Rémi Tison Dans cet article, je traite de la nature des processus cognitifs sous-tendant nos attributions d’états mentaux aux animaux non humains. Selon la conception traditionnelle, nous n’avons qu’un accès indirect aux états mentaux d’autrui, qui doivent être inférés sur la base du comportement. Cette conception traditionnelle influence autant les débats conceptuels concernant l’esprit des animaux que les recherches empiriques sur la cognition animale. Or de récents travaux sur la cognition sociale humaine avancent plutôt une conception « interactionniste », selon (...) laquelle les états mentaux peuvent parfois être directement perçus dans le comportement. J’applique dans cet article la conception interactionniste à l’attribution d’états mentaux aux animaux. Je conclus que celle-ci rend mieux compte des attitudes du sens commun à l’égard des états mentaux des animaux et est plus féconde pour la recherche empirique sur la cognition animale que la conception traditionnelle. (shrink)

There has been recent speculation that some animals are moral agents. Using a retributivist framework, I argue that if some animals are moral agents, then there are circumstances in which some of them deserve punishment. But who is best situated to punish animal wrongdoers? This paper explores the idea that the answer to this question is humans.

It is fairly commonplace to think that the capacity for sentience need not be the only basis of moral status. Pluralists contend that moral status is grounded in several other valuable capacities as well as, or instead of, sentience, such as agency, empathy, or sociality. However, this contention contrasts with a standard assumption in animal ethics: that sentience should be the only basis of moral status. This article vindicates that assumption. Whilst classical utilitarians have defended a similar claim about sentience (...) in relation to ultimate value, the merits of this view have gone relatively unnoticed in contemporary debates about moral status and animal ethics. An account based on sentience alone avoids conceptual redundancy and has greater explanatory power than pluralist alternatives. An account of moral status based exclusively on sentience also yields two significant and revisionary implications that have not been recognised. First, the distinction between persons and nonpersons cannot hold, so all moral patients, including nonhuman animals, should feature as primary subjects in ethical theories, public policies, and research agendas. Second, we ought to favour nonhuman interests far more often than we tend to suppose. (shrink)

To be intrinsically valuable means to be valuable for its own sake. Moral philosophy is often ethically anthropocentric, meaning that it locates intrinsic value within humans. This paper rejects ethical anthropocentrism and asks, in what ways might nonhumans be intrinsically valuable? The paper answers this question with a wide-ranging survey of theories of nonhuman intrinsic value. The survey includes both moral subjects and moral objects, and both natural and artificial nonhumans. Literatures from environmental ethics, philosophy of technology, philosophy of art, (...) moral psychology, and related fields are reviewed, and gaps in these literatures are identified. Although the gaps are significant and much work remains to be done, the survey nonetheless demonstrates that those who reject ethical anthropocentrism have considerable resources available to develop their moral views. Given the many very high-stakes issues involving both natural and artificial nonhumans, and the sensitivity of these issues to how nonhumans are intrinsically valued, this is a vital project to pursue. (shrink)

Are police officers morally justified in issuing unsolicited personal safety advice to women? Such advice often attracts accusations of ‘victim blaming’, although prevention advice remains a common tool used by police to address many crime and safety risks. While some examples of police advice are clearly outrageous, this article considers whether there is a place for ‘sound’ advice, i.e., advice that is proportionate, easy to follow, empirically justified, and objectively likely to reduce harm. To explore this, the article proposes a (...) thought experiment that compares safety advice dealing with threats to women from human sources with safety advice issued in response to natural phenomena, such as flooding. It argues that, despite apparent differences, safety advice addressing risks from humans and natural phenomena are relevantly similar. Consequently, if advice dealing with natural phenomena is morally justified then advice to women about human threats is also morally justifiable. Nevertheless, the article also considers whether the purported prevalence of sexism in policing may make safety advice for women morally problematic. While levels of sexism in policing may vary across time and location, it is argued that safety advice would be morally justified even if sexism was widespread among police officers. Finally, the article considers whether crime prevention advice may backfire by effectively curtailing women’s freedoms. Rather than curtailing freedom, however, it is argued that sound advice may actually enable women to flourish by helping them overcome fear of crime and achieve non-instrumental goals that they have set for themselves. (shrink)

It is widely held that moral obligations to non-human beings do not involve considerations of justice. For such a view, nonhuman interests are always prone to be trumped by human interests. Rawlsian contractarianism comprises an example of such a view. Through analysis of such theories, this essay highlights the problem of reconciling the claim that humans have obligations to non-humans with the claim that our treatment of the latter is not a matter of justice. We argue that if it is (...) granted that the basic interests of non-human beings sometimes count for more than the peripheral interests of humans, then our understandings of obligation and of justice must be aligned, so that what we say about obligation is not countered by assumptions about the invariable priority of humans in matters of justice. We further consider whether such a conclusion can be endorsed by those who adopt certain alternative theories to contractarianism. We conclude that adherents of a range of theories including sentientism and biocentrism must accept that human interests can sometimes be superseded by animal interests, and that this applies not least in matters of justice. (shrink)

Explores Levinas’s approach to animal ethics from a range of perspectives. This is the first volume of primary and secondary source material dedicated solely to the animal question in Levinas. Drawing on previously unpublished material, including the recent discovery and digitization of the original French recording of an interview with Levinas that took place in 1986, it seeks to give fresh impetus to the debate surrounding the moral status of animals in Levinas’s work. The book offers ten essays by leading (...) scholars, along with a general introduction that places Levinas’s philosophy in the context of the growing field of animal ethics. The aim of the volume is to encourage dialogue on how we can extend Levinas’s ethics beyond its traditional human confines and to spur further research on the opportunities and challenges it raises. “Face to Face with Animals is an extraordinarily important and timely contribution. Although the question of the animal has weighed heavily upon Levinas scholars for more than two decades, it has not until now formed the subject of a book-length study. This volume rectifies that absence and proves to have been well worth the wait. It is more than scholarly. It is also, in its own way, a rousing call to thinking and acting otherwise in the face of the unsettling gazes of animal others and in the shadow of their useless suffering. Reading Levinas both with and against the grain, Face to Face with Animals makes clearer than ever that injustice is irreducible to inhumanity.” — David L. Clark, coeditor of Intersections: Nineteenth-Century Philosophy and Contemporary Theory “This book contributes the most sustained and multifaceted engagement with Levinas on animals and animality to date. In particular, it makes an important and unique contribution to the interdisciplinary field of animal studies, in which Levinas has long been a figure of great interest in light of the promise his ethics of alterity would seem to hold for developing an ethics that encompasses nonhuman animals.” — Karalyn Kendall-Morwick, Washburn University. (shrink)

Can nonhuman animals and artificial intelligence (AI) entities be attributed moral agency? The general assumption in the philosophical literature is that moral agency applies exclusively to humans since they alone possess free will or capacities required for deliberate reflection. Consequently, only humans have been taken to be eligible for ascriptions of moral responsibility in terms of, for instance, blame or praise, moral criticism, or attributions of vice and virtue. Animals and machines may cause harm, but they cannot be appropriately ascribed (...) moral responsibility for their behavior. This thesis challenges the conventional paradigm by proposing an alternative approach where moral agency is conceived as the competence to participate in moral responsibility practices. By shifting focus from intra-individual to contextual and socially situated features, this practice-focused approach appears to make the attribution of moral agency to nonhuman animals and AI entities more plausible than commonly assumed. Moreover, considering the current and potential future prevalence of nonhuman animals and AI entities in everyday settings and social contexts, a potential extension of moral agency to such entities could very well transform our social, moral, and legal practices. Hence, this thesis proposes that the attribution or withholding of moral agency to different entities should be carefully evaluated, considering the potential normative implications. (shrink)

The paper begins with a description of a grey seal performing conspecific infanticide. The paper then gives an account of “nobleness” and “brutishness.” Roughly, a behavioural-disposition is noble/brutish if it is one that would be a moral virtue/vice if the possessor of the behavioural-disposition were a moral agent. The paper then advances two pairs of axiological claims. The first pair of claims is that nobleness is good and that brutishness is bad. The second pair of claims is about an axiological (...) interaction between nobleness/brutishness and well-being. That any non-human animal lacks well-being is bad. Yet, it is worse that a noble non-human animal lacks well-being, and not so bad that a brutish non-human animal lacks well-being. Lastly, the paper discusses some potential moral implications of these axiological claims, for instance that factory farming is especially wrong because it causes noble non-human animals to lack well-being. (shrink)