“Eek! a rat!”

Abstract

Rats are often despised. In what way does such aversion affect moral deliberation, and if so, how should we accommodate any distorting effects on our normative judgements? These questions are explored in this chapter with regard to recent proposals in (1) the ethics of pest management and (2) animal political theory. While ethical frameworks and tools used in the context of animal research can improve moral deliberation with regard to pest management, we argue based on psychological factors regarding the perception of rats that before implementing these methods in either animal research or pest management, one needs to ascertain that rats are owed genuine moral consideration. With regard to animal political theory, we identify three issues: truth-aptness, perception, and moral motivation. To complement as well as address some of the issues found in both animal research ethics and animal political theory, we explore compassion. Starting from compassion, we develop a pragmatist and interspecies understanding of morality, including a shift from an anthropocentric to a multispecies epistemology, and a distributed rather than an individual notion of moral agency. We need to engage with the experience of others, including rats and those who perceive these animals as pests, as well as pay attention to the specific way individual agents are embedded in particular socio-ecological settings so as to promote compassionate action.