Can the utilitarianist perspective affect animals as well as people?

Question

In English, we talked about how the utilitarianist perspective was "the greatest good for the greatest ammount of people." But can this perspective also include animals, or does it only apply to people? Please be as descriptive as possible.

Answer 1

People can operate under a justification of greatest good for greatest number of people, but.....just an observation.

The animal kingdom has been practising this for longer than man was in existance. and man probably learned from the animals.

Fish swim in schools so the weak and slow are eaten by predators in order to save the mass of strong fish.

The same with herding animals on the plains, the weak are sacrificed for the protection of the many.

There are lot more examples, but that gives you an idea.

Answer 2

You mean the greatest good for the greatest number. I don't think that this applies to animals. I have conflicting opinions. Could you be more specific. Are we talking about Rule utilitarianism or Act utilitarianism? Jeremy Bentham or John Stuart Mill's approach?

Answer 3

Weelll I was getting all set to answer this question from my brand new store of Utilitarianism information gathered at college, but I guess Mr M up there summed it up rather well :p

Answer 4

Yes it applies to animals as well. Only the loner animals don't emerge beyond the egocentric view of it.

Answer 5

Peter Singer calls it "speciesism" to exclude non-human animals from the calculation.

If humans are different from animals by way of intelligence, then we are justified in treating infants and the mentally challenged as livestock. But we aren't, so neither can we treat animals as livestock.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer#Animal_Liberation