Animal instincts and immorality

‘I think I could turn and live with animals,

they are so placid and self-contained,

I stand and look at them long and long,

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,

Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,

Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.’

                             Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass  

            The argument that an animal is immoral because it kills another animal for food is what maintains human moral superiority. Many animals have the ability to engage in intentional behaviour which requires some degree of abstract thinking. Certain animal behaviour, such as altruism, is certainly as equally consistent with the explanation that at least some animals engage in evaluative or normative-type cognition as with any other competing explanation. But the fact that an animal may be capable of abstract thought and even of some sort of mental behaviour that may be described as evaluative or normative does not mean that animals act ‘immorally’[i].

            To say that someone has acted ‘immorally’ suggests that they have ‘intentionally’ violated a moral rule. But animals cannot intentionally violate a moral rule any more than can a young child. In most legal systems, there is a minimum age for criminal liability that is generally at the very least five years old. Similarly, some adults are, for reasons of organic or psychological impairment, similarly unable to conform their conduct to rule standards. The fact that some humans may not be able to conform their conduct to rule standards, or that animals cannot do so, does not mean that humans who ‘can’ choose to follow moral rules are thereby not obligated to do so. Put simply, the fact that some animals kill other animals is absolutely irrelevant to the matter of the obligation of those humans who can make moral decisions.