Interests are interests, regardless whose they are, and like interests deserve equal consideration – this is the basic idea of a common position within animal ethics, related to Peter Singer, Tom Regan and other influential names. It is also a view that Shelly Kagan in his book How to Count Animals, More or Less rejects. Even though animals count, morally speaking, they do so to a lesser extent than most humans, according to the author. Instead of there being one kind of moral status for humans and animals, as unitarianism argues, Kagan defends a hierarchical approach, according to which most humans have a higher moral status than animals, and some animals have a higher status than others. Despite its intuitive appeal for readers unfamiliar with the animal ethics literature, the sketched hierarchical approach can indeed be described as unconventional, therefore. 

The author attempts to show that it is possible to defend a hierarchical account of moral status without falling into the pitfalls of speciesism, anthropocentrism and other unfavorable -isms. Indeed, Kagan emphasizes that his account should not be misinterpreted as a justification for our current exploitive treatment of animals, which he describes as “moral horror of unspeakable proportions, staggering the imagination” (p.5). Yet, he also believes that unitarianism has certain seriously implausible implications that should motivate us to search for alternatives.

The book consists of eleven chapters. After some general remarks about moral standing and status, Kagan goes into more detail of the position in the focus of the book, i.e., unitarianism, and argues that it has several implausible implications that should lead us to search for alternative positions. The author’s own, hierarchical approach of moral status rests on two main ideas, laid out in chapters 5 and 6. He first argues that those features relevant for moral standing and status – i.e., certain cognitive and emotional capacities – come in degrees. Some beings have more developed or sophisticated psychological capacities than others, which Kagan argues should be mirrored in their respective degree of status as well. Because Kagan also advances an individualistic, non-speciesist approach of moral status, he necessarily runs into the notorious problem of ‘marginal cases’, i.e., beings that do not share those psychological capacities that most adult representatives of their species possess. Thus, he introduces a second thought, suggesting that there are two properties that can further enhance those individuals’ status, namely their potential to have these psychological capacities (e.g., infants) and their modal status (e.g., cognitively impaired human adults). This allows him to place certain individuals higher on the hierarchy than their psychological features would actually suggest. The remaining chapters discuss the idea of a hierarchy with regard to different versions of deontological accounts and, finally, lay out the details of the emerging account of what Kagan terms a limited hierarchy, i.e., a hierarchical account with a limited number of different statuses, where several different individuals and species are grouped together. 

Kagan openly admits not to have sufficient knowledge of the relevant empirical literature as to make any claims on which animals should be placed where on this hierarchy, but he proposes to divide all morally relevant beings into not more than a handful of categories, with human persons at the top, “the most intelligent animals, those closest to being full-blown persons (like dolphins, whales, squid, or great apes)” on a level below and so on, down to “the very lowest animals, with the least developed psychological capacities (such as insects and spiders)” (p.294). With regard to the question where ‘marginal cases’ should be placed – on the highest level, the same level as animals closest to being persons or a lower level – Kagan admits being uncertain. He also commits to what he calls practical realism, however, which admonishes to choose moral principles according to our own epistemic and motivational limitations. With regard to ‘marginal cases’, practical realism suggests that if it should turn out that we are unprepared to accept a principle that would require us to treat cognitively impaired humans not better than their animal peers (based on their psychological capacities), then it may be justified to ascribe them with a higher status.

From the beginning on, Shelly Kagan is keen to make clear what his book is not. Most importantly, it does not attempt to provide a fully developed moral theory. Consequently, the book neither suggests answers to moral conflicts, e.g., whether and when it may be permissible to kill or harm an animal, nor does it discuss any practical issues from the realm of animal ethics, such as the permissibility of experimentation, zoos etc. Furthermore, Kagan does not strive to embed his deliberations within the tradition of the animal ethics literature; in fact, he only rarely refers to other authors or positions (possibly due to the fact that the book evolved from a series of lectures Kagan held at Oxford in November 2016). This lack of references also represents one of the book’s major weaknesses, however, because it makes it difficult to set the author’s deliberations into relation to actual positions. Readers should be warned that the book does not provide an overview of the current debate in animal ethics, and it doesn’t attempt to do so. Instead, it tackles one very specific, even though fundamental, view and sketches multiple versions of an alternative approach. Readers familiar with particularly important ideas and positions within the field, who are able to identify these throughout the author’s deliberations and put them in relation to the proposed account, will benefit most from reading this work, therefore.

Kagan’s rejection of unitarianism rests, first and foremost, on the assumption that it has seriously implausible or unintuitive implications. This is problematic insofar as the implications Kagan refers to are indeed embraced and defended by proponents in the animal rights movement, so they possibly should not be rejected right away. Secondly, and more severe for Kagan, I am not entirely convinced that unitarianism necessarily runs into the sort of implausible consequences laid out in chapter 3.

Finally, it is not entirely clear to me how the various situations and contexts relevant to wellbeing are to be translated into a hierarchical account, where every individual is ascribed a relatively undynamic status. Kagan acknowledges that certain psychological capacities “might actually make one vulnerable to particularly low levels of welfare as well”, but believes that these capacities should nonetheless enhance an individual’s status “by virtue of their potential impact on one’s well-being, whether for good or for ill” (p.121). It is also plausible to assume, however, that some animals might occasionally suffer more from painful situations than persons do because of their inability to mentally transcend the present situation or understand the treatment’s positive aspects (maybe the pain is a necessary component of a medical therapy). On the other hand, exactly those psychological capacities that make a painful treatment worse for these animals, arguably also lead to them being much less harmed by their deaths than a person. If it is correct, however, that less sophisticated psychological capacities should be expected to increase the harmfulness of an event in some contexts but lower it in others, then a hierarchical account might run the risk of systematically disadvantaging individuals on a lower status level in a variety of cases. It would be interesting to learn how the hierarchical account can respond to these and other challenges.

This being said, the book has many strengths. For instance, Kagan discusses the possibility that moral standing might rest on multiple grounds (sentience and agency) and convincingly argues that animal agency has been neglected thus far. He offers an elaborate and thorough analysis of the different ways a hierarchical approach could manifest itself. In doing so, he develops his ideas not within a specific moral theory but tries to make them applicable to utilitarians as well as deontologists. Finally, the approach of practical realism, which Kagan introduces towards the end, is unusual. It would have been interesting to know how practical realism avoids an unjustifiable favoring of certain species or individuals over others (e.g., on the grounds of being more or less similar to or beneficial for us).

In the end, How to Count Animals, More or Less raises more questions than it answers, as the author himself concludes. But this also is its major strength, in my opinion. Kagan draws attention to the fact that more often than not it is quite unclear in the current debate what an equal moral status or similar interests of animals and people actually amount to. In doing so, he challenges the proponents of unitarianism, but also invites them to be more precise and defend their positions. Kagan does not want to settle the matter once and for all, but, in contrast, to initiate a debate. The field of animal ethics will certainly profit, if he proves to be successful.

Felicitas Selter, PhD, Institut für Geschichte, Ethik und Philosophie der Medizin, Medizinische Hochschule Hannover (MHH)