“The reckless hardihood of a simple and barbarous people is essentially unconscious, just as the action of a hawk or weasel is unconscious when it seizes its prey; but when consciousness is once awakened, and a doubt arises as to the morality of the action, the habit begins of giving sophistical reasons for practices that cannot be justified.” -Henry Salt, Seventy Years Among Savages
Contractarianism is a trendy view to fall back on when faced with the challenge of animal rights. In response to the argument from marginal cases, contractarians (or those partial to this moral thinking) will often claim that our moral obligations to non-rational humans is grounded in our feelings toward them or, more broadly, our relations to them. It’s wrong to slaughter a severely mentally enfeebled human, the contractarian will claim, because this human holds some relation to us (those who, apparently, actually do matter). Non-human animals do not share this relation us. Therefore, it’s wrong to slaughter non-rational humans, but permissible to slaughter non-human animals.
For an account of the wrongdoing, the slaughter of a severely mentally enfeebled human would distress the rational agents to whom we do owe direct duties. This distress may come from the severely mentally enfeebled human being a family member, or this sympathy may hold because of the physical similarities (making it easier to relate) between the severely mentally enfeebled human and the rational human. And, perhaps most famously when it comes to talk of indirect duties, we have a duty not to slaughter, say, severely mentally enfeebled humans because it may cause us to be more liable to harm rational humans. The reasons can be anything, so long as it invokes a significant relation between us and severely mentally enfeebled humans. We ought not to slaughter non-rational humans only out of care for rational humans.
This position, though dead on arrival, is also incredibly common. I cannot think of a better way to expose the inadequacies of contractarianism of this form other than by simply laying out its account and entailment of the moral treatment owed to severely mentally enfeebled humans. So, we saw the account, let’s look at the entailment.
To repeat, the duties owed—if any—to severely mentally enfeebled humans are indirect. These duties exist insofar as there are rational agents—those who are owed direct duties—have the required attitudes or are harmed themselves by the treatment of the non-rational. For example, I do not have a direct duty to my neighbor’s car. I owe nothing to the car itself. I do, however, have an indirect duty not to damage my neighbor’s car because of how it would harm him (he’d be very upset if I damaged his property). Let’s say, however, that my neighbor (or anyone else) did not care whether I damaged his car or not, and let’s say damaging his property would not make me more likely to damage the property of people who do care about their things. Well, in such a world, any indirect duty not to damage his car would disappear.
Under contractarianism, severely mentally enfeebled humans and non-human animals find themselves as the moral equivalent of the car. If we lived in a world in which we did not hold a certain relation to the severely mentally enfeebled, it would be permissible to slaughter, torture, and abuse them. Perhaps this possible world gets a lot of joy from torturing and slaughtering non-rational humans. This world just simply has no feelings of benevolence toward non-rational humans. Further, inflicting pain on non-rational beings give rational beings a better appreciation for the moral significance of the pain of other rational beings–and rational beings only. It would not, contrary the contingent psychological worries of Aquinas, Locke, and Kant, make rational agents more likely to harm or violate their duties to other rational agents.
“That looks really painful, so I best not do it to who really matters: Rational humans. Now, back to torturing this mentally retarded person for fun.”
This is the absurd view of morality that many anti-vegans retreat to when faced with the obvious immorality of harming, abusing, exploiting, torturing, and killing innocent, vulnerable individuals. Not only does such a dishonest acceptance of a theory permit vicious treatment of non-rational humans and non-human animals, but, on the face of it, it provides a clearly flimsy account of the moral status of non-rational humans.
This flimsy account, of course, gets the contractarian into the mess of permitting the torture of the mentally enfeebled, but even absent these problems, one must ask:
Is torturing severely mentally enfeebled persons simply wrong because it would hurt my feelings (or the feelings of others) and because it would cause me (or others) to violate the duties I owe to other rational agents?
Or, building off the first answer, is it wrong, also, to torture severely mentally enfeebled persons because they have interests they would rather fulfill that frustrate, they can experience pain, they have a life of their own, and what happens to them matters to them?
Which, honestly, gives a better picture of the moral status of non-rational humans? The former has been dealt with, and opting for it seems more of a disingenuous ad hoc so as to preserve philosophical coherency and to avoid making the effort to go vegan. The latter, while may not offering a complete picture, intuitively gives us a better account of the moral status of non-rational humans, but, by extension, so too does it offer a moral account of non-human animals, as most also exhibit many—if not all—of these characteristics. This being the case, then we ought to take seriously the possibility of treating non-human animals with respect.
Indy 