Transcript The basic right as the most fundamental animal right

Towards a consistent animal
rights ethics
Stijn Bruers
Ethical dilemmas
• The trolley and the switch
Ethical dilemmas
• The trolley and the switch
• The trolley and the bridge
Ethical dilemmas
• The trolley and the switch
• The trolley and the bridge
• The surgeon
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Moral intuition -> ethical principle: everyone has a
basic right not to be used as merely means to
someone else’s ends.
Deontological rule: do not cause harm to a victim if
the presence of the victim is necessary in order for
your plan to work.
Burning house dilemmas
• Your child or...
– a dog?
– a child with another skin
colour?
3 principles of equality
Emotional inequality, but…
• Equal basic right (no use as merely means)
• Tolerated choice equality (respect the choice of
other helpers)
• Prioritarian justice: maximise the qualities of life
(well-beings) of all sentient beings, giving strong
priority to the worst-off individual. (Maximise the
qualities of life of the lowest levels, unless this is
at the expense of much more well-being of
others.)
3 principles of justice
• Equal basic right: deontological ethics
• Tolerated choice equality: ethics of care
• Prioritarian justice: consequentialist ethics
Discrimination

Causing harm or disadvantage to an individual
by making a value-laden distinction between
individuals based criteria that are not morally
relevant in that situation
Discrimination
• Current situation: all sentient humans have
the basic right
Moral
community
Sentient beings
Homo sapiens
Discrimination
• 4 arguments against antropocentrism
– The biological species boundary is arbitrary (kingdom,
phylum, class, order, infraorder, family, genus, species,
subspecies, population)
– Farfetched and complicated: one of the many definitions
of species refers to possibility for getting fertile offspring
– Potential fuzzy boundary: interspecies hybrids, humanzees
(chumans)
– Reference to genes or appearance, and these are not
morally relevant (there is no interest gene connected to all
and only humans,
-> There is no “essence” related to a species
Discrimination
• 4 arguments pro pathocentrism
– Virtue ethics and ethics of care:
• We can feel empathy with all and only sentient beings
• Developing the virtue of empathy is important
– Consequentialist and contractarian ethics:
• Own well-being matters to us,
• Impartiality is important (cfr. veil of ignorance)
– Deontological ethics
• Sentient being = being that has interests and can subjectively feel
its interests
• Right = protection of interest
– Other ethics
• Having a consciousness is something much more remarkable than
having the genes of an arbitrary species
• We should protect something highly remarkable
Ethical illusions
Ethical illusions
Ethical illusions
Intrinsic value of animal
Intrinsic value of human
(Morally) irrelevant properties
Ethical illusions
Basic right of
sentient humans
antidiscrimination
Eating meat
Strategy
• Common moral intuitions
• Ethical basic principles (axioms)
• Consistent ethical system?
• Delete ethical principles based on moral
illusions
The predation problem
• Should we protect the zebra or the lion?
• Dominating principle: if…
– a sentient being became, by a blind (amoral)
evolutionary proces, dependent on the use of other
sentient beings for its survival, or if
– a systematic interference would result in a loss of
biodiversity or ecological side-effects
… then we should tolerate this specific predation
as long as there are no feasible alternatives.