To achieve wellbeing for animals, PAN Works works at the intersection of ethics, science, and public policy—the very intersection where the wellbeing of animals is decided. Understanding how these three domains relate to one another is central to everything we do.
What is at stake at that intersection is the kind of world we are willing to build. We are striving for a global community that cares for animals as a distinct sphere of ethical and practical concern — one that calls on humanity to sharpen our individual and collective capacity for ethical thought and behavior, and to fulfill our moral and political responsibilities to people, animals, and nature alike. All animals merit this concern, both as individuals in their own right and as active members of their broader ecological and social communities. Much of our work takes place at the interface of animals and their interactions with humans, as we all live in “mixed communities” that include a diversity of people and animals inhabiting a shared landscape. To understand how ethics, science, and policy relate to one another, then, is to ask how we ought to live alongside the animals with whom we share that landscape — and that is, before anything else, a question of values.
Why do values matter in public policy?
Aristotle understood politics as ethics writ large — the collective expression of our moral commitments about how we ought to live together. That insight remains as sharp today as it was in ancient Athens. Public policy is never value-free. Whether the question involves how we manage wolves on the landscape, whether cats should roam freely outdoors, or how we treat animals in agriculture and research, every policy decision rests on a foundation of moral assumptions about who counts, whose interests matter, and what kind of world we want to live in. As the philosopher Mary Midgley observed, human beings are moral primates — we are constitutively attuned to the ethical dimensions of our collective life. Moral values and worldviews, latent or explicit, are the engine of public policy. Making those values transparent and accountable is the first step toward making better policy for animals.
Where does science fit in?
Science is indispensable — but it is not sufficient. The facts about animal sentience, ecological relationships, and the consequences of our actions are essential inputs to good policy. But science cannot tell us what we ought to do; that requires ethics. Nor is science itself value-free: scientific inquiry operates within ethical frameworks that govern how research is conducted, what questions get asked, and whose interests are treated as worth studying. This is why ethics and science must work together — each keeping the other honest. Ethics keeps our values transparent and accountable; science does the same for our factual claims. Neither domain stands alone, and neither should be subordinated to the other.
What is triangulation, and why does it matter?
Triangulation is the practice of bringing ethics and science to bear on public policy simultaneously, using each to illuminate and check the other. Rather than treating facts and values as rival sources of authority — or worse, pretending that policy can be reduced to technical questions alone — triangulation insists that the best policy decisions emerge from their integration. When we ask how to manage a predator population, reduce harm to wildlife in cities, or navigate the ethics of conservation interventions, we need both rigorous science and rigorous ethical reasoning working in concert. At PAN Works, triangulation is not merely a method; it is a commitment to intellectual honesty about the full complexity of what good policy for animals requires.
What does this mean in practice?
It means that animal public policy is, at its core, a wicked problem — one with no purely technical solution, because it is driven by deep conflicts over values and worldviews. Resolving such conflicts requires more than better data; it requires ethical clarity, deliberation, and the willingness to make our moral commitments explicit and open to scrutiny. At PAN Works, we call this building ethical capacity — in individuals, organizations, and institutions alike. When ethics and science triangulate under conditions of honest deliberation, we move closer to policies that genuinely serve the wellbeing of people, animals, and nature together.