Events

ABSTRACT: An active debate among philosophers and scientists concerns whether non-human animals (hereafter ‘animals’) have a sense of fairness. One problem with this debate is the focus on distributive fairness—whether animals share resources equally and protest unequal distributions. I argue we do not know whether animals have a sense of distributive fairness. The current empirical evidence is inconclusive—some studies suggest animals share resources equally, other studies suggest they don’t share resources equally; some studies suggest animals do protest unequal distributions, and other studies suggest they don’t protest unequal distributions. Evidence on neither side is strong enough to override the conflicting evidence. 

Settling this debate is ethically important. If animal interests matter, and animals have an interest in avoiding unfair treatment, then we ought to consider evaluations of fairness when making animal welfare calculations. If animals are not sensitive to fairness, then we do not need to factor fairness into our considerations.

 Luckily, the inconclusiveness concerning distributive fairness in animals is not a problem. Although distributive fairness is sufficient for a sense of fairness, it is not necessary. Retributive fairness is also sufficient for a sense of fairness. Since some animals do have a sense of retributive fairness, and since retributive fairness is a kind of fairness, I conclude some animals do have a sense of fairness. 

ABSTRACT: Many of our social relationships with animals are shaped by how animals serve us: we breed and adopt pets for affection and intimacy, keep livestock for saleable goods, and house animals in zoos for entertainment. This paper argues that many such relationships can be morally objectionable by their very nature because they characteristically treat other animals as resources for satisfying human interests. I call this desubjectification: the social practice of relating to another individual as a resource rather than recognising her as a sentient being with her own subjective experiences. This mirrors the phenomenon of dehumanisation. Just as dehumanisation signals a failure to socially recognise another’s humanity, desubjectification demarcates a failure to recognise that an animal is a somebody.

Drawing on this concept, I develop a theory of how and why the human-animal social hierarchy―which privileges humans at the expense of animals―is wrongfully oppressive. While my primary aim is to characterise the nature of this wrong, I also gesture toward possible remedies and address some humanist political concerns. I conclude that desubjectification provides a broader account of dehumanisation that allows us to reject the oppressive ‘human’ and ‘animal’ categories in favour of the shared category of sentience.