Agenda this week
- Monday: moral status of animals + discuss reports
- Wednesday: moral status of animals + discuss reports
- Friday: moral status of plants
_________________________
Reports
_________________________
MODULE 1: When making environmental decisions, what has moral status?
View (1) Anthropocentrism (Baxter)
just people have moral status; we should be concerned with other beings only to the extent that they affect or matter to people
View (2) "Animals matter too" -- they have moral status as individuals
- not just as specimens of species
- not just as contributors to ecosystems
- we have obligations to individual animals
- they have value as individuals
- at least some animals
Environmental questions involving animals
- New drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge--does the impact on caribou matter (directly)
- Wind turbines--does the impact on birds matter (directly)?
- Culling buffalos in Yellowstone--does the death of each buffalo matter (directly)?
- Using pesticides like DDT -- does harm to penguins, fish, even mosquitos matter (directly)?
POLL -- is your gut feeling yes or no?
_________________________
Clare Palmer, "Animal Ethics" (annotated)
The Marius question -- a puzzle about painless killing
Warning: pretty gruesome
Two very different defenses
- Animals don't matter as individuals, but only as species, and the zoo is protecting the species
- Captive animals are better off being able to breed, even if the surplus has to be killed
_________________________
Animals DO matter as individuals -- why? which?
Utilitarianism (Peter Singer)
- utilitarians think the prime ethical directive is: maximize total happiness
- who has moral status? all sentient beings
- sentience = the capacity for pain, pleasure, and other positive and negative experiences
- other capacities may matter but only indirectly
- must do cost-benefit analysis
- The Marius question -- if it's painless killing is it OK?
- The environmental questions
- all beings who are "subjects of a life" have basic rights--right to life, right to liberty, right not to be tortured
- doesn't matter if they're less intelligent (so are babies)
- no need for cost-benefit analysis
- Apply to Marius
- persons (us), near persons (higher animals), merely sentient
- they all have moral status (doesn't come in degrees)\
- But they have varying degrees of moral significance
- We owe more to higher animals
- Apply to Marius
Humane traditionalism (not discussed by Palmer)
- No animal has anything like human moral status
- But we have certain obligations to animals (if sentient)
- No pointless killing, no torture
- Thoughts about Marius?
_________________________
Context view (Clare Palmer)--next time