Fighting Fair: A Sense of Fairness in Animals

Angela Bischof

This talk is online and free to attend.

It will occur on Thursday December 11, Noon Eastern. Note that the time displayed on PhilPapers events may not properly indicate the actual start time in your time zone. 

Please visit the SSEA's website for more information and link to attend.

Angela Bischof (Northern Arizona University), "Fighting Fair: A Sense of Fairness in Animals"

Abstract:

An active debate among philosophers and scientists concerns whether non-human animals (hereafter ‘animals’) have a sense of fairness. One problem with this debate is the focus on distributive fairness—whether animals share resources equally and protest unequal distributions. I argue we do not know whether animals have a sense of distributive fairness. The current empirical evidence is inconclusive—some studies suggest animals share resources equally, other studies suggest they don’t share resources equally; some studies suggest animals do protest unequal distributions, and other studies suggest they don’t protest unequal distributions. Evidence on neither side is strong enough to override the conflicting evidence.

Settling this debate is ethically important. If animal interests matter, and animals have an interest in avoiding unfair treatment, then we ought to consider evaluations of fairness when making animal welfare calculations. If animals are not sensitive to fairness, then we do not need to factor fairness into our considerations.

Luckily, the inconclusiveness concerning distributive fairness in animals is not a problem. Although distributive fairness is sufficient for a sense of fairness, it is not necessary. Retributive fairness is also sufficient for a sense of fairness. Since some animals do have a sense of retributive fairness, and since retributive fairness is a kind of fairness, I conclude some animals do have a sense of fairness.