Lesson video

Hello there.

My name is Mr. Robertson.

I love RE and I can't wait for us to get started.

We've got a really interesting and fascinating lesson today.

It's part of our big inquiry question, Changing World: How Should the Earth's Resources be Used? And in this lesson, we're going to be focusing on Mary Midgley, the philosopher, and her work on why animals matter.

We're gonna be looking at this big idea of what is our relationship with animals, how should we treat them, and why might they be important to us in our everyday lives.

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to explain Mary Midgley's arguments for why animals matter and explore the issue using some philosophical tools.

This lesson has four key phrases.

Our first is this idea of blocked thinking, which is when our ideas or thinking could sometimes get broken or blocked.

Our next phrase is absolute dismissal, which is the idea that animals do not matter morally at all.

Our third phrase is absolute inclusion, which is that animals should be treated exactly like humans.

And our fourth phrase is species barrier, the belief that humans and animals are fundamentally different groups.

This might sound quite complicated at the moment, but actually, as we go through the lesson, you'll see that they make sense.

I feel pretty confident you will know what these phrases mean by the end of the lesson.

So we're looking at Mary Midgley and why animals matter, and we're gonna be looking at this in two ways.

We're gonna start by looking at this idea of unblocking our thinking about animals.

So this lesson is using the tools of philosophy.

Maybe we need to clarify now what we mean when we talk about this term philosophy in our RE lessons.

So Sophia says, "Philosophy is interested in what we know and how we know it.

Philosophers ask questions about how people think or reason about the world around them and how we can know what is true or real.

We could better understand world views by using philosophical tools like thought experiments, critical thinking and reasoning.

How will that apply in this lesson? Well, in this lesson, we'll explore Mary Midgley's approach to philosophy and how it helps us think more clearly about our treatment of animals.

Sophia and Laura are discussing school production.

Sophia says, plays and drama are pointless.

Science can explain everything we need to know about life.

Watching the school production is not logical or useful.

Laura says, "Plays and drama are how we understand human life and purpose.

Science is just equations and experiments.

It doesn't tell us about what life means." I wonder what you think about Sophia and Laura.

I wonder what you think about their ideas.

How would you respond to what they say? Do you agree with them? Do you disagree with them? Do you have ideas from both of them? This is a photograph of Mary Midgley.

She was one of Britain's most important moral philosophers, which means that she focused on ideas of what is good, how we should lead good and ordered lives.

She had some really important ideas about what the purpose of philosophy was.

She thought the philosophy should be there to help us make better choices in life.

She thought philosophy should be practical.

It shouldn't just be thinking in a room with no relevance to the world.

It should actually be engaged with the world.

And she also thought it shouldn't be detached from our everyday experiences.

So doing philosophy is not something separate, you go to a separate room or a university to do, but actually engages the way we are as human beings and the experience we have on an everyday basis.

She also said that we need to be careful about being overly simplistic.

She said that could be really tempting and attractive to have a really simple diagnosis of a problem and a simple solution, but actually this could be quite misleading and not help our thinking.

Let's just check what we understand so far.

Here are four different options.

And I wonder what we think here.

Which of these makes most sense about what we've learnt about Mary Midgley's ideas so far? a, philosophy should be theoretical and complex with little connection to everyday life.

b, it should be practical and help us make better choices in life.

c, it should aim to give simple answers, even if they ignore real world complexity.

d, it should give us clear, simple answers to every problem.

Which of those makes most sense from what we've learnt so far? Excellent.

It's b, isn't it? Mary Midgley believes that philosophy should be practical.

It should help us make better choices in life.

She cautioned against stuff that was either too complex and theoretical or too simplistic.

What's going on in this photograph? A sort of photograph that fills me with dread because it means that something's gone wrong and I'm gonna need to get it fixed.

Just like a plumber might unblock pipes in your house if you've got a blockage, Mary Midgley believed that philosophy could help fix what she called blocked thinking.

She said, sometimes our ideas get stuck or confused, and because of this blocked thinking, we don't see things or understand things clearly.

Philosophy, she believed, could help us clear those blockages so our thinking can flow freely again.

So Mary Midgley really thought that philosophy could help us think better and get over this idea of what she called blocked thinking.

Let's apply this to something which she was really passionate about.

Let's think about animals.

What do you know about animals? What do you know about how they live, how they might care for each other? Do you believe that animals are able to feel emotions for each other? And importantly, do those ideas apply equally to all groups of animals? So I've got some categories for you here.

We might have wild animals that we might find in the world, we might have the idea of keeping animals as pets and we've got the idea of animals using farming.

Do we think each of those categories is similar or different? Might we care more about certain groups of animals than other groups of animals? This might be a really great opportunity for you to pause the video and think about this, think about your own experience, whether you own an animal or not.

What do you think about some of those big questions? So Mary Midgeley thought that the way we think about animals is a classic example of blocked thinking, because she says we stop ourselves from recognising that animals could feel, form bonds and matter morally, just like humans do.

So for Mary Midgeley, animals can have feelings.

They do form bonds and relationships and they do matter.

Let's look at this through a series of structured questions.

We might start with a big philosophical question.

Do animals matter? You might answer yes or you might answer no.

If they do matter, you might ask the question, why do animals matter to you? What is it about it? What influences you to think what you do? If they don't matter to you, you might also ask the same question, why don't they matter and what influences you to think what you do? You're all gonna have your own world view about the idea of animals.

You might want to spend a little bit of time now reflecting on what you would answer to this question and think a little bit about why you think like that.

Where have your ideas come from? Laura is gonna share her thought about animals.

She says, "I think humans matter most because we're more important than animals.

I care about my dog because he's part of my family and I like dolphins because they're smart.

But animals like chickens don't matter as much to me.

I don't really think about how they're treated on farms as long as I can eat what I want." I wonder in what ways Laura might show some blocked thinking here, talking about what Mary Midgely's said.

Is Laura putting animals into different categories depending on her relationship with them? Is she justifying treatment of animals based on what they mean to her? Mary Midgely wrote about this in a very famous book of philosophy called "Animals and Why They Matter".

And her argument is this.

We have blocked thinking about animals because we forget a simple truth.

Humans are not like animals.

We are animals.

We're not completely separate or different from them.

She says this is one of the things which causes the blocked thinking is putting ourselves in a different philosophical or moral category from animals, thinking we're like them.

But she said, no, we are animals as well.

Let's just check we understood that point.

A true or false question for you here.

Mary Midgely argues that humans are different from animals.

Is that true or false? Excellent, it's false.

Why is it false? Because she says that humans are animals.

We're not separate from them.

Brilliant if you understood that.

So in her book, Mary Midgely talks about two extremes of thought when humans view animals, and she critiques both of them.

The first she describes as absolute dismissal, and this is the idea that animals don't matter at all.

We completely dismiss any idea that animals have any importance at all.

And that's equivalent to saying animals are no different from a stone or a machine.

We can use them like we will.

It's up to us as human beings.

There's no real problem there.

The other view she describes is absolute inclusion, and she says that that way of thinking says that animals must be treated exactly like humans.

So she would say, an argument for that might be that killing an animal is exactly the same as killing a human.

They're exactly the same morally.

So she has these two views, absolute dismissal and absolute inclusion.

And she finds both these positions philosophically not worthwhile or logical.

So in terms of absolute dismissal, she says that that position dismisses animals because they're not as smart or as logical as humans.

And she calls this a hyper rational way of looking by judging something at how intelligent it is.

Mary Midgely says this is unfair because it leaves animals and sometimes even humans out of how we think about right and wrong.

But she also thinks that most people don't really believe this deep down.

Even people who say animals don't matter often care about their pets or think being cruel to animals is wrong.

So ignoring animals because they're less clever doesn't match how we actually live.

Midgely warns this thinking lets people avoid taking responsibility.

Instead, we should take our everyday care of animals seriously and think more carefully about how we treat them.

So why does Mary Midgely think absolute dismissal is overly simple, do you think? You might have talked about this idea of what she says about that most people don't really dismiss animals.

A lot of people do have pets, even if they say that animals don't matter.

Most people don't think being cruel to animals is okay.

And so that position, she feels, is not a defensible or logical position.

Let's just check our understanding here.

Laura has a sentence.

Absolute something is the idea that animals do not matter at all to humans.

Is that a, indifference, b, inclusion or c, dismissal? Think about what we've just been learning.

Excellent.

It's dismissal.

Absolute dismissal is the idea that animals do not matter at all to humans.

Brilliant, if you got that right.

So what about this idea of absolute inclusion then, the idea that animals must be treated just like humans? So Mary critiques this as well.

She says that supporters of this view argue that treating animals is less important because of their species is something called speciesism.

In other words, we're discriminating animals by the fact there are different species from us, whereas we shouldn't be doing that.

But Mary Midgely disagrees with that position.

She says it ignores that there are real differences between animals.

And it also forgets relationships that we have some animals like pets or farm animals.

She says treating all animals the same can make it harder to know what is right and wrong.

For example, it doesn't make sense to treat killing a mosquito the same as killing a person.

She believes we need to notice what she calls the species barrier, not that humans are better, but we need to respect humans for what they are.

So they're not just another human being.

That's a lot of information to take on.

Let's think about what I've just said.

Why does Mary Midgely think absolute inclusion is overly simple? Well, you might have mentioned this idea of treating animals is exactly the same and ignoring important differences between them.

So the example she talks about, is killing a mosquito really the same as killing another human being or even perhaps killing an elephant or chimpanzee? She's saying we need to realise that there is a species barrier.

Humans are not exactly the same as animals, but that doesn't mean that we don't need to really respect animals for what they are.

Let's just check that we've understood what we've been learning.

Another true or false for you here.

Absolute inclusion is the idea that animals should be equal to humans.

Is that true or false? Excellent.

It's true, isn't it? It's that absolute inclusion is the idea that animals are totally equal to humans, killing an animal is the same as killing a human.

Okay, so we've learnt a lot about what Mary Midgely's talked about, unblocking our thinking, and we've learnt about these two positions that she critiques, absolute dismissal and absolute inclusion.

I've got some statements for you here.

Animals are just property, so their feelings don't matter.

We should never use animals for experiments because it's unfair to them.

No form of animal experimentation can be justified.

It's okay to use and abuse animals if it benefits humans.

Killing any animal is as wrong as killing a person.

Only humans have moral value.

What I'd like you to do with these statements is separate them.

Which of those fit with the absolute dismissal way of thinking and which of those fit with the absolute inclusion way of thinking? This is gonna help us clear our thinking so when we come to look at Mary Midgely's proposals, we know what she wants to move away from.

So I'd like you to sort those statements either into absolute dismissal or absolute inclusion, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Let's see what you did.

So you might have said under absolute dismissal animals are just property, so their feelings don't matter.

It's okay to use and abuse animals if it benefits humans.

Only humans have moral value.

Absolute inclusion might say we should never use animals for experiments because it's unfair to them.

No form of animal experimentation can be justified.

Killing any animal is as wrong as killing a person.

Brilliant if you managed to sort those into the two categories.

Fantastic work.

Okay, so for the next section, we're going to look at Mary Midgely's idea of a mixed community, how she feels that offers a philosophical way forward in the way we view animals.

So, as we said earlier, Mary Midgely rejected these extreme views that either animals should be treated exactly like humans or animals don't matter at all.

She offered what she felt was a more thoughtful middle ground.

She acknowledged a species barrier, and that means that there is a difference between humans and animals that makes them into separate groups morally.

But these differences are not as obvious as we assume.

Look at the diagram here.

So Mary Midgely uses what we call as an analogy to help us think more about this idea of a species barrier between humans and animals.

She invites us to picture a tall wire fence.

To adults, this fence looks like a really solid barrier that firmly separates humans from other animals.

We might offer temporary visas to pets like cats and dogs, allowing them to live with us.

But from the adult's perspective, the barrier seems impossible to cross.

However, the fact that this fence seems so impressive and imposing from above tells a different story, because actually it's full of holes and poses no barrier at all.

In fact, little children and animals can easily slip through the holes near the bottom, moving freely between the two sides.

And because we all began life as children, this suggests no human truly experiences the world where one, where only humans matter.

Mary Midgley argues that this fence, the species barrier, is a product of our human imagination.

It shows the strict separation between humans and animals is not as fixed an idea as we assume.

The idea that humans and animals live completely separate lives is something that humans have invented, and the fence is not as strong or solid as it seems. So I wonder what you think about this idea of the divide between species.

What do you think about Mary Midgley's idea that this idea of a species barrier is really one of our imaginations and that younger children actually might move between and see the world quite differently from us.

So although there are differences between humans and animals, they're not as strict as we might think they are.

Jun and Jacob are discussing this analogy of the fence and what it shows about the species barrier.

Jun says, "Adults often think animals are totally separate because they focus on language and thinking, but children naturally mix with animals.

They cuddle, play and connect." Jacob says, "The fence isn't seen by the children in the same way as the adults.

There's not a clear divide.

Animals and humans live and explore together.

It shows the line between us and them isn't so strong." I wonder what you think about these ideas.

Do you agree with what they're saying? What do your own experiences tell you about this? Mary Midgley says that humans and animals live together in a mixed community.

We share the world with them.

Pets, farm animals and wildlife are part of our everyday lives.

She believes that animals aren't just tools for us to use.

They have needs and feelings.

We shouldn't treat them exactly like humans, but we do need to care how we treat them because they matter morally.

Let's just check our understanding there.

True or false? Mary Midgley believed that animals only matter to humans because they're useful, like pets or farm animals.

Does that reflect what we've been learning so far? True or false? Excellent.

It's false, isn't it? But why is it false? Because Mary Midgley said that animals do matter morally in their own right, not just because they're useful to humans.

Mary Midgley doesn't try to give rules, but what she tries to do is offer some tools, some thinking tools to help us think more clearly.

She said that animals feel, they have feelings like pain, joy, they can form bonds with each other.

I have a pair of rabbits that are brother and sister and they have a really strong bond with each other.

They really don't like to be apart.

They follow each other around all the time and they're always grooming each other.

So they clearly have a bond between each other.

She also says we care.

We instinctively protect those who are vulnerable.

As she says, it's really natural, isn't it, for children to want to stroke and cuddle and pet animals and care about them.

And you may have a great love of animals yourself.

They connect with us through friendship and a shared life.

If you have pets, you'll know what it's like.

Maybe your pet sometimes likes to sleep on your bed or you like to feed it or take it for walks.

There's something about having an animal and it becoming part of your life.

And that's even the case for wild animals.

You might like feeding the birds that come into your garden, for example.

Finally, they help nature work.

They matter because they're integral to our society and ecosystems. Insects pollinate.

We have food chains where we all depend on to eat ourselves, and we need the millions of microorganisms to ensure we have a healthy soil that means that we can eat as well.

So she has lots of different ways in which we need to think about why animals matter, from really useful and essential natural processes like pollination through to ideas of feelings and emotions, through to the idea of what they add to us as human beings.

I wonder from that whether you can answer this question for me.

Which of these is not one of the reasons Mary Midgley gives for why animals matter? a, animals can feel pain and joy.

b, animals help nature work, like controlling pests or pollinating plants.

c, animals are useful for testing new medicines.

d, humans often care for animals and form close bonds with them.

Which of those does not fit with those tools we just looked at? Excellent.

It's c, isn't it? She doesn't talk about the idea of animals being useful for testing new medicines.

Brilliant if you got that right.

Okay, so we've learnt about this idea of a mixed community.

We've learnt about Mary Midgley's trying to find a middle ground between dismissing animals is not useful at all and saying they're exactly the same as humans.

And her idea of a species barrier, which is more permeable than we might think of it.

Humans and animals are separate, but they have lots of ways they cross the barrier and they are important and they do matter.

I've got a case study for you here about battery farmed hens.

Battery farmed hens are kept in very small cages where they can hardly move.

This is done to produce eggs cheaply and quickly for people to eat.

The hens can often not behave naturally, which causes them a lot of suffering.

In nature, hens and birds help by eating insects and weed seeds.

Free range hens have more space to move around, scratch and behave naturally, which is better for their wellbeing.

However, their eggs usually cost more.

So lots of information there about battery eggs, but also free range hens as well.

Using this idea and using the case study, I'd like you to try and apply Mary Midgley's ideas to answer the question, is it okay to buy cheap eggs from battery farmed hens? I'd like you to consider this.

One, how do you think the hens might feel in those cages? Because remember, Mary Midgley talked about the idea of animals having emotions.

You might want to think about how humans might connect with hens.

Have you any experience with that yourself? What relationship might we have with them? Why should we care about hens? Why might it matter? And what do hens do in nature? If you want to go back in the video and look at that diagram again, you might use to help you.

You might want to look at the information about the case study in more detail.

But from that, using Mary Midgley's thinking, could you formulate an answer to the question, is it okay to buy cheap eggs from battery farmed hens? What do you think Mary Midgley might answer using the tools she set out? Good luck.

Great, amazing philosophical thinking there.

So you might have said, how might the hens feel in these conditions? Well, you might have talked about battery farmed hens feeling scared and unhappy because they're very small cages.

They can't turn around and have their natural behaviour.

You might have talked about how humans connect with hens, that we keep them for eggs.

So we use them mainly for food.

So that's the use they are for us.

Why we should care about them? Because they can suffer, because we need to protect hens.

Fourthly, what role do they play in nature? Well, in nature, hens can help humans control insects and eat weeds.

So they have a wider role in the ecosystem.

So doing all of that analysis, you might have come up with something like, because battery farmed hens stop hens from living naturally and causes suffering, I think it's better to choose free range eggs, even if they cost more.

Your answers may not look exactly like this, but have you managed to set out some of the conditions and tools that Mary Midgley set out? And have you come to a justified conclusion, thinking about what she might have thought? And I suspect that she would have definitely been against battery hens because of all the ways we've just set out.

You've done a brilliant job.

So fantastic philosophical thinking.

So let's think about what we've learnt today.

We've learnt about Mary Midgley.

And one of the things she said was that philosophy can help us fix our blocked thinking, that it can unblock and help us think more clearly.

She critiqued two extremes in terms of our way of thinking about animals.

One was absolute dismissal, where we think that animals don't matter at all.

And the other was absolute inclusion, which is treating animals exactly like humans.

She decided to think of a middle ground.

She said, yes, there is a species barrier.

Humans and animals are different.

But we shouldn't use that as an excuse to ignore animals' needs.

She wants to think more clearly about our attitude to animals.

The animals feel, they can connect with us.

They deserve our care.

They play a role in nature.

As she calls this idea, a mixed community where we live alongside animals.

They're not exactly the same as us, but actually they're more like us than we might think.

And they matter morally for lots of different reasons.

I hope you've enjoyed wrestling with these big ideas today.

I wonder if anything you've learnt today about Mary Midgley and her ideas has changed or shaped your thinking at all.

Be really interested to know how you found this and how this makes you think about the world going forwards.

Thanks very much.