Transcript 24th November The moral status of animals

24th November
To gather a brief outline of the
history of animal rights and
welfare
To begin to consider the moral
status of animals
Can animals ever be seriously regarded as
the equal of humans?
2+2=4
What do we mean by ‘moral status’?
Status – your place in the hierarchy;
the value placed on you as a consequence
of your role or position in life,
or, perhaps your belonging to a species.
Moral – what is right and what is wrong
according to a given ethical system.
Animal rights is the argument that the
interests of animals should be afforded
the same consideration as the similar
interests of humans – that animals
should be regarded as members of the
moral community with ‘rights’, and not as
things or property.
• Very recent empirical discoveries
include evidence of altruism – the
capacity to act in a disinterested way
for the good of others.
• Animals which live in communities often
exhibit signs of morality which
resembles human behaviour.
Socrates
Plato
Aristotle
Alexander The Great
• Aristotle believed women to be colder
than men and a lower form of life. His
views held sway well into the 16th
century when some Christian
philosophers were arguing about
whether women possessed a soul. They
certainly weren’t considered capable of
reason.
He wrote the History of Animals in 350 BC
Aristotle's classification of animals grouped
together animals with similar characters into
genera and then distinguished the species
within the genera. He also divided animals in a
2-group and 3-group system. The 2 group
system was blood and bloodless and the three
group system was in terms of their movement:
walking, flying and swimming (land, air or
water). He argued that animals existed purely
for the benefit of human beings.
• Descartes ‘I think therefore I am’
• The year 1641 was significant for the idea of animal
rights. Descartes views on animals and their status
has informed our views well into the twentieth
century.
• He was a dualist – arguing that mind and matter were
separate. Human beings were mind; non-humans,
including animals, were matter – without souls, sense,
or reason. They may see, hear, touch, but they are
not conscious. He argued they are incapable of
suffering and feeling pain. The sounds animals make
do not constitute a language in any sense of that
word.
Oliver Cromwell
The Puritans passed animal protection
legislation in England too. Cromwell disliked
blood sports. The Puritans interpreted the
dominion of man over animals in the Bible to
mean responsible stewardship, rather than
ownership. The opposition to blood sports
became part of what was seen as Puritan
interference in people's lives, which became a
reason to hate and resist them.
John Locke
A 16th century philosopher who argued
that animals have feelings and
unnecessary cruelty was wrong. But the
harm done by cruelty was not to the
animal but to the owner, or the person
administering the cruelty. He said
children should be discouraged from
being cruel to animals because it would
eventually make them cruel to humans.
Rousseau
• An eighteenth century philosopher who
said that animals were part of natural
law – they were not capable of reason
but they were sentient beings. They
cannot have moral rights because they
do not have a moral nature but they
share, in part, some aspects of human
nature through their feelings.
Kant
Eighteenth century German philosopher
Augustine, Aquinas, and Locke, opposed
the idea that humans have duties
toward non-humans. For Kant, cruelty to
animals was wrong solely on the grounds
that it was bad for humankind.
• The 19th century saw an explosion of
interest in animal protection, - from
1800 onwards, there were several
attempts in England to introduce animal
welfare or rights legislation., in
particular against bull baiting and other
unnecessary cruelties.
• 1824: Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals
• The 19th century saw the beginning of
direct action in defence of animal rights
and animal welfare.
Attitudes to animals began to harden in
the late 1890s, when scientists
embraced the idea that what they saw
as anthropomorphism — the attribution
of human qualities to non-humans—was
unscientific. This takes us back to
Descartes and the idea that animals are
purely mechanical creatures – with no
more feeling than a clock!
• 1960s: Formation of the Oxford
group
• A small group of intellectuals began to
view the increasing use of animals as
unacceptable exploitation.
• In 1973 Peter Singer first put forward his
arguments in favour of animal liberation,
which have become pivotal within the
movement. He based his arguments on the
principle of utilitarianism, the ethical view
that an act is right insofar as it leads to the
"greatest happiness of the greatest number,"
a phrase first used in 1776 by Jeremy
Bentham in A Fragment on Government.
Singer drew an explicit comparison between
the liberation of women and of animals.
The moral status of animals…3 arguments