Public Reason, Evolutionary Ethics, Attribution of

Abstract

The paper discusses the problem of attributing moral status to subjects in the public institutions of a pluralist society. More specifically, it discusses the moral status of non-human animals. The general solution is derived from the traces of John Rawls's contractualist proposal of political liberalism. There seems to be one obvious answer to the question of moral status in this framework. The aim is that of finding a model of political society where reasonable and rational individuals establish a stable social cooperation. It seems, therefore, that at least some features make a strong appeal as being the core of the attribution of moral status, by using Rawls’s terminology, the ability to be reasonable and rational. I note an element of this model of political society that is relevant in the argument of this paper, and that appears in the definition of the reasonable as a requisite of political cooperation, i.e. the requirement of reciprocity. Speaking about the real world as we know it, human beings with usual human abilities are the subjects who correspond to this description, thus, the beings deserving with certainty a full moral status. But what about species or subjects which do not possess these features? Rawls indicates some lines of extension that may include the protection of animals. However, the protection due to non-human animals is indirect and not very pervasive. In the paper, I discuss a position that denies special concern for human life, and that tries to derive some decisive support from considerations from natural sciences (in particular, the theory of evolution). In virtue of the arguments appealed to by this proposal, it represents a serious challenge to Rawls's contractualist attribution of rights and moral status, because it adopts a kind of argumentation declared as legitimate by Rawls himself.