What Would We Decide Under Conditions of Impartiality?

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume II, p. 33 of the PDF edition · English translation

10.1. The impartiality test

How can we know whether a decision is just or unjust? A widely accepted view is that, for a decision to be just, it must be impartial. What is meant by impartiality is not remaining neutral and making no decision at all. What is meant is making an unbiased decision.

But how can we know when a decision has been made impartially? A widely used method consists in imagining what we would decide if we did not know what position we would occupy among those affected by it. In that case, we must sincerely imagine ourselves in the place of each of those affected by the decision. Another similar method consists in imagining what we would decide if we had to live the lives of each of those affected by our decision.

A method centered on impartiality was used extensively in John Rawls's A Theory of Justice³⁷ and influenced many later works. The method consists in imagining self-interested agents who already exist as rational beings but have not yet been born into the world in which they will live. This is the so-called original position. In it, they must decide which moral and political principles will govern that future world. However, they must decide behind a veil of ignorance, where they do not know what characteristics they will have after they are born. They will not know their race, gender, nationality, whether they will be born into rich or poor families, whether they will be born healthy or with some disease, what talents or difficulties they will have, and so on. The idea is that, under conditions of impartiality, discrimination based on these factors would not be tolerated, since rational, self-interested agents must decide bearing in mind that they have an equal probability of being born as any of the individuals in the future world.

10.2. Does the impartiality test apply to our decisions that affect animals?

Rawls believed that the veil of ignorance thought experiment did not apply to our decisions that affect nonhuman animals³⁸. This is because he believed that, for someone to be protected by principles of justice, they must have a sense of justice (since this is necessary for deciding in the original position).

However, this reasoning would only make sense if, for someone to be treated unjustly, they needed to have a sense of justice. But consider the following example. Imagine that a baby receives less food than the other babies in a nursery because of the color of its skin. Imagine also that this baby was born with a disease that affects its cognitive capacities in such a way that it will be prevented throughout its entire life from developing a sense of justice. The fact that the baby does not have (and can never come to develop) a sense of justice does not make the treatment it received any less unjust. The injustice occurred because its well-being was given less weight on the basis of an arbitrary factor (skin color), and this is unjust regardless of whether or not the victim has a sense of justice, and whether or not it has the potential to develop one.

Of course, for someone to be held responsible for committing an injustice, they need to have a sense of justice. But one does not need to have a sense of justice to be the victim of an injustice. Thus, the lack of a sense of justice in animals does not make the disregard they typically receive any less unjust.

Peter Carruthers is another author who has argued that we have no reasons to avoid harming animals³⁹. He argued that, if the agents are reasoning on the basis of the veil of ignorance, then they can presume they will be human, since animals are not capable of this. One reply to this is to observe, as Donald VanDeVeer⁴⁰ did, that the agents in the original position also know that they are capable of understanding and arguing about very complex moral and political principles, but this does not mean that in the original position they can presume they would retain this very high level of rationality, since, if they could, they would be tempted to favor the most rational individuals in a biased way. But if behind the veil they cannot assume they will be highly rational, then it also does not seem to make sense to maintain that they can know what species they would belong to.

Mark Rowlands⁴¹ observed that one of the aims of the veil of ignorance is to rule out undeserved advantages and disadvantages that are the result of luck, such as the natural characteristics one is born with. According to Rawls himself, this is why the veil of ignorance excludes knowledge of the natural properties one would have. However, Rowlands observes, membership in a species, like all other natural properties, is an undeserved result of the natural lottery, and therefore the benefits and harms that result from it are also undeserved. For this reason, Rowlands argues, knowledge of what species we will belong to must be excluded in the original position.

10.3. Impartially considering our decisions that affect animals

If we apply the impartiality test to our decisions that affect nonhuman animals, we have to imagine what we would decide if we did not know whether we would be born as humans or as nonhuman animals. Below are some examples of applying this test in various contexts.

10.3.1. Animal exploitation

It seems that, under such conditions, we would certainly consider animal exploitation highly unjust. None of us would consider it just to be forced to die and to go through all the suffering it causes so that other individuals could enjoy the benefits that result from it. This seems to suggest that those who consider animal exploitation just do so only because they know they will not be its victims. But if so, then it is not just, since it does not pass the impartiality test.

10.3.2. Speciesism

It is not only animal exploitation that would be considered unjust under conditions of impartiality, but speciesism in general, even when it does not involve exploitation. For example, suppose we had to decide whether or not it is just to give greater consideration to humans, but without knowing whether we would be born as humans or as nonhuman animals. Under

such conditions, it seems we would see giving greater consideration to humans as highly arbitrary.

That is, it seems that speciesism does not pass the impartiality test, and that it is defended only because humans know they will not be its victims and will reap its benefits. If impartiality is an essential component of justice, then speciesism is unjust. This seems to show that nonhuman animals are treated unjustly not only when they are exploited, but also, for example, in situations where they do not receive the help they need and in the little importance given to the animal cause. We will look at some of this below.

10.3.3. Wild animal suffering

Animals living in the wild are harmed on a daily basis by factors such as hunger, thirst, disease, natural disasters, hostile weather conditions, physical injuries, conflicts, and so on.⁴² Moreover, extremely high rates of premature mortality result from the predominant reproductive strategy, which consists in having thousands or even millions of offspring per brood (in stable populations, on average only two per brood survive)⁴³.

Since this kind of situation occurs independently of human action (it was already this way long before the human species appeared), the standard view is that we should "let nature take its course" and not help them. However, it seems that, under conditions of impartiality, we would argue for exactly the opposite, namely, that resources should be devoted to preventing/minimizing this gigantic amount of suffering and death.

10.3.4. The importance of the animal cause

A question commonly put to animal advocates is: "why worry about animals while there are humans in need of help?" A common view is that, even if animals are usually in a much worse situation, even if the total number of nonhuman victims is enormously greater, and even if there is a much larger number of people already investing in helping humans, we should nonetheless prioritize humans.

However, we would never say this if we did not know the species of the victims in each case. Moreover, remember that, behind the veil of ignorance, we have an equal chance of being born as any of the sentient beings existing in the world. According to some estimates, there are around 1 to 10 quintillion nonhuman animals in the world at any given time⁴⁴. There are 8 billion humans. This difference in size is so gigantic that an analogy is needed to grasp it. If we draw an analogy with the span of one year, the human population would represent at most 0.25 seconds of the year. All the rest would be nonhuman animals. This means that, once the veil was lifted, you would probably discover that you are a nonhuman animal. This shows that, under conditions of impartiality, we would condemn the current neglect of the animal cause. On the contrary, we would argue for giving it a high priority⁴⁵.

10.3.5. The importance of the future

The impartiality method also makes it possible to assess what we owe to future generations of sentient beings. For example, we can imagine that, behind the veil of ignorance, we also will not know in what era we will live. If we do this, we will realize that the probability of being born in exactly the era in which we actually exist is minimal (given that we have an equal chance of being born in any other era of the future). It seems that, under such conditions, we would argue that what we should do is adopt strategies that have a high probability of ensuring that the history of the world from now on is not full of suffering⁴⁶.

Usually, people (including animal advocates), when they reflect on how they should decide, take into account only the impact of their decisions on beings who already exist now, or who will exist in the near future. Topics related to the distant future have been largely neglected. However, just as the rise of factory farming made it possible to cause suffering and death to a gigantic number of animals, new technologies may emerge with the potential to cause suffering

many orders of magnitude greater from then on. For this reason, from an impartial perspective, we will conclude that we should give great importance to preventing suffering in the future.

10.4. Conclusion

These were just a few examples of applying the impartiality method to our decisions that affect nonhuman animals. However, it is important to remember that it is a method that allows us to think through and assess questions we had never encountered before, and even to detect questions that we had not previously realized were questions of justice. It is therefore a very wide-ranging tool.