Rowlands: Can Animals be Moral?

Rowlands offers three categories when considering animals as moral: 1) moral patients, 2) moral agents, 3) moral subjects. He then discusses how animals fit into these three. Moral patients are “legitimate objects of moral concern” that have “interests that should be taken into consideration”. Based on this definition it is not hard to see how animals could be considered as moral patients. They can feel and express these feelings at least in some way. They can express preferences and so these preferences should be taken into account. It is true that humans’ actions toward animals do not always reflect a respect for them as moral patients but one can see why they should.

A moral agent is “morally responsible” and therefore “can be morally evaluated for its motives and actions”. It is much more difficult to see animals as fitting into this category. Animals are not perceived as being responsible for their actions and therefore are not held accountable for them. To claim animals are moral agents is to claim that they are capable of making decisions and understanding the consequences of these decisions. If animals are moral patients then humans have a responsibility to act morally toward them. If animals are moral agents then they have a responsibility to act morally towards humans.

A moral subject “is, at least sometimes, motivated to act by moral reasons”. This seems to mean that if animals are moral subjects they have the motivation to act morally but cannot be evaluated based on these actions. This implies that animals cannot choose to act in a certain way and therefore their acting that way cannot be defined as morally motivated. Animals can only be moral subjects if they are moral agents because they have to be morally responsible to be morally motivated.

Based on this, it seems that animals are moral patients only. Rowlands claims that he will go on to prove that they are also moral subjects but based on the information provided, this does not seem to be the case.