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An irreducible understanding of animal dignity

2023; Wiley; Volume: 55; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/josp.12543

1467-9833

Simon Coghlan,

Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment

Alongside lively philosophical debate about human dignity (Etinson, 2020; Rosen, 2012), several philosophers have begun asking whether "dignity" could also illuminate our moral relations with nonhuman animals (e.g., Abbate, 2020; Anderson, 2005; Gruen, 2014; Humphreys, 2016; Nussbaum, 2006; Ortiz, 2004). Increasing talk of animal dignity is also occurring in public and even legal discourse (Kotzmann & Seery, 2017). For example, in a recent habeas corpus hearing for a Bronx Zoo elephant, a Judge declared that the elephant is "a dignified creature" but "there is nothing dignified about her captivity" (Wilson, 2022, p. 4). Such language is perhaps beginning to resonate more with people than it once did. Nonetheless, some philosophers seriously doubt that dignity is a coherent and useful moral idea (Zuolo, 2016). Dressing circus-kept animals in human clothes and laughing at them may strike modern people as cruelly demeaning to those nonhumans. Yet for critics, these apparent assaults on "dignity" are ethically trivial or else merely indirect wrongs—objectionable only because such treatment could upset human witnesses or generally promote animal exploitation (Martin, 2019, p. 94). According to dignity's critics, other moral concepts can far better explain what is wrong with that treatment. Dignity is a complex notion and providing lucid accounts is challenging. Furthermore, philosophical analysis of animal dignity is relatively limited. It warrants greater attention. In this paper, I explore an understanding of animal dignity that seems to be irreducible to a range of other moral concepts and to some other conceptions of dignity. The understanding I explore appears to be a sui generis notion that involves a special kind of non-natural harm and assault upon animals. This special or distinctive harm and assault is related to the cognate notions of defiling, degrading, demeaning, dishonoring, and honoring treatment. Presenting this sui generis understanding requires examining arguably the most compelling current account of animal dignity on offer—a "relational" conception of dignity as social respect or status. Although very important, I shall ask whether there is also another "relational" way of understanding dignity that is irreducible even to that account—although importantly it might complement and deepen it. This suggests that more than one ethically important way of conceiving of dignity is possible. In the following, I outline criticisms of animal dignity with a focus on reductionist attacks, identify a social conception of dignity, reflect on some key examples of human behavior that seem to facilitate understanding of animal dignity, briefly introduce positive forms of irreducible dignity, and consider several objections, before concluding. Like "human dignity" (Cochrane, 2010), "animal dignity" may be attacked as merely rhetorical or as an excessively indeterminate concept. Dignity could mean, for example, inherent value, virtue, social rank, bodily integrity, autonomy…and much more (Schroeder, 2010). However, as I attempt to do below, dignity might be more carefully specified to avoid damaging vagueness. Some pro-animal thinkers worry that "dignity" is too closely associated with higher human abilities and the denigration of nonhumans. Dignity talk, says Will Kymlicka (2018, p. 771), "is saturated with the idea that dignity involves not being treated as an animal." This is true of some analyses of human dignity (e.g., Kateb, 2011), but perhaps there are approaches that avoid throwing animals "under the bus" (Kymlicka, 2018, p. 779)—and that even enlarge our respect for animals. Both human and animal dignity are targets of a reductionist attack by philosophers who are dismissive and sometimes damning of the concept. For example, some philosophers have forcefully claimed that human dignity is a useless concept that simply means respect for persons or autonomy (Macklin, 2003). The reductionist critic says that "dignity," while apparently fine sounding, is ultimately uninformative and replaceable with more fundamental and valuable moral ideas. Federico Zuolo (2016), for instance, argues that reductionism undermines recent characterizations of animal dignity by Michael Meyer and Martha Nussbaum. Meyer (2001) proposes a Kant-inspired "simple dignity," which identifies animal dignity with inherent or intrinsic moral worth. While Kant connected dignity with rational autonomy, the "simple dignity" account says that even without rational autonomy or moral equality with humans, sentient nonhumans nevertheless possess intrinsic worth. They thus also have a dignity (Meyer, 2001, p. 120). Such dignity may also ground various rights and be offended when a nonhuman dignity-bearer is used as a mere means (see Humphreys, 2016). Unlike Meyer, Nussbaum (2006) locates dignity in natural wellbeing and species-typical flourishing. For Nussbaum, dignity involves the realization of various natural animal capabilities—such as emotional expression, play, health, and relationships—that we recognize as important. A life without dignity, on Nussbaum's account, is one that lacks these possibilities for natural flourishing. Thus, animals, like humans, also have dignity. Zuolo attacks Michael Meyer's "simple dignity" as reducible to broad notions of moral considerability and Martha Nussbaum's account as reducible to natural living and wellbeing. Zuolo concludes that animal dignity lacks a distinctive ethical meaning and is best replaced with more informative concepts (Zuolo, 2016, p. 1119). Perhaps this attack is unfairly reductionist. For example, one might say that Nussbaum's naturalistic conception of dignity is not just about natural wellbeing but is also partly constituted by a sense of wonder toward flourishing and of "waste and tragedy" toward damaged lives (Nussbaum, 2006, p. 346). Nonetheless, we might still feel that "dignity" does too little distinctive work in accounts which are so strongly centered on natural wellbeing (Nussbaum) and intrinsic worth (Meyer). This raises the possibility that relational understandings of dignity can better resist reductionism. For even if relational understandings depend on or refer to features like intrinsic moral worth and natural living and wellbeing, they might also include and foreground significant ways of human relating and behaving that render those understandings distinctive or special. By revealing these possibilities, we may cast doubt on reductionist moves that seek to banish talk of dignity. Doing so, however, can create further problems. In particular, any kind of dignity that cannot be reduced to more familiar concepts may be criticized as illusory or morally trivial. It will therefore be necessary for us to say something about why an irreducible understanding of dignity might be morally important and valuable (even if we cannot provide a more extended defense within the confines of this paper). Next, I describe one important relational account—a social conception of dignity—recently advanced by animal philosophers. Comparing and contrasting it with a sui generis understanding will hopefully clarify both these relational understandings and advance discussion about animal dignity. The social (or social-moral) respect or status account locates animal dignity in ways of presenting and viewing ethically valuable individuals and in expressions of moral (dis)respect toward them or their worth (Anderson, 2005, pp. 282–283). Such presentations and expressions occur in the space of social relations (Bird, 2013, p. 161) rather than being principally located in either natural or moral "properties." This account might apply to humans and nonhumans. Social accounts of nonhuman dignity have been developed by Lori Gruen and C.E. Abbate. Gruen describes dignity not as reducible to "properties" like "autonomous nature" (Gruen, 2014, p. 232) but rather as a relational property linked to our own and our community's perception of morally valuable others (Gruen, 2014, p. 234). This understanding has historical connections with "social or civic demands for recognition and respect" and "social harmony and human fulfillment" (Gruen, 2014, p. 234). It thus has intertwined moral and social dimensions. Just as some behavior toward humans "reinforces negative attitudes" toward certain humans (Gruen, 2014, p. 235), so too certain ways in which an animal is presented or treated can tend to undermine (or occasionally promote) moral respect for that individual in society. An example is making animals in zoos or circuses appear ridiculous. Gruen (2014, pp. 238–239) cites zoo enclosures that visibly render the contained animals pathetic and so difficult to morally respect. On Abbate's account, dignity violations "essentially amount to some form of disrespectful treatment" of an individual's inherent value (Abbate, 2020, pp. 771, 776). She draws on Jeremy Waldron's notion of dignity as a "status" in society (Abbate, 2020, p. 772). Unlike inherent value, dignity as a kind of social standing can be affected for good or ill depending on how we treat and relate to those individuals.1 Abbate suggests that disrespectful treatment or ways of viewing humans and animals constitute dignitary wrongs and harms. Such behaviors may cast intrinsically valuable others as objects, instruments, or tools (Abbate, 2020, p. 777). Some forms of disrespect occur simply from, say, inflicting, or attempting but failing to inflict, unnecessary suffering (Abbate, 2020, pp. 777–778). Others are instead culturally created—an example of this disrespect would be if people were to assign a mere number rather than a name to children (Abbate, 2020, p. 779). Our cultures can help determine various treatment as profoundly expressive of disrespect for others' worth, even when the treatment is not otherwise harmful. Abbate claims that dignitary wrongs and harms differ from "ordinary" wrongs and harms since the former do not themselves damage "experiential" welfare by, say, causing suffering or preventing satisfaction (Abbate, 2020, p. 772). Indeed, Abbate's dignitary wrongs and harms can occur in the absence of any ordinary harm—non-experiential welfare harms included2 (Abbate, 2020, p. 776). Dignitary harms follow from dignitary violations. For example, a dignitary harm can result from contemptuously mocking an oblivious animal without this causing any ordinary ill effects for them. Bringing these features together: dignity on the social account concerns behavior toward individuals that socially promotes or expresses insufficient recognition of an individual's intrinsic moral worth (however "worth" is understood). These behaviors are disrespectful ways of wronging and (perhaps) thereby harming valuable individuals, even when they are not at risk of suffering any natural harms. The disrespect can stem from cultural ways of marking an animal's inherent moral worth, from showing contempt, and perhaps from other behaviors with social overtones.3 Like the social conception, a sui generis understanding of dignity relates to apparently distinctive—but often ignored—ways animals are treated. Neither the sui generis nor the social understanding reduces dignity to natural features, such as wellbeing and autonomy, or to moral properties, such as intrinsic worth. Instead, both conceptions link dignity to certain important human behaviors toward individuals. However, although sui generis dignity is relational, it is arguably not reducible to the social form of dignity. I shall suggest that when we reflect on certain telling experiences or descriptions of animal treatment, it does not always seem possible to explain—or to fully explain—those phenomena by means of the social account. Nonetheless, I shall also suggest that a sui generis kind of dignity can sometimes complement and deepen the social conception. In outlining an understanding of dignity irreducible to other moral concepts and to the social account of dignity, it will help to focus on several telling examples. These examples relate to experiences in which people have felt compelled to employ the term "dignity" and related moral terms such as "degrade," "defile," "demean," and "dishonor." For convenience, I shall call these terms d-terms. These d-terms are part of what I call "dignity language." The approach here tracks Kaufmann et al.'s (2011, p. 24:2) suggestion that conceptual investigation of dignity profits from starting not with abstract ethical conceptions (e.g., of inherent worth) but with examples of dignity violations, such as the degradations, defilements, and humiliations that strike us as morally compelling phenomena (see also Luban, 2009; Margalit, 1998). sport brightly-colored clown collars…In their paws they clutch balloons, on a string…It makes me feel sorry, embarrassed for the bear…stripped of its natural nakedness, and dressed up like a clown. To be looked at and laughed at and photographed for tourists. I think of the bear as defiled, and the photographer as pimp (Cataldi, 2002, p. 106). Cataldi's choice of the term "defiled" to describe her morally unsettling experience is noteworthy. For Cataldi, rejecting such language or substituting it with ideas of physical cruelty or diminished flourishing, would obscure rather than clarify the full nature of the assault on those bears. The violation here thus appears to be "non-natural." It would be simpler to cart the bags to the incinerator immediately after the [killing] session and leave them there for the incinerator crew to dispose of. But that would mean leaving them on the dump with the rest of the weekend's scourings…He is not prepared to inflict such dishonour on them (Coetzee, 1999, p. 144). Coetzee suggests that dishonoring the corpses5 by leaving them amongst the rubbish or beating them is not just distressing for Lurie, but wrong and bad for the dead dogs, even though they experience nothing and suffer no natural harms. This parallels a conviction many (most?) people have that dead humans can be wronged and even harmed when their bodies are "desecrated." The next example concerns not post-mortem indignity, but putative indignity in the act of killing. Cat shovel case: Philosopher Raimond Gaita tells a story of his cat Tosca being mortally wounded by his dog at his home. Witnessing the cat's terrible suffering, Gaita considers "putting her out of her misery" (Gaita, 2016, p. 94) by hitting her on the head with a near-to-hand shovel, but Tosca disappears. Later, he comes to realize with some shock that to kill her like that, though painless and merciful, would have dishonored her. Gaita explicitly connects such dishonoring with the idea of assaulting animal dignity (Gaita, 2016, p. 35). For Gaita, dignity does not concern natural welfare, inherent worth, or various familiar animal rights (e.g., the right to life or to kind treatment). The wrong that would have been done to Tosca by striking her with a shovel was not about ending her life or hurting her. In fact, Gaita believed that ending her life and her suffering (perhaps by taking her to a veterinarian for euthanasia by lethal injection) was morally right. Nonetheless, he believed that killing her with a shovel would have dishonored her and thus offended her dignity.6 Baboon ridicule case: Philosopher Cora Diamond relates a scene7 in which a worker at a Head Injury Lab poses with a baboon "who has massive cranial hemispherical sutures." The lab staff "laugh at the animal, whom they tease as having the 'punk' look" (Diamond, 2001, p. 148, fn 41). Diamond suggests that "moral disgust" at the baboon's treatment "may be compared with the response of the Dayaks in Borneo to ridiculing or humiliating an animal, to dressing it (for example) in human clothes 'in parody of humanity'." For the Dayaks, "this is a great crime, on the level of incest" (Diamond, 2001, p. 137). Diamond might well say that the treatment demeans or degrades the baboon and thereby wrongs her. Essential to Diamond's point is that the baboon is a genuine victim: she is harmed by the ridicule even though she lacks desires about not being humiliated and is not violated or harmed in any "naturalistic sense" (Diamond, 2001, p. 137). Damage to, say, the baboon's natural capabilities, or to her ability to flourish according to her telos (Schultz-Bergin, 2017, p. 844), is not to Diamond's point.8 The above examples highlight uses of our "d-terms," that is, defiling, degrading, demeaning, and dishonoring treatment. They also highlight a concern about dignity, understood via these terms, that differs from concern focused on, say, inherent worth or rights, or "natural" properties like suffering, flourishing, and autonomy. Although one may choose to interpret the moral import of these examples as being underpinned by these notions,9 some of the above authors carefully distinguish these moral phenomena from the more familiar ethical categories. Indeed, they relate those scenes precisely because they believe they reveal something morally distinctive or unique. This is the case even if various naturalistic features may be related to important ethical aspects of such treatment (more on this later) and even if significant natural harms often accompany dignitary assaults. A final point about these examples. Will Kymlicka (2018, p. 770) suggests that some people find dignity an "awkward or unnatural" term for animals. These examples, however, illustrate an opposite response. Clearly some people feel that "dignity language" is necessary to adequately describe both the moral nature and seriousness10 of some forms of treatment. Given that "dignity" and our "d-terms" may be indispensable to moral description in a range of cases, it seems worthwhile examining what they might show about the possible meaning(s) of dignity. We have seen some evidence that not all instances of dignity language are reducible to various familiar morally important concepts; we shall now consider some further evidence. In this section, I will also consider reasons for thinking that relational kinds of dignity involving our d-terms need not be always or fully explainable by the social account. That could be an important finding about the meanings of dignity. I shall introduce this discussion with three human examples. As with the social account, a sui generis understanding of dignity possibly applies to both humans and animals. Jo cheats on an important assignment by stealing and submitting her friend Farida's essay as her own. In addition, Jo, who envies Farida's commitment to study, deletes most of Farida's essay on her computer out of spite. Farida unwittingly submits the doctored essay. Jo receives an excellent grade and Farida fails the assignment. Farida's distraught reaction to the unexpected results pleases Jo immensely. Leaving a city bar, Adam and Will encounter a drunken homeless man passed out on the roadside and decide it would be funny to urinate on him. They laugh and point at the old man as they urinate and continue laughing at him as they walk away. The homeless man, who has a heart condition, never wakes up. Cathy, a philosopher with terminal cancer, insists to her close and only friend Brian that she does not care what happens to her body after death since she will no longer exist and cannot be harmed. She tells Brian: "I don't want a funeral—just put me out with the garbage. Apart from you, my family and friends are all gone, so no-one will even notice that I have died, let alone be upset. You know, the way society treats dead bodies is irrational and sentimental." Cathy dies and Brian, grieving but convinced by Cathy's arguments, dumps her body one night at the local tip under a pile of rubbish he has been meaning to dispose of. No-one finds out. How might we morally characterize the above behaviors? In the essay cheating case, we might think that Jo wrongs Farida by betraying their friendship and causing her to suffer out of envy. We might perhaps also say that Jo treats Farida as a mere means to her own (selfish) ends and without regard to Farida's autonomy or inherent worth. It seems less likely, however, that we would describe Jo as defiling or degrading Farida. Even supposing someone did use those terms, we may well think that such a description could be translated with improved clarity into other moral concepts, such as envy, injustice, wrongful harming, treating as mere means, betrayal, disrespecting autonomy, or moral worth, and so on. Thus, the essay cheating example does not appear to be a good example of dignity understood as degrading or defiling treatment. In contrast with that case, we may feel that our "d-terms" are not only well-suited but also indispensable to a full characterization of the behavior present in the homeless man and body disposal cases. To be sure, we might also say that the old homeless man is (say) treated unjustly and in ways that damage his autonomy (although he never finds out, he could have objected to being urinated on given the opportunity). Nonetheless, many people would surely say that this man is also defiled or degraded by his treatment. Furthermore, at least some people will feel that the dead Cathy is defiled by being placed on the rubbish tip, despite suffering no natural harm and no violation of her autonomy (her corpse was treated according to her wishes). We thus have a reason for saying that dignity language (in the form of our d-terms) is both appropriate and necessary to fully understanding the moral circumstances in the last two cases. If that is so, it seems that reductionism, though perhaps on-target for the essay cheating example, is off-target for the homeless man and body disposal examples. What would the social account say here? That account resists reducing dignity to various other, familiar moral ideas and implies that the degrading treatment of the homeless man and the deceased woman are distinctive dignitary violations and/or dignitary harms against those individuals. The social account explains that kind of violation in terms of the social promotion or expression of disrespect for their intrinsic moral worth. For example, the behaviors might express a sense of reduced human worth (body disposal case) or moral superiority (homeless man case). Accordingly, urinating on the old homeless man and putting Cathy's body on the rubbish tip are violations, potentially serious ones, of those individuals' social status. Such behaviors, this account says, convey or express the idea that those individuals are not fully worthy of moral respect or have little or less intrinsic moral worth.11 Hence, there are significant violations and harms here even though the victims do not suffer natural harms or, in Cathy's case at least, infringements of autonomy. The social account appears to resist crude reductionism and tells a compelling story about the moral seriousness of kinds of degrading, demeaning, and defiling treatment. However, we may ask whether it provides a full understanding of dignitary assaults and harms. It would not do so if there were important forms of dignity that could not be entirely explained by it. Suppose we suggest that some behaviors are defiling whether or not they promote or express disrespect for another's moral worth. For example, suppose we claim that the defilement of the dead Cathy need not be constituted by the social promotion or expression of moral disrespect, since Cathy requests that her body is thrown on the tip and Brian's actions are never discovered. Moreover, Brian deeply respects his friend Cathy and her moral worth—he just agrees with her that it is sentimental nonsense to believe that the "desecration" of her body has any intrinsic (as opposed to indirect) moral significance. This case, it might be said, differs from the homeless man case where it seems more natural to think that Will and Adam's behavior socially humiliates the already socially diminished "drunk bum." However, a social account proponent may still feel that Cathy's treatment does express (even if it does not socially promote) disrespect for her, notwithstanding all the caveats we have noted. For, this proponent may argue, our culture, or indeed any other known culture, regards putting dead people on rubbish dumps as grossly disrespectful of their worth as human beings. While this is true, it does not follow that an expression of lesser worth exhausts the meanings of dignity or our d-terms here. Here is one reason. Imagine that society comes to regard the treatment of dead human bodies as irrelevant to the recognition of human moral worth. Instead, it socially marks the worth of human beings in other ways. This society, we can suppose, agrees with Brian and Cathy that the various ways that previous human cultures have treated dead bodies is sentimental and that disposing of bodies without ceremony in rubbish tips is entirely permissible and rational. Yet some of us might still feel that this society wrongly defiles its dead. The social account seems to struggle to accommodate this apparent assault on dignity. Our cat shovel case makes a similar point for animals. According to the social account, had Gaita killed Tosca with a shovel he would have degraded or defiled her (if he did) by expressing disrespect for Tosca's intrinsic moral worth. The problem, however, is that our culture presumably does not mark the killing of a suffering cat with a shovel as a social expression of disrespect for the animal. In fact, many people would say the opposite: putting the dying cat "out of her misery" with the nearest effective implement is exactly what the cat's moral worth calls for. Since the act may be praised as compassionate and respectful, perhaps the cat's defilement cannot be accounted for in social-moral terms.12 Perhaps this is too fast. For a social account proponent might reply that because our culture regards killing humans in that way as defiling, it therefore expresses disrespect for animals to treat them like that. That is no doubt an important observation. Even so, there is a related and perhaps more important point to make, which apparently supports our line of argument: Saying that certain treatment is degrading or defiling helps to explain why that treatment can express social denigration toward the recipient. That is, some behaviors owe at least part of their socially expressive power to the fact that they degrade, dishonor, demean, or defile as such. Let us admit that killing Tosca with a shovel in those circumstances expresses social disrespect for her as a morally valuable being. Why should it do that? One plausible answer is, "because it defiles her." Here it seems the moral defilement helps explain the social understanding of dignity, rather than the other way around. And something similar perhaps applies to the body-on-the-tip case: Brian (unwittingly) expresses a social kind of disrespect for the deceased Cathy because his act (unintentionally)13 defiles her. In defending her social account, Abbate writes: "to say that animals can be numbered instead of named and that their corpses can be consumed is…to express that they are not entitled to respect" (Abbate, 2020, p. 780). That may be true. But perhaps a significant part of the reason why giving certain animals numbers instead of names and eating their corpses are activities that express or socially signal disrespect is that such treatment defiles or degrades those animals. If we only understand dignity via the social status account, then we arguably overlook an important type or dimension of dignity that is not fully explainable in terms of it. Consider another illustration, concerning humans. Rape of the enemy and mutilating enemy corpses are war crimes, which convey contemptuous disrespect for the enemy. In their power to express the lesser worth of the other, such actions may stand on a level with other atrocities of war, such as deliberately inflicting unrelenting fear and suffering on a despised, unjustly attacked enemy. But we might think that rape and the mutilation of the dead have that expressive quality at least in part because they are the kinds of "outrages upon personal dignity" that involve defiling and degrading treatment. That is why those waging war may choose them. Unjustly inflicting great fear and suffering on the enemy may indeed be equally terrible and also powerfully expressive of contempt and low moral worth. But they are not (or need not be) examples of defilement. If we did not recognize rape or bodily desecration as degrading or defiling on some other or prior level, it seems unclear why we would view such treatment as powerfully expressive of the idea that those so treated lack intrinsic moral worth. Or, if that is too strong, it still seems to make sense to think the desecration of corpses in war (which incidentally causes no natural harm to the dead people) is very effective at expressing the worthlessness or inequality of the enemy because there is something already particularly morally terrible and morally special about treating bodies in those ways. And what is morally terrible and special, on this view, is the defilement. It thus appears that what makes certain treatment defiling or degrading is not "just" that we (or our culture) happen to identify it as expressive of social disrespect or reduced status, but that we (and our culture) can regard that treatment as an affront to the other's standing at least partly because it is already degrading. To be clear, some of our "d-terms" terms obviously can be used in ways that primarily connote social disrespect or denigration. As others have said, "degrade" can naturally intimate a "lowering of moral status" (Hill, 1987, p. 40). "Demean" seems somewhat similar. We can acknowledge, then, that some kinds of (say) degrading treatment are degrading partly or even principally because they express the idea that a human or nonhuman is undeserving or less deserving