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????????????????????????????????????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

Homo sapiens

Sentient beings

Moral community

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 illusionsIntrinsic value of animal

Intrinsic value of human

(Morally) irrelevant properties

Ethical illusions

Eating meatantidiscrimination

Basic right of sentient humans

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.