Álvaro Rodríguez-González Barredo

Lest he extinguish [the kindly and humane qualities in himself], [man] must already practise a similar kindliness towards animals; for a person who already displays such cruelty to animals is also no less hardened towards men. We can already know the human heart even in regard to animals. […] The more we devote ourselves to observing animals and their behaviour, the more we love them, on seeing how greatly they care for their young; in such a context, we cannot even contemplate cruelty to a wolf.

Collins’ Lectures on Moral Philosophy, 27: 459

1

We are, thankfully, well past the point where I need to introduce a post of this sort by pointing out how odd an ally Kant is if we are discussing animal ethics. Kant is very explicit that he himself didn’t think that we had any duties towards non-human animals, let alone that they had rights. But I’m far from the first person to note that Kant’s philosophy contains insights that can be helpful to discuss our ethical obligations towards other species; most notable, of course, is Korsgaard (2018). This is especially helpful if we have reasons to be suspicious of utilitarianism, however easier a utilitarian grounding of animal ethics may be.

This week, though, I don’t intend to go down this route, which has already been done, anyway. Rather, I want to present a very simple, relatively Kantian argument against a position that, rare as it is among philosophers nowadays, finds its place time and again in the public discourse around non-human animals: scepticism about animal suffering.

2

Kant has a roundabout way of saying that we shouldn’t harm animals. Only rational beings – including those that, at a given time, cannot exercise their rationality (MS 6: 280-1) – are persons endowed with dignity, and only finite rational beings can demand that we behave in certain ways towards them, and thus impose duties on us. However, people who find enjoyment in torturing animals, says Kant, and quite rightly, prove to have an odious character and desensitize themselves from the pain they may inflict on their fellows.

There is something somewhat strange about his position, however. If animals were “mere things” (MS 6: 223), over which we have full right to do as we wish, why exactly would it be conducive to a bad moral character to mistreat them? Let’s say we believed, as Descartes famously did, that animals were mere automata. We may have an instinctive reflect to see ourselves in other beings that look like us, but if we are convinced that there’s a metaphysical gap of the right sort between them and ours, we should eventually leave those feelings behind, shouldn’t we?

3

Kant doesn’t allow suffering to be an immediate ground of duties or of rights. We have a duty not to inflict harm on other people because they are free beings with legitimate interests with which pain and harm clash. But say we do, maybe because we agree, with Korsgaard, that pain is always some sort of reason

When you pity a suffering animal, it is because you are perceiving a reason. An animal’s cries express pain, and they mean that there is a reason, a reason to change its condition. And you can no more hear the cries of an animal as mere noise than you can the words of a person.

The sources of normativity, 27: p. 153

Or, otherwise, simply because we think pain should be avoided. We can put together an argument that goes like this:

(1) It is bad to cause senseless suffering.
(2) It is possible to cause senseless suffering to non-human animals.
(3) Therefore, it is bad to cause senseless suffering to non-human animals.

We can ground (1) on very different considerations, we can even do it in Kant’s indirect fashion, due to the effects it would have in our character. For what concerns us, it is just an apparently uncontroversial thesis, which each person can justify as they see fit.

4

This begs the question, however, why did Kant not take the easier, Cartesian route into denying animal rights? If animals weren’t capable of suffering in the sense necessary for it to affect negatively into our character, then Kant’s account wouldn’t need to be this convoluted. Of course, this wasn’t his call to make – either animals suffer, or they don’t, and Kant thought it obvious that they did.

We cannot “look inside” the mind of other living beings and experience pain for them. What goes on when we see another animal, however, according to Kant? Living beings are such that we cannot be sceptical about their existence. Very much skimming over the details – in a way that will be doubtlessly gritting to anyone familiar with Kant’s theory of organisms – there is a sense in which we cannot doubt or deny that other living beings have an existence external to ours. As self-moving entities which aren’t the product of human art, they exhibit an internal unity that isn’t owed to us. They have a “formative power” in themselves, as Kant says (KU 5: 374). With animals in particular, this internal unity of theirs is manifested, as Aristotle already believed, through their capacity to act following desired objects (see Nunez, 2021 for more on Kant on life). Though unfree, they have a will that directs their action towards that which they want. What comes with our bare knowledge of animals is an understanding that they pursue what feels good to them and can fail to get that, in much of the same way that humans, when not using their unique capabilities, do.

But surely this is antiquated biology we should pay no especial attention to. This may be so, but let’s consider how we sense the pain in other humans. Though we have a special tool in language to communicate our mental states, recall the earlier quote by Korsgaard. Put in the negative, just as we can ignore the suffering of animals, we can ignore what other people say to us. Even more, we can play the scepticism game with the suffering of those people who cannot say anything to us, for whatever reason that may be. Kant, however, is very uninterested in going along with this sort of sceptical concern. The inner states of others are never up for debate, regardless of what their biology may ultimately look like; our experience of people is the way it is, and we have no reason to suspend our belief to that regard. Likewise, we experience animals the way we do. Though the only example of a will moved by representations we have is our own, we have no warrant in denying it to others. Denying the suffering of a crying animal is on a similar level of frivolousness.

5

Whether a specific living being is capable of pain, or of “phenomenal pain”, or what have you, is likely a matter of fact, or close to it, and it cannot be settled a priori. There is invaluable research being conducted at the moment, trying to find new proxies for pain in fringe scenarios where it isn’t as readily evident. But many people are very ready to play the sceptical card in otherwise uncontroversial cases. To them, I heartily recommend Kantian prudence.

It is clear that Kant had no doubts about the reality of animal suffering and the noxious character that carelessly hurting or even being ungrateful towards other animals showcases. If I am right, this stance comes from a general suspicion towards those kinds of sceptical positions. If someone is willing to ignore the wailing of a wounded dog, they may as well believe that dogs do not exist. A scepticism that exerts such violence against what’s evident in our experience would, at least, need some justifying, and, in this case, there is none to be found.

6

If we agree, Kantianly or not, that senseless pain is bad, and that we have a duty not to inflict it, then we have a special concern in not risking it either. A maxim of safety (cf. R 6: 189) applies here. If we have reason to believe that an act of ours is going to cause pain, we better withhold it all things being equal, instead of having free range until a confirmation in the positive arrives. And, with many animals, we have pretty good reason to believe that is the case. We, after all, don’t wait for someone who’s drowning to prove their phenomenal consciousness to us, nor do we let people die because, for what we know, they may be philosophical zombies. Kant, for all his downsides, knew what is worth doubting about, and what isn’t.

Korsgaard, C. (1996) The Sources of Normativity, Cambridge UP.

Korsgaard, C. (2018) Fellow creatures, Oxford UP.

Nunez, T. (2021) “Kant on Vital Forces and the Analogy with Life”, In Camilla Serck-Hanssen & Beatrix Himmelmann (eds.), The Court of Reason: Proceedings of the 13th International Kant Congress. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 961-972.