Dressing up animals in ridiculous costumes, shaming dogs on the internet, playing Big Buck Hunter at the local tavern, feeding vegan food to cats, and producing and consuming "knockout" animals, what, if anything, do these acts have in common? In this article, I develop two respect-based arguments that explain how these acts are morally problematic, even though they might not always, if ever, affect the experiential welfare of animals. While these acts are not ordinary wrongs, they are animal dignitary wrongs. 1 | INTRODUCTION One puzzling ethical question is whether, and how, you can be wronged by an act if it does not affect your experiential welfare. As Angela Martin (2019) notes, there is widespread agreement that the unnoticed infringement of human privacy and mocking of unaware humans are wrong, even if no humans are affected mentally or physically by these actions. She moreover claims that these kinds of acts directly wrong the humans who are the objects of the acts. Yet she insists that neither the unnoticed infringement of animal privacy nor the mocking of unaware animals directly wrong particular animals. 1 She thus avers that we "do not owe it to a particular animal to refrain from such actions" (Martin, 2019, p. 83). On Martin's view, stalking animals, mocking animals, painting the fur of animals, dressing animals up in ridiculous ways, treating animals as mere sources of amusement, and spitting on animals wrong particular animals only when these acts impact their experiential welfare. So, according to Martin, if we do these things without impacting the experiential welfare of animals, the actions themselves are morally permissible. 2 Martin is not alone. Bonnie Steinbock (1999), for instance, claims that while it is an affront to human dignity to enslave humans, even if they are treated "nicely," there is a different story to be told when it comes to animals. Presumably, on Steinbock's view, enslaving "happy" animals does not violate animal dignity because animals do not desire dignity. Likewise, Bernard Rollin (1998) argues that while it is permissible to change the telos of animals through genetic engineering, so long as we do not make them worse-off, it would be wrong to alleviate human suffering by genetically engineering humans to be happy. While Martin, Steinbock, and Rollin seem to assume that animals cannot be subject to what I call dignitary wrongs, other animal ethicists suggest that animals have dignity and, consequently, can be wronged when their experiential welfare is not negatively affected. Sarah Gavrell Ortiz (2004), for instance, advances a dignity-based
There is a widespread belief that for their own safety and for the protection of wildlife, cats should be permanently kept indoors. Against this view, I argue that cat guardians have a duty to provide their feline companions with outdoor access. The argument is based on a sophisticated hedonistic account of animal well-being that acknowledges that the performance of species-normal ethological behavior is especially pleasurable. Territorial behavior, which requires outdoor access, is a feline-normal ethological behavior, so when a cat is permanently confined to the indoors, her ability to flourish is impaired. Since cat guardians have a duty not to impair the well-being of their cats, the impairment of cat flourishing via confinement signifies a moral failing. Although some cats assume significant risks and sometimes kill wild animals when roaming outdoors, these important considerations do not imply that all cats should be deprived of the opportunity to access the outdoors. Indeed, they do not, by themselves, imply that any cat should be permanently kept indoors.
Simple SummaryAccording to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), “invasive” species are “alien” or non-native species “whose introduction does or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health”. On this basis, many state agencies encourage the eradication of invasive species. We argue that this constitutes wrongful discrimination against members of endangered species. Although there may well be cases where it is permissible to kill them. the reasons that these agencies provide often are not sufficient to justify the killing. More importantly for our purposes, though, the killing is not the only injustice here. Additionally, it is wrong to categorize animals as invasive, and we show how to reach this conclusion by borrowing from Deborah Hellman’s account of wrongful discrimination.AbstractIt is common for conservationists to refer to non-native species that have undesirable impacts on humans as “invasive”. We argue that the classification of any species as “invasive” constitutes wrongful discrimination. Moreover, we argue that its being wrong to categorize a species as invasive is perfectly compatible with it being morally permissible to kill animals—assuming that conservationists “kill equally”. It simply is not compatible with the double standard that conservationists tend to employ in their decisions about who lives and who dies.
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