Animal Morality: What It Means and Why It Matters

Monsó, Susana; Benz-Schwarzburg, Judith; Bremhorst, Annika

doi:10.1007/s10892-018-9275-3

Cited by 41 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 114 publications

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“…However, such results stand against mixed evidence on dogs' helping behavior and against the need to clarify the underlying emotions and motivations (see e.g., Macpherson and Roberts, 2006, or the discussions in Sanford et al, 2018and Adriaense et al, 2020. Because empathy could motivate moral behavior like helping, philosophers of animal minds and animal ethicists discuss it as a moral emotion that animals could possess (Rowlands, 2012;Monsó, 2015Monsó, , 2017Monsó et al, 2018;Benz-Schwarzburg et al, 2019).…”

Section: Moral Emotions? From Biology To Philosophymentioning

confidence: 99%

How Dogs Perceive Humans and How Humans Should Treat Their Pet Dogs: Linking Cognition With Ethics

2020

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Humans interact with animals in numerous ways and on numerous levels. We are indeed living in an “animal”s world,’ in the sense that our lives are very much intertwined with the lives of animals. This also means that animals, like those dogs we commonly refer to as our pets, are living in a “human’s world” in the sense that it is us, not them, who, to a large degree, define and manage the interactions we have with them. In this sense, the human-animal relationship is nothing we should romanticize: it comes with clear power relations and thus with a set of responsibilities on the side of those who exercise this power. This holds, despite the fact that we like to think about our dogs as human’s best friend. Dogs have been part of human societies for longer than any other domestic species. Like no other species they exemplify the role of companion animals. Relationships with pet dogs are both very widespread and very intense, often leading to strong attachments between owners or caregivers and animals and to a treatment of these dogs as family members or even children. But how does this relationship look from the dogs’ perspective? How do they perceive the humans they engage with? What responsibilities and duties arise from the kind of mutual understanding, attachment, and the supposedly “special” bonds we form with them? Are there ethical implications, maybe even ethical implications beyond animal welfare? The past decades have seen an upsurge of research from comparative cognition on pet dogs’ cognitive and social skills, especially in comparison with and reference to humans. We will therefore set our discussion about the nature and ethical dimensions of the human–dog relationship against the background of the current empirical knowledge on dog (social) cognition. This allows us to analyze the human–dog relationship by applying an interdisciplinary approach that starts from the perspective of the dog to ultimately inform the perspective of humans. It is our aim to thereby identify ethical dimensions of the human–dog relationship that have been overlooked so far.

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Section: Moral Emotions? From Biology To Philosophymentioning

confidence: 99%

How Dogs Perceive Humans and How Humans Should Treat Their Pet Dogs: Linking Cognition With Ethics

2020

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“…However, it could be more than that. If complex capacities in the realm of prosociality, such as caring or helping behaviors, are capabilities that are inherently valuable, then it constitutes a much broader ethical problem that we have established husbandry systems that systematically prevent the animals from developing and maintaining such capacities [for a discussion related to this topic, see (218)].…”

Section: Ethical Considerationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Farm Animal Cognition—Linking Behavior, Welfare and Ethics

Nawroth

Langbein

Coulon³

et al. 2019

Front. Vet. Sci.

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Farm animal welfare is a major concern for society and food production. To more accurately evaluate animal farming in general and to avoid exposing farm animals to poor welfare situations, it is necessary to understand not only their behavioral but also their cognitive needs and capacities. Thus, general knowledge of how farm animals perceive and interact with their environment is of major importance for a range of stakeholders, from citizens to politicians to cognitive ethologists to philosophers. This review aims to outline the current state of farm animal cognition research and focuses on ungulate livestock species, such as cattle, horses, pigs and small ruminants, and reflects upon a defined set of cognitive capacities (physical cognition: categorization, numerical ability, object permanence, reasoning, tool use; social cognition: individual discrimination and recognition, communication with humans, social learning, attribution of attention, prosociality, fairness). We identify a lack of information on certain aspects of physico-cognitive capacities in most farm animal species, such as numerosity discrimination and object permanence. This leads to further questions on how livestock comprehend their physical environment and understand causal relationships. Increasing our knowledge in this area will facilitate efforts to adjust husbandry systems and enrichment items to meet the needs and preferences of farm animals. Research in the socio-cognitive domain indicates that ungulate livestock possess sophisticated mental capacities, such as the discrimination between, and recognition of, conspecifics as well as human handlers using multiple modalities. Livestock also react to very subtle behavioral cues of conspecifics and humans. These socio-cognitive capacities can impact human-animal interactions during management practices and introduce ethical considerations on how to treat livestock in general. We emphasize the importance of gaining a better understanding of how livestock species interact with their physical and social environments, as this information can improve housing and management conditions and can be used to evaluate the use and treatment of animals during production.

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“…Of course, unpleasant mental experiences may arise for other animals as a result of intervention (or no intervention) upon the target animal. Examples might include fear, hunger, thirst or loneliness for dependent or companion conspecifics, or, as has been suggested for both wild and domestic animals, feelings associated with witnessing injury, debility or death in a conspecific [5,[105][106][107]; if supported rather than just assumed, such collateral impacts should also be included in harm-benefit analyses when deciding whether to intervene [45]. According to this perspective, the potential for harms should be assessed for all sentient animals whenever they are capable of experiencing them.…”

Section: First Do No Harm: Similarities and Differencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

I Am a Compassionate Conservation Welfare Scientist: Considering the Theoretical and Practical Differences Between Compassionate Conservation and Conservation Welfare

Beausoleil

2020

Animals

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Compassionate Conservation and Conservation Welfare are two disciplines whose practitioners advocate consideration of individual wild animals within conservation practice and policy. However, they are not, as is sometimes suggested, the same. Compassionate Conservation and Conservation Welfare are based on different underpinning ethics, which sometimes leads to conflicting views about the kinds of conservation activities and decisions that are acceptable. Key differences between the disciplines appear to relate to their views about which wild animals can experience harms, the kinds of harms they can experience and how we can know about and confidently evidence those harms. Conservation Welfare scientists seek to engage with conservation scientists with the aim of facilitating ongoing incremental improvements in all aspects of conservation, i.e., minimizing harms to animals. In contrast, it is currently unclear how the tenets of Compassionate Conservation can be used to guide decision-making in complex or novel situations. Thus, Conservation Welfare may offer modern conservationists a more palatable approach to integrating evidence-based consideration of individual sentient animals into conservation practice and policy.

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Animal Morality: What It Means and Why It Matters

Cited by 41 publications

References 114 publications

How Dogs Perceive Humans and How Humans Should Treat Their Pet Dogs: Linking Cognition With Ethics

How Dogs Perceive Humans and How Humans Should Treat Their Pet Dogs: Linking Cognition With Ethics

Farm Animal Cognition—Linking Behavior, Welfare and Ethics

I Am a Compassionate Conservation Welfare Scientist: Considering the Theoretical and Practical Differences Between Compassionate Conservation and Conservation Welfare

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