Minding some animals but not others: Strategic attributions of mental capacities and moral worth to animals used for food in pescatarians, vegetarians, and omnivores.

While moral concern for animals has become increasingly important for both consumer food choice and food policy makers, previous research demonstrated that meat eaters attribute lower moral status and mental capacities to animals raised for meat compared to non-food animals. The current research investigated whether this strategic flexibility in moral concern and mind perceptions also occurs when considering aquatic food animals and animals used for dairy and egg products, and the degree to which these concerns and perceptions are evident in pescatarians and vegetarians. We compared perceptions (mind attributions and moral concern) of land food animals versus aquatic food animals, and of animals in the meat versus dairy and egg industry between omnivores (n = 122), pescatarians (n = 118), vegetarians (n = 138), vegans (n = 120), and flexitarians (n = 60). Pescatarians scored lower than other dietary groups on moral concern and mind attribution for aquatic animals relative to farmed land animals. Unlike the other dietary groups, pescatarians and vegetarians scored lower on moral concern and mind attribution for dairy than beef cows and for layer chickens than broiler chickens. These findings demonstrate that pescatarians and vegetarians were flexible in their moral thinking about different types of food animals in ways that suited their consumption habits, even when the same animal was evaluated (e.g., dairy vs beef cows). This research highlights the psychological barriers that might prevent people from reducing animal product consumption and may need to be addressed in interventions to encourage transitioning towards more plant-based diets.

Is Dignity Still Necessary in Health Care? From Definition to Recognition of Human Dignity.

The concept of dignity is not, as some scholars claim, an unnecessary moral idea, and nor need it have religious overtones or be characterised by speciesism. In this article, I try to show that dignity can be defined and recognised. The starting point for the argumentation is the four typologies of dignity, which show that the term 'dignity' can denote significantly different concepts, and that the different concepts of dignity can have significantly different ontological senses. A unified typology of dignity allows for five categories to be distinguished: inherent dignity, dignity based on changeable qualities, moral dignity, bestowed dignity and comportment dignity. I take the first two categories of dignity as the object of the analysis, with which I seek to formulate a philosophical response to the charge of speciesism and to show on what basis it can be maintained that all human beings possess dignity. To this end, I distinguish between existential dignity, actual dignity, and potential dignity. Distinguishing these types of dignity becomes possible in the light of Aquinas' and Aristotle's views. In the final section, I point to two ways of recognising dignity. The first is based on certain narratives and emotional states ('ecumenical model of dignity'), while the second is related to a specific moral experience developed within ethical personalism.

Animal Research that Respects Animal Rights: Extending Requirements for Research with Humans to Animals.

The purpose of this article is to show that animal rights are not necessarily at odds with the use of animals for research. If animals hold basic moral rights similar to those of humans, then we should consequently extend the ethical requirements guiding research with humans to research with animals. The article spells out how this can be done in practice by applying the seven requirements for ethical research with humans proposed by Ezekiel Emanuel, David Wendler, and Christine Grady to animal research. These requirements are (1) social value, (2) scientific validity, (3) independent review, (4) fair subject selection, (5) favorable risk-benefit ratio, (6) informed consent, and (7) respect for research subjects. In practice, this means that we must reform the practice of animal research to make it more similar to research with humans, rather than completely abolish the former. Indeed, if we ban animal research altogether, then we would also deprive animals of its potential benefits-which would be ethically problematic.

Children Prioritize Humans Over Animals Less Than Adults Do.

Is the tendency to morally prioritize humans over animals weaker in children than adults? In two preregistered studies (total N = 622), 5- to 9-year-old children and adults were presented with moral dilemmas pitting varying numbers of humans against varying numbers of either dogs or pigs and were asked who should be saved. In both studies, children had a weaker tendency than adults to prioritize humans over animals. They often chose to save multiple dogs over one human, and many valued the life of a dog as much as the life of a human. Although they valued pigs less, the majority still prioritized 10 pigs over one human. By contrast, almost all adults chose to save one human over even 100 dogs or pigs. Our findings suggest that the common view that humans are far more morally important than animals appears late in development and is likely socially acquired.

How children and adults value different animal lives.

The current study modeled the attributions underlying moral concern for animals during childhood and adulthood with the aim of better understanding how concern for animals develops. In total, 241 children aged 6-10 years and 152 adults appraised a range of animals on seven appraisal dimensions and, subsequently rank-ordered which animals they would save in a medicine allocation task. Structural equation modeling revealed several developmental continuities and discontinuities in the dimensions children and adults used to evaluate animal lives. Whereas participants of all ages valued animals based on their aesthetic qualities, intelligence, and perceived similarity to humans, younger children valued animal aesthetics most of all. They also valued benevolence in animals more than older children and adults. Only older children and adults comprehended and valued animals on the basis of their utility as food for humans. Furthermore, neither younger nor older children grasped the role of sentience in the valuation of animals. Only adults factored sentience into their view of what makes animals similar to humans and worthy of moral concern. The results highlight the ways in which moral concern for animals changes across development in several important respects, reflecting an increasingly human-centric orientation.

VR outreach and meat reduction advocacy: The role of presence, empathic concern and speciesism in predicting meat reduction intentions.

The industrial farming and slaughtering of animals may be considered one of the most pressing ethical problems of our time, yet consumers remain empathically disconnected from food animals and continue to eat meat. Therefore, animal advocacy groups have started using virtual reality (VR) outreach to promote consumers' concern for food animals and persuade them to eat less meat. In this study, we examined whether a short 360° documentary depicting the life cycle of factory farmed pigs (from their lives on the farm to their death in the slaughterhouse) experienced in a VR format versus in a regular video format increases participants' intentions to eat less meat via an increased feeling of presence and empathic concern. Using a single factor experimental design, we randomly allocated participants (n = 84 after data-cleaning) to answer a questionnaire following one of both conditions (VR versus video documentary, each n = 42). Results confirmed our hypothesized serial mediation model; VR (versus video) had a positive influence on presence and additionally on empathic concern, leading to higher intentions of reduced meat consumption among participants. Yet, VR (versus video) also had a direct, negative effect on empathy when controlling for presence, so no total effect of medium format on intentions to reduce meat could be found. This counter-effect of VR on empathic concern could be explained by an increased level of speciesism among participants exposed to the VR (versus video) documentary, a finding that is consistent with prior literature on speciesism, cognitive dissonance and dissociation, and requires further confirmatory investigation. Limitations and implications for theory and practice of the study are considered.

Health justice in the Anthropocene: medical ethics and the Land Ethic.

Industrialisation, urbanisation and economic development have produced unprecedented (if unevenly distributed) improvements in human health. They have also produced unprecedented exploitation of Earth's life support systems, moving the planet into a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene-one defined by human influence on natural systems. The health sector has been complicit in this influence. Bioethics, too, must acknowledge its role-the environmental threats that will shape human health in this century represent a 'perfect moral storm' challenging the ethical theories of the last. The US conservationist Aldo Leopold saw this gathering storm more clearly than many, and in his Land Ethic describes the beginnings of a route to safe passage. Its starting point is a reinterpretation of the ethical relationship between humanity and the 'land community', the ecosystems we live within and depend upon; moving us from 'conqueror' to 'plain member and citizen' of that community. The justice of the Land Ethic questions many presuppositions implicit to discussions of the topic in biomedical ethics. By valuing the community in itself-in a way irreducible to the welfare of its members-it steps away from the individualism axiomatic in contemporary bioethics. Viewing ourselves as citizens of the land community also extends the moral horizons of healthcare from a solely human focus. Taking into account the 'stability' of the community requires intergenerational justice. The resulting vision of justice in healthcare-one that takes climate and environmental justice seriously-could offer health workers an ethic fit for the future.

In the name of science: animal appellations and best practice.

BACKGROUND: The practice of giving animal research subjects proper names is frowned on by the academic scientific community. While researchers provide a number of reasons for desisting from giving their animal subjects proper names, the most common are that (1) naming leads to anthropomorphising which, in turn, leads to data and results that are unobjective and invalid; and (2) while naming does not necessarily entail some mistake on the researcher's part, some feature of the research enterprise renders the practice impossible or ill-advised. OBJECTIVES: My aim is to assess whether the scientific community's attitude towards naming animal research subjects is justified. That is, I wish to consider whether the practice of naming animal research subjects is good or bad for the purposes of scientific research. METHOD: After reviewing the extant literature, I constructed a list of the main arguments researchers provide for desisting from naming their animal research subjects. I then analysed these arguments, with a view to determining whether they in fact provide good reasons to avoid naming animal research subjects. CONCLUSION: I argue that none of the aforementioned reasons usually provide good grounds for not naming animal research subjects. Moreover, there are usually powerful reasons in favour of researchers giving their research animals proper names. This is because the practice usually leads to greater empathy and so to improved animal well-being. This, in turn, leads to better animal science. Thus, the scientific community's attitude towards naming animal research subjects is not justified.

A fish eye view of the mirror test.

Reactions to a recent study suggesting that cleaner wrasse can pass the mirror self-recognition test (Kohda et al. in PLOS Biology, 17(2), e3000021, 2019) reveal more about scientists' biases than about self-awareness. Scientists should base conclusions about species' abilities based on the corpus of data on that species rather than on a single test or preconceived expectations based on phylogeny alone.

On justifying arguments of species membership.

In the debate about the moral status of human beings at the margins of life, arguments of species membership are often considered to be the least plausible ones. Against this backdrop, this article explores two possible ways to formulate feasible arguments of species membership. The first is an (in the broadest sense of the word) Aristotelian or neo-Aristotelian argument; the second is an argument from the intrinsic logic of human rights, which Robert Spaemann refers toas a 'transcendental-pragmatic' argument. On these grounds, the article proposes a philosophical justification for an at least moderate speciesism.

Being human: Why and in what sense it is morally relevant.

The debate on the question of the moral status of human beings and the boundaries of the moral community has long been dominated by the antagonism between personism and speciesism: either certain mental properties or membership of the human species is considered morally crucial. In this article, I argue that both schools of thought are equally implausible in major respects, and that these shortcomings arise from the same reason in both cases: a biological notion of being human. By contrast, I show to what extent being human is morally relevant in a non-biological sense. I establish the living human form as the essential criterion for belonging to the moral community, and defend it against a number of possible objections. This new morphological approach is capable of capturing essential elements of personism and speciesism without sharing their faults, and of reconstructing widespread moral intuitions.

Speciesism, generalized prejudice, and perceptions of prejudiced others.

Philosophers have argued there is a normative relationship between our attitudes towards animals ("speciesism") and other prejudices, and psychological work suggests speciesism relies on similar psychological processes and motivations as those underlying other prejudices. But do laypeople perceive such a connection? We compared perceptions of a target who is high or low on speciesism with those of a target who is high or low on racism (Studies 1-2), sexism (Study 2), or homophobia (Study 3). We find that just like racists, sexists, and homophobes, speciesists were both evaluated more negatively and expected to hold more general prejudicial attitudes and ideologies (e.g., thought to be higher on SDO and more prejudiced in other ways). Our results suggest that laypeople seem intuitively aware of the connection between speciesism and "traditional" forms of prejudice, inferring similar personality traits and general prejudicial attitudes from a speciesist just as they do from a racist, sexist, or homophobe.

Biological Ties and Biological Accounts of Moral Status.

Speciesist or biological accounts of moral status can be defended by showing that all members of Homo sapiens have a moral status conferring property. In this article, I argue that the most promising defense locates the moral status conferring property in the relational property of being biologically tied to other humans. This requires that biological ties ground moral obligations. I consider and reject the best defenses of that premise. Thus, we are left with compelling evidence that biological ties and membership in a biological category like "species" ground neither moral obligations nor moral status. Because it is crucial to account for the moral significance of family bonds, I conclude by describing the sense in which biological ties matter morally.

What moral status should be accorded to those human beings who have profound intellectual disabilities? A reply to Curtis and Vehmas.

Curtis and Vehmas present an argument in support of full moral status for those with profound intellectual disabilities based on Moore's famous defence of a common-sense view of the nature and existence of the external world. According to them, the need for such an argument arises from the disturbing inferences that can, supposedly, be drawn from the standard Lockean philosophical theory of personhood. This paper develops and supports Curtis and Vehmas's central claim concerning this equality of moral status by suggesting a basis for rejecting Locke's position, based on reflections upon Wittgenstein's remarks about games and family resemblances. It also questions the validity of the disturbing inferences. It asserts that our moral duties towards and concerning people who have and people who do not have profound intellectual disability, human and non-human animals, do not derive solely from their moral status. The existence, content and strength of our moral duties towards particular people can be grounded in conditions and circumstances that pertain to us rather than to them.

Trends in animal use at US research facilities.

Minimising the use of animals in experiments is universally recognised by scientists, governments and advocates as an ethical cornerstone of research. Yet, despite growing public opposition to animal experimentation, mounting evidence that animal studies often do not translate to humans, and the development of new research technologies, a number of countries have reported increased animal use in recent years. In the USA--one of the world's largest users of animals in experiments--a lack of published data on the species most commonly used in laboratories (eg, mice, rats and fish) has prevented such assessments. The current study aimed to fill this gap by analysing the use of all vertebrate animals by the top institutional recipients of National Institutes of Health research funds over a 15-year period. These data show a statistically significant 72.7% increase in the use of animals at these US facilities during this time period-driven primarily by increases in the use of mice. Our results highlight a need for greater efforts to reduce animal use. We discuss technical, institutional, sociological and psychological explanations for this trend.

Children Value Animals More Than Adults Do: A Conceptual Replication and Extension.

Recent psychological research finds that U.S. American children have a weaker tendency than U.S. American adults to value humans more than animals. We aimed to conceptually replicate and extend this finding in a preregistered study (N = 412). We investigated whether 6- to 9-year-old Polish children (Study 1a) are less likely to prioritize humans over animals than Polish adults are (Studies 1b and 1c). We presented participants with moral dilemmas where they had to prioritize either humans or animals (dogs or chimpanzees) in situations that involved harming (i.e., a trolley problem) or benefiting (i.e., giving a snack). We found that Polish children prioritized humans over animals less than Polish adults did. This was the case both in dilemmas that involved preventing harm and in dilemmas that involved providing snacks. Both children and adults prioritized humans over chimpanzees more than humans over dogs.

The moral status of babies.

In their controversial paper 'After-birth abortion', Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva argue that there is no rational basis for allowing abortion but prohibiting infanticide ('after-birth abortion'). We ought in all consistency either to allow both or prohibit both. This paper rejects their claim, arguing that much-neglected considerations in philosophical discussions of this issue are capable of explaining why we currently permit abortion in some circumstances, while prohibiting infanticide.

Changing minds about minds: Evidence that people are too sceptical about animal sentience.

Our relationships with other animals are governed by how we view their capacity for sentience and suffering. However, there is currently little agreement as to whether people's beliefs about animal minds are largely accurate or inaccurate. We used an innovative task to examine how people update their beliefs in response to noisy but informative clues about animal minds. This allowed us to compare participants' posterior beliefs to what a normative participant ought to believe if they conform to Bayes' theorem. Five studies (four pre-registered; n = 2417) found that participants shifted their beliefs too far in response to clues that suggested animals do not have minds (i.e., overshooting what a normative participant ought to believe), but not far enough in response to clues that suggested animals have minds (i.e., falling short of what a normative participant ought to believe). A final study demonstrated that this effect was attenuated when humans were the targets of belief. The findings demonstrate that people underestimate animal minds in a way that can be said to be inaccurate and highlight the role of belief updating in downplaying evidence of animal minds. The findings are discussed in relation to speciesist beliefs about the supremacy of humans over animals.

Meat and interpersonal motives: the case of self-enhancement.

Meat eaters have a more hierarchical, less egalitarian view at the world than vegetarians. This can be manifested in social dominance orientation, at the intergroup level, but also at the interspecies level, yielding more empathy with nonhuman animals, and at the interpersonal level. We examined if interpersonal motives in human-human relationships and empathy with people are associated with frequency of meat eating, using a cross-sectional survey (N = 580). For the motives power and affiliation, no significant relationships emerged, but the self-enhancement motive was positively related to the number of days that participants ate meat. This predicted additional variance over and above variables at the intergroup and interspecies level, such as social dominance orientation and human-animal continuity. Empathy with people was negatively related to meat consumption, but this was explained by its correlation with empathy with animals. Discussion focuses on the importance of the self-enhancement motive in attachment to meat, the symbol of human superiority, as well as resistance to meat refusers.