Evolutionary Ethics and the Status of Non-Human Animals

ABSTRACT If we accept that the behaviour of humans and other animals is very substantially channelled by evolutionary constraints, it might appear that there can be no place for animals within the protection of a human system of morality.
However, the nature of plausible evolutionary constraints on the cognition of social animals, including humans, suggests that this is not so. It is likely that the most important element in our morality is the capacity to imagine the feelings of other individuals, and this capacity is so important for our ability to understand and predict their behaviour that it would be likely to be preserved by evolution even if moral behaviour had no survival value in its own right. We also use this kind of imaginative sympathy to understand and predict the behaviour of other animals, and it is this which provides the main reason for the inclusion of such animals within a human moral system. The primitive elements of morality have a survival value that is probably common to many other social species of animals. Since one of our reasons for putting a special value on human life is the human capacity for moral behaviour, we ought also to view members of these species as being of special significance.     

The Scope of the Argument from Species Overlap

The argument from species overlap has been widely used in the literature on animal ethics and speciesism. However, there has been much confusion regarding what the argument proves and what it does not prove, and regarding the views it challenges. This article intends to clarify these confusions, and to show that the name most often used for this argument (‘the argument from marginal cases’) reflects and reinforces these misunderstandings. The article claims that the argument questions not only those defences of anthropocentrism that appeal to capacities believed to be typically human, but also those that appeal to special relations between humans. This means the scope of the argument is far wider than has been thought thus far. Finally, the article claims that, even if the argument cannot prove by itself that we should not disregard the interests of nonhuman animals, it provides us with strong reasons to do so, since the argument does prove that no defence of anthropocentrism appealing to non‐definitional and testable criteria succeeds.     

The analysis of human behavior in context

Does the name of the special interest group, “The Experimental Analysis of Human Behavior,” imply that those who analyze the behavior of human animals must organize themselves apart from those who analyze the behavior of nonhuman animals? Is the use of nonhumans in experiments really not relevant to the analysis of the behavior of humans? If so, then something must have changed. Many differences exist, of course, between the behavior of humans and nonhumans—humans, for example, cannot fly under their own power—but have we really isolated differences in principle, differences that require separate organizations for the study of each? I will try to indicate why I believe this is a serious concern, where the concern comes from, and what, perhaps, might be done to maintain what was once a flourishing bidirectional relation between research with humans and nonhumans, in both basic and applied research.     

Is the Argument from Marginal Cases Obtuse?

Elizabeth Anderson claims that the argument from marginal cases is 'the central argument' behind the claim that nonhuman animals have rights. But she thinks, along with Cora Diamond, that the argument is 'obtuse'. Two different meanings could be intended here: that the argument from marginal cases is too blunt or dull to dissect the reasons why it makes sense to say that nonhuman animals have rights or that the argument from marginal cases is insensitive regarding nonrational human beings (the marginal cases of humanity). The purpose of the present article is to argue that, despite Anderson's and Diamond's nuanced and perceptive treatments of the argument from marginal cases, this argument is not obtuse in either sense of the term.     

Against Animal Liberation? Peter Singer and His Critics

This article explores Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation thesis and examines the arguments against his work, particularly from certain moral philosophers in the late 1970s and 1980s who seriously engaged with his ideas. This article argues that due to the straightforward, minimalist nature of Singer’s preference utilitarianism, his arguments have remained highly defensible and persuasive. By advancing sentience, above characteristics like intelligence or rationality, as a sufficient criterion for possessing interests, Singer provides a justifiable principle for morally considering animal interests equal to those of humans. Numerous moral philosophers have challenged Singer, but they have struggled to seriously counter his core principle and to resolve the argument of ‘marginal cases’—that is, why do infants and intellectually disabled humans have moral status and animals do not. Ultimately, Singer broadly challenged prevailing anthropocentric views of animals and, in some instances, persuaded some of his most intransigent opponents.     

The Preference for Pointing With the Hand Is Not Universal

Pointing is a cornerstone of human communication, but does it take the same form in all cultures? Manual pointing with the index finger appears to be used universally, and it is often assumed to be universally preferred over other forms. Non‐manual pointing with the head and face has also been widely attested, but it is usually considered of marginal significance, both empirically and theoretically. Here, we challenge this assumed marginality. Using a novel communication task, we investigated pointing preferences in the Yupno of Papua New Guinea and in U.S. undergraduates. Speakers in both groups pointed at similar rates, but form preferences differed starkly: The Yupno participants used non‐manual pointing (nose‐ and head‐pointing) numerically more often than manual pointing, whereas the U.S. participants stuck unwaveringly to index‐finger pointing. The findings raise questions about why groups differ in their pointing preferences and, more broadly, about why humans communicate in the ways they do.     

In Defence of Backyard Chickens

Suppose that animals have rights. If so, may you go down to your local farm store, buy some chicks, raise them in your backyard, and eat their eggs? You wouldn't think so. But we argue, to the contrary, that you may. Just as there are circumstances in which it's permissible to liberate a slave, even if that means paying into a corrupt system, so there are circumstances in which it's permissible to liberate chickens by buying them. Moreover, we contend that restrictions on freedom of movement can be appropriate for chickens, but not humans, because of the obvious differences between the interests of healthy, adult humans versus those of chickens who have been bred for human use. We also argue that egg consumption is permissible based on the plausible assumption that no one's rights are violated in their consumption, and so while there may sometimes be morally preferable uses for eggs, you do nothing unjust in eating them. If we're right, then the rights view doesn't imply that veganism is obligatory; rather, it implies that the constraints on how we source animal products, though highly demanding, are not so demanding that they can't be met.     

ARE ANIMALS MORAL? A THEOLOGICAL APPRAISAL OF THE EVOLUTION OF VICE AND VIRTUE

I discuss controversial claims about the status of non‐human animals as moral beings in relation to philosophical claims to the contrary. I address questions about the ontology of animals rather than ethical approaches as to how humans need to treat other animals through notions of, for example, animal rights. I explore the evolutionary origins of behavior that can be considered vices or virtues and suggest that Thomas Aquinas is closer to Darwin's view on nonhuman animals than we might suppose. An appreciation of the complexity of the emotional lives of social animals and their cooperative behaviors in light of the work of animal ethologists such as Frans de Waal and Marc Bekoff suggests that social animals can be considered moral in their own terms. I discuss the charge of anthropomorphism, drawing on the work of archaeologist Steven Mithen, and consider arguments for the evolution of conscience in the work of anthropologist Christopher Boehm. Only the biological basis for the development of conscience and religion has evolved in nonhuman animals, and this should not be confused with sophisticated moral systems of analysis or particular religious beliefs found in the human community.     

The failure of theories of personhood

The belief persists in philosophy, religion, science, and popular culture that some special cognitive property of persons like self-consciousness confers a unique moral standing. However, no set of cognitive properties confers moral standing, and metaphysical personhood is not sufficient for either moral personhood or moral standing. Cognitive theories all fail to capture the depth of commitments embedded in using the language of "person." It is more assumed than demonstrated in these theories that nonhuman animals lack a relevant form of self-consciousness or its functional equivalent. Although nonhuman animals are not plausible candidates for moral personhood, humans too fail to qualify as moral persons if they lack one or more of the conditions of moral personhood. If moral personhood were the sole basis of moral rights, then these humans would lack rights -- and precisely for the reasons that nonhuman animals would.     

Evil in the Fine‐Tuned World

If the world has been fine‐tuned for human life, why does that life encompass such calamity and suffering? It seems that in so far as we are impressed by the fine‐tuning intuition that the world has been designed for human life, the problem of natural evil gains in urgency. I propose that observing the world from the anthropic point of view is the source of theists’ challenge which arises from this tension. Dealing with this challenge I suggest perhaps the world is fine‐tuned for God’s telos, which may be His manifestation of love through sentient beings’ pains and emotions.     

You Can Only Die Thrice: Death and Dying of a Human Body in Psychoanalytical Perspective

This paper compares the (cultural) necessity of death/dying, perceived as a sequence of Imaginary—Real—Symbolic, to Van Gennep’s three-staged rite of passage. If this logic is disrupted, the subject responsible necessitates attribution of special social status and can come to embody the imagery of a life worth living. This philosophical framework, which includes epistemologies borrowed from medical anthropology, demonstrates there is more for humans to lose than biological (Real) life; a far greater loss is to exist without (Symbolic) reason to live. A critique of prevalent quantitative methodology in assessing links between spirituality and the human body is added.     

Social Rights and Migrant Realities: Migration Policy Reform and Migrants’ Access to Health Care in Costa Rica,Argentina, and Chile

Immigration poses a significant challenge to states’ existing social protection systems, especially in developing countries that are already struggling to provide social services for their citizens. In particular, immigration produces a tension between citizenship rights—those extended only to citizens, and social rights—rights extended by the state to others within their national territory. Immigration raises questions not only about the rights and access of migrants to health and other social services but also the level and quality of provisions to citizens. We draw on literatures on welfare regimes in Latin America, welfare magnets, and the legitimacy of social rights to examine the nexus of migration and health care policy in Costa Rica, Argentina, and Chile—three countries that have recently pursued immigration reform. We argue that variation in the extension of immigrants’ social rights to health is explained by the interaction of existing migration and social policies, the nature of the health care system in each country, and, in some cases, international and regional norms.     

Bounded in a nutshell and a king of infinite space: the embodied self and its intentional world

This paper explores the implications of developments in phenomenological biology for a reconsideration of synchronicity and the self. The enactive approach of Maturana and Varela aims to reformulate the relation between biological organisms and the world in a non‐Cartesian way, breaking down the conceptual division between mind and world so that meaning can be seen as a function of the species‐specific way in which an organism engages with its environment. This leads to a view of the self as inherently embodied and engaged with the particularities of its material, cultural and social worlds, while being infinitely extended through the power of imagination; this enables humans to adapt to many different social and material environments. In order to understand these differences, we need to ‘enter into the world of the other’. Where understanding of other animals requires immersion in their environmental milieux, understanding other humans requires us also to recognize that differences in socio‐cultural milieux create significantly different worlds of meaning and experience.     

Mental Handicap and Citizenship

ABSTRACT Mentally handicapped people have been taken in philosophical work as an obvious exception to the canons which are applied to other, 'rational'individuals. This paper argues that mentally handicapped people should be accorded the same rights as others. If there are human rights, then mentally handicapped people are entitled to them as humans; and if there are rights which apply in general to citizens, the same rights apply equally to mentally handicapped people. The argument for the inclusion of mentally handicapped people as citizens is first, that there is a presumption of inclusion: if citizenship is accorded to all other individuals, there is no reason why citizenship should not be accorded to mentally handicapped people on the same basis as others. Second, mentally handicapped people cannot successfully be excluded without effectively challenging the presumption of inclusion applied to other groups. Third, and perhaps most important, there are positive reasons why mentally handicapped people, as a particularly vulnerable group, need to have rights to protect them against particular abuses.     

Hobbes’s materialism and Epicurean mechanism

ABSTRACT

Hobbes belonged to philosophical and scientific circles grappling with the big question at the dawn of modern physics: materialism and its consequences for morality. ‘Matter in motion’ may be a core principle of this materialism but it is certainly inadequate to capture the whole project. In wave after wave of this debate the Epicurean view of a fully determined universe governed by natural laws, that nevertheless allows to humans a sphere of libertas, but does not require a creator god or teleology to explain it, comes up against monotheism and its insistence on the incoherence of an ordered world in the absence of a God and his purposes. The following questions were central to this debate: (1) Can we understand the universe as law-governed in the absence of a god? (2) If so, what room is there in a fully determined mechanical universe for human freedom? (3) If humans do enjoy freedom, does the same hold for other animals? (4) Is this freedom compatible with standard views of morality? (5) Is there an analogue between the material world as law-governed and human social order? (6) If so does it also obtain for other animals?     

Giving Up the Goods: Rethinking the Human Right to Subsistence,Institutional Justice,and Imperfect Duties

Either a person's claim to subsistence goods is held against institutions equipped to distribute social benefits and burdens fairly or it is made regardless of such a social scheme. If the former, then one's claim is not best understood as based on principles setting out a subsistence goods entitlement, but rather on principles of equitable social distribution — a fair share. If, however, the claim is not against a given social scheme, no plausible principle exists defining what counts as a reasonable burden for any of the available agents to secure subsistence. No justifiable principle exists implying generalised perfect duties any agent could clearly follow or clearly breach that secure subsistence conditions for others. At best we can justify rescue duties under very specific conditions, or general but imperfect duties to improve arrangements. Neither of these obviously correlates with human rights standards. Attempts in the literature to overcome the dilemma by claiming basic rights can correlate with imperfect duties or can generate duties to work towards institutions that ‘perfect’ our imperfect duties, are faulty. I then show how the dilemma can be avoided by accounts of human rights focusing on minimum respectful treatment rather than goods or interests.     

Do nonhuman animals reason about prestige-based status?

Status is a complex, but crucially important, aspect of life across species. In recent decades, researchers have made significant contributions to our understanding of both the pathways by which status can be attained, as well as our underlying capacities for reasoning about these pathways. In 2001, Henrich & Gil-White proposed a prestige-based pathway to status where low status actors willingly defer to competent or knowledgeable high status actors, as a means of facilitating social learning and cultural transmission. Although this type of status hierarchy, and the capacity to reason about it, was hypothesized to be unique to humans, here I argue that there are several reasons why we might observe prestige-based status, and the capacity for reasoning about this pathway to status, in some nonhuman species as well. These reasons focus on the prevalence, importance, and sophistication of social learning in certain taxa, as well as the marked variation in hierarchy characteristics and structure across species. I point out places where our current methodologies encounter difficulties distinguishing whether a hierarchy in the wild is based on dominance or prestige, where our experimental methods leave us unable to assess whether an individual is reasoning about a high status actor as being prestigious or formidable, and provide suggestions for addressing these limitations. Adopting a comparative approach will clarify whether prestige-based status truly is unique to humans, and—if not—precisely what selective pressures facilitate the emergence of prestige-based status and the capacity for reasoning about it.     

Religious Conflict and the Chain of Command in the American and French Militaries

Analyzing characteristics of the organizational environment, the organization, and its actors recommended by the framework guiding this symposium on the cross‐cultural study of religion in public institutions, we identify common elements of military organization that shape local and national policies surrounding religion cross‐nationally. Comparison of cases from U.S. and French militaries—a secularist group at the U.S. Air Force Academy, and Muslim soldiers in France—demonstrates this framework's utility by directing attention to when, how, and by what logics constitutional protections are afforded to religious (and nonreligious) minorities. This analysis also reveals two additional arenas of investigation important to the study of religion in public institutions. Because religion today is often at the center of disputes over citizens’ conflicting rights, conflicts over religion in the military, and in other public institutions, demand special attention. In addition, our cases call attention to the importance of organizational structures and authority. Military settings make this point obvious, since the chain of command plays a fundamental and powerful role in the operation of militaries cross‐nationally—including in activities and policies surrounding religion and religious groups.     

Conceptual constraints and mechanisms in children's selective learning

Although we can support Heyes’ call for more research on mechanisms, we disagree that the problem has been ignored as Heyes suggests. We also doubt that basic learning mechanisms are alone sufficient to account for the broad range of findings in the selective social learning literature. Although phylogenetically shared learning mechanisms must support selective social learning, we believe that they must also be guided by top‐down conceptual considerations that may be special to humans. Research to date has been focused on establishing the boundary conditions on selective social learning, with the goal of making generalizations that will constrain theorizing about the character of that special knowledge. This is critical to our understanding of both why and how selective social learning manifests in children.     

Are All Species Equal?

Species egalitarianism is the view that all species have equal moral standing. To have moral standing is, at a minimum, to command respect, to be something more than a mere thing. Is there any reason to believe that all species have moral standing in even this most minimal sense? If so — that is, if all species command respect — is there any reason to believe they all command equal respect. The article summarises critical responses to Paul Taylor’s argument for species egalitarianism, then explains why other species command our respect but also why they do not command equal respect. The intuition that we should have respect for nature is part of what motivates people to embrace species egalitarianism, but one need not be a species egalitarian to have respect for nature. The article closes by questioning whether species egalitarianism is even compatible with respect for nature.