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The Agency Account of Moral Status: Defending the Equal Moral Status of Humans and Non-Human Animals

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The Agency Account of Moral Status: Defending the Equal Moral Status of Humans and Non-Human Animals The Agency Account of Moral Status: Defending the Equal Moral Status of Humans and Non-Human Animals Marc Gareth Wilcox Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Philosophy PhD University of Leeds School of Philosophy, Religion and the History of Science September 2017 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy have been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. © 2017 The University of Leeds and Marc Gareth Wilcox. Acknowledgements I could not have completed this thesis without the help and support of some important individuals. Whilst I cannot thank everyone who has helped me by name, there are some important people who deserve a special mention. First of all I must of course thank my supervisors, Gerald Lang and Pekka Väyrynen. Through constantly challenging my ideas both of these individuals have pushed me to do better, clarify my ideas and develop my arguments further. Without their input this thesis would not be as clear and well-developed as it is. I must also thank Pekka for helping me navigate the bureaucratic university processes surrounding completing a PhD and providing me with a book for every problem I encountered. I would also like to thank my examiners Helen Steward and Mark Rowlands. Other than fulfilling their roles as examiners, the work of both of these individuals has played an important part in the development of my research. I would also like to thank Helen in particular for the trouble she went through to arrange my viva voce and for the time she has spent with me discussing animal action and animal minds over the last four years. Next I would like to thank two very special individuals who have played an important part in the completion of this piece of work. First is my wife Penelope. She encouraged me to reapply for PhD programs after failing to secure a place the first time around. Without her encouragement and belief in me, I would not have even started my doctoral research, let alone completed it. Moreover, through the four years it has taken me to complete this thesis she has moved across the country for me, been a sounding board for my inchoate ideas and pushed me to get back to my work after the inevitable and frequent setbacks that arise in research, not to mention providing me with meals whilst I’ve been occupied with reading and writing. There are many times when I thought that I couldn’t continue with my PhD and I have no doubt that if not for Penny’s support, I would not have finished this thesis. I cannot thank her enough for everything she has done to ensure my success. Second is Enzo, who played no small part in inspiring this project. Merely through his day to day behaviour, Enzo has made me constantly doubt the dogmatic approach of previous philosophers regarding animal action and inspired me to develop the account of animal action I defend here. Enzo sadly died last year but he will be fondly remembered whenever I think back to the ideas contained in this work. Finally I am grateful to the School of PRHS at Leeds who provided me with a Graduate Teaching Scholarship for the first three years of my PhD allowing me to undertake this research in the first place. I must also thank my friends inside and outside this department, who have spent time discussing the ideas contained within this thesis, as well as my parents and grandparents who have helped me financially during the completion of this work. Abstract In this thesis, I argue that humans and sentient animals have equal moral status in the sense that they ought to have like interests equally considered. Furthermore, they are owed strong pro tanto duties to be free from having pain inflicted upon them, having their lives ended and having their liberty restricted. I argue for these claims by developing and defending an account of moral status grounded in agency. This account takes agency, understood as the capacity to act on motivating reasons, to be the necessary and sufficient condition for moral status. Further, I argue that agency is sufficient to have interests in liberty, continued existence and freedom from pain. As such we pro tanto wrong agents when we frustrate these interests. I show that sentient beings necessarily possess agency in the relevant sense, because the best account of the nature of sentience, entails that sentient beings have the psychological resources to form and act upon motivating reasons. Thus, I argue that sentient animals must possess interests in liberty, continued existence and freedom from pain, just as autonomous agents do. Therefore we should take all agents, regardless of further facts about their abilities, to possess equal moral status and be owed pro tanto duties to be free from having pain inflicted upon them, having their lives ended and having their liberty restricted. Contents Introduction 1 i. Why Think Animals Matter at All? 4 ii. Overview 12 Chapter 1 What is Moral Status and Why is it Important? 15 I. The Moral Significant of Interests 17 i. Two Accounts of Interests 18 ii. Biological Functions as Interests 19 iii. Producing Offspring, Living and Flourishing 21 II. Is the Notion of Moral Status Useful? 24 III. Does Moral Status come in Degrees? 32 i. The Unequal Consideration Model 34 ii. The Unequal Interests Model 36 IV. Relationalism and Individualism 38 Conclusion 41 Chapter 2 Why do we need an Agency Account? 43 I. The Sentience Account 44 II. The Subject-of-a-Life Account 49 III. The Kantian Account 53 IV. Constructing an Ideal Account of Moral Status 60 V. The Agency Account 61 i. The Agency Account Determines Treatment 62 ii. Human and Animal Moral Status 63 iii. The Agency Account is Analytically Reductive 64 Conclusion 66 Chapter 3 From Sentience to Desires 68 I. Evolution and Instincts 69 II. Sentience 72 III. Accounts of Sensory Pleasant Feeling 73 i. Felt Quality Accounts 76 ii. Attitudinal Accounts 78 IV. Pleasant Sensory Feelings as Desire Satisfaction 82 i. General Desires 86 ii. Desires for No Reason 87 iii. Moods 88 iv. Lost Desires 89 v. Novel Experiences 90 V. The Nature of Desire 91 i Desires with Motivation 93 ii. Non-Actable Desires 94 Conclusion 98 Chapter 4 From Desires to Action 99 I. The Nature of Beliefs 99 i. Action-Guiding Beliefs 102 ii. The Argument from Specification 106 iii. The Argument from Concepts 110 II. Acting Intentionally 116 i. Acting for a Reason 116 ii. Reason Super Blind-Sighted 119 iii. Autonomy and Moral Agency 121 iv. Control without Autonomy 124 III. The Nature of Agency 127 i. Acting without a Body 127 ii. Agency as a Capacity 130 Conclusion 132 Chapter 5 The Agency Account of Moral Status: Liberty and Pain 133 I. Agency as a Necessary Condition for Moral Status 133 II. Agency as a Sufficient Condition for Moral Status 134 III. Pain 137 IV. Liberty 140 i. Kinds of Liberty 140 ii. The Instrumental Value of Liberty 143 iii. The Desire-Based Account 144 iv. The Teleological Account 147 v. Liberty as Choice 152 vi. The Instrumental Value of Choice 152 vii. The Self- Determination Account 156 viii. Animals and Humans 164 ix. Practical Implications 165 Conclusion 167 Chapter 6 The Agency Account of Moral Status: Continued Existence 169 I. Continued Existence 169 i. Future-Directed Desires 173 ii. Psychological Connectedness and Time-Relative Interests 178 iii. Categorical Desires 188 II. The Loss of Autonomy Argument 193 III. Objections to the Agency Account of Moral Status 196 Conclusion 197 Concluding Remarks 199 Bibliography 202 Introduction Henry Salt suggested that ‘the prime cause of man’s injustice to the lower animals is the belief that they are mere automata, devoid alike of spirit, character, and individuality…’1 Salt wrote these words over 100 years ago and in that time our perceptions of animals have changed; most people do not think of animals as mere automata. Nonetheless, Salt’s point still has bite; it seems we do not recognise animals as true individuals with unique characters. Where we think of ourselves as existing ‘in the world’ we often think of them as part of it, like rocks and trees.2 They are seen as something fundamentally different from humans. Often thought to be controlled by their biological nature, they are alive but not really living a life. In this thesis I will argue against this position. I will argue that those animals that are capable of sentience are also agents, capable of determining their actions minute to minute, just like humans.3 Further, I will argue that because of this, sentient animals possess a ‘moral status’, that is to say, they are individuals that matter, and as such they ought not to be treated in certain ways, just as is the case with humans. More generally, the aim of this thesis is to give an account of what the conditions are for the possession of moral status, and in doing so plausibly explain why both humans and sentient non-humans matter, taking into account the variety and depth of duties we owe to these individuals. I will argue that though previous accounts of moral status have made us aware that there is something intuitively wrong about our current treatment of animals, they have failed to provide an account that robustly and plausibly defends this claim.
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