Ethics of Wildlife Conservation, Part 3: The Good

1 Introduction

In essay 2, I argued that utilitarianism is inadequate as a theory of ethics because it focuses too narrowly on happiness (construed as pleasure and the absence of pain) as the only thing of moral significance. Here we are apt to think first of sensations: a bee sting is painful; a caress is pleasurable. But emotions, moods, and various states of mind and bodily conditions can also be painful or pleasurable and must be included in the purview of utilitarianism. For example: sorrow/joy; gloomy/cheerful; ashamed/proud; nausea/euphoria.

The problem with this is that it overlooks the importance of the lives of creatures—the importance of those lives to the creatures themselves. To illustrate the point, I introduced Luna, an aging dog who can no longer play and explore like she once did, but who still enjoys life. The greatest happiness would be served by arranging to have a new puppy born to replace her, then quickly and painlessly killing her. I ended with this rhetorical question: “Even though Luna lacks the capacity to plan for the future and has no projects to complete or goals to achieve, doesn’t she have an interest in having her life continue, at least so long as she is enjoying it?”

Luna’s presumed interest in continuing to live can only be construed from within the constraints of utilitarianism as her prospect for future happiness. Of course, this doesn’t mean she must actually think about the future. The idea will be that the longer she lives the more happiness she is likely to experience overall in her life. The problem is that it is by no means certain that this is true, let alone that there will be more total happiness in the world. If anything, at some point aging tends to bring less happiness for all concerned. Total life pleasure might be increased only at the expense of an even greater increase in total pain = less happiness overall. So, if Luna does have an interest in continuing to live, we have yet to see why. It’s time to move beyond utilitarianism.

2 Aristotle & Kant: a new deontology

What I say below borrows heavily from the work of contemporary philosopher Christine Korsgaard in her 2018 book, Fellow Creatures: Our Obligation to the Other Animals, and in her 2020 article, “The Origin of the Good and Our Animal Nature,” The Journal of Ethical Reflections 1 (2): 7-28.

Korsgaard combines ideas from Aristotle and Kant to develop an impressive deontological theory. The difference between utilitarianism and deontology is that utilitarianism judges the morality of an action by its consequences, whereas deontology judges the morality of an action by the intention behind it.

2.1 All good is tethered.

Korsgaard starts with the premise that all good, all importance, is tethered. By this she means that all good (and all importance) is good for (or important to) a sentient creature. There is no such thing as something that is good or important in itself—nothing that is intrinsically valuable. Things are valuable because they are valued, not the reverse. This might strike some readers as counterintuitive, but it makes for a naturalized ethical theory in the sense that it doesn’t require positing hypothetical intrinsic values to explain the moral quality of actions. And it makes for a superior ethical theory, as we shall see.

To help us get a handle on this, consider a hypothetical chunk of chert that is good for making spearpoints. You can imagine a paleolithic hunter using it for this purpose. The spearpoint itself, if skillfully made, will be good for killing a mammoth. And a dead mammoth will be good for feeding and clothing the hunter and his family. But the chunk of chert is not intrinsically good. It’s not intrinsically bad either, of course. It just is. The same for the spearpoint.

2.2 Functional goods and final goods

The thing to note here is that all these goods are what Aristotle calls functional goods. They are good for something. A spearpoint is good for killing game. It is a good spearpoint if it fulfills this function well. Korsgaard calls this functional goodness evaluative goodness because we typically evaluate the goodness of something by how well it functions for an intended purpose.

This leads to an interesting question. What about the purpose for making a spearpoint, which is to keep the hunter and his family alive—what is that good for? Perpetuation of the species? We can say this, but then what is that good for? One idea is that it’s not good for anything, it’s just good—intrinsically good. Another possibility is that it’s not good for anything, period.

Aristotle has a different answer. According to him, the functions of plants are nutrition and reproduction, and the functions of animals are the same plus something additional. Korsgaard says this something additional is:

“. . . characterized by an additional set of powers that determine the way they carry out the nutritive and reproductive functions—namely, the powers of perception and action, where action is understood basically as locomotion guided by perception. . . the idea is that the way an animal functions is by having instinctive evaluative attitudes—desire and aversion, pleasure and pain, fear and interest—towards things that affect her functioning.” (The Origin of the Good, page 18.)

We can summarize this by saying that the function of an animal’s powers of perception and action is to keep him alive and in good functioning condition, which is his final good. And by pursuing his final good (by, say, making spear points and killing mammoths), he ipso facto affirms the value of his life and claims the status of an end-in-himself. (More about this in connection with Kant below.) This twist on Aristotle gives us the answer to our question about Luna: Luna has an interest in her life continuing because she is not a mere means to an end, but an end in herself!

2.3 Final goods are uncomparable

You might think, “Well, okay, Luna’s life is good for her, and maybe she does have an interest in continuing to live, but this doesn’t mean I have to regard her life as good, let alone equally important as mine.”

Quite right. But remember, all goodness, all importance, is tethered. Luna’s life is good for her and yours is good for you, but there is no independent perspective from which you can judge that your life (or human life in general) is somehow better or more important than hers. The value of a lizard’s life, a vulture’s life, and a human being’s life are all literally uncomparable. Once you see this, it seems perfectly obvious. In essay 2, I quoted John Stuart Mill as saying it is better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. This declarative sentence seems grammatically normal and so one would expect it to be either true or false. But it is neither true nor false because there is no perspective from which a comparison is possible.

Even so, we still don’t know why we should regard the lives of other animals as having ethical importance. For that matter, why should any of us regard the life of another human being as having ethical importance? Maybe the only law is the “law of the jungle” = every creature for itself!

3 Kant on rationality

“I fully subscribe to the judgment of those writers who maintain that of all the differences between man and the lower animals, the moral sense or conscience is by far the most important . . . it is summed up in that short but imperious word ought, so full of high significance.” (Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, p. 70)

Was Darwin just echoing the common sentiment of his time or is there something more to consider?

According to 18^th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, we human beings are not only capable of means-end reasoning, which many other animals are also capable of to some extent, we can reflect on our reasons for doing something and evaluate them, asking ourselves if they are good reasons. In doing so, we assess the action plus the reason together (action + reason) as either good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable. Unless prevented from doing so, we can then intentionally act on the verdict. This capacity makes us rational animals in a way that other animals, whose actions and reasoning are governed by instinct, are not. It makes us autonomous rational animals.

This claim of human exceptionalism appears to mark an absolute distinction between human beings and other animals. For example, a chimpanzee’s use of instrumental reason for devising a way to take termites from a termite mound is wholly subservient to instinct, while a person’s rational choices are made on a higher level and can direct her behavior. Rationality in this sense requires taking a detached and disinterested point of view on the facts and is the wellspring of both science and ethics.

Not only do we humans have the capacity for re-evaluating our reasons for doing something, we can also employ reason to determine whether an action is (or would be) moral. This is the most distinctive form of our rationality according to Kant, who is famous in this connection for something known as the categorical imperative, a rule for assessing an action for moral rightness. There is no evidence (so far) that any other species of animal does anything like it.

3.1 The categorical imperative

One formulation of the categorical imperative states, “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” For example, if you are contemplating selling your car to your neighbor without informing her that it needs a new transmission, the maxim of your action will be *Deceive others when it is to your advantage.*

Now, in applying the categorical imperative (universalizing the maxim of your action), you attempt to make it your will that people always deceive each other when it is to their advantage. This means you must will that you deceive others when it is to your advantage and that they do the same to you. In other words, you must will something that is both to your advantage and against your advantage, which is contradictory and irrational. This tells you that the action you are contemplating is morally wrong. Obedience to the verdict, however, is another matter. It requires respect for the moral law as prescribed by the categorical imperative.

Another formulation of the categorical imperative says, “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.”

This means respecting the dignity of an autonomous rational being as an “end in itself” by not deceiving, coercing, forcing, or cheating her. The two formulations are two facets of the same rule and yield the same results.

We know that many animals exhibit empathy, compassion, and cooperation, which are no doubt the evolutionary roots of morality; but so far as we know, only human beings engage in moral reasoning. In Darwin’s words, this capacity (along with conscience) is the “moral sense” that is “summed up in that short but imperious word ought, so full of high significance.”

Now comes the big question: What has all this got to do with how we ought to treat other animals? Kant’s answer is that since other animals are not rational, and so are not capable of participating in a “kingdom of ends” whose members engage in reciprocal legislation of the moral law, we are not morally obligated to treat them as ends-in-themselves. We are free to treat them like tools, simply as means to our ends. But we should not be cruel to them because that will tend to weaken our own moral character.

3.2 Korsgaard’s correction of Kant

By striving to stay alive and in good functioning condition, we human beings necessarily regard ourselves as ends in ourselves. However, while our capacity to understand and apply the categorical imperative allows us to appreciate this fact and its moral significance, it is not what makes us ends in ourselves in the first place. We do this by striving to stay alive and in good functioning condition. Furthermore, since each sentient creature does this in the way natural to it, they are all ends in themselves! It follows that they all have moral standing. And this means we have a moral obligation to respect them for what they are.

Look at it this way: Our capacity to understand and apply the categorical imperative is part of our final good as human beings, just as being a skillful hunter is part of a wolf’s final good, but it doesn’t mean we have moral standing and wolves don’t or that our moral standing is higher than a wolf’s. Somehow, for all his brilliance, Kant missed this implication of his own theory. Korsgaard summarizes:

“So viewed, morality is just the human way of being an animal. . . The claim of the other animals to the standing of ends in themselves has the same ultimate foundation as our own claim does, the same ultimate foundation as morality—the essentially self-affirming nature of life itself.” (Fellow Creatures: Our Obligation to the Other Animals: 8.6.1)

4 Conclusion and implications

Kant’s ethical theory is superior to utilitarianism by accommodating our moral intuition that individual human beings matter morally quite apart from how happy they are in utilitarian terms. Korsgaard’s “correction” of Kant does him one better by recognizing that other animals are also ends in themselves and so have moral standing too. It follows that we ought not harm them without good reason. Here is a list of important steps in the reasoning:

1. All value is tethered = good for . . ., important to . . .
2. Functional (evaluative) good: x is good for
3. L’s final good (her life) is a kind of functional good: Her life is good for her
   
4. The final goods of different species are uncomparable
5. By pursuing what is good for her, an animal claims the status of end-in-itself
6. The categorical imperative commands respect for all ends-in-themselves
7. We ought not to harm other animals without good reason

In the next essay in this series, we will assess the adequacy of the theory for how well it lends itself to a consideration of wildlife conservation and rewilding. What are our obligations to wild animals, species, and ecosystems? The crux of the issue is the fact that the final goods of different animals, even among members of the same species, frequently conflict: nature red in tooth and claw. This introduces a host of issues. Foremost among them is whether it is ever ethical for a human being to harm another sentient creature. And if so, why, and under what circumstances? One answer is that it is only permissible when the other creature’s good is irreconcilable with one’s own, but when is that? Another possible answer is that it is permissible when it will produce a greater good by benefiting the biotic community. But again, when is that?