Abstracts

Utiles of Mice and Men: Pains, Pleasures and Preferences across Species

KELLY INGLIS

Since Singer’s publication of Animal Liberation in 1975, the idea of incorporating animal pains, pleasures and preferences into utilitarian calculations has been widely accepted by philosophers interested in animal welfare. However, the problem of how to compare the utile of an animal with the utile of a human being has been scarcely broached. How does the pain of an animal compare with the pain of a person? Are they equivalent? Through an analysis of the evolutionary function of pains, pleasures and preferences, I will attempt to provide some insight into the problem of cross-species comparisons of utility.