Download Animals and Persons

Animals and Persons
Ethical status for animals
Kantian and utilitarian ethics traditionally extended to all
people, but only people
Kant: all rational beings are ends in themselves
assumption: only humans are rational
Utilitarianism: the pleasures and pains of all conscious beings are of
equal importance
assumption (?): only humans are conscious/have pleasure and pain
But note: Jeremy Bentham, early utilitarian (pre-Mill):
“The question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk?
but, Can they suffer?” (Bentham 1789)
Are animals persons?
Philosophical sense of “persons”: a being that has moral status, i.e.
being the subject of moral considerations, on the basis of its
fulfilling the necessary qualifications, such possessing rationality,
intelligence, or a moral sense, or being a member of the species
Homo sapiens, etc.
Locke’s definition of a person:
"a thinking intelligent Being, that has reason and reflection, and can
consider it self as it self, the same thinking thing in different times
and places; which it does only by that consciousness, which is
inseparable from thinking, and as it seems to me essential to it"
(Essay on Humane Understanding, Book 2, Chapter 27, Section 9)
Are animals persons?
If so, are all animals persons?
If not, what qualifies an animal for personhood?
Sentience, consciousness, a moral sense, being subject-of-a-life?
Peter Singer
Contemporary Australian philosopher
Professor of bioethics at Princeton
Preference utilitarian
Famous advocate of animal rights
Animal Liberation (1975)
“All Animals are Equal” (1989) (and humans are animals)
Animal Liberation
Like Leopold, Singer sees ethics as evolving.
In the past, slaves, women and people of other races were often not treated as
persons, and their interests were not given consideration.
Now we recognize all people as persons and extend equal consideration to all
people.
Now we should extend equal ethical consideration to animals as well.
Discrimination against animals is “speciesism”, analogous to racism
To discriminate on the basis of species membership, or even on the basis of
intelligence or rationality, is like discriminating on the basis of skin color
What matters is sentience. Any animal that is sentient (can feel pleasure or
pain) counts as a moral subject.
All pleasure or pain, or preferences, should count equally, whether they are the
pleasures of preferences of humans or animals
The argument from borderline cases
Borderline cases: babies, the severely mentally retarded, psychopaths
We routinely grant importance to the interests to human borderline
cases – not full rights (e.g. the right to vote), but the right to have
their preferences treated as morally important and the right not to
be mistreated
Animals are not equal to normal adults, and therefore cannot have truly
equal rights, but their preferences (e.g. the desire to avoid pain) should be
given equal consideration
We don’t discriminate between people on the basis of intelligence or
ability. So we should not discriminate against animals because
they are less intelligent or lack certain abilities.
We treat babies and the severely brain damaged better than we treat
animals, but we shouldn’t. Animals have just as much right to
consideration as babies (or more!) E.g. an adult ape is more aware, more
self-directing and has at least as much capacity for suffering as a baby.
Implications
Pro vegetarian: taking away a life for a insignificant benefit (satisfying a
person’s tastes) is unjustified. Although, Singer elsewhere argues that it is
possible to raise animals ethically for food, if they are raised to have a
pleasant and enjoyable life. An animal without a life plan does not suffer
from death, and a happy animal can be replaced by another happy animal
without net loss to the world.
Anti-vivisection: the utilitarian arguments we raise to justify using animals
this way would not be accepted as justification for human vivisection, and
therefore are not accepted for the case of animals either (except in
extreme cases).
Individual animals have moral standing, not species or biosystems.
Thus, killing two common deer would be a greater sin than
killing one endangered tiger.
An animal’s rights are potentially as important as a human’s.
Where to draw the line? At sentience. Where is the borderline of sentience?
Singer’s guess: between the clam and the shrimp.
Readings
Required:
G. Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 (1968), pp. 1243-1248,
available at: http://dieoff.org/page95.htm
Guha, Ramachandra, “Radical American Environmentalism and Wilderness
Preservation: A Third World Critique” in Environmental Ethics, Vol. 11,
No.1 (Spring 1989), pp. 71-83 , available at:
www.eci.ox.ac.uk/~dliverma/articles/Guha%20on%20radical%20environm
entalism.pdf
Optional:
Goodpaster, Kenneth, “On Being Morally Considerable”, in Environmental
Philosophy, pp. 49-65, available on reserve at the Philosophy Office