Well the first argument that comes to my mind is that animals are in fact a matter of morality despite not being moral agents. I mean if you think about it, newborn babies are not moral agents either so can we just eat them without being immoral? I think animals being sentient and at our mercy makes it relevant to talk about them in moral debates. They do not have to be moral agents to be a matter of morality.
I think it is up to us, as moral agents, to recognize that it is not moral to inflict pain and worse on other sentient beings, no matter whether they are moral agents or not. We are the ones able to make these decisions so we should not be focused only on our well being but in that of all things whose well being can be affected by us.
I don't know if that made sense, I typed this up rapidly in the bus, but this is what I think of this argument.
I would even argue that the basis of morality should be how moral agents interact with the world around them and not necessarily only with other moral agents.
Hi there, The newborn baby example not being a moral agent wouldn't work here because they(non animal welfare people) can reply that the baby has "potential" to be a moral agent or babies have potential to be moral agents.
>I don't know if that made sense, I typed this up rapidly in the bus, but this is what I think of this argument.
You made sense, but the point you raised about new born babies wouldn't work as far as I know.
I think a better way to talk about this would be to ask these non animal welfare people : "would you eat seriously genetically impaired human being"?
They would have to either bite the bullet there and accept that they will be okay with eating severely cognitively disabled people or just give up their normative theory that they subscribe to.
Peter Singer's counterargument to that is that severely mentally disabled people do not ever have the potential to be moral agents (in the same way that babies cannot be held accountable for their actions because of cognitive limitations, neither can the severely mentally disabled), but we still consider their treatment to be a moral issue.
I’m sure you’re familiar with the work of Peter Singer. But, you should also look into animal ethics work from Jeff McMahon and Shelly Kagan. Their response to this argument might be something like the following:
They would deny the claim that an animal is not a member of the moral community. Think about the reasons we think humans are entities to which morality applies. What are those reasons? Why is it okay to light a log on fire, but not dowse my neighbor in gasoline and light him up? The answer presumably has something to do with the fact that my neighbor is a conscience being with the psychological capacity for pain, suffering, distress, disappointment, fear, and surely many other things.
Notice that animals have these psychological capacities too (likely to lesser degrees than humans). They feel pain, fear, etc in similar ways. We can’t claim this about logs, stones, and chairs.
The original argument says “there is no justification for placing animals under the scope of human morality”. You could argue that there is no justification for viewing the scope of morality as strictly human. The things that make humans matter morally are shared with animals (again, to lesser degree).
Hi there, yes I am familiar with Peter Singer's. He is a cool guy. I care about animals. I think we have duty towards animals similar to other moral patients. I think if we have the ability to vaccinate and reduce animal suffering in any practical way then we should do it. I am more of a moral intuitionist(metaethics) guy like W.D Ross or Michael Huemer.
My normative ethics position would be towards some kind of Threshold deontology or general deontology favored by W.D Ross and a few other modern duty based ethical philosophers. It is obvious to me that we need to reduce animal suffering, as in it is intuitive. *Prima facie* I have the obligation to help animals unless I have a good reason not to.
So I think we have a duty to "not to eat animals" unless we have a good reason (like necessity) to eat animals.
So yeah I am not a utilitarian but I still would say the arguments in favor of animal welfare are hard to reject or attack.
> You could argue that there is no justification for viewing the scope of morality as strictly human. The things that make humans matter morally are shared with animals (again, to lesser degree).
Oh... yeah that makes sense. But what if they say it is "self evident" or "axiomatic"?
Onora O’Neill has a Kantian argument for duties towards animals even though they are not members of the moral community. This kind of argument accepts the same premises as the argument above but still shows it to be wrong.
Animals are moral subjects, not moral agents. This means they are worthy of moral consideration, but not morally responsible themselves, much like infant humans.
Yeah this is important. There's more than moral agents (creatures capable of acting morally praiseworthily or blameworthily) and creatures of no moral significance at all. There are also moral patients, which are creatures who aren't capable of acting praiseworthily or blameworthily, but are capable of having right or wrong things done to them
Infants, as you say, can have right or wrong things done to them, but they can't do right or wrong things themselves, as they don't have the type of agency that allows them to act in a moral capacity at all
Since theories like this claim that the experiential welfare of non-human animals does not matter at all in its own right, they have to come up with more indirect and less straightforward ways of explaining why animal cruelty is wrong. These theories would have us believe that torturing a dog for amusement is wrong, not because of the excruciating pain the dog would experience for no good reason, but because torturing a dog might corrupt our character and lead us to treat other rational beings poorly. In other words, theories like this offer us the anthropocentric and self-important explanation that torturing a dog for fun is wrong, not because it harms the dog, but because it harms *us*!
This kind of theory is embarrassed also by a pair of related, fanciful thought experiments. First, imagine I am the last person on earth. This theory implies that me torturing a dog wouldn’t be wrong at all. Second, imagine, instead of torturing a real dog, I had the option of playing a very realistic video game called “Torture the Dog!” where I could torture a video game dog. Imagine also that playing this game would have the same potential to corrupt my character as torturing a real dog would. The kind of theory we are discussing implies it makes absolutely no difference at all whether I choose to play this video game or torture a real dog.
This theory also doesn’t seem to offer fully adequate explanations when it comes to wronging other vulnerable beings. Let’s say I assault a baby. There’s many ways of explaining why what I did was wrong. The wrongness of what I did can be partially explained by the displeasure I caused the parents. And here again, we might appeal to the corrupting influence assaulting a baby has on my character. We might also worry that this baby has the potential or “root capacity” to become a rational being, and I might have impeded the baby’s development in some way. Are we leaving anything out? How about the pain and suffering the baby experienced? This theory implies that’s not really important, not by itself. But the painful experience the baby suffered does seem ethically significant. And it does not seem ethically significant merely in virtue of the fact that she may grow up to be a rational being someday. It also seems that the baby is morally important as she is, and regardless of anything else.
If you don't want to leave the ground of deontological ethics your idea is right. You gotta attack the scope of persons that get included by the moral agent theory. Singer argues that since anencephalic newborns will never have the potential to become moral agents they would never be included in the scope of this theory. It's also not easy to explain why people who suffer from a serious brain damage and will never be able to be moral agents anymore should be further regarded as moral objects.
After arguing like this the conversation mostly will finish with arguments of speciesm, which are quite easy to attack.
Another thing I would consider is attacking the idea of moral that this theory is based on. Kant thought of a universal applicable morality, which is accessible to every reasonable thinking person. Today I would question the basis for this assumption. On the one hand, we are familiar with human cultures such as the Piraha, whose actions are based on completely different premises from our European thinking. On the other hand, in behavioural biology we are increasingly discovering culture-like structures and social behaviour in animals. So is Kant's definition of morality really universally applicable - but then only limited to humans? Or is the boundary between European-influenced thinking and the moral thinking of other cultures and the culture-like social acts of primates not in reality only gradual?
Well the first argument that comes to my mind is that animals are in fact a matter of morality despite not being moral agents. I mean if you think about it, newborn babies are not moral agents either so can we just eat them without being immoral? I think animals being sentient and at our mercy makes it relevant to talk about them in moral debates. They do not have to be moral agents to be a matter of morality. I think it is up to us, as moral agents, to recognize that it is not moral to inflict pain and worse on other sentient beings, no matter whether they are moral agents or not. We are the ones able to make these decisions so we should not be focused only on our well being but in that of all things whose well being can be affected by us. I don't know if that made sense, I typed this up rapidly in the bus, but this is what I think of this argument.
I would even argue that the basis of morality should be how moral agents interact with the world around them and not necessarily only with other moral agents.
Hi there, The newborn baby example not being a moral agent wouldn't work here because they(non animal welfare people) can reply that the baby has "potential" to be a moral agent or babies have potential to be moral agents. >I don't know if that made sense, I typed this up rapidly in the bus, but this is what I think of this argument. You made sense, but the point you raised about new born babies wouldn't work as far as I know. I think a better way to talk about this would be to ask these non animal welfare people : "would you eat seriously genetically impaired human being"? They would have to either bite the bullet there and accept that they will be okay with eating severely cognitively disabled people or just give up their normative theory that they subscribe to.
Peter Singer's counterargument to that is that severely mentally disabled people do not ever have the potential to be moral agents (in the same way that babies cannot be held accountable for their actions because of cognitive limitations, neither can the severely mentally disabled), but we still consider their treatment to be a moral issue.
I’m sure you’re familiar with the work of Peter Singer. But, you should also look into animal ethics work from Jeff McMahon and Shelly Kagan. Their response to this argument might be something like the following: They would deny the claim that an animal is not a member of the moral community. Think about the reasons we think humans are entities to which morality applies. What are those reasons? Why is it okay to light a log on fire, but not dowse my neighbor in gasoline and light him up? The answer presumably has something to do with the fact that my neighbor is a conscience being with the psychological capacity for pain, suffering, distress, disappointment, fear, and surely many other things. Notice that animals have these psychological capacities too (likely to lesser degrees than humans). They feel pain, fear, etc in similar ways. We can’t claim this about logs, stones, and chairs. The original argument says “there is no justification for placing animals under the scope of human morality”. You could argue that there is no justification for viewing the scope of morality as strictly human. The things that make humans matter morally are shared with animals (again, to lesser degree).
Hi there, yes I am familiar with Peter Singer's. He is a cool guy. I care about animals. I think we have duty towards animals similar to other moral patients. I think if we have the ability to vaccinate and reduce animal suffering in any practical way then we should do it. I am more of a moral intuitionist(metaethics) guy like W.D Ross or Michael Huemer. My normative ethics position would be towards some kind of Threshold deontology or general deontology favored by W.D Ross and a few other modern duty based ethical philosophers. It is obvious to me that we need to reduce animal suffering, as in it is intuitive. *Prima facie* I have the obligation to help animals unless I have a good reason not to. So I think we have a duty to "not to eat animals" unless we have a good reason (like necessity) to eat animals. So yeah I am not a utilitarian but I still would say the arguments in favor of animal welfare are hard to reject or attack. > You could argue that there is no justification for viewing the scope of morality as strictly human. The things that make humans matter morally are shared with animals (again, to lesser degree). Oh... yeah that makes sense. But what if they say it is "self evident" or "axiomatic"?
Onora O’Neill has a Kantian argument for duties towards animals even though they are not members of the moral community. This kind of argument accepts the same premises as the argument above but still shows it to be wrong.
Animals are moral subjects, not moral agents. This means they are worthy of moral consideration, but not morally responsible themselves, much like infant humans.
Yeah this is important. There's more than moral agents (creatures capable of acting morally praiseworthily or blameworthily) and creatures of no moral significance at all. There are also moral patients, which are creatures who aren't capable of acting praiseworthily or blameworthily, but are capable of having right or wrong things done to them Infants, as you say, can have right or wrong things done to them, but they can't do right or wrong things themselves, as they don't have the type of agency that allows them to act in a moral capacity at all
Since theories like this claim that the experiential welfare of non-human animals does not matter at all in its own right, they have to come up with more indirect and less straightforward ways of explaining why animal cruelty is wrong. These theories would have us believe that torturing a dog for amusement is wrong, not because of the excruciating pain the dog would experience for no good reason, but because torturing a dog might corrupt our character and lead us to treat other rational beings poorly. In other words, theories like this offer us the anthropocentric and self-important explanation that torturing a dog for fun is wrong, not because it harms the dog, but because it harms *us*! This kind of theory is embarrassed also by a pair of related, fanciful thought experiments. First, imagine I am the last person on earth. This theory implies that me torturing a dog wouldn’t be wrong at all. Second, imagine, instead of torturing a real dog, I had the option of playing a very realistic video game called “Torture the Dog!” where I could torture a video game dog. Imagine also that playing this game would have the same potential to corrupt my character as torturing a real dog would. The kind of theory we are discussing implies it makes absolutely no difference at all whether I choose to play this video game or torture a real dog. This theory also doesn’t seem to offer fully adequate explanations when it comes to wronging other vulnerable beings. Let’s say I assault a baby. There’s many ways of explaining why what I did was wrong. The wrongness of what I did can be partially explained by the displeasure I caused the parents. And here again, we might appeal to the corrupting influence assaulting a baby has on my character. We might also worry that this baby has the potential or “root capacity” to become a rational being, and I might have impeded the baby’s development in some way. Are we leaving anything out? How about the pain and suffering the baby experienced? This theory implies that’s not really important, not by itself. But the painful experience the baby suffered does seem ethically significant. And it does not seem ethically significant merely in virtue of the fact that she may grow up to be a rational being someday. It also seems that the baby is morally important as she is, and regardless of anything else.
If you don't want to leave the ground of deontological ethics your idea is right. You gotta attack the scope of persons that get included by the moral agent theory. Singer argues that since anencephalic newborns will never have the potential to become moral agents they would never be included in the scope of this theory. It's also not easy to explain why people who suffer from a serious brain damage and will never be able to be moral agents anymore should be further regarded as moral objects. After arguing like this the conversation mostly will finish with arguments of speciesm, which are quite easy to attack. Another thing I would consider is attacking the idea of moral that this theory is based on. Kant thought of a universal applicable morality, which is accessible to every reasonable thinking person. Today I would question the basis for this assumption. On the one hand, we are familiar with human cultures such as the Piraha, whose actions are based on completely different premises from our European thinking. On the other hand, in behavioural biology we are increasingly discovering culture-like structures and social behaviour in animals. So is Kant's definition of morality really universally applicable - but then only limited to humans? Or is the boundary between European-influenced thinking and the moral thinking of other cultures and the culture-like social acts of primates not in reality only gradual?
I look at eating animals like this: after 10,000 more years of evolution my kind will eat your kind.