Abstract
Obviously, there are many human beings, as well as virtually all animals, who are either unwilling or unable to follow moral rules. To what extent should we treat them in accordance with moral rules? Should we ever consider their interests as equal to ours — in the sense that we ought not to sacrifice their interests to our own?
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Notes
Bernard Rollin has objected (personal communication) that what an individual might want for himself while rational might be very different from what he would want if afflicted with certain mental disorders. This is surely true. But there are two factors that need to be considered here. One is that many people who are so disabled are nevertheless very sensitive to manifestations of lack of kindness and respect. A common complaint among certain rather confused residents of the nursing home where I once worked was that the staff was “experimenting on” them. These ‘experiments’ usually involved allowing student nurses to care for them or trying medications which turned out not to work. This is but one illustration of the fact that people who have lost (or never attained) full powers of reasoning vary greatly in what they do have. The gradations among people, both those considered normal and those considered impaired, are enormous. If we must make distinctions among people of such import as deciding whether or not to treat them as persons, we will be hard put to know where to draw the line. To avoid drawing it too narrowly, and thereby not to treat some with adequate rationality as persons, is risky. It is better, not only for the humans affected, but for all humans to treat all humans (at least from birth on) as persons. [See also the discussion by Jan Narveson in Moral Matters (Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 1993), 183.] Furthermore, people often have interests in what will happen in the future, even when they will not be aware at that future time of whether the events in question happen or not. And we feel certain obligations to do things to bring about the realization of those interests. Thus we consider deathbed promises to have significant weight. If what happens after a person is dead, such as the loss of his good name or the ruin of his family, can be contrary to his interests (being things he strove during life to avoid), so can things that happen after he ceases to be rational, such as being ridiculed or allowed to remain in his own excrement. Now Rollin points out that animals, too, may be sensitive to lack of respect — after all, most pet owners know that dogs and cats hate to be laughed at. And some animals may have concerns about their future. I do not deny that animals have interests that would be furthered by our treating them as persons. What I do deny is that we could seriously do this for all animals without great cost to human beings, making our lives short, wretched, and deprived. We would undermine the whole point we have for abiding by moral principles in the first place, which is to promote our interests and manage conflicts among the interests of individuals. For the animals would benefit at our expense. If nonrational humans were as numerous as the animal kingdom, then my arguments for treating them as persons would be somewhat undermined, for they are based on the assumption that there are not so many of them that rational individuals cannot afford to grant them this status, and that such sacrifices we may make are compensated for by benefits to us. If we could grant personhood to all, or even some, animals without overall harm to humans, then we should. But I don’t think we can. I will argue more for this in Chapter 9, Section 2.
Tristram Engelhardt makes this point in The Foundations of Bioethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 113–117.
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© 1996 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Forrester, M.G. (1996). Reasons for Granting Personhood. In: Persons, Animals, and Fetuses. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 66. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1633-3_8
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