Mentalizing animals: implications for moral psychology and animal ethics

Philosophical Studies 174 (2):465-484 (2017)
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Abstract

Ethicists have tended to treat the psychology of attributing mental states to animals as an entirely separate issue from the moral importance of animals’ mental states. In this paper I bring these two issues together. I argue for two theses, one descriptive and one normative. The descriptive thesis holds that ordinary human agents use what are generally called phenomenal mental states to assign moral considerability to animals. I examine recent empirical research on the attribution of phenomenal states and agential states to argue that phenomenal mental states are the primary factor, psychologically, for judging an animal to be morally considerable. I further argue that, given the role of phenomenal states in assigning moral considerability, certain theories in animal ethics will meet significant psychological resistance. The normative thesis holds that ethicists must take the psychology of attributing mental states into account when constructing moral ideals concerning animals. I draw from the literature in political philosophy on ideal and non-ideal theory to argue that non-ideal theories for animals must account for human psychology because—like current social and political conditions—human psychology limits the achievement of moral ideals.

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T. J. Kasperbauer
Indiana University

References found in this work

Practical Ethics.Peter Singer - 1979 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Susan J. Armstrong & Richard George Botzler.
Realism in Normative Political Theory.Enzo Rossi & Matt Sleat - 2014 - Philosophy Compass 9 (10):689-701.
The Case for Animal Rights.Tom Regan - 2004 - Univ of California Press.
The case for animal rights.Tom Regan - 2009 - In Steven M. Cahn (ed.), Exploring ethics: an introductory anthology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 425-434.

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