Why Animals Have No Moral Duties

• Animals were held morally – and therefore legally – responsible for their actions until the 18th century, according to our partner The Conversation.

• This is no longer the case... and everything leads us to believe that they do not have the capacities for abstraction required to conceive that certain norms “transcend” social conventions.

• This analysis was conducted by François Jaquet, teacher-researcher in philosophy at the University of Strasbourg.

Some claim that there are no more seasons.

It is to count without the various facts.

As recently as the end of January 2022, a Swiss white shepherd bit an old lady in the buttocks.

Following the assault, the angry lady filed a complaint.

Not against the dog, of course.

Although: the case would have had a completely different outcome had it taken place in the Middle Ages.

In these dark times, the canine rascal would undoubtedly have been condemned for depravity after a trial in good and due form.

Animal trials were practiced as early as the 13th century and well into the 18th century, because animals were then held legally responsible for their actions.

This bizarre idea may have stemmed from the no less preposterous belief that they would be morally responsible for their actions.

Since we have since abandoned both the idea and the belief, animal trials seem perfectly absurd to us.

But maybe we are wrong.

Our non-human cousins, after all, have long-unsuspected abilities.

As my colleague Cédric Sueur explains, not only are they capable of feeling;

many also have a theory of the mind and this self-awareness that we had nevertheless made specific to humans.

Some are even capable of empathy and an altruism that prompts them to sacrifice their own well-being for that of another.

It is then tempting to go further to attribute moral agency to them, as Cédric does.

But maybe he is wrong?

This is the idea that I will defend...

No one is born a moral agent

Let's proceed in order and start with a definition: a

is an entity that has moral duties, whose acts can be judged morally acceptable or reprehensible.

Adult humans are pretty paradigmatic – ethically speaking, they shouldn't rape, kill, or bite the buttocks of old ladies.

When they do, however, their behavior is immoral, and we feel free to condemn it.

It is quite legitimate.

Until about three years of age, however, children do nothing that is strictly speaking immoral.

Sometimes they do harm – harm someone.

But they don't do anything

– nothing morally wrong.

To cast an ethical eye on their actions would be as foolish as to blame a tsunami for the damage and deaths it has caused.

Young children are not moral agents;

they are more akin to natural disasters.

Why ?

Because their mental life is insufficiently developed to mobilize the notions of good and evil, because they are not able to deliberate in ethical terms – in short: because they cannot understand that they have moral duties .

A subject who does not understand that he has legal duties is not legally responsible for his actions;

similarly, a subject who does not understand that he has moral duties is not morally responsible for his acts.

Conventional duties and moral duties

Children learn early on that they shouldn't talk with their mouths full, spit on their father or fart in the car.

What they don't understand, however, is that some norms do not depend on the social practices in force in their community.

In other words, children do not immediately know how to distinguish moral duties from conventional duties.

This distinction is, however, at the heart of the moral sense.

There would be no harm in going to work in your pajamas if this practice were widespread and widely approved.

The norm that prohibits this behavior depends on a social practice: nowadays and in our countries, we do not work in pajamas.

This standard is strictly conventional.

Conversely, domestic violence would be unacceptable even if it were commonplace.

The prohibition to which it is subject is ethical, it does not depend on the observation that it is condemned in our society.

Unlike conventional duties, moral duties are by definition independent of social practices.

A normative sense but no moral sense

But children do not begin to draw this distinction until they are three years old.

Before that, they could not therefore understand that they have moral duties, nor therefore have any.

What about animals?

Normative cognition may not be foreign to them.

Great apes, for example, seem to understand and observe a set of rules.

In their communities, some things get done, some don't.

If we admit that they think they have duties, we can then speak in their case of a normative sense.

However, they have no moral sense.

Everything leads us to believe that they do not have the capacities for abstraction required to conceive that certain norms transcend social conventions.

In particular, there is no evidence that they are capable of “counterfactual” thinking, that is, of envisaging what would happen if things were different.

A fortiori, they cannot wonder if the duties they attribute to themselves depend on practices specific to their community.

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In sum, as far as moral agency is concerned, animals are like little humans: because they do not distinguish between moral standards and conventional ones, they cannot understand that they have moral duties, so they do not have.

Despite their impressive capacities, animals are not moral agents.

Our “ANIMALS” file

Let us note all the same, to conclude, that all this does not say much about

duties towards them.

The case of human babies suffices to settle the widely held prejudice according to which moral agency is necessary for the possession of moral rights.

Since animals are sentient, they can suffer damage.

They are therefore

.

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This analysis was written by François Jaquet, teacher-researcher in philosophy at the University of Strasbourg.

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