Paola Cavalieri

In recent years, nonhuman animals have been at the centre of an intense philosophical debate. In particular, many authors have criticised traditional morality, maintaining that the way in which we treat members of other species is ethically indefensible. We routinely use animals as means to our ends - in fact, we treat them in ways in which we would deem it profoundly immoral to treat human beings. Though they are "moral patients" - that is, beings whose treatment may be subject to moral evaluation - their status is infinitely inferior to ours. Are such double standards warranted? And, if so, on what grounds?

While not being completely overlooked by philosophers, the first justification offered is powerful and widespread at the societal level, mainly due to its simplicity. To the question of what divides us from the other animals, the answer is: the fact that they are not human. On such a view, what makes the difference is the possession, or lack, of a genotype characteristic of the species Homo sapiens. Is this a good reply? No. Those appealing to species membership work within the framework of the human egalitarian paradigm. And it is just the line of reasoning that supports human equality that implies, by denying the moral relevance of race or sex membership, the rejection of the idea that species membership in itself can mark a difference in moral status. If one claims that biological characteristics like race and sex cannot play a role in ethics, how can one attribute a role to another biological characteristic such as species membership? Moral views that, while rejecting racism and sexism, accept "speciesism" - the view that grants members of our own species special moral status - are internally inconsistent.

Sheer speciesism is hardly plausible. But there are more sophisticated ways of defending our current double standards to which the theoretical defenders of the status quo tend to turn. For most philosophers, it is not species membership but rather the possession of rationality that plays a central role. We can set aside for the sake of argument the (questionable) assumption that ration ality is a human prerogative in order to focus on the moral significance attached to rationality.

A well-known argument, going back at least to Kant, hinges upon the idea that rational beings are the existence condition of morality. Ethical norms are addressed to a particular kind of being - moral agents. Moral agents are those rational beings whose behaviour can be subject to moral evaluation. If moral agents did not exist, there could be no ethical norms. As a consequence, ethics is essentially an affair of moral agents. Despite its superficial plausibility, this argument is based on a misunderstanding. Its conclusion is reached by the shift from the idea that only rational beings can be morally responsible to the idea that only what is done to rational beings has (full) moral weight. But the how, that is, the possibility of morality, is one thing; the what, that is, the object of morality, is another. To acknowledge that moral agents make morality possible does not mean to make them the only (full) moral patients. That we do not really hold this view is shown by the fact that we do not think that small children, or intellectually disabled individuals, insofar as they are unable to conform to ethical norms, should be denied special moral status.

A second, and more radically exclusive, version of the appeal to rationality ascribes instead a particular kind of instrumental value to this characteristic. The core notion is that introduction into the moral community can be justified through some sort of agreement. Since in order to abide by the agreement one must be rational, the agreement will include only rational beings, who will be the only moral patients. In this light, moral norms are the norms with which rational, self-interested individuals would agree to comply on condition that others undertook to do so as well. If the previous argument suggests the contemporary position of John Rawls, here we see the influence of the mutual advantage account of contractarianism of Hobbesian descent. But this approach has unacceptable consequences. For since self-interested contractors gain no advantage from accepting principles that offer guarantees to individuals unable to give any guarantee in return, they can ignore the interests of those who cannot reciprocate. But if the golden rule "treat others as you would have them treat you" is replaced by what we might call the silver rule, "treat others as they would treat you," mutual advantage has the devastating effect of driving ethical impartiality off the stage. Once more, we show that we clearly grasp this when we do not deprive of rights those juvenile or impaired or just future human beings who cannot have duties to us.

Though many other defences of the doctrine of human superiority have been put forward, the appeal to species membership, the appeal to the possession of rationality as a precondition of morals, and the appeal to this very same characteristic as a means to intersubjective agreement are certainly the most basic, around which all the others revolve. If none of them can justify maintaining nonhuman animals in their present inferior moral condition, it seems plausible to infer that our current attitude is deeply flawed. But what kind of perspective should be adopted in its place? To answer this question, many of the critics of traditional morality tend to appeal to their own specific normative positions. This is not necessary, however. We already have at our disposal a theory that, if impartially considered, can stand all the previous criticisms. It is the cluster of principles and judgments that have been recently gathered under the heading of the universal doctrine of human rights.

At the centre of human rights theory lies the protection of the vital interests - in welfare, in freedom and in life - of some beings. Of which beings, exactly? Although the most common, and apparently tautological, answer is "of human beings", such a move is, as we have seen, precluded by the fact that discrimination based on species is analogous to the forms of discrimination that the very doctrine condemns in sexism and racism. Unlike drafters of political manifestos, philosophers confronting the question seem to be aware of this problem and, when called into play, reference to species is introduced in a hurried and oblique way. What, then, can play the role of explaining the why of human rights - of illuminating, that is, what it is that, in human beings, justifies the attribution of equal fundamental protection?

Among the solutions advanced, the most defensible appears to be the one put forward by a line of argument appearing at the beginning of the 1960s, and culminating in the elaboration offered by the American philosopher Alan Gewirth. According to such a line, the criterion for the access to the protection that human rights provide lies only in being an agent - an intentional being who cares about her goals and wants to achieve them. All intentional beings are characterised by the capacity to enjoy freedom and welfare (and life which is a precondition for them) both directly, and as prerequisites for action; and, for all these beings, the intrinsic value of their enjoyment is the same. To choose as a criterion, instead of intentionality, any other characteristic - be it rationality or any other among the cognitive skills traditionally seen as "superior" - would be arbitrary, as it would exclude from consideration interests which are relevantly similar in that they are equally vital for their bearers.

Once articulated, this answer - which has among other things the important effect of barring the way to discredited perfectionist worldviews - appears obvious. And yet, it involves a corollary which is not equally obvious: that, on the basis of the very doctrine that establishes them, human rights are not merely human. Not only does the implicit acceptance of the idea that species membership is not morally relevant eliminate from the theory any structural reference to the possession of a genotype Homo sapiens, but the charge to secure equal fundamental rights for all human beings, including the non-ra tional ones, implies that the criterion for the ascription of such rights must lie at a cognitive level accessible to a large number of nonhuman animals.

What can it mean to extend fundamental rights beyond the boundaries of our species? In this regard, it should be noted that two main features define the particular class of moral rights that we label as human rights. On the one hand, in spite of the attempts to embody in the doctrine some positive rights, or rights to assistance, human rights remain fundamentally negative rights, or rights to non-interference. On the other, since human rights developed as an answer to the forms of institutionalised violence and discrimination which marked the first half of the twentieth century, the model of both their implementation and of their violation is based on the organisation and the action of the state.

Let's therefore reconsider the present situation in the light of these aspects. Billions of animals who meet the requisite of intentionality are harmed, confined and killed in the pursuit of human goals. But such harm, confinement, and killing are just the opposite of that protection from institutional interference that human rights theory aims at granting. Consequently, a fair implementation of the theory would require a legal change which would imply for the animals in question a shift from the condition of objects to that of subjects of rights, and a general prohibition of the exploitative practices that are made possible by their present status.

Thus it seems that, far from being at the bottom of a moral pyramid at the apex of which we safely stand, (most) nonhumans confront us with all the force of a justified ethical demand. Removed as it may seem from our everyday reality, this conclusion will perhaps come as no surprise to those of us who see moral progress as the history of replacing hierarchical visions with presumptions in favour of equality.

Paola Cavalieri (gap-etica@planet.it) is editor of the international philosophy journal Etica & Animali, author of The Animal Question (OUP) and the co-editor of The Great Ape Project (Fourth Estate).