Restricted Deontology

Many deontologists are attracted to a view the author calls restricted deontology, according to which only people have the sort of rights that deontologists describe. Although animals count—they have standing—they do not have deontological standing, and so do not have deontological rights. (Perhaps, instead, animals are appropriately treated in accord with consequentialism.) However, this view cannot be defended. Whatever the exact feature is that underlies deontological standing—autonomy, perhaps—it is more plausible to hold that animals have it too, albeit to a lesser degree; so they too should have deontological rights, but weaker ones. Of course, one can attempt to escape this conclusion by insisting that deontological standing actually requires having enough autonomy (rather than just some). But the idea of there being such a minimal required level—so that less autonomy than this leaves one without any deontological standing at all—is implausible.

Status

This chapter sketches an account of the basis of status, suggesting that individuals with higher status largely have this status by virtue of having more developed and sophisticated psychological capacities. This idea is illustrated by indicating some of the relevant capacities which people have in a more sophisticated form than that had by animals. There are, however, other properties that can also be relevant for fixing an individual’s status, including their sheer potential to have status-enhancing psychological capacities, or—a distinct property—the fact that the given individual could have had various status-enhancing properties (a feature called modal status). The author offers accounts of potential and modal status, and explains how the overall picture of status being offered remains individualistic.

Hierarchical Deontology

The most plausible form of deontology is one in which animals have rights, but weaker ones than people have, a view the author calls hierarchical deontology. The idea is illustrated by showing how deontologists can hold that the threshold for the right not to be harmed is lower for animals than for people (with the precise level of the threshold being, in part, a function of the status of the given animal). The chapter also notes several other ways in which animals might count less within a hierarchical deontological framework, noting, for example, the possibility that several restrictions on how the threshold of a given right can be met might turn out to be less restrictive for animals, or how animals might have less of a claim to aid than people have.

Standing

This chapter introduces the key notions of moral standing and moral status, and notes the logical possibility that different individuals might have a higher or a lower status. It then turns to questions concerning the basis for having any kind of moral standing at all. A very common proposal is that sentience—the ability to feel pleasure and pain—is both necessary and sufficient for standing, but the author argues that an equally important idea (perhaps more important) is that of agency, having preferences about how things should go as well as the ability to act on those preferences. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the connection between having standing and having a welfare (being such that things can be better or worse for you).

Defense

If animals have deontological standing, then they have a right to self-defense. The chapter lays out some of the basic elements of this right in standard cases, where one person defends herself against another (including the existence of a proportionality condition, a necessity condition, and the fact that third parties can come to the defense of others), and then turns to a series of cases involving animals: cases where animals are being attacked by people, people are being attacked by animals, or animals are being attacked by other animals. Deciding what it is permissible for third parties to do in such cases is complicated by the realization that the proportionality condition may itself be sensitive to status, and that even when animals attack, they are not deliberate aggressors, but innocent threats.

Deontology

Unitarianism must be rejected even with regard to the deontological elements of our moral theory. For unitarian deontologists hold that animals have the very same right not to be harmed as people have, and this leads to intuitively unacceptable implications. For example, if one is an absolutist deontologist—so that innocent people may not be harmed, no matter how bad the overall results would be if they are not—then unitarianism implausibly implies that one cannot kill a single rabbit, even if this were the only way to save billions of people. Admittedly, moderate deontology might seem to allow the unitarian to escape this implication, since moderates hold that rights have thresholds, so that if enough good is at stake the right can be permissibly infringed. However, working through some actual calculations shows that even moderate deontologists must reject unitarianism.

Hierarchy and the Value of Outcomes

Acceptable versions of distributive principles will take status into account, so that an animal at a given level of well-being will, by virtue of its lower status, have a correspondingly weaker distributive claim than would a person at the same level of well-being. This chapter sketches some promising ways of modifying the various distributive principles, making them sensitive to differences in status. The details remain uncertain, however, as the author illustrates by pointing out some problems for the modified version of the priority view. Turning to the question of whether the very value of well-being itself (that is, the contribution it makes to the overall goodness of an outcome) should also depend on status, the author answers in the affirmative. Surprisingly, an appeal to the principle of equal consideration of interests cannot be used to reject this view, on pain of begging the question.

The Argument from Distribution

Most people embrace one or another distributive principle (such as a principle of equality, or desert, or views like prioritarianism, or sufficientarianism). But if the unitarian is correct and animals have the same moral status as people, then animals too should be able to make distributive claims (or have them made on their behalf). However, given the significantly lower level of well-being had by animals (for example, by mice as compared to people), applying these distributive principles without altering them to take into account differences in status leads to absurd claims about our obligations to animals (holding it morally unacceptable that mice, say, have it so much worse than people). The author examines several possible unitarian replies to this argument, but ultimately concludes that anyone sympathetic to one or more of these distributive principles has compelling reason to reject unitarianism.

Unitarianism

This chapter identifies a common view in contemporary discussions of animal ethics, which the author calls unitarianism. According to the unitarian, animals have the very same moral status as people have, so that otherwise similar interests of animals and people should be given the very same consideration in moral deliberation. At first glance this seems to have the implausible implication that forced to choose between saving a mouse, say, and a person, one should flip a coin. But the objection can be avoided by noting the fact that people generally have much more well-being at stake than animals do (so that more harm befalls a person if she dies, than would befall a mouse if it died). The chapter closes by clarifying the sense in which unitarians deny the existence of a moral hierarchy.

Introduction

One of the most striking developments in moral philosophy over the last half century has been the remarkable explosion in the discussion of animal ethics, that part of moral philosophy that deals with our moral obligations toward (nonhuman) animals. It would of course be an exaggeration, but only a mild one, to say that fifty years ago philosophical discussion of the treatment of animals was virtually nonexistent. The topic suffered from something close to complete neglect. On the rare occasion when a moral philosopher had something to say about animals, it was largely a matter of admitting—albeit only in passing—that it was wrong to be cruel to them, that the gratuitous infliction of pain was morally problematic. And then, for the most part, the matter was typically left at that....