Man in the Middle: Animals, Humans and Robots
Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2016 11:24 pm
I find contractualist reasoning fallacious because 1) we care about non sentient, vulnerable babies and so sentience cannot be the only benchmark and 2) just because other mammals are unable to uphold human moral tenets is no reason for humans to "lower themselves" to that base level. Other species cannot do better but we can - theoretically, anyway.Meanwhile, the circle of patiency would also contract if the (aptly-named) contract theorists, such as Hobbes, were correct that moral patients must be moral agents. Such thinkers claim that morality exists only among equals for their mutual benefit, giving them corresponding rights and duties to one another. If nonhuman animals could not have duties because they are not moral agents, they would have no rights and hence not be moral patients either.
Contractualist reasoning strikes me as fallacious since I see rights as emanating from certain inherent qualities of a being, such as sentience, relative to certain inherent qualities of another being, such as rationality. Hence, I believe, nonhuman animals are moral patients even though they might not have the requisite degree or type of rationality to be moral agents.
For me, this statement sums up the author's thoughtful position:
... it may seem reasonable to position human beings at the intersection of nonhuman animals, who are certainly moral patients but possibly not moral agents, and nonanimal robots, who could conceivably become moral agents but perhaps not moral patients. Only humans are unequivocally both.
