Differentiated Moral Status, the Harm of Death, and the Wrongness of Killing

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume III, p. 49 of the PDF edition · English translation

12.1. The harm of death and the wrongness of killing

Compare these two claims:

Claim 1: "There are stronger reasons against killing and for saving the lives of humans because they are more harmed by death than nonhuman animals".

Claim 2: "There are stronger reasons against killing and for saving the lives of humans even if they are less harmed by death than nonhuman animals".

We discussed claim 1 in previous chapters. In this chapter we will discuss claim 2.

12.2. Reasons against killing and for saving lives: direct and indirect

With regard to reasons against killing and for saving lives, there are direct and indirect reasons:

Direct: these relate to the individual who would die.

Indirect: these relate to the impact that someone's death would have on other individuals.

An example of a direct reason would be the harm the individual would suffer if they died. An example of an indirect reason would be the sense of loss other individuals would feel, or the possibility that the individual would benefit others if they stayed alive.

12.3. The debate on direct reasons: the magnitude thesis versus the status thesis

In the debate on the strength of reasons against killing and for saving lives, there is a discussion about whether only direct reasons should count, or whether indirect reasons should count as well, and, if so, whether or not they should have the same weight as direct reasons.

In this chapter we will not go into these discussions. Instead, we will address the discussion of which factors the strength of direct reasons against killing and for saving lives should depend on.

On one side, the Magnitude Thesis (MT) holds that it should depend solely on the magnitude of the harm of death. That is, according to this position, the more someone is harmed by death, the stronger the direct reasons against killing them and for saving their life.

On the other side, the Status Thesis (ST) holds that we can have stronger direct reasons against killing and for saving the life of someone, even if they are less harmed by death, if that someone has a special status.

In the following sections, we will look at some implications of these two theses.

12.4. Direct reasons against killing as dependent on the harm of death

According to the MT, given two individuals A and B, we have stronger direct reasons against killing and for saving the life of whichever one is more harmed by death, whoever that may be.

This does not mean that, according to the MT, there are no direct reasons against killing and for saving the life of the one who is less harmed by death. In fact, according to the MT these reasons can also be extremely strong (this depends on how much the individual would be harmed by death). It means only that, according to the MT, the reasons against killing and for saving the one who would be more harmed by death are even stronger.

Consider, then, two implications of the MT:

Implication 1: Comparing a human who has the cognitive capacities of a normal adult and a human who lacks these capacities (such as babies, children, already-sentient fetuses, or adults who are victims of certain diseases or accidents that prevent them from having such capacities), if the human who lacks these capacities is more harmed by death than the human who has these capacities, we have stronger direct reasons against killing and for saving the life of the human who lacks these capacities.

Implication 2: Comparing a nonhuman animal and a human, if the nonhuman animal is more harmed by death than the human, we have stronger direct reasons against killing and for saving the life of the nonhuman animal.

12.5. An example of an approach centered on privileged moral status

Some people believe that the direct reasons against killing and for saving the lives of normal adult humans are stronger, even when they are less harmed by death. This view is commonly defended by claiming that normal adult humans have a special status (usually called dignity).

One example is the Two-Tiered Account (in the original, Two-Tiered Account), proposed by Jeff McMahan, which we will abbreviate here as TTA⁵⁷. This approach draws a distinction between the wrongness of killing beings who are capable of autonomy and those who are not.

The TTA defends the following four theses⁵⁸:

(1) According to the TTA, the wrongness of killing beings incapable of autonomy (whether nonhuman or human) depends on how much they are harmed by death. Therefore, the wrongness of killing these beings varies in degree.

(2) According to the TTA, the wrongness of killing autonomous agents does not depend on how much they are harmed by death, but rather on respect for their dignity. This implies the so-called Equal Wrongness Thesis. According to this thesis, these individuals have dignity because they are capable of making autonomous decisions. This capacity also varies in degree, but, according to the Equal Wrongness Thesis, dignity is a trump and admits of no degrees: all who have dignity have it equally. According to the TTA, the wrongness of killing autonomous agents does not vary in degree, because it is grounded in respect for their autonomous will not to die.

(3) According to the full variant of the TTA, the wrongness of killing an autonomous agent is always greater than the wrongness of killing a being incapable of autonomy, no matter how much more the latter is harmed by death. According to the threshold variant of the TTA, by contrast, the trump of

dignity applies only up to a certain point: depending on how much more the being incapable of autonomy is harmed by death, the wrongness of killing that being is greater.

(4) According to the TTA, it is right to kill beings incapable of autonomy if this is the only way to save one or more autonomous agents (or to save a sufficiently large number of beings incapable of autonomy), but it is not right to do the same to autonomous agents. Here, again, depending on the variant of the TTA, the trump of the dignity of autonomous agents applies fully or only up to a certain point. According to the threshold variant, there would be a number beyond which the possibility of saving many other individuals (whether autonomous agents or not) would make it right to kill autonomous agents to save them.

Are these theses plausible? We will discuss this in sections 12.7, 12.8, and 12.9. First we will discuss whether these theses could justify the current view of animals and of the practices that affect them. We will look at this next, in section 12.6.

12.6. Would the two-tiered account justify the common view of animals?

A common mistake is to think that, if it is more wrong to kill or fail to save humans, then there is nothing wrong with killing or failing to save nonhuman animals. This is mistaken, because act A's being more wrong than act B does not show that act B is not wrong (in fact, it may still be extremely wrong, only slightly less wrong than A).

Thus, contrary to what one might initially think, the TTA could not justify animal experimentation, much less the consumption of animals or other forms of animal exploitation. Note that thesis number 4 of the TTA holds that killing beings incapable of autonomy is justified only if this is the only way to save other individuals. The consumption of animals, obviously, is not about saving lives, since we can meet our nutritional needs with plant foods. As for animal experimentation, a large part of it is not carried out with the aim of discovering medicines, and even with regard to the part that is, there is no way to show that the same benefits could not have been obtained without using animals (indeed, it might be that not using animals would be more efficient for obtaining them).

As for saving lives, the TTA holds only that it is even more wrong not to save the lives of normal adult humans. But it can still recognize that it is very wrong not to save the lives of nonhuman animals (including the lives of animals who live in the wild and are victims of natural processes). McMahan himself, the creator of the TTA, advocates intervening in nature to help animals in the wild who are victims of natural processes⁵⁹.

Important: nothing said above means that it is more wrong to kill and fail to save humans. It means only that, even if it were, this would not justify the common practices of killing nonhuman animals and of neglecting to save their lives.

Below we will discuss some problems with the TTA.

12.7. How much should we trust intuitions?

As we have seen, the TTA holds that (always or generally, depending on the variant) it is more wrong to kill autonomous agents, even when they are less harmed by death. However, it is up to the proponents of the TTA to explain why, since they are making an exception to the general principle that the seriousness of the wrongness of killing depends on how much the victim would be harmed by death. This, by itself, does not show that the TTA is wrong, but it does show that the burden of proof lies with its proponents to justify the exception they want to make.

In response, proponents of the TTA argue that it is because autonomous agents have the trump of dignity, which would exist because of their autonomy. But why would the capacity for autonomy generate a trump? And why would autonomy specifically generate this trump and not, say, sentience or any other characteristic⁶⁰? All of this is simply postulated by the TTA.

The reason for postulating these things, according to proponents of the TTA, is that doing so would allegedly ground certain intuitions⁶¹: that the wrongness of killing nonhuman animals and humans incapable of autonomy varies in degree but that the wrongness of killing normal adult humans does not vary in degree; that the wrongness of killing autonomous agents is greater than the wrongness of killing beings incapable of autonomy; that it is right to kill beings incapable of autonomy in circumstances in which killing autonomous agents would not be, etc. It is then argued that these

intuitions can be grounded by postulating that autonomous agents have the trump of dignity and that dignity, in turn, would arise from their very capacity for autonomy⁶².

However, this postulate is not independently grounded. What grounds it is simply the fact that it agrees with those intuitions. Those intuitions, in turn, are considered correct because they agree with this postulate. But then the TTA is clearly circular: the postulate comes into play to ground those intuitions, and the postulate itself is grounded in those intuitions.

Besides the evident circularity, we must take seriously the possibility that these intuitions are biased. We will see more about this below.

12.8. How can intuitions be tested?

McMahan, a proponent of the TTA, claims that coherence among various beliefs increases our reasons for thinking that each of the beliefs is justified: they reinforce one another through their mutual support⁶³. One problem with this is that any intuitions that do not contradict one another can reinforce one another and still be arbitrary, biased, or stem from morally irrelevant factors, false factual beliefs, etc.

To avoid this problem, McMahan holds that justified intuitions are those that survive a filtering process that would eliminate intuitions that are: (1) the obvious product of self-interest, (2) implausible metaphysical bases, or (3) factual errors⁶⁴.

He also acknowledges that, for a principle to support one or more intuitions, it must have independent credibility (rather than being accepted only because it would ground the intuitions)⁶⁵. The aim, according to the author, is to transcend our subjective points of view and achieve the greatest possible degree of objectivity and impartiality⁶⁶.

These seem to be good criteria for testing intuitions. However, it seems that the TTA does not pass this filtering test. To begin with, it seems that the TTA would be vehemently rejected from an impartial perspective. We will look at this below.

12.9. Does the two-tiered account pass the impartiality test?

How can we know whether a decision is impartial? A widely used method consists in imagining whether we would consider it fair if we did not know which position we would occupy among those affected by it. A method of this kind was first proposed by John Harsanyi⁶⁷ in 1955, and a very similar method was later used extensively in John Rawls's 1971 work A Theory of Justice⁶⁸, influencing many other later works.

The method consists in imagining rational and self-interested agents who aim to maximize their own well-being but have not yet been born into the world in which they will live. This is the so-called original position. In it, these agents must decide which moral and political principles will be in force in 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, etc. All of this will be decided by lottery, and behind the veil of ignorance we can know nothing about factors that depend on good or bad luck. Thus, the agents have equal probabilities of being born as any of the individuals in the future world. The basic idea is that whatever rational and self-interested agents would consider just/unjust under such conditions would in fact be just/unjust.

It is sometimes argued that this method applies only to those of our decisions that affect beings who have a sense of justice. According to this view, the method does not apply to our decisions that affect nonhuman animals and humans incapable of understanding such a method (such as babies, children, and adults with some cognitive impairment).

However, this reasoning would only make sense if, for someone to be treated unjustly, it were also necessary to have a sense of justice. But consider, for example, the case of a human child born with a cognitive limitation that will prevent her throughout her life from

developing a sense of justice. Imagine that this child is treated worse than others because of the color of her skin, because of her cognitive limitations, or because of any other factor that is the result of the natural lottery. The fact that this child does not have a sense of justice (and can never come to develop one) does not make the treatment she received any less unjust. It is true that it only makes sense to hold someone responsible for committing an injustice if that someone has a sense of justice (this is why it makes no sense to hold babies responsible, for example). However, it is not necessary to have a sense of justice in order to be the victim of an injustice.

If so, then nonhuman animals' lack of a sense of justice is not a good reason to exclude them from the protection of principles of justice, since they too can be victims of injustice. For this reason, true impartiality requires that, behind the veil of ignorance, knowledge of the species to which one belongs also be excluded, since this too is a result of the natural lottery⁶⁹.

Taking this into account, one way of testing whether the TTA passes the impartiality test is to imagine whether rational and self-interested agents would consider it fair if there were a possibility that they might be born as beings who will not develop autonomy.

Let us recall that, according to the TTA, (sometimes or always, depending on the variant) the reasons against killing beings incapable of autonomy are weaker, even when they are more harmed by death. That being so, it seems that the greater the probability that rational and self-interested agents (that is, agents who aim to maximize their own well-being) would be drawn to be born as beings incapable of autonomy once the veil is lifted, the more strongly they would reject the TTA.

In the real world this possibility would be enormous, given that the number of nonhuman animals is astronomically greater than the number of humans. The human population stands at around 8 billion individuals. According to some estimates, at any given moment there would be at least 1 to 10 quintillion sentient nonhuman animals in the world⁷⁰. This difference in size is so astronomical that it is hard to visualize. However,

an analogy will help us understand it: if we make an analogy with the span of a year, the human population would represent at most 0.25 seconds of the year.

This strongly suggests that the intuition that beings capable of autonomy should have a special status would not pass the impartiality test. Moreover, it suggests that this intuition is grounded: (1) in self-interest (since we know that, in the real world, we are capable of autonomy) and (2) in the belief that we ourselves could not be disadvantaged by this intuition (which is a factual error, since each of us may come to lose autonomy if a disease or accident affects our cognitive capacities).

Therefore, if we should seek impartiality and reject intuitions that are the result of self-interest and factual errors, as McMahan proposes, it seems that there are good reasons to reject the intuition that beings capable of autonomy should have a special status.

12.10. Conclusions

If what has been argued above is correct, it seems that there is no way to justify the idea that certain individuals should have a privileged moral status. If so, then the strength of direct reasons against killing and for saving lives should be determined solely on the basis of the magnitude of the harm of death.