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Are the folk utilitarian about animals?

Guy Kahane¹, Lucius Caviola²

¹Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford, Oxford, England.

Philosophical Studies

|August 15, 2022

Summary

Common moral intuitions about animal ethics may not support hybrid views. Psychological research suggests people apply deontology to all entities, with varying strength, challenging the Nozickian Hybrid View.

Keywords:

Animal Ethics Deontology.Hybrid view Moral Status Moral psychology, Robert Nozick

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Area of Science:

Moral Psychology
Ethics
Animal Ethics

Background:

Robert Nozick proposed a hybrid ethical view where deontology applies to humans and utilitarianism to animals.
Discussions on hybrid ethical views often assume they align with common moral intuitions.
Recent psychological research questions the empirical basis of these assumptions.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the empirical support for hybrid ethical views, specifically the Nozickian Hybrid View.
To examine folk intuitions regarding the moral status of humans, animals, and inanimate objects.
To propose an alternative ethical framework, Multi-level Weighted Deontology, based on empirical findings.

Main Methods:

Review of recent psychological research on moral intuitions.
Analysis of evidence concerning the application of deontological principles across different entities.
Examination of factors influencing moral status attributions.

Main Results:

Folk morality appears to be deontological across the board, with weaker moral constraints applied to animals and even weaker ones to inanimate objects.
This finding challenges the intuitive support for the Nozickian Hybrid View.
Evidence suggests moral intuitions about human status are influenced by morally irrelevant factors like species membership.

Conclusions:

Multi-level Weighted Deontology, where moral protections vary in strength, aligns better with empirical findings and Nozick's leanings.
Empirical findings do not invalidate hybrid views but remove their primary intuitive justification.
The origins of moral intuitions about animal status may be subject to debunking due to potentially irrelevant influences.