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?