Animals are people, too!
After considerable ethical inquiry, plumbing the depths of moral philosophy, I have reached the conclusion that personhood pertains to more than just the human person. Indeed, it pertains to the animal person as well.
To reach this profound conclusion, we begin with the first entry for person in the Merriam Webster dictionary—a human being. But this definition will not suffice, for it discounts the eminent, moral sense of personhood, a sense that anyone familiar with abortion debate should know. A person, according to this moral usage, is a human individual with a marked level of intelligence defined by certain abilities, such as the ability to engage in abstract reasoning.
Yet even the current, revised definition is erroneous, for it is at least logically possible that one could be a person without also being a human being. Thus, we may eliminate the unnecessarily restrictive modifier, "human." But what level of intelligence is necessary to warrant the distinction of personhood? And more perceptively yet, what is the moral relevance of personhood, thus circumscribed?
In the past, I have argued for a continuum of personhood, a continuum which is quite difficult to deny. If personhood corresponds to a series of mental abilities, and these mental abilities exist along a continuum, it is quite plausible that personhood itself lies on a continuum, such that one can be more or less a person.
Take Jones, for example. Jones has a quantitative reasoning IQ of 151. Meanwhile, his friend, Shawn, has a quantitative reasoning IQ of 108. Since quantitative reasoning IQ tests measure, at least roughly, the ability to manipulate, apply, and synthesize mathematical principles, and mathematical principles are themselves abstract entities, it likely follows that Jones has a higher abstract reasoning ability than Shawn. If abstract reasoning ability is moreover one of the hallmarks of personhood, and abstract reasoning exists along a spectrum, then Jones demonstrates a higher abstract reasoning ability, and is therefore "more" a person than Shawn, all other things being equal.
This analysis suggests that personhood exists along a spectrum. Yet an opponent might argue embracing this spectrum leads to redundancy, since one is either a person or not a person; what sense does it make to proclaim someone "more a person," given the person-nonperson dichotomy?
In this dissent, my opponent commits a fatal error, the same error behind what has been dubbed by queer theorists, such as Gayle Rubin, as "queer erasure." While society has long assumed the male-female dichotomy, human sexuality actually manifests itself in innumerable ways, with sexualities that defy the norm collectively denoted as "queer." Likewise, personhood manifests itself in innumerable ways, transcending the all too limited categories of "person" and "nonperson."
But even though my opponent is misguided in his strict adherence to the person-nonperson dichotomy, he raises an issue fundamental to our ongoing analysis of the person. Namely, if the person-nonperson dichotomy exists, at what point does a nonperson become a person?
From pop culture to the Supreme Court, the dividing line most frequently falls between those of "average" intelligence and those considered intellectually disabled. This division assumes especial prominence in court cases, particularly those involving homicide, where applying the death penalty to someone with an intellectual disability has been ruled unconstitutional. In such cases, an IQ of 70 or below qualifies an individual as intellectually disabled.
One of the fundamental, morally relevant differences this division denotes involves moral responsibility, such that mentally competent individuals with an IQ over 70 are morally responsible for their actions, whereas intellectually disabled individuals are not morally responsible for their actions. Such a divide reflects the moral agent-moral patient distinction, well-established in the animal ethics literature.
While this morally relevant difference obtains, however, the true question remains—does this morally relevant difference truly distinguish persons from nonpersons? As I shall argue in the latter half of this essay, animals are persons insofar as they possess the same fundamental, moral rights as persons, fundamental rights our carnistic culture would rather deny on the basis of morally irrelevant criteria than acknowledge on the basis of moral equality.
To establish the verisimilitude of these rights, both of the animal person and the human person, we will resort to the argument from marginal cases, aptly described as one of the “100 most important arguments in western philosophy.” According to the argument from marginal cases, if human "marginal cases," such as the young, senile, and intellectually disabled, possess moral status, then so, too, do nonhuman animal marginal cases. More strongly still, the AMC implies that, in the lack of a morally relevant difference, an animal marginal case has the same moral status as a human animal marginal case.
Through the AMC, we discover the core challenge of extending personhood to many nonhuman animals—namely, demonstrating the lack of morally relevant differences between humans and at least some nonhuman animals.
Having read dozens of books on animal ethics, from Tom Regan's 1983 classic, The Case for Animal Rights, to Lisa Kemmerer's In Search of Consistency: Ethics and Animals, I have seen virtually every alleged moral difference between humans and many nonhuman animals eviscerated, ultimately leading to the illuminous conclusion many animals are people, too, insofar as we concern their fundamental rights.
But to deliver this point with potency in the limited space of our short essay, I will return to the triarchic model of morality I articulated in another short essay a few months ago, an essay I rank more important than my ongoing work in exposing the multifarious, seemingly endless fallacies of carnism. This former essay represents my most sustained effort to produce a principled basis for ethics, defining for the first time, insofar as I am aware of the literature, the term "moral relevance."
While Lisa Kemmerer and others, despite otherwise well-composed literature, fail to operationalize this term, I soon isolated the common thread behind the vast majority of arguments which conclude that a certain characteristic is not morally relevant. Namely, if we cannot provide a principled basis for denying fundamental rights to nonhuman animals, the imputed distinction lacks moral relevance. Abstracting this pattern further, I soon realized, unless a term contains or is reducible to a moral term, the term in question is not morally relevant. These terms themselves are ultimately dictated by the moral principles from which we conduct moral investigation.
To defend this principle-based approach, I would note principles possess the property of priority; a principle is prior to moral reasoning, such that we cannot achieve definitive moral conclusions, let alone achieve moral consistency without first identifying our principles. Moral principles also assume the further property of primacy. Since moral principles are the bedrock of moral analysis, their identification, clarification, and application assume the utmost importance in moral investigation. For, if our principles dictate the resolution of almost every moral quandary, we had better choose a principle worthy of being the touchstone by which we judge the world.
This principle-based approach thus defended, we return to my triarchic model of morality, defined by the central principle to not cause unnecessary harm. From this principle, we abstract the right to not be caused unnecessary harm, as well as the correlate duty to not cause unnecessary harm, readily satisfying the deontologist's desire for rights commensurate with obligations to defend those rights.
As Regan and others have amply demonstrated, death represents a fundamental, prima facie harm in that death forecloses all opportunities for satisfaction. Yet our culture, and even our philosophic climate, would rather suspend the right to life of many nonhuman animals, thus established, insisting that certain criteria sufficiently distinguish humans from nonhuman animals in the ascription of the right to life, such that human persons possess this right, but not nonhuman animals. These proposed morally relevant differences include species membership, self-consciousness, and the presence of second-order beliefs.
Before we even tend the rebuttal to these alleged morally relevant differences, let us approach with considerable skepticism these claims of differentiation. According to our foregoing analysis, the core, morally relevant term of the principle, do not cause unnecessary harm, is harm itself. This principle therefore applies to any and all beings who can be harmed, including nonhuman animal marginal cases.
But the foregoing imputed morally relevant differences necessarily restrict our principle, reflecting the staunch desire to limit the right to life to all and only persons. By such reasoning, we revise our principle by adding the restrictive clause, “to all and only persons,” modifying our principle thusly—do not cause unnecessary harm to all and only persons. To take this revision seriously, however, we must justify the addition of this restrictive clause, a task I approach with enormous skepticism, given the term "person" has been inserted into a principle which appears to operate perfectly well without this seemingly unnecessary restriction.
To determine whether the alleged differences are, in fact, morally relevant, we now reference the moral method, a process I devised to further clarify not only the term moral relevance, but its integral application to the process of moral reasoning.
Like the scientific and axiomatic methods, the moral method formalizes the application of various principles to the real world, this time, in a series of three steps. First, locate a morally relevant difference. Then demonstrate that this difference is, in fact, morally relevant with respect to our moral principles. Finally, demonstrate that this morally relevant difference, in fact, justifies differential treatment, as per the principle of justice—that is, in the absence of a morally relevant difference, treat two cases alike.
In reference to the AMC, I formulated the moral method as follows. To refute the logic behind the AMC, you must:
locate a morally relevant difference which supposedly justifies the rape, torture, and murder of billions of animals but not similarly situated human beings,
demonstrate this difference is, in fact, morally relevant, and
demonstrate this morally relevant difference, in fact, justifies our treatment of animals but not similarly situated human beings
By this method do we uncover that many alleged morally relevant differences, from membership to the species Homo sapiens to the most eximious exaltations of human rationality, fail the litmus test of the moral method, reflecting instead the speciesist, ableist pretensions of the philosophers who waxed eloquent about their own enterprise—the exercise of “human” rationality.
Returning once more to our principles, we realize these pretenses do not constitute a sufficient basis for suspending the most basic rights of many nonhuman animals, at least those of whom are sentient, those of whom can both be harmed and perceive harm. For, if death presents a fundamental, prima facie harm, and all living creatures, including sentient, nonhuman animals, succumb to death, on what principled basis can we deny them the right to life?
As I have established in previous essays, the right to life is intended to protect a legitimate interest in continued existence. Additional criteria, such as second-order beliefs, are simply not necessary for such an interest in continued existence.
In a similar succession, applying the moral method to other alleged morally relevant differences steadily uncovers the following truth—humans and many nonhuman animals possess the same fundamental rights in accordance with our moral principles. Once we abandon our speciesist tendencies, we may recognize many animals are people, too, deserving of the same love, respect, and compassion as any other human being; morality, consistently applied, permits nothing less.
