3.2.2 - Applied ethics - simulated killing and eating animals

The Applied Question

The two issues in this lesson are awkward because the obvious victim is not always obvious.

In simulated killing, nobody is actually killed. The case might be a computer game, a play, a film, a training simulation, or another representation of killing. The first philosophical question is not whether real murder is wrong. It is whether representing, performing, enjoying, or encouraging imagined killing can itself matter morally.

In eating animals, there is a real animal, but the difficult question is moral status.

The issue is not simply whether humans enjoy eating animals. It is whether, and how, animals count in moral argument.

The applied-ethics task has two levels:

The contrast with stealing and lying is useful but brief. In many stealing and lying cases, the wronged person is easy to identify. In simulated killing and eating animals, the pressure falls more heavily on indirect effects, representation, character, animal status, and the assumptions behind moral language.

Here is the basic applied problem:

1. P1: If an action or practice affects welfare, duty, character, or moral recognition, it can be ethically assessable.
2. P2: Simulated killing may affect welfare, duty, character, or moral recognition even though no one is killed.
3. P3: Eating animals may affect welfare, duty, character, or moral recognition because animals may count morally.
4. Therefore, C: Simulated killing and eating animals require ethical analysis rather than mere personal preference.

Hidden assumption: Moral assessment is not limited to cases where a human victim is directly harmed.
Inference type: Practical and conceptual reasoning about what can count as morally relevant.
Main pressure point: Whether indirect effects, representations, and animals' status are strong enough to generate moral requirements.

Utilitarian Application

Utilitarianism judges actions by their consequences for utility. Utility is what the theory treats as valuable to maximise. In Bentham's quantitative hedonistic utilitarianism, the relevant value is pleasure and the absence of pain, assessed by factors such as intensity, duration, certainty, and extent. In Mill's qualitative hedonistic utilitarianism, pleasures also differ in quality, so not every pleasure is equal merely because it is pleasant. Act utilitarianism assesses individual actions directly; rule utilitarianism assesses the rules whose general acceptance would maximise utility.

Applied to simulated killing, the utilitarian procedure is:

An act utilitarian might permit one case of simulated killing if it produces harmless enjoyment or serious artistic understanding. A rule utilitarian might ask whether a society with a general rule permitting certain violent representations would have better or worse consequences than one that restricts them. Mill's qualitative view may ask whether the pleasure taken in cruelty is a lower or corrupting pleasure, especially if it damages more valuable capacities such as sympathy, reflection, or humane concern.

The core utilitarian reconstruction for simulated killing is conditional:

1. P1: An instance of simulated killing is right if and only if it maximises expected utility compared with available alternatives.
2. P2: Some instances produce pleasure, learning, or artistic value without significant harmful effects.
3. P3: Other instances may produce distress, harmful dispositions, or social normalisation of cruelty.
4. Therefore, C: Utilitarianism permits or condemns simulated killing case by case, depending on the balance of expected utility.

Hidden assumption: The relevant psychological and social effects can be identified well enough to compare alternatives.
Inference type: Practical consequentialist reasoning.
Main pressure point: Calculation is difficult, especially when long-term effects are uncertain.

Applied to eating animals, the most important utilitarian pressure is which beings to include. If animals can experience pain, fear, pleasure, or frustration, then their welfare seems relevant to the utility calculation. Bentham's approach is naturally pushed toward counting suffering wherever it occurs, rather than counting only human pleasure.

The utilitarian procedure is:

A simple utilitarian argument against many forms of eating animals would be:

1. P1: We ought to choose the available practice that maximises overall utility impartially.
2. P2: Many practices of eating animals produce significant animal suffering.
3. P3: In many cases, the human benefits of eating animals can be gained by alternatives with less suffering.
4. Therefore, C: In many cases, utilitarianism gives strong reason not to eat animals.

Hidden assumption: Animal suffering counts in the utility calculation with real moral weight.
Inference type: Practical consequentialist reasoning, partly dependent on empirical facts.
Main pressure point: Whether the calculation includes animal welfare, and how strongly it weighs animal suffering against human benefit.

This does not make utilitarianism a simple slogan. It must still answer questions about measurement, prediction, and scope. The strength of the approach is its impartial attention to consequences. Its weakness is that the calculation may be unstable: different evidence about animal experience, human need, or social effects can change the verdict.

Kantian Application

Kantian ethics does not start with outcomes. It starts with duty, good will, rational agency, and the categorical imperative. A categorical imperative is a command of reason that applies regardless of what someone happens to want. A maxim is the principle on which an agent acts.

The first formulation asks whether the agent's maxim can be universalised without contradiction. The second formulation requires treating humanity, in oneself and others, always as an end and never merely as a means. In this technical Kantian context, humanity means rational nature: the capacity to set ends and act from reason.

Applied to simulated killing, the Kantian procedure is:

This makes Kantian ethics more precise than a blanket ban on all representation. Acting in a tragedy, studying a war film, or playing a game need not share the same maxim as delighting in humiliation or domination. The Kantian asks what principle the agent is willing, and whether that principle respects rational beings.

The reconstruction can be put like this:

1. P1: An action is morally permissible only if its maxim can be universalised and respects humanity as an end.
2. P2: Some simulated killing is guided by maxims of representation, learning, or artistic communication that need not disrespect humanity.
3. P3: Some simulated killing is guided by maxims of enjoying cruelty, degradation, or treating persons as disposable objects.
4. Therefore, C: Kantian ethics does not condemn all simulated killing as such, but condemns simulated killing when its maxim conflicts with respect for rational beings.

Hidden assumption: A represented or fictional act can express a real maxim and real attitude toward rational beings.
Inference type: Deontological application of a universalisation and respect test.
Main pressure point: Whether enjoyment of representation is enough to show a disrespectful maxim.

Applied to eating animals, Kantian ethics raises a different problem. Animals are not rational persons in Kant's central sense, so the second formulation does not straightforwardly make them ends in themselves in the same way as rational agents. A careless answer would simply say that animals do not count. That is too quick.

The Kantian application should move step by step:

The main Kantian issue is that duties to animals, if defended, are not as direct as duties to rational persons. That can look like a weakness: the theory may struggle to capture the thought that an animal's suffering matters for its own sake. A Kantian reply is that the moral life is still damaged by cruelty, callousness, and self-indulgence. But the residual pressure remains: this protects animals through their relation to rational agency, not through an independent animal right.

Virtue And Diamond

Aristotelian virtue ethics asks what a good human life involves. The central ideas are eudaimonia, virtue, character, practical wisdom, habituation, and the mean. Eudaimonia is flourishing: the final end of human life. A virtue is a stable excellence of character, involving action and feeling in the right way, at the right time, toward the right objects, for the right reasons. Practical wisdom is the capacity to judge what the virtuous response requires in a concrete situation.

Applied to simulated killing, virtue ethics asks less like a calculator and more like a character diagnosis: