Q: What is it about subjecthood that makes it immoral to own [a subject]?
A: I said in my Q&A that it is immoral to own a being that was a subject of a life (SOALs) because it is immoral to interfere with a SOALs interests. That's sort of hard to defend because we need to figure out what is in an animal's interest. Do most animals have anything more than immediate interests? Does this mean that we can't ever constrain an animal because that animal would presumably always be interested in escaping from those constraints?
There is a difference between conscious interests and psychological and physical interests. The conscious interests of animals aim at satisfying those psychological and physical interests which the conscious mind of the animal might not be equipped to properly provide for, especially if the animal is a member of human society. Thus it is not morally wrong to stop a pig consciously in pursuit of food from walking over a cliff because it's conscious mind is not able to attend to the pigs fundamental interests. Similarly, restraining a dog in the appropriate social situations may be necessary because it relies on it's participation in human society for it's psychological and physiological needs.
A: I said in my Q&A that it is immoral to own a being that was a subject of a life (SOALs) because it is immoral to interfere with a SOALs interests. That's sort of hard to defend because we need to figure out what is in an animal's interest. Do most animals have anything more than immediate interests? Does this mean that we can't ever constrain an animal because that animal would presumably always be interested in escaping from those constraints?
There is a difference between conscious interests and psychological and physical interests. The conscious interests of animals aim at satisfying those psychological and physical interests which the conscious mind of the animal might not be equipped to properly provide for, especially if the animal is a member of human society. Thus it is not morally wrong to stop a pig consciously in pursuit of food from walking over a cliff because it's conscious mind is not able to attend to the pigs fundamental interests. Similarly, restraining a dog in the appropriate social situations may be necessary because it relies on it's participation in human society for it's psychological and physiological needs.
I would agree with your assessment of our moral ability to constrain non-human animals in certain situation. I would compare our ability to interfere with the lives of non-humans to our ability to interfere with the lives of human children.
ReplyDeleteHuman children certainly have conscious, physiological, and psychological interests. We have the moral ability, and perhaps even the moral obligation to prevent children from causing severe harm to themselves. We should prevent children from crossing busy roads, doing hard drugs, harming other people, et cetera. From this I suppose we'd have to conclude that we are obligated to take care on non-human animals in the same way. Though this might be dangerous, if we take the argument to it's absurd conclusion: we are morally obligated to prevent as much serious harm as we can.
I do wonder if, to get around this, we can make a distinction between the animals of whom we are guardians and animals who don't have guardians. The distinction seems (and probably is) irrelevant, but I can't see how else we could avoid the conclusion and it's negative consequences.