What Is Relevant to Knowing to Whom We Owe Consideration?

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume II, p. 8 of the PDF edition · English translation

1.1. A double standard

Nonhuman animals are exploited and killed by humans every day for the most diverse purposes. They are used for food, clothing, as test subjects, for entertainment, leisure, and as workers or tools. These practices cause suffering and death to a gigantic number of nonhuman animals and are widely accepted. However, if the victims were human, such practices would be considered monstrous.

In addition to being victims of human practices, nonhuman animals are also greatly harmed by natural processes such as malnutrition, hunger, and thirst, disease, physical injuries, psychological stress, hostile weather events, natural disasters, and interspecific, intraspecific, and sexual conflicts. This is the typical situation of most animals living in the wild. The standard view is that we should not help them: we should let nature take its course. But, once again, if the victims were human, the standard view would be the opposite, namely, that resources should be devoted to helping them.

These attitudes reveal that a large proportion of people apply a double standard, depending on the species of those affected by their decisions. If they are nonhuman animals, they receive no help and are tortured and killed. If they are human, they receive full moral consideration. This is, therefore, an anthropocentric speciesist moral standard.

1.2. Attempts to justify anthropocentric speciesism

There are various attempts to justify this moral double standard. Among the reasons most often given in an attempt to justify the view that either only the good of humans matters or it matters to a greater degree are:

(1) The very fact that they belong to the human species.

(2) The fact that they belong to the same species we belong to. (3) Metaphysical claims, such as that humans were created in the image and likeness of a creator; have a special relationship with that creator; have an immortal soul; have dignity; belong to a higher ontological category, and so on.

(4) The claim that humans possess (or have the potential for) capacities such as reason, language, freedom, moral agency, a sense of justice, autonomy, culture, the capacity to make mutual agreements, to respect rights, to claim rights, and so on.

(5) The claim that humans have (or have the potential to have) various kinds of relationships, such as relationships of affection, mutual solidarity, political relationships, and power relationships.

(6) The fact that all humans belong to the same species as those who possess those capacities or relationships (even though not all humans actually possess them).

(7) The claim that the idea of species is not a mere social construct (it is based on biological characteristics).

(8) The claim that disregarding nonhuman animals is a natural attitude.

(9) The fact that animal exploitation is traditional and part of the culture of many peoples.

However, it makes sense to ask what relevance these things have to knowing whom we should respect. In asking this question, we can see that all defenses of anthropocentrism simply assume that the criterion they adopt is relevant to knowing to whom we should give moral consideration, without offering any explanation of why it would be relevant.

This applies to all attempts to justify anthropocentrism, whether those based on the criterion of membership in a certain species, on the possession of certain metaphysical characteristics, or on the possession of certain capacities or relationships, as well as those based on the fact that a distinction rests on a biological characteristic or that a behavior is natural or traditional.

Moreover, there are reasons to think that none of these criteria is relevant to knowing to whom to give moral consideration. This is pointed out by the argument from relevance, described below.

1.3. The argument from relevance

The argument from relevance¹ starts from the trivial premise that, for a criterion to be justified, it must be based on a distinction relevant to the question it aims to answer. For example, what is relevant to evaluating a candidate for a medical team at a hospital is their medical skills, their level of knowledge in the field, whether they are punctual, whether they treat patients well, and so on. To evaluate who should be seen in a hospital emergency room, on the other hand, what matters is knowing who is injured, who is seriously ill, who is at risk of dying, and so on.

Switching the criteria would mean applying criteria that are relevant in one context to another in which they are not. This would happen, for example, if it were required that, to be accepted onto a medical team, one would have to be ill and that, to be seen by a doctor, one would also have to be a doctor. Of course, the absurd attitude described in this example would hardly occur in real life. However, the argument from relevance points out that the anthropocentric moral standard commits a very similar confusion. Let us see:

The argument from relevance holds that none of the defenses of anthropocentrism adopts criteria relevant to determining who should receive moral consideration. This is so because what is at stake in questions of moral consideration is how our acts and omissions could positively or negatively affect whoever is affected by them. To give moral consideration to someone is to act so as to avoid harming them and to seek to benefit them. If so, then the appropriate criterion for knowing to whom to give moral consideration is knowing who can be harmed and benefited.

The species to which someone belongs; whether or not they were created in the image and likeness of a deity; whether or not they have an immortal soul; whether or not they have certain capacities and certain relationships; whether or not they have the potential for such capacities or relationships; whether or not a behavior is natural or traditional, and so on: none of this determines who can be harmed or

benefited. Therefore, these cannot be relevant characteristics for knowing to whom to give moral consideration, the argument from relevance concludes.

On the other hand, being capable of having positive and negative experiences (that is, being capable of enjoying and suffering) determines whether someone can be harmed and benefited. That is why proponents of the argument from relevance hold that sentience (that is, the capacity to have experiences) is the appropriate criterion for moral consideration.

1.4. What is relevant for consideration and what is relevant for responsibility

Traditionally, criteria that are relevant to determining whom it would make sense to hold responsible have been applied to determine who should receive moral consideration. For example, it is commonly argued that, for us to have obligations toward someone, that someone must also be capable of recognizing obligations²; that for someone to receive the protection of principles of justice, they must have a sense of justice³; that to have rights, one must be capable of understanding the notion of rights⁴, and so on.

These claims have been widely used in an attempt to justify all the terrible things that are done to nonhuman animals. However, possessing these capacities may be relevant to knowing whom to hold responsible, but not to knowing whom to consider morally. This is already recognized in the case of babies, children, humans with cognitive disabilities, and so on. Recognizing this, however, implies recognizing that every sentient being, regardless of species, should receive moral consideration.

The disregard that nonhuman animals typically receive arises, at least in part, from the belief that, for us to owe moral consideration to someone, that someone must also be capable of acting morally. However, as the argument from relevance points out, this is a confusion analogous to thinking that, for someone to be seen by a doctor, that someone must also be a doctor.