4 0 2C H A P T E R 1 9 ■ M o r a l R e a s o n i n gAldo Leopold has called the ‘integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic com-
munity’. Protecting the biotic community from needless damage is a moral
imperative, not just for the good of humanity, but because the unspoiled nat-
ural world is worth valuing for its own sake.
Reverence for life suggests that, other things being equal, it is always
better to avoid killing a living thing. But Schweitzer was aware that not all
killing can be avoided. His view was that one should never kill without
good reason, and certainly not for sport or amusement. Thus, it does not
follow from an ethic of reverence for all life that abortion is morally wrong.
Human fetuses are living things, as are unfertilized ova and spermatazoa.
However, many abortions may be defended as killing ‘under the compul-
sion of necessity’.vi Genetic Humanity
Opponents of abortion will reply that abortion is wrong, not simply because
human fetuses are alive, but because they are human. But why should we
believe that the destruction of a living human organism is always morally
worse than the destruction of an organism of some other species? Member-
ship in a particular biological species does not appear to be, in itself, any more
relevant to moral status than membership in a particular race or sex.
It is an accident of evolution and history that everyone whom we cur-
rently recognize as having full and equal basic moral rights belongs to a single
biological species. The ‘people’ of the earth might just as well have belonged
to many different species — and indeed perhaps they do. It is quite possible
that some non-human animals, such as dolphins and whales and the great
apes, have enough so-called ‘human’ capacities to be properly regarded as
persons — i.e. beings capable of reason, self-awareness, social involvement,
and moral reciprocity. Some contemporary philosophers have argued that
(some) non-human animals have essentially the same basic moral rights as
human persons. Whether or not they are right, it is certainly true that any
superior moral status accorded to members of our own species must be jus-
tified in terms of morally significant differences between humans and other
living things. To hold that species alone provides a basis for superior moral
status is arbitrary and unhelpful.vii The Sentience Criterion
Some philosophers hold that sentience is the primary criterion of moral
status. Sentience is the capacity to have experiences — for instance, visual,
auditory, olfactory, or other perceptual experiences. However, the capacity
to have pleasurable and painful experiences seems particularly relevant to
moral status. It is a plausible postulate of utilitarian ethics that pleasure is
an intrinsic good and pain an intrinsic evil. True, the capacity to feel pain
is often valuable to an organism, enabling it to avoid harm or destruction.
Conversely, some pleasures can be harmful to the organism’s long-term97364_ch19_ptg01_383-422.indd 402 11/15/13 5:45 PM
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