Paper Projects
Teaching Applied Ethics: The Challenge of Empathetic Bias
One challenge in teaching issues in applied ethics is getting students to adequately empathize with others’ suffering. This challenge is especially evident when teaching ethical issues such as vegetarianism and famine relief. Empathy is important for good moral reasoning because it makes us feel concern for others’ suffering and give their suffering its due weight in moral deliberations. Yet empathy is vulnerable to biases, including biases against those who are less familiar to us and those who are distant from us in space or time. I consider some ways in which this bias can be counteracted in the classroom, encouraging students to empathize with others’ suffering more widely and equitably. This includes the idea of “recruiting” people’s empathic bias and the strategy of using graphic video footage in the classroom. I evaluate the potential benefits and challenges of these strategies.
Empathy, Animal Rights, and Male Bias against Emotions
One feminist criticism of animal rights discourse contends that animal rights theory is male-biased insofar as it tends to elevate reason and devalue emotions in moral justifications. Feminists sympathetic to raising the moral status of animals have sought to develop a more female-representative ethic of care applied to animals. In this paper, I suggest that a theory of animal rights can be conceived in a way that makes it more compatible with some of the values of a feminist ethic of care, including the value of emotion. In particular, I defend the idea that the basic rights of sentient beings are grounded in our capacities to empathize with others' interests in their own basic well-being. This approach unites reason and emotion and shows how they can work together in our understanding of moral rights. Additionally, I argue that this approach portrays humans not as separate, competitive, and egoistic, but rather as beings capable of deep connectedness to other sentient beings and genuine altruistic concern for one another.
Animals, the Right to Life, and the Comparative Value of Life
Even if life has some value for animals, one further challenge to the idea that animals have a moral right to life consists in the thought that life has significantly less value for animals than people (rational, self-aware beings). I address this challenge by considering two questions: (1) is it true that life has less value for animals than people, and (2) if it is true, does this justify the further claim that animals do not have a right to life? In response to the first question, I argue that it makes sense to think that life has less value for animals than people. This is evident from the fact that a self-aware, reflective being is capable of experiencing a greater quantity and quality of good in its life than a being lacking self-awareness. However, it doesn't follow from this that animals do not have a right to life similar to people. Whether some being has a right to life depends not on whether the value of life for that being is equal to the value of life for us, but rather whether the value of life for that being meets a certain threshold. There are good reasons to think that the value of life for many animals meets the threshold for having a right to life. For one, the value of life for many animals is equal to if not greater than the value of life for many "marginal" humans. More fundamentally, it is consistent with the virtues of compassion and humility.
One challenge in teaching issues in applied ethics is getting students to adequately empathize with others’ suffering. This challenge is especially evident when teaching ethical issues such as vegetarianism and famine relief. Empathy is important for good moral reasoning because it makes us feel concern for others’ suffering and give their suffering its due weight in moral deliberations. Yet empathy is vulnerable to biases, including biases against those who are less familiar to us and those who are distant from us in space or time. I consider some ways in which this bias can be counteracted in the classroom, encouraging students to empathize with others’ suffering more widely and equitably. This includes the idea of “recruiting” people’s empathic bias and the strategy of using graphic video footage in the classroom. I evaluate the potential benefits and challenges of these strategies.
Empathy, Animal Rights, and Male Bias against Emotions
One feminist criticism of animal rights discourse contends that animal rights theory is male-biased insofar as it tends to elevate reason and devalue emotions in moral justifications. Feminists sympathetic to raising the moral status of animals have sought to develop a more female-representative ethic of care applied to animals. In this paper, I suggest that a theory of animal rights can be conceived in a way that makes it more compatible with some of the values of a feminist ethic of care, including the value of emotion. In particular, I defend the idea that the basic rights of sentient beings are grounded in our capacities to empathize with others' interests in their own basic well-being. This approach unites reason and emotion and shows how they can work together in our understanding of moral rights. Additionally, I argue that this approach portrays humans not as separate, competitive, and egoistic, but rather as beings capable of deep connectedness to other sentient beings and genuine altruistic concern for one another.
Animals, the Right to Life, and the Comparative Value of Life
Even if life has some value for animals, one further challenge to the idea that animals have a moral right to life consists in the thought that life has significantly less value for animals than people (rational, self-aware beings). I address this challenge by considering two questions: (1) is it true that life has less value for animals than people, and (2) if it is true, does this justify the further claim that animals do not have a right to life? In response to the first question, I argue that it makes sense to think that life has less value for animals than people. This is evident from the fact that a self-aware, reflective being is capable of experiencing a greater quantity and quality of good in its life than a being lacking self-awareness. However, it doesn't follow from this that animals do not have a right to life similar to people. Whether some being has a right to life depends not on whether the value of life for that being is equal to the value of life for us, but rather whether the value of life for that being meets a certain threshold. There are good reasons to think that the value of life for many animals meets the threshold for having a right to life. For one, the value of life for many animals is equal to if not greater than the value of life for many "marginal" humans. More fundamentally, it is consistent with the virtues of compassion and humility.
