Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
negative arguments. They demand specifying what it is that animals lack that valid-
ates treating them in ways that are objectionable when directed at humans.
The familiar answer here is that the property that animals miss is “moral status”
(adding that this is why it is fallacious to draw analogies between humans and anim-
als: the latter “possess” status while the former do not, or the latter have “much
more” of “it”). The original Cartesian elimination of the moral status of animals was
predicated on an exclusively human mind-body dualism coupled with a denial of an-
imal pain. A contemporary Cartesian will discard most or all aspects of the older po-
sition (the most important of which relates to pain: no one doubts the reality of an-
imal pain), and will instead refuse granting moral considerability to animals until a
positive case for such is established. Such a move—in effect shifting the burden of
proof to the pro-animal advocate—is, in my impression, a common reaction of ethi-
cists and other philosophers who are outside the animal debate. The problem with
contemporary Cartesianism surfaces when trying to explain why some animal-related
acts—say, manifestly cruel acts—ought to be prevented. Denying animals any moral
considerability cannot cohere with morally restricting any animal-related conduct. Why
should
any
conduct be considered abusive if animals have no moral status at all?
Since even neoCartesians wish to eliminate sadism to animals, they will be hard-
pressed to explain why and how such limitations on cruelty can be defended. Our
neo-Cartesian will turn out to be, in effect, a neo-Kantian, defending some variety of
a direct/indirect approach.
Direct/indirect approaches attempt to prohibit some animal-related conduct without
ascribing to animals moral status. The underlying idea is that cruelty to animals is to
be prevented, and this is occasioned not by any property of the animals, but because
of the concern
of
other (animal-loving) humans, or because of the concern
to
other
humans (the projected threat being that cruelty to animals prompts cruelty to humans),
or a concern for some ideal of humanity that is disrupted if cruelty to animals is al-
lowed. The original formulation of this view in Kant's
Lectures on Ethics
includes
the latter two aspects along with the pre-Darwinian teleological view of animals as
means for humans. Peter Carruthers, a contemporary Kantian (though he may well
disapprove of this title), argues against cruelty to animals through the first two con-
siderations above: hurting the feelings of animal-loving humans, and the possibility
that such cruelty will evolve into cruelty to humans. For Carruthers, there is nothing
objectionable in cruelty to animals as such, if one is sure that none of these future
undesirable consequences for humans will occur. (Carruthers's example in his
The An-
imal Issue
is of a scientist that leaves Earth on a spaceship and desires to torture her
cat. In Carruthers's opinion, such torture is morally unproblematic, so long as others
never hear about it.)
