Intelligence is not morally relevant- this is a common point to be made about why animals perhaps being less intelligent than the average human is irrelevant in considering their interests. I think these arguments about the children, mentally handicapped, mentally ill, etc. are well known.
Potential is a really interesting concept that Rowlands explores- saying that your potential does not give you rights and entitlements- for instance there is potential that I could be Princess of the Universe one day, but that does not mean that I get the rights and entitlements of the PRincess of the Universe right now. Fair enough.
The Principle of Desert: Your entitlement to be treated with equal consideration cannot be dimished by things or circumstances over which you have no control.
The Impartial Position gets used heavily in Rowlands reasoning, and I wonder if this is a well known and respected rationalizing or philosophical device. Essentially what this exercise is involves imagining that you do not know what form you will take on the earth- snake, human, rock etc. and so from this anonymous point you must decide what the world should look like. This means hedging your bets- because if you design the world to fit one inhabitant- like horses – and you turn out to be a mouse, your life won’t be too enjoyable. A good metaphor Rowlands uses is a Pizza- if you and your friends get a pizza, the best way to divide it up, the most rational anyway, is for whoever is cutting the pizza to not know what slice will be theirs- that way they cut it evenly.
Moral agents are beings that can make moral decisions- basically beings whose moral actions influence others. Moral patients are those who do not make moral desicions, but decisions which are made about them affect their quality of life.
Rowlands also discusses death at great length, and I was not exactly with him for much of this discussion. He basically reasons that death is a greater loss for those with a fuller conception of their future. So this would mean that the death of an unemployed homeless person is less of a loss than the death of a CEO of a corporation who wants to do blank and blank to enhance his career. I don’t think we can really honestly make any ‘rational’ judgement about the value or potential value of life. WHat if the CEO had plans but his plans would end the jobs of thousands of workers- how much ‘potential’ did he have, what was his future worth??? ANd what if the homeless person had nothing going for them the day they died, but what if someone else was going to find them a job helping kids the next week. There are too many unknowns and too many whack value judgements being made in terms of what success and a good future is for this to be a productive way to think about death.
Rowlands is pretty much obligated to discuss lifeboat scenarios, and I am glad he did because it is important to discuss whether or not animals life is as important as human. I think he does well by talking about the more realistic scenario of how many animal lives might be worth a human etc.- mostly because I had no idea that Regan thinks millions of animals are still not worth a human life. I am glad Rowlands disagrees. I think it is still speciesist that when it comes down to dog v. human most humans would rescue the human first, but I also think this is not a rational human choice- attempts to justify it are a waste of time- I think this is just a prejudice that is wide spread. It is like who are you more likely to resuce from a fire your friend/family member or a stranger. Your friend/family member clearly. We are inclined towards those similar to ourselves and to those with which we have or perceive to have connections. We would choose to rescue the human over the dog not because it is right but because it is more familiar. I think that those who would rescue the dog and not the human do so not because they have rationalized the value of the dogs life morally, but because they are more familiar with dogs. The example of a doctor who either save one person from dying or ten from losing a leg- essentially translating one human life for 10 dog lives into all human terms- made me think of a useful idea perhaps. In Multiple Casualty Incidents, medical incidents with more patients than doctors a traige system is used in order to allow the medical personnel to do the most good for the most people. This is a standard accepted practice, with plenty of moral implications. But I think a bit of inter-species traige could be a useful mindset from time to time.
