Our fellow creatures

Journal of Ethics

Volumn 9, Issue 3-4, 2005, Pages 353-380

  Mcmahan, Jeff ^a  

^a RUTGERS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Animals; Cognitive disability; Common humanity; Cora Diamond; Ethics; George Pitcher; James Rachels; Moral individualism; Raimond Gaita; Stephen Mulhall

Indexed keywords

EID: 36749087080     PISSN: 13824554     EISSN: 15728609     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10892-005-3512-2     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (44)

1. James Rachels, Created From Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 173.
2. Intrinsic properties are, of course, bases of group membership. For example, the capacity for sentience is an intrinsic property but is also necessary and sufficient for membership in the group of sentient beings. Rachels would say that it is the intrinsic property of sentience that is morally significant and that membership in the group of possessors of the property is morally epiphenomenal.
3. Rachels, Created From Animals, p. 175 (Italics in the original).
4. Rachels, Created From Animals, p. 209.
5. Carl Cohen, "The Case for the Use of Animals in Biomedical Research," New England Journal of Medicine, 315 (1986), p. 866.
6. The earliest instance of the argument of which I am aware is in Stanley Benn, "Egalitarianism and Equal Consideration of Interests," in R. Pennock and J. Chapman (eds.), Nomos IX: Equality (New York: Atherton Press, 1967), pp. 62ff.
7. John Finnis, "The Fragile Case for Euthanasia: a Reply to John Harris," in John Keown (ed.), Euthanasia Examined (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 48.
8. T. M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 186.
9. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, p. 185.
10. For the denial, see Eva Feder Kittay, "The Ethics of Philosophizing: Cognitive Impairment at the Margins of Moral Personhood," unpublished manuscript, pp. 50-52. There she speculates that "there are no individuals about whom one can say with any certainty that they are both human and have the cognitive capacities of an animal."
11. Jeff McMahan, The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 7-24.
12. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, p. 185. A similar view was defended by Bernard Williams in a lecture he delivered shortly before his death in 2003. The text is marked as not for citation but one hopes that it will be published in due course.
13. I have written at greater length about the moral significance of species membership in McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, pp. 209-228.
14. Kittay, "The Ethics of Philosophizing," p. 24.
15. Kittay, "The Ethics of Philosophizing," p. 25. Emphases added.
16. Stephen Mulhall, "Fearful Thoughts," London Review of Books 24 (2002), p. 18.
17. George Pitcher, The Dogs Who Came to Stay (New York: Dutton, 1995), pp. 158-159, 162, and 163. There are, of course, limits to the depth and significance of our relations with certain beings that are imposed by the limitations of those beings' nature. Suppose that I have a pet garden snail, Cecil, whom I love and think of as my best friend. I nevertheless cannot have a genuinely important relation with Cecil because he is simply too insubstantial psychologically, biologically, and otherwise to be a partner in a significant relation. Admittedly, it seems true that there are some important special relations that are effectively unilateral, such as unrequited love. It may, for example, be rational to make great sacrifices for someone about whom one cares but who cares nothing about oneself. But it would not be rational to make such sacrifices for Cecil. Even in unilateral relations, the passive member in the relation must be an appropriate object of the active member's emotions.
18. McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, pp. 145-149.
19. Peter Vallentyne, "Of Mice and Men: Equality and Animals," this issue.
20. Mulhall, "Fearful Thoughts," p. 18.
21. Cora Diamond, The Realistic Spirit (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1991), p. 329. Emphases in the original.
22. Cora Diamond, "The Importance of Being Human," in David Cockburn (ed.), Human Beings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 35-62;
23. and Diamond, The Realistic Spirit, pp. 319-334.
24. Diamond, The Realistic Spirit, pp. 319-323.
25. Diamond, "The Importance of Being Human," p. 59. Emphasis in the original.
26. Diamond, "The Importance of Being Human," p. 41 and 55. Emphasis in the original.
27. Diamond, "The Importance of Being Human," pp. 43, 56, and 58.
28. Diamond, "The Importance of Being Human," p. 55. It is perhaps worth noting that Mulhall too is impressed by the mysteriousness of fate, by the idea that we can see "ourselves as mortal creatures subject to a common and uncanny fate" (Mulhall, "Fearful Thoughts," p. 18).
29. Diamond, "The Importance of Being Human," p. 59.
30. Diamond, "The Importance of Being Human," p. 59. Emphases in the original.
31. Diamond, The Realistic Spirit, p. 323.
32. The protagonist in J. M. Coetzee's novel, Disgrace, volunteers to take the corpses of dogs that have been killed at the Animal Welfare clinic to the incinerator and to burn them, refusing to allow the incinerator crew to dispose of them later. For "that would mean leaving them on the dump with the rest of the weekend's scourings: with waste from the hospital wards, carrion scooped up at the roadside, malodorous refuse from the tannery - a mixture both casual and terrible. He is not prepared to inflict such dishonour upon them." He acts in earnest, though with a self-mocking irony: "He saves the honour of corpses because there is no one else stupid enough to do it." It is clear, however, that the reader is meant to take seriously the idea that even the corpse of an anonymous animal is susceptible to being dishonored [see J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace (New York: Viking, 1999), pp. 142-146].
33. James Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, Second Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993), p. 15.
34. Rachels, Elements of Moral Philosophy, p. 27. The question of the appropriate treatment of corpses is similar to the question of the acceptability of homosexuality in two respects - namely, that neither issue is about considerations of harm yet both evoke visceral and volatile passions that are difficult to defend by rational argument. It may well be that commonly accepted beliefs about respectful treatment of corpses will be - or could be - transformed in a relatively short period of time, just as beliefs about homosexuality that were prevalent for many centuries have been greatly transformed in our society in the space of only a few decades.
35. Diamond, The Realistic Spirit, p. 324.
36. Raimond Gaita, The Philosopher's Dog: Friendships With Animals (New York: Random House, 2002), p. 174.
37. Gaita, The Philosopher's Dog, p. 171.
38. Gaita, The Philosopher's Dog, p. 175.
39. Gaita, The Philosopher's Dog, p. 176.
40. Gaita, The Philosopher's Dog, p. 176.
41. Gaita, The Philosopher's Dog, pp. 174 and 42.
42. Gaita, The Philosopher's Dog, pp. 206-207.
43. For a critical discussion of the idea that we can explain the significance of special relations in terms of an entitlement to give priority to those we specially care about, see McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, pp. 218-220.
44. Diamond, "The Importance of Being Human," p. 54.