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Nonhuman Animals and the Promise of the Capabilities

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Nonhuman Animals and the Promise of the Capabilities NONHUMAN ANIMALS AND THE PROMISE OF THE CAPABILITIES APPROACH by DANIEL L. CRESCENZO (Under the Direction of Victoria Davion) ABSTRACT In my project I argue that my version of the capabilities approach provides a better framework for including animals as subjects of justice in Western liberal societies than Martha Nussbaum’s version of the approach, Tom Regan’s animal rights, Peter Singer’s animal welfare, or any social contract theory. I first lay out Nussbaum’s capabilities approach. Then I examine several versions of the social contract, highlighting a number of reasons that animals cannot be included as subjects of justice on a social contract theory. After this I consider Regan’s animal rights and Singer’s animal welfare accounts, as well as Val Plumwood’s egalitarian account of the intentional other, Mary Midgley’s affective account, and Clare Palmer’s causal history account of our responsibilities toward animals. Drawing on Plumwood’s and Palmer’s work, in the last section, I craft a version of the capabilities approach that departs radically from Nussbaum’s version in two ways: First, on my capabilities approach, individuals are valuable by virtue of their form of life, rather than by virtue of the capacities they actually have, and second, our responsibilities toward them are partly determined by the ways in which we have made them vulnerable to harm, rather than only by the overriding moral directive to provide every individual the opportunity to flourish. I argue that these components of my account enable it to avoid critical problems that Nussbaum’s account, Regan’s animal rights, Singer’s animal welfare, and social contract theories cannot. INDEX WORDS: Capabilities approach, Martha Nussbaum, Animal ethics, Justice, Social contract theory, Animal rights, animal welfare, Val Plumwood, Clare Palmer NONHUMAN ANIMALS AND THE PROMISE OF THE CAPABILITIES APPROACH by DANIEL L. CRESCENZO B.A., The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, 2004 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GA 2016 © 2016 Daniel L. Crescenzo All Rights Reserved NONHUMAN ANIMALS AND THE PROMISE OF THE CAPABILITIES APPROACH by DANIEL L. CRESCENZO Major Professor: Victoria Davion Committee: Chris Cuomo Piers Stephens Electronic Version Approved: Suzanne Barbour Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia December 2016 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………...1 Martha Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach…………………………………...3 Social Contract Theory and Animals……………………………………….....5 Problems with Social Contract Theory………………………………………..7 Capacities Accounts and Relational Accounts in Animal Ethics………….....10 The Case for My Capabilities Approach………………………………..........13 2 Martha Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach and Animals………………………19 The Philosophical Foundation of Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach………20 Constrained Consequentialism…………………………………………….....25 Kinds of Capabilities, Autonomy, and Functioning……………………….....27 Political Justification…………………………………………………………30 From Human Beings to Nonhuman Animals………………………………...34 The Question of Autonomy…………………………………………………..41 Animals, Overlapping Consensus, and Threshold Levels…………………....42 Ambiguous Terms and Dualisms…………………………………………......44 Putting the Approach into Practice…………………………………………...46 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………52 v 3 Social Contract Theory and Animals…………………………………………….53 John Rawls’ Justice as Fairness………………………………………………56 Peter Carruthers’ Contract Theory……………………………………………60 T.M. Scanlon’s Contract Theory……………………………………………..66 Andrew I. Cohen’s Contractarianism………………………………………...69 Mark Rowlands’ Neo-Rawlsian Social Contract…………………………….72 Kimberly K. Smith on Animals and the Social Contract…………………….75 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………80 4 Problems with Social Contract Theory………………………………………….81 Nussbaum’s Argument from the Circumstances of Justice………………….82 Nussbaum’s Argument from the Conception of a Person…………………...86 The Right Circumstances of Justice, the Right Conception of a Person…….88 Problems with Cohen’s Direct Subject Account…………………………….90 Problems with Rowland’s Neo-Rawlsian Account………………………….95 Problems with Smith’s Account of the Social Contract……………………100 Conclusion………………………………………………………………….108 5 Capacities Accounts and Relational Accounts in Animal Ethics………….......109 Tom Regan’s Animal Rights……………………………………………….111 Peter Singer’s Animal Welfarism………………………………………….118 Mary Midgley’s Mixed Human-Animal Community…………………......122 Val Plumwood’s Account of Dialogue with the Other……………………125 Clare Palmer’s Causal Account……………………………………………129 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………137 vi 6 The Case for My Capabilities Approach………………………………….......139 Two Kinds of Egalitarianism and Inegalitarianism………………………..140 The Case for Methodological Egalitarianism and Its Implications…………144 The Case for a Life-Form Hierarchy of Value……………………………...149 The Problem of Morally Relevant Inequalities……………………………..158 Regan’s and Singer’s Failure to Explain the Laissez-Faire Intuition…...…..161 How My Capabilities Approach Explains the LFI………………………….165 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………..176 WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………………..177 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ABSTRACT In my project I argue that my version of the capabilities approach provides a better framework for including animals as subjects of justice in Western liberal societies than Martha Nussbaum’s version of the approach, Tom Regan’s animal rights, Peter Singer’s animal welfare, or any social contract theory. I first lay out Nussbaum’s capabilities approach. Then I examine several versions of the social contract, highlighting a number of reasons that animals cannot be included as subjects of justice on a social contract theory. After this I consider Regan’s animal rights and Singer’s animal welfare accounts, as well as Val Plumwood’s egalitarian account of the intentional other, Mary Midgley’s affective account, and Clare Palmer’s causal history account of our responsibilities toward animals. Drawing on Plumwood’s and Palmer’s work, in the last section, I craft a version of the capabilities approach that departs radically from Nussbaum’s version in two ways. First, on my approach, individuals are valuable by virtue of their form of life, rather than by virtue of the capacities they actually have. Second, following Palmer, I hold that our responsibilities toward them are partly determined by the ways in which we have made them vulnerable to harm, rather than only by the overriding moral directive to provide every individual the opportunity to flourish. I argue that these components of my account enable it to avoid critical problems that Nussbaum’s account, Regan’s animal rights, Singer’s animal welfare, and social contract theories cannot. 2 In my project, I argue that my capabilities approach provides a better framework within which to include nonhuman animals1 as subjects of justice in Western liberal societies than Nussbaum’s version of the approach, animal rights, animal welfare, or social contract theory. My project is divided into five chapters. In the first chapter I outline Nussbaum’s capabilities approach. In the second, I outline some representative social contract theories, highlighting the ways in which they have dealt with the question of whether animals are subjects of justice. In the third chapter I outline Nussbaum’s main arguments that social contract theory cannot include animals as subjects of justice and argue that some accounts of social contract that she does not consider also fail, but for different reasons. In chapter four I outline some prominent intrinsic and relational accounts of the value of individuals and of our responsibilities toward them. In the final chapter, I craft a version of the capabilities approach that departs radically from Nussbaum’s version in two ways: First, on my approach, individuals are valuable by virtue of their form of life, rather than by virtue of the capacities they actually have. Second, following Palmer, I hold that our responsibilities toward them are partly determined by the ways in which we have made them vulnerable to harm, rather than only by the overriding moral directive to provide every individual the opportunity to flourish. I argue that these unique components of my approach work together to make it a better framework through which to include animals as subjects of justice than Nussbaum’s version of the approach, Regan’s and Singer’s animal ethics, and all social contract theories. 1. Form here on, more simply, animals. 3 2. Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach No author has developed the capabilities approach as a philosophical framework within which to see animals as subjects of justice more extensively than Martha Nussbaum. So I begin by outlining her version of the approach. For Nussbaum, justice is concerned with securing up to a minimum threshold for each individual each capability, or opportunity for activity or being, that has been judged essential for living a life worthy of dignity. These capabilities are not only judged necessary for a life worthy of dignity, but also partly constitutive of such a life. Each individual is viewed as an end. Anything that blocks or diminishes the central capabilities below the minimum threshold is a harm and anything that promotes them up to that threshold is a good. When it is not possible to secure each central capability up to the threshold level for each individual, we should
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