The Question is not, "Can they do moral philosophy?"

So apparently some woman in New York is trying to get punitive damages for pain suffered by her dog because of deficient care by the store that sold it to her. Basically the case rests upon convincing the Law to recognize the dog as a Being rather than as Property, although her lawyer has been throwing around the word "soul" in a way that does no one any good. Out of curiosity I checked out the Huffington Post comment thread, and while most of the commenters said things like, "well I'm sympathetic, but c'mon, you can't even prove that humans have souls," one person said something like, "well perhaps animals have souls, but they don't have rights. They have no ability to understand complex moral issues." He then went on to insult animal rights advocates, blah blah blah. Can I just say, this is entirely the wrong way to look at things? Yes, John Rawls' framework makes a lot of use of the fact that the citizens of his desired just society are rational, moral, autonomous beings, which is how he manages to exclude non-human animals. As a matter of political theory the fact that animals cannot communicate is deeply relevant, and probably does mean that we shouldn't even try to give animals political participation rights.

But the entire point of a so-called human right is that you have it not by virtue of any particular characteristic or, you know, virtue, like the ability to understand complex moral concepts, but because you are a human being and you exist. My right not to be murdered does not stem from my ability to participate in a long-term cooperative scheme among rational moral beings treated as free and equal citizens. Rather it stems from the fact that being murdered is pretty much the ultimate evil that can befall me (in both the etymological and modern sense of the word!), and so if we care about my welfare at all then we'll care pretty strongly that I not get murdered. We can see that this is what's going on because we don't withdraw basic rights against violence from people who demonstrate, say, an utter lack of ability to understand complex moral issues. There are many members of the species Homo sapiens who cannot understand such concepts; I think the commenter to whose "arguments" I am responding may be one of them. As Peter Singer has been known to point out, some human beings have neurological impairments that prevent such understanding. We don't say that these people are not beings, do not have rights. They retain a full complement of human rights, because they are still humans.

So what is it, exactly, about humans that makes us so damn special? It clearly is not our ability to do moral philosophy, although that's a useful skill. Perhaps there's some sort of religious philosophy that describes violence against human beings as a "sin," just because, and thereby dodges the question of why it's a bad thing. But I think in general our sense that violence against humans is wrong derives from our understanding that such violence inflicts tremendous suffering on the victim (among others), and that it is therefore almost always a bad thing. And we do tend to express the wicked nature of violence in rights terminology: I do have a right against your shooting me through the heart. I have this right simply because I am a human being who would suffer rather tremendously (infinitely, one might say) if you did so. It comes with a corresponding obligation on you not to shoot me through the heart, again just because it would cause lots of suffering. If you concede that non-human animals can suffer, can feel pain, can feel pleasure, can just plain feel, then what's left of the case against basic animal rights?



Incidentally, I like the "soul" terminology. I personally like the word soul, even though it has supernatural/religious origins; that's part of my intranaturalist philosophy. The way I use it, "soul" refers more or less to whatever the thing is which thinks a person's thoughts, feels their feelings, experiences their experiences, and remembers their memories. That is to say, as I sit here writing I can "hear" the thoughts which form this post running through my head, and I feel like I'm sitting somewhere inside my head looking out at the world. But what's the "I" in that sentence? I don't know, exactly, and I don't really know that anyone else does, at a deep philosophical level. (Obviously there's the strictly neurological sense in which it's just "the brain" that does all this stuff, but there's still this simulated virtual reality that I feel myself to be moving in. There's that pesky "I" again!) But there's clearly something which is that I, that deepest core of the experience of self, and I like to use the word "soul" to refer to that thing, whatever it is. Obviously there's nothing remotely supernatural about that usage, which is convenient for the reasons detailed in the aforelinked post on intranaturalism.

Anyway, the point is that the having or not-having of a soul is exactly the relevant question when considering animal rights. If animals do not have a soul, in the sense I described above, then that would mean exactly that they do not have anything which experiences in a true manner. Plants will bend toward the sunlight, and computers can have complicated behavioral programming, but I doubt that either of them has a soul, that kernel of sentience. It's fine and dandy, then, to treat plants and computers as things rather than beings; there's no suffering to worry about, no happiness to be promoted. If dogs also lack a soul in this sense, then they likewise deserve zero protection. But if, as I strongly suspect, dogs have every bit as much a soul as you or I, then they deserve as much of the protections which derive from our soul-having qualities as we receive. Certainly we shouldn't be slaughtering billions of cows per year if cows have souls, or if there's a strong possibility that they do.



Again incidentally, I just thought I'd note the difference between the way I'm using the word "soul" and the way the inhabitants of the Buffyverse use it. Clearly Angelus, the evil version of Mr. Vampire-With-A-Soul Angel, has a kernel of sentience in the sense that I described above. It's pretty clear that vampires, demons, etc. have some sort of spirit, which assumes similar functions as a human soul would. The difference is basically that a human soul has all sorts of attributes, foremost among them the conscience, which a demonic spirit lacks. They're actually a little fuzzy about which demons have souls and which don't; perhaps most are just demonic spirits, but the question gets a little more interesting when we consider someone like Anya, who goes from human to demon and back again. Does she lose her human soul while a demon? If so, does she get her old one back when he becomes mortal again? Does she get a new one? Why doesn't she experience the same kind of hundred-years-of-remorse that Angel goes through when he, formerly a vicious killing machine, obtains a brand new conscience? Why no sudden personality change? It's all kind of vague.

Oh, and don't post comments that mention things past the middle of Season 6 of Buffy; some of my family members haven't finished the series yet.