What kind of activity are non-human animals capable of? A venerable tradition insists that lack of language confines them to ‘mere behaviour’. This article engages with this ‘lingualism’ by developing a positive, bottom-up case for the possibility of animal agency. Higher animals cannot just act, they can act intelligently, rationally, intentionally and for reasons. In developing this case I draw on the interplay of behaviour, cognition and conation, the unduly neglected notion of intelligence and its connection to rationality, the need (...) to recognize that reasons are objective conditions, and the difference between the ability to act for reasons and the capacity to reflect on reasons. (shrink)

There are some interesting similarities between Aristotle’s ‘mixed actions’ in Book III of the Nicomachean Ethics and the actions often thought to be justifiable with the Doctrine of Double Effect. Here I analyse these similarities by comparing Aristotle’s examples of mixed actions with standard cases from the literature on double effect such as, amongst others, strategic bombing, the trolley problem, and craniotomy. I find that, despite some common features such as the dilemmatic structure and the inevitability of a bad effect, (...) Aristotle’s mixed actions do not count as cases justifiable through application of the Doctrine of Double Effect because they fail to meet the crucial necessary condition of the Doctrine according to which the bad effect can only be a merely foreseen side-effect and not an intended means. (shrink)

We provide an account of chimpanzee-specific agency within the context of philosophy of action. We do so by showing that chimpanzees are capable of what we call reason-directed action, even though they may be incapable of more full-blown action, which we call reason-considered action. Although chimpanzee agency does not possess all the features of typical adult human agency, chimpanzee agency is evolutionarily responsive to their environment and overlaps considerably with our own. As such, it is an evolved set of capacities (...) for goal-directed behavior, which solves problems that chimpanzees naturally encounter. Thus, it ought not be understood as a deficient instance of human agency. (shrink)

Contemporary research on Neuroimaging seems to provide various techniques toread a personÏs mind and her individual thoughts. In this essay I examine someethical and metaphysical aspects of mind reading with a focus on how techniques ofmind-reading might concern the idea of human dignity.

Most nonhuman animals live on the terms imposed on them by human beings. This condition of being under the mastery of another, or domination, is what republicanism identifies as political unfreedom. Yet there are several problems that must be solved in order to successfully extend republicanism to animals. Here I focus on the question of whether freedom can be a benefit for individuals without a free will. I argue that once we understand the grounds that make freedom a desirable property (...) of choices, we can see how it is appropriate to predicate it of those made by any sentient agent. (shrink)

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