Abstract
Animal ethics has become a standard part of most ethics syllabuses, in the sense of asking questions concerning the appropriate norms to guide human treatment of non-human animals. In this book, Jonathan Crane collects a wide range of contributions concerning animal ethics in the opposite sense: do non-human animals have ethics of their own? While this is a very different question, it is related to the first sense of the term, since some moral frameworks follow Kant in making moral status dependent on moral agency. The discussions within the book therefore contribute both to a better understanding of the commonalities and differences between humans and other animals in terms of morality, and provoke questions concerning what these findings might mean for how humans should treat other animals. The book should be of wide interest to Christian ethicists because it asks fundamental questions about the moral capacities of non-human animals in a dialogue between ethologists—those who study the behaviour of non-human animals—philosophers, and religious texts and traditions.
As is often the case, some of the most engaging contributions to the volume are those that seek to clarify the question concerning the potential moral agency of non-human animals. In the second chapter, Kendy Hess notes that the question has often been asked in a way that risks investigating to what extent non-human animals can be human moral agents, to which the answer is unsurprisingly not at all. Instead, we need a species-neutral definition of moral agency. Hess notes that there is disagreement as to whether moral agency requires acting on an explicit moral intent, which has the implication of excluding children among other humans. She proposes instead that ‘a candidate qualifies as a moral agent if and only if it is able to act appropriately on the basis of morally relevant information, because it is morally relevant information’ (p. 41). Put this way, she argues, it seems entirely possible that non-human species exhibit moral agency and that ‘Moral agency is not essentially a human activity’ (pp. 45–46). Sean Meighoo reaches a similar conclusion by bringing to the table Nietzsche’s claim in Daybreak that morality is an egoistic activity characteristic of animals, resulting from the drive to seek food and elude enemies (p. 55), so cannot be understood as a distinction between humans and other animals.
The ethological contributions to the volume from Frans de Waal, Elisabetta Palagi and Marc Bekoff take a different tack, examining building blocks of morality that should be considered as shared across the human/non-human boundary. Frans de Waal discusses a range of stories and systematic studies demonstrating that non-human animals possess the moral sentiment of empathy, and act in response. He cites a 1964 research study—which must now be considered the most appalling breach of research ethics—in which rhesus monkeys learned that if they pulled a lever to deliver food, their companion would suffer an electric shock. One monkey starved for 12 days rather than shock their companion (p. 84). De Waal also recounts the story of the pioneering Russian primatologist Nadia Ladygina-Kohts, who found she could only attract her chimpanzee down from the roof of her house if she pretended to cry, at which point she reported that ‘He hastily runs around me, as if looking for the offender; looking at my face, he tenderly takes my chin in his palm, lightly touches my face with his finger, as though trying to understand what is happening, and turns around, clenching his toes into firm fists’ (pp. 84–85). Palagi notes that facial mimicry of emotions and yawn contagion have been linked to higher levels of empathy in human and non-human research subjects, and recounts a study showing that when faced with the choice between releasing a cage-mate from confinement and eating chocolate, rats opted to first release their cage-mate and then share the treat (pp. 92–97). Bekoff makes a convincing case that fair play among dogs involves four basic principles: ask first, be honest, follow the rules, and admit when you are wrong (p. 110). He observes that dogs who violate trust are ostracized and notes the strong connections between play rules and wider social norms.
Dan Demetriou challenges de Waal’s assumption that empathy is fundamental to morality, arguing instead that there are various independent moral systems, so that rather than asking whether non-human animals are moral agents, we should instead ask whether they are justice-agents, authority-agents or honour-agents. He notes that the race of Klingons in Star Trek have a moral system in which there is little evidence of empathy, but a strong focus on honour, so they are moral agents by virtue of being honour-agents, even though they are not empathetic (pp. 142–44). He observes that Hobbes was ‘dead wrong’ to claim that there is no ‘contestation of honour and preferment’ among animals (p. 150), and discusses examples of honour hierarchies among competing stags, as well as other mammals, insects, birds, fish and reptiles. Demetriou points out that species of animals which fight by establishing coalitions, such as chimpanzees and lions, rather than by a fair fight of one against one, form the exception rather than the rule (p. 148). Taking honour systems seriously, he concludes, shows a strong continuity between humans and other animals in this aspect of morality (p. 150).
John Berkman argues that an authentic Thomist morality must be open—as Aquinas himself was not—to the possibility that there may be some non-human animal species or individual animals embodying morality (p. 196). Berkman challenges the principle of cognitive parsimony that would not attribute cognitive capacities to non-human animals without overwhelming evidence, citing Alasdair MacIntyre’s argument that such an approach does not work in human or non-human contexts, and that we need instead to be prepared to engage in interactive interpretative experience of other animals (p. 200). Any such engagement must be attentive to the lives of particular animals, Berkman argues, and discusses observations of chimpanzees in which they clearly exhibit friendliness, reciprocity and compassion, and engage in acts of justice such as peacemaking, vengeance and impartial leadership (p. 213).
Several contributions to the volume draw on religious texts to demonstrate that considering non-human animals to be moral agents is by no means a recent phenomenon. Mark Goldfeder draws attention to biblical and Talmudic texts where non-human animals are identified as moral exemplars, Harrison King focuses on the way in which insects function pedagogically in rabbinic texts, and Michael Bathgate highlights similar themes in the medieval Japanese Konjaku monogatarishū tales. Jonathan Crane and Aaron Gross gather up the story of Balaam’s donkey in the Hebrew Bible, the late third-century Jewish text Sifre Devarim, and ‘The Case of the Animals versus Man before the King of the Jinn’ from the tenth-century Islamic encyclopaedia Rasai’il al-Ikwhan al-Safa, arguing that in giving animals a voice of protest against their human oppressors the stories represent a counter-tradition to what Kalman Bland has called the ideology of ‘brutism’ in which a categorical distinction between humans and animals is affirmed (pp. 241–43).
Taken together, the philosophical, ethological and religious contributions Crane has assembled in this volume make a convincing case that it is no longer viable—if it ever was—to consider morality or ethics to be a uniquely human enterprise. In this, the book makes a valuable contribution, drawing attention both to the complexities of what we mean by morality, and to the complexities being revealed in our knowledge of the lives of other animals. If we give honest consideration to the question of what it means to act morally, we must reckon with the insight that what we mean by acting morally is much more diffuse and various than we have often believed. If we also give honest consideration to what is being discovered by ethologists about the ways social relationships are structured and mediated among non-human species, the conclusion that there is overlap between different modes of the moral ordering of human and non-human sociality seems inescapable. This is not to make any claim of sameness between any particular non-human and human modes of social life, but it is to reject in this context a categorical distinction between humans and other animals.
The next step beyond the recognition of the interesting overlaps between human and non-human moral action, briefly indicated in the book’s concluding chapter, will be to assess the implications of accepting that we are not unique in our possession of morality. Cynthia Willett makes the thought-provoking proposal that we once we have reckoned that each non-human animal group has its own ethos, we should consider the potential for constructive alliances with the other species among whom we are coevolving (p. 261). This made me think for the first time of human engagement with other animals in the mode of diplomacy: properly attentive to and respectful of the social norms that pertain within their own communities, and seeking to identify areas of cooperation to mutual advantage. Whatever the merits of this reflection, it is clear that if the insights of this volume are taken seriously, the negotiation of our relationships with other animals cannot remain unchanged.