Abstract
Hume’s Treatise, Enquiries and Essays contain plentiful material for an investigation into the moral nature of other animals and our moral relations to them. In particular, Hume pays considerable attention to animal minds. He also argues that moral judgment is grounded in sympathy. As sympathy is shared by humans and some other animals, this already hints at the possibility that some animals are morally considerable, even if they are not moral agents. Most contributions to the literature on animal ethics assume one of the big three normative theories as their starting point; consequentialism, deontology or neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics. However, as several philosophers have argued, Hume’s discussion of animals suggests a distinctive, alternative approach. I defend and develop this sort of view, building from the ground up via a careful study of Hume’s texts. In particular, I pay close attention to the operations of sympathy and the correctness conditions for moral judgments based on our sympathetic responsiveness to animal minds, addressing a number of interpretative puzzles and difficulties along the way. The result is an outline of an approach to animal ethics that is grounded in a general philosophy of nature, a naturalistic methodology and broadly plausible psychological assumptions.
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Some authors distinguish between moral considerability and moral standing. For example, while allowing that any being with moral standing is morally considerable, Driver (2011) suggests that some beings may be morally considerable yet lack moral standing. She gives the example of non-sentient living organisms. In such cases, I would be inclined to say that beings that lack moral standing also lack moral considerability. This is consistent with the possibility that they merit some other form of consideration, perhaps aesthetic or prudential. For present purposes, however, I shall avoid these difficulties with the following clarification: by the claim that some animals are morally considerable I mean that they merit moral consideration in virtue of their moral standing.
In this regard, my approach overlaps in part with Driver (2011), although she is more concerned to set Hume’s claims about animal minds in their historical context and defend them in the light of contemporary cognitive ethology.
See Wolloch (2006) for an overview of Scottish Enlightenment discussions of animals and the usual purposes of these discussions.
See Driver (2011, 145–148) for more on the historical context of Hume’s rejection of what she labels “human exceptionalism”. Driver takes this to be the view that “there is some dramatic difference in kind between human beings and animals that marks us as apart from the natural world and renders animals devoid of moral standing” (2011, 146).
The role of sympathy is more prominent in the Treatise. The sentiment of humanity, which I shall return to below, sometimes plays a similar role in the second Enquiry.
Of course, similarity is not sameness. For example, as I explain in Sect. 10, the principle of analogical reasoning does not license an inference to moral agency in animals.
This claim is of course far more controversial, although it makes sense as a reading if we follow Baier in dismissing the ‘original existence’ passage and allowing that passions can have representational content. More on this point below.
It is clear that for Hume moral judgment does in fact require us to adopt the common point of view. Moreover, it is clear that we are often capable of doing so (however imperfectly) and that this has pragmatic advantages at least insofar as it facilitates conversing together on ‘reasonable terms’ (T.581). The question of whether we should do so is more contested. Cohon (1997) and Korsgaard (1999) have both argued that the common point of view provides a normative standard and not just a descriptive account of moral judgment. While I find this interpretation persuasive, their explanations differ in important ways and I cannot do justice to the details of the debate here.
Driver (2011, 159 ff.) makes this point during her extended discussion of the passage and also emphasizes that Hume’s use of the term ‘justice’ was far more restricted than contemporary use given its basic connection to property rights.
Many thanks to Doug Campbell, Carolyn Mason and an audience at the New Zealand Human-Animal Studies Conference for helpful conversation, feedback and suggestions.
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Turp, MJ. Hume, Humans and Animals. J Ethics 24, 119–136 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-019-09313-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-019-09313-2