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Welfare comparisons within and across species

Welfare comparisons within and across species
Welfare comparisons within and across species

One of the biggest problems in applications of animal welfare science is our ability to make comparisons between different individuals, both within and across species. Although welfare science provides methods for measuring the welfare of individual animals, there’s no established method for comparing measures between individuals. In this paper I diagnose this problem as one of underdetermination—there are multiple conclusions given the data, arising from two sources of variation that we cannot distinguish: variation in the underlying target variable (welfare experience) and in the relationship of measured indicators to the target. I then describe some of the possible methods of making comparisons, based on the use of similarity assumptions that will have greater or lesser justification in different circumstances, and the alternative methods we may use when direct comparisons are not possible. In the end, all our available options for making welfare comparisons are imperfect, and we need to make explicit context-specific decisions about which will be best for the task at hand while acknowledging their potential limitations. Future developments in our understanding of the biology of sentience will help strengthen our methods of making comparisons.

Animal welfare, Comparison, Interspecies, Measurement, Underdetermination
0031-8116
529-551
Browning, Heather
8d13aa04-7648-4403-b29c-11f7674f6618
Browning, Heather
8d13aa04-7648-4403-b29c-11f7674f6618

Browning, Heather (2023) Welfare comparisons within and across species. Philosophical Studies, 180 (2), 529-551. (doi:10.1007/s11098-022-01907-1).

Record type: Article

Abstract

One of the biggest problems in applications of animal welfare science is our ability to make comparisons between different individuals, both within and across species. Although welfare science provides methods for measuring the welfare of individual animals, there’s no established method for comparing measures between individuals. In this paper I diagnose this problem as one of underdetermination—there are multiple conclusions given the data, arising from two sources of variation that we cannot distinguish: variation in the underlying target variable (welfare experience) and in the relationship of measured indicators to the target. I then describe some of the possible methods of making comparisons, based on the use of similarity assumptions that will have greater or lesser justification in different circumstances, and the alternative methods we may use when direct comparisons are not possible. In the end, all our available options for making welfare comparisons are imperfect, and we need to make explicit context-specific decisions about which will be best for the task at hand while acknowledging their potential limitations. Future developments in our understanding of the biology of sentience will help strengthen our methods of making comparisons.

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Accepted/In Press date: 30 November 2022
Published date: 2 January 2023
Additional Information: Funding Information: Thanks to the attendees at various workshops and seminars at which I have presented and refined this work, including the 2018 Australian Association of Philosophy conference, the Philosophy of Biology at Dolphin Beach workshop, and the Study for the Society of Ethics and Animals online colloquium. I am particularly grateful to Kim Sterelny, Seth Lazar, and Jonathan Birch for feedback on earlier written drafts. This research is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, Grant Number 851145.
Keywords: Animal welfare, Comparison, Interspecies, Measurement, Underdetermination

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 475331
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/475331
ISSN: 0031-8116
PURE UUID: 6d3ad59a-d83b-4fe3-82c1-025d190a3024
ORCID for Heather Browning: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-1554-7052

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Date deposited: 15 Mar 2023 17:43
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 04:15

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Author: Heather Browning ORCID iD

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