Empathy and rationality in ethics

The present article examines a concern I have had for some time about the compatibility of humanistic psychology with the emerging animal rights movement. Beyond working out my position, the paper has the additional educational and, frankly, political purpose of bringing animal rights issues to the attention of humanistic psychologists.

A number of theories have been put forward from the days of the pre-Socratic philosophers through modern times attempting to determine how the relationship between the animal species and the human species ought to function in regards to how humans treat animals. These theories have generated numerous ideas, but often rely on claims that animals are living creatures and thus deserve a set of rights, or, that animals are an inferior species to humans but are living creatures capable of feeling pain and thus a superior human species has a duty to keep the pain inflicted upon animals at the lowest level possible it not eliminate it all together. In this essay, I will argue that neither a rights based approach nor a duty to the animals based approach to how humans ought to treat animals are correct, but that humans possess a duty to our humanity to treat animals in a way that is commensurate with how we treat fellow humans. I will distinguish the difference between animals and humans regarding each set of species capabilities of performing moral actions and explain why these differences disqualify animals from being owed a set of inherent rights. I will then offer a thought experiment, "how we treat non-moral agents" to show how even without providing creatures capable of moral actions a set of inherent rights humans still have a duty to ensure animals are not mistreated. This duty will challenge the idea that we have a duty to animals for animal's sake, and I will show why a duty to animals for humans will still allow for animals to be treated in ways humans would not wish upon other humans. I will then put forward my theory on why humans owe it to humanity to treat animals with a basic respect.

Theories of rights are many and engaging in a detailed discussion of those theories is beyond the scope of this essay. However, here we shall start with the views of the 17th century philosopher Rene Descartes, which informed attitudes towards animals well into the 20th century. Descartes based his rights arguments on cogito, ergo sum: I think, therefore I am 1. Therefore consciousness and thought were central to his views on humans and animals. In part five of Discourse on Method published in 1637, he examined the nature of animals and how they were distinguished from humans. Mind, for Descartes, was not part of the physical universe; it was a separate substance and a link between humans and the mind of God. This link to God i.e. mind was unique to humans and non-humans had no mind and therefore no link to the mind of God. 2 His views suggest that the use of language is a sign of rationality and only beings that possess minds and souls are rational and argues that animals do not have immaterial minds or souls and are therefore not rational. It therefore follows that animals do not have sensations like pain, thirst or hunger. Animals for Descartes, were therefore nothing more than a "complex automata" and the squeals of pain, were mechanical reactions of the animal to external stimuli and not evidence of any sensation of pain. Humans on the other hand have minds or rational souls hence their capacity to use language and feel sensations like hunger, thirst and pain and this justifies their entitlement to holding rights. Furthermore, philosophers such as Locke and Grotius attached great emphasis on the ability of humans to reason, which for them justified their equal access to rights. However, the basis proposed by Descartes, Locke, and Grotius and defended by modern philosophers such as Georodie Duckler is being increasingly questioned. Questions are being asked about the moral standing of animals and whether their interests should also be considered. Amongst the commentators who have increasingly questioned the justification for focusing exclusively on human interests to the exclusion of all other species is Peter Singer who has attacked the basis of the theories of natural law. Singer is an advocate of utilitarianism and in Animal Liberation Movement, he refers to the proposals of equality of consideration by many philosophers, but points to their failure to recognize that this principle also applies to members of other species and not only humans. 3

The central purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the relationship between ethics and nonhuman animals. That is, in what way ethics has been understanding and incorporating nonhuman animals as participants in our moral community. To that end, I present how some of the different ethical perspectives concur to offer a more adequate response to the question of how we should include nonhuman animals in morality. The theoretical contributions offered by Peter Singer (utilitarianism), Tom Regan (law), Karen Warren (care) Martha Nussbaum (capabilities) and Maria Clara Dias (functionings) are called for the construction of this panorama and to the development of this debate.

2012

Essays in Philosophy, 2004

Varieties of Empathy: Moral Psychology and Animal Ethics, 2018

In Western traditions, rationality has tended to be the chosen method of moral philosophy. It is via detached, neutral and logical analyses that one can discover how we ought to value and act: in order to construct or discover values and norms, one must detach from the lived reality, look at it from afar, andgoverned by the rules of logicsestablish the content of morality. At the root of this ethos stand many classic figures, perhaps most famously Immanuel Kant in his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. For him, the way toward morality is the use of autonomous reason. Emotions, such as sympathy, even if at times seen as virtuous, are inevitably irrelevant. Yet, rationalism has its dangers. It may facilitate us to ignore the lived experiences of others, and replace the subjectivity and individual worth of those others with utilitarian calculations , ultimately enabling forms of systematic, even institutionalized violence. A common claim is that the Holocaust, together with its calculative, mechanic and bureaucratic efficiency, is the product of modernity. Here specialisation, rationalisation, and moral indifference become the rule, and as a result the subjectivity of the victims is lost -"What is being done to someone just becomes 'what is being done'" (Cohen 2002, 90). Dissociation and numbing are an integral part of also the late-modern culture, which increasingly resorts to moral apathy when faced with difficult questions concerning the subjectivity and treatment of others. (Ibid.) In other words, subjugation of and violence toward others become possible when morality is hidden under detached, rationalising calculations, and this ethos of moral numbness is very much present also in the contemporary culture. Simply put, if "rationality" is taken to mean optimisation, the subjectivity of othersif they serve a goal one wants to achieveis quickly lost and replaced with faceless, utilisable categories.

2020

Simple Summary: Many animal ethicists consider cognitive capacities as being the basis for the moral status of an animal. On this view, animals that have, for instance, complex experiences, future preferences, or at least the ability to suffer, impose an obligation on us. Those beings that do not share these capacities do not have a moral status. This would also apply to embryos, infants, or severely cognitively impaired humans, but this seems to be at odds with many of our shared ethical intuitions. As a response, so-called relationalists argue that our different relations to different kinds of beings form the basis for moral obligations. However, on this view, it remains unclear (a) why it is particularly our relations to kinds of animals that are morally relevant; and (b) how we can criticize and change these relations. This paper seeks to combine both accounts of animal ethics to overcome these pitfalls. It argues that it is individual vulnerability that forms the basis of moral obligations, but that social structures and relations predetermine how we perceive and recognize vulnerability. However, particular relationships with animals as well as open possibilities to treat animals in different ways (e.g., to treat a dairy cow not as a mere resource) render critique and change of current practices possible. Abstract: This paper presents vulnerability and the social structures surrounding recognition of vulnerability as fundamental elements of animal ethics. Theories in the paradigm of moral individualism often treat individual rational capacities as the basis of moral considerability. However, this implies that individuals without such capacities (such as human or nonhuman infants) are excluded even though we grant them special protection in our lived morality. It also means that moral agents are pictured as disembodied, impartial observers, independent of social relations and particular relationships. Relationalists take moral obligations to be rooted in different kinds of beings. However, relationalism runs the risk of losing the individual animal and her capacities. It cannot also it adequately explain what forms different kinds of being, or the constitution of normativity through relations. Moreover, it lacks resources to explain how critique and change are possible. This paper argues that vulnerability and its recognition are the source of our moral obligations to animals. It seeks to combine individualist and relationalist arguments by using a social ontology of the bodily individual which can be applied to human agents and to any vulnerable being. Social structures predetermine the ways in which we perceive and recognize the vulnerability of living beings. However, we are not fully determined by these structures; particular relationships and direct encounters with individual animals as well as the open possibilities of treating animals differently that are immanent in common practices render critique and change of current conditions possible.