Abstrakt
My doctoral research analyses the ethical status of nonhuman nature (animals, plants, forests, glaciers) in the context of the climate crisis. My project treats utilitarianism and the role sentience plays in this theory as an entry point to further discussion on what ethically matters.
In this context, the work of Jeremy Bentham or Peter Singer is very valuable, because they opened the door for consideration of animal welfare by identifying the animals' ability to suffer as more fundamental than rational thinking or language. However, taking inspiration from environmental philosophers, one can argue that this approach still presupposes an anthropocentric worldview that defines the significance of the nonhuman only in human terms by focusing on a shared capacity for pain.
Thus, it does not seem to adequately respond to the climate crisis, as other nonhuman entities such as forests or glaciers impose ethical demands of their own. I argue that they display vulnerability, animacy or agency, which cannot be reduced to simple pain-pleasure signals, and yet deserve moral relevance in their own right.
My research tackles these problems and tries to answer if sentience as conceptualised by utilitarian thinkers can avoid reducing animals to (in Donna Haraway's words) "discursive victims and little else" and marginalizing the diversity of human-nonhuman interactions and interplays.