RESISTING A PATERNALISTIC ATTITUDE IN THE FOUNDATIONS OF ANIMAL ETHICS

A Thesis submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of A3 the requirements for 3G the Degree PoR Master of Arts

In

Philosophy

by

Cheri Lynn Kruse

San Francisco, California

May 2017 Copyright by Cheri Lynn Kruse 2017 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL

I certify that I have read Resisting a Paternalistic Attitude in the Foundations of Animal

Ethics by Cheri Lynn Kruse, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Arts in Philosophy at San Francisco State University.

Michelle Wilcox Ph.D. Professor RESISTING A PATERNALISTIC ATTITUDE IN THE FOUNDATIONS OF ANIMAL ETHICS

Cheri Lynn Kruse San Francisco, California 2017

Most would agree that humans must consider the needs of nonhuman animals in our ethics.

This paper examines extreme implications of different systems of animal ethics and addresses why these systems lead to intuitively absurd conclusions, arguing that the problem is a paternalistic attitude found at the heart of these ethics and based in consideration of animals’ capacities to motivate humans to take animals into account. This attitude leads to extreme interventions in nonhumans’ lives based, ultimately, on human morality. To avoid policies toward nonhumans which impose human morality where it has no business, we must revise our conception of animal ethics to eradicate this paternalistic attitude, replacing current capacities-based approaches with a biocentric one.

I certifv that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this thesis.

Date ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Dr. Michelle Wilcox for her invaluable assistance and support over the course of this project. Her guidance and reassurance helped me to shape coherent ideas and arguments out of the vague notion I began with. I also want to thank Dr. Justin Tiwald for his enthusiasm and willingness to serve on my thesis committee. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their support, especially Nick, who helped me in more ways than I could ever enumerate. TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction...... 1 Distinctions in Paternalism...... 3 Paternalism in Animal Ethics...... 6 Why a Paternalistic Attitude Toward Animals is Wrong...... 12 Rationality is Not Synonymous with Superiority...... 19 An Alternative Approach that Eradicates Paternalistic Attitudes...... 23 Conclusion...... 31 References...... 33 1

Introduction

Human and animal spheres inevitably overlap, and humans must make both practical and moral decisions about how to interact with nonhumans. Many societies have prohibitions against cruelty toward animals, television commercials raise funding for abused pets, and animal products like meat and eggs advertise that they were produced from animals who had access to free-range conditions instead of cramped pens. In a different vein, there are places where feeding squirrels is a punishable offense, and where hunters are licensed to cull specific numbers of animals like deer or wolves when their populations have exceeded balanced levels and threaten the natural environment or human structures and landscaping. Yet again, we consider the welfare of animals even in our infrastructure when we build bridges to facilitate their safe passage around dangerous structures like highways. There is widespread agreement that humans must consider the needs of nonhuman animals in our ethical systems, but conceptions of animal ethics and their implications vary in which animals should be considered, what considerations should be made for them, and to what extent our current social structures must be changed. My project in this paper is to examine some extreme implications of different systems of animal ethics and address why these systems lead to intuitively absurd conclusions. I will argue that the problem lies in a paternalistic attitude found at the very heart of these ethics, where they justify the need for ethical consideration of animals based on the animals’ capacities. The process of categorizing animals’ capacities highlights our own capacity to reason and makes it appear to us that animals lack this capacity, which then allows us to justify our interventions in their lives for their own 2 good. Focusing on the capacities of nonhuman animals produces a paternalistic attitude toward them upon which the rest of the desired ethical systems are built, and these systems then lead to extreme interventions in nonhumans’ lives based, ultimately, on human morality. My arguments will assume that expecting nonhuman beings to abide by human morality is unacceptable, and so to avoid public policies toward nonhumans which impose human morality in spheres where it has no business, we must revise our conception of animal ethics at the very foundations to eradicate this paternalistic attitude.

Categorizing and personally identifying with animals’ capacities is a motivating factor that spurs people to take action on harms we do to animals. For a non-paternalistic alternative that still provides this motivation, I appeal to Albert Schweitzer’s ‘ethic of reverence for life’ as a biocentric underpinning for animal ethics which will allow consideration of animals’ interests and needs without imposing a paternalistic attitude, extreme interventions, and ultimately human morality, on them. Schweitzer’s ethic also addresses a common objection to biocentrism in general: valuing all life equally itself leads to absurd conclusions about the impermissibility of our harming any living things, even plants, to survive. Thus, the ethic of reverence for life is an ideal biocentric replacement for current classifications delimiting which animals have moral status based on human-imposed categories like capacity for suffering or sentience. This ethic will allow humans to take nonhumans’ interests and good seriously without appealing to a paternalistic attitude to motivate it and without imposing human morality on nonhumans.

To clarify what sort of paternalism I will be addressing and in what way it is problematic, I will begin with an overview of some of the philosophical literature on 3

paternalism and the difference between paternalistic acts and a paternalistic attitude. I

will then explore how extreme paternalism and other extreme implications manifest in

current animal ethics. Next I will deal with what, exactly, about paternalism causes the

common intuitive aversion to it, and argue that the same thing that makes paternalism

toward humans wrong (when it is wrong) is what makes the sort of paternalistic attitude

found in the foundations of current animal ethics wrong: an assumed relation of superior

to inferior. Finally, I will delineate how Albert Schweitzer’s ethic of reverence for life

can provide an alternative foundation and motivating factor for animal ethics without

resorting to a paternalistic attitude.

Distinctions in Paternalism

There is wide discussion of paternalism among philosophers, so the literature to

draw on in this area is rich. A brief survey of some of the work that has already been

done concerning the general aversion to paternalism should help to define the contours of

what constitute paternalistic actions and paternalistic attitudes, when paternalism may be justified, and when and why it is wrong. There are two (related) distinctions that will be

important here: paternalistic actions versus a paternalistic attitude, and paternalism on a

small versus a large scale.

Thinkers who consider paternalism often take as their ideal a basic liberty which

cannot be infringed upon except under specific and exacting circumstances. Gerald

Dworkin begins with John Stuart Mill’s assertion that the only legitimate reason for

limiting someone else’s liberty is to protect oneself (1972, 64), and others often begin

with Dworkin. Dworkin’s interest is in the type of interference he claims Mill’s principle 4 precludes—paternalism—which he defines as “the interference with a person’s liberty of action justified by reasons referring exclusively to the welfare, good, happiness, needs, interests or values of the person being coerced” (65). This should be immediately problematic for Mill as a utilitarian, because utilitarianism should not allow concepts like

‘liberty,’ which are not inherently good-promoting, to override the promotion of whatever action will produce the most good for the most people. Dworkin examines how

Mill’s argument may resist the objection that Mill assumes the average person is more rational and stable than is realistic, and concludes that for Mill, “to be able to choose is a good that is independent of the wisdom of what is chosen” (75). Standing on this principle of preserving the capacity to choose, Dworkin attempts to find a justification for some paternalistic interferences which is consistent with Mill’s commitment to personal liberty, and at the same time promotes good in a way that is consistent with utilitarianism.

Dworkin concludes that “a heavy and clear burden of proof’ (83) must lie on those who are proposing to restrict freedom paternalistically, even when the acceptable justifications are so narrowly defined. This sort of approach assumes that the intuitive resistance to paternalistic actions, and therefore what is wrong about paternalism, comes from its interference with the personal liberty of free, reasonable, adult individuals. Paternalistic acts violate personal autonomy.

An alternative proposal is that what is wrong about unjustified paternalism, and what therefore causes such strong intuitive resistance to some paternalistic interferences, is that paternalism can be defined as an action characterized by a relationship of superior to inferior. Marion Smiley, in her article “Paternalism and Democracy” (1989), surveys 5 much of the literature on paternalism and concludes that attempts justify some paternalistic interferences (particularly those imposed by the state) while keeping principles of personal liberty and autonomy intact ultimately fail (299, 308), but that this is really peripheral to the main issue because “paternalism entails more than our restriction of an individual’s activities or our violation of an individual’s right to free choice...paternalism entails a paternalistic relationship, that is, a relationship modelled on that between a father and his children” (310). The problem with paternalism, when it is a problem, is that it “perpetuates (or at least expresses) relationships of domination and inequality among individual members of a community” (310), not that it infringes on personal autonomy.

Thus, we have the distinction between the paternalistic action, which restricts liberty and violates autonomy, and the paternalistic attitude, which assumes a relationship of superior to inferior. The second distinction, what I am calling ‘scale,’ is seen throughout discussions on paternalism. Common examples of paternalistic restrictions are when parents force children to do things that are good for them even when the children would rather not do them, and when governments impose laws such as requiring people to wear seatbelts or helmets when operating certain kinds of vehicles. While the first sort of action is on a small, individual scale, the second is on a larger scale and deals with public policy. Both of these types of interferences are generally assumed to be paternalistic, and both are justified to varying degrees. Problematic instances of paternalism can exist on both the small and large scales, as can justified instances of paternalism. It is justifiable for me to require my child to bathe tonight; it is not 6 justifiable for me to require the same of my student. Similarly (though perhaps more contentiously), it is justifiable for a state to require motorists to take safety precautions such as wearing seatbelts or helmets, but not justifiable for a state to require citizens to take vitamin supplements. I do not have the space here to adequately map the complex contours of the debate on paternalism, nor is it my project; it will suffice for this discussion of paternalism in animal ethics that both individual actions and public policies can be described as paternalistic, and that previous philosophical literature has found paternalism in the human case problematic both in its violation of personal liberty and autonomy and in its expression of an oppressive relationship. I will return shortly to the question of whether what is wrong with paternalism in the human case translates to the

sphere of nonhumans, but first I want to explore what, exactly, paternalism looks like in

animal ethics.

Paternalism in Animal Ethics

Two of the most common approaches to animal ethics are utilitarianism and

animal rights. The utilitarian approach, most famously advocated by Peter Singer, says

that anything that has an interest in its own well-being, that is, a capacity to suffer,

deserves moral consideration (Singer 2014, 175). Since suffering is bad, we should take

active steps to minimize that suffering for all beings who have the capacity to suffer,

including nonhumans. The animal rights view advocated by Tom Regan alleges that all

individuals who have inherent value have it equally, and that in the same way that

members cannot be excluded from this class based on sex, race, disability, etc., members

cannot be excluded based on species (Regan 2014, 195). What gives an individual 7 inherent value is being “the experiencing subject of a life, a conscious creature having an individual welfare that has importance to [it] whatever [its] usefulness to others” (196).

Singer and Regan both stipulate that there is no way to ensure that all humans fall within the sphere of moral considerability while all animals fall outside it without being guilty of speciesism. If the conditions for having inherent worth are stringent enough to exclude all animals, they will exclude some humans as well (e.g., the very young, the developmentally disabled, or the severely injured); similarly, if the conditions are lax enough to include all humans, then some animals will be included as well (e.g., a human infant is not self-aware, but many adult animals are). Drawing the boundaries of moral considerability must rely on more basic capacities, like the ability to suffer or to be an experiencing subject of a life, and these boundaries will necessarily include many animals. This ethical consideration of animals, then—whether it takes a utilitarian or animal rights form—relies on the evident fact that animals are beings with certain capacities to motivate humans to take nonhumans’ interests into account in our ethical calculations. This is certainly a good thing—and an improvement over the ways animals have often been thought of throughout history. I am concerned, however, that these capacities-based approaches to animal ethics encourage a paternalistic attitude toward nonhumans and their welfare. In turn, when views informed by this paternalistic attitude are applied to positively-focused large-scale policies toward nonhumans, they lead to extreme interventions which fail to adequately respect nonhumans as living things in their own right—interventions which are either too overbearing or too hands-off. 8

In his paper “Not for Humans Only: The Place of Nonhumans in Environmental

Issues,” Peter Singer (1995) argues that in making decisions that affect the environment and the animals that depend on it, we must consider nonhumans’ interests in avoiding suffering to be equally important as our own. For Singer, “That one being is more intelligent than another does not entitle him to enslave, exploit, or disregard the interests of the less intelligent being” (57). He goes on to develop and defend this idea, drawing out its implications for current practices like pest control and clear-cutting forests. He suggests that it would be indefensible for ‘environmentalist’ organizations to disregard the interests of individual animals or to thwart these interests in the service of threatened or endangered species or ecosystems. The implications of considering animals’ interest in avoiding suffering begin to become overly paternalistic, however, and work out to extreme consequences. In “Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Bad Marriage,

Quick Divorce,” Mark Sagoff (1984) argues that it would be a small move from Singer’s suggestion that contraceptives rather than poison (which causes greater suffering) would be a more ethical choice for pest control to an ethical obligation to convert all wilderness to farmland, since the greatest amount of suffering happens to animals in the wild (Sagoff

1984,42; Singer 1995, 59). This sort of environmentally catastrophic conclusion leads to intense conflict between animal welfare and animal rights proponents and environmentalists. In “Can Animal Rights Activists Be Environmentalists,” Gary E.

Varner (1995) points out that one of the concerns about the implications of a view which focuses on the suffering and interests of individual animals, as Singer’s does, is that this would obligate humans not only to prohibit hunting, but to prevent natural predation to 9 the best of our ability as well (97). These examples may seem extreme, but if one accepts basic premises about the badness of suffering for nonhuman animals and the duty of humans to prevent suffering to at least some extent, implications such as these seem unavoidable. Even an approach which favors a laissez-faire attitude toward the welfare of animals in the wild would have to account for the reality of how entangled humans already are with nonhumans—even the wild ones—in almost every sphere of our lives

(e.g., the changes we are making to the environment are already adversely affecting animals we have little direct contact with). These conclusions, however paternalistic or distasteful they may seem, are not necessarily ridiculous ones to draw. Sagoff argues that

“an animal liberationist must regard it [the wilderness-to-farmland example] as stating a serious position, at least if the liberationist shares Singer’s commitment to utilitarianism”

(42). But perhaps it is simply a utilitarian approach that causes the problem here and not the paternalistic attitude I have suggested. Maybe demanding conclusions like these— that we should convert wildland to farmland or that we should prevent predation in the wild—come from a commitment to maximize good and minimize harm. A different view of animal ethics based on basic inviolable rights might be a better approach to protecting the interests of animals while not requiring extreme or overly-paternalistic interventions on our part.

Tom Regan provides a classic formulation of the animal rights view in his paper

“The Case for Animal Rights” (2014). Regan contends that, in order for the idea of

‘inherent value’ to have substance, “all who have inherent value have it equally, regardless of their sex, race, religion, birthplace, and so on” (195), and Regan argues that 10 this list includes species, since there is no way to narrow the scope of this principle to include only humans without at the same time leaving some humans out of it. Our duty, then, is a duty of respect for the inherent value, and thus the right not to be treated as beings without inherent value, of all “subjects of a life” (196). A strict animal rights view such as this can hardly be accused of paternalistic implications, as it is based on respect for animals as individuals and calls for a cessation of human control over animals’ lives.

Regan sees the implications of this view as a completely abolitionist stance toward the use of animals in science, agriculture, hunting and sporting, and even entertainment

(Regan, 1995, 70). These implications, however, are extreme, and deficiencies appear in this approach when we begin to wonder about what positive duties we have toward nonhumans, how we should interact ethically with them at this moment when our lives are still so intertwined with theirs, and whether removing ourselves from interacting with all nonhumans in coercive ways (if even possible, which is doubtful) is really the most ethical solution. While an animal rights view may not fall to an objection based on overly-paternalistic consequences, many thinkers question its viability for other serious reasons. There are those who do propose solutions to the deficiencies in a rights view, but in these solutions I see the return to a problematic paternalistic attitude.

In their book Zoopolis, Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka (2011) address current animal rights-based approaches to animal ethics and offer what they view as an improvement, a view of animal rights drawn from an analogy to political categories among humans (citizens, denizens, and sovereigns). They discuss how animal rights have traditionally been negative (rights not to be deprived of something or not to have 11 something done to them), like the view Regan proposed, and therefore limiting of what positive duties would be required in situations where our actions cause animals harm even without infringing on their rights. The authors argue that a more positive conception of animal rights comes with the difficulty of being interpreted either too narrowly or too broadly, and thus producing unattractive implications (5-11). Donaldson and Kymlicka write, “if ART’s [animal rights theory’s] conception of basic individual rights is interpreted narrowly, it provides no protection against degradation of the environment [by overpopulation of some animals]; but if its conception of basic rights is interpreted expansively [as a right to life, and thus protection from things like human pollution of their habitat, but also from predation, starvation, and other naturally occurring detriments], it seems to license massive human intervention in nature” (11). In either of these scenarios, if humans are committed to positively respecting the inviolable rights of nonhumans, we must define (or at least categorize) what these rights are, which animals have them, and how they are to be respected. These are, again, categories and definitions imposed on nonhumans by humans and are, I will argue below, the result of a paternalistic attitude toward animals and their capacities.

With this focus on capacities, it would be unwise to neglect Clare Palmer’s discussion of what she thinks is an alternative to both utilitarian and animal rights conceptions of animal ethics—a capabilities approach. In Animal Ethics in Context,

Palmer (2010) appeals to Martha Nussbaum’s theory of human flourishing being the result of people realizing certain basic capabilities (39). Palmer addresses how Nussbaum extends this approach to animals, arguing that “sentience alone cannot give sufficient 12

guidance as to human duties to animals, since it is not only the absence of pain that is

important to animals. It is also, as with humans, the fulfillment of their capabilities” (40).

Here, speciesism is as little permitted as in utilitarianism or animal rights. In a capabilities approach, the species to which a being belongs has nothing to do with

whether that being should be assisted in realizing its capabilities, but it is instead the “few

morally relevant characteristics that are valuable in whatever species they are

manifested” (41). Palmer argues that this sort of approach precludes us from merely

removing ourselves from interacting with animals (even in the wild) as a solution to our

ethical dilemma of how to treat animals, and points out that Nussbaum herself suggests

that paternalism toward even wild animals would often be appropriate (42). Even this

alternative capabilities-based approach arrives back at a system whose foundation allows

for paternalistic treatment of nonhumans in the service of fulfilling certain ethical

obligations to them. These ethical obligations, in turn, are motivated by an understanding

of which capabilities are valuable and should be promoted. I contend that these sorts of

overly paternalistic conclusions (or at least the potential for them), common to all three

approaches to animal ethics discussed here, are the result of a deeper paternalistic attitude

enshrined in the very foundation of consideration for nonhumans—that they have

capacities, such as suffering or sentience, which we can recognize in them and with

which we, as humans, can identify.

Why a Paternalistic Attitude Toward Animals is Wrong

As noted above, we routinely treat people paternalistically, whether it is

compelling a child to bathe when she would rather not or fining drivers who neglect to 13 wear their seatbelts. Most people find these types of paternalism perfectly acceptable, and would agree that there are instances where paternalism in personal interactions or public policies is justified. Why, then, would treating animals paternalistically be problematic, when paternalistic actions toward even humans are sometimes acceptable? Surely, there are times when a housecat must be prevented from eating a plant that would poison it, or when farm animals must be vaccinated to prevent the spread of disease. These would seem to be instances of paternalistic treatment, and yet the objections to these tend to lie not in the paternalistic actions themselves, but perhaps the morality of the categories of

‘pet’ and ‘farm animal’ or the safety or efficacy of certain vaccines. If, intuitively, many paternalistic actions we take toward humans and nonhumans every day raise little cause for concern, my objection to paternalism must not be that it exists, but where in the process of constructing ethical systems it is located and what the motivation behind it is.

Another point of interest will be the objection that, if the problem with treating humans paternalistically is that it violates their autonomy, this problem will not translate to the treatment of nonhumans, since by definition ‘autonomy’ cannot apply to animals. I will argue that violation of autonomy is not ultimately what is wrong with paternalism, however, and that the most troubling aspect of unjustifiable paternalism is the attitude of superiority and domination it exemplifies. It is in this attitude of superiority that the true problem with paternalism is found, and it is this definition of paternalism which can be translated to the nonhuman context to yield an argument for why a paternalistic attitude toward animals is problematic. 14

A narrow definition of justified paternalism demonstrates that a person’s freedom to choose, or autonomy, is of paramount importance to some who want to resist paternalism. If the problem with wrongful paternalism toward humans is that it infringes on their autonomy, or treats them as less than fully autonomous beings, then the possession of a capacity for autonomy is necessary in order for paternalism to be an ethically problematic interference. A human capacity for autonomy is based in our ability to organize information and rationally deliberate about what is, what is not yet but may be, and how the actions we take affect these two things. We have the ability to consent or not consent to certain forms of treatment, to choose courses of action, and to voluntarily submit to moral rules and laws. These all constitute a meaningful autonomy and humans resist infringement on it, especially those who are committed to an ideal of liberty.

Nonhuman animals, however, as far as we can tell, do not have these same abilities, or at least not to the robust extent that humans do. While animal behavior is complex, the ability to imagine and predict complicated future states and the possession of language which can communicate these ideas are required for this sort of meaningful autonomy. If the problem with paternalism is that it infringes on important aspects of personal autonomy, and animals do not have the capacity to be autonomous in the first place, then paternalism in our treatment of animals should not be problematic from an ethical standpoint.

Douglas Husak (1981) is unconvinced, however, that concern for autonomy can ground a robust objection to paternalism. Even though he dismisses the reliance on utilitarianism, with its seemingly inherent conflict of what is best for all with personal 15 freedoms for a deontological framework which accepts autonomy as a valuable principle, he still thinks that “the attempt to employ the notion of moral autonomy in developing a general criticism of paternalism is unconvincing” (28). He examines the idea that paternalism is a problem because the coerced person(s) cannot consent to the treatment, but finds that the criterion in these cases is not really consent of the coerced, but reasonableness of the interference—and that has nothing to do with autonomy. Similarly, he argues that the problem with paternalistic interference cannot be the violation of autonomy by the restriction of choice or the capacity to choose, because those are routinely restricted for non-paternalistic reasons (such as to keep one person from harming another) and no objection based on autonomy is made. If we cannot ground an absolute prohibition on interfering with autonomy, we are back to trying to find

something distinct about paternalism that makes it an unacceptable interference—but

now Husak has shown that it cannot be because of autonomy (38).

Why, then, is paternalism a problem? Husak (1981) mentions the idea that justified paternalism may rely on the relationship of “an alleged superior and inferior”

(42). This is precisely the case that Marion Smiley made about paternalism—that it is

characterized by a relationship of superior to inferior, and that wherever this relationship

is inappropriate, the paternalism will be problematic—and I think this is correct. The

problem with paternalism in the human case, then, is not that we sometimes prevent

people from being able to act in certain ways which harm themselves—this is not

necessarily a problematic interference. For something to be a case of problematic or

unjustified paternalism, it must embody an inappropriate attitude of superiority and 16 domination, and that attitude itself is what is problematic about paternalism. A paternalistic attitude evidences the assumption that one party (that imposing the paternalistic restriction) is in some way superior to the other, and thus better equipped to make decisions regarding the inferior party’s interests. While this attitude may, in fact, reflect the reality of some relationships (like that of parent to child), extending this attitude to categories of beings is inappropriate and oppressive.

Even though in his article Husak (1981) raises the idea of a relationship between assumed unequals characterizing paternalistic actions, he quickly dismisses this as a solution to the question of why paternalism is problematic, since he can give examples in which paternalism toward oneself or toward someone who is an equal can be justified, and in those instances there is obviously no relationship of superior to inferior (43-45).

His contention directly contradicts Smiley’s, and as this concept of unequal relationship is pivotal, it is important to ascertain whether Husak is right. Husak’s examples here are of Odysseus commanding his crew to tie him to the mast and ignore his later orders to be untied so that he would not be seduced by the sirens to guide his ship onto the rocks, and a more mundane example of a hungry man whose wife (who is not as hungry) refuses to stop at a bakery on the way home even though the man wants to, spurning less nutritious food for a more nutritious dinner at home (44-45). Husak claims that these are examples of justified paternalistic interference which do not involve relationships of superior to inferior (Odysseus is limiting himself, and Husak specifies that the man and his wife are equally possessed of willpower, the man is simply hungrier than his wife). If this were the case, then not all paternalistic actions would necessarily be characterized by this 17 unequal relationship, and we would be back to the problem of trying to figure out what it is about paternalism that makes it justified in some instances and not in others. I will argue that Husak’s examples, however, show precisely the type of inequality that is highlighted in paternalistic attitudes, when and why it is problematic for humans, and why I believe this problem translates to our interactions with animals.

In both of Husak’s (1981) cases, the person who is imposing the paternalistic restrictions (Odysseus before encountering the sirens and the not-so-hungry wife) can be understood as more rational than the other person, whose rationality has been compromised by appetites (Odysseus lured by the sirens and the hungry husband). In these examples of paternalistic action, the thing that makes the action seem justified is a lack of full rationality on the part of the person coerced, coupled with the assumption that the person who is more rational in the situation has the superior position from which to impose constraints on the other. These examples seem to raise few ethical concerns because of the circumstances under which the paternalistic action is occurring and the scale of the interactions (both are small in scale). Husak thinks that these are examples of justified paternalism among equals, and that this proves that what justifies paternalism cannot be a relation of superior to inferior. What these examples show, however, is that these instances where paternalism seems appropriate are examples of a more rational party constraining a less rational one and so the unequal relation is appropriate. From this, it is easier to see why paternalistic attitudes predicated on an assumption of relationships between categories of people are ethically problematic. If one group or entity, such as the state, is imposing paternalistic restrictions on another group based on 18

an attitude of superiority due to supposed superior rationality or ability to make value judgments, it is treating the latter group as less rational or less able to make such judgments. Marion Smiley provides an illustration which exemplifies this sort of

problem:

One sort of government protection that would seem to qualify as paternalistic in this context is that which transforms government officials into expert protectors. Examples of such paternalism are not hard to find. One of the most commonly cited involves the decision by government officials to hold back information from individual citizens on the grounds that they are not qualified to participate in judgments about, say, the safety of domestic nuclear power plants. Two things would seem to render such a decision paternalistic. First of all, the experts in this case have the power to impose their judgments on others. Second, the judgments which they have decided to make themselves are not merely technical judgments about how to obtain energy safely. Instead, they are value judgments about what kinds of safety risks individuals should or should not be willing to take. (1989, 311)

Considering that humans are, as part of our nature, rational beings, it is clear why

paternalistic attitudes predicated on the assumption that one group of humans (of a

certain race, religion, or social status) is more rational than another are deeply

problematic, perpetuate systems of inequality and domination, and therefore should be

resisted. An act which is paternalistic toward one’s own (rationally underdeveloped) child

is appropriate based on the relationship between the two individuals; a law based on a

paternalistic attitude on the part of one group of people about the rationality of another

(oppressed or less powerful) group is deeply inappropriate and unjust. This is the problem

with a paternalistic attitude in the human context.

The next question to address is whether this paternalistic attitude translates to the

relationships between humans and animals, and whether this is actually a problem. In the

human case, rationality is privileged as that which gives one the status of a superior and 19 the right to impose one’s understanding of what is good for others on those others regardless of their understanding of the matter. This is obviously problematic in the human case for the reasons explored above. However, it is not immediately apparent that this paternalistic attitude remains problematic in the case of human-animal relations, because such an attitude is based in reality. Nonhuman animals are, for the most part and in relevant ways, nonrational. Due to our capacity for rational thought, humans are better able to assess current situations and predict future outcomes than nonhumans are. It is possible that this capacity may ground a justification for a paternalistic attitude toward nonhumans, and I believe that this sort of attitude is precisely what is behind many conceptions and arguments about ethical treatment of animals and animal rights today.

We can argue that we have an obligation to treat animals benevolently and respect their capacities for suffering, relationship, and pursuing their own ends while still maintaining a posture of superiority that gives us the right to make decisions for them based on our superior intellect and rationality. So, the question on which this project hinges is this: Do humans, due to our superior capacity for rational thought, have the right to impose our rationality on nonhuman nature? I believe the answer to this should be a resounding

‘NO,’ and this contention is what I defend next.

Rationality is Not Synonymous with Superiority

Why is it that the capacity that is privileged in human-animal relations, rationality, just so happens to be something that humans have, and animals (for the most part) do not have? Does rationality really make us better? Rationality, even though it has been useful in human endeavors and vital to the accomplishments we prize, is a human 20 category which we have no right to impose on other species. In comparing human rationality to nonhuman nonrationality, we are essentially setting animals up to fail. Our justification of a paternalistic attitude toward animals rests on animals’ apparent ‘lack’ of a capacity for rationality, with the very concept of ‘lack’ assuming that it is better to be whole (read: rational) than to lack. To say that animals lack rationality is to come from an attitude of paternalism and an orientation toward humanity as the norm. Who is to say that having a capacity for rationality is better than not having one? We, as a species, would not even have a capacity for rationality unless non-rational capacities were sufficient to promote the well-being, and therefore survival, of the pre-rational species from which we evolved. Rationality promotes human ends, yes, but that does not justify imposing human ends on nonhuman nature.

What is it, then, which causes us to impose human ends on nonhuman nature and assume that we have the (paternalistic) right to coerce nonhumans toward ends that humans consider good for them? It is focusing on the capacities of nonhumans which makes us personally identify with their ability to suffer, have relationships, and seek what they find good. Once we have identified with nonhumans based on these capacities, we notice that they lack a capacity that we have—rationality. Assuming that our possession of this capacity compared to their lack of it makes us superior in some way, even if that way is just our ability to reason, leads to the paternalistic attitude of superior toward inferior which then characterizes our interventions in nonhuman nature. Our rationality allows us to discover the kinds of things that promote the physical well-being of animals, so we assume we know what their flourishing consists in. The paternalistic attitude we 21 hold toward them then spurs us to impose this flourishing on them, and we justify our right to do so in virtue of our rational understanding of what best promotes their flourishing.

This is most evident in proposals that deduce policies like eliminating predation and sterilizing wild animals from the implications of current animal ethics. If humans interfere in the realm of wild animals to prevent predators from harming their prey, we are clearly imposing morality and normative concepts of good and flourishing on them.

The cases are rarely this clear-cut, however, since human civilizations have had, and continue to have, huge effects on both wild and domesticated animals. It is difficult to see how it could be objectionable for humans to intervene in animals’ lives to correct a previous intervention which was detrimental to the animals. I want to be careful here— I absolutely support consideration of animals’ needs in the construction of human society and infrastructure. We should, as far as we are able, treat animals fairly, and this concept of ‘fairness’ will necessarily be a human concept. We must, however, be careful about the attitudes we use to promote consideration of animals and fairness to them—there is a subtle, but important, difference between considering the needs of nonhumans because we rational beings have a perspective on the world that nonrational beings lack and considering the needs of nonhumans because we share with them the status of being living things.

Many supporters of utilitarian or animal-rights based approaches to animal ethics do think that the moral status of nonhumans comes from something about them in themselves, and not just from our ability to place value on them. They think that 22 nonhumans have capacities which demand certain kinds of responses from us. Singer thinks this capacity is the ability to suffer; for Palmer, it is the ability to “feel pain and have other kinds of aversive and positive mental states” (2010, 11). How could attempting to respond appropriately to these capacities constitute paternalism? I argue that it is not in attempting to respond to nonhumans’ capacities where paternalistic attitudes are found, but in the project of demarcating these capacities in the first place. If the moral status of a living thing depends on its capacity for suffering, where do we draw the line? Is suffering merely a pain response, or, as Palmer contends, does it require some sort of cognition in addition to pain? Can a fish suffer? Can an insect? When we run into these difficulties and must draw lines, those lines will necessarily be arbitrary. Why is it that humans get to decide where these arbitrary lines will be drawn? It just so happens that we, by virtue of our rationality, are the only ones who can. These ethical approaches to human-animal relations create a system for governing the rules of interaction in which we are the only animals capable of making those rules and deciding to whom they apply.

All approaches may not fall immediately into these overly paternalistic conclusions, but where paternalistic attitudes prevail in the foundations of animal ethics, they are susceptible to it. Donaldson and Kymlicka are committed to “a new moral framework, one that connects the treatment of animals more directly to fundamental principles of liberal democratic justice and human rights” (2011, 3), and yet even they characterize nonhumans paternalistically. “We believe that the view of animals as vulnerable selves who need the protection of inviolable rights is one that is accessible to all societies from within their diverse moral sources” (48-49). Donaldson and Kymlicka 23 do an admirable job of resisting paternalistic formulations which make human-animal relations that of a superior group to an inferior group, but I think that this quotation still displays the paternalistic attitude that makes humans into ‘protectors’ and nonhumans

‘vulnerable’ and in need of protection. While that may be the reality in some relationships between specific nonhumans or groups of nonhumans and humans, at its base, this conception is still founded on the assumption that nonhumans are beings without the capacities requisite to fully protect themselves, capacities which humans can, apparently, supplement for them. This is a paternalistic attitude.

An Alternative Approach that Eradicates Paternalistic Attitudes

Now it is time for me to propose a solution. I would not suggest in the slightest that we turn a blind eye to the harm we cause animals or the ways in which our actions affect them. We should not just assume that animals will take care of themselves or allow other members of our species to exploit nonhumans for use and profit. There should be restrictions on the ways humans are allowed to interact with nonhumans, either directly or by the ways in which we develop their habitats and expand our influence. How, then, do we make laws to regulate our interaction with nonhumans without partaking in paternalistic attitudes? I believe the answer lies in reassessing the foundation on which we build our animal ethics, and replacing the paternalistic attitude of human as rational protector and curator of nonrational nature with something like the philosophy of Albert

Schweitzer and his ethic of reverence for life. Instead of being founded on human- imposed categories like a capacity for suffering or sentience, the justification for moral 24 considerability would come from the living things themselves, simply by virtue of their being living things.

Schweitzer’s (1987) ethic of reverence for life says that in all life there is an impulse toward life that he labels will-to-live— it is in humans no less than in nonhumans; in beings which express themselves vocally as well as beings which do not.

This will-to-live is both universal and individual; it is a thread that runs throughout all life, but it is also in each separate living thing. Often individual wills-to-live struggle against one another in the fight for survival. Humans take part in this struggle as well, but

Schweitzer finds us unique in that we can reflect on the will-to-live of both ourselves and other living things, and recognize the universal manifestation of it beyond the individual.

This recognition should then lead to efforts to connect will-to-live to itself by promoting and sustaining life wherever we find it. He asserts that “Ethics consist, therefore, in my experiencing the compulsion to show to all will-to-live the same reverence as I do to my own” (309). The inclusiveness of Schweitzer’s view, with its basis in life itself wherever it is found and its refusal to dictate a hierarchy of importance when it comes to different forms of life, makes it biocentric.

Biocentrism faces difficult challenges, not the least of which is the common human intuition that some forms of life, typically those which are more “complex” and like our own, have a higher stake in being treated fairly and ethically than those of simpler organisms such as insects or plants. However, if an ethic is truly committed to the bio- of biocentric, like Schweitzer’s is, the criterion for ethical consideration will be life alone, and discrimination based on any other characteristic or capacity will be illicit. 25

Current animal ethics are founded on reasoning which notices similarities between the capacities of humans and nonhumans, and then theorizes that, since some animals are like humans in important ways, we should treat them the same way we do humans. This sort of foundation forces one to draw (often arbitrary) lines around which capacities are or are not relevant, and which nonhumans have or do not have the relevant capacities. A biocentric ethic makes just life itself, and what it expresses, the marker for moral considerability. Current animal ethics are founded on much more complex reasoning around which capacities are relevant, and while complexity does not always equal error, I think that a biocentric ethic accounts better for the kind of respect humans owe to nonhumans, and it is fortunate that this approach happens to be simpler at its core than current animal ethics.

For Schweitzer (1987), it is a given that the wills-to-live of different organisms will conflict with one another, and that in order for humans to survive, we must at times assert our own will-to-live over that of others—be they people, animals, or plants.

Someone might question whether an ethic that allows us to harm other living things can be truly biocentric. Schweitzer’s philosophy can respond to this objection, however.

Schweitzer’s ethic does not try to excuse or justify this conflict between wills-to-live based on any differences between life forms; he makes no excuses or justifications at all.

Schweitzer insists that whenever any injury or destruction to life occurs, the ethic of reverence for life counts this as evil. Whenever a moral agent (someone who is able to recognize will-to-live in other living things) perpetrates this evil she or he incurs guilt, and thus incurring guilt is unavoidable. “True knowledge consists in being gripped by the 26

secret that everything around us is will-to-live and in seeing clearly how again and again

we incur guilt against life” (325). The only solution Schweitzer offers for guilt is that,

once we embrace reverence for life and become aware of all the ways in which we

become guilty, we can work harder to avoid this guilt wherever we can and to promote

life wherever it is found. For Schweitzer, dwelling in the real and the practical is the very

basis for his ethic. “Ordinary ethics seek compromises” and “produce experimental,

relative ethics,” but “the ethics of reverence for life know nothing of a relative ethic.

They make only the maintenance and promotion of life rank as good” (317). Varner

(1995) may think that the utilitarian reasoning that “the production of some evil can be justified by the preservation or production of good” (109) is really what underlies

Schweitzer’s ethic, but I believe Varner is wrong. The ethic of reverence for life does not

seek to justify evil, but directly opposes this kind of utilitarian thinking with its

biocentrism and its mysticism.

Schweitzer places a great deal of importance on the guilt that is incurred when we

do any harm to life, whether necessary or not. This guilt takes no account of the motives

behind one’s actions and makes no compromises; if we injure or inhibit life, we incur

guilt. There is no getting around this. Schweitzer states,

Whenever I in any way sacrifice or injure life, I am not within the sphere of the ethical, but I become guilty, whether it be egoistically guilty for the sake of maintaining my own existence or welfare, or unegoistically guilty for the sake of maintaining a greater number of other existences or their welfare. This so easily made mistake of accepting as ethical a violation of reverence for life, if it is based upon unegoistic considerations, is the bridge by crossing which ethics enter unawares the territory of the non- ethical. The bridge must be broken down. (1987, 325) 27

Utilitarian ethics decide whether an act is ethical or not based on calculating the amount of overall good and bad which are produced by the act; on many types of animal rights views, certain rights must be respected, regardless of the cost to the living things actually involved. From the passage above, however, the ethic of reverence for life maintains that the good of helping and promoting life is not canceled out by the evil of harming life, or vice versa; instead, both good and evil result, and there is a place for both in Schweitzer’s ethic. Incurring guilt is unavoidable. The only solution Schweitzer offers for guilt is that, once we embrace reverence for life and become aware of all the ways in which we become guilty, we can work harder to avoid this guilt wherever we can. Schweitzer certainly has no intention to assuage our consciences when he insists that ethical conflicts are inevitable. The constant awareness of the conflict is essential to reverence for life; there is no reverence in dismissal. “We must never let ourselves become blunted. We are

living in truth, when we experience these conflicts more profoundly” (318). For

Schweitzer we all, as moral agents, share the guilt of the injury we do to life (human and

nonhuman) and bear the responsibility to attempt to atone for it.

Schweitzer’s ethic of reverence for life is truly biocentric; it sees no living thing

as more important than any other and it does not try to construct hierarchies and make

compromises. As wills-to-live constantly surrounded by other wills-to-live, it is necessary

that we sometimes assert ourselves over the others in order to survive. This is both

unavoidable and, in the strictest sense, unforgivable. We cannot, as living things, survive

without becoming guilty; this is why the responsibility to act ethically and promote life

wherever we can falls on everyone. The ethic of reverence for life bridges the gap 28 between the unethical actions we take that incur guilt and the ethical actions we take that promote will-to-live; its motivation is subjective experience of one’s own will-to-live and the understanding that all other living things are also wills-to-live; as wills-to-live which recognize ourselves, we can end the division of will-to-live against itself only by having reverence for and promoting other will-to-live and thus participating in unity with the universal will-to-live. This is a profoundly mystic philosophy, and by so being it undercuts the paternalistic attitude which is present in the very foundations of most animal ethics. For Schweitzer, true ethics “must become cosmic and mystical, that is to say, it must seek to conceive all the self-devotion which rules in ethics as a manifestation of an inward, spiritual relation to the world” (1987, 307). In being biocentric, this ethic is concerned with the promotion of all life, not just sentient (or rational, or suffering, etc.)

animal life; in being devoted to the promotion of will-to-live wherever it is found, it

accounts for and encourages ethical treatment of each life form one encounters on an

individual basis.

Three concerns become apparent here. First, is this solution I’ve proposed really a

necessary adjustment to theories of animal ethics, which seem to be already grounded in

consideration of the value of animals themselves? Second, does Schwetizer’s focus on

individual actions of individual moral agents translate to a foundation for a theory of

ethics which can inform large-scale, public policy? And finally, will this proposed change

avoid the extreme and paternalistic implications that I have argued are problematic in

current animal ethics? 29

In answer to the first concern: yes, I believe this shift is necessary. Without a foundation in the ethic of reverence for life, and in something that comes from the living thing itself, there is nothing to stop the imposition of human categories from becoming the imposition of human morality on beings who are not humans and should not be expected to abide by human morality. It is a short and easily-traversed step from the assertions that ‘some nonhumans have the capacity to suffer’ and ‘humans think suffering is bad’ to ‘we have a responsibility to eradicate suffering in nonhumans.’ And while this

may not sound like it should be immediately objectionable, it leads to proposals like converting wilderness to farmland, preventing predatory animals from preying on other

animals, or sterilizing animals in the wild. The shift from human-as-protector to human-

as-overseer is an easy one to make, and has already resulted in proposals like those

above. The ethic of reverence for life places humans within the flow of will-to-live as

experiencers alongside other experiencers, instead of in the higher status of protectors

with the power to coerce other animals to abide by our assessments of good and bad.

In response to the second concern, Schweitzer’s focus on the individual nature of

the ethic of reverence for life was primarily practical. Our policy decisions are also

practical solutions to problems we encounter. Policies often address situations which are

complex, and where many beings’ interests conflict. With a view of animal ethics

founded on an ethic of reverence for life, the answer to complex situations of conflict will

not be ‘always sacrifice animals’ interests’ or ‘always sacrifice humans’ interests,’ or

even ‘always sacrifice the interests of the less-developed life form,’ but, I suspect, will

look somewhat similar to what we currently have and are working toward daily; the 30 difference will be in the attitude with which we approach these decisions. Some of the actions we take toward animals may still be paternalistic actions—that is, may be characterized by a relation of superior to inferior—but these will not be characterized by a paternalistic attitude of overall superiority of humans to nonhumans. This may manifest as me preventing my housecat from eating a plant that would poison it, but this results from the particular relationship between the cat and me, the knowledge I possess about the plant, and the cat’s obvious interest in continuing to live as manifested by its own will-to-live. This paternalistic act is not motivated by an attitude that endorses the overall superiority of humans to domesticated cats. Expanding justified paternalistic acts to larger-scale interactions between humans and nonhumans must continue to be motivated by particularities about the relationship between the parties, not by an assumption of humans’ overall superior capacities, or these interventions will be illegitimate from the view of an animal ethic built on reverence for life.

The difference in attitude also provides the answer to the final concern. With the ethic of reverence for life underlying our interactions with nonhumans, we will not see ourselves as the protectors of nature, custodians of living things, or even intercessors who speak on behalf of those who cannot; this ethic shows us that living things express will- to-live, and ethical decisions consist in recognizing, respecting, and promoting will-to- live wherever it is found. In recognizing our place as will-to-live alongside other will-to- live, we will be discouraged from under- or overstepping the place we occupy in nature; what separates us as humans from nonhuman will-to-live is only our capacity to recognize the ethical and unifying nature of promoting will to live, and this, far from 31 making us responsible for the welfare of all nonhumans, makes us even more responsible for the consequences of our own choices where other living things are concerned.

Conclusion

The ethical treatment of animals is relevant in all spheres of our lives, and we do need policies, procedures, and rules to guide our interactions with nonhuman nature.

Many of the current formulations of animal ethics, however, are founded in consideration for the ways in which animals’ capacities for suffering, sentience, or other characteristics resemble humans’ capacities for these same things. Consideration of these capacities leads humans to identify with nonhumans and to notice that we have a capacity for rationality which they lack, which makes us better able to attain our own ends. Assuming that nonhumans’ lack of rationality is a deficit and that rationality is required to realize their full flourishing leads humans to take a paternalistic attitude toward nonhumans and therefore justify any interference in their lives which promotes their good as we conceive it. We are then able to justify interferences up to and including eliminating predation, clearing wildlands, or sterilizing animals in the wild, things which end up being extremely paternalistic or even objectively ridiculous. In order to prevent animal ethics from falling toward these extreme conclusions, I believe that a reformulation of the very foundation of consideration for animals is needed, and that this should be biocentric instead of based on animals’ capacities. A biocentric ethic will make moral considerability rest not on human-imposed understandings of capacities for suffering or sentience or other characteristics, but on life itself—on an impulse toward life, which is communicated by and from within the living thing and not imposed by humans onto 32

(some, but not other) organisms. Albert Schweitzer’s ethic of reverence for life uniquely

satisfies this need for a biocentric ethic not only by supplying the criteria for moral considerability (will-to-live), but also by reckoning with one of the most stubborn

problems facing biocentrism: that most living things must—for one reason or another—

destroy other living things to survive. Schweitzer’s ethic does not try to circumvent this

problem, but faces it head-on and acknowledges that any harm we, as moral agents, do to

living things is unethical, and no amount of good that results can prevent us from

incurring guilt in these circumstances. There will be times—many times—when we are

forced to make decisions that cause harm to living things; these times make us guilty, and

this guilt should serve to motivate us to promote will-to-live wherever we can so as to

unite individual and universal will-to-live instead of divide it.

When this mystical, yet practical, biocentric ethic of reverence for life replaces

the paternalistic attitude in the foundations of our animal ethics, what results will be

policies which respect the rights, suffering, sentience, etc. of animals without

encountering the necessity of imposing our own conceptions of flourishing or our own

morality on beings who are not, and do not need to be, human. 33

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