QuestionsXVI
Do animals have moral rights?
A pig can feel pain, fear and something like joy. Does that give it a claim on how we treat it, and how strong a claim?
- Reading time
- 5 min
- Difficulty
- Introductory
- Branch
- Ethics
- First posed
- Pythagoras and Porphyry in antiquity; Jeremy Bentham, 1789; Peter Singer, 1975
The question
Every year, humans raise and kill more than 80 billion land animals for food, along with a far larger number of fish. Many of these animals are capable of pain, fear and distress, and many spend their lives in conditions that would be considered cruel if inflicted on a dog.
Most people care about animals in some way. They are horrified by cruelty to pets and support laws against it. Yet most people also eat meat, wear leather and benefit from animal research. The question is whether these attitudes are consistent, and if not, which should give way.
The philosophical core is the question of moral status: what makes a being matter morally, for its own sake? Is it being human? Being rational? Being able to suffer? Being the subject of a life? Different answers draw the circle of moral concern in very different places.
“The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”
Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789)
Why it matters
The scale is enormous. If animals' suffering counts for anything significant, the treatment of animals in industrial farming may be one of the largest moral issues of the present age. If it does not, a great deal of concern is misplaced.
The question also tests our theories of value. Whatever criterion we use to include all humans, including newborns and people with severe cognitive disabilities, seems likely to include some animals too.
Key terms
- Moral statusMattering morally for one's own sake, so that others have reasons to consider one's interests.
- SentienceThe capacity to have experiences, especially of pleasure and pain.
- SpeciesismA term coined by Richard Ryder and made famous by Peter Singer for giving less moral weight to a being's interests simply because it is not human.
- UtilitarianismThe moral theory that the right action is the one that produces the greatest total wellbeing, counting everyone's equally.
- RightsEntitlements that protect a person's interests or choices and constrain how others may treat them, even for the sake of a greater good.
The positions
Equal consideration of interests
The suffering of any being that can suffer counts, and counts equally with the like suffering of any other. Species alone is no reason to discount it.
Animal rights
Animals that are 'subjects of a life' have rights that may not be violated, even for good consequences. Using them as resources is wrong in itself.
Indirect duties only
Animals do not have moral standing in their own right. Our duties regarding animals are really duties to humans or to our own character.
Graded moral status
Animals matter morally in their own right, but less than humans, and some animals more than others, depending on their capacities.
Arguments and objections
Equal consideration of interests
- Best argument
- Jeremy Bentham wrote: 'The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?' Peter Singer argues that favouring humans simply because they are human is speciesism, a prejudice parallel to racism and sexism: it gives weight to a morally irrelevant biological category. Equal consideration does not mean equal treatment, since a pig has no interest in voting, but it means a pig's pain is as bad as a human's equal pain.
- Strongest objection
- Critics argue that humans have morally relevant capacities that most animals lack: rationality, moral agency, complex plans for the future, membership in a moral community. These, not mere species, justify special treatment.
- The reply
- Singer answers with the argument from marginal cases: some humans lack these capacities too, yet we rightly give their suffering full weight. If capacities are what matter, consistency requires the same for animals with comparable capacities.
Animal rights
- Best argument
- Tom Regan argues that a being with beliefs, desires, memory, a sense of its own future and a welfare of its own has inherent value. Such beings may not be treated merely as means, just as humans may not. This explains why it would be wrong to cause an animal great suffering even if it produced more total happiness, which a utilitarian might permit.
- Strongest objection
- Where is the line? Regan focused on mammals over a year old; fish, insects and other animals raise harder questions. Rights theory also has trouble with conflicts, such as predators in the wild.
Indirect duties only
- Best argument
- Immanuel Kant held that only rational beings are ends in themselves. Yet he argued that cruelty to animals is wrong because it damages our humanity: 'he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men'. Contractualists add that morality is an agreement among those who can make agreements, which animals cannot.
- Strongest objection
- This seems to locate the wrong in the wrong place. Kicking a dog is wrong because of what it does to the dog, not because it might make you rude to your neighbours. And it implies that cruelty to animals would be fine if it had no effect on the person doing it.
Graded moral status
- Best argument
- This tracks most people's considered views: it is wrong to cause animals needless suffering, but it may be acceptable to use them in some ways for serious human benefit. Shelly Kagan argues for a hierarchy of moral status based on psychological capacities, without reducing animals to nothing.
- Strongest objection
- Hierarchies have a troubling history. And if status depends on capacities, the view seems to imply that some humans have lower status than others, which most defenders want to avoid.
Who argued what
- Equal consideration of interests Jeremy Bentham, Peter Singer
- Animal rights Tom Regan, Christine Korsgaard, Gary Francione
- Indirect duties only Immanuel Kant, René Descartes, Peter Carruthers
- Graded moral status Shelly Kagan, Aristotle
Where you stand
Is it permissible to eat animals?
In surveys
Choose one to see how people answer.
Variations
The lobster pot
Most people would not boil a dog alive. Many find boiling a lobster alive acceptable. In 2021 a review commissioned by the UK government found strong evidence that decapod crustaceans and cephalopods are sentient, and they were included in the UK's Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022. Where should the line of sentience be drawn, and what happens when evidence moves it?
The super-intelligent alien
Imagine aliens far more intelligent than us arrive and decide our suffering does not matter much because we are cognitively simple by their standards. Would they be wrong? If so, what does that imply about our treatment of animals?
Go deeper
Why the 'marginal cases' argument is so contested
The argument from marginal cases says that any capacity used to deny animals moral standing is also lacking in some humans, so consistency requires granting standing to animals or withdrawing it from those humans. Critics find the comparison offensive; defenders reply that the point is precisely that we would never withdraw it from humans, so we should extend it. Others argue that what matters is the kind of being one is, not one's individual capacities: a human infant belongs to a rational kind.
Schools of thought: Utilitarianism, Kantian ethics
Related ideas
Further reading and sources
- EncyclopediaStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: The Moral Status of Animals
- WikipediaAnimal rights
- WikipediaSpeciesism
- SurveyPhilPapers Survey, 2020 · question: Eating animals and animal products; about 1,785 professional philosophers; accept or lean toward
- BookAnimal Liberation, Peter Singer
- BookThe Case for Animal Rights, Tom Regan
- BookFellow Creatures, Christine Korsgaard
Open questions
- What, exactly, makes a being matter for its own sake?
- If you would not harm a dog this way, would you harm a pig this way?
- How certain do we need to be that a creature can suffer before we take its suffering seriously?