Members of the CRÉ and GREÉEA are delighted to welcome Angie Pepper (University of Roehampton) and Richard Healey (LSE), who will offer a presentation titled “Animals, Inferiory, and Abolition.”
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Abstract
In The Pecking Order, Niko Kolodny argues that natural persons have an irreducible claim against inferiority: a claim “that we not be set beneath another in a social hierarchy” (p. 5). Such social hierarchies, Kolodny suggests, are constituted by untempered disparities in power, authority, and regard. Though Kolodny acknowledges that the lives of many social animals are organised around the “pecking order” (p. 1, p. 87), other animals barely feature in his analysis of relations of inferiority. This omission is striking because many of our relations with nonhuman animals, especially those who have been domesticated, do not arise in “chance, one-off encounters”, but are rather “entrenched in an established, ongoing social structure” (p. 98). Think, for example, of our relations to livestock animals, laboratory animals, and pets. In each of these cases, animals are systematically subordinated by a pattern of social and legal norms that involve untempered asymmetries in power, authority, and regard.
These observations raise the question: Do non-human animals have a claim against inferiority within human-animal communities and hierarchies? In this paper, we argue that they do. Moreover, we suggest that nonhuman animals’ complaint against inferiority supports an abolitionist approach to animal rights. The basic idea is that to fully respect the rights of other animals, we must desist from using them as means to our ends. Importantly, the claim against inferiority not only supports the abolition of practices that clearly cause animals suffering but also those that need not, such as pet keeping.
The paper is structured as follows. First, we defend the claim that sentient nonhuman animals can have claims against inferiority against humans. We consider the view that only those capable of adequately recognising their position within a social hierarchy can have claims against inferiority. In response, we observe that while one’s ability to recognise one’s social position will likely have implications for what constitutes appropriate treatment, nothing in Kolodny’s account necessitates a recognition condition for the claim against inferiority. We further argue that the lack of a recognition condition is independently plausible if we wish to allow, for example, that young children in lower castes and individuals with severe cognitive disabilities can have claims against inferiority. Second, we argue that some nonhuman animals do have claims of inferiority against us. To illustrate this we show that animals have a complaint against being socially positioned as pets, which is grounded in a claim against inferiority. Specifically, we contend that the practice of pet-keeping is a socio-political institution which is constituted by untempered asymmetries in power, authority, and regard between humans and nonhuman animals. Furthermore, we argue that it is not possible to effectively temper these asymmetries while maintaining the practice of living with pets. This is because the tempering factors that undercut objections to social hierarchy in the human case (see Kolodny §5.2 and Ch. 8) either cannot be made to work for other animals (e.g., democratic governance) or otherwise require that the practice be dismantled. If our argument is correct, the implications are significant. Not only does this give us a further reason to abandon practices that harm other animals such as farming and biomedical research, but it suggests that the seemingly more benign practice of keeping animals as pets should be abolished.
Workshop co-organized by Ophélie Desmons (INSPE Paris, Sorbonne University) and Martin Gibert (Université de Montréal).
With the support of GREEA (environmental and animal ethics research group), CRÉ (Centre de recherche en éthique) and UMR 8011 “Sciences, Normes, Démocratie”, Sorbonne University.
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Program
9:00 am (Montreal)/03:00 pm (Paris)
Mark Ryan (Wageningen), Leonie N. Bossert (U. of Vienna)
Dr. Doolittle Uses AI: Should We Try to Speak Whale?
AI technologies are increasingly applied on nonhuman animals. In this talk, we will focus on a particular application of AI to other animals, namely, using AI to decode animal communication, in particular whale communication. We will discuss a variety of ethical aspects of using AI to decode whale communication, as well as the risks and benefits involved.
9:30 am/03:30 pm
Ophélie Desmons (Sorbonne)
Une IA qui parle baleine, anticiper le pire et évaluer les bénéfices potentiels
Des projets récents de développement de l’IA laissent entrevoir la possibilité de communiquer avec les baleines. Cette intervention s’appuie sur les ressources offertes par une ouvre de fiction (Extrapolations, Saison 1, épisode 2, AppleTV, 2023) pour examiner la question de savoir si une telle IA est susceptible de produire de nouvelles injustices à l’égard des animaux concernés ou au contraire d’apporter des éléments de réponse à l’un des problèmes fréquemment souligné dans le champ de l’éthique et de la justice animales : le fait que les animaux ne disposent pas d’une “voix” leur permettant de faire entendre leurs intérêts et de revendiquer le respect de leurs droits.
Recent AI technologies point to the possibility of communicating with whales. This talk draws on the resources offered by a work of fiction (Extrapolations, Season 1, Episode 2, AppleTV, 2023) to examine the question of whether such an AI is likely to produce new injustices for the animals concerned or, on the contrary, to provide elements of a response to one of the problems frequently highlighted in the field of animal ethics and animal justice: the fact that animals do not have a “voice” enabling them to make their interests heard and claim respect for their rights.
10:00 am/04:00 pm
Soenke Ziesche, Yip Fai Tse (Princeton)
AI alignment for nonhuman animals: next steps
In our talk we present our latest research, which comprises further arguments why nonhuman animals ought to be included in AI alignment efforts and why we believe this is possible. In short, we propose to provide AI systems access with all types of data of nonhuman animals according to animal welfare methods and let the AI systems analyse the data and learn about the interests and preferences of nonhuman animals through (inverse) reinforcement learning.
10:30 am/04:30 pm
Jean-Cassien Billier (Sorbonne)
La pluralité des mondes moraux : les implications métaéthiques des interactions entre l’IA et les animaux non-humains
On sait déjà que l’IA peut créer des mondes moraux inédits, constitués d’agents moraux artificiels modulaires. L’interaction entre l’IA et les animaux non-humains ouvre une perspective plus radicalement nouvelle, et bien plus hétérodoxe : celle de mondes moraux constitués par des relations entre des entités morales non-humaines de deux types : les unes naturelles, les autres artificielles. Ces nouveaux mondes moraux pourront être dépourvus d’agents moraux humains ou de relation directe à ces derniers. Quelles sont les implications métaéthiques de cette potentielle multiplication des mondes moraux ?
11:00 am/05:00 pm – break
11:15 am/05:15 am
Augusta Gaze (Sorbonne)
Comment Zoopolis éclaire les relations entre systèmes d’IA et animaux non-humains?
Après une présentation de la Théorie des Droits des Animaux développée dans Zoopolis, nous partirons du cadre normatif posé par les auteurs afin de penser des cas qui ne sont pas intuitivement faciles à traiter. D’abord, nous analyserons l’exemple des systèmes d’IA capables d’éduquer les animaux de compagnie. Puis, nous poursuivrons avec l’interaction des voitures autonomes avec les kangourous.
11:45 am/05:45 pm
Angela Martin (Basel), Leonie N. Bossert (U. of Vienna)
Large Language Models, Search Engine Ranking, and Justice for Animals
In this talk, we focus on the manifold forms of harms that nonhuman animals can experience because of Large Language Models (LLM) and Search Engine Ranking (SER). We show how LLMs and SERs regularly disrespect animal interests, which amounts to speciesism. In a first step, we outline that LLMs and SERs should, in an ideal world, minimally not cause any harm to animals. In a second step, we argue that in the currently non-ideal world, LLMs and SERs should be actively altered to educate people about animals and speciesism. Finally, we discuss several objections to our arguments.
12:15 pm/06:15 pm
Martin Gibert (U.Montréal) et / and Nick Clanchy (Centre de recherche en éthique)
Qu’est-ce qui est spécial avec le spécisme algorithmique?
Le spécisme algorithmique, entendu comme l’ensemble des effets discriminatoires des algorithmes sur les animaux, se distingue des autres manifestations du spécisme par ses aspects plus automatiques et contrôlables – et donc plus facilement réversible. Il se distingue par ailleurs du racisme algorithmique car il est moins reconnu et par le fait que les victimes ne peuvent qu’être passives face à ces discriminations: elles ont besoin de notre epistemic care. Nous considérerons plusieurs exemples.
Algorithmic speciesism, understood as all the discriminatory effects of algorithms on animals, differs from other manifestations of speciesism in being more automatic and controllable – and therefore more easily reversible. It also differs from algorithmic racism in that it is less recognized, and its victims can only be passive with regard to such discrimination: they need our epistemic care. We will consider several examples.
