New approaches in empirical animal ethics - using experimental philosophy to challenge intuitions regarding the moral status of nonhuman animals

There are few people who would claim they do not like animals or at least care about them in one way or another. Yet, human-animal relations are ambivalent, coined by partiality and ignorance, fascination and fear, scientific curiosity and abuse, closeness and carelessness. For this doctoral project moral intuitions regarding animals have been investigated with an innovative mixed methods approach. With the help of narratives from qualitative interviews, light is shed on complex personal attitudes and judgements, revealing individual intuitions regarding the animals’ moral status. Furthermore, three quantitative studies with the novel tools of experimental philosophy contribute pivotal insights into crucial factors for moral decisions and actions related to nonhuman animals. As a complementary approach, an empirical pilot study with toy figurines is introduced. The built scenarios present an entirely new angle on human-animal relations based on three-dimensional, non-verbal data. Empirical results are discussed against the background of different ethics concepts in animal philosophy with a special focus on different accounts of the animals’ moral status. Finally, application contexts for the results on the topical question how to deal with (different kinds of) nonhuman animals are shown.