Do they matter because we care or do we care because they matter?

Patrizia Setola, PhD studentSchool of Philosophy, UCD, Dublin

Wittgensteinian relationalists

Types of relationalists

Approaches in animal ethics

Moral reasons

Distinctions: Todd May (2014)

CBRs

Moral individualists

‘being human’’

Wittgensteinian

RBRs

Relationalists

Wittgensteinian

Cora Diamond

Alice Crary

Assistance

Todd May (2014) Two distinct grounds for moral status

Capacities

• Moral status determined by characteristics of individualbeings

• ‘Capacities’ have variously included logos, reason, having sex for pleasure, starting wars, being autonomous agents, etc.

Relations

• Moral status determined by relations that a living being has with human beings

Todd May (2014) Two approaches

Moral individualists

• In animal ethics capacities invoked have been sentience, consciousness, being ‘subject-of-a-life’, etc.

• CBRs (= capacity-based reasons)

Relationalists

• It is the relations that an animal has with human beings that determine their moral status

• RBRs (= relation-based reasons)

RBRs

• A RBR is a moral obligation towards a being in virtue of that being either

a) belonging to a moral community, orb) having some relationship with that moral community

• Human moral community = a community of interdependent individuals with a set of moral obligations to one another arising (at least in part) from their dependences and interactions (May, 2014, p. 157).

Relationalists

Wittgensteinian

• Cora Diamond and Alice Crary

• ‘Our moral relations to non-human animals are derivative from our moral relations with other human beings’ (May, 2014, p. 156)

• ‘being human’ as a morally relevant category

Assistance

• An animal’s claim of assistance depends on that animal’s relationship with human beings

• But they have a claim of non harm/non interference even in absence of a relationship

Capacities – May’s view

• ‘In some circumstances, humans and animals with comparable capacities, say for instance a captive chimpanzee and a severely cognitively impaired child, should be considered equally’(May, p. 165).

Chimps have better memory than humans

The sliding-scale model of moral status(DeGrazia, 2002)

• ‘Animals deserve consideration in proportion to their cognitive, emotional, and social complexity’ (p. 36).

May on relations

• Two reasons for the relevance of relational bonds1. Parallel with the human case: I am justified in

having more concern for a family member or a friend, compared to a stranger

2. We have created dependency in animals by bringing them within the human community

• I would add another reason3. We have interfered with the habitats of wild

animals too

May on relations

• Examples

– Two cats, one domestic, one feral

– Two chimps, one captive, one in the ‘wild’

Cora Diamondon being human

• The response to animals as our fellows in mortality, in life on this earth..., depends on a conception of human life. It is an extension of a non-biological notion of what human life is. (Cora Diamond, 1991, p. 329)

• Problem:

– Why does our response always have to be an extension? Why not direct?

The importance of being human

• ‘Images of fellow creatures are naturally much less compelling ones than images of our ‘fellow human beings’ can be’ (Diamond, 1978, p. 477).

• Problem:

– Why should these images be much less compelling? Are they? Why ‘naturally’? And for whom? (Steiner, 2013, p. 164).

Alice Crary

• ‘There is a straightforward sense in which the recognition that a creature is a human being or an animal is by itself morally significant’ (2010, p. 23)

• ‘Our ability to identify a human being’s qualities of mind depends on our already having a certain ethical orientation toward her’ (p. 24).

• ‘An attitude towards a soul’ (p. 26)

May’s criticism of Diamond and Crary

• The instability of ‘kind’

• Empirical investigation reveals complexity in the lives of animals grounds for concern (as CBRs)

• We cannot use the very practices we need to question as the source of our moral obligation towards animals

My view on Diamond and Crary

• Right in their rejection of ‘capacities’

– However, resort to ‘being human’ as a morally significant category not necessary

• Correctly identify the origin of our ethical response in our shared vulnerability and the recognition of the other as ‘fellow creature’

– However, this recognition can and does happen directly, does not need to be an extension, a derivation, or a projection

Sentience revisited

• A shared vulnerability, finitude, a ‘passivity’ even; having experiences that can be positive and negative; having a life that can go badly or well

• Sentience as a ‘mode of being’, rather than a capacity

Empathetic response(Painter, 2007)

• Husserl’s notion of animals as soul-bearing, embodied, moving, sensing, psychic, intentional, and conscious beings, who relate to the world in a meaningful way (Section 12 of Ideas II)

• The personalistic attitude is the way in which ‘we live with one another ... or are related to one another in love and aversion, in disposition and action, ...’ (p. 192)

• Our animal nature as the foundation of moral subjectivity (p. 106)

Empathetic response

• How do we know we are in the presence of another consciousness?

a) Inferential-analogical theory

b) Painter’s alternative: the key that allows access to another psychic life is empathy, a fundamental mode of intersubjective, cross-species relation

• a form of knowledge of foreign consciousness, including that of non-human animals

Ethical orientation

• Painter’s empathetic response

– There is an appropriate, affective response to another consciousness (empathy)

– It is a form of knowledge, it helps seeing aspects of the other which we would not see otherwise

• Crary’s ethical orientation

– Our perception of other humans (and animals) is affective, imbued with value ab initio

– It allows us to illuminate aspects of the others to which we would otherwise be blind

Closing the gap

Singer and Regan

• Reject the need for emotional involvement in our ethical response

• Yet both acknowledge that the animal makes a moral claim on me in virtue of their suffering

• There is an appropriate moral response to the suffering of the other

Diamond and Crary

• A certain ethical orientation precedes the attribution of capacities

• There is nothing in the suffering of the other per se to which we ought to respond (Cora Diamond, 1978, p.478)

• But we do (rightly) respond to the shared vulnerability, finitude, etc. of ‘fellow creatures’

A modified version of May’s sets of reasons

Moral reasons

SBRs

sentience-based

reasons

RBRs

relations-based

reasons

A modified version of May’s sets of reasons

• SBRs = sentience-based reasons

• RBRs = relation-based reasons

– Personal relations

– Assimilation into the human community

– Appropriation of habitats and interference

Open problems

• Dignity?

• The dead animal – the possibility of posthumous harm

• If a certain ethical orientation is the appropriate response to another, one can consider lack of this response as a defect of character

Thank you!