One of the most inspirational scientists to ever live, Carl Sagan would have been 80 years old today. Sagan & Druyan on animals, exploitation and suffering.
“Philosophers of marauding high-technology civilizations have often argued that humans deserve a category distinct from and above all the other animals. It is not enough that humans have a different assortment of the qualities evident in the other animals – more of some traits, fewer of others. A radical difference in kind, not some fuzzy-edged difference in degree, is needed, longed for, sought…
Almost all of them believed that our distinction arises from something made neither of matter nor of energy that resides within the bodies of humans, but of no one else on Earth. No scientific evidence for such a ‘something’ has ever been produced. Only a few of the great Western philosophers – David Hume, for instance – argued, as Darwin did, that the differences between our species and others were only of degree.
… What can we learn about ourselves from an apparent error so widespread, propagated by so many leading philosophers and scientists, both ancient and modern, and with such assurance and self-satisfaction?
One of several possible answers: A sharp distinction between humans and ‘animals’ is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them – without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. With untroubled consciences, we can render whole species extinct, for our perceived short-term benefit, or even through simple carelessness. Their loss is of little import: Those beings, we tell ourselves, are not like us. An unbridgeable gap has thus a practical role to play beyond the mere stroking of human egos. Darwin’s formulation of this answer was: Animals whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equals.“
… Humans – who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals – have had an understandable penchant for pretending that animals do not feel pain. On whether we should grant some modicum of rights to other animals, the philosopher Jeremy Bentham stressed that the question was not how smart they are, but how much torment they can feel…
From all criteria available to us – the recognizable agony in the cries of wounded animals, for example, including those who usually utter hardly a sound – this question seems moot. The limbic system in the human brain, known to be responsible for much of the richness of our emotional life, is prominent throughout the mammals. The same drugs that alleviate suffering in humans mitigate the cries and other signs of pain in many other animals. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer.”
—Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1992). Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan. Chapter 19, What Is Human?