 Second, there is a lot at stake morally in the question of whether animals are conscious beings or “mindless automata”. (See article on the Moral Status of Animals.) Many billions of animals are slaughtered every year for food, use in research, and other human purposes. Moreover, before their deaths, many — perhaps most — of these animals are subject to conditions of life that, if they are in fact experienced by the animals in anything like the way a human would experience them, amount to cruelty. Arguments that non-human animals are not conscious therefore effectively double as apologetics for our treatment of animals. When the question of animal consciousness is under consideration, our guilt or innocence as a civilization for an enormous body of cruelty may hang in the balance. However, some philosophers have argued that consciousness per se does not matter for the treatment of animals, and therefore either that a) even if animals are not conscious, they may deserve moral consideration, or b) even if animals are conscious, they may not deserve moral consideration. (For more discussion of the ethical issues, see Singer 1990 [1975]; Regan 1983; Rollin 1989; Varner 1998, 2012; Steiner 2008.)