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