Sara asked:

What weight should animals have in our moral calculations?

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Kant, and more latterly Roger Scruton in his new book on animal rights, would hold that we need not
recognise animals in our moral calculations at all, since they are not members of our moral
community. We might act morally towards animals, but they cannot act morally towards us. We take
account of the feelings of pets to a large extent because we take them into our homes and regard
them as part of our community insofar as we love them and expect to abide by certain rules. But there
is nothing particularly moral about this. We want to do it because it gives us pleasure.

However, an alternative view is that we should take a moral approach to animals because we do, in
fact, and by and large, care about them. Hence we have animal rights movements, anti-fox hunting
campaigns and laws, vegetarians, rescue centres for pets, etc. But the people behind these
movements are individuals with a cause and there are any number of reasons for supporting these
sorts of causes which are not moral at all. Furthermore, it is easy enough to take a moral attitude
towards dogs, cats and horses because we regard them as tame. We can care about the conditions
of cows, sheep and lambs because they enhance our countryside and we want to eat healthy
animals. Wild and vicious animals are not easy to care about. We might not want certain species to
die out, but we want them to be contained in manageable places like wild-life parks. Given the nature
of mankind, we will never produce any reason to include animals in general into our moral
calculations such that they can be properly called moral. Some people don't care, some do, but even
then we are species-ist about it.

Of course, if we are trying to find a ground for why we "should" be moral towards animals, we need a
principle. The principle cannot be underpinned by Kantian notions of rationality or duty where this
involves reciprocity. Animals are not rational and have no sense of duty. Peter Singer's approach, that
we should treat animals morally because they feel pleasure and pain, seems more promising. The
problem is people just can't get concerned about this. A moral principle will only work if we receive
some benefit from it. If we do our duty to others, we presume they will reciprocate and this is for the
benefit of society. Unfortunately, it seems to be to the benefit of humanity that many species are
destroyed, others are treated badly, and others are used for our own ends.

Rachel Browne