Animals, science, and ethics -- Section III. Critical anthropomorphism, animal suffering, and the ecological context

Section III discusses the problem of animal suffering and its recognition by "critical anthropomorphism," a serious and thoughtful attempt to bridge the gap between the understanding of human and animal life. This is a method that involves critically using our human experience to recognize and alleviate animal suffering by checking our immediate intuitions about an animal's subjective life against what we can learn from more objective scientific studies. Yet the necessarily imperfect or imprecise nature of any method to get "inside" the animal and to grasp what it subjectively feels accounts for the ongoing difficulties and controversies over the definition of animal suffering. Just how far should we adhere to an objective, "outside" or subjective, "inside" approach?....