Ch. 4— Ethical Considerations • 79 
man being. And he too may feel about equally jus- 
tified in both cases in being late for his uncle’s 
party. 
Humane treatment is the most commonly cited 
standard in Federal legislation concerning animals. 
Its wide range of application due to its lack of pre- 
cision, however, leads to a temptation to dismiss 
it as a pious but essentially vacuous sentiment. A 
theory of moral constraints is needed to determine 
whether this or some other standard is sufficiently 
precise to serve as a guide for legislation regulat- 
ing the use of animals. 
Moral Constraints 
A rule that allows an individual to do whatever 
that person wished would not be a moral rule. 
Morality by its very nature operates as a check 
on the tendency to go wherever desire leads. The 
constraints it imposes can be applied prospectively, 
contemporaneously, or retrospectively. Prospec- 
tive analysis looks ahead to the possible conse- 
quences, while retrospective analysis may restrict 
the results it is permissible to promote (37). Be- 
fore the action is taken, it can be said that the ac- 
tion that morally ought to be performed is the one 
with the best consequences. An individual succeeds 
in this objective to the extent that an action pro- 
duces as much benefit and as little harm as possi- 
ble. During the course of the action, conditions 
concerning the intention of the individual and the 
consent of the recipient may have to be met be- 
fore a moral license to pursue the best conse- 
quences is granted. The fact that a lie will produce 
more benefit than the truth will not necessarily 
make it the right thing to do. 
Moral theories divide according to the weight 
they give to one or the other kind of constraint. 
In its purest form, the prospective approach holds 
that an action or policy is right if it has better con- 
sequences, for everyone affected by it, than any 
available alternative. The language here is care- 
fully drawn. “Better” does not mean "morally bet- 
ter.” A good consequence is simply an outcome 
that someone finds desirable. If an action gives 
pleasure to someone, the enjoyment is a good thing; 
if it causes pain, the person's suffering would be 
a bad thing. It is not necessary to ask whether the 
pleasure or pain is morally fitting. 
Intuition will ideally play no part in determin- 
ing an outcome. One consequence will count as 
better than another if, after assigning positive nu- 
merical values to its good elements and negative 
values to its bad ones, the sum of positive values 
exceeds that of negative values (10). 
Better for whom? The utilitarian principle, still 
the most influential formulation of the forward- 
looking approach, holds that actions and policies 
are to be evaluated by their effects, for good or 
ill, on everyone, not just the individual alone or 
some select group of individuals. Between an in- 
dividual’s own good and the good of others, "utili- 
tarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial 
as a disinterested and benevolent spectator” (10,34). 
The interests of each affected individual are to 
count equally . Any two experiences that are alike 
except that they occur in different individuals are 
to be given the same value. Among utilitarians, en- 
joyment is a good and suffering an evil, and so every 
animal with the capacity for such experiences will 
also count as one individual. Sentience suffices for 
possessing this value, even if it does not confer 
rights. "The question,” as Bentham once put it, "is 
not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk?, but Can 
they suffer?”(10). 
Because it extends the scope of moral concern 
to animals without committing itself to a vulner- 
able theory of animal rights, utilitarianism has be- 
come the theory of choice among those who would 
press for more constraints on humans ’ treatment 
of animals. Singer derives the credo that all ani- 
mals are equal from the utilitarian conception of 
equality (45). If the principle of utility requires that 
suffering be minimized, and if some kinds of suffer- 
ing are found in animals as well as humans, then 
to count human suffering while ignoring animal 
suffering would violate the canon of equality. It 
would make a simple difference of location— in one 
species rather than another— the basis for a dis- 
tinction in value. Like racism, such "speciesism” 
enshrines an arbitrary preference for interests 
simply because of their location in some set of in- 
dividuals (45). (For arguments that speciesism is 
not immoral, see refs. 16,23,51,52.) 
As a general moral principle, utilitarianism is sub- 
ject to several objections, the most serious being 
that its standard of equality is much too weak to 
