Philosophy for Animals

This article concerns the content of Chapter 2: The Moral Status of Animals in David DeGrazia‘s Animal Rights: A Very Short Introduction. The arguments presented are paraphrased from his work.

Definitions

moral status = a being has moral status if we consider the morality of actions towards that being based on how they affect that being for the being’s own sake. If animals have moral status we have obligations to treat them well for their own sake, regardless of whether treating them well also benefits humans.

This post assumes that the reader affirms some moral status for animals.

3 Conceptions of ‘Animal Rights’

DeGrazia outlines three main frameworks through which to view animal rights.

1) The Moral Status Sense

In this sense of animal rights, animals have a minimum of some moral status (Most people hold at least this view, since it is why most people view torturing animals to be wrong, for example)

2) The Equal-Consideration Sense

In this sense of animal rights, animals’ interests should be given equal moral weight as humans’ comparable interests.

3) The Utility-Trumping Sense

This sense of animal rights goes the furthest, advocating that animals have interests that should not be violated even if violating those interests would have positive effects on society.

DeGrazia seeks to defend giving animals equal consideration in this chapter.

Why Equal Consideration?

This view of animal rights posits that because animals have interests and can be harmed or benefited by actions, and animals have moral status, the comparable interests all all beings should be weighed equally “unless there is a relevant difference between the beings in question that justifies unequal consideration“

(See Peter Singer’s concept of Equal Consideration)

Both Utilitarianism and the Utility-Trumping Sense of animal rights mentioned earlier would be consistent with this view.

Common Objections to Equal Consideration with Rebuttals

1) Appeal to species

A common objection to the idea of giving animals and humans equal consideration is that just by virtue of being human, humans should be prioritized morally. This is probably the one that I’ve heard the most in my own real-world interactions at least, and it’s also one of the easiest to rebut.

Rebutting the appeal to species:

There is little reason to believe that species membership is morally significant, and many philosophers would not agree that it is. It is hard to justify differential treatment on species membership alone (See speciesism)

Additionally, the differences between humans and closely-related species, as well as between modern Homo sapiens and past hominids like Homo erectus, etc. are very small. DeGrazia invokes chimpanzees, noting that the difference between humans and chimpanzees is barely more in terms of DNA percentage than the difference between pygmy chimpanzees and common chimpanzees. Examining this makes species membership seem even more spurious a characteristic to base moral consideration on.

2) Contract Theory

DeGrazia writes, “According to contract theory, one’s moral rights and obligations flow from the terms of an agreement reached by imaginary contractors, who bargain with each other in an attempt to find mutually advantageous principles and rules by which to govern their society and structure and basic institutions.” Since animals don’t participate in this contract, they lack moral status.

Rebutting the appeal to contract theory:

Most people, even non-vegans, would say that we have some obligations towards animals and for example wouldn’t go out and kick a dog to death. But if we are to accept this appeal to contract theory, there would be nothing wrong with such an action as dogs would have no moral status.

Also, there are plenty of humans who do not have the ability, whether because of age (infants) or cognitive impairments, to participate in the contract. Would these humans also not have moral status? Such a conclusion would allow for horrific violations of human rights.

3) Appeals to Moral Agency

In this view, only beings who possess the ability to act morally (and in a rational manner) can have full moral status. Because animals don’t have this ability, they shouldn’t have moral status, or at least shouldn’t have full moral status.

Rebutting appeals to moral agency:

This objection runs into similar pitfalls as the contract theory objection in that it cannot justify why we have any obligations to animals at all, and it also fails to include humans incapable of rational/moral agency in its prescription of moral status.

(DeGrazia doesn’t mention this, but I have my own ideas about whether we can even say animals lack moral agency in the first place. I think it’s entirely plausible that some animals, like chimpanzees, dolphins, etc. with highly-developed brains, could have some form of moral reasoning. I want to explore that topic further on this blog in the future)

4) Appeals to Social Bonds

This objection places moral significance on social bonds between beings. People generally have different obligations towards people closer to them. For example, a parent is responsible for feeding their child, but not feeding every child in the world.

Rebutting appeals to social bonds:

DeGrazia argues that this objection fails to adequately oppose equal consideration, because positive obligations are discretionary, and choosing to help one person over another with your limited resources does not necessarily mean you assign them different inherent moral worths.

This appeal to social bonds can also be used to justify things like racism, if people’s increased social identification with others of their own race could be used as the basis of assigning moral status to others, which is clearly problematic.

However DeGrazia concedes that this objection could be refined to be more coherent, like if it was tempered to mean that social bonds are a factor, but not the only factor, in moral status.

4) Appeals to common-sense moral differences regarding assistance and killing

DeGrazia identifies two perceived differences between animals and humans that are dominant in our society and are used to object to the claim of equal consideration.

1. Humans have positive rights that give others a duty to help them obtain these rights, while animals do not. For example, we would commonly say that humans have a right to shelter, water, food, etc. and if some humans do not have these things, other humans ought to intervene. However, we do not expect that humans intervene to provide these things to animals.
2. It is more wrong to kill a human than it is to kill an animal

He then seeks to explain why giving animals equal moral consideration does not violate these perceptions.

Addressing Difference #1: Positive Rights

It is possible to keep giving equal moral consideration to animals without contradicting the accepted duty to help humans obtain positive rights but not help animals obtain these. In the case of wild animals, intervening in ecosystems would more likely cause harm than help anything, which justifies our staying out of it. (This is my argument towards meat eaters who ask why I am not out trying to prevent animals from eating each other, incidentally)

DeGrazia does not mention companion animals, but I would add on that we would consider companion animals to have these positive rights and humans to have a duty to protect such rights as well.

Addressing Difference #2: Killing Animals vs. Killing Humans

DeGrazia brings up two ways to address this.

Argument 1: Equal consideration does not imply that killing a human is equally as wrong as killing an animal

All equal consideration means is that we weigh human interests and animal interests equally when those interests are comparable. One can accept equal consideration and still believe that killing a human would be worse than killing an animal because humans have more interest in staying alive. “Humans typically have life plans, projects, and deep personal relationships, all of which would be destroyed by untimely death. By contrast, assuming that it is in a dog’s interest to remain alive…. it is reasonable to suppose that continued life is less central to the dog’s welfare than it is to the human’s welfare.”

Argument 2: Argue that it is NOT worse to kill a human than it is to kill an animal

DeGrazia does not elaborate on this position but mentions Steve Sapontzis as one proponent of it. I find myself more inclined towards the first argument intuitively.

DeGrazia’s Conclusion

DeGrazia concedes that Objections 4 and 5 carry the most promise and may be further developed to refute his rebuttals of them, declaring the issue not completely resolved. This book was written in 2001, so I’m not sure whether there’s been some counter-arguments– but I’m sure there have been. However, DeGrazia notes that the strongest counterarguments to equal consideration could very well rest on prejudicial pro-human bias.