Jonathan K. Crane, Ani B. Satz, Lori Marino, and Cynthia Willett
Pulling together the many threads of Beastly Morality into some comprehensive or cohesive conclusion is no easy task. Indeed, these arguments, observations, and investigations point toward no specific goal or telos but rather open ambiguities and opportunities. They uncover ancient and ongoing philosophical and theological ambivalences that resist easy assuaging or erasure. They discover evidence that challenges long-held assumptions of human superiority and excellence. They displace scholarly narcissism in favor of a new kind of humanism in which the human sits, perhaps uncomfortably, alongside other denizens similarly worthy of contemplation and admiration, even respect.
Yet . . .
So what? What is the significance of the fact that arguments can be made that nonhuman animals are moral agents, too, and not just objects of human moral concern? What implications and applications are entangled here? In which ways might the very questions pursued in this volume lead us even further afield, into ever murkier and knottier ways of thinking, doing, and relating?
Thankfully I am not alone in wondering such things. Matthew Calarco raises similar questions in response to a brilliant Socratic play, The Death of the Animal: A Dialogue, by Paola Cavalieri. Calarco asks, “Why do we need to determine the outer limits of moral status beyond animals? What if the logic of deciding inclusion and exclusion within the moral community were itself the problem? And what would be the implications for ethics if we were to abandon the aim of determining the proper limits of moral status altogether?”1
To gain insights into such possibilities, I invited three prominent scholars—all of whom are colleagues at Emory University and each of whom is an expert on animal issues, be it in law, psychology, or philosophy—to sit together and reflect on the “so what” of beastly morality, of nonhuman ethical agency, and perhaps forge an epilogue—an additional lecture—on this subject. To be sure, those hours of conversation were some of the most stimulating and illuminating I have ever experienced. The animated and divergent nature of that conversation, however, challenged the very project I suggested. Instead of weaving these scholars’ voices into a singular argument, we agreed it would be better to hear their responses to this “so what” question in their own words, using their own disciplinary idioms. What follows is their responses to my invitation to meditate on the “so what” of beastly morality. As anticipated, each scholar interpreted the question slightly differently in her own way.
For Ani B. Satz, a professor of law, Beastly Morality inspires reconsidering the legal status of nonhuman animals. Lori Marino, a cetologist and professor of psychology, questions the very link between moral subjectivity and moral agency. And Cynthia Willett, a professor of philosophy, meditates on how animal ethicality troubles our notions of freedom—and this is a good trouble to have.2
I agree. The challenges these scholars raise are not to be disparaged because they identify difficulties that are politically unpalatable or pragmatically complex. Rather, they indicate opportunities to understand ourselves afresh, as moral subjects alongside myriad other moral entities who, thankfully, do not look like, smell like, or speak like we do.
ANI B. SATZ
This volume—which examines the capacity of nonhuman animals to be moral agents—raises the significant “so what?” question about the implications of such moral agency. Answering this question is especially difficult, as animals and humans may have different moral codes. And human moral codes may not, as is the default assumption, be superior even under human-constructed notions of moral agency. Nor do we have any way of assessing animal moral codes, much less adherence to those codes, outside our human constructs. Yet, as a general matter, viewing animals as moral agents (however defined) may impose obligations on human and nonhuman animals. While the significance of moral agency must be examined in detail elsewhere, I sketch here a possible consequence and benefit for animals of possessing moral agency: higher legal status.
In order to see how higher legal status might arise, it is necessary to discuss the possible relationship between moral agency and moral status. One consequence of recognizing animal morality may be that it could support animals’ moral status, or ability to be wronged.3 The characteristics that suggest moral agency may overlap with the characteristics used to establish moral status. In fact, moral agency typically is viewed as requiring higher-order characteristics, such as the ability to reason from abstract rules, whereas moral status might be conferred based on the ability to make autonomous choices without such a capacity to reason, for example. Thus, moral agency likely is sufficient to establish moral status, but not the other way around. (Having moral status but not moral agency, incidentally, could prove beneficial for animals, who otherwise might be held accountable for harms they cause.) The characteristics that afford animals moral status could be used in turn to justify granting animals greater legal protection.
Unlike viable fetuses, corporations, and even sailboats—which have been recognized as “persons” under law—animals currently do not possess personhood or another high legal status. Domestic animals are instead a form of living property. As a result, laws covering animals largely protect their interests only when human owner interests and animal interests align, rather than protecting animals in their own right.4 Animals who are companions enjoy the most protections against abuse and neglect, whereas animals used for experimentation, exhibition, and entertainment may be intensively confined and, depending on their status, worked to the point of exhaustion; have their skin, nails, and tissues removed; or be subjected to painful procedures without anesthesia or pain medication, if it interferes with experimental results. Farm animals have the least protection; the primary federal legal requirement is that they must be rendered insensible prior to slaughter, and they have some protections in transport and if “downed” due to illness. These animals may be immobilized for their entire lives, starved to produce eggs, and have their tails, toes, testicles, part of their posteriors, and beaks removed without anesthesia. The disparate treatment between companion animals and other animals is true even if the animal is the same in each context, for example, a pig. And due to legal exclusions to support human uses of animals, no federal law protects mice, rats, chickens, turkeys, or fish in any of these contexts. Some protections may apply under state anti-cruelty laws to farmed and other animals, though enforcement has proven difficult. Wild animals, who may be protected by government trust, often fare no better, since their protections may wane when human interests in hunting, entertainment, urban expansion, or other activities conflict with protection.
Recognizing higher legal status for animals could change dramatically the manner in which they are confined, raised, worked and otherwise used, and killed. Under the most favorable reading for animals, it might mean that animal interests in such areas as nourishment, hydration, shelter, bodily integrity, avoidance of pain, natural movement, and companionship (and maybe even higher-order interests like mental stimulation or education) would be given equal weight to human interests in the same areas. This could create a presumption against animal use if it interfered with certain interests, and animal users could be held legally liable for compromising these interests. Under a less favorable reading for animals, it could mean that animal interests would be given only some weight against the interests of other individuals with the same or higher legal status, depending on the legal hierarchy of individuals. While it is unclear how a legal hierarchy of individuals would be determined—it might be based on higher-order capacities, “humanness,” or other criteria—in this context, human interests in using animals in certain ways may trump animal interests in avoiding even basic deprivations. Animal protections would depend on whether it is viewed as wrong to compromise basic animal needs for human desires. The recent fois gras ban in California reflects this possibility, demonstrating a shift from the view that ducks should suffer through force-feeding for the production of this human food to the view that they should not.
LORI MARINO
This volume raises two quite distinct questions. One of them is the scientific question about whether other animals are moral agents. That is, do members of other species possess a concept of morality in some shape or form? Do they understand “right from wrong” and is their behavior—particularly in a social context—driven, in some part, by concepts of morality? It would be interesting, for instance, to know if chimpanzees evaluate behavior and intentions in other chimpanzees and respond accordingly, by punishing inappropriate behaviors or rewarding valued behaviors like loyalty and fairness. Whatever sense of morality a member of another species possesses, it will, of course, be species specific. So, a member of another species may have very strong notions of “proper” behavior, but those may be entirely different from human concepts of morality. Indeed, differences exist even among humans.
The scientific question of whether other animals possess moral agency fits squarely within the realm of other scientific queries about the characteristics and capabilities of other animals, such as whether they communicate symbolically, grieve their dead, recognize themselves in mirrors, or count to ten. But another dimension to the writings in this volume addresses an orthogonal issue: Is being a moral agent in any way relevant to being a moral subject? Do we have more of a moral responsibility to members of other species who are deemed to be moral agents than to those who are not? I contend that there is little, if any, direct connection between human moral responsibility and nonhuman animal moral agency. In other words, other animals can clearly be moral subjects without being moral agents.
We recognize a moral responsibility to a number of kinds of individuals who are not moral agents. These include infants and young children, individuals with mental disabilities, patients in a coma, etc. There is no question about these being moral subjects. Equally, there is no expectation that they should be moral agents. So, why is it important for other animals to be moral agents in order to be recognized as moral subjects? The answer may lie in the way we frame concepts of morality, mind, and our relationship with the other animals. I argue that the claim that moral agency in other animals requires a moral response from our species is based in the fact that moral agency becomes a proxy for something more general, i.e., psychological complexity. By virtue of its correlation with other sophisticated cognitive traits, such as self-awareness, autonomy, social complexity, etc., the question of moral agency in other animals becomes about whether we have more of a moral responsibility to cognitively and emotionally complex animals than to those who are deemed less so. While this point does not describe the totality of arguments about morality in other animals in this volume or elsewhere, it is worth considering that it is difficult to disentangle moral agency from other characteristics that we view as morally relevant, such as autonomy or self-awareness.
It is well known that we tend to treat animals with whom we are familiar and see as similar to us as more worthy of moral consideration than others.5 Simply put, our assumption is that highly intelligent animals are more vulnerable to suffering than are less-complex beings and thus require a more robust moral response from us. Given that we see ourselves as a moral species, we tend to feel greater moral responsibility toward other animals who appear to share some aspects of morality with us simply by virtue of the fact that they seem more similar to us. Even when there is no evidence for a hierarchy of sophistication or any meaningful differences in intelligence between two species, we often impose the belief that the one we accept as moral subjects is more intelligent than the one we dismiss as moral subjects. Our treatment of domestic pigs and dogs is a striking example of disparate moral consideration in the face of a complete lack of evidence for any relevant psychological differences between the two that would cause one to be more worthy of moral consideration than the other.6
Unfortunately, we are still in the grips of the ancient Scala Naturae view of the world that places humans and other animals on a hierarchy of complexity, form, and, most relevantly, value. We apply this model to considerations of whether other animals possess moral status. Hence, those “higher up” on the scale are more like us and more worthy of consideration. But because other animals are not human and do not enjoy “automatic” moral status, they must demonstrate their worthiness by sharing certain characteristics with us. Thus, it is difficult to argue that moral agency has any relevance to moral status apart from its connection with the Scala Naturae model of the world. The writings in this volume strive to articulate our relationship to the other animals in the moral realm. These thoughts and expressions can only help us to eventually shed ancient views and take a more informed and enlightened stance toward the other animals.
CYNTHIA WILLETT
“We are heading down a path toward . . . a world without animals,” Jacques Derrida famously exclaims, exhorting us toward an ethics that is responsive to radical alterity.7 His poststructuralist challenge to the threat of human-induced mass extinction joins with Peter Singer’s reason-based concern for those sentient nonhuman animals consigned carelessly to factory farms, research facilities, and other sites of human abuse and neglect.8 Derrida and Singer represent the two major traditions of moral thought—continental response ethics (also known as alterity ethics and tracing back to Levinas) and utilitarianism—that have forcefully challenged the view of animals as lacking moral status. Yet both of these philosophers assume strong discontinuities between human and nonhuman. Moreover, each conceptualizes the targets of concern primarily in terms of their relative vulnerability or passive suffering. Neither unfolds the rich possibility that our prized human ethical agency is fundamentally continuous with that of other animals across a range of species. Yet, ever more evidence suggests that underlying the spectacular differences among species are the common capacities of creatures who in fact have coevolved in shared habitats and multispecies communities. These continuities give rise to speculations on an impending paradigm shift in moral theory and philosophical ethics. Here I focus on the reverberations of this shift for the meaning of freedom.
In addition to extending moral status and legal protection to nonhuman animals, the essays in this volume, drawing on scientific and phenomenological observations and philosophical and theological arguments, call for philosophical speculation on modes of ethical agency in other species. Otherwise we risk viewing other species too narrowly as passive or amoral creatures vulnerable to pain and suffering but lacking significant subjectivity of their own. In fact, other species may not be at all metaphysically distinct from us or even our moral subordinates and inferiors. Varieties of species develop social codes and mores, communicating to various degrees across species as well as within their own species not only their own interests and concerns, but also modes of ethical agency and social desires that may not be any less sophisticated than our own. The coevolved origins of what we loosely term “morality” offer a basis for understanding both such differences and commonalities within and across species. However, renewed attention to the commonalities among human and nonhuman animals, long underemphasized in Western philosophy, promises a deeper awareness of how humans might engage other species, not as amoral beasts but as creatures who, like us, experience suffering and joy, flourishing through the social connections of camaraderie or community. This social source of flourishing also recalls dimensions of ethics neglected in modern and poststructuralist theory and yet important in our own everyday lives as profoundly social creatures.
Understanding shared animal capacities for ethical agency requires not only enhancing our knowledge of the social behavior and desires of other species and ourselves but also reconceptualizing the nature and significance of morality. Morality as taken up in the abstract formulations of modern moral theory (primarily through Kantian philosophies of rational duty and Singer’s tradition of utilitarianism) loses sight of the concrete social codes and mores, the animating desires, and the social emotions that constitute what Hegelians term the “substance of ethical life.” Questioning the abstraction of modern moral theories or poststructuralist modes of ethical subjectivity and response, this post-Hegelianism highlights webs of mutual obligation and character development. Abstract moral claims or subjectivities are relatively empty apart from the living world where social bonds attuned through affect give meaning and motivating force. What Hegelians term “ethical substance,” or “ethical life,” retracts from such modern moral dualisms as individual autonomy vs. dependence or reason vs. emotion toward a larger world of group dynamics and social interdependence, a world indeed shared with other animal species. Nonetheless, few philosophers have yet to trouble the sharp metaphysical divide erected since the time of Plato and Aristotle between human and nonhuman animals.
Singer’s assumptions regarding unique human capacities for moral reasoning represent this dominant view of Western philosophy. Singer launched the animal liberation movement in 1975 with the argument that animals no less than humans possess interests and feelings that merit moral consideration; however, he grounds ethics in abstract moral principles that, he continues to insist, provide the sole ground for moral judgment, and that, he also claims, only humans have the capacity to develop. Singer postulates this unique capacity for moral reasoning in humans to shore up the claim that humans, unlike other creatures, have the capacity for impartial moral judgments. This capacity seemingly enables humans to do what no other social animal can do, namely, extend ethical concern to the stranger outside one’s own social group (as emphasized in his response to Frans de Waal in Primates and Philosophers).9
Response ethics also in effect maintains a metaphysical barrier between us and animals in its own attempt to account for the stranger. According to this tradition, ethical concern across the radical differences separating singular individuals challenges the relevance of abstract principles or universals and the reasoning process upon which such abstractions rest. Derrida ventures to ponder the ethical alterity of animals, but leaves standing the traditional assumptions regarding the radical discontinuity between humans and animals. (Sean Meighoo, in chapter 3 of this volume, problematizes this metaphysical claim in Derrida by pluralizing the radical differences across the human-animal divide.)
In distinction from these views, here I invite wonder on the simple possibility that humans may display their ethical agency first and foremost as do some other species through vital needs for cooperative relationships. Common desires for social status and group membership, social emotions such as shame and forgiveness, and social codes and expectations compose the concrete basis for modes of belonging, or an ethos, which lies at the too often neglected root meaning of ethics. This ancient Greek word, signifying both disposition and custom, would shift current debates in moral theory or its poststructuralist alternative toward concrete modes of belonging and cultivated dispositions of attuning the self to the other, that, as it turns out, are not only central to human life but also profoundly evident across species. Nonhuman animals, like human animals, participate together in a varying, larger ethos, which can stretch across species and which, despite life’s wide variety, can be appreciated, if only inadequately, by our own species apart from any technical discourse weighed down by metaphysical abstractions.
Otherwise oblivious to the ethos and moral codes of other species, humans are tempted to view nonhuman animals largely not through impartial judgment but according to our needs. As a result, we treat them at once as objects of sentimental attachment, frivolous amusement, or indifferent use. Traditional Western and contemporary philosophical perspectives proclaiming a metaphysical abyss between them and us obscure the partially overlapping moral capacities of our and other species, and significantly, the imperfect impartial capacity for humans and nonhumans to respond ethically across group and species lines.
As this volume suggests, and the documentary Blackfish dramatizes, animals themselves offer an alternative moral tale. The documentary is based on a whale’s struggles in captivity. In the wild, orcas, who have been misnamed as “killer whales,” are seen to be a peaceful and nonviolent species with relatively “universal” or “impartial” codes against harming one another and humans. In this way, humans and orcas share a code in which harm to conspecific members and even to members of other species is inhibited. At the same time, Tilikum’s murderous rage against his captors in the entertainment industry tells the story of how a toxic mix of abuse, neglect, and frustration narrows the options for ethical response. Yet the documentary also tells the tale of humans—individually and collectively—refusing to see Tilikum’s suffering as morally significant. Blackfish is a sad tale of a diminished human capacity for ethical response. The kidnapping and captivity of the orca for use in the entertainment industry exhibits a terrifying disregard for the compelling social lives of other creatures. In this case, if the term “beast” signifies wanton disregard for others, as casually postulated of other species by moral philosophers, one is given to wonder: who here is the beast?
Perhaps, if only to free ourselves from being insensitive “beasts,” we should reconsider the meaning of freedom. Freedom is commonly understood in modern, liberal democracies and moral theories to signify the right to self-control through choices that we make in our private lives. No doubt freedom should include its modern meaning as autonomy, bearing relevance as it does for other animals as well as ourselves. This can be illustrated in the fact that just as humans suffer myriad psychological and behavioral disorders from struggling to control that which cannot be controlled, so do many animals manifest disorders from similar disability to control their contexts.
However, studies of emotional expression and styles of cooperation among other species suggest a more expansive meaning of freedom via our shared status as social animals. Ironically, studies of other social species’ complex needs for freedom prompt more attention to hitherto underemphasized or neglected dimensions of freedom in our own lives. We assume that modern life grants us more freedom than would be possible in premodern, traditional, or indigenous societies because of the privacy and independence that modern life allows. Perhaps it does as measured along the single dimension of autonomy. Yet consider how the exigencies of hyperproductive modern societies often leave us with little more reward than claims to control over an increasingly isolated private life, depriving us of the substantial social bonds and vital affects that we need to thrive. A large part of our lives is dictated by the need to work hard for institutionally defined goals, leaving us disconnected from others in ways that are profoundly removed from ancient human and indigenous lifestyles. In contrast with the community focus of our ancestors and of social primates generally, the fragmentation and atomism of modern individualism combined with sharpening socioeconomic inequalities and hierarchies between wealthy elites and impoverished masses have become the norm, inducing tremendous stress in humans, who are by nature like many of our planet’s cohabitants, social creatures, and whose ethicality is performed and embodied in and through social contexts. Is it any wonder that some people, deprived of many features of those social contexts, evidence increasing degrees of depravity?
Perhaps it is within our own interests as humans to pay heed to our lives alongside other social creatures rather than reducing their lives and our own to objects of control on the single axis of freedom measured as autonomy and opposed to dependence. On this scale our social vulnerability is viewed as a weakness rather than as a source of joy and flourishing. The suffering we impose on other animals through the constricted existence of our control-driven lives is a symptom of a deeper malaise. The dramatic reaction of wild animals to their forced removal from their social group or communities when captured eerily echoes the fact that, as mammals, we too thrive in rich social environments. Without that support, social animals suffer characteristically modern ailments such as depression and anxiety, and as Tilikum demonstrates, occasional murderous rampages. The same is true for elephants and other group-housed animals in laboratories and zoos, where transfers of individuals in and out of these often artificially created social groups damage their psyches.10
More than self-control and a private life, freedom for social animals requires the connective tissue of a felt life, lived social context, ethos. Understanding this ethos expands beyond any narrow conception of freedom as autonomy to embrace that web of belonging that, after Hegel, has been termed “social freedom.” Tilikum’s traumatic acting out against his captors is no different from the behavior of most any animal hostage, human or nonhuman. Eons of evolutionary history have spun strands of intra- and interdependence, laying the basis for an ethos of connection and affective response not only within but also across various species. Cooperative societies, predators and prey, and symbiotic groups thrive by learning to sense the potential for alliances as well as threats acutely. To know ourselves as animals, as one species coevolving alongside others, is to recall an expansive existence in this dense biosocial weave. In the process of disconnecting ourselves from one another and the rest of nature, we risk forgetting that other animals are similarly entrenched in a web of social closeness and meaningful interaction. Not surprisingly, we have difficulty learning to respect for others what we no longer appreciate for ourselves. If, on the other hand, we consider the possibilities raised in this book that other species are, like us, agents of ethics, agents in different ethoi—we may better appreciate and respect their true natures, if not our own.
NOTES
1. Matthew Calarco, “Toward an Agnostic Animal Ethics,” in The Death of the Animal: A Dialogue, ed. Paola Cavalieri (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 77.
2. For example, see Cynthia Willett, Interspecies Ethics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014).
3. See Dale Jamieson, Morality’s Progress: Essays on Humans, Other Animals, and the Rest of Nature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 122 (understanding moral status as the ability to be wronged by the actions of others).
4. See Ani B. Satz, “Animals as Vulnerable Subjects: Beyond Interest-Convergence, Hierarchy, and Property,” Animal Law Review 16 (2009): 65–101.
5. Donald Broom, “Cognitive Ability and Awareness in Domestic Animals and Decisions About Obligations to Animals,” Applied Animal Behavior Science 126 (2010): 1–11; Hal Herzog and Shelley Galvin, “Common Sense and the Mental Lives of Animals: An Empirical Approach,” in Anthropomorphism, Anecdotes, and Animals, ed. R. Mitchell, N. Thompson, and H. Miles (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997), 237–53.
6. Lori Marino and C. M. Colvin, “Thinking Pigs: A Comparative Review of Cognition, Emotion, and Personality in Sus domesticus,” International Journal of Comparative Psychology 28 (2015), uclapsych_ijcp_23859.
7. Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am, trans. David Wills (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008).
8. Peter Singer, Animal Liberation: The Definitive Classic of the Animal Movement (New York: HarperCollins, 2009).
9. Frans de Waal, Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved, ed. Stephen Macedo and Josiah Ober (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).
10. Gay A. Bradshaw, Elephants on the Edge: What Elephants Teach Us About Humanity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).