Premium
Moral Individualism, Moral Relationalism, and Obligations to Non‐human Animals
Author(s) -
May Todd
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of applied philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.339
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1468-5930
pISSN - 0264-3758
DOI - 10.1111/japp.12055
Subject(s) - individualism , argument (complex analysis) , epistemology , moral disengagement , salient , relation (database) , sociology , moral authority , moral psychology , social cognitive theory of morality , non human , moral reasoning , environmental ethics , social psychology , philosophy , psychology , law , political science , biology , biochemistry , database , computer science
Moral individualists like J eff M c M ahan and P eter S inger argue that our moral obligations to animals, both human and non‐human, are grounded in the morally salient capacities of those animals. By contrast, what might be called moral relationalists argue that our obligations to non‐human animals are grounded in our relationship to them. Moral relationalists are of various kinds, from relationalists regarding assistance to animals, such as C lare P almer and E lizabeth A nderson, to relationalists grounded in a Wittgensteinian view of human practice, such as C ora D iamond and A lice C rary. This article argues that there are, in fact, two distinct types of moral reasons, those based on salient capacities and those based on relationships. Neither type of reason is reducible to the other, and there is no third type to which to reduce them both. Any attempt at reduction would run counter to deep intuitions about our moral relation to non‐human animals as well as to other humans. Among the implications of this is that certain kinds of arguments, such as the argument from marginal cases, seem to be incomplete precisely because they do not capture the complexity of our moral relations to non‐human animals.