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The Moral Status of Animals (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
What place should non-human animals have in peter singer animal liberation essay acceptable moral system? These animals exist on the borderline of our moral concepts; the result is that we sometimes find ourselves according them a strong moral status, while at other times denying them any kind of moral status at all.
Philosophical thinking on the moral standing of animals is diverse and can be generally grouped into three general categories: Indirect theories, peter singer animal liberation essay, direct but unequal theories, and moral equality theories. Indirect theories deny animals moral status or equal consideration with humans due to a lack of consciousness, reason, peter singer animal liberation essay, or autonomy. Arguments in this category have been formulated by philosophers such as Immanuel KantRené DescartesThomas AquinasPeter Carruthers, and various religious theories.
Arguments in this category consider the sentience of the animal as sufficient reason not to cause direct harm to animals, peter singer animal liberation essay. However, where the interests of animals and humans conflict, the special properties of being human such as rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness accord higher consideration to the interests of human beings.
Moral equality theories extend equal consideration and moral status to animals by refuting the supposed moral relevance of the aforementioned special properties of human beings. Arguing by analogy, moral equality theories often extend the concept of rights to animals on the grounds that they have similar physiological and mental capacities as infants or disabled human beings. Arguments in this category have been formulated by philosophers such as Peter Singer and Tom Regan.
On indirect theories, peter singer animal liberation essay, animals do not warrant our moral concern on their own, but may warrant concern only in so far as they are appropriately related to human beings. The implications these sorts of theories have for the proper treatment of animals will be explored after that.
Finally, two common methods of arguing against indirect theories will be discussed. Some philosophers deny that animals warrant direct moral concern due to religious or philosophical theories of the nature of the world and the proper place of its inhabitants. One of the earliest and clearest expressions of peter singer animal liberation essay kind of view comes to us from Aristotle B.
According to Aristotle, there is a natural hierarchy of living beings. The different levels are determined by the abilities present in the beings due to their natures. While plants, animals, and human beings are all capable of taking in nutrition and growing, only animals and human beings are capable of conscious experience. This means that plants, being inferior to animals and human beings, have the function of serving the needs of animals and human beings. Likewise, human beings are superior to animals because human beings have the capacity for using reason to guide their conduct, while animals lack this ability and must instead rely on instinct.
It follows, therefore, that the function of animals is to serve the needs of human beings. Following Aristotle, the Christian philosopher St. Aquinas believes that if a being cannot direct its own actions then others must do so; these sorts of beings are merely instruments. Instruments exist for the sake of people that use them, not for their own sake.
Since animals cannot direct their own actions, they are merely instruments and exist for the sake of the human beings that direct their actions. Aquinas believes that his view follows from the fact that God is the last end of the universe, and that it is only by using the human intellect that one can gain knowledge and understanding of God. Since only human peter singer animal liberation essay are capable of achieving this final end, all other beings exist for the sake of human beings and their achievement of this final end of the universe.
Remnants of these sorts of views remain in justifications for discounting the interests of animals on the basis of the food chain. On this line of thought, if one kind of being regularly eats another kind of being, then the first is said to be higher on the food chain. If peter singer animal liberation essay being is higher than another on the food chain, then it is natural for that being to use the other in the furtherance of its interests, peter singer animal liberation essay.
Since this sort of behavior is natural, it does not require any further moral justification. Kant developed a highly influential moral theory according to which autonomy is a necessary property to be the kind of being whose interests are to count direclty in the moral assessment of actions Kant,peter singer animal liberation essay, According to Kant, morally permissible actions are those actions that could be willed by all rational individuals in the circumstances.
The important part of his conception for the moral status of animals is his reliance on the notion of willing. While both animals and human beings have desires that can compel them to action, only human beings are capable of standing back from their desires and choosing which course of action to take. This ability is manifested by our wills.
Since animals lack this ability, they lack a will, and therefore are not autonomous. According to Kant, the only thing with any intrinsic value is a good will.
Since animals have no wills at all, they cannot have good wills; they therefore do not have any intrinsic value. A theory is a Kantian theory, then, if it provides an account of the properties that human beings have and animals lack that warrants our according human beings a very strong moral status while denying animals any kind of moral status at all.
Another reason to deny that animals deserve direct concern arises from the belief that animals are not conscious, and therefore have no interests or well-being to take into consideration when considering the effects of our actions. Someone that holds this position might agree that if animals were conscious then we would be required to consider their interests to be directly relevant to the assessment of actions that affect them.
However, since they lack a welfare, there is nothing to take directly into account when acting. One of the clearest and most forceful denials of animal consciousness is developed by Rene Descarteswho argues that animals are automata that might act as if they are conscious, but really are not so Regan and Singer, Writing during the time when a mechanistic view of the natural world was replacing the Aristotelian conception, Descartes believed that all of animal behavior could be explained in purely mechanistic terms, and that no reference to conscious episodes was required for such an explanation.
Since it is possible to explain animal behavior without reference to inner episodes peter singer animal liberation essay awareness, doing so is simpler than relying on the assumption that animals are conscious, and is therefore the preferred explanation. Descartes anticipates the response that his reasoning, if applicable to animal behavior, should apply equally well to human behavior.
The mechanistic explanation of behavior does not apply to human beings, according to Descartes, for two reasons. First, human beings are capable of complex and novel behavior. This behavior is not the result of simple responses peter singer animal liberation essay stimuli, but is instead the result of our reasoning about the world as we perceive it.
Second, human beings are peter singer animal liberation essay of the kind of speech that expresses thoughts. Only human beings can engage in the kind of speech that is spontaneous and expresses thoughts.
According to Descartes, there are two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive kinds of entities or properties: material or physical entities on the one hand, and mental entities on the other. Although all people are closely associated with physical bodies, they are not identical with their bodies. Rather, they are identical with their souls, or the immaterial, mental substance that constitutes their consciousness.
Descartes believed that both the complexity of human behavior and human speech requires the positing of such an immaterial substance in order to be explained. More recently, arguments against animal consciousness have been resurfacing. One method of arguing against the claim that animals are conscious is to point to the flaws of arguments purporting to claim that animals are conscious. For example, Peter Harrison has recently argued that the Argument from Analogy, one of the most common arguments for the claim that animals are conscious, is hopelessly flawed Harrison, The Argument from Analogy relies on the similarities between animals and human beings in order to support the claim that animals are conscious.
The similarities usually cited by proponents of this argument are similarities in behavior, similarities in physical structures, and similarities in relative positions on the evolutionary scale. Since they are similar to each other in these ways, we have good reason to believe that animals are conscious, just as are human beings.
Harrison attacks these points one by one. He points out that so-called pain-behavior is neither necessary nor sufficient for the experience of pain. It is not necessary because the best policy in some instances might be to not show that you are in pain. It is not sufficient since amoebas engage in pain behavior, but we do not believe that they can feel pain.
Likewise, we could easily program robots to engage in pain-behavior, but we would not conclude that they feel pain. The similarity of animal and human physical structures is inconclusive because we have no idea how, or even if, the physical structure of human beings gives rise to experiences in the first place.
Evolutionary considerations are not conclusive either, because it is only pain behavior, and not the experience of pain itself, that would be advantageous in the struggle for survival. Harrison concludes that since the strongest argument for the claim that animals are conscious fails, we should not believe that they are conscious, peter singer animal liberation essay.
Peter Carruthers has suggested that there is another reason to doubt that animals are conscious Carruthers, Carruthers begins by noting that not all human experiences are conscious experiences.
Carruthers then notes that the difference between conscious and non-conscious experiences is that conscious experiences are available to higher-order thoughts while non-conscious experiences are not. A higher-order thought is a thought that can take as its object another thought. He thus concludes that in order to have conscious experiences one must be able to have higher-order thoughts. However, we have no reason to believe that animals have higher-order thoughts, and thus no reason to believe that they are conscious.
Contractualist Theories of morality construe morality to be the set of rules that rational individuals would choose under certain specified conditions to govern their behavior in society. These theories have had a long and varied history; however, peter singer animal liberation essay relationship between contractualism and animals was not really explored until after John Rawls published his A Theory of Justice.
In that work, Rawls argues for a conception of justice as fairness. Arguing against Utilitarian theories of justice, Rawls believes that the best conception of a just society is one in which the peter singer animal liberation essay governing that society are rules that would be chosen by individuals from behind a veil of ignorance.
The veil of ignorance is a hypothetical situation in which individuals do not know any particular details about themselves, such as their sex, age, race, intelligence, abilities, etc. However, these individuals do know general facts about human society, such as facts about psychology, economics, human motivation, etc.
Since they do not know who exactly they are, they will not choose rules that benefit any one individual, or segment of society, over another since they may find themselves to be in the harmed group.
Instead, they will choose rules that protect, first and foremost, rational, autonomous individuals. Although Rawls argues for this conception as a conception of justice, others have tried to extend it to cover all of morality. Since the contractors are self-interested, but do not know who they are, they will accept rules that protect rational individuals. However, the contractors know enough about themselves to know that they are not animals, peter singer animal liberation essay.
They will not adopt rules that give special protection to animals, therefore, since this would not further their self-interest. The result is that rational human beings will be directly protected, peter singer animal liberation essay, while animals will not.
If indirect theories are correct, then we are not required to take the interests of animals to be directly relevant to the assessment of our actions when we are deciding how to act. This does not mean, however, that we are not required to consider how our actions will affect animals at all. Just because something is not directly morally considerable does not imply that we can do whatever we want to it. For example, there are two straightforward ways in which restrictions regarding the proper treatment of animals can come into existence.
Consider the duties we have towards private property. I cannot destroy your car if I desire to do so because it is your property, peter singer animal liberation essay, and by harming it I will thereby harm you.
Also, I cannot go to the town square and destroy an old tree for fun since this may upset many people that care for the tree. Likewise, duties with regard to animals can exist for these reasons. I cannot harm your pets because they belong to you, and by harming them I will thereby harm you. I also cannot harm animals in public simply for fun since doing so will upset many people, peter singer animal liberation essay, and I have a duty to not cause people undue distress.
Peter Singer: Animal Equality
, time: 3:03Animal rights movement - Wikipedia
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube Nov 06, · In a recent essay in the New York Times Magazine, Singer urged America's elite to forgo their usual $a-head restaurant dinners and send the money saved to famine relief agencies Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals is a book by Australian philosopher Peter blogger.com is widely considered within the animal liberation movement to be the founding philosophical statement of its ideas. Singer himself rejected the use of the theoretical framework of rights when it comes to human and nonhuman animals.. Following Jeremy Bentham, Singer argued that
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