Animal Suffering, Human Rights, and the Virtue of Justice 9783031270475, 9783031270482

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Animal Suffering, Human Rights, and the Virtue of Justice

Per Bauhn

Animal Suffering, Human Rights, and the Virtue of Justice

Per Bauhn

Animal Suffering, Human Rights, and the Virtue of Justice

Per Bauhn Linnaeus University Kalmar, Sweden

ISBN 978-3-031-27047-5    ISBN 978-3-031-27048-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27048-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To Atlas the Cat

Atlas the Cat (photo by author)

Preface

I grew up on a small farm in the south of Sweden. My father raised pigs, and from age ten I used to help him during school holidays. At most, there were at one and the same time perhaps up to twenty sows with their piglets and up to thirty weaners to be sold off before they reached maturity. The pens the pigs were living in provided them with generous space to turn around and lie down, and every morning and every evening, after the manure had been cleaned out, the pigs were given fresh hay or straw for bedding. In summertime, the pigs were in a fenced outdoor area behind the barn where they enjoyed themselves digging up the ground and now and then also digging tunnels under the wooden fence in pursuit of freedom and adventure. A neighbour could call and tell us that our pigs were now at the other end of the village, exploring someone’s garden or potato field. Then my father or my mother would go there with a bucket full of grain, trying to attract the attention of the dominant sow of the herd; once that sow had decided to follow the grain bucket back home, the rest would follow her in a tidy parade through the village. Once we had the pigs act as landscapers. We wanted to have a new lawn in front of our house, but first we needed to get rid of the old one which was full of weeds. So we fenced the lawn and let the pigs have it to themselves one summer. They enjoyed working it over, tilling the soil with their snouts and fertilizing it with their manure as they went along. After the pigs had done their job, we could easily level the ground, sow grass mixed with white clover, and so have a beautiful new lawn.

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Pigs are highly social animals, and they enjoy communicating with each other and with humans—that is, if you approach them in a calm and slow manner, not stressing them, as pigs can also be jumpy and nervous. They are creatures of habit, expecting to be fed at about the same hour every day. If you have befriended a pig by scratching its back, it will expect you to repeat that treatment whenever you show up. Once I took care of a tiny piglet who had lost out to its siblings in the teat order competition. Piglets are competitive and if there are not enough teats for all of them, some will be left without milk from their mother or get much less than the others, often resulting in lasting weakness or death. For some reason, I wanted to save this one, a tiny female piglet. Much to my mother’s consternation (and provoking the jealousy of our two cats, who normally did not have to compete for attention), I brought it to the kitchen in a cardboard box. Next I made a simple feeding bottle, cutting a finger off a rubber glove, making a hole in the top of the finger, and attaching it to a bottle of warm gruel. In this way, I could feed the piglet until it grew stronger and could return to the pigsty. However, in the process this little piglet bonded with me. It followed me wherever I went, like a dog, eager for my attention, and whenever we had been separated for a while, it greeted me by getting up on its hind legs and placing its front trotters on my legs. This welcoming ritual became a literal burden to me, as the piglet grew up to become a young pig, weighing more than I did myself. Hence, I had to prepare myself to be knocked to the ground whenever we met outside. I persuaded my father to keep the pig, although he suspected that her behaviour was so much altered by hanging out with me that she was now more of a companion animal than a farm animal. Unfortunately, he was right. My pig turned out to be an affectionate friend but a bad mother. Whenever I or anyone else approached her to scratch her back, she immediately threw herself to the floor to enable the human visitor to continue to cuddle her; in the process, she crushed those of her piglets who did not manage to get out of the way in time. In the end, my father sent her to slaughter. I did not oppose his decision, as I was well aware of the realities of being a pig farmer. If you grow up on a farm, you learn how to keep two distinct thought processes alive at the same time. You should be kind to your animals, but you should also be aware that you have them for a purpose—to produce meat, milk, fur, leather, or some other animal products for a market. It is a livelihood, not (at least not only) an exercise in love across species borders. At one point, the pigs, or cows, or sheep that you farm will be sent

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to slaughter and they will be replaced by other animals. At the same time, you should be aware that this is not just any kind of livelihood, but one that involves looking after living creatures dependent on your care. To be sure, they are replaceable and they will be replaced by other animals one day, but until then they deserve your care and attention. Contemporary animal rights activists, many of whom have spent their whole lives in cities, might find this way of seeing things difficult to understand. Perhaps they assume that if you keep animals for the sake of having them slaughtered one day, earning your livelihood from their deaths, you must be a cold-hearted exploiter, taking only an instrumental view of your animals’ well-being. Certainly, there are farmers who are like this, just as there are greedy businessmen who are willing to sacrifice the well-being of their employees and customers for the sake of profit. But we should be careful not to present extreme and immoral examples of an activity as the standard or necessary version of it. Half a century after my first experience of looking after farm animals, I am now approaching the topic of animal ethics as an academic philosopher, having spent most of the last forty years studying and working on theories of moral rights. My purpose in writing this book is to try to provide a perspective on animals and morality that differs from what I perceive to be the dominant trend within contemporary animal ethics, namely that non-human animals are holders of moral rights, comparable to human rights. I share the animal rights activists’ viewpoint that many non-human animals are the victims of human cruelty—suffering from the human greed involved in factory farming and the human arrogance involved in testing cosmetic products on animals caged in laboratories. But I do not believe that non-human animals have moral rights and hence I do not believe that human agents are violating any such rights just because they keep farm animals or just because they eat animal meat. I believe that only human agents have moral rights and that these rights include the right to use— but not to abuse—non-human animals. Hence, I am a speciesist, which I believe places me beyond the pale in the eyes of many animal liberationists. Be that as it may. In this book, I will argue that we cannot avoid anthropocentrism in our moral thinking, and that there is nothing necessarily bad about being a speciesist. It is not like being a racist or a sexist, regardless of what some of my fellow philosophers think. Instead of assigning rights to animals, I rely on the human virtue of justice to guide decent human behaviour towards

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animals. Human agents who have inculcated in themselves the virtue of justice will be aware of the difference between use and abuse of animals and never inflict harm on innocent creatures, be they humans or non-­ human animals. For a long time I thought I would never write anything on animal ethics. It was my wife, Fatma Fulya Tepe, who changed my mind. After noting how much time I spent with the cats in the streets and parks of Istanbul where she lives, she suggested to me that I might have something worth saying on the topic of human-animal interaction. She continued to encourage me throughout the time I was working on this book, convincing me that my ideas deserved to be publicized. I am immensely grateful to her for all the love and support she has given me and continues to give me. Many thanks also to Alan Crozier, who has checked and corrected my use of the English language in this book as well as in all of my previous international book publications. The present book is dedicated to Atlas the Cat. He was not my cat but belonged to my neighbours in the house where I live in Lund, Sweden. Atlas lived to the age of almost twenty. He often walked up the stairs to visit me in my flat, always appearing gentle, dignified, and wise. (Yes, I am aware that I am projecting human character traits on Atlas, but this is what we do when we love animals.) I miss him a lot.

Contents

1 Introduction 1 References 4 2 The  Suffering Inflicted on Non-Human Animals by Human Agents 5 References 8 3 Speciesism 9 References19 4 Sentientist Equality21 4.1 Singer and Animal Rights25 4.2 Regan and Animal Rights27 References34 5 Kant  on Duties to Animals35 References40 6 Gewirthian  Human Rights and Non-Human Animals41 References47 7 Why  Non-Human Animals Do Not Have Moral Rights49 References55

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8 In  Defence of a Speciesist View of the Moral Community57 8.1 The Amoral Order of Nature60 8.2 The Case for Eating Meat64 References69 9 Duties  Regarding Animals and the Virtue of Justice73 References80 Index81

About the Author

Per  Bauhn is Emeritus Professor of Practical Philosophy, School of Cultural Sciences, Linnaeus University, Sweden. Among Per Bauhn’s previous publications are The Value of Courage (2003) and Normative Identity (2017). He is also the editor of Gewirthian Perspectives on Human Rights (2016).

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract  Ethical aspects of animal welfare are now no longer the concern solely of philosophers, but also to an increasing extent the rallying point of legal and political activists. At the centre of the debate are questions concerning non-human animals as holders of moral rights, and to what extent we—human agents—violate these rights when we farm and kill animals for the sake of their meat, or when we experiment on animals. The argument outlined in this book will rule out any wanton infliction of cruelty on non-­ human animals; however, it will not prohibit the eating of meat or other uses of animals that are required for human well-being. Keywords  Animal ethics • Moral rights • Human agency Over the last fifty years, animal ethics has turned into an important subsection of the wider field of applied ethics. In addition to attracting the attention of academic philosophers, be they utilitarian or rights theorists, the issue of animal welfare has become a major concern for many people outside the narrower circle of academic philosophers. Indeed, it has been pointed out that the writings of philosophers on animal welfare “are unique in modern academic philosophy in that they have sparked and continue to influence a popular movement” (Singer 2005, 37). Hence, ethical aspects of animal welfare are now no longer the concern solely of philosophers, but to an increasing extent also the rallying point of legal and © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Bauhn, Animal Suffering, Human Rights, and the Virtue of Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27048-2_1

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political activists who seek legal protection for the interests of farm animals and wildlife, as well as national and global non-governmental organizations, such as PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). Animal welfare has also to an increasing extent become a moral concern to individual citizens all over the world, whether or not they are organized in groups defending animal rights; it has indeed become “a mainstream phenomenon” (Rollin 2011). At the centre of the debate are questions concerning non-human animals as holders of moral rights, and to what extent we—human agents—violate these rights when we farm and kill animals for the sake of their meat, or when we experiment on animals in order to provide ourselves with safe medical drugs and cosmetic products. Many philosophers have followed the Australian philosopher Peter Singer in arguing that the fact that non-human animals are similar to us in their capacity to experience pain justifies our treating their interest in not having pain inflicted on them as equally morally significant as our similar interest in not being subjected to pain. To refuse to recognize that the same amount of pain is equally bad whether suffered by a human or by a non-human animal is to be guilty of speciesism—that is, an irrational and immoral prejudice on a par with racism and sexism. Like racism and sexism, anti-speciesists argue, speciesism is a prejudice based on biological differences. However, “just as the color of one’s skin and the gender of one’s sex should not determine one’s membership in the moral community, so the classification of one’s species should be similarly impotent” (Regan 2001, 71). The objection that humans differ from non-human animals by possessing higher cognitive faculties or being able to reason is usually dismissed by animal rights advocates by pointing to the fact that at least certain non-human animals are capable of more advanced cognitive skills and have a more developed consciousness than, for instance, a human infant or humans suffering from severe mental disabilities. In this book I intend to question the assumption that speciesism is a prejudice. While it is irrational and immoral not to extend equal human rights to women and to black people, it is neither irrational nor immoral not to extend such rights to wolves, bears, squirrels, or any other non-­ human animal. Moreover, our moral thinking is necessarily anthropocentric, relying on concepts and categories available only to human beings. This is only what we should expect it to be and nothing to apologize for. Certainly, humans can assign moral rights to non-human animals, but this would only be a typically human projection of human claims, evaluations,

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and perspectives onto non-human animals. Such a projection of human norms and values onto non-human animals could itself be seen as a special case of speciesism, based on the benevolent prejudice that these animals are similar to humans in morally relevant respects. It is also a patronizing form of speciesism, with humans taking upon themselves to speak on behalf of non-human animals, assigning rights to them that they will never themselves ask for. (One could compare this kind of “benevolent speciesism” with the condescending kind of ethnocentrism that forms the background of Gayatri Spivak’s criticism of how Western colonizers and later Western intellectuals have taken upon themselves to speak for colonized and oppressed peoples of the Third World but without allowing these peoples a voice of their own (Spivak 1994)). The animals themselves do not recognize either moral rights or moral duties. They do not see themselves as members of a moral community that they share with us. Only humans can entertain such a line of thinking. To recognize that moral reasoning must be anthropocentric does not mean that it has no space for concerns about animal welfare. In this book, after having described and rejected some frequently discussed theories of animal rights, I intend to outline a rationalist theory of human rights that will contain an indirect prohibition on wanton cruelty against non-human animals, but without assigning any rights to the animals themselves. The prohibition is hence justified not directly (by animal rights), but indirectly as a means to fulfilling the requirements of human rights. The prohibition on wanton cruelty is necessitated by the virtue of justice, the development of which is in turn necessitated by rationally justified human rights to freedom and well-being. Agents who are to act in accordance with these human rights should inculcate in themselves an aversion to inflicting cruelty on innocent beings, be they humans or non-human animals; the inculcation of this aversion is what the virtue of justice requires of them. This argument is reminiscent of Immanuel Kant’s idea that we have only indirect duties towards animals, but unlike that idea my argument does not depend on any causal hypothesis that humans who are cruel to animals are likely to be cruel also to their fellow humans. Instead my argument relies on a conceptually necessary connection between the contents of the virtue of justice and a general prohibition on cruel treatment of innocent beings (regardless of whether the intended victims are humans or non-human animals). Consequently, the argument outlined in this book will rule out any wanton infliction of cruelty on non-human animals; however, it will not

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prohibit the eating of meat or other uses of animals that are required for human well-being. Except for the prohibition on wanton cruelty, my theory allows us to behave in accordance with the amoral order of nature as we interact with members of other species, including living the omnivore life that nature has equipped us for. From the point of view of animal well-­ being, it is no worse for a sheep to be killed and eaten by a human agent than it is for it to be killed and eaten by a wolf. And given that it is animal well-being that is at the centre of the discussion here, there is no ground for morally condemning human agents just because they behave in accordance with their omnivore nature, as long as they do not subject non-­ human animals to forms of suffering that are neither part of the amoral order of nature, nor necessitated by the human right to well-being.

References Regan, T. 2001. Animals, Treatment of. In Encyclopedia of Ethics, ed. L.C. Becker and C.B. Becker, vol. I, 2nd ed., 70–74. New York and London: Routledge. Rollin, B.E. 2011. Animal Rights as a Mainstream Phenomenon. Animals 1 (1): 102–115. Singer, Peter. 2005. Animals. In The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. T. Honderich, 2nd ed., 37. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Spivak, G.C. 1994. Can the Subaltern Speak? In Colonial Discourse and Post-­ Colonial Theory, ed. P. Williams and L. Chrisman, 66–111. New York: Columbia University Press.

CHAPTER 2

The Suffering Inflicted on Non-Human Animals by Human Agents

Abstract  Huge numbers of non-human animals suffer daily at the hands of humans who farm them, hunt them, experiment on them, or force them to participate in deadly games arranged just for the amusement of humans, such as bullfights, dogfights, and cockfights. While we can be expected to be appalled and disgusted by accounts of the suffering inflicted on animals for the sake of providing us with affordable meatballs, hamburgers, and veal chops as well as with perfumes and makeups that are safe for humans to use, we might be less certain about what conclusions should follow from these accounts. Should we give up eating animals and animal products? Or should we just change the conditions of farming to be more considerate of animal well-being? Keywords  Animal suffering • Factory farming • Meat-eating Huge numbers of non-human animals suffer daily at the hands of humans who farm them, hunt them, experiment on them, or force them to participate in deadly games arranged just for the amusement of humans, such as bullfights, dogfights, and cockfights. Animals in zoos and circuses are forced to entertain humans, while being kept in cages with limited room for movement and under conditions very different from their natural ones, often resulting in that special kind of psychosis called zoochosis, expressing

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itself in “stereotypic obsessions (head rolling, pacing, etc.), anomalous behaviors such as roaming, squeaking, anxiety, spewing, and coprophagia (feeding on excrement) and urophagy” (Yasmeen et  al. 2022). Animals crowded together under the conditions of factory farming are often exposed to various forms of mutilation at the hands of their owners. With little space for themselves animals tend to be aggressive towards each other and towards their human keepers. Hence, chickens are debeaked (by cutting or burning), cows are dehorned, and pigs are subjected to tooth clipping and tail docking—all of these procedures often performed without anaesthesia. Moreover, most animals forced to spend their short lives on factory farms “are deprived of quality air and light. Their movements are limited, causing them physical atrophy. They are permanently surrounded by their own feces and waste, and even sometimes by their fellows’ corpses” (Nuñez del Prado Alanes 2022). In addition to this, animals suffer at the hands of scientists who test chemicals on them, not only for the sake of developing much needed medicines but also to develop products of much less obvious value. In spite of decades of protests, “[a]nimals are still suffering and dying to test shampoo, mascara and other cosmetic products. Terrified rabbits, guinea pigs, mice and rats have substances forced down their throats, dripped into their eyes or smeared onto their skin before they are killed” (HSUS 2022). Add to this the horrors of the slaughterhouse—here is an account of what animals have to endure during their last moments of life: Killed proficiently, cattle die when a slaughterer holds a captive-bolt pistol to their forehead and shoots a steel rod into their brain—once. But the pistol often lacks adequate air pressure, and slaughterers frequently aim poorly. Numerous cattle feel repeated slams of the rod. Many are conscious when shackled by one rear leg and hoisted. To end a hoisted cow’s frantic kicking, slaughterhouse employees sometimes cut off the lower part of the cow’s front legs. Cattle commonly are knifed in a way that fails to slit their throat. In any case, the line moves too quickly for blood loss to render cattle unconscious. Within seconds—conscious or not—they’re being skinned. Even when the lower third of each leg is cut off, many cattle are conscious. ... Even after three or more [electric] shocks, many pigs are conscious. Some pigs are beaten on the head with a metal pipe until they’re dazed or dead. Paralyzed or flailing, others remain conscious while they’re shackled and hoisted by one rear leg; they feel the slaughterer slash their jugular vein or cut them elsewhere. Rushed along, many pigs are conscious when they enter the scalding tank. (Dunayer 2004, 47–48)

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It has been noted as an oddity that people who would react strongly to anyone maltreating an animal in front of them still seem to take a rather relaxed view of what is going on in abattoirs: “we prosecute anyone who is cruel to a cow—by beating it or giving it electric shocks, say—yet the connection between that fact and the dinner table is rarely made” (Grayling 2005, 32). Now, while we can be expected to be appalled and disgusted by accounts of the suffering inflicted on animals for the sake of providing us with affordable meatballs, hamburgers, and veal chops as well as with perfumes and makeups that are safe for humans to use, we might be less certain about what conclusions should follow from these accounts. Should we give up eating animals and animal products? Or should we just change the conditions of farming to be more considerate of animal well-being? Is hunting always morally wrong? Is it wrong for humans to use non-human animals as workers without their consent? Most people would probably agree that it is at least prima facie morally wrong to wantonly inflict pain on humans as well as on non-human animals. However, while many of these same people would find it morally outrageous to suggest that humans could be killed for the sake of providing other humans with meat to eat, they would not find hunting wild animals or having animals killed in abattoirs for the sake of their meat similarly controversial. In fact, some might even argue that since the existence of many animals—domesticated farm animals in particular—depends on humans having the habit of eating animal meat, we actually benefit animals by having and cultivating this habit. Thus Nick Zangwill argues that “[e]ating nonhuman animal meat is not merely permissible but also good. It is what we ought to do, and it is our moral duty” (Zangwill 2021, 295). Likewise, while human slavery and forced labour would be almost universally condemned, forced animal labour in the service of human interests has not met with a similar general moral disapproval. Hence, it has been considered non-controversial to expose non-human animals to at least some non-consensual discomfort, for instance, by using them as working animals, pulling carts, ploughing, or moving logs. Moreover, while many people are concerned about experimentation on non-human animals, many of them might well be willing to accept such experimentation if it is believed to be necessary for the elimination of illnesses like cancer that threaten basic human well-being.

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References Dunayer, J. 2004. Speciesism. Derwood, MD: Ryce Publishing. Grayling, A.C. 2005. Life, Sex, and Ideas. New York: Oxford University Press. HSUS [The Humane Society of the United States]. 2022. Ending Cosmetics Animal Testing. https://www.humanesociety.org/all-­our-­fights/ending-­ cosmetics-­animal-­testing/ Accessed 14 December, 2022. Nuñez del Prado Alanes, M. 2022. What Is Factory Farming and Why Is It Bad? Sentient Media October 28, 2022. https://sentientmedia.org/factory-­farms/. Accessed 14 December, 2022. Yasmeen, R., I. Aslam, M. Ahmand, and H. Ali Shah. 2022. Zoochosis: A Short Review on Stereotypical Behavior of Captive Animals. Journal of Wildlife and Biodiversity 7 (X): X. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7362442. Zangwill, N. 2021. Our Moral Duty to Eat Meat. Journal of the American Philosophical Association 7 (3): 295–311.

CHAPTER 3

Speciesism

Abstract  Speciesism, like racism and sexism, is presumed to involve an unjustified deviation from the principle of equal treatment. If an animal is as vulnerable as a human to the infliction of pain and we would consider it morally impermissible to inflict pain on the human but have no problem with inflicting pain on the animal just because it is an animal and not a human, then we are guilty of speciesism. However, one might well raise the question whether sentience is all that matters morally. Wouldn’t the very capacity for moral thinking count for something—a capacity that is possessed only by humans? Moreover, a speciesist need not be indifferent to the suffering inflicted on non-human animals by humans. Keywords  Speciesism • Peter Singer • Sentience • Animal rights • Equality According to one famous line of argument, the willingness to accept that animals are subjected to kinds and degrees of suffering that would be morally unthinkable in the case of humans expresses speciesist beliefs and values. Speciesism, like racism and sexism, is presumed to involve an unjustified deviation from the principle of equal treatment. If an animal is as vulnerable as a human to the infliction of pain and we would consider it morally impermissible to inflict pain on the human but have no problem

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with inflicting pain on the animal just because it is an animal and not a human, then we are guilty of speciesism. And, animal rights activists would continue, speciesism is just as bad, morally speaking, as racism and sexism. In all three cases, equal respect and equal rights are being denied because of prejudices based on biological categorization. According to Peter Singer (who is probably the most well-known philosophical defender of animal liberation), “[i]f a being suffers there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration. No matter what the nature of the being, the principle of equality requires that its suffering be counted equally with the like suffering—insofar as rough comparisons can be made—of any other being” (Singer 1975, 9). According to Singer, even if we allow for the probability that humans, due to their advanced mental capacities, have interests that are more complex than certain non-human animals and therefore can claim to be more worthy of protection than these animals, this will not be true in all cases in which there is a conflict between human and animal interests: To avoid speciesism we must allow that beings who are similar in all relevant respects have a similar right to life—and mere membership in our own biological species cannot be a morally relevant criterion for this right. Within these limits we could still hold, for instance, that it is worse to kill a normal adult human, with a capacity for self-awareness and the ability to plan for the future and have meaningful relations with others, than it is to kill a mouse ... Whatever criteria we choose, however, we will have to admit that they do not follow precisely the boundary of our own species. We may legitimately hold that there are some features of certain beings that make their lives more valuable than those of other beings; but there will surely be some nonhuman animals whose lives, by any standards, are more valuable than the lives of some humans. A chimpanzee, dog, or pig, for instance, will have a higher degree of self-awareness and a greater capacity for meaningful relations with others than a severely retarded infant or someone in a state of advanced senility. So if we base the right to life on these characteristics we must grant these animals a right to life as good as, or better than, such retarded or senile humans. (Singer 1975, 21–22)

Singer’s view that it would not be speciesist to judge it worse to kill a “normal adult human” than a mouse has been criticized and rejected by Joan Dunayer, who argues that there are no differences between human and non-human animals that can justify giving priority to human interests: “Why is it wrong to torture or murder humans, force them to labor, harm

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them in experiments, or imprison them for life when they’ve committed no crime? ... Because most humans reason abstractly, possess verbal language, use technology, and have social ties? No. ... Treating humans in particular ways is wrong because humans are sentient. They experience. Harming them causes them to suffer. Killing them deprives them of any further experience. The same is true of all other animals” (Dunayer 2004, 4). Dunayer hence requires an equality of treatment that is more far-­ reaching than the one advocated by Singer: “Am I saying that a spider has as much right to life as an egret or human? Yes. I see no logically consistent reason to say otherwise” (Dunayer 2004, 134). Here one might well raise the question whether sentience is all that matters morally. Wouldn’t the very capacity for moral thinking count for something—a capacity that is possessed only by humans? From the point of view of morality itself, having or lacking a capacity to reason morally should certainly matter. Without humans having this capacity, questions concerning animal rights or equality between humans and non-human animals would never have been up for discussion in the first place, as non-­ human animals do not bother about these issues in one way or another. Here someone might want to contest my claim that only humans are capable of moral thinking by pointing to empirical observations that seem to tell a different story. It is known that animals belonging to species as different as elephants, chimpanzees, and coyotes are capable of emotions such as grief, care, and loss—that is, emotions which have a lot in common with standard “moral emotions” like sympathy and empathy. Accordingly, the philosopher Mark Rowlands has argued that since “certain animals arguably show themselves to be concerned with the welfare or fortunes of others” and since “concern is a category of moral attitude”, then these animals “are motivated to act by moral considerations—moral reasons, broadly construed” (Rowlands 2012, 8). However, the fact that animals might manifest emotions that also figure in moral considerations does not mean that the animals themselves engage in considerations or reasoning of a moral kind. The same holds, of course, for human beings. That love and hate figure in moral considerations (“love of freedom”, “hate of tyranny”) does not mean that every instance of love and hate is evidence of moral reasoning. Parents may love their children just because they are their children and they may hate their neighbour’s children just because they perform better in school than their own children. Neither of these emotions would qualify as evidence of any moral reasoning on the part of the parents.

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Now Rowlands makes it easy for himself by stipulating very generous conditions for what should count as moral behaviour. According to him, “[f]or an individual to act morally … it is not necessary that she have the ability to reflect on her motives or actions; nor does it require that she be able to explicitly formulate or understand the principles on which she acts, nor that she be able to adopt an impartial perspective of the sort required for a sense of justice” (Rowlands 2012, 22). Previously his claim was that animals could be “motivated to act by moral considerations”. Now he opens up for the possibility that people (and animals, presumably) could be capable of acting morally without even being capable of reflecting on their motives. That is, they still need to be motivated by “moral considerations” but they need not understand that they are so motivated. And as “moral consideration” in Rowlands’s terminology only denotes the presence of emotions that typically also figure in moral agency, the argument here seems to be reducible to a claim that if a person’s or an animal’s behaviour is motivated by emotions that can be components of moral agency, like sympathy, loyalty, grief, resentment, and so on, then that behaviour is evidence of moral agency. However, this claim seems to confuse possibility with actuality. Certainly, an emotion like sympathy can motivate us to do the right thing—but not always and not necessarily. Our sympathy can be misplaced and by helping an evil person we may facilitate his murder of an innocent bystander. Of course one can agree with Rowlands that an agent might act morally without understanding why she acts as she does. However, for an agent to qualify as a moral agent, she should at least have an idea, however simple and undeveloped, of the difference between actions that are morally right and actions that are morally wrong. She does not need to have a firm grasp of moral philosophy, nor does she have to be able to express her moral beliefs in a coherent and consistent theory. But she cannot do without moral concepts altogether. It is not sufficient that she is motivated by emotions that could support moral action; she must also have an idea of what it means to do something because it is the morally right thing to do. Otherwise it would be hard to understand what it is that makes an agent a moral agent. Hence, to include non-human animals in our moral community, it is not enough to show that they have emotions similar to ours. One would also need to show that they are capable of using moral concepts. Now there are other problems, of a more general philosophical kind, relating to any attempt to found moral equality on the capacity for

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sentience. One such general problem has to do with the classical “is”— “ought” question. How are we supposed to move from the descriptive fact that certain creatures are sentient to the normative conclusion that they are all moral equals? Here defenders of animal rights may choose to formulate their position in hypothetical terms. That is, they refrain from claiming that moral principles are derived from empirical facts about sentience and instead they claim only that if humans base certain moral rights on the fact that they are sentient and vulnerable to the infliction of pain, then they should extend this argument, for the sake of consistency, to include non-human animals that are similarly vulnerable. This however does not tell us why we should care (only) about sentience in the first place. The idea that the interests of human and non-human animals should be treated as equally deserving of (human) protection could also be questioned from a prudential point of view. Why would it be rational for a human being to accept a system of morality according to which her interests and the interests of her species can always be “outvoted” by a majority of insects, fish, birds, and other mammals? And why would it be rational for her to assign to herself the position of the one who counts the “votes” (as non-human animals would not even be aware of there being a moral procedure of weighing interests against each other)? Isn’t it in itself anthropocentric for humans to bring their moral concepts to bear on the lives of non-human animals, assigning rights to spiders and egrets? And what are the practical consequences of a morality based on equality between humans and non-human animals? Are we supposed to leave a child crying in a ditch in order to help a spider cross the road without being run over by cars? Would the lives of two spiders be more important to protect than the life of one child, if we cannot protect all of them? One may well ask oneself whether this kind of reasoning is not just a fallacy typical of philosophers looking for norms that are free of all kinds of bias or partiality and who therefore conclude that valid norms can admit of no exceptions, no special cases, no preferential treatment. Such philosophers may well think that one sentient life is as important as any other sentient life and that this is all there is to it. But the world consists not only of sentient lives but also of relationships, partnerships, and other various contingent but morally significant associations between individuals. It is not absurd to hold that a morality worth its name should accommodate such associations, at least to the extent that it recognizes that we owe more to some sentient lives than we do to others. Imagine a person who lets her own child starve for the sake of feeding twenty other children that

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have been abandoned by their parents, and who justifies this by saying that all lives matter equally and that she should provide help in a way that saves the most lives. This person might be a good utilitarian, but she is a bad parent. All children have a right to be cared for, but her child has a right specifically vis-à-vis her that she should care for him. Sometimes rights and duties come with names written on them, and a morality that cannot accommodate this fact is a poor morality indeed. Now, it turns out that even a species egalitarian such as Joan Dunayer cannot herself escape being anthropocentric. She dedicates her book to “all nonhuman animals”, and she pays a lot of attention to using a morally correct terminology. For instance, she talks of “fishes” rather than of “fish” to “remind readers that any group of nonhumans consists of multiple individuals”, and she calls aquariums “aquaprisons”, once again to remind her readers that “[n]onhumans are political prisoners”, victims of the politics of speciesism (Dunayer 2004, xii–xiii). But who are her intended readers? Certainly not the non-human animals to whom her book is dedicated, who would not care what words humans would use to describe them and their conditions of life anyway. Dunayer’s book expresses an implicit human superiority in relation to non-human animals, voicing a paternalist belief in the rights and duties of human beings to bring justice to the world of non-human animals without giving a voice to these non-human animals themselves. As is the case with Singer, Dunayer is just another human voicing specifically human moral concerns about how non-human animals are treated. Of course, this does not by itself invalidate their views in any way, but it points to the fact that even a human rejection of speciesism would be anthropocentric at least in the sense that it would express a typically human perspective—indeed, a perspective that only humans could have. Human animal liberationists take upon themselves to speak in the name of non-­human animals in an exchange of views with other humans; the non-­ human animals themselves are not a party to this exchange. Clearly, this way of imposing a human perspective on the interests of non-human animals could qualify as anthropocentric—perhaps even as a form of benevolent speciesism. Here it could be objected that speciesism is about unequal treatment of human and non-human animals having the same capacity for experiencing pain, and not about the perspective from which we, as human beings,

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perceive this inequality. However, anti-speciesists like Singer hold that “[s]peciesism ... is a prejudice or attitude of bias toward the interests of one’s own species and against those of members of other species” (Singer 1975, 8). Hence, speciesism denotes not only the actual unequal treatment of non-human animals, but also the prejudiced perspective from which this unequal treatment derives its support. Now, Singer assumes that speciesism refers only to those prejudiced views that result in unequal treatment of human and non-human animals with similar capacities for experiencing pain. But a prejudice is a prejudice regardless of whom it benefits. (Prejudices can lead to altruistic as well as to selfish behaviour.) Hence, the term “speciesism” could just as well apply to a perspective that is prejudiced in the sense that it assumes, for no good reason, a moral equality across species borders. As we noted above, Peter Singer objects to speciesism since he believes it is inconsistent with a principle of equal consideration of equally relevant interests. Tzachi Zamir, however, has argued that speciesism does not stand in the way of such a principle—one can be a speciesist and still support animal liberation, that is, liberation from the cruelties inflicted by, for instance, factory farming and experimental testing. As a speciesist (and unlike Singer), Zamir does not base his argument on a comparison of the mental capacities of humans and certain non-human animals; as an animal liberationist (and like Singer), his moral focus is on freeing animals from unnecessary suffering at the hands of humans: It does cohere with my speciesist bias to promote the welfare of humans before that of animals, even if the humans happen to be profoundly retarded and inferior in mental capacities in relation to the animals. ... The same holds for eating animals: if personal or collective survival requires eating animal flesh, I would give up my moral vegetarianism. The justification I can give to this does not amount to anything more sophisticated than an engrained favoritism. Similar deep-seated intuitions underlie my liberationism: primarily, the immediate, nonderived conviction that needless tremendous suffering and death take place, and that these can and should be eradicated. (Zamir 2007, 14)

A similar defence of speciesism has been given by Tim Scanlon. According to Scanlon, we stand in a special kind of relationship to other fellow human beings that does not fully apply to non-human animals.

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Accordingly, while recognizing that it is at least prima facie wrong for us to inflict pain and distress on non-human animals, Scanlon goes on to argue that “we do not have the reason that we have in the case of rational creatures to accept the general requirement that our conduct be justifiable to them” (Scanlon 2000, 184). Hence, we may interfere with the lives of animals (if we can do so without causing them pain or distress) without having to justify ourselves to them. When it comes to fellow human beings, however, we owe them this justifiability of our conduct. This requirement also includes humans with not fully developed or impaired capacities for rationality: The mere fact that a being is ‘of human born’ provides a strong reason for according it the same status as other humans. This had sometimes been characterized as a prejudice, called ‘speciesism’. But it is not a prejudice to hold that our relation to these beings gives us reason to accept the requirement that our actions should be justifiable to them. Nor is it a prejudice to recognize that this particular reason does not apply to other beings with comparable capacities, whether or not there are other reasons to accept this requirement with regard to them. The beings in question here are ones who are born to us or to others to whom we are bound by the requirements of justifiability. This tie of birth gives us good reason to want to treat them ‘as human’ despite their limited capacities. (Scanlon 2000, 185)

According to Zamir, the main difference between a speciesist and a non-speciesist animal liberationist is that a speciesist will hold that when human and animal interests conflict, the human interest should be given priority, but still within limits: “Human interests are more important than animal interests, in the sense that promoting even trivial human interests ought to take precedence over advancing animal interests. Only survival interests justify actively thwarting an animal’s survival interests” (Zamir 2007, 15). That is, while we are morally entitled to spend our money on expensive art objects rather than donating to animal rights’ organizations, killing an animal can be justified only when it is necessary to save a human life. Hence, this form of speciesism takes as central the distinction between negative and positive duties. We have a duty not to kill animals needlessly, but we have no similar duty to promote their interests. When Zamir refers to human “survival interests” as the only morally justifiable reason for killing a non-human animal, it is not fully clear what kinds of situation he has in mind. On the one hand, he provides an

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example in which we can save a woman from drowning only by throwing a dog overboard and so make space for her in our boat. In this case Zamir suggests that we should throw the dog overboard: “Rescuing the woman by pitching the dog overboard does not appear to me to conflict with or contradict my own liberationist sensitivities. It does cohere with my speciesist bias to promote the welfare of humans before that of animals, even if the humans happen to be profoundly retarded and inferior in mental capacities in relation to the animals” (Zamir 2007, 14). On the other hand, Zamir later seems to reject the idea that we might be morally justified in actively bringing about an animal’s death for the sake of saving a human life; at most, we are permitted to refrain from rescuing an animal for the sake of saving a human: “[T]he greater value of A over B does not justify A in doing anything to B. True, if it is a matter of saving either A or B, then it is justified to save A, which is why, upon entering a burning house and having the option of saving a sick old man or his healthy eight young dogs ..., it is justified to save the man. But here the person doing the saving is not doing anything to B, but to A, and is simply not intervening in B’s situation” (Zamir 2007, 64–65). Here is an inconsistency in Zamir’s reasoning, as the first example— throwing the dog overboard—definitely involves bringing about the dog’s death and not just refraining from rescuing the dog. Zamir’s later more restrictive position allows for killing animals only in standard self-defence situations, in which, for instance, a human being is being attacked by a wolf or a bear. Given this more restrictive understanding of when it is permissible to kill animals, he is also able to reject experimentation on animals, even if the purpose of that experimentation is to come up with a way of effectively curing a fatal disease that threatens human lives: “Short of self-defense—and experimentation on animals is not a form of self-­ defense—the scope of one’s own protections never extends to the permissibility of harming others” (Zamir 2007, 63). However, had he stuck to the example with the dog that is thrown overboard to save a woman from drowning, his conclusion about permissible experimentation on animals would certainly have been different. Then experimentation on an animal could be held to be morally permissible provided that such experimentation is indeed necessary to save a human being’s life. (The scope of the self-defence argument is also unclear. Presumably, it would cover a case in which a human is attacked by a wolf. But would it also cover a case in

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which a wolf attacks a farmer’s sheep? Here the farmer is not defending her life but her property—although this defence of course also involves protecting the lives of her sheep. Would this suffice to justify the farmer’s killing the wolf?) However, apart from cases of killing, Zamir does not view all kinds of human exploitation of animals as morally impermissible: “While many uses of animals are wrong, unlike killing them, the very use of animals for eggs and dairy is not wrong as such. Using animals for these is consistent with their welfare, in the sense that they can lead comfortable and painless lives. Here commodification can actually work for animals rather than against them, since it generates a financial incentive to preserve them” (Zamir 2007, 49). Nor does Zamir object to humans who keep animals as pets: “Well-kept pets are a source of joy to their owners, live a much better life than they would have lived in the wild, and, as far as I can tell, pay a small price for such conditions. A petless world is bad for cats and dogs, an overwhelming number of which would not survive out of human care. It is a bad world for humans, since they lose an important source of happiness, and it is bad for the animal welfare cause, since strong relations with pets prompt many people to think morally about animals” (Zamir 2007, 97). Now, as the above account indicates, a speciesist need not be indifferent to the suffering inflicted on non-human animals by humans. While a speciesist may find it morally unproblematic to eat non-human animal meat, she does not necessarily condone animal factory farming or the everyday cruelties inflicted on farm animals in general. In fact, she can agree with the argument of another speciesist, Douglas MacLean, that “[m]eat eaters should be willing to pay the price of raising animals for food without torturing them” (MacLean 2010, 18). That is, non-human animals should not be made to suffer just for the sake of providing human consumers with cheap meat. To the extent that decent conditions for farm animals make meat more expensive, due to the enforcement of legally mandated requirements of more space and better comfort for the animals, this would be morally justified. Hence, speciesism is not equivalent to being indifferent to wanton cruelty towards animals. The question still remains whether or not a speciesist position can be rationally and morally justified. We will return to this question later in this book, after first having clarified some other positions.

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References Dunayer, J. 2004. Speciesism. Derwood, MD: Ryce Publishing. MacLean, D. 2010. Is ‘Human Being’ a Moral Concept? Philosophy and Public Policy Quarterly 30 (3/4): 16–20. Rowlands, M. 2012. Can Animals Be Moral? New York: Oxford University Press. Scanlon, T.M. 2000. What We Owe to Each Other. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Singer, P. 1975. Animal Liberation. New York: Random House. Zamir, T. 2007. Ethics and the Beast. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

CHAPTER 4

Sentientist Equality

Abstract  Sentientist equality is the opposite of speciesism, advocating that all sentient beings—including humans as well as non-human animals—possess equal moral worth, and that this should have a bearing on how we treat animals. The ideal of sentient equality may be qualified by the proviso that humans have duties to non-human animals while non-­ human animals have only rights and no duties. Accordingly, while wolves have no duty to respect the rights of sheep, humans have a duty to respect the rights of wolves and sheep alike. This argument invites the objection that it makes it difficult to see how it could be wrong for humans to kill and eat animals if it is not wrong for animals to kill and eat each other. Keywords  Sentientist equality • Animal rights • Peter Singer • Tom Regan As an alternative to speciesism, it has been argued that “all sentient animals, including humans, possess an equal moral worth”, implying that “all sentient creatures merit equal consideration of their interests and protection of their basic rights” which in turn requires the establishment of a “sentientist cosmopolitan democracy” the institutions of which “should include dedicated representatives of non-human animals whose job should

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Bauhn, Animal Suffering, Human Rights, and the Virtue of Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27048-2_4

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be to translate the interests of animals into deliberations over what is in the public good for their communities” (Cochrane 2018, 3–4; emphasis in the original). It should be noted that the “dedicated representatives” mentioned by Alasdair Cochrane of course are human representatives of various non-­ human animal populations. Hence, his proposal relies on a kind of speciesist paternalism, according to which non-human animals are presumed to be incapable of defending their rights and to speak for themselves and so must be represented by humans. Speciesist paternalism, to be sure, is a benevolent kind of speciesism, unlike the exploitative kind of speciesism that is often at the centre of animal rights activists’ criticism. It is still a kind of speciesism, however, as it distributes rights and duties in accordance with a belief that one species—the human one—is superior to others when it comes to moral reasoning. It has also been argued that we should look for “an extension of equality that will embrace not only our own species, but also the species that are our closest relatives and that most resemble us in their capacities and their ways of living”, including “our fellow great apes”, that is, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orang-utans, since “the moral boundary we draw between us and them is indefensible” (Cavalieri and Singer 1994, 1). The equality argument is backed by some genetic evidence. Chimpanzees, for instance, are estimated to share about 99 per cent of our DNA (Wong 2014, 100). However, if we should think of chimpanzees as our moral equals, why should we not also permit ourselves to eat meat as chimpanzees do? To deny humans the right to kill and eat other animals while affirming the right of chimps to kill and eat other animals (including members of other primate species) would not only be inconsistent with moral equality—it would be a kind of speciesism in reverse. In fact, the main arguments of the animal rights movement can be seen as speciesist in this sense, ascribing rights to non-human animals while assigning duties only to humans. Speciesism, we should remind ourselves, is about giving a member of the animal realm preferential treatment just because of her membership in a particular species. Disfavouring humans simply because they are humans is just as speciesist as disfavouring non-human animals simply because they are non-human animals. Advocating the moral worth or moral rights of non-human animals can also be seen as the expression of a typically human interest in applying human morality beyond the human species. This interest is typically

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human in the sense that it aims to transcend the naturally given by subjecting it to human norms and values. Just as humans reshape the natural world by introducing art, laws, and social institutions, so do they try to impose their moral values on the animal world. According to Martha Nussbaum, a morally respectful human approach to nature should avoid romanticizing it and, at least to some extent, accept that violence is an integral part of many inter-species relationships. Given Nussbaum’s species-specific capability ethics, our aim should be to protect and promote the abilities of non-human animals “to live a flourishing and dignified life as the sort of creature it is”. Then, however, “it will be difficult to maintain that a creature who feels frustration and pain at the inhibition of its predatory capacities is living a flourishing life. ... [A] lion who is given no exercise for its predatory capacity appears to suffer greatly, and there is no chance that education or acculturation would remove this pain. ... [T]he capability to exercise one’s predatory nature, avoiding the pain of frustration, may well have value, if the pain of frustration is considerable” (Nussbaum 2007, 370). Nussbaum does not advocate human passivity in the face of inter-­animal cruelty in nature (“[r]espect for nature should not and cannot mean just leaving nature as it is” (Nussbaum 2007, 369)), but she suggests that human intervention should be limited and cautious. She rejects the idea that we should put all vulnerable animals or, alternatively, all predators, in “protective detention”, as this “surely does greater harms, by closing off the very possibility of flourishing in the wild”. Moreover, what moral obligations we have to non-human animals depends on the particularities of our relationships with them: “It seems plausible”, she argues, “that we have less responsibility to protect gazelles than we do to protect domestic dogs and cats, since we are the guardians of the latter and they have evolved in symbiosis with us” (Nussbaum 2007, 379). Now Nussbaum does not intend her capability argument as a justification of humans killing and eating non-human animals, as she believes it to be within human capabilities to learn how to flourish without killing animals. However, given that humans are omnivores, a species-specific capability ethics at least cannot rule out human meat-eating as obviously unjustified. According to such an ethics, each species should be allowed to flourish according to its specific nature. Of course, there is always room for discussion regarding how far members of a particular species can modify the behaviour characteristic of its nature and still “flourish”, but the

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important point here is the species relativism implicit in Nussbaum’s reasoning. The right kind of life for members of one species need not be the right kind of life for members of another species. This relativism will have consequences for any moral imperative of the kind “Prevent animal suffering!”, as the pain of a prey animal may be possible to avoid only at the price of causing pain to a predator animal. From the lion’s point of view, the imperative would be understood as a ban on interfering with its hunting and killing of gazelles. From the gazelle’s point of view, it would be understood as ruling out lions’ hunting and killing of gazelles. Of course, Nussbaum wants us to understand the imperative from a human point of view and to balance the interests of lions and gazelles against each other and so come to a decision that best accommodates both—that is, according to a human understanding of the interests of lions and gazelles. However, we must ask ourselves whether such a view is really consistent with the idea of respect for nature or with the principle of equality between human and non-human animals. For humans to take upon themselves to decide which animal interest should be allowed to override which other animal interest seems rather to affirm human superiority, implying a human-centred species imperialism or species colonialism. It would be more consistent with respect for nature and with the principle of animal equality if humans simply allowed each species—including the species of humans—to act in accordance with its own natural interests. This would still not imply a human passivity in relation to other species. Being omnivores, humans will hunt and kill animals for food, and they will also utilize their capacity to domesticate other animals, keeping and breeding them for meat, milk, fur, and other products that are essential to human well-­ being. Having a capacity for species-transcending sociality, humans will also keep pet animals for companionship. Humans will also protect their domesticated animals and pets against attacks of other animals and in the process they will now and then kill predators. This seems to be what a principle based on “respect for nature” would imply, given that it has to take into consideration human nature with its complex needs and inherent capacity to use reason to transcend merely instinctual behaviour. Respecting nature necessarily involves respecting human nature. However, human nature is consistent with many different systems of morality, and different moralities will assign different views of how humans should treat non-­ human animals. Hence, we will have to dig deeper into moral theory.

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4.1   Singer and Animal Rights Now, as we saw above, Peter Singer uses the language of rights in connection with non-human animals. However, he intends this only as a way of indicating that certain interests deserve consideration. As he clarifies in a later edition of Animal Liberation, his own position is that when it comes to humans’ treatment of non-human animals “the argument is really about equality rather than about rights” (Singer 2002, 8). Singer is a utilitarian, committed to adopting “the course of action most likely to maximize the interests of those affected” (Singer 1979, 12). Hence his argument cannot allow for individual rights functioning as “trumps” against utility-­maximizing collective goals, in the sense once outlined by Ronald Dworkin (1978, xi), but only as rules of thumb, indicating certain interests the protection of which in most cases results in the maximization of satisfied preferences. Singer’s focus on the capacity to experience suffering as the most relevant factor when comparing the moral standing of humans and non-­ human animals echoes Jeremy Bentham, the founder of philosophical utilitarianism, who in 1789 questioned why animals and the pain they experience at the hands of humans should be considered inferior to humans and human experiences of pain: “Is it the faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month old. But suppose the case was otherwise, what would it avail? the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?” (Bentham 1948, 412 n. 1; emphasis in the original). One part of Singer’s argument has to do with universalizability. This is basically a logical concept, saying that if it is wrong for you to do something to me in a particular situation, then it is also wrong for me to do the same thing to you in a relevantly similar situation. According to Singer (but certainly not only him) “[e]thics requires us to go beyond ‘I’ and ‘you’ to the universal law, the universalizable judgment, the standpoint of the impartial spectator or ideal observer, or whatever we choose to call it” (Singer 1979, 11). Similar cases should be assessed and dealt with in a similar manner—and here, and this is Singer’s point, it should not matter whether it is a human or a non-human animal that is victimized by some painful treatment as long as they both are relevantly similar in their

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capacity to experience pain and suffering. Other utilitarians have argued in a similar way. Richard Hare, at one time Singer’s teacher in Oxford, once wrote of universalizability: Suppose that I claim to think that it is morally all right for me, just for fun, to hang this cat up by its tail, but deny that it would be all right for someone else, in identical circumstances, to hang me up by my tail, if I had one and were in all other respects like this cat, suffering in just the same way (which is not too difficult to imagine). Those who understand the words will say that I am guilty of a logical inconsistency – that I cannot know what ‘morally all right’ means. For if there were no other difference, how could there be a moral difference? (Hare 2001, 1736)

However, Hare’s argument is not without its own problems. For instance, what would it mean for me to imagine myself being hung up “by my tail”? Would that even be me? To what extent can I imagine being someone else and still be me, the person who is supposed to do the imagining? As John Mackie has pointed out, a strict understanding of what it means to put oneself in another person’s place—with that person’s “desires, tastes, preferences, ideals, and values as well as his other qualities and abilities and external situation”—is conceptually problematic, as “hardly any of oneself is retained” (Mackie 1977, 92–93). This does not mean that universalizability can be disposed of as irrelevant to moral theorizing. On the contrary, it is highly relevant to any understanding of the mutuality of rights and duties among human agents. But it has to be given a different meaning than Hare’s idea about putting oneself in one’s recipient’s place—a transformation of personal identity that might well be logically impossible. (A more reasonable formula for universalizability in relation to moral rights that does not suggest any transformation of personal identity could, for instance, take the following form: If I claim that my possession of a certain quality Q is a sufficient condition of my having a right to X, then I must accept that any other subject possessing Q also has a right to X.) Now, Singer’s utilitarian position does not mean that he is categorically against every human use of non-human animals—it all depends on the consequences, as viewed from the perspective of maximized satisfaction of interests. If, for instance, chicken could be reared under good conditions (not under the conditions of factory farming, which determine most

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chickens’ lives today), and if these chicken would not exist unless humans wanted to eat them, then killing them (painlessly) could be compensated for by replacing them with new chickens and would hence not constitute any wrong: “Then the replaceability argument will justify killing the birds, because depriving them of the pleasures of their existence can be offset against the pleasures of chickens who do not yet exist, and will exist only if existing chickens are killed” (Singer 1979, 104). Moreover, as we saw in the previous chapter about speciesism, Singer accepts that “it is worse to kill a normal adult human, with a capacity for self-awareness and the ability to plan for the future and have meaningful relations with others, than it is to kill a mouse”. Hence, the kind of equality he endorses does not imply that all humans and all animals deserve equal treatment, but rather that those humans and those animals that have a similar capacity for rationality and sensitivity deserve equal treatment.

4.2  Regan and Animal Rights Other defenders of the moral standing of animals take rights language more seriously, however, and in so doing they can claim membership in a long historical tradition. Just as Singer can rely on the eighteenth-century philosopher Bentham when he connects animal liberationism to utilitarianism, so can present-day animal rights advocates derive inspiration from Bentham’s contemporary Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In his treatise on the origins of inequality among men, Rousseau also touches upon the question of the moral standing of animals. He believes that his argument about the natural rights of mankind can be extended to animals, and so “put an end to the time-honoured disputes concerning the participation of animals in natural law”. Rousseau continues: [F]or it is clear that, lacking enlightenment and freedom, they cannot recognize that law; but sharing something of our nature by means of the sensitivity with which they are endowed, one will judge that they also ought to participate in natural rights, and that mankind is subjected to some sort of duties to them. It appears, in fact, that if I am bound to do no injury to one who is similar to me, this is less because he is capable of reason than because he is a sentient being; this quality, being common both to beast and to man, should at least give the former the right not to be unnecessarily mistreated by the latter. (Rousseau 1969, 56; my translation of the French original)

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In more recent times, animal rights have been vigorously defended by the philosopher Tom Regan. He rejects the utilitarian replaceability argument, insisting on viewing moral agents and patients as having “inherent value”, which implies holding that “[t]hey have value in their own right, a value that is distinct from, not reducible to, and incommensurate with the values of those experiences which, as receptacles, they have or undergo” (Regan 1983, 236). Like Singer, Regan argues in favour of a principle of equality, but one that does not admit of sacrificing individuals for the sake of maximizing the satisfaction of preferences or interests. Now, Regan makes a distinction between moral agents and moral patients, according to which moral agents are capable of acting in accordance with “impartial moral principles” in a way that makes it “fair to hold them morally accountable for what they do”, while moral patients, on the other hand, “cannot do what is right, nor can they do what is wrong”, since they lack the capacity for moral reasoning (Regan 1983, 151–152). Still, while adult and normal human beings typically are moral agents and non-human animals typically are moral patients, Regan holds that agents and patients are equal in the sense that they all have “inherent value”: All who have inherent value ... have it equally, whether they be moral agents or moral patients. All animals are equal, when the notions of ‘animal’ and ‘equality’ are properly understood, ‘animal’ referring to all (terrestrial, at least) moral agents and patients, and ‘equality’ referring to their equal possession of inherent value. Inherent value is thus a categorical concept. One either has it, or one does not. There are no in-betweens. Moreover, all those who have it, have it equally. It does not come in degrees. (Regan 1983, 240–241; emphasis in the original)

The inherent value that Regan ascribes to moral agents and patients is based on their status as being subjects-of-a-life, which is the case “if they have beliefs and desires; perception, memory, and a sense of the future, including their own future; an emotional life together with feelings of pleasure and pain; preference- and welfare-interests; the ability to initiate action in pursuit of their desires and goals; a psychophysical identity over time; and an individual welfare in the sense that their experiental life fares well or ill for them, logically independently of their utility for others and logically independently of their being the object of anyone else’s interests” (Regan 1983, 243). It seems as if Regan does not intend all of the enumerated conditions to be necessary for being a subject-of-a-life. Among

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possible subjects-of-a-life he includes “young children and the mentally enfeebled of all ages” who may “lack the requisite knowledge and sometimes even the requisite physical abilities to satisfy even their most basic needs and correlative desires” (Regan 1983, 244). This suggests that Regan holds it to be sufficient that one can have needs and desires (whether or not one can act on them) and experience pleasure and pain for one to be a subject-of-a-life. All those animals, human or non-human, who possess inherent value through being subjects-of-a-life should be treated in accordance with a respect principle, the content of which is that “[w]e are to treat those individuals who have inherent value in ways that respect their inherent value” (Regan 1983, 248; emphasis in the original), ruling out that these individuals are reduced to being the slaves or tools of others or that they are treated as mere means to the goal of maximizing utility. According to Regan, the respect principle is a principle of justice, making a certain treatment of moral agents and patients morally mandatory: “We owe them respectful treatment, not out of kindness, nor because of the ‘sentimental interests’ of others, but because justice requires it” (Regan 1983, 261; emphasis in the original). Given Regan’s assumption that justice requires respectful treatment of moral agents and moral patients alike, it comes as no surprise that his conclusion is an argument about rights: [M]oral agents and moral patients have an equal right to respectful treatment. Moreover, because moral agents have this right independently of the legislative acts (the laws) of this or that nation, the same is true in the case of moral patients. In the case of animals, in particular, therefore, one cannot argue against their having the basic moral right in question on the grounds that it is not recognized as a legal right by any nation. ... It is not an act of kindness to treat animals respectfully. It is an act of justice. (Regan 1983, 279–280)

Accordingly, treating non-human animals as mere resources for the satisfying of human interests is morally wrong. To farm animals for the purpose of offering animal meat for humans to consume is a paradigmatic case of speciesist injustice. Animals “are not treated with respect, and cannot be, so long as they are treated as if they are renewable resources. This is why, on the rights view, farmers who raise animals for human consumption are engaged in an unjust practice. Morally, they exceed their rights. Morally, this practice ought to cease, and consumers ought to cease

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to support it. ...Vegetarianism is not supererogatory; it is obligatory” (Regan 1983, 346; emphasis in the original). For the same reason, the use of animals in scientific research and in laboratory testing of products intended for human consumption is morally wrong and should be abolished, since these kinds of activity “violate the rights of laboratory animals” and, more specifically, because treating these animals as if “their value were reducible to their utility for human interests, even important human interests, is to treat them unjustly” (Regan 1983, 374, 380). Regan also rejects the idea that humans can have a property right in non-human animals: “the very notion that farm animals should continue to be viewed as legal property must be challenged” (Regan 1983, 348). This claim is also central to another important work on animal rights in which the author, Gary Francione, argues that the existence of property rights in animals is the very cornerstone on which the exploitation of animals rests: “The fact that we allocate property rights in animals means that we do not value animals in themselves, or that we do not value animal protection ... in itself. ... The value of animals is dependent on their property status, and in the absence of a pervasive system of animal servitude, it is unlikely—to say the least—that animals would ‘voluntarily’ offer themselves to be used as food sources or as laboratory ‘equipment’” (Francione 1995, 27–28). The realization of animal liberation would hence require the abolition of human property rights in animals, just as the emancipation of African American slaves once required the abolition of slave owners’ property rights in humans. According to Regan, although moral agents and moral patients are equal in their possession of moral rights, only moral agents have duties. This is a significant qualification of the ideal of sentient equality. While wolves have no duty to respect the rights of sheep, humans have a duty to respect the rights of wolves and sheep alike. However, since species of non-human animals do not have rights against each other, human agents cannot claim that they need to kill wolves for the sake of upholding the rights of sheep: Only moral agents can have duties, and this because only these individuals have the cognitive and other abilities necessary for being held morally accountable for what they do or fail to do. Wolves are not moral agents. They cannot bring impartial reasons to bear on their decision making—cannot, that is, apply the formal principle of justice or any of its normative

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interpretations. That being so, wolves in particular and moral patients generally cannot themselves meaningfully be said to have duties to anyone, nor, therefore, the particular duty to respect the rights possessed by other ­animals. In claiming that we have a prima facie duty to assist those animals whose rights are violated, therefore, we are not claiming that we have a duty to assist the sheep against the attack of the wolf, since the wolf neither can nor does violate anyone’s rights. (Regan 1983, 285; emphasis in the original)

Still, the assumption that non-human animals can never be guilty of violating any moral right does not rule out the possibility that they can be killed in self-defence. Regan accepts that “innocent threats”, that is, moral patients with no ability to understand the distinction between what is morally right or wrong but who pose a threat to our lives or basic well-­ being can be justifiably harmed by us as we try to defend ourselves against them: “A rabid dog is guilty of no moral offense when he attacks us in our backyard; yet he poses a distinct threat, and we do no wrong if we harm the animal in the course of defending ourselves” (Regan 1983, 296). Moreover, Regan also allows for the possibility of sacrificing the lives of non-human animals in exceptional cases when doing so is indeed necessary to save human lives. He discusses a lifeboat example in which one either has to throw a dog overboard or let four humans perish by drowning. In such a case, Regan observes, we should throw the dog overboard, since “the harm that death is, is a function of the opportunities for satisfaction it forecloses, and no reasonable person would deny that the death of any of the four humans would be a greater prima facie loss, and thus a greater prima facie harm, than would be true in the case of the dog. Death for the dog, ... though a harm, is not comparable to the harm that death would be for any of the humans” (Regan 1983, 324). Numbers do not matter here, as it is the quality of the harm inflicted that is important, and, unlike utilitarians, Regan does not accept a moral mathematics of the kind that makes the sum of many lesser harms equal the infliction of one great harm; nor does he accept species membership in itself as decisive: Let the number of dogs be as large as one likes; suppose they number a million; and suppose the lifeboat will support only four survivors. Then the rights view still implies that, special considerations apart, the million dogs should be thrown overboard and the four humans saved. ... The decision to sacrifice the one or the million is not based on species membership. It is based on assessing the losses each individual faces and assessing these losses

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equitably, an approach that is at once consistent with and required by the recognition of the equal inherent value and the equal prima facie right not to be harmed possessed by all those involved. (Regan 1983, 325; emphasis in the original)

Presumably, however, it would matter to Regan if the humans in the lifeboat example are senile or terminally ill while the dog is young and healthy. He has previously argued that “[t]he untimely death of a woman in the prime of her life is prima facie a greater harm than the death of her senile mother”, this being so since death here would inflict a greater loss on the daughter than on the mother: “death is a comparable harm if the loss of opportunities it marks are equal in any two cases”, otherwise it is not (Regan 1983, 303, 304). Moreover, Regan has explicitly rejected the speciesist idea that human lives matter more than the lives of non-human animals simply because they are human: “[T]here is no credible basis on which to claim that the death of a normal, adult animal is not a greater loss, and thus a greater harm, than the death of a less aware, retarded human, one who possesses fewer desires, less competence to act intentionally, and is less responsive to others and to the environment generally” (Regan 1983, 314). Hence, one wonders how he can be so confident that a dog (not to mention a million dogs) should be thrown overboard for the sake of saving the lives of a few humans. If he is willing to sacrifice the dog even for the sake of saving the life of a human being who possesses “less competence to act intentionally”, Regan would in fact, even if not in name, be a speciesist. And then, one wonders, what would be so wrong with humans farming non-human animals for food? After all, if “the harm that death is, is a function of the opportunities for satisfaction it forecloses”, it could always be argued that the loss to the animals is more than well compensated for by the physical, cultural, and economic gains of human farmers and human meat-eaters. On the other hand, if he were to suggest that it is the dog that should be saved at the expense of a senile or terminally ill human being, due to the dog’s greater capacity for having a good life, then there would seem to be not much of a practical difference between his and Singer’s theory. Rather than being about protecting moral rights, Regan’s theory would then appear to be about maximizing satisfied interests, giving priority to the (human or non-human) individual with the best prospect of having

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many interests and also having the better capacity to satisfy them. Rights will then depend on interest satisfaction in the sense that when two rights of the same degree of importance are in conflict, that right should be upheld which enables an agent or a patient to satisfy the greatest number of interests (or the greatest number of the highest kind of interests, if one wants to add a qualitative criterion) to the highest degree. Moreover, although Regan claims to advocate a principle of equal treatment, his argument involves a fundamental inequality between agents and patients, as only agents are supposed to have duties. According to his argument, only humans can be agents while all non-human animals are patients. Hence, animals are not doing anything morally wrong when they kill other animals, but humans are violating a moral duty when they kill animals for the purpose of eating meat. But this inequality seems unjustified. Normally we would think that the reason some action is morally wrong is that it brings unjustified harm to its recipient (or “patient” in Regan’s terminology). Hence, the basic question is whether or not a recipient is being harmed or has her rights violated by what is done to her. But if a wolf can kill and eat a sheep without doing anything morally wrong, why would it be morally wrong for a human to kill and eat a sheep? From the perspective of the sheep, it would be equally bad whether it is killed by a wolf or by a human. I agree that it is pointless and irrational to hold a wolf morally accountable, but why should it be considered morally wrong for a human to do something to a sheep that is morally neutral when done by a wolf? Regan’s answer is, of course, that humans, unlike wolves, have a capacity for choice and moral reasoning and that we consequently are capable of refraining from killing and eating sheep; hence, we have a responsibility for what we do to sheep that wolves do not have. However, this response seems to separate the duties of humans from the rights of sheep. In fact, Regan’s argument implicitly denies that a sheep has a right to life. If a sheep had had such a right, this right would have been violated if the sheep had been killed by a wolf as well. (Whether or not the wolf could have been held responsible for this violation is a different question.) But Regan insists that “the wolf neither can nor does violate anyone’s rights”. This can be true only if we assume that the sheep does not have any rights that a wolf can violate. If the sheep has a right to life and a wolf kills it, the wolf has violated the sheep’s right to life. (Once again, whether or not to hold the wolf accountable for this violation of the sheep’s right to life is a different question.) The only reason why a wolf

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could not violate any right to life in killing a sheep would seem to be that the sheep does not have any such right in the first place. However, if the sheep does not have a right to life, then how could it be morally wrong for a human agent to kill it? Regan’s moral theory seems to bring problems rather than clarity to the issue of animal rights. However, his is not the only attempt at defending animal rights. In what follows, we will take a look at other animal rights theories and, as we will see, these theories will bring problems of their own to the discussion.

References Bentham, J. 1948. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. In A Fragment on Government and An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. W. Harrison, 113–435. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Cavalieri, P., and P.  Singer. 1994. Preface. In The Great Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity, ed. P.  Cavalieri and P.  Singer, 1–3. New  York: St. Martin’s Press. Cochrane, A. 2018. Sentientist Politics: A Theory of Global Inter-Species Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dworkin, R. 1978. Taking Rights Seriously. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Francione, G.L. 1995. Animals, Property, and the Law. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Hare, R.M. 2001. Universalizability. In Encyclopedia of Ethics, ed. L.C. Becker and C.B. Becker, vol. III, 2nd ed., 1734–1737. New York and London: Routledge. Mackie, J. 1977. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. London: Penguin Books. Nussbaum, M. 2007. Frontiers of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Regan, T. 1983. The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Rousseau, J.-J. 1969. Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes. Paris: Gallimard. Singer, P. 1979. Practical Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2002. Animal Liberation. rev. ed. New York, NY: Ecco. Wong, K. 2014. The 1 Percent Difference. Scientific American 311 (3): 100.

CHAPTER 5

Kant on Duties to Animals

Abstract  Although he is not condoning the wanton infliction of pain on animals, Kant does not conceive of animals as ends in themselves, that is, as autonomous agents with purposes of their own and not just means to the realization of someone else’s ends. According to him, only human agents are such ends. Non-human animals, on the other hand, can be justifiably used as mere means to the realization of human purposes. However, Kant rejects the idea that human agents can treat non-human animals in just any way they want—not because this would go against any moral right of the non-human animals, but because it would go against the moral duty of human agents to their fellow humans not to cultivate insensitivity in themselves. Keywords  Immanuel Kant • Treatment of animals • Indirect duties • Sympathy Discussing the topic of animal rights, we should not ignore the contributions made by Immanuel Kant to this debate. Kant famously argued that we have a duty to treat animals well—but this duty is not a duty to the animals themselves, but rather a duty to our fellow humans: “Our duties towards animals are merely indirect duties towards humanity. Animal nature has analogies to human nature, and by doing our duties to animals

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in respect of manifestations of human nature, we indirectly do our duty towards humanity” (Kant 1930, 240). Kant’s view of the morality of human interaction with animals is based on a causal hypothesis, namely, that cruelty towards non-human animals makes human agents disposed to be cruel to their fellow human agents, ignoring the human rights of these agents. In The Metaphysics of Morals Kant claims that “violent and cruel treatment of animals is far more intimately opposed to a human being’s duty to himself, and he has a duty to refrain from this; for it dulls his shared feeling of their suffering and so weakens and gradually uproots a natural predisposition that is very serviceable to morality in one’s relations with other men” (Kant 1996, 192–193 [Ak. 6: 443]). And in Lectures on Ethics (based on lecture notes made by Kant’s students) he repeats the same message, arguing that kindness towards animals predisposes the human agent to kindness towards fellow humans: “If he is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practise kindness towards animals, for he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals” (Kant 1930, 240). Now, although he is not condoning the wanton infliction of pain on animals, Kant does not conceive of animals as ends in themselves, that is, as autonomous agents with purposes of their own and not just means to the realization of someone else’s ends. According to him, only human agents are such ends. Non-human animals, on the other hand, can be justifiably used as mere means to the realization of human purposes (for instance as food, or as working animals). However, as we have already seen, Kant rejects the idea that human agents can treat non-human animals in just any way they want—not because this would go against any moral right of the non-human animal, but because it would go against the moral duty of human agents to their fellow men not to allow themselves to become insensitive. Hence, Kant distinguishes between justified and unjustified uses of non-human animals, as here, in The Metaphysics of Morals: The human being is authorized to kill animals quickly (without pain) and to put them to work that does not strain them beyond their capacities (such work as he himself must submit to). But agonizing physical experiments for the sake of mere speculation, when the end could also be achieved without these, are to be abhorred. (Kant 1996, 193 [Ak. 6: 443])

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And in Lectures on Ethics he makes a similar distinction between justified and unjustified uses of animals: “Vivisectionists, who use living animals for their experiments, certainly act cruelly, although their aim is praiseworthy, and they can justify their cruelty, since animals must be regarded as man’s instruments; but any such cruelty for sport cannot be justified” (Kant 1930, 240–241). Contemporary Kantians have tried to modify Kant’s view of non-­ human animals as mere ends, by pointing to the possibility that these animals too should be viewed as ends in themselves. Thus Christine Korsgaard has argued that when we humans see ourselves as ends, what we do is to confer value not only on our specifically human nature as autonomous and rational beings, but also on our animal nature, that is, the part of our nature which we share with other animals and which includes things such as our desire for food, sex, play, and exploration of our environment (curiosity). When we “legislate” about these things, that is, when we claim rights to them and demand of other humans that they should not interfere with our possession of them, “we are legislating on behalf of our animal nature”. Accordingly, we “are not distinguished from the other animals by being in connection with some sort of transcendental, rational order beyond nature with which the other animals have nothing to do. Instead we are distinguished by our ability to construct a transcendental, rational order out of the essential love of life and the goods of life that we share with the other animals” (Korsgaard 2005, 105; emphasis in the original). Hence, Korsgaard argues, given this fundamental similarity between us and non-human animals there is no reason why a Kantian should not accept direct rather than indirect moral duties to non-human animals. We should “treat all animals, as far as we possibly can, as fellow creatures, whose good matters for its own sake” (Korsgaard 2005, 108). However, Korsgaard’s argument would appear convincing only to those who already believe that our similarities to non-human animals are morally more important than the differences that exist between them and us. What if our capacity for rational construction, referred to by Korsgaard, makes us so different from non-human animals that it makes no sense to claim that animals can have moral rights? After all, this capacity should include other morally relevant abilities, such as our very ability to engage in moral reasoning, including reasoning about moral rights and duties. Recognizing that we have a capacity for rational construction and that animals lack this capacity could be taken as a sufficient reason why animals cannot have moral rights—at least moral rights of the kind that we claim

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for ourselves. Moreover, it could be plausibly argued that we cannot share a moral community with creatures who are not only occurrently and contingently (as in the case of children and some people suffering from severe mental illnesses) but dispositionally and necessarily (by their very nature) unable to understand the idea of morality in the first place. This, of course, still leaves open the possibility that we could have moral duties regarding non-human animals—moral duties, that is, which are not founded on any prior assumption about animal rights. In what follows, I will argue exactly this, namely, that animals have no moral rights, but that we still have an indirect moral duty not to subject them to acts of cruelty. Now, Kant’s view of what makes cruelty towards animals wrong has been described as “abominable”, as it “makes our duties concerning animals dependent on contingent psychological facts about what does, or does not, erode our sense of empathy”, implying that “people who are incapable of developing empathy, and therefore cannot erode that capacity by torturing an animal ... violate no duty by doing so” (Birch 2020, 2). However, this kind of criticism is as wrong in its content as it is exaggerated in its tone. Rather than being “abominable”, Kant provides a ground for treating non-human animals well that is more solid than, for instance, utilitarian reasons. A utilitarian would not hesitate to subject animals to cruelty if it turns out that doing so would bring about a greater total happiness. (For instance, if the joy and pleasure experienced by a bullfight audience outweigh the pain the bull has to endure, then the bullfight would be morally all right, according to the most straightforward kind of utilitarianism, limiting itself to the immediate and foreseeable consequences of a particular activity.) A Kantian agent, however, would have a duty to himself and to humanity never to be cruel to animals. Moreover, Kant does not say that those who fail to develop feelings of empathy in themselves are entitled to abuse animals. On the contrary, these people are just guilty of another shortcoming by failing to work on their capacity for sympathy for others. Kant’s argument assumes that we all have a natural capacity for empathy and that we should develop that capacity in a way that supports moral action: “[W]hile it is not in itself a duty to share the sufferings (as well as the joys) of others, it is a duty to sympathize actively in their fate; and to this end it is therefore an indirect duty to cultivate the compassionate natural (aesthetic) feelings in us, and to make use of them as so many means to sympathy based on moral principles and the feeling appropriate to them” (Kant 1996, 205 [Ak. 6: 457]).

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Hence, the person who lacks empathy is not permitted by Kant to be cruel to animals. On the contrary, Kant would assign to her the duty of exposing herself to situations that might awaken in her feelings of sympathy. She would have “a duty not to avoid the places where the poor who lack the most basic necessities are to be found but rather to seek them out, and not to shun sickrooms or debtors’ prisons and so forth in order to avoid sharing painful feelings one may not be able to resist” (Kant 1996, 205 [Ak. 6: 457]). Kant would hence assign a duty to the agent deficient in empathy to undergo a process of “cognitive psychotherapy” in Richard Brandt’s sense of the term, according to which people should test their beliefs and emotive responses by repeatedly representing to themselves “in an ideally vivid way, and at an appropriate time, the available information which is relevant in the sense that it would make a difference to desires and aversions if they thought of it” (Brandt 1979, 111). Hence, far from being relieved of the duty to act with kindness towards animals, the agent who lacks empathy is requested to remedy his emotional shortcomings. This is so, since “duties with regard to animals are duties to the self, part of the perfection of ourselves as natural and moral beings” (O’Hagan 2009, 534). Moreover, Kant provides those human agents who do not believe in animal rights with a reason to treat animals just as well as they might be treated by advocates of such rights. As Onora O’Neill has pointed out, “[t]he fact that there are indirect duties from which non-human animals ought to benefit is not a trivial protection”, since, according to Kant, “indirect duties matter: they are real duties that bind all who are capable of having duties” (O’Neill 1998, 223). Consequently, Kant deserves a better reputation than he presently enjoys within the animal rights community. However, one can think of cases more difficult for Kant’s theory to handle than people who suffer from an underdeveloped capacity for empathy. What of a person who is emotionally and cognitively normal, but who seriously believes that non-human animals are incapable of feeling pain as we do? Such a person would be able to expose animals to cruelty without developing any inclination to treat humans badly, simply because her maltreatment of animals is not related to her possessing any sadistic character traits in the first place. Think of the French philosopher René Descartes who, according to some sources, “hurled a cat out of a window in order to demonstrate the absence of conscious awareness in non-human

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animals; its terrified screams were mechanical reactions, he concluded” (Gray 2020, 5). Such a person would not see herself as cruel, nor would her maltreatment of animals necessarily be motivated by cruelty. Since she is seriously convinced that animals do not experience pain as we do, she will be able to treat them harshly without being motivated by cruelty; hence, there is no reason to believe that her treatment of animals will make her insensitive to human suffering. Hence, whether or not an agent’s cruelty towards animals makes it more likely that she will also be cruel to humans would depend on whether or not she believes that she has been cruel towards animals in the first place. In what follows, I will outline an argument that is similar to Kant’s in that it both denies that non-human animals have moral rights and asserts that human agents are rationally and morally required not to expose non-­ human animals to acts of cruelty. However, this argument will also differ from Kant’s in that it will be founded on conceptual or logical necessity rather than on causal probability. My argument will take its point of departure in the moral theory of Alan Gewirth.

References Birch, J. 2020. The Place of Animals in Kantian Ethics. Biology & Philosophy 35 (1): 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-­019-­9712-­0. Brandt, R.B. 1979. A Theory of the Good and the Right. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gray, J. 2020. Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life. London: Allen Lane. Kant, I. 1930. Lectures on Ethics. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd. ———. 1996. The Metaphysics of Morals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Korsgaard, C.M. 2005. Fellow Creatures: Kantian Ethics and Our Duties to Animals. In The Tanner Lectures on Human Values 25, ed. G.B.  Peterson, 77–110. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press. O’Hagan, E. 2009. Animals, Agency, and Obligation in Kantian Ethics. Social Theory and Practice 35 (4): 531–554. O’Neill, O. 1998. Kant on Duties Regarding Nonrational Nature. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, vol. 72: 211–228. London: The Aristotelian Society.

CHAPTER 6

Gewirthian Human Rights and Non-Human Animals

Abstract  According to Alan Gewirth’s moral theory, every human agent, qua agent, logically must claim rights to freedom and well-being as the generally necessary conditions of successful agency. Once the agent universalizes the ground for her rights-claim, that is, that she is an agent with purposes that she wants to realize, she is logically compelled to accept that all agents have similar rights to freedom and well-being (as all agents have the same need for these necessary goods). Elaborating on what she calls a “corrected” version of Gewirth’s theory, Evelyn Pluhar argues that since at least some non-human animals appear to be agents in Gewirth’s sense, they should also be recognized as rights-holders. However, her argument is questioned in this chapter. Keywords  Gewirth • Agency • Necessary goods • PGC • Freedom • Well-being One of the most sophisticated contemporary philosophical theories of human rights has been developed by the Chicago philosopher Alan Gewirth. Of course, this assessment would be challenged by those who either reject moral rights theories or who have another favourite rights theorist of their own, such as John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Ronald Dworkin, James Nickels, Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum, Rowan Cruft,

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or any other philosopher who has formulated a principle or argument involving moral rights. As this is not a book about human rights per se, I intend to refrain from multiplying footnotes here and simply stick to the theory I have found to be the most carefully outlined and developed of them all. I will simply assume here that if Gewirth’s theory cannot withstand critical scrutiny, no other human rights theory is likely to do any better. (For a detailed defence of Gewirth’s theory against various objections, see Beyleveld (1991).) Now, according to Gewirth’s theory, every human agent, qua agent, logically must claim rights to the generally necessary conditions of successful agency. (A more recent theory of human rights, developed by James Griffin, has also taken its point of departure in the needs of agency. Griffin builds his theory around the concept of normative agency which involves “deliberating, assessing, choosing, and acting to make what we see as a good life for ourselves” (Griffin 2008, 32). Unlike Gewirth, however, Griffin does not try to present his argument as rationally necessary.) Gewirth’s concept of an agent is derived from certain basic assumptions that he believes are common to all forms of morality and according to which moral precepts are addressed to persons who “can control their behavior through their unforced choice so as to try to achieve the prescribed ends or contents, although they may also intentionally refrain from complying with the precepts” (Gewirth 1978, 26–27). Hence, morality is connected to the capacity for agency, and agency is characterized by voluntariness and purposiveness: agents aim to control their behaviour with the intention of achieving their goals of action. Now, according to Gewirth, every agent must accept first, that the end of her action is a good to her—she would not try to realize that end unless it had at least some value for her—and, second, that the conditions generally necessary for her successful realization of any and all of her ends are necessary goods to her; hence, no agent can (logically) accept being deprived of these necessary goods; hence, every agent must claim rights to them. This is what is involved in Gewirth’s argument that agency has a normative structure—that is, as we set out to realize the ends of our actions, we thereby also implicitly subscribe to an evaluative view of these ends that in turn makes it necessary for us to claim rights to the necessary goods of successful agency (Gewirth 1978, 48). Not to accept being deprived of the necessary goods of agency by others is tantamount to telling others that they must not interfere with one’s possession of these goods; this in turn is tantamount to claiming that

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one has rights to them. To be sure, this rights-claim is prudential rather than moral, as it takes its point of departure in the agent’s self-interested reason for wanting to have her necessary goods of agency protected from interference by others. But once the agent universalizes the ground for her rights-claim, that is, that she is an agent with purposes that she wants to realize, she is logically compelled to accept that all agents have similar rights to the necessary goods of agency (as all agents have the same need for these necessary goods), and by now we have a moral rights-claim, referring to agents in general as rights-holders. The agent’s recognition that all agents have rights to the necessary goods of agency “is a moral judgment precisely because its criterion is not his own interests or prudential purposes but rather the interests or prudential purposes of persons other than himself” (Gewirth 1978, 147). By recognizing other agents as holders of rights to the necessary goods of agency, each agent thereby also recognizes that she has corresponding duties regarding these other agents’ possession of these necessary goods. Primarily these duties are about not interfering with other agents’ necessary goods of agency, but they can also involve a duty to help them have or continue to have these necessary goods. Gewirth defines the necessary goods of agency as freedom and well-­ being, freedom referring to the ability to control one’s behaviour by one’s unforced and informed choice, and well-being referring to the physical and psychological capacities as well as the material resources needed to act and to act successfully. Since freedom and well-being constitute generic features of successful agency, Gewirth characterizes the rights to freedom and well-being as generic rights. Consequently, all agents are rationally required to accept as their supreme moral principle the Principle of Generic Consistency (PGC): “Act in accord with the generic rights of your recipients as well as of yourself” (Gewirth 1978, 135; emphasis in the original). Here it could be objected that Gewirth has only shown that rational agents must claim rights to freedom and well-being. He has not shown that they actually have such rights. However, this objection is built on a category mistake in that it assumes that rights are a property that can be had in the same way as we have two arms and two legs. But rights are not such a property. Rights are justified claims regarding actions—that is, regarding what other people should do for us or not do to us. What Gewirth has done is to show that a certain claim, namely a claim to the non-interference of others with one’s possession of freedom and well-­ being, is indeed justified in the sense that it is rationally necessary for every agent to make such a claim. As an implication of accepting that it is

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necessary for her to make such a claim, every agent must also accept that all other agents are equally justified in making the same claim. Hence, every agent must rationally accept and commit herself to the universalized claim: “All agents have rights to freedom and well-being”, which is a moral principle of human rights. Now, Gewirth himself appears to be willing to include non-human animals in the category of rights-holders. He notes that “[e]very rational agent, being also an animal, has various feelings”, with the implication that human agents can be incapacitated by pain. He then goes on to argue that “to the extent to which animals have in a similar way the quality or property of being debilitated by pain, they have in a similar way the right justified by this quality, the right to immunity from wanton infliction of pain” (Gewirth 1978, 144). However, immediately after making this argument, Gewirth proceeds to claim that the rights of human agents should be given priority over the rights of non-human animals and that “to the extent to which the eating of animal flesh is needed for the physical well-being of humans, the killing of animals is also justified” (Gewirth 1978, 144–145). This gives the somewhat paradoxical result that while non-human animals have a right not to be tortured by humans, they have no right not to be killed and eaten by them. This suggests that Gewirth’s argument for animal rights is not made from the point of view of the non-­ human animals themselves, but rather from the point of view of human agents, allowing these agents to use, but not to abuse, non-human animals. Now, a possible explanation offered by Gewirth’s theory (but not explored by Gewirth himself) as to why non-human animals indeed cannot possess moral rights is that although non-human animals may be capable of having prudential interests similar to those of human agents, they are incapable of undertaking the process of universalization needed to turn these interests into moral rights-claims. At least some non-human animals could certainly be described as similar to human agents in the sense that they spontaneously would reject having their freedom of movement restricted as well as having pain and suffering inflicted on themselves. In this respect, these non-human animals, although they themselves would not make rights-claims of any sort, would at least resemble human agents making prudential rights-claims regarding others’ non-interference with their freedom and well-being. However, in order for any agent to have moral rights to freedom and well-being, she must be capable of universalizing her prudential rights-claims, recognizing that all agents have

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similar rights and that she hence has corresponding duties regarding her recipients’ (continued) possession of freedom and well-being. According to Gewirth, the agent’s “attribution of these rights to himself could be considered moral only if he was prepared to admit that other persons also have such rights” (Gewirth 1978, 146). Now, while many non-human animals are capable of a spontaneous resistance to any attempt at restricting their freedom or subjecting them to painful treatment, they will not connect this resistance to any recognition that their recipients (be they human agents or other non-human animals) have rights of any kind to freedom and well-being; nor would they recognize any duties regarding their recipients’ (continued) possession of freedom and well-being. Consequently, as non-human animals cannot universalize their prudential interests, they cannot have moral rights to freedom and well-being. Now, there are Gewirthians who want to take his argument further in the direction of human–non-human animal equality. Evelyn Pluhar is one such theorist. Elaborating on what she calls a “corrected” version of Gewirth’s theory, Pluhar argues that since at least some non-human animals appear to be agents in Gewirth’s sense, trying to achieve goals of their own, they should also be recognized as rights-holders, regardless of whether or not they are capable of claiming rights: The morally relevant similarity between the reflective agent and others to whom rights are attributed is having purposes one wants to fulfill. ... Individuals lacking the conceptual wherewithal to claim rights can nonetheless be purposive agents. Being able to conceptualize the Principle of Generic Consistency is not the relevant similarity here; thus, the absence of such a capacity cannot be grounds for exile from the moral community. ... Following Gewirth’s line of reasoning, it seems that agents as such, not just conceptually well-developed agents, should have the rights of freedom and well-being attributed to them. (Pluhar 1995, 248–249; emphasis in the original)

Pluhar hence argues in favour of an equality of rights between human and non-human animal agents, according to which “reflective agents should accord any being capable of caring about what befalls him or her a prima facie right to life” (Pluhar 1995, 256). Accordingly, human agents should recognize that “many other animals—mammals and possibly also birds—are no less morally significant than they themselves are” (Pluhar 1995, 267).

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The idea that non-human animals can be agents is fairly common. Studying our pets, it comes natural to us to ascribe to them intentions of a kind similar to that of human agents. For instance, watching a cat stalking a mouse we might find it hard to avoid thinking of the cat as “a moment-to-moment controller of its own body, a centre of subjectivity, a possessor of some representational and some motivational states (whether or not we are prepared to call these beliefs and desires) and a settler of matters which concern its own bodily movements” (Steward 2009, 229). Here, however, we should be aware of how humans often project on animals their own ways of conceiving the world. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida confessed that he felt embarrassed appearing naked in the bathroom in front of his cat, speaking of “the impropriety that comes of finding oneself naked, one’s sex exposed, stark naked before a cat that looks at you without moving, just to see”; the embarrassment probably further aggravated by the fact the cat was not only “a little cat” but “also a female” (Derrida 2002, 372, 375). Humans who live with companion animals often find it easy to ascribe not only agency, but also complex moral attitudes to these animals. Here is Nobel laureate author Doris Lessing describing how she had her female cat neutered: “I put the grey cat in the cat basket and took her to the vet. She had never been shut up before, and she complained—her dignity and self-respect were wounded. I left her, and came back late that afternoon to collect her. ... She looked at me with enormous dark shocked eyes. She had been betrayed and she knew it. She had been sold out by a friend, the person who fed her, protected her, whose bed she slept on. A terrible thing had been done to her. I couldn’t bear to look at her eyes” (Lessing 2002, 78–79). In Lessing’s account, the cat is capable not only of feeling pain, but also of feeling deprived of dignity and self-respect; she knows that she has been betrayed, and Lessing experiences a corresponding feeling of guilt, making it impossible for her to look into the eyes of her cat. But in cases like these, one must wonder whether it is not the pet owner’s guilt feelings that come first, and as a consequence of these feelings she ascribes to her pet moral feelings that fit with her own experience of guilt. It is the pet owner’s belief that she has betrayed her pet that makes her ascribe to her pet a sense of being betrayed. My intention here is not to belittle pet owners who ascribe moral attitudes to their companion animals. On the contrary, I believe pet owners who think of their pets as capable of moral emotions are more

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likely to take good care of their pets than pet owners who think of their cats and dogs as having no needs more complex than those of food and sleep. We love our pets, we do not just like them, as we might like a wallpaper or a comfortable armchair, and in love relationships it is not unusual that we project on the loved one our own beliefs and motivations. Sometimes it might be a matter of “elevating” the loved one so that our devotion to him or her should not look unjustified in our own eyes; this should be the case especially when we are dealing with love for companion animals, as the natural differences between pet and pet owner are so extensive in the first place. Hence, there is nothing strange about projecting moral attitudes on our pets. However, a projection is not necessarily a mirror of reality, and we should be careful not to conclude that nonhuman animals are agents with agents’ rights just because we feel it necessary to treat them as such. What we feel about animals tells more about us than it does about them.

References Beyleveld, D. 1991. The Dialectical Necessity of Morality. Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press. Derrida, J. 2002. The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow). Critical Inquiry 28 (2): 369–418. Gewirth, A. 1978. Reason and Morality. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Griffin, J. 2008. On Human Rights. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Lessing, D. 2002. On Cats. London: Flamingo. Pluhar, E.B. 1995. Beyond Prejudice: The Moral Significance of Human and Non-­ human Animals. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Steward, H. 2009. Animal Agency. Inquiry 52 (3): 217–231.

CHAPTER 7

Why Non-Human Animals Do Not Have Moral Rights

Abstract  Human life is dynamic, while animal life, viewed over time and over generations, is much more static. Non-human animals do not to try to change the conditions of their life; instead they just repeatedly reaffirm them, generation after generation, by going on living as their ancestors have done before them. This is also an indication that non-human animals are not agents, at least not in the fullest sense of the term. An agent is a subject who controls her behaviour in accordance with her unforced choice; she is not controlled and limited by inherited instincts to the same extent as non-human animals are. Consequently, animal rights advocates cannot benefit from the Gewirthian agency-based argument to human rights. Keywords  Agency • Control • Instincts • Moral reasoning Contrary to Pluhar, I want to argue that non-human animals do not qualify as agents in the sense intended by Gewirth. They cannot control their behaviour in the way presumed by moral precepts, but are rather conditioned by their natural instincts. Hence, they would not claim rights to freedom and well-being, nor would they recognize any universal duties regarding the freedom and well-being of others, be they humans or other non-human animals. Certainly, human agents can assign rights to non-­ human animals (as animal rights advocates do), but this only means that these human agents have decided to extend at least some parts of their © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Bauhn, Animal Suffering, Human Rights, and the Virtue of Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27048-2_7

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human morality to include animals. It tells us something about how humans think they should act towards non-human animals; it does not tell us anything about justifiable claims made by the non-human animals themselves. (Interestingly enough, even the most inclusive of animal rights advocates are less likely to assign duties to non-human animals, as they would recognize the pointlessness of such an undertaking.) Non-human animals will not recognize any moral precepts. They live in accordance with the amoral order of nature—which means that carnivores and omnivores will hunt, kill, and eat other animals, and there is nothing morally right or wrong about it. It is just the way nature works. Nature knows of neither rights nor duties. Now, it could be objected that I seem to conflate having moral rights with being able to understand or claim such rights. But we usually accept that small children and people suffering from advanced stages of dementia have moral rights, although they may not be capable of understanding what is involved in having moral rights, nor able to claim such rights for themselves. So why would non-human animals be disqualified from having moral rights, just because they have no conception of morality or of rights? After all, the fact that non-human animals are not aware of their having moral rights does not by itself preclude them from actually having such rights. What is the case and what we believe is the case is not necessarily one and the same thing. For instance, I might come to forget that I am the owner of my flat, but this does not by itself deprive me of the ownership of that flat. Now, as a first step towards answering this objection, we have to distinguish between those epistemological shortcomings that are relevant to the issue of whether or not someone possesses a certain moral right (or moral rights in general) and those that are not. Just to forget about one’s owning a certain piece of property should not invalidate one’s ownership rights in relation to that piece of property, as long as the conditions that justified these ownership rights in the first place still apply. For instance, as long as it is true that I acquired my flat in certain valid ways (e.g. by buying it, inheriting it, or having it given to me as a present) and that I did not voluntarily relinquish my ownership rights (e.g. by selling the flat or giving it away as a present), I am still the owner of the flat, whether or not I remember this. However, if I have not only forgotten that I own a flat but suffer from a more general loss of mental capacities, then it might indeed be questioned whether I am still an agent with all the moral rights related to

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human agency. For instance, if I no longer know who I am and no longer recognize friends and members of my family, nor understand the workings of my natural and social environment, it might well be argued that my cognitive skills are so impaired that I no longer qualify as an agent. I might still be capable of reacting to external stimuli, but not of acting, in the sense of being able to control my behaviour with a view to realizing purposes that I can see as my purposes, as I no longer have a secure hold on who I am. To have the moral rights of an agent, one must at least be an agent. To have one’s behaviour controlled by instincts rather than by rational deliberation, by repetition rather than by innovation, as is the case of non-human animals, would also disqualify one from being an agent. (That animals only repeat and never innovate is of course a generalization that might be contested. New Caledonian crows, for instance, make tools out of twigs, wood, and metal wire which they use to catch and impale larvae. However, even in the tool making of these birds there is a repetition, as it is the same kind of tools that are made, generation after generation, for the same kind of purposes. There is no dynamic development of ends and means similar to the one that has taken place among humans, from the cave dwellings and stone handaxes of prehistoric times up to today’s skyscrapers and spaceships.) Moreover, when comparing non-human animals to children and human persons suffering from dementia as regards their respective capacity for agency, we need to distinguish between occurrent and dispositional losses of capacity. Small children and persons suffering from dementia may be occurrently deprived of capacities for moral reasoning, including the capacity to understand and claim moral rights. Here and now they lack such abilities, but, with normal maturation, children will have them and persons suffering from dementia once had them. Hence, the difference between human agents and non-human animals is that while human agents may lack capacities for moral reasoning by accident, non-human animals lack such capacities by nature. Here we should also note that to the extent that humans lack capacities for moral reasoning, their moral rights, and especially the right to freedom, are also correspondingly restricted. Now what about human beings who never mature psychologically and who are deprived of capacities for moral reasoning throughout their whole lives? Would they not be in the same category as non-human animals as regards capacities for agency and for possession of moral rights? However, cases like these would not invalidate the conclusion that humans in

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general have capacities for moral reasoning that non-human animals do not have. We are considering and comparing humans in general and non-­ human animals in general here, rather than individual humans and individual animals. When we try to assess truths about capabilities at the level of species, we should focus on aspects that are typical of a particular species, rather than allowing ourselves to be confused by untypical cases; we should be looking for the rule, not the exception. Moreover, even in the case of humans who are permanently deprived of capacities for moral reasoning, this deprivation is accidental rather than natural. Hence, they still share a moral community with the rest of us and we can see them as humans who would have been like the rest of us had they not been the victims of some unusual physical or mental disorder. These unfortunate individuals have been accidentally deprived of capacities for moral reasoning that human beings normally would have and that non-human animals would never have possessed in the first place, even under the best of natural conditions. Rejecting the idea that non-human animals should have their interests protected by legal rights, Richard Cupp argues that animal rights defenders can gain very little from comparing animals with marginal cases of human beings, such as children and mentally impaired persons. Certainly, he observes, while “children on the whole have greater potential for eventually attaining practical autonomy”, the same cannot be said of mentally impaired adults: “However, mentally incapable adults with absolutely no potential for practical autonomy are relatively rare. Most mentally impaired adults have some significant degree of autonomy despite their impairment” (Cupp 2013, 49). Hence, even when marginal cases are brought into the discussion of animal rights, the difference between human agents and non-human animals remains too substantial to admit of animal rights, whether moral or legal. Now, if an individual human being, due to some severe mental disorder, loses her capacity for voluntary and purposive behaviour—that is, her capacity for agency—her rights will be diminished to a corresponding degree. Still, she must not be treated as a thing or as a farm animal to be used for work or meat production. She must be treated with the respect due to a human being who would have been an agent, had it not been for certain unfortunate circumstances. Here a justified form of speciesism applies. Because of the intimate connection between being human and being an agent, the respect owed to agents (as part of their right to wellbeing) cannot be detached from the respect owed to human beings as

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such; hence, a human being is owed respect even when she is deprived of her capacity for agency. When I endorse moral rights to freedom and well-being as a logical implication of recognizing that I am an agent for whom freedom and well-­ being are necessary goods, I reason from the point of view of a human agent—not from any species-neutral agent’s point of view. I reason, that is, from the perspective of typically human physical and psychological needs, and not from the perspective of needs that are had by all animals— human as well as non-human. There is no other way I could approach agency and agency-related needs than from my own perspective as a human agent. Of course, I could try to imagine what it would be like for a cat, or a bat, or a spider to enjoy their respective kinds of life. However, this would still not be the cat’s, or the bat’s, or the spider’s experience of their respective needs, but a human representation of these needs. As Thomas Nagel has pointed out, “I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. Yet if I try to imagine this, I am restricted to the resources of my own mind, and those resources are inadequate to the task” (Nagel 1979, 169; emphasis in the original). Of course, it could be argued that the same conclusion applies to our capacity to understand other human beings whose conditions of life are sufficiently different from our own. For instance, how can I know what it is like for another human being to be born blind if I do not share that particular experience myself? However, what is required in the case of a human born blind is not an identification with her specific conditions of life but rather a general understanding of human agency. Even if I cannot fully understand what it would be like to have been born blind, I can still understand what being blind would mean for any human’s capacity for successful agency. And it is this general understanding of human agency that is required for a universalization of agency-related needs into a moral principle of human rights to freedom and well-being. As human agents we are aware of the many ways in which human agency differs from animal behaviour. For one thing, human agency is generally more diversified than animal behaviour. Human agency involves highly specialized purposes, such as building houses and cities, training to become a dentist, making maps, creating art and philosophy, or developing new kinds of communication technology, while the agency of non-­ human animals usually involves a more limited repertoire related to finding food and bringing up offspring. The history of human agency is one of

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development—we live under different social, technological, and medical conditions than our ancestors did—while the history of non-human animal behaviour is one of repetition, governed by natural instincts that allow for a limited range of flexibility: “Most animals rely on innate skills rather than learning from each other, and their culture is not cumulative—unlike our technologies, the simple tools used by animals do not appear to have improved significantly over the past few million years” (Vince 2019, 9). Human life is dynamic, while animal life, viewed over time and over generations, is much more static. Non-human animals do not to try to change the conditions of their life; instead they just repeatedly reaffirm them, generation after generation, by going on living as their ancestors have done before them, trying to adapt to external changes of their environment but not attempting to bring about changes of their own. This is also an indication that non-human animals are not agents, at least not in the fullest sense of the term, as that would involve trying to improve one’s conditions of life rather than just passively accepting them as they are. An agent, according to the Gewirthian view that I am outlining here, is a subject who controls her behaviour in accordance with her unforced choice; she is not controlled and limited by inherited instincts to the same extent as non-human animals are, nor is she caught up in a comprehensive pattern of repetition caused by such instincts. Consequently, animal rights advocates cannot benefit from the Gewirthian agency-based argument to human rights, since non-human animals fail to fulfil the conditions of being agents, capable of recognizing rights as well as duties relating to the necessary conditions of successful agency. Of course, supporters of animal rights might object that the Gewirthian theorizing about moral rights rests on anthropocentric assumptions about agency and so cannot provide a fair and unbiased framework for a discussion of animal rights. However, if it is morality and moral rights and moral duties we intend to discuss, we cannot escape anthropocentrism, since morality is a typically human way of understanding and relating to the world. We may try to extend and expand our moral thinking from its anthropocentric origins, but we can never formulate a morality that leaves anthropocentrism behind: “Some form of anthropocentrism is a necessary presupposition of any moral theory or moral discourse: no agents, no morality” (O’Neill 1998, 217). Whether or not we are animal rights advocates we remain human beings and it is as human agents we approach the very issue of animal rights.

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References Cupp, R.L. 2013. Children, Chimps, and Rights: Arguments From ‘Marginal’ Cases. Arizona State Law Journal 45 (1): 1–52. Nagel, T. 1979. Mortal Questions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. O’Neill, O. 1998. Kant on Duties Regarding Nonrational Nature. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, vol. 72: 211–228. London: The Aristotelian Society. Vince, G. 2019. Transcendence. London: Allen Lane.

CHAPTER 8

In Defence of a Speciesist View of the Moral Community

Abstract  We do not share a moral community with non-human animals. To be a member of a moral community involves being at least potentially capable of having a conception of right and wrong and of recognizing mutual duties as well as mutual rights. We should distinguish between the amoral order of nature, according to which each species tries to survive and flourish according to its natural instincts, and the moral order of human agency, according to which human agents and their human recipients have rights to freedom and well-being. When human agents interact with non-human animals, their actions are not constrained by any moral rights had by these animals; hence, humans are morally permitted to eat animal meat. Keywords  Amoral nature • Human agency • Moral community • Meat-eating The approach outlined so far is not only anthropocentric but also speciesist in that it results in a conclusion according to which humans but not non-­ human animals have moral rights; however, the fact that a conclusion is speciesist does not make it automatically invalid. On the contrary, there might be good reasons for us to defend a speciesist view of morality:

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Although animals have more cognitive ability than was once believed, the gulf between animal consciousness and human consciousness remains wide. Further, recent scientific research about fundamental differences between human minds and animal minds challenges the notion that the more we learn about animal minds, the more we will understand that they are capable of thinking like we think. Being a speciesist is good, not bad, when substantial differences exist between species. (Cupp 2013, 51)

We do not share a moral community with non-human animals. To be a member of a moral community involves being at least potentially capable of having a conception of right and wrong and of recognizing mutual duties as well as mutual rights. Human agents may project their ideas of moral rights on non-human animals, but that does not mean that these non-human animals are capable of understanding what is involved in having rights. Most importantly, they will not be able to reciprocate the rights assigned to them by recognizing any corresponding duties. Humans may assign rights to wolves and sharks, but wolves and sharks will not recognize any rights of humans. Animals do not think of themselves as right-­ holders, nor do they view themselves as having duties to other animals or to humans. Now, the inability to conceive of oneself as a holder of duties is one more reason why non-human animals are not agents in the sense needed to justify having moral rights in the first place. To think of oneself as a holder of duties towards others involves being able to form an intention to act towards these others in certain ways prescribed by the duties in question. Such an ability, in turn, involves going beyond the impulses and reactions caused by immediate and occurrent stimuli and to control one’s behaviour in accordance with a perceived responsibility to protect or further the interests of others. To be able to envisage oneself as having such a responsibility is a capacity typically possessed by human agents; however, equally typically, it is not possessed by non-human animals. Now, non-human animals may certainly behave in a way that suggests that they have a sense of responsibility, at least for other members of their species, as they react to stimuli in their immediate vicinity. For instance, a pack of wolves may attack a black bear that comes too close to their pups, and if the wolves track a herd of caribou, they will likely hunt them and kill some caribou that they manage to separate from the rest of the herd. However, all this behaviour is governed by natural instincts; the joint

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efforts of the individual wolves protecting and providing for their pack are not based on any idea of duties that they owe to the pack (and certainly not involving any idea of rights possessed by bears or caribou). The wolves react to stimuli in their near environment as they are programmed by nature and their inherited instincts of self-preservation to do. This is what their ancestors did and this is what their offspring will do. Human agents, on the other hand, are capable of overcoming such immediate and spontaneous responses for the sake of achieving goals that they believe are valuable or morally justified. For instance, humans who believe they have a duty to protect biodiversity might reject what would otherwise be a natural impulse and refrain from killing wolves that attack their sheep and instead try to build better fences to ward off future wolf attacks. Whether or not there is a human duty to protect biodiversity and to whom such a duty is owed are important questions in their own right, but they are not relevant here. The important point is instead that human agency involves the capacity to reflect not only on the features of the situation at hand but also on how to best respond to that situation; most important, it involves a capacity to act from moral motives that is very different from the natural instincts guiding non-human animal behaviour. Hence, I would argue that not only is human agency a necessary condition of having moral rights, but it is also a necessary condition of morality itself. There can be no morality, in the sense of a system of rules or principles prescribing certain forms of conduct and prohibiting other forms of conduct, unless there are beings who are capable of choosing to conform to such prescriptions and prohibitions because they believe this is the right thing to do. That is, there must be beings with a capacity for moral deliberation. Without a capacity for moral deliberation there can be no morality, and without human agency there can be no capacity for moral deliberation. Now, the above argument about the moral community is undeniably speciesist in that it makes the possession of typically human capacities for moral reasoning a necessary condition of membership in that community. However, this should come as no surprise, given that morality itself only exists as a typically human way of relating to reality, involving not only a recognition of the possibility of agency but also an understanding that agency can be exercised in ways that are morally right or morally wrong. Nothing similar takes place within the non-human animal domain.

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8.1   The Amoral Order of Nature As we know, non-human animals of certain predatory species kill and eat other non-human animals of other species (and sometimes they also kill and occasionally eat humans). Given this fact, what is so wrong with humans killing and eating non-human animals? The argument that other animals kill and eat out of instinct while we have a choice in the matter is not really relevant here, since the general complaint against human killings of animals takes its point of departure in the experiences of the prey animal and the loss it suffers, not in the motives of the predator. And, as Martha Nussbaum points out, “[t]he death of a gazelle after painful torture is just as bad for the gazelle when torture is inflicted by a tiger as when it is done by a human being” (Nussbaum 2007, 379). Nature has no problem with carnivores and omnivores eating other animals, so why should human agents make it a problem for themselves? After all, from the point of view of the victims (the prey animals) it is not worse to be killed by human agents than by non-human animals. And if it does not make a difference to them, why should it matter to us? Our thinking about these matters is likely to be complicated by the fact that there seem to be two different normative orders, one regulating the behaviour of both human and non-human animals, the other regulating only the actions of human agents. On the one hand, there is the amoral order of nature, according to which each species tries to survive and flourish according to its natural instincts; on the other hand, there is the moral order of human agency, according to which human agents and their human recipients have rights to freedom and well-being. Human agents, being also creatures of nature, belong to both orders, and outside the area regulated by human rights nothing would seem to prohibit them from acting in accordance with the amoral order of nature. Human agents act in accordance with the amoral order of nature when they feed on animal meat. This is what goes on in nature all the time, and human meat-eaters are in this sense no different from any other omnivore. Moral judgements, being reserved for the community of human agents and recipients, do not apply to humans killing and eating non-human animals, any more than they apply to wolves killing and eating sheep. Humans who eat animal meat can take some comfort (if they happen to feel they need it) from the fact that what they do is “natural” in one of the most basic senses of that term.

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Contrary to what some animal liberationists believe, I think Benjamin Franklin made a good point when he pondered whether or not it would be morally permissible for him to eat fish: “I balanced some time between principle and inclination till recollecting that when fish were opened, I saw smaller fish taken out of their stomachs. ‘Then’, thought I, ‘if you eat one another, I don’t see why we mayn’t eat you.’ So I dined upon cod very heartily and have since continued to eat as other people, returning only now and then occasionally to a vegetable diet” (Franklin 1969, 26; for criticism of Franklin’s views, see Singer 1975, 228). According to the amoral order of nature, members of predator species, acting in accordance with their natural instincts, kill and eat members of prey species, and moral concepts of right and wrong do not apply to what they do. “Visible nature is all plasticity and indifference”, wrote William James, adding: “To such a harlot we owe no allegiance; with her as a whole we can establish no moral communion; and we are free in our dealings with her several parts to obey or destroy, and to follow no law but that of prudence in coming to terms with such of her particular features as will help us to our private ends” (James 2017, 43–44). Belonging to a later age, more sensitive about environmental degradation, we might be reluctant to agree with James that we are free to destroy nature. However, even when we take care to preserve our natural environment, we do it—and should do it—not because animals or nature themselves have rights, but because we will hurt our own long-term interest if we allow the air, the waters, and the soil from which we harvest our food to be polluted. This is probably also what James has in mind when he refers to a law of prudence. That nature is very far from being a source of moral behaviour was also pointed out by John Stuart Mill as he observed that “nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another are nature’s everyday performances” (Mill 1958, 20). Mill’s words are echoed in the observation made by the environmental ethicist Holmes Rolston III that “[n]ature proceeds with an absolute recklessness that is not only indifferent to life, but results in senseless cruelty which is repugnant to our moral sensibilities” (Rolston 1979, 17). To Rolston it is obvious that nature is amoral “because morality appears in humans alone and is not, and has never been, present on the natural scene. Human conduct may be moral or immoral, but the ‘conduct’ of nature, if indeed it can be called that, is simply amoral” (Rolston 1979, 16). Nature does not know of any norms or values; it is indifferent to peace and beauty as well as to death and

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suffering, being “red in tooth and claw”, as Tennyson wrote. The evaluation of what goes on in nature as good or bad, beautiful or ugly, harmonious or violent, originates only from within a human perspective. It is we who assign to nature its evaluative properties. Respecting nature requires that we recognize the differences and not only the similarities between us and non-human animals. We should be careful not to apply moral standards where they do not belong. Morality has its given application when we evaluate inter-human agency, but non-­ human animals function according to instincts that have nothing to do with human conceptions of right and wrong. According to Rolston, caring for non-human animals makes us prone to the mistake of ascribing rights and other moral interests to them: To treat wild animals with compassion learned in culture does not appreciate their wildness. ... Animals can, by human adoption, receive some of the protections of culture, which happens when we domesticate them, but neither pets nor food animals enter the culture that shelters them. ... Can they talk? and Can they reason?  – indicating cultural capacities  – are relevant questions; not just, Can they suffer? ... Something about treating sheep and cougars as the equals of humans seems to elevate them unnaturally and not to value them for what they are. There is something insufficiently discriminating in such judgments; they are species-blind in a bad sense, blind to the real differences between species, valuational differences that do count morally. (Rolston 1991, 76)

As June Dwyer has pointed out, “[m]ost animals don’t care about us nearly as much as we care about them” (Dwyer 2007, 73). Animal rights activists sometimes forget, ignore, or dismiss the fundamental differences that exist between us and non-human animals for the sake of achieving a sense of community with them. Especially when activists want to treat wild animals like companions, the outcome can be tragic. Recounting the story of Timothy Treadwell, who together with his girlfriend Amie Huguenard was killed by one of the Alaskan grizzly bears he wanted to live with, Dwyer notes how Treadwell’s childlike identification with the bears led him astray: “[H]e lacked the sense of their complex otherness that intellectual inquiry would have taught him” (Dwyer 2007, 87). Timothy Treadwell was also the protagonist of Werner Herzog’s film Grizzly Man. In the film Herzog, although fascinated with Treadwell, voices a critical view of his project and its underpinning beliefs. Herzog

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“looks at a bear’s face and coldly opines that he discovers in it ‘no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature ... a half-bored interest in food’” (Dwyer 2007, 81). Others have taken a different view of the bear in the Treadwell case. David Lulka, a writer more sympathetic to Treadwell, has argued that the story of Grizzly Man rather supports the idea that grizzlies too are agents, making purposive choices: Treadwell’s death was not an inevitable, beastly act of consumption, but rather an act of omnivory that reflected grizzly agency by virtue of its flexibility. ... The act of carnivory was natural, but it was only a specific selection within an omnivore’s diet, a selection that requires agency. The grizzly is not an agent because it kills a man, but rather because it elects to kill a man amid a collection of other edible entities. (Lulka 2009, 86)

However, that an animal exhibits the kind of flexibility that its natural instincts have provided it with does not make it an agent in the sense that I have relied on here. A genetically inherited capacity for omnivorous flexibility is not by itself sufficient for anyone to be categorized as an agent. Now, in all fairness, Lulka admits that humans and grizzlies are not agents in the same way: Treadwell cannot be criticized for diminishing the significance of animal agency, for he is willing to grant grizzlies as much agency as humans. Yet, in part, this is exactly the problem. ... [B]y blurring distinctions, Treadwell distorts and homogenizes the character of nonhuman agency. ... Anthropomorphism is thus a double-edged sword, for it permits humans to bond with other animals, yet prevents the development of a more comprehensive understanding of animal agency, one that is receptive toward points of divergence from humanity. (Lulka 2009, 71–72)

Now, presumably Lulka would not hold that animals are agents in the sense of that term that I have outlined here. Following Gewirth, I mean by an agent someone who is capable of controlling her behaviour in the way presupposed by morality, that is, someone who is capable of adjusting her behaviour in accordance with what she believes is morally right or wrong, and unlike a being who is instead controlled by its instincts, impulses, and urges. Hence, in spite of Lulka’s reference to “animal agency”, I will assume that our disagreement is terminological rather than substantial.

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The moral community of human agents is situated within the larger amoral order of nature as an isolated enclave of moral rights and duties. As human agents interact with non-human animals, the normative structure of human agency with its human rights and human duties does not apply. However, the amoral order of nature is not the only order that applies to human agents as they interact with non-human animals. After all, human agents are capable of acting in accordance with moral standards, and they do not lose this capability when interacting with non-human animals. This leaves us with a complex normative picture of human agents interacting with non-human animals. On the one hand, human agents are aware of their own status as holders of moral rights to freedom and well-­ being. As such they are also aware of having a duty not to violate any other human agent’s freedom and well-being. On the other hand, when human agents interact with non-human animals, their actions are not constrained by any moral rights had by these animals. Instead humans are free to behave in accordance with the amoral order of nature as just one animal species among others, following only precepts of prudence, and taking an instrumental view of the value of members of other species. However, this does not mean that human interaction with animals is not constrained at all by moral requirements, as we will see in the next chapter. In order to clarify how the amoral order of nature combines with the moral order of human agency, let us first take a look at the contentious issue of human meat-eating, that is, the issue involving human agents hunting, farming, and killing non-human animals for the sake of eating meat.

8.2   The Case for Eating Meat So far, I have argued that non-human animals have no moral rights, and that it is morally no worse if a human agent kills and eats a sheep than if a wolf does it. Humans who kill and eat non-human animals only act in accordance with the amoral order of nature, which applies to them as well as to all other species. However, could there also be a moral justification of meat-eating? Does human well-being—that is, the kind of well-being that all human agents must claim as their right—require meat-eating? This would, at a first glance, seem doubtful. After all, although 86 per cent of the world’s human population eat meat (Buchholz 2021), there are still plenty of people who voluntarily abstain from meat and yet manage to have good lives. So why should we assume that the human right to well-being justifies the killing and eating

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of non-human animals? Perhaps eating meat is just a cultural artefact, once associated with wealth or warrior heroes, and therefore associated with social status? It has been argued that “meat consumption has been leveraged for notable social purposes, such as to demonstrate cultural status and superiority” (Chiles and Fitzgerald 2018, 14). If that is the only reason why we want to eat meat, it could be argued that we should learn how to satisfy our desires in ways that do not bring death and suffering to non-­ human animals. However, if eating meat derived its attraction just from the fact that in the past only elites could afford it, then one must wonder why it did not go out of fashion at the same time as wearing monocles and other antiquated forms of conspicuous consumption disappeared. Obviously, there is also something in meat-eating itself that speaks to the human senses and makes it difficult to give up, even when there is a lot of public concern about its possible health risks. It has been observed that “[i]n general, consumers tend to consider meat to be a healthy and important component of the diet” and that “even vegetarian dishes often include some vegetables prepared as if they were meat, and vegetarian restaurants frequently design their dishes by making them appear similar to meat dishes” (Font-i-Furnols and Guerrero 2014, 363). We should also bear in mind that not every human in the world has the time, money, and skills needed to become a vegetarian or a vegan (Morgan 2021). Besides, basic human well-being involves more than mere survival. It also includes that one is capable of functioning well as an agent. While there is certainly much to be said for the positive impact on human health of a diet that includes fresh vegetables, fruit, beans, and nuts, it has been observed that a diet based only on vegetarian or vegan principles might have an adverse impact on, for instance, human bone health (Galchenko et al. 2021). Likewise, recent research suggests that depression and anxiety are less prevalent among meat consumers than among those who completely abstain from eating meat (Dobersek et al. 2021). Now, vegetarians have been found to have a lower prevalence of diabetes than omnivores, and their diet has been associated with better weight control and possibly also with the prevention of certain forms of cancer (Hargreaves et  al. 2021). On the other hand, a large Australian study, involving more than 260,000 men and women above the age of 45, could detect “no statistically significant difference in the risk of mortality between vegetarians and non-vegetarians” (Mihrshahi et  al. 2017, 3). A recent Oxford study suggests that while vegetarians and vegans indeed have

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lower risks of ischaemic heart disease than meat eaters, vegetarians and vegans also had higher risks of haemorrhagic and total stroke than meat eaters (Tong et al. 2019). A recent empirical study, criticizing some earlier research on the topic, concludes that “meat intake is positively associated with life expectancy” (You et al. 2022, 1847). So let us assume that from the point of view of human well-being, a reasonable claim would be that there is at least nothing wrong with eating meat. On the contrary, it might well be that meat-eating, at least if it is not excessive and if it is combined with eating vegetables, fruits, and nuts, might contribute to our functioning well as agents. Hence, it would not be wrong, at least not in any obvious sense, to claim that the human right to well-being involves having access to meat. Hence, even from the point of view of an ethics of care, obligating us to be sympathetic to non-human animals, it would be recognized that “[w]e might justifiably set aside our sympathies for animals where our own lives or functioning are threatened or can only be sustained by taking or limiting the lives of animals” (Engster 2006, 526). Now, it should be noted that some of the moral arguments relating to meat-eating are not only permissive, in the sense that they recognize a right to eat meat, but think of meat-eating as a commendable or even mandatory activity, given its benefit not only to humans but also to non-­ human animals. One line of argument simply denies that animals are capable of having moral standing and that it hence could not be morally wrong to kill and eat them. Hence, we do not need to bring in considerations of how meat-eating can benefit human well-being, since we do not need to justify meat-eating morally in the first place: “Since animals lack moral status, it is not wrong to eat meat, even if this is not essential to nutrition” (Hsiao 2015, 278). This position is close to the one I have advocated myself, with the important difference that I believe we do have (indirect) moral duties regarding how we treat animals even if the animals themselves do not have any moral rights. (I will outline this argument in the next chapter.) A recent development within animal ethics is new omnivorism, a concept originally developed by Andy Lamey (2019). New omnivorism centres around the argument that a strictly vegan diet would bring more harm to non-human animals than would a mixed diet, based on meat as well as on plants. This is so, since a vast number of field animals are accidentally killed or harmed by the methods used in industrialized arable agriculture, involving pesticides, field traps, land clearing, and mechanical harvesting

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(Davis 2003). New omnivorism is different from what has been called “compassionate carnivorism”, according to which we are morally permitted to eat meat, provided that we make sure that animals are not exposed to any needless suffering as we farm and slaughter them. (A related term is “conscientious carnivorism”, referring to the double position that there is nothing morally wrong with meat-eating in itself and that we should do what we can to get rid of factory farming and cruelty towards the animals that we eat (Shahar 2021).) New omnivorism, on the other hand, defends meat-eating not because of the benefits it brings to us, but because of the benefits it brings to the animal population at large. That is, it holds that “we should eat animal products for the sake of animals” (Milburn and Bobier 2022, 8; emphasis in the original). Another kind of moral argument for meat-eating is provided by Nick Zangwill. Like the new omnivores, he argues that we are not only allowed to eat animal meat, but we should (morally) do so: “Eating nonhuman animal meat is not merely permissible but also good. It is what we ought to do, and it is our moral duty” (Zangwill 2021, 295). However, Zangwill justifies his argument in a historical perspective rather than in one looking to the future well-being of humans and animals. The duty to eat animal meat is based on the assumption that not only we but also the farm animals that we kill and eat have in the past and up to now benefitted from the very practice of meat-eating: “Domesticated animals exist in the numbers that they do only if there is a practice of eating them. For example, the many millions of sheep in New Zealand would not begin to survive in the wild. They exist only because we have a practice of eating them. The meat-eating practice benefits them greatly. Therefore, we should eat them” (Zangwill 2021, 295). Zangwill does not deny that some farm animals have bad lives, but many such animals also have good lives, and they would not exist and have these good lives unless humans wanted to eat them. “We are in ongoing symbiotic relationships with many types of animals (such as cows, sheep, and chickens), and there are long-standing practices whereby we benefit them and they benefit us. It is as if we were in a relationship of friendship with them – and that is why we should eat them!” (Zangwill 2021, 299). According to Zangwill, “carnivorism is and has been highly beneficial to both the eater and the eaten”, and “if most human beings became vegetarians or vegans, it would be the greatest disaster ever for animal kind since an asteroid strike precipitated an ice age that wiped out the dinosaurs and many other species” (Zangwill 2021, 300–301).

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Being killed and eaten is the price that domesticated animals pay for having reaped the benefit of existing in the first place and for being cared for and protected by humans: “At the time of death, the benefit a particular sheep has reaped is in the past. Now is the time for this sheep to pay” (Zangwill 2021, 307). And eating meat is the price presently existing humans—including vegans—should pay for having benefitted from their ancestors’ practice of meat-eating: “Almost all modern vegans would not exist if their ancestors had not eaten meat. Vegans depend for their existence on their forebears who virtuously benefitted animals and who reaped benefits themselves from the carnivorous practice. Therefore, vegans are individually bound by the same collective duty to eat meat as the rest of us” (Zangwill 2021, 308). According to Zangwill, our duty to eat meat involves a conception of justice. The practice of meat-eating has been beneficial to us as well as to the animals that we eat, and in recognition of the benefits of meat-eating we owe it to ourselves and to the animals to continue to eat them. Zangwill is clear that his argument is a historical one: “We eat the animals that have benefitted out of respect for the past—a matter of honor, if you like” (Zangwill 2021, 307). Of course, at the moment in which it is about to be killed in the abattoir, the animal does not benefit from the practice of meat-eating, but “due to the history of benefit, it is just that the animal should die even though it is not to its benefit at that point” (Zangwill 2021, 305). If Zangwill had been content to argue that meat-eating is morally permissible, he would indeed have a case. It could be argued that if there exist more animals with reasonably good lives because of the human practice of meat-eating than there would be if we all turned into vegans, then this would at least to some extent undermine the force of the animal rights argument against meat-eating. However, he wants to make the stronger point that we have a moral duty to eat meat from non-human animals, and this is a tall order indeed. Zangwill’s argument suggests that meat-eaters have a right to impose their dietary habits on vegans just because meat-eating in the past has generated certain benefits to humans as well as to animals. However, a practice, however beneficial, cannot generate moral duties regarding its continuation unless it is freely undertaken and respectful of the rights of those involved in it or concerned by it. It does not suffice to point to the benefits we or previous generations have reaped from it. I may have benefitted from my parents’ and grandparents’ successful business ventures,

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and others might possibly benefit if I were to continue with the same kind of commercial activities, but this does not mean that I am under any moral obligation to become a businessman. If I choose to follow my inclination and take up a career in philosophy instead, I have every right to do so and no one can fault me for having neglected any moral duties by discontinuing the line of work chosen by my forebears. The same goes for any decision I might make to quit eating meat. My right to freedom could only be restricted if I used it to infringe similarly important moral rights of others, but as my choice not to eat meat does not force any meat-eater to give up her meat-eating, my right to freedom would remain intact here. Now, before concluding this section, I would like to make it clear that I am aware that there are several other arguments against meat-eating than the ones about human well-being that I have mentioned here. However, not all of them relate to the topic of the present book. Hence, I am not addressing what we may call “climate reasons” for giving up meat-eating, that is, reasons based on the contribution to the heating of the planet made by emissions coming from animals that exist only for the sake of providing humans with meat. For instance, it has been pointed out that “[t]he global food system” generates about one quarter of all human made greenhouse gases, and that “[l]ivestock ... is responsible for more than half of food’s greenhouse gas emissions” (Garnett 2021). The present book focuses on arguments relating to human and animal well-being, the moral standing of animals, and so on. Arguments from climate protection against meat-eating are not grounded in a concern for animal well-­ being, but in a concern for planetary well-being. Hence, climate arguments against meat-eating will not be discussed here.

References Buchholz, K. 2021. Eating Meat Is the Norm Almost Everywhere. Statista, Statista Inc. https://www.statista.com/chart/24899/meat-­consumption-­by-­ country/ Accessed on 15 Dec 2022. Chiles, R.M., and A.J. Fitzgerald. 2018. Why Is Meat So Important in Western History and Culture? A Genealogical Critique of Biophysical and Political-­ economic Explanations. Agriculture and Human Values 35 (1): 1–17. Cupp, R.L. 2013. Children, Chimps, and Rights: Arguments From ‘Marginal’ Cases. Arizona State Law Journal 45 (1): 1–52.

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Davis, S.L. 2003. The Least Harm Principle May Require That Humans Consume a Diet Containing Large Herbivores, Not a Vegan Diet. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 16 (4): 387–394. Dobersek, U., G. Wy, J. Adkins, S. Altmeyer, K. Krout, C.J. Lavie, and E. Archer. 2021. Meat and Mental Health: A Systematic Review of Meat Abstention and Depression, Anxiety, and Related Phenomena. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition 61 (4): 622–635. Dwyer, J. 2007. A Non-companion Species Manifesto: Humans, Wild Animals, and ‘The Pain of Anthropomorphism’. South Atlantic Review 72 (3): 73–89. Engster, D. 2006. Care Ethics and Animal Welfare. Journal of Social Philosophy 37 (4): 521–536. Font-i-Furnols, M., and L. Guerrero. 2014. Consumer Preference, Behavior and Perception About Meat and Meat Products: An Overview. Meat Science 98: 361–371. Franklin, B. 1969. In Benjamin Franklin: An Autobiographical Portrait, ed. A. Tamarin. New York, NY: Macmillan Company. Galchenko, A., K. Gapparova, and E. Sidorova. 2021. The Influence of Vegetarian and Vegan Diets on the State of Bone Mineral Density in Humans. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/ 10408398.2021.1996330 Garnett, E. 2021. Meat Eating Is a Big Climate Issue – But It Isn’t Getting the Attention It Deserves. The Conversation, November 9, 2021. https://theconversation.com/meat-­e ating-­i s-­a -­b ig-­c limate-­i ssue-­b ut-­i snt-­g etting-­t he-­ attention-­it-­deserves-­170855 Accessed 15 Dec 2022. Hargreaves, S.M., A.  Raposo, A.  Saraiva, and R.  Puppin Zandonali. 2021. Vegetarian Diet: An Overview Through the Perspective of Quality of Life Domains. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18 (8): 4067. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18084067. Hsiao, T. 2015. In Defense of Eating Meat. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 28 (2): 277–291. James, W. 2017. Is Life Worth Living? In The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, 32–62. New York, NY: Dover Publications. Lamey, A. 2019. Duty and the Beast. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lulka, D. 2009. Consuming Timothy Treadwell: Redefining Nonhuman Agency in Light of Herzog’s Grizzly Man. In Animals and Agency: An Interdisciplinary Exploration, ed. S.E. McFarland and R. Hediger, 67–87. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill. Milburn, J., and C. Bobier. 2022. New Omnivorism: A Novel Approach to Food and Animal Ethics. Food Ethics 7 (5): 1–17. Mill, J.S. 1958. Nature. In Nature and Utility of Religion, ed. G.  Nakhnikian, 3–44. Indianapolis, IN and New York, NY: The Liberal Arts Press.

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Mihrshahi, S., D. Ding, J. Gale, M. Allman-Farinelli, E. Banks, and A.E. Bauman. 2017. Vegetarian Diet and All-cause Mortality: Evidence from a Large Population-based Australian Cohort  – the 45 and Up Study. Preventive Medicine 97: 1–7. Morgan, C. 2021. Why Veganism Can Be Associated with Classism. The Vegan Review, February 16, 2021. https://theveganreview.com/veganism-­associated-­ with-­classism/ Accessed 15 Dec 2022. Nussbaum, M. 2007. Frontiers of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Rolston, H. 1979. Can and Ought We to Follow Nature? Environmental Ethics 1 (1): 7–30. ———. 1991. Environmental Ethics: Values in and Duties to the Natural World. In Ecology, Economics, Ethics: The Broken Circle, ed. F.H.  Bormann and S.R. Kellert, 73–96. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Shahar, D.C. 2021. Why It’s OK to Eat Meat. Abingdon and New  York, NY: Routledge. Singer, P. 1975. Animal Liberation. New York: Random House. Tong, T.Y.N., P.N.  Appleby, K.E.  Bradbury, A.  Perez-Cornago, R.C.  Travis, R. Clarke, and T.J. Key. 2019. Risks of Ischaemic Heart Disease and Stroke in Meat Eaters, Fish Eaters, and Vegetarians Over 18 Years of Follow-up: Results from the Prospective EPIC-Oxford Study. BMJ 366 (8212): l4897. https:// doi.org/10.1136/bmj.14897. You, W., R. Henneberg, A. Saniotis, Y. Ge, and M. Henneberg. 2022. Total Meat Intake Is Associated with Life Expectancy: A Cross-Sectional Data Analysis of 175 Contemporary Populations. International Journal of General Medicine 15: 1833–1851. Zangwill, N. 2021. Our Moral Duty to Eat Meat. Journal of the American Philosophical Association 7 (3): 295–311.

CHAPTER 9

Duties Regarding Animals and the Virtue of Justice

Abstract  A Gewirthian can offer an indirect argument why wanton cruelty towards non-human animals is morally wrong, without having to rely on the assumption that these animals themselves are holders of moral rights. Such a Gewirthian would accept that humans have a duty not to subject animals to wanton acts of cruelty. This duty is an indirect one. The human agent’s direct duty is to respect her human recipients’ rights to freedom and well-being. In order for her to facilitate the fulfilment of this duty, she has an indirect duty to inculcate in herself the virtue of justice, which in turn requires of her that she should refrain from all acts of cruelty, including such acts of cruelty that have non-human animals as their intended victims. Keywords  Gewirth • Virtues • Justice • Cruelty • Innocence The fact that non-human animals do not have moral rights does not mean that we are morally permitted to treat them in just any way we please. As human agents, we have other duties than those based on the rights of others (whether these others are humans or non-human animals). In this chapter, I will argue that a moral duty regarding the non-infliction of wanton pain and suffering on non-human animals can be derived from a more fundamental duty we have to ourselves as rational human agents, namely, the duty to cultivate the virtue of justice. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Bauhn, Animal Suffering, Human Rights, and the Virtue of Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27048-2_9

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Now, justice is not only “the first virtue of social institutions” (Rawls 1972, 3), but also, as Aristotle once pointed out, a character trait of individuals “that disposes them to perform just acts, and behave in a just manner, and wish for what is just” (Aristotle 1976, 171 [1129a]). Hence, the virtue of justice depends for its content on an idea of what is involved in actions to which we apply the term “just”. As my argument so far has been inspired by Alan Gewirth’s theory of human rights, I would like to revert to his theory for an account of the virtue of justice. Gewirth distinguishes between, on the one hand, the prudential virtues of courage, temperance, and prudence and, on the other hand, the moral virtue of justice. The prudential virtues belong to the necessary goods of agency as they make agents more efficient in successfully achieving their ends. And since agents should act in accordance with the generic rights of their recipients as well as of themselves, they have a duty to themselves to develop these virtues for themselves. However, for these prudential virtues to be also morally justified, “they must be guided by or at least be subordinate to the other-regarding virtue of justice as this is embodied in the PGC” (Gewirth 1978, 243). Accordingly, the virtue of justice is defined as a disposition to act in accordance with the PGC, that is, as a disposition to act with respect for one’s recipients’ freedom and well-being. To develop such a virtue of justice in oneself is a duty prescribed and justified by reason (applied to the normative structure of human agency) as well as by the PGC. As Gewirth himself points out, the PGC “requires that the agent act in such ways that he develops the moral and prudential virtues in himself, because of the assistance such development provides for his fulfillment of the various moral duties of action prescribed by the PGC” (Gewirth 1978, 244). If reason requires of me that I should act in accord with my recipients’ rights to freedom and well-being, and if my acting in accord with my recipients’ rights requires my willingness to do so, then reason also requires of me that I develop in myself that willingness. That willingness, and its habitual expression in one’s actions, is what is involved in the virtue of justice. Now, given this account of the virtue of justice, it could also be plausibly argued that a just agent should refrain from all acts of wanton cruelty, regardless of whether such acts are directed against humans or non-human animals. Hence, a Gewirthian can offer an indirect argument, similar to the one given by Kant, why wanton cruelty towards non-human animals is morally wrong, without having to rely on the assumption that these animals

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themselves are holders of moral rights. Such a Gewirthian would then reject what Gewirth himself says about animals being rights-holders but still accept his conclusion that humans have a duty not to subject animals to wanton acts of cruelty. This duty, however, is an indirect one. The human agent’s direct duty is to respect her human recipients’ rights to freedom and well-being, and in order for her to facilitate the fulfilment of this duty, she has an indirect duty to inculcate in herself the virtue of justice, and the fulfilment of that indirect duty in turn requires of her that she should refrain from all acts of cruelty, including acts of cruelty directed against non-human animals. The virtue of justice involves recognizing moral concepts such as desert and responsibility, and distinctions such as the one between guilt and innocence. Without such concepts and distinctions, an agent would be unable to differentiate between recipients who need her support or at least her non-interference with their rights, and recipients who, on the contrary, should be restrained and punished. Among other things, for an agent to be committed to the virtue of justice requires that she refrain from all actions that involve subjecting innocent beings to cruelty. A just agent is not a pacifist, and she is not reluctant to inflict punishment on guilty criminals. Nor is she against the killing of non-human animals to provide herself or other humans with necessary nutrition. But she will refrain from all acts of cruelty, whether it is a matter of torturing a prisoner in order to make him confess to a crime or subjecting a non-human animal to pain for the sake of human entertainment. Here we should note that an agent who engages in acts of cruelty against her recipients is not just an agent who inflicts harm on them. An agent inflicts harm on a recipient when she kills a wolf that attacks her sheep or when she knocks down a human intruder in her home. But in these cases, as they are presented here, the harm inflicted on the wolf and on the intruder cannot be conceptualized as cases of cruelty. The harm inflicted on the wolf and the intruder is motivated by the agent’s need to protect herself and her property, not by a desire to make the wolf and the intruder suffer. An act of cruelty, on the other hand, involves an agent’s “knowingly causing unnecessary pain and/or suffering” (Tanner 2015, 822). The agent might not intend her recipient to suffer, but she is at least willing to accept that he will suffer as a result of what she does, and she knows that this suffering is not necessary—that is, she knows that there is no good reason why her recipient should have to suffer in the first place.

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The latter point combines causal and moral aspects of the situation—the agent could and should have avoided inflicting a certain amount of suffering on her recipient, but did so anyway. (Julia Tanner, who is quoted above, distinguishes between active and passive cruelty, including in the latter category cases in which the agent simply allows a suffering to continue that she has not caused oneself (Tanner 2015, 823). Here I will confine myself to cruelty in its “active” variety.) That the agent has “no good reason” to inflict suffering on her recipient means that the infliction of suffering cannot be justified by its being necessary to prevent or punish violations of the human rights to freedom and well-being. Hence, we are not talking about cases in which an agent is morally entitled or justifiably authorized to inflict suffering on her recipient, as when a woman kicks a would-be rapist in the groin, or as when a judge sentences a murderer to prison. Cruelty is not about acts of self-­ defence or acts of morally justified punishment. In fact, a cruel agent does not care about whether or not her recipient deserves what she intends for him; she will make him suffer anyway. Hence, agents of cruel actions do not take seriously concepts and distinctions that are fundamental to the virtue of justice, such as the concepts of responsibility and desert, and the distinction between guilt and innocence. It is important to note that the virtue of justice rules out all acts of cruelty regardless of whether or not the recipient of such acts is himself an agent with moral rights. An agent committed to the virtue of justice must refrain from being cruel simply because cruelty is inconsistent with justice. It would be no excuse for her to argue that she is cruel only towards non-­ human animals and that she is still capable of being respectful of the rights of human agents. It is no excuse, since to be cruel to non-human animals necessarily involves inflicting suffering on innocent beings. Animals are innocent, not in the sense that they have not done anything morally wrong, but in the sense that they are not even capable of doing anything morally wrong (or morally right, for that matter). Non-human animals function in accordance with the amoral order of nature. The very fact that they are guided by natural instincts rather than by choice absolves them of wrongdoing and makes it inappropriate to apply moral concepts to them, but it also places them in the category of innocent beings. Even an aggressive guard dog that bites a child who has trespassed by mistake on the dog owner’s property is innocent in the sense that it is not controlling its behaviour in accordance with its own unforced choice but is instead behaving as the trained tool of its owner. Hence, it is the dog

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owner that should be held morally responsible for the child’s injuries, not the dog. The dog might still have to be put down as being too dangerous to be left alive, but this should not be thought of as some kind of deserved punishment of the dog, but only as necessary risk management. Animals are innocent in the sense that concepts like moral responsibility and guilt are inapplicable in their case. Accordingly, an agent who is cruel to animals contradicts one of the most basic of the precepts of justice, namely, not to harm innocent beings. Hence, a human agent cannot claim that she has not offended against the precepts of justice just because she has been cruel only to non-human animals that do not have any moral rights anyway. Her cruelty is not mitigated by the fact that her victims have no moral rights, as it is still inconsistent with the virtue of justice and with her indirect duty to develop this virtue in herself. Cruelty hence involves a disregard for the right to well-being as well as an indifference to innocence that are inconsistent with the virtue of justice. While animals do not have a moral right to well-being, they are morally innocent and should not be exposed to cruelty. Hence, when it comes to cruelty, the distinction between human agents having moral rights and non-human animals having no such rights is not relevant. An agent committed to the virtue of justice is not an agent who knows when to be cruel and when not to be cruel. She is an agent who refrains from cruelty, full stop. The above argument shows why agents who recognize only other human beings as holders of moral rights still have an indirect moral duty not to be cruel to non-human animals. Whether we call this a duty to non-­ human animals or a duty regarding non-human animals is of less importance as long as we remember that the duty in question is justified not by any moral rights of non-human animals, but derived from the human agent’s indirect duty to cultivate the virtue of justice in herself. Here we should note that while my argument bears some similarity to Immanuel Kant’s indirect prohibition on cruelty to animals, it also differs in important respects from Kant’s argument. While Kant relies on a causal hypothesis, namely, that a person who is cruel to animals is more likely to be cruel also to her fellow humans, my argument is conceptual or logical, holding that being cruel (whether to animals or to humans) is inconsistent with the virtue of justice which all agents are rationally required to develop in themselves. Hence, it is not vulnerable to empirical objections, contesting the causal likelihood that someone who is cruel towards animals will also be cruel to humans.

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What are the implications of the above argument about the virtue of justice for our interactions with non-human animals? One significant implication is that we are still morally allowed to eat meat from non-­ human animals. In this regard, humans may act in accordance with the amoral order of nature as the members of other omnivorous species do. However, having acquired the rationally required virtue of justice, human agents will also refrain from cruelty and hence endeavour to inflict as little pain and suffering as possible on the animals they kill for the sake of feeding on meat. Of course, the fact that human agents are morally permitted to eat animal meat does not mean that they are morally obligated to do so. (Hence, I disagree with Nick Zangwill’s view, referred above, that we have a moral duty to eat animals.) Human agents who for reasons of health, religion, or concerns about animal welfare decide to refrain from eating meat should be free to do so. The claim defended here is only that we should make room for the flexibility provided by our omnivore nature regarding what to eat. We have no conclusive moral reason to give up meat-eating derived from any alleged moral rights of animals. However, it is easy to understand that human agents, aware of their own rights to freedom and well-being, feel conflicted about killing animals for the sake of providing themselves with tasty meals. Perhaps we will in the future be able to produce cell-­ based and plant-based meat, thereby enabling ourselves to “uncouple” meat-eating from the killing of animals, and so eliminate this conflict of values (Heidemann et al. 2020). However, we are not there yet. Moreover, the virtue of justice requires that farm animals are protected from maltreatment. A just person may well keep farm animals for the sake of providing herself as well as the market with meat, milk, eggs, hides, wool, fur, and other animal products. However, as we noted above, a just person will refrain from exposing her farm animals to any unnecessary pain in the process. Here we need to be clear about the meaning of “unnecessary”. A certain way of managing farm animals can be considered as needed for the basic well-being of these animals, including providing them with an adequate supply of food of good quality, sufficient space for them to turn around and lie down, including a dry bedding area, access to clean water and good ventilation as well as opportunities for outdoor grazing. To deny one’s farm animals living conditions like these for the sake of minimizing one’s costs and maximizing one’s profit is to expose them to unnecessary pain and hence an act of cruelty. What is necessary and

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unnecessary in this context should be related to the well-being of the farm animals, not to the profitability of farming them. To secure good living conditions for farm animals might well cause an increase in the price of meat and so make the consumption of meat more of a luxury than it is today. Then so be it. As we have already noted, human agents have a duty to themselves to act in accordance with the virtue of justice, and to do so it is necessary that they refrain from all acts of cruelty. To sacrifice animal well-being for the sake of profit is just as cruel as it is to expose animals to pain and violence for the sake of human entertainment; in both cases innocent beings are being unnecessarily and knowingly exposed to pain and suffering. For similar reasons experiments conducted on animals in research laboratories that are not necessary to basic human well-being should be abolished. The virtue of justice involves acting in accord with one’s recipients’ generic rights to freedom and well-being. Only human agents have such rights. Hence, developing new drugs that might cure or alleviate lethal or disabling illnesses in humans and which involves testing these drugs on non-human animals is morally justified. For this justification to apply, however, it is necessary that the animals that are subjected to such tests do not have to suffer any pain that can be prevented by the administration of anaesthetics or by any other means. What cannot be justified by human rights to freedom and well-being, however, is to expose non-human animals to experimental testing causing them pain and suffering for the sake of supplying the market with products that are not essential from a human health perspective. Cosmetic products, shampoos, deodorants, and body lotions belong to the category of non-essential consumer goods, produced for the sake of aesthetic perfection rather than for the sake of securing basic well-being. In the case of such non-essential consumer goods, it would be morally more appropriate to have them tested on voluntary human test persons rather than on animals, if testing is required in the first place. To provide the market with cosmetic products is not a human rights necessity and hence it would be an act of wanton cruelty to expose animals to the pain involved in the testing of such products; in fact, it is as cruel as it is to expose animals to pain for the sake of human entertainment, as in the case of, for instance, bullfighting. To sum up, in this book I have tried to show that it is possible to formulate a speciesist prohibition of wanton cruelty directed against

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non-­human animals. The prohibition is speciesist in the sense that it is based on human moral concerns and is justified not by animal rights but by an indirect duty of human agents to develop in themselves the virtue of justice. We do not share a moral community with non-human animals and these animals have neither rights nor duties in relation to us. The prohibition is also speciesist in the sense that it does not rule out the killing of animals for the sake of providing humans with meat, nor does it rule out experimentation on animals that is needed to develop medical drugs that are needed to cure or alleviate threats to human basic well-being. We have shown that such a speciesist prohibition, unlike prohibitions that take their point of departure in ascriptions of moral rights to non-human animals, can be justified within the framework of a rational normative ethics based on the necessary claims of human agents to rights to the necessary conditions of successful action. This gives non-human animals as strong a protection against wanton infliction of pain and suffering as can be achieved by means of reasoned argument.

References Aristotle. 1976. Ethics. London: Penguin Books. Gewirth, A. 1978. Reason and Morality. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Heidemann, M.S., C.F.M.  Molento, G.G.  Reis, and C.J.C.  Phillips. 2020. Uncoupling Meat From Animal Slaughter and Its Impacts on Human-­Animal Relationships. Frontiers in Psychology 11: 1824. https://doi.org/10.3389/ fpsyg.2020.01824. Rawls, J. 1972. A Theory of Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tanner, J. 2015. Clarifying the Concept of Cruelty: What Makes Cruelty to Animals Cruel. The Heytrop Journal 56 (5): 818–835.

Index

A Agency capacity for, and rights, 51–53 generic features of, 43 human, compared to animal behaviour, 53 lack of capacity for, among humans, 51 and morality, 42, 59 necessary goods of, 42, 43, 74 normative structure of, 42, 64, 74 and rights-claims, 42, 43 Animals and moral agency, 12 as property of humans, 30 as rights-holders, ix, 2, 44, 45, 58, 75, 77 as victims of human abuse, ix, 5–6 Anthropocentrism, ix, 54 and morality, 54 Aristotle, 74 B Bentham, Jeremy, 25, 27 Brandt, Richard, 39

C Compassionate carnivorism, 67 Conscientious carnivorism, 67 Cruelty, 75 as inconsistent with the virtue of justice, 77 D Derrida, Jacques, 46 Descartes, René, 39 Dunayer, Joan, 6, 10, 11, 14 Duties, direct and indirect, 37, 75 F Farming, moral problems of, 6, 18 Francione, Gary, 30 Franklin, Benjamin, 61 Freedom (Gewirth), 43, 45, 49, 74, 75 G Gewirth, Alan, 40–45, 49, 63, 74, 75

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Bauhn, Animal Suffering, Human Rights, and the Virtue of Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27048-2

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INDEX

H Hare, Richard, 26 Herzog, Werner, 62

includes humans who lack capacity for moral reasoning, 51 not shared with animals, 38, 58, 80

I Innocence, 76 of animals, 76, 77

N Nagel, Thomas, 53 Nature, 4, 10, 23, 24, 27, 35–38, 50, 51, 59–64, 76, 78 amoral order of, 4, 50, 60–64, 76, 78 New omnivorism, 66, 67 Nussbaum, Martha, 23, 24, 41, 60

J James, William, 61 Justice as respect for inherent value (Regan), 28, 29 virtue of, and rejection of cruelty, 3, 77 as a virtue of human agents (Gewirth), 74–79 K Kant, Immanuel, 3, 35–40, 74, 77 Korsgaard, Christine, 37 L Lessing, Doris, 46 M Mackie, John, 26 Meat-eating and human health, 65 and human rights, 66 as a moral duty (Zangwill), 7, 67, 68, 78 and morality, 66–68, 78 Mill, John Stuart, 61 Moral community and the amoral order of nature, 60–64

P Pluhar, Evelyn, 45, 49 Principle of Generic Consistency (PGC), 43, 45, 74 R Rawls, John, 41, 74 Regan, Tom, 2, 27–34 Rights of agents, 42–44 animal, ix, 2, 3, 10, 11, 13, 16, 22, 25–35, 38, 39, 44, 49, 50, 52, 54, 62, 68, 80 human, ix, 2–4, 36, 41–47, 53, 54, 60, 64, 66, 74, 76, 79 legal, 29, 52 moral, ix, 2, 3, 13, 22, 26, 29–32, 36–38, 40–42, 44, 45, 49–54, 57–59, 64, 66, 69, 73, 75–78, 80 Rights-claims of agents moral, 43, 44 prudential, 43, 44 Rolston III, Holmes, 61, 62 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 27 Rowlands, Mark, 11, 12

 INDEX 

S Scanlon, Tim, 15, 16 Sentientist equality, 21, 25 criticism of (Rolston), 62 and moral reasoning, 11 Singer, Peter, 1, 2, 10, 11, 14, 15, 22, 25–28, 32, 61 Speciesism paternalist vs. exploitative, 22 as a prejudice, 2, 3, 16

U Universalizability, 25, 26

T Tanner, Julia, 75, 76 Treadwell, Timothy, 62, 63

Z Zamir, Tzachi, 15–18 Zangwill, Nick, 7, 67, 68, 78

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V Vegetarianism and human well-being, 65 and morality, 15 Virtues (Gewirth), 74, 75 W Well-being (Gewirth), 43, 45, 49, 74, 75