Animal Ethics: The Basics by Tony Miligan

Author:Tony Miligan [Miligan, Tony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2015-06-04T14:00:00+00:00

The Appeal to a Bond

What this points to is the idea that the argument from marginal cases, or at least formulations which in any way resemble the versions set out by Singer and Regan, completely miss the point. Appeals to the special importance of humans may not be grounded in any view about special properties. Rather, the special importance of humans may be bond-based. That is to say, it may best be understood in relational terms. We can, of course, retain the language of properties, if we are absolutely determined to do so, but the properties that matter will be relational properties rather than properties of the sort that Singer and Regan have in mind, properties which we can make sense of without reference to other beings. And the most obvious candidate for such a relational property is that of shared membership of the same species.

This does, of course, invite the response that appeal to the species bond is yet another instance of speciesism in the sense of a prejudice in favour of our own. Mary Midgley has, however, suggested otherwise. She has suggested that the similarities between this kind of favouring and sexism, anti-Semitism or racism are superficial. It is an important feature of the former prejudices that they are all social constructs. They are the products of history and have emerged more or less in the order given, with racism making a surprisingly late appearance. To state an obvious but important point, we don’t have anti-Semitism before we have Judaism. Sexism is a little more complicated, but our best anthropology and most plausible accounts of history give it a history as well. And this fact, that each of these prejudices has a history, may give us hope for their comprehensive eradication. They are, perhaps, things which can be overcome although none of them is near to being ended.

According to Midgley, a special attachment to our own species is rather different. It is a basic, biologically given fact about being human. Every human society has regarded humans as having special standing, even those in which human life has been, relatively, cheap. This makes it such a deep fact about who we are that the prospect of ending this attitude towards humans is effectively the prospect of ceasing to be human. Coupled with the familiar idea that ought implies can, it is simply mistaken to say that we ought to cease privileging the human for the obvious reason that we cannot do so. The fact that we privilege humans is part of the background conditions for morality rather than a stance which can be amended within it. It is important to note, here, that Midgley’s sympathies are, nonetheless, very much with animals, at least in the sense that she is a strong advocate of animal welfare. She is very far from offering some apology or excuse for a continuation of the status quo. Yet what she does offer has been questioned. It relies on the idea that ethics is strongly bounded by biology and more specifically by species identification.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.