X is a moral agent if and only if X can be morally evaluated -- praised or blamed (broadly understood) -- for its motives and actions.
(Rowlands himself agrees with the orthodoxy that
animals are moral patients but not agents; however he argues that animals do
fall under a third category, moral subjects, which he
defines as anything that can be motivated to act by moral considerations.)
Some people believe that animals can be moral
agents; Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce’s Wild Justice is a recent defense of this view, but
several other people have defended it as well (see the references in section 2
of Rowlands’ linked article). I want to consider a different kind of argument that I have not seen before; if someone else has already made it, please let me know in the comments.
The argument I want to consider here combines a
position one of my students recently suggested with Susan Wolf’s “Asymmetrical
Freedom.” (So none of it is
original with me.) The key part of
Wolf’s view is: “it seems that an agent can be morally praiseworthy even though
he is determined to perform the action he performs” (158). She elaborates on this as follows:
“When we ask whether an agent’s action is deserving of praise, it seems we do not require that he could have done otherwise. … ‘I cannot tell a lie,’ ‘He couldn’t hurt a fly’ are not exemptions from praiseworthiness but testimonies to it. … If one feels one ‘has no choice’ but to speak out against injustice, one ought not to be upset about the depth of one’s commitment.” (156)
Wolf’s paper is titled “Asymmetrical
Freedom” because, if an agent’s action is morally
blameworthy, then that agent cannot be
determined to perform that action, and we require that he could have done
otherwise. That is, “The
metaphysical conditions required for an agent’s responsibility will vary
according to the value of the action he performs” (158).**
Now, one of the leading reasons people give
nowadays for the view that animals can’t be moral agents is that it seems
wrong to hold animals morally blameworthy for
their actions; this rationale is often coupled with the imagined scenario of
putting an animal on trial for a crime to heighten the sense of absurdity.
But if Wolf is right,*** then we can avoid this
absurd consequence: a being’s actions can be morally praiseworthy even if its
actions are determined and the being couldn’t do otherwise, then the fact that
an animal acts ‘purely instinctively’ or automatically, without deliberative
control, does not rule out that animal’s being a moral agent. (I am assuming we
accept Rowlands’ definition of ‘moral agent’ (notice ‘praised OR blamed’ – not ‘and’).)
So far, this merely eliminates one obstacle to
animals being moral agents: it is possible for a being to be morally
praiseworthy without the possibility of being morally blameworthy (so we don’t
have to put lions on trial), because an action can be morally praiseworthy even
if the actor had no choice but to perform that action.
But I think we can go further than this mere
possibility. The point my student
stressed, and which is probably implicit in the long Wolf quotation above, is
that lots of human actions that we consider morally
praiseworthy are automatic, ‘system1’ actions, over which we do not exercise deliberative control. In this respect, they more closely
resemble animal actions than our actions that result from deliberation,
future-oriented planning, and (perhaps linguistically-aided) reasoning. I think there are at least two classes
of these automatic actions in humans: (i) the several different little daily
kindnesses we do for one another without thinking (e.g. you drop your pen, and
before I’ve even thought about whether or not I should reach down, I’m handing
it back to you), and (ii) massively heroic actions whose performers, when
interviewed afterwards, report not even thinking about e.g. running into the
burning building. Now, if we are
willing to give moral praise to such automatic, non-deliberative behaviors when
done by humans, then prima facie we should be willing to
give moral praise to such automatic, non-deliberative behaviors when performed
by non-humans too.
Of course, this is only prima
facie evidence, because there certainly could be some relevant, important
difference between a human’s automatic behaviors and a non-human’s that would
invalidate the inference. But
going through the entire list of all plausible candidates would require a much
fuller treatment. I just wanted to
get the basic argument clear: if some automatic human actions are morally
praiseworthy, then some automatic non-human actions are morally praiseworthy
too.
* Here is Rowlands’ definition of a moral patient:
“X is a moral patient
iff X is a legitimate object of moral concern: that is, roughly, X is something
whose interests should be taken into
account when decisions are made concerning it or which otherwise impact on it.”
** This formulation made me wonder whether there
might be an interesting connection with the Knobe effect, since in Knobe effect
situtations ‘the conditions required for an agent’s intentionality/performing
an action ‘on purpose’ will vary according to the value of the action he
performs.’
***
Of course, someone who finds the conclusion that animals can be morally
praiseworthy absurd should take what follows as a reductio of Wolf’s claim that
determined acts can be praiseworthy.
