Mentalizing Animals: Implications for Moral Psychology and Animal Ethics

Summary

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The author notes that ethicists have overlooked how the psychology of attributing mental states to animals interacts with the moral significance of animals’ mental states. The author argues for both a descriptive thesis and a normative thesis bringing these issues together. The descriptive thesis uses recent empirical research to argue that phenomenal mental states (e.g., pain, happiness, etc.) are the primary factor causing one to judge an animal as morally considerable. The normative thesis argues that ethicists must take this psychological fact into account when discussing the moral significance of animals in a non-ideal world as it restrains reaching moral ideals.