Abstract
The distinctive feature of a hybrid view (such as Nozick’s “utilitarianism for animals, Kantianism for people”) is that it divides moral patients into two classes: call them dersons and uersons. Dersons have a deontological kind of moral status: they have moral rights against certain kinds of optimific harms. Uersons, by contrast, have a utilitarian kind of moral status: their interests are morally important (in proportion to the magnitude of those interests), but uersons do not have deontological moral rights or any other kinds of deontological protections. In this paper, we discuss and critically evaluate three ways of supporting a hybrid view: a case-based argument; an autonomy-based rationale; and a rationale based in a capacity for what we call deep commitments. Finally, we discuss a way in which considerations about the moral significance of relationships might support an approximation of a hybrid view.
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Notes
Not all hybrid views need be ‘Nozickian’: one could take a contractualist approach to humans, a virtue-theoretic approach to non-human animals, and an ecocentric approach to plants, for example. Since our focus is on Nozickian hybrid views, we’ll use ‘hybrid view’ to refer to Nozickian hybrid views only.
An act is optimific if and only if its consequences are at least as good as the consequences of any alternative action open to the agent.
Recall one of the oldest objections to utilitarianism, that utilitarianism is “a doctrine worthy only of swine” (Mill 1871, 121–22). This fairly straightforwardly implies that utilitarianism is in fact worthy of swine, even though it is not worthy of humans. On one plausible interpretation, this is an endorsement of a hybrid view.
In The Case for Animal Rights, for example, Tom Regan allows that, while all normal mammals over 1 year of age are subjects-of-a-life and so have a basic right to respectful treatment, utilitarianism might be appropriate for sentient animals that are not subjects-of-a-life (1983, 246).
Utilitarianism and deontology themselves are large families of theories: just consider, e.g., satisficing vs. maximizing utilitarianism and egalitarian vs. prioritarian deontological theories.
The few include Loren Lomasky: “Human beings are rights-holders, and nonhuman animals are not. People may not be sacrificed to the greater good of others, while animals may” (2013, 195 emphasis in the original). Carl Cohen holds that humans have rights, that animals do not have rights, and that we still have direct duties to animals, but he fails to specify the principles governing our relations to animals in sufficient detail to know whether he is a utilitarian about animals (1986, 867; 1997, 95; 2001, 5–6, 38, 46). Similarly with Dario Ringach (2011, 309–10). Also, as noted in fn. 4, Regan suggests a hybrid view, albeit one according to which the class of dersons is significantly expanded and the class of uersons is significantly restricted.
This isn’t to say that utilitarian approaches are completely absent in our dealings with our fellow human beings. For example, during the current pandemic, many countries restricted individual liberties in order to promote public health—a decision that is at least consistent with a utilitarian approach. Thanks to a reviewer for pushing us on this point.
This is a version of a template used in experiments conducted by Caviola et al. (2021).
The qualifier “the sort of harm involved in an instance of Outbreak” is important, as some people (e.g., (Thomson 1990, 292) hold that animals have deontological protections against being caused pain, but not against being killed. In this regard, one could have intuitions about animals that conform to (i) and yet still not be a utilitarian towards animals; one would only be a utilitarian about animal death.
As Mill notes, the view that there is one ultimate moral principle (e.g., the principle of utility) doesn’t commit one to using that principle to “test each individual action directly.” Instead, one can, and often should, use intermediate generalizations and secondary principles such as “One shouldn’t murder” and “One shouldn’t steal” (1871, 137–38). Sidgwick similarly argues at length for a utilitarian understanding of “the morality of common sense,” despite its outwardly non-utilitarian appearance (1907, 423–59). Two-level utilitarianism is a development of this idea. For a recent articulation and defense of two-level utilitarianism, see (Varner 2012).
In several of their studies, Caviola et al. use a 7-point Likert scale, which they describe as asking participants “to indicate how morally right (i.e., permissible) or wrong they thought it to be to harm 10 animals (humans) to save 100 animals (humans) on a 7-point scale from 1 (absolutely morally wrong) to 7 (absolutely morally right)” (2021, 1013). If a hybrid view is committed to saying that optimific harm is “absolutely morally right” then any response other than 7 is incompatible with a hybrid view; but if a hybrid view is only committed to saying that optimific harm is on balance morally right, then a larger range of responses would be consistent with a hybrid view. Another issue worth flagging here is that, if “right” is being interpreted as “permissible”, as the quoted language above says, then “(4) neither right nor wrong” means “(4) neither permissible nor wrong,” which is clearly not what is intended.
There is one further concern that we wish to flag here. We think that case-based intuitionists should build their theories on the basis of stable intuitions—i.e., intuitions that persist after being informed of the relevant non-moral facts, careful thought, and consideration of alternative views and arguments. Traditional surveys, including the sorts of surveys conducted by Caviola et al., are unable to distinguish between stable intuitions and superficial gut reactions that participants would retract after due reflection. For this reason, we think that alternative methodologies—such as a method known as deliberative polling—ought to be explored in this area.
This is not to say that these are the only factors affecting magnitude of autonomy in Kagan’s account. We’re grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pushing us on this point.
Kagan responds to a problem that is related to, but less serious than, the problem we discuss here. Kagan allows that there is “normal variation” among humans and among animals. Among ordinary humans, for instance, he allows that some have a “somewhat better ability to plan” than others, that some have a “somewhat greater capacity for normative self-governance” than others, etc. (2019, 164). Given the prominent role that autonomy-related capacities play in Kagan’s account of status-generating capacities (2019, 124–26), these differences mean that Kagan is committed to the result that, other things being equal, those ordinary humans have slightly higher moral status than others. This would seem to imply that, on Kagan’s account, we should think of different ordinary people as having slightly different levels of moral status, which (to many) will seem objectionable. Kagan responds to this problem by making two points. First, he maintains that the differences between ordinary humans are typically so small as not to significantly affect how ordinary humans ought to treat one another in most real-world circumstances (2019, 166). Second, he defends a “practical realism” according to which “moral rules are to be evaluated with an eye toward our actual epistemic and motivational limitations” (2019, 292). Given this practical realism, he thinks, the best moral rules are likely to require us to treat all ordinary humans as if their moral status is exactly, not just approximately, equal. However, these points do not satisfactorily address our objection. As we have seen, Kagan’s account supports the view that an ordinary human suffers a dramatic reduction in autonomy as they age and that ordinary humans can be dramatically more autonomous than others simply by having far more diverse and detailed preferences. Contrary to Kagan’s response, then, his account does not support the view that differences in autonomy among ordinary humans are typically slight. And this in turn suggests that even given Kagan’s practical realism, Kagan’s account has difficulty avoiding the unsavory implication that we should treat some ordinary humans as if their status is dramatically lower than that of other ordinary humans.
You might simply have thought the original statue was valuable intrinsically as a beautiful work of art and yet less valuable than the better statue that could be made from it. See (Chappell 2015) for useful related discussion.
A utilitarian might try to handle the Teresa and George case by understanding individuals’ interests in terms of their preferences. But this solution will be costly for those who believe—as many utilitarians do believe—that our interests cannot be spelled out in terms of our preferences. Further, preference utilitarianism might not do full justice to our intuitions about the Teresa and George case. After all, preference utilitarianism takes account of the full range of an individual’s preferences. So we can imagine a case where Teresa says that the cake should go to George even though the full range of preferences would be more completely satisfied by giving the cake to Teresa instead. In such a case Teresa’s willingness to give the cake to George still seems to justify giving the cake to George.
Analogies with other, non-altruism cases also support the claim that commitment utilitarianism’s verdict is more plausible. Consider gender affirmation surgery, or any other major plastic surgery that is largely irreversible. Many believe that mere consent is not enough to justify a doctor in proceeding with such surgery; rather, doctors should look for evidence that patients have a deep commitment to having such surgery before proceeding.
Thus understood, the depth of a commitment comes in degrees. This opens up the possibility of a more complicated version of commitment utilitarianism: If an action X treats an individual Y in a detrimental way and X is sub-optimific, then the more harmful X is to Y, the deeper Y’s commitment to being so treated needs to be for X to be justified.
We think this is a plausible assumption, because we think that seeing oneself as an end in itself requires a kind of abstract thought of which pigs seem incapable. It appears Korsgaard, in some of her publications, disagrees (2012, 368–9), but we do not have the space to argue for this assumption here. We thank a reviewer for pushing us to flag this.
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Killoren, D., Streiffer, R. Three and a half ways to a hybrid view in animal ethics. Philos Stud 180, 1125–1148 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-022-01816-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-022-01816-3