This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
For the sake of clarity, I use the term ‘subjective well-being’ to refer to the subjective component of well-being, be it understood as preference satisfaction, happiness or in some other way. I reserve the term ‘well-being’ for the wider inclusive notion of what makes a life good, of which I suggest this subjective element and self-determination are constituents. I discuss this point in more detail below.
A third notion of liberty, republican liberty is related to the power relations that are present between agents. One is deprived of republican liberty when one is vulnerable to having one’s interests interfered with, or one is so-called dominated by other agents Quentin Skinner, “A Third Concept of Liberty,” Proceedings of the British Academy, 2002, 243; Philip Pettit, “The Republican Ideal of Freedom,” in The Liberty Reader (London: Paradigm Publishers, 2006), 224. While what I say in this article is certainly relevant to the question of animals’ interest in republican liberty, I do not have the space to explore these connections here. For a thorough discussion of animals’ interest in republican liberty see Valéry Giroux, “Animals Do Have an Interest in Liberty,” Journal of Animal Ethics 6, no. 1 (2016): 20–43; Andreas T. Schmidt, “Why Animals Have an Interest in Freedom,” Historical Social Research 40, no. 4 (2015).
Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in Four Essays on Liberty (London: Oxford Paperbacks, 1969), 122.
Charles Taylor, “What’s Wrong with Negative Liberty?,” in The Liberty Reader, ed. David Miller (London: Paradigm Publishers, 2006), 143–44.
Following convention I shall refer to ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’ interchangeably.
Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” 131,136.
As a side note, the notion of positive liberty is not recognized to be applicable to animals since they are generally considered to be incapable of higher-order thought. As such, they have no higher order desires to act in line with, nor any higher order desires to be obstructed by their lower order desires. Thus they are unable to either possess or lack positive liberty.
I do not make any claims about how we determine the relevant subset of desires, the satisfaction of which, contribute towards one’s well-being. However I discuss this issue in a little more detail below in relation to the Desire Account of the value of liberty
For a particularly clear defence of this account see Alasdair Cochrane, “Do Animals Have an Interest in Liberty?,” Political Studies 57, no. 3 (2009): 660–79.
The Perfectionist Account is the other popular account of animal liberty. The principal claim of this account is that liberty is good for animals where it allows them to engage in their natural functioning. However, because I cannot do justice to this account here, and to ensure that this paper does not become unwieldly, I will not discuss it here. For defences of this account see Bernard E. Rollin, Animal Rights and Human Morality (New York: Prometheus Books, 1981), 35; Martha C. Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 347; Paul W. Taylor, Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 108–9; Cochrane, “Do Animals Have an Interest in Liberty?,” 670–71.
As Killoren and Streiffer note: we ordinarily think there is something seriously wrong about confining or owning humans, even if they are treated exceptionally well, however we tend not to think that this is the case regarding animals David Killoren and Robert Streiffer, “Utilitarianism About Animals and the Moral Significance of Use,” Philosophical Studies, 2018, 4. Regan is one of the few to explicitly recognize the harm of this specific kind of paternalism regarding animals: Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 92.
Alasdair Cochrane, Animal Rights without Liberation: Applied Ethics and Human Obligations (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 11. Also see Cochrane, “Do Animals Have an Interest in Liberty?,” 666.
Donaldson and Kymlicka give a good overview of some of the applied philosophical work in disability studies that supports this claim Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 105–8.
The Mental Capacity Act 2005, http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2005/9.
The Mental Capacity Act 2005, sec. 4B.
Although I take it that much like the case of neuro-atypical humans, paternalism regarding animals is justified in some circumstances. I will discuss these circumstances below.
I take the name from Duus Otterström’s discussion of the account. See Göran Duus-Otterström, “Freedom of Will and the Value of Choice,” Social Theory and Practice 37, no. 2 (2011): 265.
Robert Young, “The Value of Autonomy,” The Philosophical Quarterly 32, no. 126 (1982): 43; John Harris, “Consent and End of Life Decisions,” Journal of Medical Ethics 29, no. 1 (2003): 11.
John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty,” in On Liberty, Representative Government, the Subjection of Women (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1918); Göran Duus-Otterström, “Freedom of Will and the Value of Choice,” 266.
Stephen Darwall, “The Value of Autonomy and Autonomy of the Will,” Ethics 116, no. 2 (2006): 267.
Duus-Otterström, “Freedom of Will and the Value of Choice,” 266.
Darwall, “The Value of Autonomy and Autonomy of the Will,” 268.
Duus-Otterström, 262; Robert Young, “The Value of Autonomy,” The Philosophical Quarterly 32, no. 126 (1982): 39.
Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, 91; Mark Rowlands, Animals Like Us (London: Verso, 2002), 153; Natalie Thomas, Animal Ethics and the Autonomous Animal Self (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 90–91.
An anonymous reviewer has noted that it may be that all agents have a desire to be free to pursue their desires unobstructed, or that they are free to engage in action unrestricted. I am sceptical that all sentient animals are capable of possessing such desires as this seems to require higher order, or at least abstract, thought. However, even if animals are capable of possessing such desires and the satisfaction of these desires contributed towards their well-being, this would only make liberty contingently and instrumentally valuable for animals. Here I defend the position that liberty has value for animals in virtue of the type of beings they are: agents, regardless of the content of their desires. So it can demonstrate the necessary and intrinsic value of liberty for animals. In any case, I take that these are not competing explanations as one could endorse both this account and the account I defend here, and accept that they are attempts to explain two different kinds of value that liberty has for animals.
Donaldson and Kymlicka, Regan and Thomas are exceptions here. However Donaldson and Kymlicka provide no sustained argument for this position and Regan and Thomas take the value of liberty to be reducible to subjective well-being. See Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, 91; Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, Zoopolis, 108–12; Natalie Thomas, Animal Ethics and the Autonomous Animal Self , 90–91.
Young, “The Value of Autonomy,” 43; R. G. Frey, “Autonomy and the Value of Animal Life,” The Monist 70, no. 1 (1987): 61; Harris, “Consent and End of Life Decisions,” 11; Darwall, “The Value of Autonomy and Autonomy of the Will,” 267; Alasdair Cochrane, “Do Animals Have an Interest in Liberty?,” 665; Alasdair Cochrane, Animal Rights without Liberation: Applied Ethics and Human Obligations, 11; Duus-Otterström, “Freedom of Will and the Value of Choice,” 266.
Young, “The Value of Autonomy,” 39.
I focus on intellectually disabled persons rather than say children or senile persons to avoid the added complications regarding potentiality for, or previous possession of, the capacity for autonomy.
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pushing me to consider this point.
I take it that a fully autonomous person, acting autonomously, can permissibly inflict significant harm upon themselves and end their own life (however one need not accept this view in order to accept my argument here).
I will not elaborate upon the distinction between a poor choice and a significant harm, neither do I pretend that there is a straightforward boundary here. It is sufficient for my purposes that we can distinguish some cases where agents should be free to make their own choices from others in which we would be justified in acting paternalistically. Pragmatically I suggest that there should be a presumption against interfering with non-autonomous agents’ choices unless we have reason to believe that they will inflict significant harm upon themselves.
The Mental Capacity Act 2005, sec. 4B.
Jose Luis Bermudez, Thinking Without Words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Helen Steward, “Animal Agency,” Inquiry 52, no. 3 (2009): 217–31; Hans-Johann Glock, “Can Animals Act For Reasons?,” Inquiry 52, no. 3 (2009): 232–54; Mark Rowlands, Can Animals Be Moral? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Donaldson and Kymlicka, Zoopolis; Thomas, Animal Ethics and the Autonomous Animal Self; Jeff Sebo, “Agency and Moral Status,” Journal of Moral Philosophy 14, no. 1 (2017): 1–22; Nicolas Delon, “Animal Agency, Captivity, and Meaning,” The Harvard Review of Philosophy 25 (2018): 127–146; Christine M. Korsgaard, Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
Here I will merely take this as given, however, for a defence of my view that animals are agents see Marc G. Wilcox, “Animals and the Agency Account of Moral Status,” Philosophical Studies 177 (2020): 1879–1899.
For a good discussion of how to address the practicalities of allowing animals to make such choices and interpreting their decisions see Donaldson and Kymlicka, Zoopolis, 108–12.
The question of what obligations we owe toward wild animals is an especially complex one in which there are many competing arguments to consider. Here I am merely suggesting that endorsing the Self-Determination Account provides one with a pro tanto reason not to interfere with wild animals in certain situations (which may well be outweighed by competing reasons).
Killoren and Streiffer, “Utilitarianism About Animals and the Moral Significance of Use.”
Killoren and Streiffer, “Utilitarianism About Animals and the Moral Significance of Use,” 2.
Killoren and Streiffer, “Utilitarianism About Animals and the Moral Significance of Use,” 20.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Gerald Lang and Pekka Väyrynen for supervising the research that lead to this paper. Thanks must also go to Helen Steward and Mark Rowlands for encouraging me to write this paper in the first place and Helen in particular for providing comments on an early draft. Thank you to the audience at the Value of Sentience: Empathy, Vulnerability and Recognition conference at University College Dublin where this paper was presented especially Jan Deckers and Clare Palmer for providing comments on a draft of this paper. Thank you to the anonymous referee from the Journal of Value Inquiry who provided thorough and insightful feedback and comments. And finally I would also like to thank Enzo for inspiring this work through his ceaseless desire to eat grass despite it apparently having no positive impact upon his well-being.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Wilcox, M.G. The Intrinsic Value of Liberty for Non-Human Animals. J Value Inquiry 55, 685–703 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-020-09762-1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-020-09762-1