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%20environmentalism.pdf Optional: Goodpaster, Kenneth, “On Being Morally Considerable”, in Environmental Philosophy, pp. 49-65, available on reserve at the Philosophy Office