Personhood and animals: three approaches

Can Animals be Persons?, 2019

This is the penultimate version of the opening chapter of my book Can Animals Be Persons? (New York: Oxford University Press, May 2019).

It is orthodox to suppose that very few, if any, nonhuman animals are persons. The category of the person is restricted to self-aware creatures: in effect humans (above a certain age) and possibly some of the great apes and cetaceans. I shall argue that this orthodoxy should be rejected, because it rests on a mistaken conception of the kind of self-awareness relevant to personhood. Replacing this with a sense of self-awareness that is relevant requires us to accept that personhood is much more widely distributed through the animal kingdom.

Humans are animals; humans are machines. The current academic and popular dialogue on extending the personhood boundary to certain non-human animal species and at the same time to machines/robots reflects a dialectic about how “being human” is defined, about how we perceive our species and ourselves in relation to the environment. While both paths have the potential to improve lives, these improvements differ in substance and in consequence. One route has the potential to broaden the anthropocentric focus within the West and honor interdependence with life systems, while the other affords greater currency to a human-purpose-driven worldview–furthering an unchecked Anthropocene. The broadening of legal personhood rights to life systems is underway with a ruling for dolphins in India, for a river in New Zealand and with Laws of the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia. Many philosophers, ethicists, and ethologists define personhood within the confines of the dominant anthropocentric paradigm, yet alternate eco-centric paradigms offer an inclusive model that may help dismantle the artificial wall between humans and nature. In this paper, I explore these eco-centric paradigms and the implications of an associated worldview for human perceptions, self-awareness, communication, narrative, and research.

Journal of Ethics and Emerging Technologies

Humans are animals; humans are machines. The current academic and popular dialogue on extending the personhood boundary to certain non-human animal species and at the same time to machines/robots reflects a dialectic about how “being human” is defined, about how we perceive our species and ourselves in relation to the environment. While both paths have the potential to improve lives, these improvements differ in substance and in consequence. One route has the potential to broaden the anthropocentric focus within the West and honor interdependence with life systems, while the other affords greater currency to a human-purpose-driven worldview–furthering an unchecked Anthropocene. The broadening of legal personhood rights to life systems is underway with a ruling for dolphins in India, for a river in New Zealand and with Laws of the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia. Many philosophers, ethicists, and ethologists define personhood within the confines of the dominant anthropocentric par...

The concept of animalism suggests that human persons are animals, whose lives are defined as biological in a manner that is continuous with other animals, but who are also narrative animals telling a self-story, each narrating his or her own biological existence. I claim, in relation to bioethics, that the concept of animalism contains unplumbed depths in the biology of the affective and intersubjective dimensions of animal life that are fundamental features of biological living for mammals. This includes social intelligence that is largely affective, and the basic moral capacities that are required for and responsive to living in social groups. With respect to the bioethics literature on advanced directives, I note the presence of a kind of ''game'' mentality in which the dying subject is cast as an object for consideration. This approach creates what psychologists call intellectual distancing from the emotional feelings related to death and the dying person. I argue, in contrast, that the affective dimension of living and dying should hold a clearly articulated and central place in bioethical discussions. But in order for the affective dimension of animal cognition to be valued, it must be broadly understood , especially in relation to certain fundamental experiences shared by all mammals and central to the motivated behavior that shapes self-awareness, identity, and personhood. Animal studies have produced substantial findings that humans are similar to other animals in many dimensions of cognition and behavior that were formerly considered to be exclusively human.

2014

Humans are animals; humans are machines. The current academic and popular dialogue on extending the personhood boundary to certain non-human animal species and at the same time to machines/robots reflects a dialectic about how “being human” is defined, about how we perceive our species and ourselves in relation to the environment. While both paths have the potential to improve lives, these improvements differ in substance and in consequence. One route has the potential to broaden the anthropocentric focus within the West and honor interdependence with life systems, while the other affords greater currency to a human-purpose-driven worldview–furthering an unchecked Anthropocene. The broadening of legal personhood rights to life systems is underway with a ruling for dolphins in India, for a river in New Zealand and with Laws of the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia. Many philosophers, ethicists, and ethologists define personhood within the confines of the dominant anthropocentric para...

2011

Environmental Values, 1997

Contemporary ethical discourse on animals is influenced partly by a scientific and partly by an anthropomorphic understanding of them. Apparently, we have deprived ourselves of the possibility of a more profound acquaintance with them. In this contribution it is claimed that all ethical theories or statements regarding the moral significance of animals are grounded in an ontological assessment of the animal’s way of being. In the course of history, several answers have been put forward to the question of what animals really and basically are. Three of them (namely the animal as a machine, an organism and a being that dwells in an – apparently – restricted world) are discussed. It is argued that the latter (Heideggerian) answer contains a valuable starting point for an ethical reflection on recent changes in the moral relationship between humans and animals.

Ethics & Behavior, 1993

It seems impossible for a human being not to have some point of view concerning nonhuman animal (hereafter animal) welfare. Many people make decisions about how humans are permitted to treat animals using speciesist criteria, basing their decisions on an individual's species membership rather than on that animal's individual characteristics. Although speciesism provides a convenient way for making difficult decisions about who should be used in different types of research, we argue that such decisions should rely on an analysis of individual characteristics and should not be based merely on species membership. We do not argue that the concept of species is never useful or important. To make our points, we present a conversation among a skeptic, an agnostic, and a proponent of the view that our moral obligations to an animal must be based on an analysis of that individual's characteristics. In the course of the discussion, concepts such as personhood, consciousness, cognitive ability, harm, and pain are presented, because one's understanding of these concepts informs his or her ethical decisions about the use of animals by humans.

Animal & Natural Resource Law Review, 2021

macaRena monTes fRanceschInI * introduction Courts around the world have discussed nonhuman animal 1 personhood in different types of procedures. This paper examines twentyseven such cases, most of which are writs of habeas corpus (HCW) filed on behalf of specific animals incarcerated in a zoo or laboratory in the hope that a court will find that the animal's imprisonment is unlawful and order their transfer or release. To date, there has only been one successful HCW case, regarding a chimpanzee named Cecilia in Argentina. 2 Cecilia lived alone in a concrete cage at the notorious Mendoza Zoo for many years, until, following her trial, a court ordered her transfer to Brazil's Great Ape Sanctuary, where Cecilia currently resides with other chimpanzees. 3 The remaining legal cases this paper will discuss are either administrative, criminal, or copyright proceedings in nature, where the topic of an animal's legal personhood has been an issue. This paper examines the arguments for legal personhood that have been employed in court, teases out the trends that emerge from this historical analysis, and presents the reader with three difficult dilemmas. The first argument pertains to the pros and cons of employing legal or political means; the second argument examines the relative advantages * Macarena Montes Franceschini is an attorney and a predoctoral researcher at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona). She is a member of the UPF-Centre for Animal Ethics, a member of the Editorial Committee of the Chilean Journal of Animal Law, and the treasurer of the Great Ape Project-Spain. She has written several articles on nonhuman animal personhood and animal law and a book titled Animal Law in Chile. The author would like to thank Randy Abate, Paula Casal, Carlos Contreras, Maggie Livingston, and Steve Wise for their valuable help and comments, and the entire editorial team at MSU ANRLR for their hard work on this article.