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The moral importance of agency
Frederike Kaldewaij
Philosophy Department, Utrecht University ([email protected])
Expert Meeting Fish welfare: the interplay between science and ethics. November 29/30, 2010
The moral importance of agency
• The importance of agency in “Kantian practical reasoning theories”
• Claim: even if animals are not rational (moral) agents, we can have duties regarding animals if they pursue objects of desires
Requirements of practical reason
• Practical vs. theoretical reason: rational requirements on action
• Instrumental or prudential requirements of practical reason:
if your end is x, you ought to do y (take the means to x)
Kantian vs. Hobbesian theories of practical reasoning
• Kantian theories contrasted with Hobbesian theories, which justify moral rules on the basis of mutual self-interest
Kantian theories: categorical duty
• Categorical (moral) duty: a rational requirement that can (even ultimately) conflict with your self-interest:
All moral agents ought to do y (whatever their personal ends are or what is in their self-interest)
Kantian practical reasoning theories and animals
• Constraints in our treatment of animals (and weak humans) are not in our self-interest
• More than just being kind to animals: doing our duty
Kantian theories might offer a possibility to justify duties to animals - BUT…
Possible problem for duties to animals?
• Duties are grounded in our practical reason (not in our desires, e.g. for happiness, or our natural dispositions, e.g. sympathy)
• Moral autonomy: rational self-legislation of moral requirements
• Animals are not autonomous (moral) agents
What moral duties do we have?
• Goal of Kantian theories: specify the content and rational justification of categorical duties
• Do we rationally have to accept a duty not to harm animals (without sufficient justification)?
Indirect duty regarding well-being moral agents
• Doing your moral (categorical) duty is an end in itself, not a means to another end, e.g. self-interest
• Respect for moral autonomy
• Well-being only indirectly morally relevant, because suffering may interfere with our ability to act morally
Indirect duty regarding well-being animals
• Only reason to treat animals well if being cruel to animals will lead us to be cruel to moral agents
• On this picture the suffering of human moral agents isn’t in itself morally relevant either
Direct duty regarding well-being?
• Perhaps we ought not interfere with our own and others’ ability to act on moral duties
• But what are our moral duties? Do they include a direct duty not to harm others, including animals?
What moral duties do we have?
• Moral duties: duties that all moral agents have (universality), no matter what their personal ends are (categorical)
• What does reason require of all moral agents, independently or regardless of their personal ends?
How these arguments work
• If an action is morally justified for me, it is justified for all moral agents
• We are motivated to pursue some end or any end
universalization: duties to others
Examples
• I cannot regard it as permissible to harm others because, universalizing this, others would be permitted to harm me, and I do not want to suffer
• Stronger claim: I cannot regard it as permissible to harm others because I cannot rationally will that others undermine my ability to fulfill any ends
Not prudence but rational consistency
• These arguments are not prudential (they do not ultimately refer to your self-interest)
• They are about rational consistency; avoid self-contradiction when I universalize my intention:
if an action is justified for me, it is justified for all moral agents
The scope of our moral duties (1)
• Problem: I can universalize the intention never to harm anyone who is not called Frederike
• What characteristics are morally relevant?
• Why can’t we will a universal rule that harming others is permissible?
The scope of our moral duties (2)
• Because we do not want to be harmed / cannot rationally will to undermine our ability to fulfill our ends
• Being motivated to act on the basis of desires (sentience?) is sufficient to be the object of a duty not to harm
Conclusion
• Perhaps only human beings are moral/ prudential agents, but that just means that only we are morally/prudentially responsible
• It could still be that we rationally have to accept a duty not to harm animals: animals can be the objects of moral duties