B1 Non-refereed article in a scientific journal

We Do Not Even Know, Yet, How to Take Non-Human Animals Morally Seriously




AuthorsKokko, Ville

PublisherFinnish Society for Human-Animal Studies

Publication year2025

Journal: Trace: Finnish Journal for Human-Animal Studies

Volume11

eISSN2343-0591

Publication's open availability at the time of reportingOpen Access

Publication channel's open availability Open Access publication channel

Web address https://trace.journal.fi/article/view/145719

Self-archived copy’s web addresshttps://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/508818989

Self-archived copy's licenceCC BY

Self-archived copy's versionPublisher`s PDF


Abstract

At the end of 2023, a proposal to amend the Finnish constitution passed the citizens’ initiative system and proceeded to be discussed by the Finnish Parliament. This radical proposal was based on the idea of respecting the individual value of ever non-human animal as sentient beings. Though this is a very defensible starting point, the proposal demonstrates some of the difficulties in achieving or even imagining a new state of society where these rights are fully respected. Some of the corollaries of the proposal as explicitly spelled out in it were too conservative to match the purported spirit of the proposal itself, whereas some of its unexplored but undeniable implications were radical beyond what its authors had seemingly intended. This article explores what the problems in the proposal demonstrated: that the idea of taking the individual moral value of non-human animals seriously is such a radical and unprecedented change to what we have now or have ever had that it is not possibly for us to know what such a world will be like, and we will need to learn what it will be like as we approach it; it is not possible to simply derive it from such principles as sentientism. Not only is human society built around a lack of recognition of non-human value, but even nature itself is problematically amoral. This is no justification to just give up on a radically more moral world, but it does mean we cannot see its full shape from here.


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Last updated on 02/02/2026 12:10:07 PM