Misadventures of Sentience: Animals and the Basis of Equality

Abstract

This paper aims to put in question the all-purposes function that sentience has come to play in animal ethics. In particular, I criticize the idea that sentience can provide a sound basis of equality, as has been recently proposed by Alasdair Cochrane. Sentience seems to eschew the standard problems of egalitarian accounts that are based on range properties. By analysing the nature of range properties, I will show that sentience cannot provide such a solution because it is constructed as a sui generis range property. After criticizing the approaches seeking to ground animals’ equal status, I turn to Singer’s principle of equal consideration of interests. Despite its seeming non-controversiality, I argue that it cannot do without referring to the moral status of a being in order to determine the weight of a being’s interests. Moreover, it outlines a weak egalitarian basis because it relies on the presumption of equality of interests in virtue of our lack of knowledge of the weight of individuals’ interests. I conclude in a more positive tone by arguing that, irrespective of the troubles of range property egalitarianism, animal ethics can rely on other normative resources to defend the cause of animals.

The Animal Welfare Consequences and Moral Implications of Lethal and Non-Lethal Fox Control Methods

“…In general, philosophers attribute moral significance to the conscious experience of pain and suffering, which are considered harmful for the individual and are, therefore, undesirable and should be avoided, prevented or alleviated [ 39 , 84 , 85 ]. For Regan, beings who satisfy the “subject-of-a-life” criterion should be granted equal moral worth and rights [ 86 ], and their suffering should be considered morally bad. Roughly speaking, these are (more than merely sentient) beings who act intentionally and have an emotional life, a sense of the future and memories, desires and beliefs.…”

Rawls and Animal Moral Personality

“…One difficulty is that moral personality is a range property, such that those who fall short are considered not to have moral personality at all, while those who meet the threshold to any degree have full moral personality [ 18 , 19 ]. There is reason to consider that some animals may well qualify as moral persons even though their extent of moral personality is less than most humans; many other animals are likely to fall short.…”

The problem of equal moral status

“… 8. One may wonder why I am not using the more common “proportionality principle” to denote this thesis (see Zuolo 2019). My reason is that, as will be clear below, proportionality suggests a specific function with which reasons for action and attitude vary with variations in the relevant property, whereas response co-variation does not single out any specific function and is therefore more general and captures a broader range of accounts.…”