Letting animals off the hook
Are other animals morally responsible for their good and bad behavior?
Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy, vol. 28, no. 1, July 2024
https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v28i1.2800
What kinds of moral agents are there? Computers and cars are not moral agents. Now imagine you are walking past a playground. The children are agents, but you are reluctant to hold them morally responsible. Likewise, maybe the dogs playing at the park are agents of some sort but not moral agents. They are playing by some tacit rules, but those are not moral. The realm of agents is larger than that of moral agents. Only the latter are open to attributions of moral responsibility and reactive attitudes. Parents are morally responsible and can be blameworthy for what happens to their children and their dogs. But if children or dogs fight at the park, they may be reprimanded, not held morally responsible. There are important differences between our responses to children and dogs. For instance, children will normally become moral agents; dogs will not. Children need and dogs need not be brought into scaffolding practices where we hold each other accountable and raise budding agents. The standards we apply to children are sensitive not just to what they are but also to what they are starting to become and the contexts in which they grow up.
In my article, “Letting animals off the hook,” recently published in the Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy (open access), I argue take up the issue of animal morality—the topic of a rapidly growing philosophical literature—and argue that most proponents of the existence of animal morality face a dilemma. According to a prominent family of views of moral responsibility, the facts that motivate claims of animal morality are sufficient for many animals to be morally responsible. Some authors accept this consequence, but many deny it by appealing to a putative difference between “moral subjects” and “moral agents”. In the article, I argue that if they want to deny animals’ moral responsibility, they are committed to a much less impressive account of animals’ moral abilities. In a nutshell, either moral subjects are moral agents or they are not really moral.
Contrary to much of this literature, I also express some skepticism concerning the benefits of regarding, let alone treating, other animals as moral, whether to praise or blame them. While I only briefly touch upon the issue in the article, I address the issue in depth in a working paper, arguing that the empirical and philosophical literature on animal morality is subject to non-negligible inductive risks. Independently of whether moral abilities give rise to distinctive moral claims or moral status, I question the pervasive assumption that it would be better for animals to be seen as capable of acting morally.
Several other interesting papers have come out since I finished this paper, check them out too!
Erik Nelson, Kantian animal moral psychology: empirical markers for animal morality in Ergo (also open access)
Rhys Borchert and Aliya R. Dewew, In praise of animals in Biology and Philosophy, winner of the inaugural Philosophy of Animal Minds and Behavior Prize
I would say I did my best to cover most of the pertinent literature in the article, but there were inevitable omissions. Apologies to anyone whose work I omitted.
Moral responsibility begins with a theory of mind, but to hold a being responsible requires knowing that they know a) they've caused harm b) they should avoid causing harm. If those points cannot be known with reasonable certainty any act must be treated as amoral.