Higher and lower animals

 Shelly Kagan, How to Count Animals: More or Less

Some terminology

1. Unitarian view: every being with moral status has the same moral status
2. Hierarchy view: beings with moral status can have many different moral statuses (2, 3, 10, 20, innumerable)
3. Utilitarian ethics; the right action maximizes total good
• how to add hierarchy to Utilitarianism
  
  
  
4. Deontological ethics: ethics consist of a set of duties (e.g. duty to keep promises, duty to not harm for fun)
• how to add hierarchy to deontological ethics

  

  Sea lion shot 12 times (NYT Sept 25)

  
  
5. Practical realism: ethical principles and categories must be simple enough to be comprehensible and motivating
• will come into play in second half of article

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Kagan's hierarchy view: based on capacities of different species

• More capacities ---> higher moral status
• Fewer capacities ---> lower moral status

Which capacities count? He doesn't say. Which are plausibly relevant?

1. capacity to fly
2. capacity to run fast
3. capacity to survive under water
4. sentience
5. capacity to cooperate
6. capacity to be self-aware
7. sense of fairness
8. capacity to empathize
9. sheer intelligence
10. capacity to make art
11. capacity to appreciate beauty
12. capacity to migrate great distances

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Troubling implications of this capacity-based hierarchy view

1. Hierarchy leads to implication X
2. X is really bizarre and unacceptable
3. So hierarchy must be rejected

Three implications Kagan discusses:

1. Superior beings might have higher moral status than us
2. Marginal cases might have lower moral status than us
3. Given normal variation, different normal people might have different moral statuses

What is Kagan's response to each implications? He has two options:

1. Hierarchy doesn't really lead to that
2. That's not really so bizarre and unacceptable

We'll see what he says in part 2 of the article

Workbook--let's discuss superior beings 

Wild sovereigns and animal denizens

 

Donaldson & Kymlicka Basics

• equal basic rights (right to life and liberty)
• different political categories
• human categories --> animal categories

Last time: citizens

1. domesticated animals: cats, dogs, goats, donkeys, horses, cows, pigs, chickens
2. see last time

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Liminal denizens 

1. Humans: tourists, foreign students, temporary workers, illegal immigrants, opt-out citizens,  like Amish
2. Animals: ducks, geese, rats, mice, squirrels, swallows, chimney swifts, feral cats, etc.
3. Animal denizens seek human settlements, depend on us, but don't share a community with us
4. Two principles that apply to human denizens (p. 14)
• KEEP OUT: legit to have borders and laws about who enters; also legit to discourage entry
• ACCOMMODATE: "sooner or later they acquire the right to stay" (p. 14)
5. Application to liminal animal denizens
• KEEP OUT: we can try to keep them out
• ACCOMMODATE: "we need to regularize their status, and to accept and accommodate to their presence" (p. 14) 

Animal liminal denizen examples

MICE 

• keep out: plug holes in walls to keep mice out, avoid open food, use humane traps and remove
  
• accommodate: "why should we begrudge them some space in the cellar, or the garage or the garden shed? " (p. 15)

 

CANADA GEESE

"we can actively discourage geese from colonizing our parks and fields, although of
course we can’t kill them or otherwise harm them" (p. 15)
• video about methods
• Migratory Bird Treaty Act
• accept that they live in some areas

 

FERAL CATS

• analogy with opt-out communities (the Amish)
• feral cat colony at SMU

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Foreigners in other countries ... wild animal sovereigns 

1. Foreigners in other countries  
• respect for sovereignty (e.g. the UK gentry)
• we don't "manage" people in other countries
• occasional assistance ok
2. Wild animal sovereigns 
• respect for sovereignty
• we shouldn't "manage" wildlife
• occasional assistance ok

 

Wild animal sovereign examples

STOPPING RUTTING ELK - NO!

• we would stop dogs from fighting at a dog park, because they're members of our community
• we should respect elk fighting because that's their way of life          

 

STOPPING PREDATION - NO!

• we stop our cats from killing birds, because the cats are members of our community
• shouldn't stop wild animal predation 

ONE-OFF ASSISTANCE

• Nick and Nora at White Rock Lake -- last summer one of their 3 eaglets fledged and couldn't get back to the nest...the police got involved with protecting them 

REGULAR ASSISTANCE 

• Saving the pufflings...solves a problem that humans create -- light pollution
• Habitat loss also human-caused ... solved with wildlife corridors

Helping the puffins in the Westman Islands, Iceland

EXCESSIVE ASSISTANCE 

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PREVIEW: Shelly Kagan, "For hierarchy in animal ethics"

• D&K: political categories
• Kagan: capacity categories

Animal citizens

Precis of Zoopolis (2011)

Sue Donaldson & Will Kymlicka

Animal rights debate

• Do animals have basic rights like a right to life and liberty?
• Longstanding debate...they are not contributing to it...they assume YES
• Assuming ALL animals have basic rights, we need to understand the DIFFERENT rights and responsibilities of different animals

Human rights vary by "political category"

1. Citizens here (Canada, US, wherever) 
2. Liminal denizens: tourists, foreign students, temporary workers, refugee claimants (all drawn here for different reasons)
3. Foreigners in other countries

They claim: animals fall into parallel "political categories"

Note: they are NOT saying....

1. human and animal citizens should have the same rights
2. human liminal denizens and animal liminal denizens should have the same rights
3. human foreigners and wild sovereigns should have the same rights

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Animal citizens (next part of article is about the wild sovereigns and liminal denizens)

1. Why think of domesticated animals as citizens?
2. Are all the cows, pigs, and chickens going to be citizens too? 
3. What is involved in animal citizenship?

p. 5

Socialization

• Animals have to be trained to live with each other and humans in a mixed community

Public spaces -- outdoor

 Mixed communities that already exist

• cats of Istanbul -- KEDI trailer

Public spaces -- indoor

Cat cafe field trips

Animal cafes (South Korea)

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Animal citizens should work, but not be exploited

• contribute manure YES
• goats or sheep
  mowing lawn YES
  

Open Space

• sheep for wool if shorn humanely   YES
• keeping chickens for eggs MAYBE
• using animals as guide dogs (video clip) NO

Donkey farm field trip

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Exam 1

• Worth just 15% ... many great answers
• If you want to do better next time: 
• make better use of study guide and blog posts
• do the readings... don't just find the thing the RR calls for and skip the rest of the reading
• There's an exam key at the top of the Canvas home page

Do animals have moral standing?

1. 
   

Peter Carruthers, "Against the Moral Standing of Animals" (2011)

1. Part 1 (sec 1-3):  contractualist argument ... animals have no moral standing
2. Part 2 (sec 4-5): why is animal cruelty still wrong?

Thought experiments

1. Kids set a cat on fire for fun in a public place (p. 11)
2. Astrid the Astronaut and her pet cat (p. 12)
3. Astrid the Astronaut and her dead servant (p. 13)
4. Lazy Jane the doctor 

Why is cruelty and indifference wrong?

1. Because of what is shows about you and your character (compare Indian animal ethics)
2. Your cruelty will lead you to harm humans (compare Kant)
3. Contractors would agree that cruelty is wrong

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Preview of Monday's reading -- to make more time for field trips 

Sue Donaldson & Will Kymlicka, Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights 

• they are Canadian
• they wrote this book in 2011
• we're reading their precis of the book -- a short summary
• "zoopolis" means (literally) animal city
• animalism, but a different kind of animalism than we've seen before

Individualistic animalism--our obligations to animals depend on each individual animal's "intrinsic moral standing" (D&K p. 1).

1. Peter Singer--sentience, interests
2. Tom Regan--being a subject of a life, rights

Political animalilsm

1. Intrinsic moral standing does matter
2. but so does "political status" 
3. both matter for both humans and animals

---

What do they mean by political status?

Passport control at DFW international terminal

Picture people who get off a plane

They all have  the same basic rights based on "intrinsic moral standing" (p. 1) – enshrined in Universal Declaration of Human Rights 

1. right to life
2. right to liberty
3. we can't torture or enslave any of them

But they have different rights based on "relationship to a particular political community" (p. 2)

1. Citizens of the US
• right to enter the US
• right to work here
• right to have their interests represented by government
• right to vote
• right to have access to public spaces (can go there, signs are in your language)
• right to emergency health care
• 
  
2. In-betweens/Denizens: "tourists, foreign students, refugee claimants, business visitors or temporary workers" (p. 2). 
• have all the basic rights based on "intrinsic moral standing" 
• don't have all of the rights of citizens, but do have some
• 
  
3. Foreign Nationals--citizens of other countries, back in home country
• have set of rights established in other nation

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D&K say animals are in parallel political categories 

1. Animal Citizens -- domesticated animals living with us-- for example pets
2. Animal Denizens  -- animals drawn to us but not living with us--squirrels, rats, mice, raccoons, ducks, geese, chimney swifts, swallows
3. Animal wild sovereigns --  live independently in wilderness (inside our borders or outside)

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Next time: arguments, details, what it means to be an animal citizen

Do animals have moral standing?

Look ahead

1. There have been no quizzes for a while...they are randomly scheduled!
2. Next time: more Carruthers, but I will also give you a preview of the next reading
3. Monday: 3 field trips

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Module 3 -- Animals and humans: the contemporary debate

What is the moral status/moral standing of animals?

•  the extent to which moral agents (like us) have obligations to Xs

Views on animal moral standing

1. NO MORAL STANDING FOR ANIMALS
2. EQUAL MORAL STANDING FOR ANIMALS
3. SOME MORAL STANDING FOR ANIMALS

Today: Peter Carruthers, "Against the Moral Standing of Animals" (2011)

Next: type 3 views

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Recap

Singer and Regan: argument from marginal cases

Marginal cases: humans at the low end of the ability spectrum.  

Babies, cognitively impaired people, adults with advanced dementia, etc.

1. Some animals and some marginal cases have roughly the same abilities
2. So what you say about the moral standing of one you must say about the moral standing of the other. 
3. Since marginal cases have equal moral standing, so do animals.

One goal of Carruthers' article is to counter this argument

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Peter Carruthers,  "Against the Moral Standing of Animals" (2011)

SECTION 1, Assumptions

About animal minds

1. Animals are sentient
2. They aren't rational, don't weigh costs and benefits, can't abide by rules, etc.

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Why are there any moral truths? Why does anyone have moral standing? 

Ideas we have already encountered:

Religious answers: God gave humans special standing, prohibited murder, permitted eating animals
Aristotle: ruler-ruled is built into the constitution of the universe 
Regan: being a subject-of-life has inherent value
Singer: sentience is sentience 

Carruthers proposes a different answer: contractualism 

"All contractualists agree that moral truths are, in a certain sense, human constructions, emerging out of some or other variety of hypothetical rational agreement concerning the basic rules to govern our behavior." (Carruthers, pg. 2)

 

A few clarifications

1. The social contract is hypothetical, not real
2. The contractors are rational people, because only rational people can agree to a contract 
3. The contract situation is idealized -- people don't know what would be in their personal best interests -- they decide behind a "veil of ignorance" (Rawls)
4. The contractors have no moral beliefs ... for example, they don't go into it already believing "murder is wrong" ... morality is the "output" of their agreement (pg. 3 & 8) 
5. Contractualists think people everywhere would agree to the same things  

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Carruthers, SECTION 2-- what would rational human contractors decide about humans?

All rational agents have equal moral standing

• they wouldn't agree to the contract otherwise         

Non-rational human agents (marginal cases) have equal standing

• The social stability argument -- pg. 5
  
• Regan's objection to contractualism: this is second class standing because they are not contractors; Carruthers says: no, its first class moral standing

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Carruthers, SECTION 3 -- animals

          Animals have no moral standing 

1. there's no social stability argument for giving them moral standing -- pg. 8
2. so they don't have it 
3. the fact that some animals have the same abilities as some marginal cases is irrelevant

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Rest of the article: can we really torture animals for fun?

 

Animal morality

Let's do some reviewing first...use the Exam 1 tab above

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Do animals have anything like morality?

        Does it matter, as far as their fundamental moral status is concerned?

1. Kant -- in some places, says YES
2. Singer, Regan -- NO

Two theories

1. Morality is something entirely new in humans, there's nothing like it in animals
2. There are rudiments/precursors of morality in animals; human morality evolved from these precursors (this is Frans DeWaal's view)

Who is Frans DeWaal?

• was a primatologist at Emory University

What are thes rudiments/precursors of morality in animals?

1. Perspective taking 
2. Targeted helping
• chimps will try to get humans to give them a banana outside their enclosure--will point if humans can see them--will make noise if humans can't see them
3. Cooperation 
•  the cooperative pulling paradigm
• teamwork in other animals--whales, orcas, lions, wolves, wild dogs, Harris's hawks, capuchin monkeys, chimpanzees
4. Empathy
5. Reciprocity & Fairness

Self-awareness

Today we're discussing...

• self-awareness
• awareness of oneself in past and future

Human self-awareness

• awareness of one's body
• introspection

Human awareness of self in past and future

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Does self-awareness (or self-consciousness) matter for moral status? 

YES (Kant)

"But so far as animals are concerned, we have no direct duties. Animals are not self-conscious and are there merely as a means to an end. That end is man." (Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics AWT p. 6)

"The fact that man can have the idea 'I' raises him infinitely above all the other beings living on earth. By this he is a person; and by virtue of the unity of his consciousness, through all the changes he may undergo, he is one and the same person--that is, a being altogether different in rank and dignity from things, such as irrational animals, which we can dispose of as we please." (Kant, quoted in Fellow Creatures, by Christine Korsgaard, pg. 30) 

NO (Singer) 

 "If 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. If a being is not capable of suffering, or of experiencing pleasure or happiness, there is nothing to be counted." Peter Singer, Animal Liberation Now, pg. 8 of our pdf

A non-self-aware sentient being still has interests and is entitled to equal consideration.  Then again, the non-self-aware may have somewhat difference interests. 

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Do any animals have self-awareness?

1. NO animals have any self-awareness (Kant's view)
2. SOME have it, some lack it (Gordon Gallup's view -- inventor of the mirror test)
3. ALL sentient animals have self-awareness to some degree

• feeling pain and pleasure creates awareness of ME
• bat is aware of certain echoes as MINE
• lion locates zebra relative to ME

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Some have, some lack....using the mirror recognition test to decide

• what is the "visual mark test"?

Frans DeWaal (Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?)

• The mirror test can be passed to different degrees
• complete pass
• elephants
• What would Kant say?  Are elephants persons? Do they have full moral status?
• Also: Inside the animal mind episode 3, 32:44-36:40)

• intermediate--
• some animals fail the mark test but can use mirrors as a tool 

Using mirror as a tool

• intermediate--dogs and cats who don't react much to image instead of fighting with it

• complete fail--small songbirds and fighting fish--treat the image like it's someone else

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Mirror test videos

Problems with the mirror test

• too visual
• dogs are smell oriented -- recognize own urine
  

• bats and dolphins are sound oriented -- recognize own echoes

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Awareness of past self and future self

1. Recalling your past activities (episodic memory, autobiographical memory)
2. anticipating your future activities

Another term for both

• time travel

Animals: are they "stuck in the present" and therefore less self-aware?

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Episodic memory

1. recalling yourself at your high school graduation
2. using episodic memory strategically
• looking for my car in Airline garage -- visualize when I drove into it
• answering an exam question -- visualize when we were discussing it
• deciding whether to eat leftovers in your fridge--when did you put them there?

Contrast with other kinds of memory (that animals obviously have)

1. Knowing where your car is ....you just know
• Clark's nutcracker knows where the seeds are--Inside the Animal Mind I, 15:11-17:48- 
2. I can ride a bike ... dog heels

Is there evidence of episodic memory in animals?

• Chimps

DeWaal 

• when chimps are going to a fig tree they've visited before they get up early, walk in the dark(which they avoid), 

• Most plausible explanation: they recall past visits to the fig tree.

• Western scrub jays

Nicky Clayton's research
they dig up cached food

1. which food they dig up depends partly on "freshness"
2. so apparently they remember the act of caching
3. recently cached perishable foods are preferred

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Anticipating the future

Examples

• grabbing an umbrella because you think it will rain
• includes forethought, planning, anticipation

        Contrast with other types of future orientation

• Squirrels hoarding nuts for the winter
• They're doing it "for the winter" (future) but are they thinking about the future?
• Behavior could be just triggered by nuts + shortening of the day

        How to prove that animal is thinking about future?

• Chimps: Storing a tool today for use tomorrow 
• Crows

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Does it matter?

1. Why does self-awareness seem SO important to Kant?
2. is it really a determiner of fundamental moral status?

Animal sentience

Electronics policy reminder

• No phones, no laptops...no electronics period
• If you didn't ask me to be an exception to the policy, then you're not an exception
• Violating policy will result in penalties deducted from citizenship grade

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Exam 1 next Monday

1. see tab above
2. will review a bit Wed and Friday

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Sentience

• Negative sentience: pain, fear, anxiety, feeling too hot or cold, etc.
• Positive sentience: pleasure, enjoyment, exhilaration, love, optimism etc.

What kinds of positive sentience do animals have...especially animals at the "edge of sentience"?

What kinds of positive sentience do animals have...especially animals at the "edge of sentience"?

But first:  Ethically, why does it matter?

• Utilitarianism is one theory that says negative and positive sentience do matter

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Positive sentience in animals

• Inside the Animal Mind, part 2, 12-18 (see tab)
• pleasure in fish (NPR)
• article

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What do animals sense?  We'll watch this and then discuss.

Ed Yong

We will watch first 12 minutes

 

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Sensing = detecting -- the Waymo detects students in the crosswalk

Sensing = experiencing - feeling  -- the Waymo probably doesn't experience the students

Sensing  positively, sensing negatively -- the Waymo doesn't feel frustrated!

Ed Yong attributes not just detection to animals, but experiencing/feeling. 

To what extent is experience/feeling ethically important, if it's not positive sentience or negative sentience?

Animal sentience

 

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Sentience vs. Sapience

Sentience -- root word means "feeling"

1. Having experiences of any sort, being conscious
2. Having valenced (good vs. bad) experience 
• pain (bad), pleasure (good) 
• positive emotions: fun, love, excitement
• negative emotions: fear, anxiety
3. Living in a particular "sensory bubble" 
• seeing, smelling, hearing, etc.
• other senses in other animals

Sapience -- thinking of various kinds  (could be unconscious)

1. self-awareness
2. awareness of past and future
3. reason, rationality, intelligence
4. morality
5. communication, language

Today and Monday: sentience

Wed and Fri: sapience

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Today's reading -- "Animal Sentience," Heather Browning and Jonathan Birch

Background

• There is already some animal welfare legislation protecting some species
• Question: should more species be protected?
• Is there sentience in fish, octopuses, lobsters, insects, etc?
• They focus on pain mostly
• But we will be interested in all sorts of sentience

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Butterfly field trip

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Sentience in fish 

• what is it like to be a salmon swimming upstream to spawn? Is it exhilarating? Exciting? Do they feel tired? -- VIDEO
• what is it like to be farmed salmon? Do they feel crowded? Frustrated? (zugunruhe in birds)

• to think of fish as a "subject of a life" (Regan's term) it would be helpful to understand all their feelings
• but the study of sentience tends to focus on one feeling: pain

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What is pain?

1. starts with nociceptors--peripheral neurons that respond to damage; in skin, many areas of body -- thermal, mechanical, chemical, polymodal (wikipedia)
2. nociceptors lead to brain, where pain is felt

Nociception without a feeling of pain

• body damaged while you're focused on playing a sport

Price DD. Psychological and neural mechanisms
of the affective dimension of pain. Science. 2000

Do animals have nociceptors? 

Do they have pain experience?

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Lynne Sneddon articles; Victoria Braithwaite, Can Fish Feel Pain?

1. nociceptors (22 in face alone) -- trout dissected
2. pathways to brain -- dissection, study under microscope, electrical stimulation
3. after vinegar/bee venom injection (nociception) do they FEEL pain? 
• they rub snout on gravel on sides of tank
• elevated heart rate and respiration and reduced hunger 
• altered behaviors -- less avoidant of novelty
• they seek painkillers
• morphine changes these behaviors

Area of uncertainty

1. But a very different brain--does that matter? 
2. Just a few species studied

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Invertebrates--a totally different kind of nervous system

• Cephalopod molluscs--octopuses, squid
• Evidence of pain similar to fish
• but does the pain signal go to the animal's central brain or just to local brain in one arm?

• Decapod crustaceans--lobsters, crabs

• "The presence of nociceptors has not yet been conclusively established, though there is evidence of the detection of extreme heat" (Browning and Birch pg. 3)

• Insects

• "Insects will continue normal feeding and mating behaviours even when severely injured" (Browning and Birch p. 4)

• "We should be open to the possibility that the traditional focus on pain in this literature

  does not serve insects well. There are, of course, affects other than pain. For example, bees will show a ‘pessimistic’ judgement bias after being shaken" (Browning and Birch p. 4)

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Ethics when there's room for doubt

• "precautionary reasoning about sentience" (Browning and Birch pg. 5)
• if the lobster might  feel pain, don't throw them in boiling water
• Boiling lobsters alive to be banned in UK, already banned in some countries
• "might" is enough to justify laws protecting animals at "the edge of sentience"

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Next time: sentience beyond pain ... what are animals sensing and feeling?