Developed by Manuel Velasquez, Claire Andre, Thomas
Shanks, S.J., and Michael J. Meyer
For over eight years the three monkeys immobilized in harnesses have
sat staring helplessly from their cages. Their paralyzed limbs dangling
at their sides have been useless appendages since researchers eight years
ago cut their nerves in experiments. According to the director of the
National Institutes of Health, they now "give evidence of frequent, unrelievable
pain." Experimenters plan next to surgically remove the tops of the monkey's
skulls, insert electrodes to take brain measurements, and finally kill
them, all as part of a research project on spinal cord injuries financed
by the National Institutes of Health.
Clearly, the experimenters would never have done to humans what they
did to these monkeys. Their moral principles and ours dictate that inflicting
such massive insults is a shockingly abhorrent injustice. But, like some
of us, the experimenters apply their principles to humans and not to animals:
animals don't count. In fact, one of the most fundamental dividing lines
in morality is the one we draw between those who count in our moral considerations
and those that don't, or, as ethicists sometimes put it, between those
who do and those who don't have moral standing.
What is moral standing? An individual has moral standing for us if we
believe that it makes a difference, morally, how that individual is treated,
apart from the effects it has on others. That is, an individual has moral
standing for us if, when making moral decisions, we feel we ought to take
that individual's welfare into account for the individual's own sake and
not merely for our benefit or someone else's benefit.
Take, for example, a doctor who attends to the physical welfare of her
patients and believes that it would be morally wrong to mistreat them.
Suppose that she believes this not because of any benefits she will derive
from taking good care of them nor because she is afraid of being sued,
but only because she has a genuine concern for her patients' well-being.
Her patients have moral standing for her. On the other hand, take a farmer
who looks after the welfare of his cows and who also believes that it
would be morally wrong to mistreat them. But suppose he believes this
only because mistreating them would decrease their milk production and
their milk is an essential source of nourishment and income for his family.
Although this farmer considers his cows' welfare, he does so only for
the sake of his family and not for the sake of the cows themselves. For
the farmer, the cows have no moral standing.
The oldest and most prevalent view of who has moral standing is the
belief that only human beings have moral standing; only human beings ultimately
count in matters of morality. This anthropocentric or "human centered"
conviction is usually linked to the idea that only creatures with the
capacity to reason (perhaps as expressed through language) have absolute
value and consequently they are the only creatures whose well-being ought
to be taken into account for their own sakes.
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, for example, viewed nature
as a hierarchy, believing that less rational creatures are made for the
benefit of those that are more rational. He wrote "Plants exist for the
sake of animals, and brute beasts for the sake of man." In a similar vein,
the seventeenth century philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote that "So far as
animals are concerned, we have no direct moral duties; animals are not
self-conscious and are there merely as a means to an end. That end is
man." For these thinkers, therefore, only human beings have moral standing,
so the welfare of other creatures matters only if they are useful to humans.
The conviction that only human beings ultimately count in morality doesn't
imply that we have no moral obligations whatsoever toward nonhumans. Even
anthropocentric views hold that it is immoral to destroy plants or animals
needlessly since by doing so we are destroying resources that may provide
significant benefits to ourselves or to future human generations. Some
anthropocentric positions also hold that all cruelty toward animals is
immoral because, as the philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas put
it, "through being cruel to animals one becomes cruel to human beings."
Non-humans count, however, only to the extent that the welfare of human
beings is affected.
Although every anthropocentric ethic holds that, morally speaking, only
humans can matter, there is wide disagreement about exactly which humans
matter. Some anthropocentric views hold that any human creature that has
at least the potential to be rational has moral standing. According to
this view, a fetus has moral standing. Others hold that only those humans
who are already rational count morally. From this perspective a fetus
doesn't count. Other anthropocentric views claim that both present and
future generations of humans count, while still others argue that only
currently existing humans count.
In the eighteenth century the view that only humans count was challenged
by several philosophers, including the utilitarians Jeremy Bentham and
John Stuart Mill. According to these philosophers our only moral duty
is to maximize pleasure which they claimed is the only fundamental good,
and to minimize pain, the only fundamental evil. In making moral decisions,
therefore, we have to take into account all creatures, rational or not,
that have the capacity to experience pleasure or pain. As Bentham wrote,
"The question is not, Can they reason nor Can they talk, but, Can they
This early view, which extended moral standing to animals, set the stage
for the "animal rights" movement. Following in the footsteps of Bentham
and Mill, utilitarians in the 1970s began vigorously defending the view
that it is as immoral to inflict pain and suffering on animals as on human
beings. For humans to fail to recognize the moral standing of animals,
they argued, is discrimination on the basis of species and is as wrong
as discrimination on the basis of race or sex.
Some defenders of animal rights, however, argue that the welfare of
animals matters morally not only for utilitarian reasons, i.e., minimizing
pain, but also because animals have moral rights that should not be violated.
They claim that the rights of animals are based on the idea that animals
have interests, and moral rights exist to protect the interests of any
creatures, not merely those of human beings. Others have held that animals
have a life of their own deserving of respect. Advocates of animal rights
have concluded that in addition to freedom from pain, animals have a right
also to protection of their interests or to respectful consideration of
their independent lives.
During this century an even broader view of what has moral standing
has emerged, one which holds that all living things have moral standing.
The most well-known proponent of this view is Albert Schweitzer who claimed
that all life merits reverence. More recent philosophers have based their
stand on the view mentioned above that anything with interests has moral
rights. They point out that all living entities, including plants, have
interests, exhibiting certain needs and propensities toward growth and
self-preservation. All living entities, therefore, have rights to the
protection of their interests and we have an obligation to take their
interests into account in our moral deliberations.
Perhaps the broadest view about what counts morally is the view that
entire natural systems count. This "ecocentric" view was first put forward
by the naturalist Aldo Leopold who argued in favor of a "land ethic" that
gives all of nature moral standing. He wrote: "The land ethic... enlarges
the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and
animals, or collectively, the land." For Leopold and many others, whole
ecological systems, such as lakes, forests, or entire continents, have
an "integrity" or a "welfare" of their own that should not be harmed or
Which of these views on moral standing is correct? The answer we give
to this question will depend on the moral importance we attach to rationality,
the capacity to experience pain and pleasure, to the interests of all
living things, and to the integrity and "welfare" of our ecological systems.
A great deal hinges on our answer. If we believe that only humans count,
we will not voice strong objections to painful animal experiments that
benefit humankind. But if we believe that all sentient creatures have
equal moral standing, then we will demand that the welfare of these animals
be taken into account, and perhaps lobby for legislation to protect animals
from painful experiments or industrial uses. And if we believe that all
natural things count, then we may oppose as immoral any activities that
threaten to harm our forests and wilderness, such as logging or real estate.
Of course, deciding "who counts" doesn't tell us whose welfare or interests
should be given more or less consideration when competing interests are
at stake. But it does make us more aware of our boundaries of moral concern,
and the criterion we use to establish those boundaries.
This article appeared originally in Issues in Ethics V4 N1 (Spring
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