Difference in moral perspective between wild and domestic animals

[Steve Garlick]

The question to Professor Priscilla Cohen by Roger Yeats is one that interests me as I feel there is a significant moral distinction between wild animals and domestic animals when the context relates to the globally significant issue of environmental sustainability.  Context when considering moral significance is important. 

Recently I wrote a chapter for a book on environmental sustainability that will be published in early 2012. The chapter is titled Learning from wildlife emotion: A lacuna in our knowledge of environmental sustainability.  In that chapter I suggest we have, to our detriment, relied exclusively on the science of humans in relation to environmental sustainability and ignored the knowledge of the environment that wildlife can tell us.  Indeed it has been human exceptionalism that has created the mess we have with the environment today.  I chose the kangaroo as the wild animal to learn from because it has been an integral part of the environment for 16 million years, is able to cover large tracts of the landscape, has specific habitat requirements, and is sitting at the edge of complete annihilation due to significant loss of this habitat and human killing programs.

In that research I have used affective neuroscience to identify mammal states of emotion as a means of communication about the responsiveness of the wild kangaroo to their environment circumstance.  Through a range of observed emotion markers identified initially through close observation of kangaroo behaviour, based on an in-house programme of a relational ethic of care in rehabilitating the severely injured animal, it is possible to use these markers in the natural situation to conclude whether the environment is reinforcing or restrictive for these animals. That we might learn from wild animals about something that is as significant for human futures as environmental sustainability suggests a new area of moral significance for wildlife.

[Carolyn Bailey]

Hi Steve! 

I agree with you in that we have, and continue to, rely exclusively on the science of humans in relation to environmental sustainability. I think we rely on the science of humans and the arrogance and perceived supremacy of humans in regard to pretty much everything in regard to other animals. 

I'd be very interested to read your chapter when the book is released, if you'd like to keep us informed!

[Tim Gier]

Hi Steve!

Thanks for posting this. I believe that the fundamental problem at the root of human-nonhuman relations is the false construction of the divide, as evidenced in language, between human and nonhuman. That is, just as we are beginning to understand that gender in human beings is not biologically determined by which sex organs a person happens to have, but rather that gender is a socially constructed practice that people "do" as opposed to what they "are" - so too then we must see that the boundaries between species are socially constructions of human imagination. We ought to be listening to what everyone in an environment can teach us about what happening in that environment - whether we describe them as "human" or not.

[Steve Garlick]

Indeed Tim.  In fact in relation to human science I have a sentence in the introduction of the chapter I referred to along these very lines, vide: "Rather than ‘educated’ humans saying what they are good at on matters to do with environmental sustainability, perhaps instead they should be asking what they are good for".