Login
Written by Rebecca Brown
Breed Specific Legislation
The UK currently imposes what’s called ‘Breed Specific Legislation’ in an effort to limit serious injuries due to dog attacks. The legislation was introduced in 1991 and made it illegal to own, sell, abandon, give away or breed dogs deemed to belong to one of four banned breeds. These are the Pit Bull Terrier, Japanese Tosa, Dogo Argentino and Fila Brasileiro. These breeds, having been selectively bred for purposes such as fighting, hunting and guarding, and are considered to have physical and behavioural attributes that mean they pose an unacceptable risk to the public. Dogs that meet the criteria for being a banned breed can be seized and either destroyed or permitted to remain with their owner under restrictive conditions. Breed specific legislation has been recently criticised in a number of organisations.
I do not intend to defend Breed Specific Legislation. It’s plausible that there are alternative, more effective and less damaging ways of reducing harm from dog attacks. However, many of the critiques of Breed Specific Legislation made by prominent animal charities and veterinary bodies are flawed. In pursuing what they no doubt see as a worthwhile end (the scrapping of Breed Specific Legislation), those publicly lobbying for change have made numerous confused and misleading arguments. Below, I outline why these arguments are misleading, implausible or weak, and how they fail to show that Breed Specific Legislation should be revoked.
Any dog can bite
One common claim is that “All dogs, whatever their breed type or size, are capable of showing aggression” and that “All dogs have the potential to be dangerous”. I don’t want to quibble about whether or not a Chihuahua is technically capable of inflicting a serious injury, but the relevant question is surely a) how likely a given dog is to bite a person, coupled with b) how damaging that bite is likely to be.
The Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) point to the more relevant claim that “recent studies found no difference observed between legislated and non-legislated breeds in the medical treatment required following a bite, or in the severity of bite and the type of dog that bit.” Unfortunately they don’t provide any citation or link to this evidence so it’s impossible to evaluate it. So we are left with the frankly implausible claim that if you get bitten by a toy poodle puppy you’re as likely to be harmed as if you are bitten by a breed of dog that was selectively bred to be able to fight a bull to the death.
Elsewhere on the RSPCA website is a document about dog aggression. Here they seem to acknowledge – albeit carefully – the fairly obvious point that some dog breeds are more likely to show aggression, and are more dangerous when aggressive, than others:
Although it might seem that some dogs are born to be aggressive, it is more accurate to say that they are born with inherited tendencies that might, if not controlled, make aggressive behaviour more likely… There are inherited ways of behaving that are particular to some breeds or types of dogs that make it more likely for individuals to grow up to use aggression where others would not… Aggression is not a single characteristic, however there are breeds of dogs that have historically been used for specific purposes, such as for fighting dogs or other animals, or for guarding. Whilst these breeds may not be any more likely to show aggression, because of their physical and temperamental attributes if they do show aggression it is likely to have more serious consequences. Persistence in attack coupled with strong jaws can cause serious injuries.
Lack of evidence
Notwithstanding the above quote from the RSPCA, another common claim is that there’s no ‘robust scientific evidence’ that some dogs (and types of dog) are able to inflict more damaging injuries than others. Again, this seems to be a case of absence of evidence rather than evidence of absence. It may be worth recalling Yeh et al’s (2018) article ‘Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft: randomized controlled trial’ which usefully highlights how direct RCT evidence might not be necessary in order to conclude that interventions such as parachutes are probably a good idea when jumping out of aeroplanes. Thinking again of the toy poodle versus pit bull example, we can probably draw some fairly reliable conclusions based upon ‘mechanistic reasoning’, without a need to inflict different kinds of dogs bites upon participants as part of a randomised trial.
Disconfirmatory evidence
It is also claimed that there is direct evidence that banned breeds are no more dangerous than other breeds, and that Breed Specific Legislation is completely ineffective at reducing (serious) injuries from dogs.
The RSPCA tells us that “Between 1989 and 2017, 48 people died in dog-related incidents. Of the 62 dogs involved, 53 were dog breeds not on the prohibited list.” And that “Only 8% of dangerously out of control dog cases involved banned breeds”. They also reference evidence that “in the past 20 years (1999-2019), the number of hospital admissions for the treatment of dog bites has increased by 154%, despite the prohibition of certain types of dogs”.
What can we make of this? First of all, the population data: dog bites requiring hospital treatment do not appear to have dropped as a result of the introduction of Breed Specific Legislation. This may well be the case, but it’s not possible to tell based on the information provided. We don’t know how dog ownership has changed over the time period studied – perhaps there were lots more dogs, and this resulted in more bites. It has certainly been speculated that the enthusiasm for pets during the covid lockdown (the number of dogs registered with the UK Kennel Club increased by nearly 40% between 2020 and 2021) might have contributed to more dog bite injuries in recent years. The population data might be suggestive, but it is far from conclusive evidence that Breed Specific Legislation doesn’t or hasn’t prevented any serious injuries from dogs since it was introduced.
Second, the breed-linked data, supposedly showing that banned breeds are responsible for only a small minority of serious injuries, including deaths. But wait: banned breeds, of which there are only four (amongst hundreds of other dog breeds) were involved in 1/7 (14%) of the fatal attacks on people during the period mentioned; they were implicated in 8% of cases of ‘dangerously out of control’ dogs. We don’t know how many dogs belonging to banned breeds exist in the UK, but surely it’s less than 14%, meaning they’re at least overrepresented in these samples.
And surely we can go further than that. I’m pretty keen on dogs and had a childhood of obsessively recording and watching all the annual coverage of Crufts repeatedly. I can reliably tell the difference between an Italian Greyhound, a Whippet and a Greyhound, or describe to you what a Wirehaired Vizsla looks like. But I have never heard of three of the breeds on the banned list and possibly never seen them.
This Wikipedia article lists fatal dog attacks in the UK, including breed information where known. The breeds responsible for fatal attacks on humans since 1980 are largely unsurprising. In the below table I’ve summarised the data from the Wikipedia article. (Note that I’ve grouped some breeds / breed types together [Mastiffs; Bulldogs other than American Bulldogs]).
| Breed | Number of fatalities involved in since 1980 (including as part of cross-breed) |
| Staffordshire Bull Terrier | 12 |
| American Bulldog | 9 |
| American Bully XL | 7 |
| Mastiff / Bull Mastiff / Neapolitan Mastiff / Italian Mastiff | 7 |
| Alsatian / German Shepherd | 6 |
| American Pit Bull Terrier / Pit Bull type | 6 |
| Rottweiler | 6 |
| Bordeaux Bulldog / Bulldog type / Aylestone Bulldog / British Bulldog | 4 |
| Jack Russell Terrier | 3 |
| Bull Terrier | 2 |
| Cane Corso | 2 |
| Husky | 2 |
| Doberman | 1 |
| Alaskan Malamute | 1 |
| Lakeland Terrier | 1 |
| Presa Canario | 1 |
| Chow Chow | 1 |
Again, without baseline information about how common these breeds are, one must be cautious about extrapolating from this list to draw conclusions about the dangers of specific breeds. Yet what is clear is that, with the exception of Jack Russell Terriers and a single Lakeland Terrier (responsible for killing three newborn infants), small dogs do not tend to kill people. Dogs that end up inflicting injuries sufficient to kill people tend to be powerful types, which have been selectively bred for guarding, fighting or hunting.
These dogs don’t deserve to die
One unfortunate refrain used by critics including the RSPCA and British Veterinary Association is that dogs deemed to belong to a banned breed and which do not qualify for an exemption, despite showing no previous signs of aggressive or dangerous behaviour, do not deserve to die. Yet this seems to mischaracterise what the Breed Specific Legislation is intended to do. It is clearly not intended to hand out punishment to ‘bad’ dogs, but instead to act as a preventative measure, to stop injuries in the first place. Indeed, since dogs are not moral agents it is entirely inappropriate to punish them on the basis that they ‘deserve’ it. We should of course treat dogs kindly and not cause them unnecessary suffering. But to suggest that Breed Specific Legislation is a form of undeserved punishment of ‘innocent’ dogs is misleading. Even the destruction of dogs that have seriously injured or killed people should not be construed as punishment: the justification for such actions is to protect people from future attacks from a dog proven to be dangerous.
Banning breeds implies that all other dogs are safe
Commentators suggest that, by banning certain breeds, the government sends the message that only these breeds are dangerous, that dogs belonging to other breeds are never dangerous, and that it is breed alone (rather than circumstances, handling, training, etc.) that makes a dog dangerous. Yet I wonder if this is really the case. It hadn’t crossed my mind that only those banned breeds were (potentially) dangerous, and I would be surprised if other people concluded this from the legislation. Indeed, it seems equally plausible that banning specific breeds would raise awareness of general dangers posed by all dogs.
A vet writing for the British Veterinary Association states “there has never been an onus on anyone, young or old, to behave sensibly and respectfully around dogs.” The problem is that many serious bites – particularly those resulting in fatalities – happen to children. 31 of the 64 fatalities in the UK since 1980 listed on the Wikipedia page were in children under 12. They include a number of babies, one of whom was 5 days old when she died. Children are particularly vulnerable to dog attacks: they are small (and thus injuries may be more severe and they are less able to escape or protect themselves if attacked); they are more likely to provoke dogs through excitement or rough treatment; they are more likely to miss the signs that a dog feels threatened and may attack. But there is a limit to what small children can be taught or the extent to which parents can control their behaviour, and we inevitably place them at risk by putting them in shared spaces with dogs. Of course there is an onus on people to treat dogs carefully and kindly, and to ensure those without the capacity to do this are protected. Yet focusing on whether or not children or their parents could (or should) have behaved differently once again seems to attend to questions of blame and desert, rather than the core matter: how best to prevent injuries in the first place.
Whilst it may well be a good idea to provide training and support to people regarding how to safely handle and act around dogs, this is not incompatible with Breed Specific Legislation. We need not accept the supposition that people are too stupid to simultaneously appreciate that poor training, irresponsible handling, stressful circumstances and the inherited predispositions and physical characteristics of a dog can all contribute to how likely it is to bite and injure someone.
Don’t judge a book by its cover
An interesting argument presented in criticism of Breed Specific Legislation is that the law is implemented based on the extent to which a dog fits the breed standard of a banned breed. This raises complaints from the RSPCA and British Veterinary Association for failing to use, for instance, genetic testing to determine whether or not a dog belongs to a particular (banned) breed.
But isn’t this disingenuous? First of all, if it is physical attributes that play a part in how severe a dog bite may turn out to be, then using physical attributes as a guide to which individuals should be restricted seems not unreasonable. Second, I do not think that, were the legislation to be enforced via genetic testing rather than breed standard, the RSPCA, British Veterinary Association or any of the other opposed groups would be any happier with it. Third, it’s not clear what additional information a genetic test will give you beyond the visible phenotypes that are used in the current system to determine breed. From my Crufts-watching days, the judges were looking at how well the dogs matched up against the breed standard. Of course, genes are partially responsible for what dogs end up looking like, but the relevant thing for dog breeds seems to be what they are actually like rather than what their genetic make-up is. The ‘you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover’ claim seems to be a piece of rhetoric rather than a genuine complaint about how the legislation is enforced.
A plea for better communications
As I said, I don’t want to defend Breed Specific Legislation. But it’s hard to evaluate the value of a policy on the basis of communications that are so clearly aimed at achieving a particular outcome (scrapping the legislation) rather than providing informative arguments. At the moment, the arguments made by the RSPCA, the British Veterinary Association and others could apply as equally to wolves as to any other dog breed. If I want to keep a wolf then, extrapolating from the above claims, I could defend myself against accusations I was risking others’ safety by saying “any dog can bite, and no one has shown me evidence that a wolf bite is worse than any other dog”. Indeed, none of the lethal attacks on humans by dogs in the UK in the last 50 years came from wolves. As long as the wolf hasn’t bitten anyone else yet, subjecting it to restrictions would be equivalent to ‘punishing the innocent’. Children just need to treat wolves respectfully and then they should be fine; there should be more of an emphasis on (potential) victims of wolf attacks to avoid putting themselves at risk, rather than restricting people’s freedom to keep wolves. Even though it looks and behaves exactly like a wolf, it’s not fair to say it’s a wolf unless this has been genetically proven.
Is this really the argument the RSPCA, British Veterinary Association and others want to make? It seems to me it would be vastly preferable to present the best evidence in support of their claims, and acknowledge where uncertainty lies so people can form a sensible and well-informed view on Breed Specific Legislation.
This article received an honourable mention in the graduate category of the 2023 National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics
Written by University of Oxford student Pablo Neira
If the interests of sentient animals matter, then there are (at least pro tanto) reasons to prevent the harms they suffer. There are many different natural harms that wild animals suffer, including hunger, disease, parasitism and extreme weather conditions (Singer 1975; Clark 1979; Sapontzis 1984; Cowen 2003; Fink 2005; Simmons 2009; Horta 2010; McMahan 2010; Ebert and Mavhan 2012; Keulartz 2016; Palmer 2013; Sözmen 2013; Bruers 2015; Tomasik 2015; McMahan 2016; Bramble 2021; Johannsen 2021). One of these (on which I will focus in this paper) is the suffering caused by predation. Predation is an antagonistic relationship in which a predator obtains energy by consuming a prey animal—either wholly or partially—which is alive when it is attacked (Begon et al. 2006, 266). The harms predation cause to prey animals can vary greatly, depending on the kind of injuries they suffer in the process and how painful they are, the amount of time it takes them to die, the release of endorphins that reduce pain or the extent to which psychological suffering—mostly distress—affects them during the process. In addition, beyond the pain of predation itself, there are other substantial harms related to predation. It has been argued that death itself may harm animals because it deprives them of any possible future positive experiences (Nagel 1970; Višak and Garner 2016). However, we do not need to agree that death harms animals in order to consider predation a harm, as the suffering it causes to animals is sufficient in its own right. Moreover, some animals may survive predation and yet suffer serious injuries that cause them pain for a prolonged period of time, sometimes chronically (Schoener 1979; Engh et al. 2006; Jonhson et al. 2006). They may also live in fear of being attacked by predators (Lima 1998; Holbrook and Schmitt 2002; Mashoodh 2009). Thus, the pain experienced by sentient animals when they are attacked in nature should not be overlooked. In this essay, I will argue that it is permissible, and perhaps obligatory, to intervene to prevent predation. Moreover, if we accept this, it leads us to consider predation prevention as a cause area to take action seriously from Effective Altruism.
Predation: A Thought Experiment
Consider the following thought experiment:
Trapped Animals. An antelope is trapped between branches and abandoned by its herd. A hyena finds the antelope and begins to devour different parts of its body while it is still alive. This lasts several hours, until the antelope finally dies. Anna is near the antelope and, without placing herself in danger, could untangle the branches so the antelope could escape.
According to some deontological or virtue ethics perspectives,[1] it can be argued that Anna’s intervention would be incorrect. This position can be defended by arguing that there is a rule that prevents intervention or that it is not virtuous to intervene. The idea that we should prevent predation may seem odd and wrong to some people at first. At the same time, based on other deontological approaches, we may have positive duties to animals (including wild ones), which we would fail to honour if we do not aid them when they are in need. Similarly, based on some virtue approaches, refusing to help animals would be contrary to what a virtuous person would do. In fact, that seems to be the case if we do not help the antelope here. Meanwhile, according to a consequentialist perspective, if Anna intervenes she would be acting in the correct manner, as long as her action leads to the best possible consequences all things considered. A counterargument could be that if we save the antelope, the hyena will starve, and thus Anna would be harming the hyena. This supports people’s intuition against preventing predation. However, consider the following alternative:
Trapped Animals 2. The situation is the same as in Trapped Animals, except that Anna is physically close to the antelope, and, without exposing herself to danger, she could place a vegetable meat alternative on the ground with identical characteristics to antelope meat. The hyena would eat this alternative and leave the antelope unharmed. Anna could then untangle the branches so the antelope could escape.
In this case, again, a consequentialist perspective would imply that if Anna intervenes, she will act correctly, as the best outcome will be achieved all things considered. Deontological and virtue ethics arguments could reach a similar conclusion, as we saw in the Trapped Animals case. Therefore, our initial intuition against preventing predation may be shown to be misguided simply by introducing a small modification to the scenario. This is because our intuition against predation may still be present when we consider this case, despite the fact that all relevant considerations would lead us to conclude that we should save the antelope. In addition, our intuition against preventing predation could also be challenged by the following variant of the same case:
Trapped Animals 3. Everything is the same as in Trapped Animals 2, except that instead of an antelope it is a human being that is trapped.
When we include a human in the scenario, our intuition changes significantly. It no longer seems merely permissible but obligatory for Anna to act. It could be argued that this has no relevance for the previous cases, as there is a crucial difference between wild animals and humans. Indeed, it has been argued that wild animals possess certain capacities that allow them to use their natural abilities to survive, while humans do not (Simmons 2009, 19–21). However, this objection does not seem to work, as in the cases we are considering both the human being and the nonhuman animal will surely die if Anna does not act. Thus, the antelope cannot adequately deal with the threat. So, if we are not speciesist, it seems we should hold a similar position in all cases.
This conclusion is further reinforced by the following case:
Trapped Animals 4. Everything is the same as in Trapped Animals 2, except that Anna is a biologist and knows that the antelope has a highly contagious disease. If the hyena eats it, this disease could infect other mammals, including humans.
Again, in this case it seems that it would not only permissible but obligatory for Anna to act. But, it is not clear whether there is a relevant difference between this case and the previous ones. We can only claim that there is if we maintain that the interests of humans are important in a way in which the interests of other beings are not.
Practical Implications: The Case for Effective Altruists
We may also conclude that this is an important cause, considering (as effective altruists do) its scale, neglectedness and tractability (Singer 2016, 19–20; MacAskill 2019, 12–15; Timmerman 2019, 166–68; Berkey 2020, 368–70). Regarding the scale, it is difficult to determine the exact number of wild animals that exist,[2] although we can estimate that the number is vast. Most suffer due to natural factors, and many are killed by predators. The overall amount of pain will be several orders of magnitude greater if we consider a long-term perspective, as the number of sentient animals that will live in the future is likely to be greater than the number of sentient animals that are alive now and have lived in the past as a whole. As for neglectedness, it is evident that this topic (and that of wild animal suffering in general) has received very little attention from animal charities or other organisations (for an exception, see Animal Ethics 2020). Finally, regarding tractability, there are different courses of action that could be implemented to prevent predation. I will now consider four of them. The first two are more speculative, and their expected results would need to be researched in far more detail before they could be implemented, which should first occur through pilot programmes. Meanwhile, the third and the fourth ones could be applied immediately and are much less controversial.
First, it has been argued that resources could be devoted to researching how to perform interventions similar to the natural evolution that led to the herborisation of some previously predatory species (e.g. the giant panda). This could be done by genetically modifying predators so that their offspring gradually becomes herbivorous, consequently changing their predatory behaviour (Pearce 2009; Palmer 2013; McMahan 2016; Bramble 2021; Johannsen 2021).
Second, resources could be devoted to organising the gradual extinction of predatory species (Pearce 2009; McMahan 2016; Bramble 2021), for example, by administering contraceptives to predators and allowing them to gradually disappear. Depot-contraception (a form of contraceptive injection that prevents ovulation in females) could be administered to carnivores, causing predatory animals to disappear within a few generations, and the resulting population effects on predated spices could be managed through more selective forms of contraception. Such advanced contraceptive techniques could be controlled by computer programs, which would be tested first on a small scale and then applied on a larger scale.
Third, the resources currently used to promote the conservation of predators (which are sometimes significant) could be allocated elsewhere, potentially having a better impact, while allowing the predators to disappear naturally (Cowen 2003).
Fourth, reforestation plans could be designed so the resulting ecosystems contain less rather than more predation. Different types of plants can support different types of animals. Accordingly, we could choose to plant types of vegetation that are less likely to support predators (Animal Ethics 2020).
If the arguments made in the previous sections are correct, then all the courses of action indicated above should be considered acceptable. However, many people will find this counterintuitive in the first two cases, despite the arguments presented above. Nevertheless, the latter two approaches could be considered acceptable by anyone willing to give at least some weight to the interests of wild animals. This means that preventing predation is tractable, at least in some ways.
Conclusion
I have argued that intervening to prevent harms to animals resulting from predation is morally right. Those who argue that we should not act in cases of predation must rely on ad hoc responses to intervention in scenarios in which such action seems to be the right choice. Admittedly, this will likely be a counterintuitive conclusion for many people, although the arguments I have presented appear to imply it. However, while some of the approaches for preventing predation may appear contrary to intuition, that is not true for all of them.
Notes:
[1] It could be also be defended from a rights perspective, wild animals can certainly harm each other, but they cannot violate the rights of others (Regan 1983; Jamieson 1990; Cohen 1997; Milburn 2015); of capacities, the capacity of specific species to flower, requiring a type of predation (Nussbaum 2006; Schlosberg, 2006; Cripps 2010); or of the community of animals, as it is reasonable to assume that wild animals are fully competent to address the challenges they face (Donaldson and Kymlicka 2011).
[2] Specifically, there are estimated to be 1011–4·1011 birds, 1011–1012 mammals, 1011–1014 reptiles, 1011–1014 amphibians, 1013–1015 fish, 1014–1017 earthworms 1014–1017 mites, 1015–1018 polyps, 1017–1019 terrestrial arthropods, 1017–1019 rotifers, 1019 gastrotrichs, 1018 copepods and 1020–1022 nematodes (Tomasik 2019).
References
Animal Ethics. 2020. “Antagonism in Nature: Interspecific Conflict”. https://www.animal-ethics.org/conflictos-interespecificos/#fr30. Retrieved 31 August 2022.
Begon, Michael, Townsend, Colin R. and John L. Harper. 2006. Ecology: From Individuals to Ecosystems. Oxford: Blackwell.
Berkey, Brian. 2020. “Effectiveness and Demandingness.” Utilitas 32, no. 3: 368–81. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820820000084.
Bramble, Ben. 2021. “Painlessly Killing Predators.” Journal of Applied Philosophy 38, no. 2: 217–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/japp.12461.
Bruers, Stijn. (2015). “The Predation and Procreation Problems: Persistent Intuitions Gone Wild.” Relations 3, no. 1, 85–91. https://doi.org/10.7358/rela-2015-001-brue.
Clark, Stephen R. L. 1979. “The Rights of Wild Things.” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 22, no. 1-4: 171–88. https://doi.org/10.1080/00201747908601871.
Cohen, Carl. 1997. “Do Animals Have Rights?” Ethics and Behavior, 7, no. 2: 91–102. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327019eb0702_1.
Cowen, Tyler. 2003. “Policing Nature.” Environmental Ethics 25, no. 2: 169–82. https://doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics200325231.
Cripps, Elizabeth. 2010. “Saving the Polar Bear, Saving the World: Can the Capabilities Approach Do Justice to Humans, Animals and Ecosystems?” Res Publica 16: 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-010-9106-2.
Donaldson, Sue, and Will Kymlicka. 2011. Zoopolis. A Political Theory of Animal Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ebert, Rainer, and Tibor R. Machan. 2012. “Innocent Threats and the Moral Problem of Carnivorous Animals.” Journal of Applied Philosophy, 29, no. 2: 146–159. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5930.2012.00561.x.
Engh, Anne L., Jacinta C. Beehner, Thore J. Bergman, Patricial L. Whitten, Rebekah R. Hoffmeier, Robert M. Seyfarth and Dorothy L. Cheney. 2006. “Behavioural and Hormonal Responses to Predation in Female Chacma Baboons (Papio Hamadryas Ursinus).” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 273, no. 1587: 707–12. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2005.3378.
Fink, Charles K. (2005). “The Predation Argument.” Between the Species 13, no. 5:1–15. https://doi.org/10.15368/BTS.2005V13N5.3.
Holbrook, Sally J. and Russell J. Schmitt. 2002. “Competition for Shelter Space Causes Density-dependent Predation Mortality in Damselfishes.” Ecology 83, no. 10: 2855–68. https://doi.org/10.2307/3072021.
Horta, Oscar. 2010. “The Ethics of the Ecology of Fear against the Nonspeciesist Paradigm: A Shift in the Aims of Intervention in Nature.” Between the Species 13, no. 10: 163–87. https://doi.org/10.15368/bts.2010v13n10.10.
Jamieson, Dale. 1990. “Rights, Justice, and Duties to Provide Assistance: A Critique of Regan’s Theory of Rights.” Ethics 100, no. 2: 349–62. https://doi.org/10.1086/293181.
Johannsen, Kyle. 2021. Wild Animal Ethics. The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering. London: Routledge
Jonhson, Pieter T. J., Eric R. Preu, Daniel R. Sutherland, John M. Romansic, Barbara Han and Andrew R. Blaustein. 2006. “Adding Infection to Injury: Synergistic Effects of Predation and Parasitism on Amphibian Malformations.”, Ecology 87, no. 9: 2227–35. https://doi.org/10.1890/0012-9658(2006)87[2227:aitise]2.0.co;2.
Keulartz, Jozef. 2016. “Should the Lion Eat Straw Like the Ox? Animal Ethics and the Predation Problem.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 29, no. 5: 813–34. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-016-9637-4.
Lima, Steven. 1998. “Stress and Decision Making Under the Risk of Predation: Recent Developments from Behavioral, Reproductive, and Ecological Perspectives.” Advances in the Study of Behavior 27: 215–90. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-3454(08)60366-6.
MacAskill, William 2019. “The Definition of Effective Altruism.” In Effective Altruism, 10–28. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198841364.003.0001.
Mashoodh, Rahia, Christopher J. Sinal and Tara S. Perrot-Sinal. 2009. “Predation Threat Exerts Specific Effects on Rat Maternal Behaviour and Anxiety-related Behaviour of Male and Female Offspring.” Physiology & Behavior, 96, no. 4–5: 693–702. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2009.01.001.
McMahan, Jeff. 2010. “The Meat Eaters”. New York Times (online), 19 September. https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/the-meat-eaters/. Retrieved 31 August 2022.
——–. 2016. “The Moral Problem of Predation.” In Philosophy Comes to Dinner, 268–95. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203154410
Milburn, Josh. 2015. “Rabbits, Stoats and the Predator Problem: Why a Strong Animal Rights Position Need not Call for Human Intervention to Protect Prey from Predators.” Res Publica 21, no. 3: 273–89. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-015-9281-2.
Nagel, Thomas. 1970. “Death”, Noûs, 4, no. 1: 73–80. https://doi.org/10.2307/2214297.
Nussbaum, Martha. 2006. Frontiers of Justice. Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Palmer, Clare. 2013. “What (If Anything) Do We Owe Wild Animals?” Between the Species 13, no. 1: https://doi.org/10.15368/bts.2013v16n1.4.
Pearce, David. 2009. “Reprogramming Predators.” BLTC Research. https://www.abolitionist.com/reprogramming/index.html.
Regan, Tom. 1983. The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Sapontzis, Steve. 1984. “Predation”, Ethics and Animals 5, no. 2: 27–38. https://doi.org/10.15368/ea.1984v5n2.1.
Schlosberg, David. 2007. Defining Environmental Justice: Theories, Movements, and Nature. New York: Oxford University Press.
Schoener, Thomas. 1979. “Inferring the Properties of Predation and Other Injury-producing Agents from Injury Frequencies.” Ecology 60, no. 6: 1110–15. https://doi.org/10.2307/1936958.
Simmons, Aaron. 2009. “Animals, Predators, the Right to Life, and the Duty to Save Lives.” Ethics & the Environment, 14, no. 1: 15–27. https://doi.org/10.2979/ete.2009.14.1.15.
Singer, Peter. 1975. Animal Liberation. New York: Random House.
——–. 2015. The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas about Living Ethically. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Sözmen, Beril. 2013. “Harm in the Wild: Facing Non-Human Suffering in Nature.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 16, no. 5: 1075–88. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-013-9416-5.
Timmerman, Travis. 2019. “Effective Altruism’s Underspecification Problem.” In Effective Altruism, 166–83. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198841364.003.0011.
Tomasik, Brian. 2015. “The Importance of Wild Animal Suffering.” Relations, 3, no. 2: 133–52. https://doi.org/10.7358/rela-2015-002-toma.
——–. 2019. “How Many Wild Animals Are There?” Essays on Reducing Suffering. https://reducing-suffering.org/how-many-wild-animals-are-there/. Retrieved 31 August 2022.
Višak, Tatjana, and Robert Garner. 2016. The Ethics of Killing Animals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Written by Muriel Leuenberger
The question of who gets to be a person is one of those old but never outdated classics in philosophy. Throughout history, philosophers have discussed which human beings are persons, when human beings start to be persons, when they are no longer the same person, and whether non-human beings can be persons – and the discussion continues.
The task of defining the concept of a person can be approached from a purely ontological angle, by looking at what kind of entities exist in the world. There are those beings we want to call persons – what unites them and what separates them from non-persons? This ontological project has, at least at first sight, nothing to do with how the world should be and purely with how it is.
But many moral practices are connected to this concept. Persons deserve praise and blame, they should not be experimented on without their consent, they can make promises, they should be respected. The status of personhood is connected to a moral status. Because of the properties persons have they deserve to be treated and can act in a certain way. Personhood is what can be called a thick concept. It combines descriptive and normative dimensions. To be a person one must meet certain descriptive conditions. But being a person also comes with a distinctive moral status.
Defining thick concepts is particularly tricky. Those definitions are not just judged for their descriptive plausibility but whether they imply acceptable moral practices. In the debate on personhood, philosophers have repeatedly drawn boundaries on the descriptive level that lead to normative implications they do not want to support. Notably, individuals who they would like to see treated as persons do not meet their criteria for personhood because they do not have certain cognitive capacities.[i] Most recently, this happened in this year’s John Locke Lecture by Susan Wolf on Selves like us.[ii] She argued compellingly for a definition of character as a complex of dispositions and tendencies that reflect and express one’s distinctive way of seeing the world. She furthermore seemed to imply that certain types of attitudes, such as resentment, gratitude, forgiveness, anger, or love (Strawson’s reactive attitudes[iii]), can only be directed towards ‘selves like us’ which meet her definition of having a character. In her account, character requires cognitive faculties of “active intelligence”. Because of this, the question arose what this implies for individuals with cognitive disorders. She replied that she would certainly not want to exclude them from being appropriate objects of reactive attitudes and would have to do more research to work out how they would fit in her framework.
There seems to be a disparity between our intuitions and opinions on who should be treated as a person and descriptive definitions of the term. One attempt at fixing this problem has been to stipulate that while the suggested definition of personhood excludes, for instance, people suffering from dementia from being persons, this does not undermine their moral status.[iv] But because the normative and descriptive dimensions are intertwined in thick concepts, such attempts at separating them do not seem to be successful. It’s too little too late to reassert the moral status of an individual whose personhood has just been denied. The rhetorical power of denying that someone is a person should not be underestimated – a reassurance that this does not affect their moral status seems insufficient to counteract it.
Personhood is usually defined via capacities, such as moral agency, autonomy, self-awareness, narration, or rationality. Those capacities require certain brain functions – they are tied to biological facts about the individual. But biology is fuzzy, gradual, and full of multiple but slightly different solutions for the same problem (e.g., for realizing a capacity). As David DeGrazia[v] argues, those capacities are multidimensional and gradational. For instance, there are different kinds of self-awareness (bodily, social, introspective) and they come in degrees. To know whether, for example, great apes are persons, we would have to define arbitrary cut-off points for the capacities that are defined as essential to personhood. Thus, personhood is a vague concept, meaning that there is no non-arbitrary way to define whether an individual is a person. Because it is also a thick concept, arbitrary cut-offs are particularly worrisome since they can have far-reaching normative implications.
In the face of those considerations, we should be aware of and thematize the limits of definitions of personhood (or selves). Marginal cases can and should remain undecided. This does not mean that philosophy has nothing to say about what is distinctive of persons. Identifying common properties of clear, paradigmatic cases of persons can make salient in which way marginal cases differ. Differences in moral practices can be accounted for through distinct properties, instead of an overarching term like personhood or self. This allows for more nuance in our moral practices.
Pattern theories of personhood or self, which take a range of properties and capacities into account, can be particularly helpful in this regard.[vi] According to a pattern-theory, personhood or self are constituted by a cluster of dimensions that interact with each other and that take a different value and weight for each individual. A self might, for instance, be constituted by embodied, experiential, affective, behavioral, intersubjective, and narrative dimensions. Someone becomes a person through the dynamic interaction of a range of capacities, such as, moral agency, autonomy, self-awareness, narration, and rationality. Changes to one dimension may cause modulations in others. Concepts like personhood or the self are not reducible to any one of these aspects but are complex systems that emerge from the dynamic interactions of those constituents.
Pattern theories can illuminate how a range of properties and capacities interrelate to produce characteristics typical of clear cases and make salient in which ways other individuals differ. Instead of either ascribing marginal cases the status of personhood or not, pattern theories can describe them in terms of different types of persons (with gradual transitions in-between) which warrant distinct moral practices. Thereby, they can help us to avoid the philosopher’s compulsion to draw clear lines where there are none.
[i] On the other hand, definitions of personhood can of course also appear to be overly inclusive.
[ii] Self and person are often used interchangeably. Definitions of the self face the same problems because the self tends be considered as a thick concept as well (albeit less obviously than in the case of personhood).
[iii] Strawson, P. F. (2008). Freedom and resentment and other essays. Routledge.
[iv] Schechtman, M. (1996). The Constitution of Selves. Cornell University Press.
[v] DeGrazia, D. (1997). Great apes, dolphins, and the concept of personhood. The Southern journal of philosophy, 35(3), 301-320.
[vi] Leuenberger, M. (Forthcoming) A Narrative Pattern-Theory of the Self. In: Personhood, Self-Consciousness, and the First-Person Perspective. Edited by Markus Hermann. Brill mentis.
Gallagher, S. (2013). A Pattern Theory of Self. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 443-443.
FreshRSS 