How can animals be objects of ethics without being subjects as well?

Question

Most people seem to agree that animals cannot act immorally, even when they inflict suffering. They are thus completely excluded from being subjects of any kind of ethical framework.

At the same time, there is an entire branch of ethics dealing with animals as objects, and trying to describe rules for how they should be treated.

This seems paradoxical. If animals are incapable of recognizing right and wrong in their own actions, how can they possibly do so in actions towards them? And if they indeed cannot, how can actions towards them be morally wrong? How can killing a lion be evil when the lion killing another animal is not evil? Indeed, if animals are incapable of moral agency, how is killing an animal different from destroying a (complex) machine?

Answer 1

There's no paradox here.

Let A be the characteristic of having moral value.

Let B be the characteristic of having the ability to recognize moral value.

You have imposed A -> B. Which implies ~B -> ~A. Yet you observe that some people attribute A to those who have ~B. This is only a paradox if you hold the axiom A -> B. Drop this axiom and there's no paradox. Most moral theories do not require this.

In fact, you probably already hold values that are contrary to this axiom that you seem to be imposing here. Examples of things that have ~B are human infants and the severely mentally handicapped. If you think they also have A then you violated your original assumption.

Answer 2

Welcome user37552

I'd phrase my answer in terms of a moral community. You might say that only humans can belong to a moral community because only they can have moral agency, owe obligations, deserve moral praise or blame. Only subjects, you seem to imply, can belong to a moral community and only towards such subjects can we act in ways that are morally wrong.

First point, on this logic not even all humans belong to a moral community. For certainly not all humans have moral agency. Some of the irreparably brain-damaged don't, and nor does a person in a coma. Yet we can act morally wrongly towards them.

The second point, following this up, is that since having moral agency is not a necessary condition for being morally 'considerable', we can act morally wrongly to other than moral agents. Moral judgements are sensitive to considerations of suffering; and on this basis non-moral agents such as non-human animals, through their capacity for suffering, fall within the moral community and we can act morally wrongly towards them.

Answer 3

I can't give you a cite, but if you believe animals have no soul and if you believe ethics only apply to things with souls then it would be improper to judge the actions of an animal. Just as it would be improper to judge the rock which falls off a cliff and kills a woman.

Another possible justification would be interpreting Genesis such that morality only applies to humans because they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

With regard to treatment of animals as objects, this would delve into the philosophy of personal property - the animals owners, the owners of property the animals interact with, etc.

Regarding your question on whether animals are sentient, this is a historically contentious topic. I believe all the way from Descartes until Bernard Rollin (1980s) it was not definitively known whether animals could feel pain, let alone have consciousness.

Answer 4

If animals are incapable of recognizing right and wrong in their own actions, how can they possibly do so in actions towards them?

Many objects of ethics are incapable of recognizing right and wrong. For example, if I kill somebody, that person is dead and cannot recognize anything. Unborn humans cannot recognize anything. If I hurt a fresh baby, it certainly was not yet able to recognize that act as morally wrong, even though it felt the pain in an animalistic way. Same goes for demented or otherwise brain-damaged people (hence, for example, all the fuss about when to "turn off the machines" with people in a permanent coma). Generally, the capability of the "receiver" of our actions seems not to matter so much.

How can killing a lion be evil when the lion killing another animal is not evil?

This is generally directly related to the intent behind the killing. For example, killing a lion in self-defence is not evil. Killing the animal as food is generally not considered evil (let's stay away from the vegan discussion here - assume being a native hunter-gatherer tribe which kills exactly the amount of animals they need to survive).

Killing the lion can be evil if done for fun or adventure, for profit, for gloating, etc.

Indeed, if animals are incapable of moral agency, how is killing an animal different from destroying a (complex) machine?

Firstly, ethics is concerned with values, in general, not just direct personal damage to humans. Values are subjective. Some people consider the fact that we live in a world with a complex ecology a value. Some people view it as a value to live like a guest in a very big house - where you would not go around destroying random items either.

Secondly, one can view ethics as a way to keep people from abusing their power. We all have the power to literally eradicate any animal and plant around us, and Bob knows we (as a species) are certaily doing so in many occasion. So restricting our own power to destroy - no matter the object of the destruction - certainly is a valuable part of ethics. If nothing else, the world would be very boring if everything except us was dead!

Thirdly, all mysticism and personal opinion aside, one utilitarian argument that's a relatively simple metric is to ask "if I destroy object X, can I repair or replace it (and do I really know all the results of my actions)"? For a machine, the answer is probably "yes" (if I have enough money etc. I can buy a replacement, but there may be exceptions, like a machine that runs life support for someone...); for an animal (or, say, a 500 year old rare tree, a species of flowers, etc.), the answer is "no". Thus, something being "one of a kind" is a value in itself, where it certainly behooves humans to pay attention. Funnily, in my experience, this is one surprisingly valuable argument to teach to little children (for totally everyday questions - whether to kill that bee that sits on your cone of ice, or not...).

Answer 5

The biggest moral difference between an animal and a person is the capacity to understand moral reason. A human realizes that an animal feels suffering, and realizes this is bad, while an animal typically does not.

It is not that an animal actions do not carry moral weight, but rather that because animals are incapable of understanding the moral weight of their actions, there is nothing gained by decrying what they do as immoral.

There are some noteworthy exceptions that reinforce this claim. When a dog misbehaves, his master usually punishes him, and people have no problem labeling a dog as "bad" for doing something much less egregious than a lion. The difference here is that a dog has been taught, and continues to learn, whether certain actions are good and bad, and there is something to be gained by letting it know when it does something wrong.

Essentially I am claiming that the reason we consider animals objects but subjects of ethics is not because they actually aren't both, but because pragmatically there is no reason to treat them as subjects.

Answer 6

An act does not have to be (directly) towards a moral agent to be a moral wrong. This is the case whether you are thinking in a utilitarian or a deontological framework.

For example, the destruction of the Buddha statues by the Taliban was a moral wrong, or at least I think so. It was a purely destructive act. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamyan)

Similarly, the destruction of ants with a magnifying glass is a moral wrong even if ants do not feel pain (or at least I think so).

There are different ways to think about this.

• One is to consider that the act was wrong in itself, as a failure of a duty (deontological).

• Another is to think that the act affects others indirectly, perhaps by depriving them of the opportunity to see the Buddhas of Bamyan.

• And yet another is to think that the act makes the person who does it into a worse person (i.e. it corrupts or depraves), so they are more likely to act badly to other people.

So taking the last one as an example, it is quite possible to believe that it is wrong to kick a sheep for pleasure, or out of anger or for no good reason, and yet by quite happy to kill and eat a sheep.

Kicking a sheep for no reason is cruel. Aristotle said character is largely a matter of habit, so allowing yourself to be cruel will make you more cruel and you will become a worse person who will behave worse in future.

Sharing a meal of a delicious shoulder of mutton with friends and neighbours may strengthen friendships, help you learn about your neighbours, and make you a better person.

Answer 7

It suggests that there isn’t a middle ground between adults and the inanimate world. Since animals are obviously not human beings or like them in their capacities, it seems that people then refer to them as objects. This does not seem quite right to me. It seems a language adequate to their own nature, and acceptable to all, will have to be uncovered.

How can killing a lion when a lion can kill another animal is not evil?

In Islam, hunting is fine so long as the end in sight is for food. Lions aren’t food. So hunting lions in Islam would be seen as morally wrong.

Also in Islam, all life is seen as sacred which is why even when an animal is killed, a prayer is said over it. This suggests that life in general should be held sacred. Whereas, lions have a limited capacity for destruction, humans have been known to wipe out whole ecological niches. This does not necessarily mean that this is evil, given that it may be an unintended consequence, or a result of ignorance, or lack of statecraft. But I would say, given what one hears about the kind of ecological crashes seen recently, with repeated warnings by various experts in ecology and wildlife, that’s it is tending towards an evil.

It’s also worth noting, that an expert in the oil industry at Chatham House, a UK think-tank, not known for making radical statements, is on record for stating that if oil companies such as BP or Shell International do not completely change their business model in the next decade, they are in for a ‘nasty, brutish and short end.’

Answer 8

Suppose a Lion kills a Human. You agree that since the Lion is not the subject of an Ethical Framework, the act is not Evil. However, you are also agreeing that despite the Human being the subject of an Ethical Framework, the act is still not Evil.

The implication is that Evil is dependant on the entity undertaking the action, not that what is being acted upon. Or rather: "It is wrong for me to undertake arbitrary destruction", and not "It is wrong for arbitrary destruction to be undertaken against me"

So, destroying a (complex) machine without valid purpose would be morally wrong - no different from killing a Lion.

(As for what constitutes "valid purpose" - well, that's a second and much larger argument)

Answer 9

I would reject the premise of your question, in particular, I'd argue that animals can indeed act immorally. In fact, anyone with a poorly trained dog can attest to this fact.

This makes the answer to your question simple- animals do have the ability to act immorally. But we have mostly given up on trying to get them to actually act this way.

Answer 10

From the Thomistic approach, any act done to an animal is ethical. What would make that action unethical is the purpose for doing it.

Answer 11

I think the same is applicable to children -- you don't expect a human infant to be ethical, even so it's wrong to inflict suffering on them.

It's because they're "sentient" that they're able to "suffer", and "infliction of suffering" (especially intentional and when you know better) is seen as Wrong.

Perhaps it (duty) is an example of Noblesse oblige.

Perhaps it's also an expression of sympathy -- it's good to have a capacity for sympathy, and it's because you're sympathetic that you don't hurt other people -- a.k.a. the "golden rule", the biblical "(Matt. 7:12)". You don't want people to lack in sympathy, and they say that those who are cruel to people may have been previously cruel to animals in their childhood.

If you do feel sympathy then perhaps that's another reason to avoid inflicting suffering, i.e. because you find it unpleasant to perceive another's (even an animal's) suffering.

Answer 12

They aren't. But other simple humans, like children, are. And other simple humans naturally suffer when they witness animal suffering.

From a Kantian perspective, empathy is the nearest natural human motive to a real ethical imperative. We therefore need to limit the degree we are willing to undermine and impair empathy, if we wish for those whose moral compass is not logically explicit to have the most chance of leading moral lives acceptable to human culture. It is also laudatory to practice and develop empathy as a habit.

Humans also naturally anthropomorphize. Again this is more common in those with less explicit thinking in their ethical deliberation.

So to be fair to everyone, ethically, we should accept these two natural traits and work around them. This gives us an obligation to empathize with those who anthropomorphize, and thus to anthropomorphize second-hand, ourselves. This makes humane treatment of animals a duty to other people, and not to the animals themselves.

This is why this duty is not as direct or binding as other duties to people. It is a secondary, derived duty, which can be foregone in favor of direct duties to consider human suffering of a similar degree of immediacy.