1. Animal rights and personhood Studium Generale October 4, 2016Bernice Bovenkerk

2. April 2015 First Time in World History Judge Recognizes Two Chimpanzees as Legal Persons Leo and Hercules Non-human Rights Project Steven Wise (Studium Generale November 13) Ruling not upheld in court Decision appealed Still liberated (sanctuary)

3. Why is this significant?  Animals already had rights (anti cruelty legislation)  Now they were legally regarded as ‘persons’  Grants special rights; in particular the right to argue that they should no longer be incarcerated  Doesn’t mean they are regarded as human persons

4. Questions  What is the moral basis for granting (any) animals rights?  What is the difference between legal and moral rights to personhood?  When is one considered a person according to animal ethics theory?  What does this mean in practice? - Right to be free? - Right to life? - Right not to be used?

5. Structure of this talk  Brief introduction to (animal) ethics  Different rights theories (Regan, Francione, Cochrane)  Which animals are considered persons?

6. Ethics?

7. Ethics What the world is like (empirical) How we should deal with that world (normative) Reflection FACTS

8. Ethics is a systematic reflection on morality Morality: “The totality of norms and values that a person (or group) regard as directive for action and that are deemed universalisable and important by this person (or group). Ethics

9. Moral judgment formation Intuitions/ emotions Principles Facts

10. What is the status of a moral judgment? Ethics is dynamic Outcome of reflection is an equilibrium/balance until other relevant information comes to light or principles are refined or intuitions change Does not mean subjective or relative Universality pretence Based on logical reasoning Consistency

11. Moral Status: who counts in our moral decisions? People Nature as a whole ? What arguments do we have to be able to speak about moral status? Animals Plants

12. Moral status  In our moral decisions the interests of each being with moral status should be weighed  All beings with certain properties matter  Possible candidates for properties are: - Sentience (capacity for enjoyment and suffering) - Conscious experience - Possession of desires - Self-reflective agency- Autonomous activity - Purposive agency - Being alive Because of these properties it matters to them how you treat them: basis for interests

13. Morally relevant capacities? Sentience The question is not, "Can they reason?" nor, “Can they talk?” but rather, "Can they suffer?” ( Jeremy Bentham, 1748-1832)

14. Analogy with racism and sexism  Discrimination on the basis of an irrelevant characteristic  Solely based on belonging to a specific species

15. Speciesism  Belonging to the species ‘human’ is not a good reason to be favoured  Only amount of suffering/ enjoyment is relevant  Self-awareness could lead to more (or less) suffering

16. Division between humans and nonhuman animals “One of the things that sets humans apart from other animals is our perennial efforts to establish our distinctiveness from them” (Gruen)  On the basis of specific characteristics: Intelligence, language, creativity, sentience, moral autonomy, morality  Difference between moral agents and moral patients

17. Human exceptionalism Two problems with this human exceptionalism: 1) None of these characteristics are exclusively human 2) Not all humans possess these characteristics

18. Marginal cases-argument  Humans with lowered capacities and/or consciousness and/or who do not have an image of the future  For example babies, severely mentally retarded, Alzheimer/coma patients  If we do not eat them or perform tests on them, why do this to animals?  Singer: equal interests should be weighed equally and all sentient creatures have a minimal interest in avoiding pain

19. Equality  Equal consideration of interests ≠ equal treatment  Differences between species important when we decide how to treat them  But: equal interest = equal treatment for Singer  Points out arbitrary way in which we treat different species  A pet ≠ a wild animal ≠ a lab animal ≠ a production animal

20. Anthropocentrism  Placing human interests in the centre  Other beings only have instrumental value  Animal ethics approaches try to avoid this  But do they really?  Moral status based on what animals have in common with humans > human is still the standard

21. Animal rights  Distinction between legal rights and moral rights  Legal rights can be based on moral considerations, but something can be immoral without it being legal and vice versa  In a sense easier to grant animals a legal right than a moral rights  Moral rights come with a specific theoretical framework Rights theories

22. Rights framework Utilitarianism Virtue ethics Relational ethics Contractualism Rights theories/ Kantianism/ deontology

23. What do they have in common?  Developed in opposition to utilitarian thinking  Singer: all equal interests treated equally  Maximize the total amount of good and minimize the total amount of bad of all those involved  Good: happiness, preferences, welfare  Aggregation

24. What do they have in common?  Interests should be respected irrespective of consequences  Boundaries > rights  But: rights are not absolute; can be trumped by other rights  Should not sacrifice individuals for the good of the group  Do not only focus on animal welfare, but also on other considerations

25. Tom Regan  Utilitarianism does not consider individual rights  Utilitarians focus on the happiness or welfare of individuals, not on the individuals themselves  Respect for the intrinsic value of animals  Animal dignity  Belong to the moral community because they are subject-of-a-life  Should never treat them solely as means, but always as ends in themselves as well (Kant)

26. Subject – of – a - life  Experiential welfare, a sense of the future, desires and beliefs, acting intentionally, perceiving, having a psychosocial identity over time, having preference autonomy  When you have these, you have inherent value and it is wrong for anyone to harm you  Rules out animal use categorically  Against animal cruelty, killing animals, using animals in recreation, using animals in experiments, confining animals in zoos, etc.

27. Gary Francione  Animals have the right not to be used as human resources or to be treated as property  Only things can be property and animals are not things  If an animal is property this means he or she has no intrinsic value, only instrumental value for humans  Francione likens property ownership of animals to slavery; against any form of animal confinement  According to the Dutch law animals are property.  Tension > they are also regarded as possessing intrinsic value. Can we have duties towards animals, while they do not have rights?

28. Domestication  Francione: we should stop domestication > not let any more domestic animals come into existence  Take care of the ones still alive  Domestication makes animals completely dependent on us  We have bred companion animals, in particular dogs, to be docile and dependent on us  We control their lives the way slave owners control the lives of slaves  In Francione’s view all animals have personhood (because sentient and autonomous)

29. Rights bearers  Some argue that only those who can understand rights and have legal duties themselves can be rights-bearers  However, this is not the case for a lot of human beings either, such as children and mentally challenged people  Criticism of Francione: he seems to conflate legal and moral concepts  When animals can be owned legally, it does not follow that the moral relationship is necessarily one where we treat the animal as a thing.  Humans have deep seated social relationships with other animals and to view the “ownership” of a “pet” as “slavery” is reductionist and a bad analogy

30. Alasdair Cochrane  A theory of animal rights without liberation  Argues against Regan: does not make clear why a being with inherent value has a basic right to be treated respectfully  Rights are simply protections of important interests  Sentient animals have important interests  But: most sentient animals do not have an intrinsic interest in liberty (only an instrumental interest)  For this they would have to be autonomous agents

31. Cochrane  As long as they are treated well, they can be confined and used  Against Francione: keeping an animal as a pet is unlike keeping a human as a slave  For humans freedom is important, because it is in their interest to lead an authentic life, pursuing their own goals The Truman Show

32. Persons  According to Cochrane some animals might have an intrinsic interest in liberty, because they are autonomous  Persons not necessarily all and only human beings  The Great Ape Project (Singer, Cavalieri): great apes “are the closest relatives of our species” and these nonhumans “have mental capacities and an emotional life sufficient to justify inclusion within the community of equals.”

33. Personhood  The term persons was historically reserved for rights bearers, so slaves were not persons  Nowadays it refers to beings with complex consciousness: self-awareness over time, rationality, sociability, autonomy  Problem: self-awareness is not an all or nothing trait  Comes in degrees  In a sense all animals capable of purposive action are self-aware and social animals have sociability  Not enough to have just one of these traits, but do not need to have all of them

34. What animals considered persons?

35. Examples of very complex consciousness  Crows with Theory of Mind?  Dogs that can distinguish the meaning of words apart from intonation  Dolphins have conversations  Elephants have very long memory  Even fish who cooperate with other species

36. Conclusion  Whether or not a being is considered a person from a moral point of view is separate from the question whether they are legal persons  With more evidence about cognitive abilities of animals, more and more animals may be granted (moral) personhood  Discussion needed between philosophy of mind, ethics, biology, and ethology to determine who are persons  For persons liberty may be an intrinsic interest  Meaning: animals with personhood should not be confined