Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T22:45:54.000Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Neuroethics, Painience, and Neurocentric Criteria for the Moral Treatment of Animals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2014

Abstract:

Neuroscience affords knowledge that can be leveraged in the ontological valuation of individuals, groups, and species. Sociocultural sentiments, norms, and mores may impede embracing such knowledge to revise moral attitudes, ethics, and policies. We argue that the practices of neuroethics will be valuable in that they ground ethico-legal discourse in (1) naturalistic philosophy; (2) the current epistemological capital of neuroscience; (3) the issues, problems, and solutions arising in and from neuroscientific research and its applications; and 4) the use of neurocentric criteria—such as painience—to define and resolve ethical decisions regarding attitudes toward and treatment of nonhuman animals.

Type
Special Section: Neuroethics and Animals
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Giordano, J, Benedikter, R. Neurotechnology, culture, and the need for a cosmopolitan neuroethics. In: Giordano, J, ed. Neurotechnology: Premises, Potential, and Problems. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press; 2012:233–42.Google Scholar

2. Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Book VI. Ross D, trans. London: Oxford University Press; 1966.

3. Galton, F. Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development. New York: AMS Press; 1973.Google Scholar

4. Sorabji, R. Animal Minds and Human Morals: The Origins of the Western Debate. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press; 1993.Google Scholar

5. Gigerenzer, G, Goldstein, DG. Mind as computer: Birth of a metaphor. Creativity Research Journal 1996;9(2–3):131–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Giordano, J. Neurotechnology as demiurgical force: Avoiding Icarus’ folly. In: Giordano, J, ed. Neurotechnology: Premises, Potential, and Problems. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press; 2012:114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Giordano, J, Benedikter, R, Kohls, NB. Neuroscience and the importance of a neurobioethics: A reflection upon Fritz Jahr. In: Muzur, A, Sass, H-M, eds. Fritz Jahr and the Foundations of Global Bioethics. Münster, Berlin: LIT Verlag; 2012.Google Scholar

8. Giordano, J, Benedikter, R. An early—and necessary—flight of the Owl of Minerva: Neuroscience, neurotechnology, human socio-cultural boundaries, and the importance of neuroethics. Journal of Evolution and Technology 2012;22(1):110–15.Google Scholar

9. Giordano, J, Olds, J. The interfluence of neuroscience, neuroethics and legal and social issues: The need for (N)ELSI. American Journal of Bioethics–Neuroscience 2010;1(4):1214.Google Scholar

10. Giordano, J. Neuroethics—coming of age and facing the future. In: Giordano, J, Gordijn, B, eds. Scientific and Philosophical Perspectives in Neuroethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2010.Google Scholar

11. Page, G. Inside the Animal Mind: A Groundbreaking Exploration of Animal Intelligence. New York: Doubleday; 1999.Google Scholar

12. Griffin, DR. Animal Minds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1994.Google Scholar

13. See note 12, Griffin 1994.

14. White, T. In Defense of Dolphins: The New Moral Frontier. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell; 2007.Google Scholar

15. Jahr, F. Bio-Ethik: Eine Umschau über die ethischen Beziehungen des Menschen zu Tier und Pflanze. Kosmos. Handweiser für Naturfreunde 1927;24(1):24, at 4.Google Scholar

16. See note 9, Giordano, Olds 2010.

17. Giordano, J. Integrative convergence in neuroscience: Trajectories, problems and the need for a progressive neurobioethics. In: Vaseashta, A, Braman, E, Sussman, P, eds. Technological Innovation in Sensing and Detecting Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear Threats and Ecological Terrorism. NATO Science for Peace and Security Series. New York: Springer; 2012.Google Scholar

18. Giordano, J. Neuroethics: Traditions, tasks and values. Human Prospect 2011;1(1):510.Google Scholar

19. See note 7, Giordano et al. 2012.

20. Giordano, J. Advances in Neurotechnology: Premises, Potential and Problems. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press; 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. Turner, J, D’Silva, J, eds. Animals, Ethics, and Trade: The Challenge of Animal Sentience. London: Earthscan; 2006.Google Scholar

22. Bentham, J. Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. Oxford: Clarendon Press; 1823.Google Scholar

23. Policy and cultural implications. Compassion in World Farming; available at http://ciwf.org.uk/animal_sentience/policy_and_culture (last accessed 12 Feb 2012).

24. Frankena, WJ. Beneficence in an ethics of virtue. In: Shelp, E, ed. Beneficence and Health Care. Dordrecht: Reidel; 1982.Google Scholar

25. See note 10, Giordano 2010.

26. Giordano, J. The neuroscience of pain, and the neuroethics of pain care. Neuroethics 2009;3(1):8994.Google Scholar

27. International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP). IASP Pain Terminology; available at http://www.iasp-pain.org/Content/NavigationMenu/GeneralResourceLinks/PainDefinitions/#Pain (last accessed 20 June 2012); 2009.

28. See note 27, IASP 2009.

29. Lascelles, BDX, Flecknell, PA. Do animal models tell us about human pain?Pain: Clinical Updates 2010;XVIII(5):1–5; available at http://www.iasp-pain.org/AM/AMTemplate.cfm?Section=HOME,HOME&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=15073&SECTION=HOME,HOME (last accessed 20 June 2012).Google Scholar

30. Whiteside, GT, Adedoyin, A, Leventhal, L. Predictive validity of animal pain models? A comparison of the pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic relationship for pain drugs in rats and humans. Neuropharmacology 2008;54(5):767–75.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

31. Peter Carruthers has asserted that animal pain is not as morally significant as human pain, which asserts a definitive speciesism based on philosophical grounds that are reflective, at least to some extent, of a form of natural law. Although we recognize the value of proximate relationships—see, e.g., note 60—we believe that the encompassing claim against the moral consideration of a painient creature’s suffering at the very least fails to acknowledge grounding maxims of nonharm and at worst establishes arbitrary criteria for the determination of which organisms deserve moral regard and beneficent treatment. This latter point has been raised in critique of the divergent and contradictory attitudes and practices fostered by the 1933 and 1938 iterations of the Animal Protection Laws (Reichstierschutzgesetz) and Nuremburg Laws during the Third Reich. For further discussion, see Arluke, A, Sax, B. The Nazi treatment of animals and people. In: Birke, L, Hubbard, R, eds. Reinventing Biology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press; 1995:228–60.Google Scholar For a thorough philosophical counterpoint to Carruthers, see Singer, P. In Defense of Animals. New York: Blackwell; 1985.Google Scholar

32. Although this is not to infer that we view the nervous system and/or brain “as” a computer, neural systems and brains are involved in computational processes. See, e.g., Kelso, SJA. Dynamic Patterns: The Self-Organization of Brain and Behavior (Complex Adaptive Systems). Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute for Technology; 1995Google Scholar, and Doya, K, Ishii, S, Pouget, A, Rao, RPN, eds. Bayesian Brain: Probabilistic Approaches to Neural Coding (Computational Neuroscience). Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology; 2007.Google Scholar

33. Bekoff, M. Cognitive ethology: The comparative study of animal minds. In: Bechtel, W, Grahm, G, eds. Blackwell Companion to Cognitive Science. Oxford: Blackwell; 1995.Google Scholar

34. Salloway, S, Cummings, J. Subcortical disease and neuropsychiatric illness. Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience 1994;6:93–9.Google Scholar

35. Edelman, GM. Wider than the Sky: The Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; 2004.Google Scholar

36. Baars, BJ. A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1998.Google Scholar

37. Steinke, GK, Galan, RF. Brain rhythms reveal a hierarchical network organization. Public Library of Science Computational Biology 2011;7(10):e1002207. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002207.Google Scholar

38. Kelso, JAS, Fuchs, A. Self-organizing dynamics of the human brain: Intermittency, antimonotonicity and Sil nikov chaos. Chaos 1995 Mar;5(1):64–9.Google Scholar

39. Bennett, MR, Hacker, PMS. Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell; 2003.Google Scholar

40. Giordano, J, Abramson, KD, Boswell, MV. Pain assessment: Subjectivity, objectivity and the use of neurotechnology part one: Practical and ethical issues. Pain Physician 2010;13(4):305–15.Google Scholar

41. This speaks to Thomas Nagel’s existential question, “What is it like to be a bat?” reflecting the essential subjective and solely self-transparent qualities of consciousness. In the absence of some ability to explicitly communicate first-person experience, interpreting the phenomenological conditions of others becomes something of a hermeneutical exercise. Attempts to bridge the subjectivity-objectivity gap (e.g., through the use of neurotechnology) remain largely unsuccessful and are a focus of much of current pain and consciousness research; see Nagel, T. Mortal Questions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1979Google Scholar; Giordano, J. Pain: Mind, Meaning and Medicine. Glen Falls, PA: PPM Press; 2009;Google ScholarGiordano, J The neuroscience of pain, and the neuroethics of pain care. Neuroethics 2009;3(1):8994Google Scholar; Giordano, J, Benedikter, R, Boswell, MV. Pain medicine: Biotechnology, and market effects: Tools, tekne, and moral responsibility. Ethics in Biology, Engineering and Medicine 2010;1(2):133–40.Google Scholar

42. National Research Council. Guidelines for the Care and Use of Mammals in Neuroscience and Behavioral Research. Washington, DC: National Academy Press; 2003.Google Scholar

43. Sufka, KJ, Weldon, M, Allen, C. The case for animal emotions: Modeling neuropsychiatric disorders. In Bickle, J, ed. Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Neuroscience. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2009.Google Scholar

44. See note 42, National Research Council 2003.

45. There is considerable discussion and debate about putative distinctions between pain and suffering that may be important to definitions of painience and derivative moral and ethical implications. For a thorough discussion of defining characteristics and putative neural mechanisms of pain and/or suffering, see Moskovitz, P. Understanding suffering: The phenomenology and neurobiology of the experience of illness and pain. In: Giordano, J, ed. Maldynia: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on the Illness of Chronic Pain. New York: Taylor Francis; 2010.Google Scholar

46. Sherwin, CM. Can invertebrates suffer? Or how robust is argument-by-analogy? Animal Welfare 2001;10:S103–18.Google Scholar

47. Eisemann, CH, Jorgensen, WK, Merritt, DJ, Rice, MJ, Cribb, BW, Webb, PD, et al. Do insects feel pain?—A biological view. Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences 1984;40(2):164–7.Google Scholar

48. Fiala, A. Neuroethology: A neuronal self-defense mechanism in fly larvae. Current Biology 2008;13(3):R116–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49. Linzey, A. Why Animal Suffering Matters: Philosophy, Theology and Practical Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2008.Google Scholar

50. Gert, B. Common Morality: Deciding What to Do. New York: Oxford University Press; 2007.Google Scholar

51. Pfaff, D. The Neuroscience of Fair Play: Why We (Usually) Follow the Golden Rule. Washington, DC: Dana Press; 2007.Google Scholar

52. Kant, I. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Gregor, M, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53. Ryder, RD. Painism: A Modern Morality. London: Open Gate Press; 2001.Google Scholar

54. Singer, P. Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals. New York: Random House; 1975.Google Scholar

55. See note 53, Ryder 2001.

56. For a more thorough address, see, e.g., Giordano, J. Pain: Mind, Meaning and Medicine. Glen Falls, PA: PPM Press; 2009Google Scholar; Ingensiep HW. Painism—a new ethics: Richard Ryder’s moral theory and its limitations. In: Giordano J, ed. Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives on the Illness of Chronic Pain. New York: Taylor-Francis; 2010.

57. See note 53, Ryder 2001, at 27.

58. See note 53, Ryder 2001, at 119.

59. See note 53, Ryder 2001, at 30.

60. Of course, such consideration and treatment would need to be situated within an ethical framework of proximate value of kith and kin and an appreciation of the real risk of harms that may occur should pain be inflicted in an animal under these circumstances, e.g., an animal attack on one’s self, child, spouse, etc.; see, e.g., Powers, M. Contemporary defenses of the doctrine of double effect. Revue Internationale de Philosophie 1995;193:341–56Google Scholar; Regan, T. Matters of Life and Death: New Introductory Essays in Moral Philosophy. 3rd ed. New York: Random House; 1993Google Scholar; Schofield, M, Striker, G, eds. The Norms of Nature. New York: Cambridge University Press; 1986.Google Scholar

61. Grandin T. Animals are not things: A view on animal welfare based on neurological complexity; available at http://www.grandin.com/welfare/animals.are.not.things.html (last accessed 22 Jan 2012).

62. See, e.g., Regan, T. Defending Animal Rights. Champaign: University of Illinois Press; 2001Google Scholar; Derbyshire, SWG. Time to abandon the three Rs. Scientist 2006;20:23Google Scholar; Greek, CR, Greek, JS. Is the use of sentient animals in basic research justifiable? Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine 2010;5:14Google Scholar; Greek, CR, Greek, JS. Specious Science: Why Experiments on Animals Harms Humans. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group; 2003.Google Scholar

63. Mogil, JS, Davis, KD, Derbyshire, SW. The necessity of animal models in pain research. Pain 2010;151(1):1217.Google Scholar

64. See note 63, Mogil et al. 2010.

65. Russell, WMS, Burch, RL. The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique. London: Methuen; 1959.Google Scholar

66. Bennett, GJ, Xie Y-, K. A peripheral mononeuropathy in rat that produces disorders of pain sensation like those seen in man. Pain 1988;33:87107.Google Scholar

67. Mogil, JS. Animal models of pain: Progress and challenges. Nature Review of Neuroscience 2009;10:283–94.Google Scholar

68. Mogil, JS, Crager, SE. What should we be measuring in behavioral studies of chronic pain in animals? Pain 2004;112:1215.Google Scholar

69. Rice, ASC, Cimino-Brown, D, Eisenach, JC, Kontinen, VK, LaCroix-Fralish, ML, Machin, I, et al. Animal models and the prediction of efficacy in clinical trials of analgesic drugs: A critical appraisal and call for uniform reporting standards. Pain 2008;139:241–5.Google Scholar

70. Steel, D. Across the Boundaries: Extrapolation in Biology and Social Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

71. Rawls, J. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; 1971.Google Scholar

72. We have referred to this expanded paradigm as “3Rs + 3” in that it advocates extending animal welfare into the social sphere, beyond the Three Rs of animal research, to include respect for both the knowledge gained to date and for the animals (i.e., species) that were the subjects of study; reciprocal translation of animal research findings into veterinary care; and responsibility to engage the corpus of extant and new knowledge more broadly and to reflect on, reform, and guide constructs, values, and actions of individuals and communities. See Loveless, S. Welfare and ethics in veterinary shelter medicine. Today’s Veterinary Practice 2011;1(1):50–5.Google Scholar

73. See here, e.g., note 56, Ingensiep 2010, and Berns, GS, Brooks, AM, Spivak, M. Functional MRI in awake unrestrained dogs. PLoS ONE 2012;7(5):e38027. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0038027.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

74. Nivens, J. Reckoning with the Beast: Animals, Pain and Humanity in the Victorian Mind. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press; 1972.Google Scholar

75. Nattrass, K. “Und die Tiere”: Constitutional protection for Germany’s animals. Animal Law 2004;10:283312.Google Scholar

76. Sax, B. Animals in the Third Reich: Pets, Scapegoats, and the Holocaust. New York: Continuum; 2000.Google Scholar

77. Köpf, P. Ein Herz für Tiere. Hamburg: Verlag JHW Dietz; 1996.Google Scholar

78. “The state protects, in the interest of future generations, the natural basis of life and the animals within the framework of constitutional laws and through the making of laws, and in accordance with ordinances and through judicial decision.” See note 75, Nattrass 2004, for a complete review.

79. German Animal Protection League (Deutscher Tierschutzbund). Tierschutz ins Grundgesetz—Langer Atem führt zum Erfolg—Konsequente Umsetzung angemahnt—Verbandsklagerecht für Tierschutzorganisationen nächstes Etappenziel [press release]; 2002 May 17; available at http://www. tierschutzbund.de/aktuell/presse/index.htm (last accessed 20 June 2012).

80. See note 75, Nattrass 2004.

81. Meyer, C. Animal Welfare Legislation in Canada and Germany: A Comparison. Stuttgart: Peter Lang; 1996.Google Scholar

82. For example, the United States Animal Welfare Act, 7 U.S.C. § 2131 et seq. (1966), regulates commercial and research activities, and—unlike the Tierschutzgesetz—protects only vertebrate species, excluding rats, mice, and birds.

83. Treaty of Lisbon; available at http://europea.eu/lisbon_treaty/full_tedt/index_en.htm (last accessed 20 June 2012).