Science, Ethics, and Moral Status

This paper has two purposes, first to discuss the nature of ethics (or moral philosophy, I take these terms to be equivalent) and second to examine the notion of moral status in general and in particular the moral status of nonhuman animals.l The practical importance of the second purpose will be apparent to readers of this joumal. But the fIrst purpose must come first, I believe, in order to counter a number of fundamental but widespread misconceptions ofethics. It is widely believed that ethics is relative to particular cultures in a way that science is not, or that ethics is not, as science is, objective, or that ethics is somehow intrinsically emotional. These beliefs lead to the conclusion that rational and productive work on ethical questions is just not possible. If rational justification of ethical positions is taken to be impossible, one need not concern oneself with the justification of one's treatment of illlimalS. Those who object to accepted, customary, uses of illlimals are just being "emotional."