Responding to Animals

In their very interesting article, Émilie Hache and Bruno Latour argue that, in the sphere of moral philosophy, contemporary treatments of animals exhibit a hard-won insensitivity, and a corresponding inability to respond, to the "call" of animals: to the moral claims that animals legitimately make on us. I think there is much to commend in this thesis, and to a considerable extent I agree with it. However, I think that Hache and Latour have improperly formulated it. On the one hand, there is the insensitivity they describe; on the other, there is the inability to respond to the call. Hache and Latour seem to regard these things as equivalent. I am going to argue that they are not. There is an insensitivity in contemporary moral philosophers' dealings with animals. I do not think Hache and Latour have succeeded in identifying it with precision. Something in the vicinity of the insensitivity they describe is present, but it does not consist in an inability to respond to the call of animals. Rather it is a determination to understand this call in the only way available, given the development of moral discourse (at least in the anglophone world) during the last three hundred years. The determination to answer the call in the one available way, under these restricting circumstances, is laudable. The restriction on moral discourse is, I shall suggest, admirable and regrettable in (almost) equal measure.

The Anglophone Case for Animals

Latour and Hache begin their article with a striking claim: "Ever since Luc Ferry's book on ecological philosophy appeared, no one seems to have doubted, at least not in France, that to endow any of the world's creatures except human beings with an ethical dimension of any kind could lead only to conceptual absurdities and moral monstrosities." I shall assume that Latour and Hache are correct in their claim that Ferry has had this influence in France. But he certainly has had no such influence outside France. In the anglophone context, the idea that nonhuman animals (henceforth simply "animals") make at least some moral claims on us is almost universally accepted. To the extent there is disagreement on this matter, it concerns the scope and nature of these claims. Those who deny that animals make any moral claims on us are few and far between. Indeed, while the idea that the moral claims animals make on us are much more significant and wide-ranging than has traditionally been thought is by no means mainstream, neither is it recherché or otherwise unheard of. It is a relatively common claim; some would say increasingly common.

In broad outline, the "anglophone case for animals"-as moral philosophers have developed it over the past four or so decades-looks like this:

1. 1. There are no differences in the moral entitlements possessed by two creatures unless there is some other relevant difference between them.

2. 2. With regard to the possession of basic moral entitlements-fundamentally the entitlement to have their interests considered equally-there are no relevant differences between humans and at least some other animals.

3. 3. Therefore, animals possess some basic moral entitlements, including, fundamentally, the entitlement to equal consideration of interests.

If this argument is valid, it precludes any general discounting of the interests of animals. We are morally obliged to take those interests into account in our decision making. Indeed, we are obliged to give those interests the same weight as the equivalent interests of humans.

Premise 1 is uncontroversial. It is an expression of the idea that moral properties supervene on natural-that is, nonmoral-properties. Just as differences in moral evaluation of two individuals must be grounded in differences in non-moral properties, so too, according to premise 1, must differences in moral entitlement. Thus, it would be nonsensical to claim, with respect to two individuals identical in point of their relevant nonmoral properties, that one individual is a morally good person while the other is morally evil. If one individual is good, and there is no difference in their relevant nonmoral properties, then the other must be good too. Premise 1 is an application of this general idea...