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Theses and Dissertations

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Browsing Theses and Dissertations by Subject "animals"

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    By their own standards: a new perspective for the question of moral agency in animals
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Grattan, Douglas, author; Rollin, Bernard, advisor; Gorin, Moti, committee member; Volbrecht, Vicki, committee member
    Much of the history of ethology, philosophy, and psychology has been a sort of tug-of-war between those claiming that animals have certain capacities and others claiming that such science is unverifiable and amounts to anthropomorphizing. While resistance to such positive claims has certainly fallen off over the past few decades, the idea that animals can be moral is one of the last bastions of human uniqueness to which many tenaciously hold. Yet in the light of newer research involving emotion and cognition, such claims against morality in animals become harder to defend. However, even those who do claim that animals can possibly act morally still hold back from making the stronger claim that animals can be held responsible for their behavior. I view such attitudes against morality (or moral agency) in animals and against anthropomorphizing in this case as incorrect for the same reason: combined, they assume that 1) if animals are truly moral, they must be moral in the same ways we are, and 2) if they are moral, then they must be viewed in the same way we view humans and therefore treated as such. In short, both claims involve anthropocentrism and worries of anthropomorphism. This work will be dedicated to showing that this point of view is conceptually flawed and suggesting a new avenue to pursue this line of thought, one that keeps in mind both animal uniqueness-- by invoking the subjective lived experiences of the animals themselves, coupled with what they have reason to know—and, surprisingly, human uniqueness.
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    Of mice and Kant: re-examining moral considerability to non-human animals on Kant's cognitive grounds
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Easley, William Eric, author; Rollin, Bernard E., advisor; Kneller, Jane, committee member; Volbrecht, Vicki J., committee member
    In this thesis, I examine Kant's criterion for moral considerability in light of the intersection between the moral, critical, and epistemic principles Kant commits himself to and evidence of advanced cognitive capacities in non-human animals. As I argue, Kant's denial of crucial cognitive capacities in non-human animals represents a flawed attempt at applying a principle of parsimony which threatens to undermine the transcendental base of his theories. Further, expelling the anachronisms and human exceptionalism Kant fell victim to in his theories reveals a robust sense of ethical duties directly to non-human animals, beyond non-cruelty. In Chapter One, I argue that the basis of moral considerability in Kant's ethics ought to extend directly to non-human animals if they possess sufficient degrees of the three cognitive capacities that comprise dignity and the ability to meaningfully set ends: reason, autonomy, and self-consciousness. In Chapter Two, I examine Kant's cognitive theory and argue that it lacks a developmental account in terms of degrees of these capacities that is crucial to completing Kant's ethical project. In Chapters Three and Four, I develop a model for such an account based upon evidence and theories in the philosophy of mind and the sciences, concluding that many non-human animals do possess advanced cognitive capacities and the we, thus, have moral duties directly to most non-human animals.