Shelly Kagan

In my forthcoming book, How to Count Animals, More or Less (based on my 2016 Uehiro Lectures in Practical Ethics), I argue for a hierarchical approach to animal ethics according to which animals have moral standing but nonetheless have a lower moral status than people have. This essay is an overview of that book, drawing primarily from selections from its beginning and end, aiming both to give a feel for the overall project and to indicate the general shape of the hierarchical position that I defend there. In this essay, I contrast the hierarchical approach with its most important rival (which holds that people and animals have the very same moral status), sketch the main idea behind one central argument for hierarchy, and briefly review three potentially troubling implications of the hierarchical view. I close with a discussion of a promising possible solution to the most worrisome of the three objections.

Many proposed moral principles are such that it would be difficult or impossible to always correctly identify which act is required by that principle in a given situation. To deal with this problem, theorists typically offer various methods of determining what to do in the face of epistemic limitations, and we are then told that the right thing to do – given these limitations – is to perform the act identified by the given method. But since the method and the underlying principle can diverge, it would seem that in such cases we are being given contradictory advice: some particular act will be both right and not right. Various attempts to resolve this apparent paradox are surveyed, but none are completely satisfactory.

What would we do in Utopia? Imagine that technology makes it completely unnecessary to do anything as a mere means of achieving something else. What would we still think it worth doing? Thinking about these questions helps us approach the concept of the ideal of human existence. Bernard Suits' Grasshopper argues that what we would do in Utopia is play games, but it seems likely that this is too little to constitute a satisfying ideal. However, with the help of various ideas taken from Bob Adams, this chapter argues that other things will remain worth doing in Utopia as well; for example, enjoying the beautiful, contemplating the basic truths of the universe, being creative, and maintaining meaningful relations with others.