I think one can be just or unjust to many animals, since loyalty is in the field of justice, and many animals can behave loyally or disloyally.

Some animals are capable of other virtues too.

Nevertheless I would be reluctant to grant animals legal right.

It would be a terrible thing to put human beings who we do not grant even such minimal rights as security of life below the level of animals, yet we do and we are heading further in the same direction, one that degrades humanity and justice in a large sense.

It would be impractical.

It would be a license for lawyers and courts to mess with people more than they do, and it would be exploited for money.

The proper sanction for the unjust treatment of animals is social.

(If a dog saved Bob's life at great risk and pain to itself, our sentiment or intuition is that Bob should also show some loyalty to the dog, and if he doesn't, Bob invites contempt. I think that is right.)

The main problem with my position is a combination of shamelessness and social diversity, meaning that people won't be shamed for what they can in fact get away with.

If justice were "extended" to animals, does this mean that moral culpability applies to them as well? After all, justice is not just a box of goodies, it also means accountability to standards of justice; those who are protected by justice are also answerable to it.

No doubt there are people who would casually charge a Yorkie terrier with sexual assault for attempting to copulate with somebody's leg; probably the same bureaucratic cretins who file indecent exposure charges against 5 year-old children. How exactly will the Yorkie be brought to justice, or even made to understand its Miranda rights?

#2 from Glen Wishard: If justice were "extended" to animals, does this mean that moral culpability applies to them as well?"

Yes.

For example, it's expected that a good dog will warn the family if a dangerous stranger enters the home. That doesn't always happen: a cowardly and disloyal dog may shut up and save itself. The way I put that - and I think it's a very reasonable, natural way - implies a moral judgment.

#2 from Glen Wishard: "After all, justice is not just a box of goodies, it also means accountability to standards of justice; those who are protected by justice are also answerable to it."

In an example such as I gave above, it would be reasonable fror members of the protected family to reward and protect good doggie as a member of that family; while any survivors of the betrayed family should see to it that bad doggie gets a lethal injection or a bullet in the head.

I do not think that anyone who acted that way would be acting irrationally. I think they would be acting justly, in a rough and ready way appropriate to animals.

#2 from Glen Wishard: "No doubt there are people who would casually charge a Yorkie terrier with sexual assault for attempting to copulate with somebody's leg; probably the same bureaucratic cretins who file indecent exposure charges against 5 year-old children. How exactly will the Yorkie be brought to justice, or even made to understand its Miranda rights?"

I'll leave those issues for someone who thinks that animals should have legally enforceable rights.

Nicely written Grim.

Does the author assume that pets are being “all that they can be”? I am not a pet owner, nor wish to be. I know some pet owners find this to be clear evidence of a cruel heart, but I've never been able to figure out whether its because I like animals too much or not enough, or I am simply too lazy. I do suspect that many pets, particularly most breeds of dog, would be happier in at least a semi-rural setting. They would be more happy without a leash, and well, Grim has the good tast to avoid discussing [snip-snip]. Given all of the accomodations that a pet makes to its owner's convenience, how can justice be the true mark of that relationship? It seems to me that the pet is property and is blessed if its owner is kind.

I think we normally do extend a measure of justice towards animals, but that it's different from justice between men because we are always the ones in power. Animals lack the capacity to behave justly to us; we do have the capacity to behave justly toward them.

You mention, David, that dogs show loyalty. Certainly, particularly intelligent dogs and horses I've known have seemed to show real loyalty -- not just instinctive loyalty-to-master, but a learned behavior that responds to kind treatment with deference and obedience. Most dogs and horses can be trained to obey, but some (particularly ones who have been abused) can learn to distinguish a good master from a bad one. They do more for you than any other of their kind, because they have learned the difference between being treated justly and injustly, and they honestly seem to respect justice.

That's an interesting fact, but it doesn't change that this sense of justice is coming from us. That dogs and horses can learn it from us doesn't change that they don't develop it naturally. Dogs do have an instinct for loyalty, but an instinct is in the irrational part of the soul (do dogs have souls? Another metaphysical question; I think so).

The kind of rational, learned loyalty seen in the best dogs and horses is different from that. Again, it's a reflection of their interactions with us. They seem to be able to learn our terms, and reward them. Yet the source of the justice they are learning, and rewarding, is mankind.

You ask if beasts should be morally culpable for their actions -- I don't see how they can be. One of the maxims of training animals is, "It's never the animal's fault -- it's always the trainer's." That's not a normative statement, in other word's, it's not how we'd like it to be. It's a practical statement. If you follow it, you get better results over time with more animals than if you do not. It holds up to experience.

I do think that some animals can learn to understand when they are being treated justly, and I think that the best of them will reward (rather than take advantage of) that. This shows something of our kinship with these animals, and is one reason we've traditionally held animals of that type to be "higher" sorts of beings. Both horses and dogs have been called "noble" throughout recorded history, for that reason.

The pet issue is my favorite. There is no defenseable way for a radical animal rights advocate to justify owning pets. The mental gymnastics they go through to rationalize their dogs is truly entertaining. Its about equivalent to the environmentalists that cant give up the Jeep Cherokees they take to go backbacking.

All this talk of self-fufillment in the animal kingdom is odd. Is it fufilling for somebodys cat to be hit by a car (or eaten by a wolf)?

The truth is we have no obligation to treat animals any particular way aside from those we place on ourselves, ie societal constructs. We've found that abusing animals is both aestetically distasteful and a gateway to abusing fellow humans, hence we proscribe it.

Cavalieri's argument is circular, if taken to its logical conclustion. If animals have the right to self-fufillment, that implies all sorts of things about habitat and survival that humans would be expected to respect. Not paving over the rabbit warrens for instance. But if humans are animals, what about our right to be all we can be? Even if i just lived in a cave somewhere on the side of a cliff and ate moss, I might be ejecting the wolf that lived there, who might eat a squirrel that 'shouldnt' have been eaten. How is that ultimately different from me chopping down the squirrels tree to build a house? Where does that logic end, some arbitrary line?

This isnt a game we designed. Life feeds on life. If every animal has the right to be all it can be, humans have simply proved themselves extremely good at it. By Cavalieri's logic, every time you kill a kitty you aren't you living up to your potential, and hence what she considers justice?

To me this is one of the thorniest questions we have right now from a philosophical standpoint. I think it's even more thorny that philosophical issues around the existance of God. In fact, the two questions are related. But that's a post for another day.

We're working without a net here, but I'm game. Let me get out my toga and beer stein (figuratively speaking) and try to make something out of it.

There is other life in the universe. I think most everybody agrees about this. I will go further and say there is life that is both more and less intelligent than us.

So the general question is: How does a more capable and intelligent race of beings interact with a race of beings not at their level? Right now we're having this discussion about pets and other animals, but whatever we decide should also apply to us. Because we're the equivalent of cows to some other race. (A race I hope doesn't stop by and decide for a bunch of "Big Macs" any time soon)

I think there are multiple levels of existance. Being able to reason abstractly seems to be a pretty big threshold. Being able to use language seems to be another. The ability to record information for future generations is a third hurdle. If we view this in terms of a ladder, I don't think we have a moral obligation to watch out for creatures on the next rung down. Preferably we'd just leave them alone in their state of nature if we could. Interestingly enough, this might be an explanation for Fermi's Paradox.

I think it's even more thorny that philosophical issues around the existance of God. In fact, the two questions are related. But that's a post for another day.

I think that is the real question. IMHO, to extend human rights to animals is simply a progressive (you say Liberal) tactic to water down the cornerstone on which the Western civilization is founded, which is that all persons are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.

I think the discussion is not about animals, but about people. Giving some of such rights to animals you are saying that those rights which otherwise are only manageable by God, could be granted by men.

J -- you quoted me and then said that I said a bunch of things, like "Giving some of such rights to animals you are saying that those rights which otherwise are only manageable by God, could be granted by men."

I didn't say any of that. In fact, I said I thought we did NOT have a moral obligation to those on the ladder under us. I may have overstated that a bit, though, as I am not comfortable with eating primates.

"So the general question is: How does a more capable and intelligent race of beings interact with a race of beings not at their level?"

I'm not sure the question can be limited in that way. I think we have several different questions we have to answer:

1) How should a powerful race (P) interact with a less-powerful race (l) if they have no established relationship? For example -- if P encounters a wilderness full of l, should they act to preserve those conditions, or should they pursue their interests without regard for the consequences for l, or something in between?

2) How should P interact with l if they have an established predatory relationship? For example, how do we manage game populations?

3) Ditto in reverse -- how should we manage grizzly bears and lions? The latter, in particular, have a historic claim to 'be all they can be' by harvesting a few of us.

4) How should P interact with l when there is a symbiotic relationship? Cattle, for example -- they prosper in large part because we eat them and use them for milk. Any rules developed for cases 1, 2, and 3 will not be good for cattle.

In an example such as I gave above, it would be reasonable fror members of the protected family to reward and protect good doggie as a member of that family; while any survivors of the betrayed family should see to it that bad doggie gets a lethal injection or a bullet in the head.

Maybe you're being as facetious as I was, because however reasonable that example is, you can't call it justice.

When you correct your dog's behavior you might call it "punishment", but all you need to do to mold the animal's behavior is make it understand that you disapprove of certain actions. Punishing an animal as if it were a responsible moral agent is cruelty, even if the animal is as intelligent and sociable as a dog is.

I can't think of anything crueler than dragging innocent animals into our nightmare world of entitlements, politics, and litigation. But all of those unpleasant things derive from the fact that people have rights. Real justice isn't as beautiful as Dike and Athena.

Pretending that an animal is a person is normal for a child. When adult persons do it, the intention is usually more anti-human than pro-animal.

Just in the interest of clarity, I'd like to point out that it was David who asserted that, not me. :) What I asserted was that "You ask if beasts should be morally culpable for their actions -- I don't see how they can be."

Daniel (#9)

Oh excuse me! I meant this:

If a legislator gives some of such rights to animals he/she is saying that those rights which otherwise are only manageable by God, could be granted by men.

Better third person...

Daniel (#9)

Oh excuse me! I meant this:

If a legislator gives some of such rights to animals he/she is saying that those rights which otherwise are only manageable by God, could be granted by men.

Better third person...

#11 from Glen Wishard: "Pretending that an animal is a person is normal for a child. When adult persons do it, the intention is usually more anti-human than pro-animal."

On a micro level I've seen little evidence for that, but on a gross political level it seems to be true. Democrats seek to protect animals and to strip unborn human beings of protection, while Republicans don't care about animals and sometimes (optionally) do care about human beings. (link)

Paola Cavalieri and Grim are speaking at a much higher level, and deserve respect for it.

Still, I always wonder when people advocate strong rights for animals: ~Rights like human beings have? What rights do you think human beings have? What blanket is this, that's being stretched to cover animals as well as human beings?

Grim: "Who then is being just? Society, one supposes, since this is meant to be a universal formula: we are meant to treat everyone this way, and indeed (in Cavalieri's ideal) every animal."

I feel better when an argument is attacked for what it asserts than for what "one supposes". Especially when what "one supposes" is tangential to the original speaker's point, and construed in a way to make the first speaker's position unintelligent or even unintelligible.

Courts are supposed to interpret the will of legislators with the idea that they must have meant to make a workable law. (I know courts don't always do that.) I think it is nice to assume that someone who argues as well as Paola Cavalieri meant to assert a workable position.

Grim: "Societies are not just or unjust. A society has no virtue, no morals, no heart, and no soul. It is a name we give to a collection of people. It is the people who have hearts and souls, morals and virtues. A society is not just or unjust. It is made up of people who are just or unjust. They pass laws, either justly or unjustly because of the people's intent. Those laws are applied justly or unjustly, because people apply them.

Thus, this vision of what justice might be cannot be correct."

I am in broad disagreement with this. Moreover, it is not what Paola Cavalieri was talking about.

Grim: "Animals are outside the human conception of justice, because of their nature. They have no sense of kindness or mercy, and they do not have the capacity to obtain dominion over others -- save that sort of dominion that is quickly resolved, for the purpose of nutrition."

And that's a factual error. Monkeys can decide that a deal or a reward is unfair, and reject it for that reason. That's a very primitive sense of justice, but it is a sense.

(Humans are good but not perfect at detecting justice. And we have very good eyes. Some primitive animal eyes, much less capable than ours, are still eyes. I think that a very primitive sense of justice, such as some animals are capable of, is in much the same case as weaker eyes. The truth is out there. In some ways, some animals sense it far better than we do, but in this important way we sense it far better than they do.)

Also, you are a horse guy, and you do not think animals "have the capacity to obtain dominion over others -- save that sort of dominion that is quickly resolved, for the purpose of nutrition." ???? I find that a surprising thing to say.

Both you and Paola Cavalieri are arguing in a good spirit. But I think she did it much, much better.

I depart somewhat from the topic, but David Blue put me in mind of it with his link to the Weekly Standard article that mentioned disaster relief for animals. (Given the ridiculous things that humans do with disaster relief funds, we might as well give them to animals - animals won't kick them over to their brother's construction company.)

After the battle of Waterloo, British veterinarians rescued hundreds of injured horses from the battlefield and brought them to England to recuperate. Every now and then, as if hearing a command, the horses would form a line of battle at one end of their pasture and execute a cavalry charge across the field. Just for old times sake, I guess.

Back to the topic:

There is a sense in which beings can have rights without also having obligations. That is the case with small children, and persons who are totally incapacitated, mentally or physically. Since animals cannot assume moral agency (unless you're David Berkowitz) they can only enjoy "rights" in the same sense that these persons do. Which in a certain sense they do under most legal systems, being protected from cruelty and abuse.

David Blue puts his finger squarely on the problem, though, and dooms the effort to expand the concept of animal rights. Fetuses and incapacitated persons have sharply curtailed rights, if they have any rights at all, and this is done with the full approval of animal rights activists who are overwhelmingly liberals. Leave aside the moral hypocrisy and dishonesty of their position. They undermine the only possible foundation on which animals could be said to enjoy human-like rights.

David --

As to the points in 16 and 17, Cavalieri and I are in agreement on the unworkability of the position. It is not hers, but Nussbaum's, which Cavalieri also rejects (on different grounds) as unacceptable. I wanted to outline my reasons for opposing it, to show how they were different from hers, because the underlying reasons mattered later in the argument. However, I'm not assuming Cavalieri's position is unworkable on its face. What I was dismissing, as she does, is Nussbaum's.

As for your broad disagreement on whether societies are unjust, I'll be glad to discuss it if you want to outline it. I will be gone for the holidays, but after the 28th or so will be glad to resume the discussion -- an argument that began with the Greeks can wait a week for us. :)

As for the points raised in 18:

I think Cavalieri was on much stronger ground when she was arguing for the apes/monkies alone. The extension of the argument attempted here raises great problems.

That said, I don't believe that what you cite re: monkies qualify as a sense of justice. Kindness and mercy are not calculations of the sort that, "The effort I put out means that I deserve X, and you are giving me (X-Y), which is not enough." That is closer to the concept of fairness, which is a simpler exercise -- a kind of calculation, again -- and one that I intentionally distinguised from justice itself.

Some animals do seem to be capable of real, learned loyalty, as we discussed above. That is closer to justice than what you describe. Some animals are capable of apparent concern and worry over an injured member of its family, which is closer to kindness. I have read of at least one ape that rescued a human baby from destruction, which raises interesting questions (again, about apes only).

To the degree that those acts are instinctive, however, they are not rational but irrational. Again, with the great apes alone, it is possible to argue that some of what they do may be a kind of learned, rational virtue -- one they cannot articulate nor improve across generations (and therefore qualitatively different from human justice), but something fundamentally similar. That does not seem to be the case with other animals, and I'm not wholly convinced of the depth of it with apes, though I'd be willing to be convinced by further research.

You raise a good point about dominion. The word choice may be confusing. Horses, and dogs, and others, of course practice dominance in groups. What I meant by dominion was the larger quality to decide, as humans do for so many species, every aspect of their existence. A wolf or a horse who exercises dominance is doing so according to preset, instinctive rules. He does not have the power to change even his own society: he is only filling a role that his group is hardwired to require.

An animal can exercise perfect power of that sort only in killing another. Men, on the other hand, have the power to take wild cattle and make veal; to take wild dogs and make Shi Tzu; or to take horses from Mongolia and make hotblooded Arabians suited to the desert. We can order our own society as we like, and to a large degree we can order the lives of others too: deciding who will breed and who will not, making breeds and species larger or smaller, faster or slower, and indeed now altering their hormones and increasingly their genetics for our purposes.

I hope that clarifies what was meant by the word.

I'd like to clarify and extend a couple of remarks, on account of it being quite early here, and yet still no coffee.

When I say that "an animal can exercise perfect power of that sort only in killing another," I'd like to point out that I don't just mean the simple power of eliminating a single "copy" of an animal from the world. That is a great power, but it is not the limit of the power.

By systematically hunting the sick and weak and old, a predatory animal population can exercise that form of dominion over a prey population -- that is, they can improve the species, at least locally. This is beautifully illustrated in Never Cry Wolf, with the wolves and the caribou.

Again, though, this is not justice. It is not done for the purposes of kindness or mercy. It seems to be a combination of instinct and practicality -- there is an instinct to hunt the weaker-seeming animals, plus also they are easier to catch.

I suppose one could argue that earthworms also systematically improve the cattle who live above them, by improving the ground for the grass; but I think there is no more reason to extend rights to earthworms than to wolves.

I'd also like to say that I did not intend to conflate Cavalieri and Nussbaum's arguments with the aside, "in Cavalieri's ideal." I had mentioned that she felt Nussbaum was wrong for the opposite set of reasons than I did; and thus, my objection would apply only more strongly in the ideal position she thinks Nussbaum fails to reach. The problem is one of provision, which Glen is after -- who pays for all this?

It may be a person, freely choosing to do so with his or her own limited resources, which I think I present as praiseworthy -- my dear friend Sovay being the offered example. But there are limits to what can be achieved; the universal extension of Justice to Many Nonhuman Lifeforms is not in the scope of what private actors can achieve.

It may be a society in the small sense, like the Humane Society -- but that too has limits. I don't see why even the largest NGO would be capable of amassing the resources capable of doing more for 'many nonhumans' than the Humane Society does for the ones we as a species care most about. It's easier to raise money for kittens than seals, and for seals than lobster, and for lobster than... etc.

Or it may be 'society,' which seems to me the only entity capable of supporting a project on the scale suggested. This runs into exactly the problems Glen is speaking to above.

We'll get back to this later, Grim. As you say, when we resume the problems will still be there waiting for us.

Meantime, I need to re-read both articles, first to exercise greater care in attributing positions, and second because, regardless of my disagreements with it, Paola Cavalieri's piece is a rare and beautiful thing.

-

#19 from Glen Wishard: "Fetuses and incapacitated persons have sharply curtailed rights, if they have any rights at all, and this is done with the full approval of animal rights activists who are overwhelmingly liberals. Leave aside the moral hypocrisy and dishonesty of their position. They undermine the only possible foundation on which animals could be said to enjoy human-like rights."

Exactly.

In the 1970s, Christopher Stone wrote an article/book called "Should Trees Have Standing," which adocated appointing human guardians for various ecosystems to enforce their interests. The guardian could sue a factory for pollution damage and get money to improve the injured woodlands. A developer could negotiate with the guardian to exchange land for a subdivision by supplying small animal habitat. There's much to be said for and against the proposal, I think I wrote sixty pages in college . . .

One key issue with giving inanimate things rights is that they need a human to enforce, negotiate and compromise those rights. Stone argued that the law had already created non-human rights by creating the corporation and giving lawyers the power to represent them. But who would speak for the trees, or the squirrels and the flees? We can gather what a corporation wants by readings its charter, reviewing the paperwork and consulting with its officers. More importantly, the corporate lawyer can be fired.

The main problem is that the rights given are really those of the guardian since the animal/plant would have no recourse to question the decisions made on its behalf. In this light the guardian is a potential tyrant, imposing his/her preferences on the animal. We saw this problem with Terry Shiavo, two competing guardians with two competing views on what Terry Shiavo wanted, intertwined inevitably with what they themselves wanted. I have much greater confidence that a human could ascertain a human's dreams and desires than those of a squirrel.

If the animal's rights are merely the preferences of the guardian, then the proposal is not an extension of democracy, but its diminishment by giving some humans more rights than others. The animal lover speaks not only for himself and his cat and his hamster and the bed bugs and the bathtub fungus . . .

You know, it seems awful specist of us just to have this conversation among humans.

So I asked my dog what she thought of animal justice. She licked my hand, which I took to mean she is opposed to the entire concept.

I've always lived by the maxim that if you will just be tender to animals, they will be tender to you (with the right amount of cooking)

Seriously, it's a huckuva tough nut to crack. The concept of "justice", like "virtue" and "the good life" are open issues that have been debated since the Greeks. Like Socrates, I would go after a pretty durn clear definition in terms before I attempted in-depth analysis.