since they are just animals.” See: Rebecca Rifkin, “In U.S., More Say Animals Should Have Same Rights as People,”
I adopt the operative notion of common sense morality from Michael Huemer, who says that it consists of a collection of judgments about particular cases and non-theoretical general principles that “the great majority of people are inclined to accept, especially in my society and societies that readers…are likely to belong to.” See: Michael Huemer,
Renford Bambrough, “A Proof of the Objectivity of Morals,”
In my view, our judgments about F2 and F3 are also immediate, in the sense that we do not arrive at them by conscious inference from other beliefs. For this reason, I would categorize them as moral intuitions. I follow Jeff McMahan in thinking that “a moral intuition is a moral judgment—typically about a particular problem, a particular act, or a particular agent, though possibly also about a moral rule or principle—that is not the result of inferential reasoning. It is not inferred from one’s other beliefs but arises on its own. If I consider the act of torturing the cat, I judge immediately that, in the circumstances, this would be wrong.” See: Jeff McMahan, “Moral Intuition,” in
See, once again, Rifkin, “More Say Animals Should Have Same Rights…”
Indeed, as Huemer notes, “every [inquiry] must begin somewhere, and beginning with such [common sense judgments] as that under normal conditions one may not rob, kill, or attack other people seems reasonable enough. This is about the least controversial, least dubious starting point...I have seen.” See Huemer,
The recent philosophical literature contains a wealth of material on self- and other-defense. Some highlights include: JJ Thomson, “Self-Defense,”
For interesting recent research on problem solving and memory in squirrels see: Pizza Ka Yee Chow, PWW Lurz and Stephen E.G. Lea, “A battle of wits? Problem-solving abilities in invasive eastern grey squirrels and native Eurasian red squirrels,”
Norcross, “Puppies, Pigs, and People,” 235.
Some would argue that puppies and dogs are special because human beings can enter into reciprocal social relationships with them. Is this a morally relevant difference? I should think not, largely because many kinds of non-domesticated mammals can (and occasionally do) enter into reciprocal social relationships with human beings. For one interesting example, which documents 18th century Americans’ fondness for keeping squirrels as pets, see: Katherine Grier,
A question for the reader: can you imagine even considering the possibility, were you to find yourself in Jim’s position, that Fred might be conducting legitimate and potentially beneficial scientific research by mutilating puppies in his basement?
Derek Parfit distinguishes between fact-relative, belief-relative, and evidence-relative senses in which an act can be wrong. See: Derek Parfit,
There are interesting questions about when and whether medical researchers have an excuse for conducting animal experiments that are wrong relative to the facts. Although I cannot explore these questions in detail, it nevertheless seems to me that such excuses are likely to be in short supply. This is because, given the high stakes of error for both humans and animals, medical researchers ought to be aware of the poor track record of animal experiments (which I discuss in more detail in section four); to put it another way: if they do their due diligence, there will not be many cases where animal experimentation is going to be wrong relative to the facts but justifiable relative to the researcher’s evidence. Supposing, however, that a researcher does have an excuse, they are probably not liable to be harmed. Even so, animal defenders may have a lesser-evil justification for using limited and proportionate forms of coercion against them.
A caveat on animal experimentation: much like the pleasure Fred experiences when he eats flavor enhanced chocolate, knowledge acquired via animal experimentation has (at least in my view) intrinsic value. Even so, this value does not thereby justify the harm imposed to produce it. Indeed, I should think it uncontroversial that there are moral limits on the harms we may impose to harvest knowledge for its own sake. I do not intend to identify these limits. Certainly, however, common sense morality forbids accosting you on the street and hitting you in the face with a hammer just for the sake of collecting data about fight-or-flight responses in human beings. The (putative) intrinsic value of the knowledge obtained does not outweigh your suffering, override your interests, or trump your basic rights. To justify doing serious harm to others for the sake of knowledge acquisition, we should need to be able to show that the knowledge in question
The change in venue in F8 also raises questions about the degree to which institutions are liable for the wrongful behavior of individuals who operate under their aegis. I will not attempt to answer this difficult question. Still, I should note that in the cases under consideration the institutions in question are actively sanctioning and supporting Fred’s puppy mutilation. Thus, they too appear to be liable to defense harm (though perhaps not to the same extent as Fred). If a property owner knowingly allows their property to be used to wrongfully harm animals, this renders them at least somewhat liable to defensive action. If they do not know that their property is being used for this purpose, they may not be
Glenn Greenwald, “Hidden Video and Whistleblower Reveal Gruesome Mass-Extermination Method for Iowa Pigs Amid Pandemic,”
For recent discussion of the many harms associated with factory farming, see: Matthew C. Halteman, “Varieties of Harm to Animals in Industrial Farming,”
“ALF Releases Captive Foxes,” Animal Liberation Press Office, June 1, 2019,
I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for raising the second objection.
For a useful historical overview of ALF lab raids see: Peter Young,
I am not aware of any philosophers who have explicitly defended and articulated this view. I think, however, that it would not be unfairly attributed to Carl Cohen on the basis of (a) his utilitarian argument for markedly increasing animal experimentation and (b) his specific remark that “the wide and imaginative use of live animal subjects should be encouraged rather than discouraged.” See: Carl Cohen, “The
Johnson, “The Trouble with Animal Models,” 272.
See: Mylan Engel, “Epistemology and Ethics of Animal Experimentation,” in
For instance, R.G. Frey accepts that many (perhaps most) harms imposed on animals for human benefit are morally unjustifiable. But he is a consistent defender of animal experimentation in medical research. For one recent work where he outlines these views, see: R.G. Frey, “Animals and their Medical Use,” in
I can imagine someone who agrees that the research in F8 is morally unjustifiable nevertheless saying something like the following: “Sure, Fred is liable, in some sense, to defensive harm…but we can’t have people assaulting scientists and destroying their labs whenever they judge that their research is immoral…allowing even a little bit of that would undermine the work of the university, which we all agree is one of society’s most important institutions.”
I assume here that most readers will be members of democratic political communities.
Kimberly Brownlee provides a helpful overview of the philosophical discourse on civil disobedience and a discussion of the conditions under which it is justifiable. See: Kimberly Brownlee, “Civil Disobedience,” in ed. Edward Zalta,
For additional information on the Birmingham bombings and their aftermath, see: Doug Jones,
For an influential defense of this view, see: John Rawls,
See: Kimberly Brownlee,
A point of comparison: Henry Shue claims that a similar burden should fall on those who justifiably use torture—which, he argues, should never be legal—for the sake of preventing a catastrophe, such as the detonation of a ticking time bomb in a major city center. These persons should willingly accept punishment for the sake of upholding the rule of law and ensuring that the use of torture as an interrogation tactic remains taboo. Even so, Shue thinks the balance of reasons would typically support issuing suspended sentences to justified torturers. Perhaps the same is true in cases where activists justifiably use coercion to defend animals. See: Henry Shue, “Torture,”
It is worth noting, in addition, that the coercive interventions considered here have a very different goal than paradigm cases of justified of civil disobedience. While the latter are largely focused on the
See, for instance: Matthew Feinberg, Robb Willer and Chloe Kovacheffa, “The Activist’s Dilemma: Extreme Protest Tactics Reduce Popular Support for Social Movements,”
Cara C. MacInnis and Gordon Hodson, “It Ain’t Easy Eating Greens: Evidence of Bias Toward Vegetarians and Vegans from both Source and Target,”
Best, “It’s War.”