Animal Subjectivity | 45 Rollin, Bernard E 2006 Science and ethics Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Sax, Boria, ed 2001 The mythical zoo: An A-Z of animals in world myth, legend and literature New York: ABC-Clio Wolch, Jennifer, and Jody Emel, eds 1998 Animal geographies: Place, politics and identity in the nature-culture borderlands London: Verso Wolf, Cary, ed 2003 Zoontologies: The question of the animal Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press William S Lynn ANIMAL SUBJECTIVITY We care about animal rights and animal welfare because we assume that animals are able to experience their lives subjectively—that they have an individual perspective on things and can feel good or bad about them Thus we naturally see animals as sentient, and assume that they have an inner life of some sort, that there is “something it is like to be” them, to quote the words of philosopher Thomas Nagel For scientists working in the field of animal welfare, the problem is whether and how we can objectively assess this subjectivity, for example, what it is like to be a battery cage hen or a laboratory rat There exists as yet no agreement between either scientists or philosophers on precisely how we should understand the subjective aspects of life, how they might relate to observable behavior, and how we might measure them These are deep philosophical problems that we cannot expect to resolve in the near future, but that nevertheless affect the way we think about animal suffering and our responsibility to alleviate it This difficulty in studying how animals subjectively experience life feeds into another meaning of the term sub- jective, which refers to the difficulty of gaining certain, factual knowledge Many scientists are concerned that because experience is subjective, it is not open to reliable, objective assessment, only to prejudiced, untrustworthy, subjective judgment Many go so far as to believe that because feelings are difficult to study, they are literally hidden from view, and should be defined as internal mental states In such a light, describing animals as happy or sad, frustrated or content, can quite easily be dismissed as the misguided anthropomorphic projection of human emotions onto nonhuman animals It is, however, very important that we not confuse the two meanings of the word subjectivity That feelings are of an inner, personal nature does not automatically imply that they are completely hidden from others and cannot be observed and investigated It is true that, generally, you not directly feel what someone else (human or animal) feels, but that is not to say that, with some effort, you could not perceive and understand the quality of another’s experience With appropriate criteria and assessment procedures, objective investigation of subjective experience in animals may well be possible Various approaches to the study of subjective experience in animals have been developed over the years In science, one of the first and most influential ideas was to let animals vote with their feet: when given a choice of environments or situations, animals will presumably spend most of their time in the situations they like best Another proposal was to test how hard animals are prepared to work for various kinds of reward To gain access to litter, for example, chickens are willing to peck a key many times Such studies indicate what animals like and