介绍:
Whether or not animals are due equal consideration is an unresolved issue. 【I have defended a moral presumption in favour of equal consideration, and it is clear that appeals to species will not overturn that presumption.】 Almost as certainly, contract theory will not do so either.
But, while no published discussions of the appeals to moral agency and to social bonds have carried the burden of proof on the inegalitarian, it may be premature to preclude the possibility that the relevant argument could be developed more successfully. 【Among the various challenges to equal consideration, the strategy of appealing to the common-sense moral differences regarding assistance and killing seems strongest.】 Combining this approach with either, or both, of the suitably developed appeals to moral agency and social bonds may offer the most formidable possible challenge to equal consideration.
【But the very real possibility that our intuitions regarding assistance and killing are shaped by pro-human, anti-animal prejudice justifies a continued presumption in favour of equal consideration.】 Only a challenge that was explicit, coherent, and more compelling than any produce so far could overturn that presumption. Suppose that the presumption favoring equal consideration for animals were successfully overturned, how should we understand animal moral status?
As we have seen, the view that animals have moral status is not plausible, in view of the arguments we have canvassed. 【But there is a position that falls in between that extreme one and the equal-consideration approach, a view that is intuitively fairly plausible and no doubt tacitly accepted by many people.】 To get a handle on this view, one needs to imagine two particular scales and then merge them. The first is the phylogenetic scale, or at least one way of construing it.
This scale is an evolutionary hierarchy with animal species that are more biologically and cognitively complex closer to the top. The second scale is a hierarchy of moral status. Being at the very top have the highest moral status and deserve full consideration. Beings somewhat lower deserve very serious consideration but less that what the beings on the top deserve. 【As one moves down this scale of moral status or moral consideration, the amount of consideration one owes to beings at a particular level decreases.】 At some point one reaches beings who deserve just a little consideration.
