read slides and answer the questions
Animal Ethics
Extending the Moral Community
Think of an animal …
Regan, “The Case for Animal Rights”
Goals: Abolition of use of animals in science, agriculture, & sport.
None of these domains can be rendered “humane” in any credible sense.
“The fundamental wrong is the system that allows us to view animals as our resources, here for us.”
Philosophy’s contribution is to frame an argument for defending animal rights.
This can then be used as a theoretical basis to have some rights built into legislative reforms.
The Contractarian Approach
1) Indirect duties to animals: It is wrong to harm animals, because this harms human owners of animals.
E.g. it is wrong for me to kick you dog. But: it’s the dog’s pain, not mine; minimally, the pain is shared.
On analogy with children, animals are protected by the morally competent adult, to whom contract obligations are due.
But: harm to children – as to animals – is still morally significant with regard to their own moral status and well-being.
Kindness and Utility
Avoiding cruelty and being kind are desirable, but do not ensure just action. My sentiments maybe selective or arbitrary.
Utilitarianism is attractive on account of its egalitarianism (the interests of all are taken into consideration.
But: Utilitarianism aims at maximizing pleasure, and does not accord fundamental rights to any agent or object of action.
In other words, utilitarianism cannot be sensitive to the intrinsic value of persons or things. (Mill’s “higher pleasures” idea tries to respond to this challenge).
Inherent Value
“My value as an individual is independent of my usefulness to you. Yours is not dependent on your usefulness to me. For either of us to treat the other in ways that fail to show respect for the other’s independent value is to act immorally, to violate the individual’s rights” (540).
Human Rights
On what moral basis are rights attributed to human beings?
Cognitive complexity (higher-order thinking)? Does a person forfeit all rights when they are cognitively impaired?
Regan claims the real basis of human rights is common concern for one’s well-being.
Animals are also thus concerned; thus, it is appropriate to accord rights to animals.
Any attempt not to extend rights to animals will also have to deny rights to certain groups of persons (disabled, unintelligent, insane).
Do animals have less inherent value? This again calls for criteria of inclusion or exclusion (e.g. higher intelligence).
Conclusion
“The animal rights movement is a part of the human rights movement. Those involved in the animal rights movement are partners in the struggle to secure respect for human rights – the rights of women, for example, or minorities, or workers” (543).
Singer, “All Animals are Equal”
Animal liberation, like other liberation movements, requires “an explanation of our moral horizons” (= new moral paradigm).
The equality principle, central to human rights, should be extended to include all animals.
Equality does not entail all groups are treated equally. E.g. men have no “right” to an abortion as they cannot conceive.
Equality is a moral ideal and is not based on observable states or capacities, such as intelligence, strength, character traits, etc.
Sentience: Capacity for Suffering
Moral standing is based on something’s having interests; interests, in turn, are something that be facilitated or harmed.
A precondition of something having interests is a capacity for enjoyment or suffering. Suffering is always morally bad.
Therefore: the ability to suffer (sentience) is the basis of something’s having “moral standing.”
Indifference towards animal suffering is therefore a moral failing and rests on “speciesism,” that is, moral indifference to other animal species (parallel to the racist’s attitude to other races).
Fox, “The Moral Community”
A moral community exists where there are bonds of mutual obligation and mutual recognition of certain capacities.
The relevant capacities here are: autonomy (agency) and recognition of autonomy (in oneself and others).
Rights and obligations (duties) only exist with respect to what can credible be regarded as a moral community.
Rights are restricted to human persons, because humans alone can constitute a moral community.
“[The moral community rests upon] humans’ possession of a particular type of reflexive consciousness, unique cognitive and linguistic abilities, and the capacity to comprehend, undertake, and carry out obligations and to expect the same of similarly constituted beings” (186).
“Deficient” humans
If inclusion in the moral community requires certain capacities, what happens when a person lacks these capacities?
The problem here is one of generating a moral category of “sub-humans,” who do not have normal moral standing.
Fox insists that, although such persons do not properly belong within it, they “must fall within the most immediate extension” of the moral community.
Thus, those who are cognitively impaired as essentially honorary members of the moral community (unlike animals) .
Frey, “The Value of Lives”
Animals are part of the moral community, but they are normally of less value that humans.
If one is against cruelty to animals, it in no way follows that animals and humans of of equal moral standing.
This means that animal cruelty to avoid human suffering is justified (purposeless cruelty cannot be morally justified).
The higher moral standing of humans is derived from the richness of human lives, which is all about the variety of choices on offer.
This goes back to agency and autonomy: self-determination.
Avoiding Speciesism
Frey wants to defend his “unequal moral standing” thesis without being open to Singer’s charge of “speciesism.”
He holds that the appeal to great richness of human life is free of the taint of speciesism.
He rejects skeptical positions, which deny we can say anything about the lives of animals.
But this means: where quality of human life is questionable, it must be possible to set animal life above it.
There is nothing, Frey insists, that allows us to place human life always above animal life, no matter how low the quality of the former is.