speciesism as a moral heuristic

Speciesism as a Moral Heuristic Stijn Bruers Philosophia Philosophical Quarterly of Israel ISSN 0048-3893 Volume 41 Number 2 Philosophia (2013) 41:489-501 DOI 10.1007/s11406-013-9420-y 1 23 Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com”. 1 23 Author's personal copy Philosophia (2013) 41:489–501 DOI 10.1007/s11406-013-9420-y Speciesism as a Moral Heuristic Stijn Bruers Received: 25 October 2012 / Revised: 5 December 2012 / Accepted: 11 February 2013 / Published online: 22 February 2013 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 Abstract In the last decade, the study of moral heuristics has gained in importance. I argue that we can consider speciesism as a moral heuristic: an intuitive rule of thumb that substitutes a target attribute (that is difficult to detect, e.g. “having rationality”) for a heuristic attribute (that is easier to detect, e.g. “looking like a human being”). This speciesism heuristic misfires when applied to some atypical humans such as the mentally disabled, giving them rights although they lack rationality. But I argue that it is not necessarily irrational or inconsistent to hold on to this heuristic rule, because we have to take time and knowledge constraints, uncertainty aversion and emotional costs into account. However, this “heuristic defense” of speciesism uses a target attribute (rationality) that has implications of disrespect towards some atypical humans. Therefore, based on notions of impartiality and compassion, I argue for a morally better target attribute: sentience (“having a sense of well-being”). “Being a vertebrate” is suitable as a corresponding heuristic attribute because it is easy to detect and has a strong correlation with the target attribute of sentience. Keywords Speciesism . Animal ethics . Moral heuristics . Slippery slope argument . Argument from marginal cases Introduction Ever since Ryder (1971) introduced the term speciesism—a prejudicial discrimination on the basis of species membership—more than 40 years ago, it has attracted a great deal of controversy.1 This article combines the philosophical reflections on speciesism with a recent development in moral psychology, namely moral heuristics (Sunstein 2005). 1 For some recent discussions in the literature, see Bernstein (2004), Chappell (2011), Grau (2010), Horta (2010), Kaufman (1998), Lee and George (2008), Liao (2010), McMahan (2005), Nobis (2004) and Tanner (2009). S. Bruers (*) Department of Philosophy and Moral Science, Ghent University, Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Ghent, Belgium e-mail: stijn.bruers@ugent.be Author's personal copy 490 Philosophia (2013) 41:489–501 Do the test: ask any person what justifies our current use of animals for experiments, food, clothing or entertainment. Chances are high that you will hear an answer that sooner or later refers to a distinction between humans and non-human animals. Next, you can ask them what it is about humans that other animals lack and that justifies a different treatment of humans and animals. Most people will answer this question, so it is a common belief that this is a meaningful question. Now, again the chances are very high that the answer will refer to a mental capacity that most humans have and animals lack: self-consciousness, creativity, rational reflection, the ability to speak, understand ethics, sign social contracts, have a sense of justice, and many others. The list of authors and philosophers who have defended speciesism by referring to such mental capacities is long (see e.g. Carruthers 1992; Cohen 1997; Scruton 1998). The antispeciesist now comes up with the ‘argument from marginal cases’ (see e.g. Dombrowski 1997; Wilson 2001), which might be better (more neutrally) termed ‘argument from atypical humans’. Atypical humans refer to a minority group of Homo sapiens who lack mental capacities such as rationality. The argument says that such atypical humans exist, and giving those atypical humans a moral status comparable to typical humans would be inconsistent if the mental capacity is a necessary condition for moral status. Confronted with this argument from atypical humans, some people defending speciesism attempt to extend or refine their criteria in the hope of including all atypical humans (and still excluding all non-human animals). They refer to the potentiality of developing a certain mental capacity in the future, the possibility that they themselves might later become mentally handicapped, or the presence of interpersonal relationships between those atypical humans and typical humans. However, it is striking that those attempts are too often doomed to failure (some authors who have defended the argument from atypical humans against such attempts include: Dombrowski (1997), Huther (2005), McMahan (2005) and Tanner (2006, 2009)). The antispeciesist can persist by referring to more extraordinary atypical humans who fall outside the scope of those extended and refined criteria. The abovementioned criteria are invalid when applied to for example an incurable, seriously mentally handicapped young orphan. Such human beings exist (in fact, I happen to be a foster parent of such a Vietnamese boy). I am not aware of any proposed set of mental capacities plus refinements that allows the inclusion of such humans in the moral realm, and at the same time excludes all non-human animals. In the many conversations that I have had, my opponents who defended speciesism often gave one final response: a simple affirmation that those extraordinary atypical humans are still humans and therefore should be protected. Strikingly, people giving such a response are often not aware of the circularity in this reasoning. And what is more: using the argument from atypical humans in such conversations often triggered reactions varying from indignation to overt outrage. The Heuristics Hypothesis For animal rights advocates, the above sounds very familiar. The hypothesis that I want to put forward is that this common speciesist thinking is based on a heuristic. Author's personal copy Philosophia (2013) 41:489–501 491 Heuristics are intuitive, efficient rules of thumb applied when facing complex problems (Kahneman and Shane 2002). As will become important in our discussion of speciesism, these heuristics work by a process called ‘attribute substitution’: our brains (unconsciously) substitute a computationally complex target attribute for a heuristic attribute that is easier to calculate or detect. In recent literature, as a spin-off of the work of Kahneman et al. (1982), the study of moral heuristics has gained some influence (Sunstein 2005; Sinnott-Armstrong et al. 2010). In general, a heuristic works pretty well in most cases, but as Sunstein argued, in certain, atypical situations, moral heuristics might “misfire” and create erroneous intuitive judgments. I am going to argue that this misfiring of the heuristic is exactly the case in situations with atypical humans. In fact, speciesism is a very clear example of the mechanism of attribute substitution. If the speciesism heuristic hypothesis is true, it can explain why a lot of people are “blind” to the argument from atypical humans, why a lot of people do not seem to be aware that they deny the rights of mentally disabled humans when pointing at some complex mental capacities, and why the speciesism intuition is so obstinate. As mentioned in the introduction, a lot of people have the conviction that moral status depends on a complex mental capacity, such as rationality. This mental property is the so-called target attribute of a being. But the problem of this target attribute is that it is difficult to detect. If we encounter a being, how can we quickly decide whether or not she has the relevant mental property? Our brains have found a solution: they unconsciously substitute the target attribute for a heuristic attribute that is easier to detect. This heuristic attribute is based on something our brains are good at: pattern recognition (Margolis 1987). For example, looking at figures, we can very quickly interpret a figure as the letter A, without being able to explain what exactly characterizes a letter A. Computers are not (yet) able to detect a letter so quickly. Similarly, looking at objects, we can very quickly determine whether it is a human, even if no-one is able to clarify what set of elements, conditions and characteristics defines a human being. We look at an individual and immediately see the pattern (face, behavior, etc.) that corresponds to a human, because our brains are trained that way. Now, looking at the set of objects that have the target attribute of rationality on the one hand, and the set of objects that have the heuristic attribute of a human being on the other hand, we see a strong overlap between these two sets, with a low percentage of exceptions. The exceptions are the atypical humans. Most beings that have the ‘human pattern’ also have the target attribute. So our brains use the species criterion (our human recognition capacity) as a heuristic. When an object looks like a human, when it has the characteristic pattern of a human, intuition says that the object has the target attribute mental capacity as well. This “speciesism” or “looks-like-ahuman” heuristic works pretty well in most cases, but not in the atypical cases. If speciesism is a heuristic, it explains why antispeciesist people so often refer to the argument from atypical cases. The speciesism heuristic becomes particularly clear in the recent work of, among others, Chappell (2011), who refers to a “folk” notion of human species (which—as I interpret it—is based on our pattern recognition skills) to determine who counts as a person: “In normal cases, we have already identified a creature as a person before we start looking for it to manifest the personal properties, indeed this pre-identification is part of what makes it possible for us to see and interpret the creature as a person in the Author's personal copy 492 Philosophia (2013) 41:489–501 first place. And that pre-identification typically runs on biological lines.” (Chappell 2011, p.1). The pre-identification is nothing but the attribute substitution: our brains immediately and unconsciously substitute the target attribute (a property of personhood—or what Chappell and others might have in mind: a complex pattern of mental properties that constitute personhood) for a heuristic attribute (that “runs on biological lines”). Even though we know that heuristics can sometimes result in erroneous intuitions or judgments, it does not imply that we are better off without heuristics. Sunstein (2005) and rule utilitarians (see discussion in Shaw 1999, pp. 145–170) argued that without those heuristics or rules of thumb we might make more mistakes. The question I address in this article, is whether using the speciesism heuristic is permissible, useful or dangerous. Do we have to keep it, improve it or throw it away because it makes some errors in atypical cases? In the following sections I discuss the strongest pros and cons of keeping the speciesism heuristic in atypical cases. Afterwards, I argue that—even if it is not irrational or inconsistent to stick to the speciesist heuristic—it is better (more respectful towards atypical humans) to take another heuristic which uses sentience instead of rationality as its target attribute. Time and Knowledge Constraints One advantage of heuristics is that these are rules of thumb that can help us make quick decisions in situations with time and knowledge constraints. Compare heuristics with traffic laws. The target attribute in traffic would be a rule such as: “Always drive as to maximize well-being” or “maximize efficiency and minimize accidents.” This target attribute rule is too difficult to follow, so it is substituted for simpler heuristic rules, such as: “Always stop in front of a red traffic light.” But in atypical cases, when there really is no other traffic around; there is no harm in ignoring a red light. Most people would say that introducing a new traffic law: “Stop at red lights except when crossroads are safe,” would make matters worse, because we cannot be sure enough whether crossroads are safe. Perhaps we are not smart or alert enough to judge the safety. Perhaps we are tempted to judge safety to our own advantage. Perhaps we are biased and we ignore red lights even when the situation is not safe. So, it is often conceded that strongly holding on to heuristics is a good strategy. Does the same apply for the speciesism heuristic? The difference between traffic situations and situations related to treatment of atypical humans is that in the latter we do have time and (scientific) knowledge to influence our decisions. True, in emergency situations, the analogy with traffic might be valid. If you see some creature drowning, and you have to be quick to decide to rescue that being, it would be effortful, time-consuming and unreliable to look first for the mental capacities of that drowning being. If you see it is a human, you will show a direct response and jump in the water to save this human. And in most cases, your judgment will be correct: in most cases, the drowning human will be a rational self-conscious being who deserves to be saved. Weighing the probability that it is a mentally handicapped human against the cost for you to rescue the human, would still make you conclude that it is better to stick to the speciesism (“looks-like-a-human”) heuristic. Author's personal copy Philosophia (2013) 41:489–501 493 But when we have to decide how to treat mentally disabled persons, whether we should clothe them, feed them or use them in experiments, we do have time and access to information about their mental states. In these cases, other heuristics than the “looks like a human” heuristic might be more accurate, in the sense that these new heuristics also cover all rational beings, but include fewer non-rational beings. For example, we could look at results of communication or IQ-tests, adaptive behavior or neurological functioning. And scientists might come up with more accurate and faster techniques to see what the mental capacities of a mentally disabled human are. People with average intelligence might be vulnerable to bias and erroneous judgments about the mental capacities of beings, but scientists and judges might be able to make sufficiently wise judgments. So where do we stand? Do we feel comfortable with the idea that having fundamental rights would depend on our subjective state of knowledge? It is absurd to claim that mentally disabled humans have rights merely because we are at this moment “too stupid” to work with more accurate heuristics. We, and at least scientists, philosophers, and judges, are intelligent enough to determine which human being is certainly not a rational being, and I am not aware of historical or psychological evidence that suggests that using the target attribute directly or using more accurate heuristic attributes instead of the speciesist heuristic attribute results in real violations of the rights of rational beings. So, in most cases we do have time and we have already developed efficient ways to detect mental capacities. But one might object: how reliable are those scientific tests? And a more fundamental question is how reliable should these tests and refined heuristics be? Answering that question eventually becomes a matter of taste, of gut-feelings. Although my intuition says that time and knowledge constraints are not sufficient reasons to stick to the speciesism heuristic, we should accept that this discussion remains unresolved and that it is not yet irrational or inconsistent to stick to the speciesism heuristic due to the above concerns about our limitations of knowledge. Fear of a Slippery Slope Following Carruthers’s slippery slope argument (Carruthers 1992), one could argue that it might be better to retain the speciesism heuristic. Several philosophers have criticized the slippery slope objection of Carruthers (Dombrowski 1997; Tanner 2009), but we can look at this argument from the heuristics perspective. People might worry that not retaining the speciesism heuristic, i.e. using the target attribute of rationality directly instead of the heuristic attribute, might result in more serious errors overall. More rights of real rights holders (i.e. truly rational people) might be violated, because the target attribute is difficult to detect or there is no sharp distinction between having and not having the target attribute. A first reason that people might give to justify this view is that rationality and other mental capacities are a matter of degree. So we have a “sorites” problem of where to draw the line. When removing grains from a heap, when does the heap become a nonheap? When removing mental features, when does a person lose its rationality? If we cannot answer this question, we risk making erroneous judgments about the rationality of some persons. Author's personal copy 494 Philosophia (2013) 41:489–501 Second, one might point to the fact that our cognitive biases can unconsciously skew our judgments. In situations involving possible atypical humans, we might be vulnerable to bias and erroneously judge the situation to our own benefit (we might too easily start to think that a specific human is non-rational, and treat him or her as a non-rational being to our own benefit). These two observations combined will put us on a dangerous slippery slope, where we will move towards real violations of the rights of rational people. But also two objections to this slippery-slope argument can be raised. The first is that, if there is indeed an unavoidable spectrum of mental capacities, we might be able to couple this to a spectrum of rights. Some people with higher mental capacities could be given more or stronger rights claims. However, this first objection might not run so smoothly. When it comes to fundamental rights, some might prefer to stick to the binary view: either one has an absolute claim to this right, or one does not have the right at all. Such a binary view cannot be coupled in a non-arbitrary way to the supposed spectrum of mental capacities. A second counter-argument to the slippery-slope argument is that we are already able to deal with such slippery slopes. Consider situations where we have to decide whether mentally handicapped humans have a right to vote or a right to marriage. Different countries have different ways of dealing with the right to vote for mentally handicapped humans. In some countries, a judge or medical practitioner will decide whether a mentally handicapped person has this right. In others, the person needs to undergo a psychological test or needs to be under a protective measure such as a guardianship (for the situation in European countries, consult FRA (2010)). Whatever solution a country prefers, there seems to be a general lack of worry that this exclusion of mentally handicapped persons from the right to vote would put us on a slippery slope towards broad violations of the right of rational humans to vote. However, this second counter-argument is based on a presupposed analogy between a right to vote and a more fundamental right such as the right not to be harmed or the right not to be used as merely means to some else’s ends. One might object that we should be more concerned about slipping down a slippery slope when the slope involves a fundamental right. A second possible objection to this second counterargument is that the demarcation line between people who can have the right to vote and those who do not might be easier to draw than the demarcation line between rational and non-rational people. It might be easier to check whether someone is able to vote (i.e. by doing a communication test), than to check whether someone is able to reason or is self-conscious. The analogy between spectra of fundamental rights and spectra of political rights might be too weak. The above discussion indicates that, as with the argument of time and knowledge constraints, things are not yet completely resolved. It might come down to a kind of uncertainty aversion: if people have a strong fear for slipping down the slope of fundamental rights when we are confronted with atypical humans, they have a strong uncertainty aversion. They are worried about the question: “What might happen to my rights and the rights of my loved ones, if we stop giving fundamental rights to mentally handicapped humans?” The major problem that I have with this slippery-slope defense of the speciesism heuristic is that it seems disrespectful to claim that the moral status of mentally handicapped people merely depends on our uncertainty aversion or our supposed Author's personal copy Philosophia (2013) 41:489–501 495 inability to put barriers on a slippery slope, instead of it depending for example on the real interests and feelings of those mentally handicapped people. Are we so sure that we will slip down the slope when we look for more accurate heuristics than the speciesism heuristic, say a heuristic based on some psychological tests? This question has no easy answer, but at least to me, refinements of the heuristic rule (to make it better fit with the target attribute such as rationality) do not seem to be impossible, nor do they seem to be so dangerous for the rational people. They are dangerous for arational, atypical humans. Also, I am doubtful that those people who defend the speciesism heuristic due to an uncertainty aversion, have a consistently strong uncertainty aversion in other situations in their lives. It seems strange to me that merely avoiding a slippery slope is the real motivation for people to take such care of mentally disabled orphans. If that were the real motivation, we could expect that one would have a very high level of uncertainty aversion and fear of slippery slopes. But such a high level of uncertainty aversion seems incompatible with the way we deny some atypical humans a right to vote (it is unlikely that judges are really unable to make wise decisions about who is able to vote), and with the treatment of animals in factory farms. We do not seem to worry at all about slippery slopes or the potential negative influence on our rights when we treat thousands of sentient animals the way we do in factory farms. But, admittedly, it is difficult to test such apparent inconsistencies in people’s uncertainty averse attitudes towards slippery slopes. The Emotional Cost of Excluding Atypical Humans Moral heuristics are often strongly internalized rules, which means that rule violations are often accompanied with strong emotions of indignation, guilt or moral disgust. The abovementioned reactions of people (sometimes overt outrage when they are confronted with the argument from marginal cases) indicate that the speciesism heuristic and the rights of atypical humans are also strongly emotionally charged. People have empathic concerns for the mentally disabled. Even if the emotions that people feel towards atypical humans would be irrational if all that mattered was a property (mental capacity) that those atypical humans lack, we observe that violating the heuristic will result in an emotional cost, and this cost is not to be underestimated. Sometimes it might be rational to stick to irrational feelings. Compare it with fear of heights. Imagine that most people had a strong fear of heights. Do they react irrationally? Not necessarily: these people might claim that, if they conquered their fear in situations where they could not fall (e.g. when they are safely attached), they might react less fearfully in more dangerous situations where fear is required or advantageous. They might know about themselves that they will be tempted to make erroneous judgments in dangerous situations. And they also know that it takes some effort (e.g. some costly therapy or focussed meditation) to overcome their fear of heights. So these people have a heuristic: always avoid tall buildings. The costs of overcoming their fear might be greater than the cost of avoiding tall buildings, so even when they could not fall from the tall building, they do not necessarily react irrationally by keeping the heuristic. These people have weighed all the costs and benefits, including the emotional ones. Author's personal copy 496 Philosophia (2013) 41:489–501 The same could be said about the feeling of indignation that one experiences when looking at human rights violations, even if the human is mentally handicapped and is lacking the relevant mental capacities. The emotional cost of reacting in a more detached or neutral way towards those atypical humans might be greater than the benefits that one could obtain from violating their rights. However, this weighing of the emotional cost against the potential benefits is often very difficult. One might object that the benefits for real rights holders of violating the rights of atypical humans should not be underestimated either. There might be health advantages in using atypical humans in e.g. medical experiments. Atypical humans (such as mentally disabled orphans) are often better research models for rational humans, compared with non-human animals, because the atypical humans are genetically and physiologically closer to the rational persons. So their use in medical experiments might give better results than if non-human animals are used as models for rational persons. The atypical humans could also be used for organ transplantations and blood transfusions, to help rational persons in need. If we do not sacrifice non-rational, atypical humans, then rational humans might die. Is that not more serious than the abovementioned emotional cost? It is not easy to decide this issue. Consider again the traffic laws. Most people feel a repugnance when they drive through a red light, because they have internalized an important rule. But are we not allowed to drive through red lights in emergency situations (e.g. when there is a child in the middle of the crossroad, in the distance there is a car coming, and we could only bring the child to safety by ignoring the red light)? How stubbornly do we have to stick to the heuristic traffic rules (“always stop at red lights”) in such situations? As with some of the previous questions that I raised, we have to admit that these questions do not have easy answers. For me, the “emotional cost” defense of the speciesism heuristic seems to be too weak at this moment, but I again have to admit that my judgments might be biased, that the emotional cost is not to be underestimated either or that using atypical humans in experiments (instead of using only non-human animals) would not be a sufficient improvement for the health of rational beings. In summary, the above three defenses for the speciesism heuristic (time and knowledge constraints, slippery slope, and emotional cost), remain largely undecided and are not clearly irrational nor inconsistent. In the next and final section, I will explore my main objection to the speciesism heuristic, even if this speciesism heuristic was not applied in an irrational or inconsistent manner. The Importance of Sentience The speciesism heuristic was based on the assumption that the target attribute is some higher mental capacity such as rationality. In my view, this seriously underestimates the importance of another mental capacity that even most animals have: sentience. The importance of sentience can be seen by asking the questions: what is the real reason why people help mentally handicapped humans in institutes? What really drives those health care workers to take care of atypical humans? I do not believe that they are willing to accept that the only reason why they take such great care of the mentally disabled is that they fear a slippery slope or the emotional costs of overcoming a heuristic. Author's personal copy Philosophia (2013) 41:489–501 497 The idea that some humans have rights merely because our heuristic misfires seems incompatible with the moral intuitions of many people. For example, it is more plausible that the persons who take care of handicapped people in fact respond to the needs of these people. They are not concerned with a higher mental capacity as the morally relevant target attribute. These health care workers have empathy, and they are happy when they see that the mentally disabled humans feel pleasure or joy in something. They want to avoid their suffering. Therefore, according to these carers, sentience is one of the most important target attributes, and sentience is likely to be the most important motivator for them to help these mentally handicapped people. If the empathy and moral intuitions of a health care worker towards atypical humans are clear expressions of an undercurrent in the common morality of our culture, which I believe they are, we can say that sentience is important in our common morality. But its importance is underestimated due to the dominance of the speciesism heuristic. The problem with the speciesism heuristic is that it claims that rights of atypical humans are only indirect results of misfiring heuristics and that these humans in fact do not deserve rights because they are not rational beings. But it is highly disrespectful towards atypical humans to say that they only have an indirect moral status, that they in fact do not deserve rights but that we intuitively give them rights merely because our speciesism heuristic misfires. Consider the mainstay of the speciesism heuristic: the ability to see a difference between humans and non-human animals. Without such a clear observable distinction, the heuristic attribute would not be that useful. But as biology now shows, this human-animal difference is not absolute or essential. In the past, there were human ancestors with more and more non-human (non-rational) properties as we look further into the past. There is in fact a whole continuum of ancestors, moving down the evolutionary branch, till we meet a common ancestor of, say, humans and pigs. Also, it might not be genetically impossible for human-chimpanzee hybrids to be born. Such hybrids are infertile offspring of a human and a chimpanzee parent, which means that each cell contains the DNA of both humans and chimpanzees. Or what about human-animal chimeras; beings who consist partly of human body cells, partly of non-human body cells? Or what about genetically modified humanlike beings? It is hard to believe that we really feel comfortable with the thought that, if the ancestors, hybrids, chimeras or genetically modified humanlike beings were alive among us, our speciesism heuristic loses its strength and we would drastically alter our ethics and our treatment of atypical humans. Although these examples are hypothetical, they should give us some discomfort. It is awkward to claim that mentally disabled humans are just lucky that we have pattern recognition skills and that for us in the current situation it is easier to see distinctions between humans and non-humans than to see distinctions between rational and non-rational beings. Disabled humans have basic rights, but not because they are just lucky that the borderline human/non-humans do not exist yet or do not exist anymore. And neither are they just lucky that the borderline rational/nonrational beings do exist. If there were no borderline cases of rational/non-rational humans, if we were clearly able to make a demarcation between rational and nonrational humans, the slippery slope argument would completely fail, because the slope would contain a really big gap, and this gap is a good place to stop any further slipping down the slope. Author's personal copy 498 Philosophia (2013) 41:489–501 All the above questions and reflections should take us to the conclusion that sentience is more important than rationality. Sentience is a better target attribute from a moral point of view, for two main reasons. The first reason is based on impartiality. Rowlands (1997, 1998) and Van den Berg (2011) derived the sentience criterion through a contractarian “veil of ignorance” thought experiment. This thought experiment tests our impartiality by forcing us to take the positions of others, as if behind a veil of ignorance we do not know whose life we are going to live. The veil needs to be as thick as possible in order to respect maximum impartiality. This means that we have to include the positions of all non-humans, non-rational beings and non-sentient beings. If I put myself in the position of a non-sentient being, things would not matter to me, because I would not have any subjective experiences or consciousness. If I were a non-rational but sentient being, things would matter to me, because I would still have a sense of well-being. This reference to preferences and what would matter to the subject is also the basis of a utilitarian-consequentialist vindication of sentience (Singer 1975). In summary, when we value our own well-being (what matters to us) and we value impartiality as in consequentialist or contractarian ethics, then the wellbeing of all sentient beings should be valued. This impartiality argument for the sentience criterion is also coherent with a second argument in favor of sentience: the virtue of compassion (Slote 2001). In almost all major religious and philosophical traditions compassion is considered as one of the greatest of virtues. It is based on a feeling of empathy for the suffering of others and a desire to act on that emotion. Compassion is directly related to sentience because we are able to feel empathy with (non-rational) sentient beings, but not with non-sentient beings who cannot suffer. Compassion also plays a key role in an ethics of care (Gilligan 1982). Compassion is what drives health care workers to help mentally disabled people. Impartiality (supported by some interpretations of consequentialist and contractarian ethics) and compassion (supported by some interpretations of virtue ethics and ethics of care) both point to the importance of sentience. Such a coherent justification for sentience is lacking for the higher mental capacities such as rationality. From an impartial perspective, having a sense of well-being is not restricted to rational beings alone. And from a virtues perspective, there is no moral virtue that restricts attention to rational beings alone.2 There are two arguments to justify rationality, but these arguments can also justify sentience. The first argument to justify the criterion of rationality is by pointing out that a coupling between rights and rationality is not far-fetched: rationality can be defined as the ability to understand and respect rights and interests. But neither is the coupling between rights and sentience far-fetched: rights protect interests and feelings detect interests. For example, pain indicates a violation of bodily integrity and fear detects the interest of safety. Sentient beings value their own interests due to their positive and negative feelings. Therefore, it is not far-fetched to couple rights to sentience. From a rights perspective, both rationality and sentience are equally valid.3 2 Although one can argue that virtues like honesty and fair-mindedness indirectly refer to a notion of rationality. However, the virtue of compassion directly and strongly refers to suffering and sentience. 3 The coupling between rights and species is really far-fetched, because we cannot see a connection between rights and genes or between rights and the ability to beget fertile offspring. Author's personal copy Philosophia (2013) 41:489–501 499 A second way to justify the criterion of rationality is by referring to intuitions that some people have towards rational beings. Some people simply intuit that rational beings have a higher moral status than other beings. However, the sentience criterion is also coherent with our intuitions about helping mentally disabled humans or pet animals such as dogs, and intuitions about preferring animal welfare laws. An exclusive focus on rationality in ethics cannot explain those attitudes towards nonrational beings.4 As with other mental capacities, sentience is difficult to detect. Of course, when confronted with an individual being, we can always try to do some tests to see whether it is sentient. If we take sentience as the most important target attribute, and if sentience is difficult to detect, we can look at a suitable heuristic attribute. Heuristics might be useful in many cases, so we should not throw away all such rules of thumb. Looking at our current scientific knowledge about sentience, we can take the biological group of vertebrates as the corresponding heuristic attribute: vertebrates are also easy to recognize, and science indicates that there is a strong overlap between the group of vertebrates and the group of sentient beings (see e.g. Griffin (2001) and EFSA (2009) for sentience in fish). I suggest that—in contrast to our rather “fixed” attitude towards the speciesist heuristic—we can and should have a more “flexible” attitude towards the vertebrate heuristic. When possible (when scientists have accurate ways of determining sentience), it might be best to dispense with all heuristics, including the vertebrate heuristic. For example, we might also have to include some large crustaceans and molluscs such as squid, because they also might be sentient. And presumably some atypical vertebrate animals are non-sentient. It would not be disrespectful towards those non-sentient animals if we do not stick to the vertebrate heuristic, i.e. if we were to give those specific non-sentient individuals a lower moral status than sentient vertebrates. The reason why the speciesist heuristic was disrespectful towards non-rational humans is exactly because those humans are sentient: they have a sense of well-being and feelings that express interests. The disrespect does not lie in the use of a heuristic, but in the choice of the target attribute. Choosing a target attribute that excludes sentient but non-rational humans is disrespectful, even when these atypical humans are saved by the “misfiring” of a speciesist heuristic. To conclude, people give too much credence to the arguments in favor of the speciesism heuristic, or to arguments in favor of speciesism in general. The reason why they give too much credence to those arguments is perhaps because those people use animals on a huge scale. For example, they decide three times a day to eat animal products. They have friends and family who use animals in similar ways. They know that their parents and grandparents used animals in similar ways. They see TV commercials that promote meat, see animal circuses in their hometowns, and see no-one (or just a few “extremists”) complaining, etc. For those who consume animals on a daily basis, a lot is at stake (especially for their self-image), so we can expect that this creates a real bias towards justifications of speciesism and the use of animals. 4 In common morality, the attitudes towards different non-rational beings are not consistent. Consistency can be improved by uplifting the moral status of non-human vertebrate animals, due to their sentience. Author's personal copy 500 Philosophia (2013) 41:489–501 Those people are less willing to accept the moral importance of sentience, and the extension of rights to all sentient beings. Acknowledgments I would like to thank Dianne Scetrine, Tim de Smet and anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and proofreading. References Bernstein, M. (2004). Neo-speciesism. Journal of Social Philosophy, 35(3), 380–390. Carruthers, P. (1992). The animals issue: Moral theory in practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chappell, T. (2011). On the very idea of criteria for personhood. Southern Journal of Philosophy, 49(1), 1–27. Cohen, C. (1997). Do animals have rights? Ethics and Behavior, 7(2), 91–102. Dombrowski, D. (1997). Babies and beasts. The Argument from marginal cases. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. EFSA (2009). General approach to fish welfare and to the concept of sentience in fish. Scientific Opinion of the Panel on Animal Health and Welfare, EU Food Safety Authority, Parma, Italy. FRA. (2010). The right to political participation of persons with mental health problems and persons with intellectual disabilities. Vienna: European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Grau, C. (2010). Moral status, speciesism and Liao’s genetic account. Journal of Moral Philosophy, 7(3), 387–396. Griffin, D. (2001). Animal minds: Beyond cognition to consciousness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Horta, O. (2010). What is speciesism? The Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 23, 243–266. Huther, C. (2005). Can speciesism be defended? A discussion of the traditional approach to the moral status of animals. Munich: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. Kahneman, D., & Shane, F. (2002). Representativeness revisited: Attribute substitution in intuitive judgment. In T. Gilovich, D. Griffin, & D. Kahneman (Eds.), Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgment (pp. 49–81). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kahneman, D., Tversky, A., & Slovic, P. (Eds.). (1982). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics & biases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kaufman, F. (1998). Speciesism and the argument from misfortune. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 15(2), 155–163. Lee, P., & George, R. (2008). The nature and basis of human dignity. Ratio Juris, 21(2), 173–193. Liao, S. M. (2010). The basis of human moral status. Journal of Moral Philosophy, 7(2), 159–179. Margolis, H. (1987). Patterns, thinking and cognition: A theory of judgement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McMahan, J. (2005). Our fellow creatures. The Journal of Ethics, 9, 353–380. Nobis, N. (2004). Carl Cohen’s ‘kind’ arguments for animal rights and against human rights. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 21(1), 43–59. Rowlands, M. (1997). Contractarianism and animal rights. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 14(3), 235–247. Rowlands, M. (1998). Animal rights: A philosophical defence. New York: St Martin’s Press. Ryder, R. D. (1971). Experiments on animals. In S. Godlovitch, R. Godlovitch, & J. Harris (Eds.), Animals, men and morals (pp. 41–82). London: Victor Gollanz. Scruton R. (1998). Animal rights and wrongs. Demos. Shaw, W. H. (1999). Contemporary ethics: Taking account of utilitarianism. Oxford: Blackwell. Singer, P. (1975, 1990). Animal liberation, a new ethics for our treatment of animals. 2nd ed., New York Review of Books. Sinnott-Armstrong, W., Young, L., & Cushman, F. A. (2010). Moral intuitions as heuristics. In J. Doris et al. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of moral psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Slote, M. (2001). Morals from motives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sunstein, C. (2005). Moral heuristics. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, 531–573. Author's personal copy Philosophia (2013) 41:489–501 501 Tanner, J. (2006). Marginal humans, the argument from kinds and the similarity argument. Facta Universitas, 5(1), 47–63. Tanner, J. (2009). The argument from marginal cases and the slippery slope objection. Environmental Values, 18, 51–66. Van den Berg, F. (2011). Harming others: Universal subjectivism and the expanding moral circle. PhD thesis, Universiteit Leiden. Wilson, S. (2001). Carruthers and the argument from marginal cases. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 18(2), 135–147.