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The Moral Status of Animals

Is there something distinctive about humanity that justifies the idea that humans have moral status while non-humans do not? Providing an answer to this question has become increasingly important among philosophers as well as those outside of philosophy who are interested in our treatment of non-human animals. For some, answering this question will enable us to better understand the nature of human beings and the proper scope of our moral obligations. Some argue that there is an answer that can distinguish humans from the rest of the natural world. Many of those who accept this answer are interested in justifying certain human practices towards non-humans—practices that cause pain, discomfort, suffering and death. This latter group expects that in answering the question in a particular way, humans will be justified in granting moral consideration to other humans that is neither required nor justified when considering non-human animals. In contrast to this view, an increasing number of philosophers have argued that while humans are different in a variety of ways from each other and other animals, these differences do not provide a philosophical defense for denying non-human animals moral consideration. What the basis of moral consideration is and what it amounts to has been the source of much disagreement.

1.1 Speciesism

1.2 human exceptionalism, 1.3.1 rational persons, 1.3.2 legal persons, 1.4 sentience, 2. the moral significance of animals’ moral claims, 3. alternative perspectives on human relations to other animals, references cited, further reading, other internet resources, related entries, 1. the moral considerability of animals.

To say that a being deserves moral consideration is to say that there is a moral claim that this being can make on those who can recognize such claims. A morally considerable being is a being who can be wronged. It is often thought that because only humans can recognize moral claims, it is only humans who are morally considerable. However, when we ask why we think humans are the only types of beings that can be morally wronged, we begin to see that the class of beings able to recognize moral claims and the class of beings who can suffer moral wrongs are not co-extensive.

The view that only humans are morally considered is sometimes referred to as “speciesism”. In the 1970s, Richard Ryder coined this term while campaigning in Oxford to denote a ubiquitous type of human centered prejudice, which he thought was similar to racism. He objected to favoring one’s own species, while exploiting or harming members of other species. Peter Singer popularized the term and focused on the way speciesism, without moral justification, favors the interests of humans:

the racist violates the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of his own race, when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race. Similarly the speciesist allows the interests of his own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is the same in each case. (Singer 1974: 108)

Discrimination based on race, like discrimination based on species is thought to be prejudicial, because these are not characteristics that matter when it comes to making moral claims.

Speciesist actions and attitudes are prejudicial because there is no prima facie reason for preferring the interests of beings belonging to the species group to which one also belongs over the interests of those who don’t. That humans are members of the species Homo sapiens is certainly a distinguishing feature of humans—humans share a genetic make-up and a distinctive physiology, we all emerge from a human pregnancy, but this is unimportant from the moral point of view. Species membership is a morally irrelevant characteristic, a bit of luck that is no more morally interesting than being born in Malaysia or Canada. As a morally irrelevant characteristic it cannot serve as the basis for a view that holds that our species deserves moral consideration that is not owed to members of other species.

One might respond that it is not membership in a biological category that matters morally, but rather the social meaning of those categories, meanings that structure not only the institutions we operate within, but how we conceptualize ourselves and our world. Humans have developed moral systems as well as a wide range of other valuable practices, and by creating these systems, we separate the human from the rest of the animal kingdom. But the category “human” itself is morally contested. Some argue, for example, that racism is not simply, or even primarily about discrimination and prejudice, but rather a mechanism of dehumanizing blackness so as to provide the conditions that makes humans white (see Fanon 1967; Kim 2015; Ko& Ko 2017). According to this line of thought, speciesism isn’t focused on discrimination or prejudice but is a central tool for creating human (and white) supremacy or exceptionalism.

Like speciesism, human exceptionalism can be understood in different ways. The most common way of understanding it is to suggest that there are distinctly human capacities and it is on the basis of these capacities that humans have moral status and other animals do not. But which capacities mark out all and only humans as the kinds of beings that can be wronged? A number of candidate capacities have been proposed—developing family ties, solving social problems, expressing emotions, starting wars, having sex for pleasure, using language, or thinking abstractly, are just a few. As it turns out, none of these activities is uncontroversially unique to human. Both scholarly and popular work on animal behavior suggests that many of the activities that are thought to be distinct to humans occurs in non-humans. For example, many species of non-humans develop long lasting kinship ties—orangutan mothers stay with their young for eight to ten years and while they eventually part company, they continue to maintain their relationships. Less solitary animals, such as chimpanzees, baboons, wolves, and elephants maintain extended family units built upon complex individual relationships, for long periods of time. Meerkats in the Kalahari desert are known to sacrifice their own safety by staying with sick or injured family members so that the fatally ill will not die alone. All animals living in socially complex groups must solve various problems that inevitably arise in such groups. Canids and primates are particularly adept at it, yet even chickens and horses are known to recognize large numbers of individuals in their social hierarchies and to maneuver within them. One of the ways that non-human animals negotiate their social environments is by being particularly attentive to the emotional states of others around them. When a conspecific is angry, it is a good idea to get out of his way. Animals that develop life-long bonds are known to suffer from the death of their partners. Some are even said to die of sorrow. Darwin reported this in The Descent of Man : “So intense is the grief of female monkeys for the loss of their young, that it invariably caused the death of certain kinds” (1871: 40). Jane Goodall’s report of the death of the healthy 8 year old chimpanzee Flint just three weeks after the death of his mother Flo also suggests that sorrow can have a devastating effect on non-human animals (see Goodall 2000: 140–141 in Bekoff 2000). Coyotes, elephants and killer whales are also among the species for which profound effects of grief have been reported (Bekoff 2000) and many dog owners can provide similar accounts. While the lives of many, perhaps most, non-humans in the wild are consumed with struggle for survival, aggression and battle, there are some non-humans whose lives are characterized by expressions of joy, playfulness, and a great deal of sex (Woods 2010). Recent studies in cognitive ethology have suggested that some non-humans engage in manipulative and deceptive activity, can construct “cognitive maps” for navigation, and some non-humans appear to understand symbolic representation and are able to use language. [ 1 ]

It appears that most of the capacities that are thought to distinguish humans as morally considerable beings, have been observed, often in less elaborate form, in the non-human world. Because human behavior and cognition share deep roots with the behavior and cognition of other animals, approaches that try to find sharp behavioral or cognitive boundaries between humans and other animals remain controversial. For this reason, attempts to establish human uniqueness by identifying certain capacities, are not the most promising when it comes to thinking hard about the moral status of animals.

1.3 Personhood

Nonetheless, there is something important that is thought to distinguish humans from non-humans that is not reducible to the observation of behavior best explained by possessing a certain capacity and that is our “personhood”. The notion of personhood identifies a category of morally considerable beings that is thought to be coextensive with humanity. Historically, Kant is the most noted defender of personhood as the quality that makes a being valuable and thus morally considerable (for a contemporary utilitarian discussion of personhood, see Varner 2012). Kant writes:

…every rational being, exists as an end in himself and not merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by this or that will…Beings whose existence depends not on our will but on nature have, nevertheless, if they are not rational beings, only a relative value as means and are therefore called things. On the other hand, rational beings are called persons inasmuch as their nature already marks them out as ends in themselves. (Kant [1785] 1998: [Ak 4: 428])

The fact that the human being can have the representation “I” raises him infinitely above all the other beings on earth. By this he is a person….that is, a being altogether different in rank and dignity from things, such as irrational animals, with which one may deal and dispose at one’s discretion. (Kant [1798] 2010: 239 [Ak 7: 127])

More recent work in a Kantian vein develops this idea. Christine Korsgaard, for example, argues that humans “uniquely” face a problem, the problem of normativity. This problem emerges because of the reflective structure of human consciousness. We can, and often do, think about our desires and ask ourselves “Are these desires reasons for action? Do these impulses represent the kind of things I want to act according to?” Our reflective capacities allow us and require us to step back from our mere impulses in order to determine when and whether to act on them. In stepping back we gain a certain distance from which we can answer these questions and solve the problem of normativity. We decide whether to treat our desires as reasons for action based on our conceptions of ourselves, on our “practical identities”. When we determine whether we should take a particular desire as a reason to act we are engaging in a further level of reflection, a level that requires an endorseable description of ourselves. This endorseable description of ourselves, this practical identity, is a necessary moral identity because without it we cannot view our lives as worth living or our actions as worth doing. Korsgaard suggests that humans face the problem of normativity in a way that non-humans apparently do not:

A lower animal’s attention is fixed on the world. Its perceptions are its beliefs and its desires are its will. It is engaged in conscious activities, but it is not conscious of them. That is, they are not the objects of its attention. But we human animals turn our attention on to our perceptions and desires themselves, on to our own mental activities, and we are conscious of them. That is why we can think about them…And this sets us a problem that no other animal has. It is the problem of the normative…. The reflective mind cannot settle for perception and desire, not just as such. It needs a reason. (Korsgaard 1996: 93)

Here, Korsgaard understands “reason” as “a kind of reflective success” and given that non-humans are thought to be unable to reflect in a way that would allow them this sort of success, it appears that they do not act on reasons, at least reasons of this kind. Since non-humans do not act on reasons they do not have a practical identity from which they reflect and for which they act. So humans can be distinguished from non-humans because humans, we might say, are sources of normativity and non-humans are not.

But arguably, Kant’s view of personhood does not distinguish all and only humans as morally considerable. Personhood is not, in fact, coextensive with humanity when understood as a general description of the group to which human beings belong. And the serious part of this problem is not that there may be some extra-terrestrials or deities who have rational capacities. The serious problem is that many humans are not persons. Some humans—i.e., infants, children, people in comas—do not have the rational, self-reflective capacities associated with personhood. This problem, unfortunately known in the literature as the problem of “marginal cases”, poses serious difficulties for “personhood” as the criterion of moral considerability. Many beings whose positive moral value we have deeply held intuitions about, and who we treat as morally considerable, will be excluded from consideration by this account.

There are three ways to respond to this counter-intuitive conclusion. One, which can be derived from one interpretation of Kant, is to suggest that non-persons are morally considerable indirectly. Though Kant believed that animals were mere things it appears he did not genuinely believe we could dispose of them any way we wanted. In the Lectures on Ethics he makes it clear that we have indirect duties to animals, duties that are not toward them, but in regard to them insofar as our treatment of them can affect our duties to persons.

If a man shoots his dog because the animal is no longer capable of service, he does not fail in his duty to the dog, for the dog cannot judge, but his act is inhuman and damages in himself that humanity which it is his duty to show towards mankind. If he is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practice kindness towards animals, for he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. ([1784–5] 1997: 212 [Ak 27: 459])

And one could argue the same would be true of those human beings who are not persons. We disrespect our humanity when we act in inhumane ways towards non-persons, whatever their species.

But this indirect view is unsatisfying—it fails to capture the independent wrong that is being done to the non-person. When someone rapes a woman in a coma, or whips a severely brain damaged child, or sets a cat on fire, they are not simply disrespecting humanity or themselves as representatives of it, they are wronging these non-persons. So, a second way to avoid the counter-intuitive conclusion is to argue that such non-persons stand in the proper relations to “rational nature” such that they should be thought of as morally considerable. Allen Wood (1998) argues in this way and suggests that all beings that potentially have a rational nature, or who virtually have it, or who have had it, or who have part of it, or who have the necessary conditions of it, what he calls “the infrastructure of rational nature”, should be directly morally considerable. Insofar as a being stands in this relation to rational nature, they are the kinds of beings that can be wronged.

This response is not unlike that of noted animal rights proponent, Tom Regan, who argues that what is important for moral consideration are not the differences between humans and non-humans but the similarities. Regan argues that because persons share with certain non-persons (which includes those humans and non-humans who have a certain level of organized cognitive function) the ability to be experiencing subject of a life and to have an individual welfare that matters to them regardless of what others might think, both deserve moral consideration. Regan argues that subjects of a life:

want and prefer things, believe and feel things, recall and expect things. And all these dimensions of our life, including our pleasure and pain, our enjoyment and suffering, our satisfaction and frustration, our continued existence or our untimely death—all make a difference to the quality of our life as lived, as experienced, by us as individuals. As the same is true of … animals … they too must be viewed as the experiencing subjects of a life, with inherent value of their own. (Regan 1985: 24)

A third way of addressing this problem has been taken up by Korsgaard who maintains that there is a big difference between those with normative, rational capacities and those without, but unlike Kant, believes both humans and non-humans are the proper objects of our moral concern. She argues that those without normative, rational capacities share certain “natural” capacities with persons, and these natural capacities are often the content of the moral demands that persons make on each other. She writes,

what we demand, when we demand … recognition, is that our natural concerns—the objects of our natural desires and interests and affections—be accorded the status of values, values that must be respected as far as possible by others. And many of those natural concerns—the desire to avoid pain is an obvious example—spring from our animal nature, not from our rational nature. (Korsgaard 2007: 7)

What moral agents construct as valuable and normatively binding is not only our rational or autonomous capacities, but the needs and desires we have as living, embodied beings. Insofar as these needs and desires are valuable for agents, the ability to experience similar needs and desires in patients should also be valued.

In the courts, all humans and some corporations are considered persons in the legal sense. But all animals, infants and adults, are not legal persons, but rather, under the law they are considered property. There have been a few attempts to change the legal status of some nonhuman animals from property to persons. The Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) founded by Steven Wise, has filed a series of cases in the New York courts seeking to establish legal personhood for particular chimpanzees being held in the state, with the goal of protecting their rights to bodily integrity and liberty, and allow them to seek remedy, through their proxies, when those rights are violated. Chimpanzees are a good test case for establishing nonhuman legal personhood as they are, according to the documents filed by NhRP, autonomous beings with sophisticated cognitive abilities including

episodic memory, self-consciousness, self-knowing, self agency, referential and intentional communication, mental time-travel, numerosity, sequential learning, meditational learning, mental state modeling, visual perspective taking, understanding the experiences of others, intentional action, planning, imagination, empathy, metacognition, working memory, decision-making, imitation, deferred imitation, emulation, innovation, material, social, and symbolic culture, cross-modal perception, tool-use, tool-making, cause-and-effect. (petition of NhRP v. Samuel Stanley, p. 12, see Other Internet Resources )

The legal arguments to extend personhood beyond the human parallel more general ethical arguments that extend ethical consideration outward from those who occupy the moral center. Turning to empirical work designed to show that other animals are really similar to those considered legal persons, primatologists submitted affidavits attesting to what they have learned working with chimpanzees. Mary Lee Jensvold suggests

there are numerous parallels in the way chimpanzee and human communication skills develop over time, suggesting a similar unfolding cognitive process across the two species and an underlying neurobiological continuity. (Jensvold affidavit, p. 4, in Other Internet Resources )

James King notes

chimpanzees and humans resemble each other in terms of their ability to experience happiness and the way in which it relates to individual personality. (King affidavit, p. 8, in Other Internet Resources )

And Mathias Osvath makes remarkable claims about chimpanzee personhood:

Autonoetic consciousness gives an individual of any species an autobiographical sense of it self with a future and a past. Chimps and other great apes clearly possess an autobiographical self, as they are able to prepare themselves for future actions… they likely can, just as humans, be in pain over an anticipated future event that has yet to occur. For instance, confining someone in a prison or cage for a set time, or for life, would lose much of its power as punishment if that individual had no self-concept. Every moment would be a new moment with no conscious relation to the next. But, chimpanzees. and other great apes have a concept of their personal past and future and therefore suffer the pain of not being able to fulfill one’s goals or move around as one wants; like humans they experience the pain of anticipating a never-ending situation. (Osvath affidavit, pp. 4–7, in Other Internet Resources )

These claims, as well as those of others experts, identify the relevantly similar capacities that chimpanzees and other great apes share with humans and it is in virtue of these capacities that legal personhood is sought.

Using rational nature or cognitive capacities as the touchstone of moral considerability misses an important fact about animals, human and nonhuman. Our lives can go better or worse for us. Utilitarians have traditionally argued that the truly morally important feature of beings is unappreciated when we focus on personhood or the rational, self-reflective nature of humans, or the relation a being stands in to such nature, or being the subject of a life, or being legal persons. What is really important, utilitarians maintain, is the promotion of happiness, or pleasure, or the satisfaction of interests, and the avoidance of pain, or suffering, or frustration of interests. Bentham, one of the more forceful defenders of this sentientist view of moral considerability, famously wrote:

Other animals, which, on account of their interests having been neglected by the insensibility of the ancient jurists, stand degraded into the class of things . [original emphasis] … The day has been, I grieve it to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated … upon the same footing as … animals are still. The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized, that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the ossacrum , are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps, the faculty for discourse?…the question is not, Can they reason ? nor, Can they talk ? but, Can they suffer ? (Bentham 1780/1789: chapter xvii, paragraph 6)

Contemporary utilitarians, such as Peter Singer (1990, 1979 [1993]), suggest that there is no morally justifiable way to exclude from moral consideration non-humans or non-persons who can clearly suffer. Any being that has an interest in not suffering deserves to have that interest taken into account. And a non-human who acts to avoid pain can be thought to have just such an interest. Even contemporary Kantians have acknowledged the moral force of the experience of pain. Korsgaard, for example, writes “it is a pain to be in pain. And that is not a trivial fact” (1996: 154).

When you pity a suffering animal, it is because you are perceiving a reason. An animal’s cries express pain, and they mean that there is a reason, a reason to change its conditions. And you can no more hear the cries of an animal as mere noise than you can the words of a person. Another animal can obligate you in exactly the same way another person can. …So of course we have obligations to animals. (Korsgaard 1996: 153)

When we encounter an animal in pain we recognize their claim on us, and thus beings who can suffer are morally considerable.

That non-human animals can make moral claims on us does not in itself indicate how such claims are to be assessed and conflicting claims adjudicated. Being morally considerable is like showing up on a moral radar screen—how strong the signal is or where it is located on the screen are separate questions. Of course, how one argues for the moral considerability of non-human animals will inform how we are to understand the force of an animal’s claims.

According to the view that an animal’s moral claim is equivalent to a moral right, any action that fails to treat the animal as a being with inherent worth would violate that animal’s right and is thus morally objectionable. According to the animal rights position, to treat an animal as a means to some human end, as many humans do when they eat animals or experiment on them, is to violate that animal’s right. As Tom Regan has written,

…animals are treated routinely, systematically as if their value were reducible to their usefulness to others, they are routinely, systematically treated with a lack of respect, and thus are their rights routinely, systematically violated. (Regan 1985: 24).

The animal rights position is an absolutist position. Any being that is a subject of a life has inherent worth and the rights that protect such worth, and all subjects of a life have these rights equally. Thus any practice that fails to respect the rights of those animals who have them, e.g., eating animals, hunting animals, experimenting on animals, using animals for entertainment, is wrong, irrespective of human need, context, or culture.

The utilitarian position on animals, most commonly associated with Peter Singer and popularly, though erroneously, referred to as an animal rights position, is actually quite distinct. Here the moral significance of the claims of animals depends on what other morally significant competing claims might be in play in any given situation. While the equal interests of all morally considerable beings are considered equally, the practices in question may end up violating or frustrating some interests but would not be considered morally wrong if, when all equal interests are considered, more of these interests are satisfied than frustrated. For utilitarians like Singer, what matters are the strength and nature of interests, not whose interests these are. So, if the only options available in order to save the life of one morally considerable being is to cause harm, but not death, to another morally considerable being, then according to a utilitarian position, causing this harm may be morally justifiable. Similarly, if there are two courses of action, one which causes extreme amounts of suffering and ultimate death, and one which causes much less suffering and painless death, then the latter would be morally preferable to the former.

Consider factory farming, the most common method used to convert animal bodies into relatively inexpensive food in industrialized societies today. An estimated 8 billion animals in the United States are born, confined, biologically manipulated, transported and ultimately slaughtered each year so that humans can consume them. The conditions in which these animals are raised and the method of slaughter causes vast amounts of suffering (see, for example, Mason & Singer 1980 [1990]). Given that animals suffer under such conditions and assuming that suffering is not in their interests, then the practice of factory farming would only be morally justifiable if its abolition were to cause greater suffering or a greater amount of interest frustration. Certainly humans who take pleasure in eating animals will find it harder to satisfy these interests in the absence of factory farms; it may cost more and require more effort to obtain animal products. The factory farmers, and the industries that support factory farming, will also have certain interests frustrated if factory farming were to be abolished. How much interest frustration and interest satisfaction would be associated with the end to factory farming is largely an empirical question. But utilitarians are not making unreasonable predictions when they argue that on balance the suffering and interest frustration that animals experience in modern day meat production is greater than the suffering that humans would endure if they had to alter their current practices.

Importantly, the utilitarian argument for the moral significance of animal suffering in meat production is not an argument for vegetarianism. If an animal lived a happy life and was painlessly killed and then eaten by people who would otherwise suffer hunger or malnutrition by not eating the animal, then painlessly killing and eating the animal would be the morally justified thing to do. In many parts of the world where economic, cultural, or climate conditions make it virtually impossible for people to sustain themselves on plant based diets, killing and eating animals that previously led relatively unconstrained lives and are painlessly killed, would not be morally objectionable. The utilitarian position can thus avoid certain charges of cultural chauvinism and moralism, charges that the animal rights position apparently cannot avoid.

It might be objected that to suggest that it is morally acceptable to hunt and eat animals for those people living in arctic regions, or for nomadic cultures, or for poor rural peoples, for example, is to potentially condone painlessly killing other morally considerable beings, like humans, for food consumption in similar situations. If violating the rights of an animal can be morally tolerated, especially a right to life, then similar rights violations can be morally tolerated. In failing to recognize the inviolability of the moral claims of all morally considerable beings, utilitarianism cannot accommodate one of our most basic prima facie principles, namely that killing a morally considerable being is wrong.

There are at least two replies to this sort of objection. The first appeals to the negative side effects that killing may promote. If, to draw on an overused and sadly sophomoric counter-example, one person can be kidnapped and painlessly killed in order to provide body parts for four individuals who will die without them, there will inevitably be negative side-effects that all things considered would make the kidnapping wrong. Healthy people, knowing they could be used for spare parts, might make themselves unhealthy to avoid such a fate or they may have so much stress and fear that the overall state of affairs would be worse than that in which four people died. Appealing to side-effects when it comes to the wrong of killing is certainly plausible, but it fails to capture what is directly wrong with killing.

A more satisfying reply would have us adopt what might be called a multi-factor perspective, one that takes into account the kinds of interest that are possible for certain kinds of morally considerable beings, the content of interests of the beings in question, their relative weight, and the context of those who have them. Consider a seal who has spent his life freely roaming the oceans and ice flats and who is suddenly and painlessly killed to provide food for a human family struggling to survive a bitter winter in far northern climes. While it is probably true that the seal had an immediate interest in avoiding suffering, it is less clear that the seal has a future directed interest in continued existence. If the seal lacks this future directed interest, then painlessly killing him does not violate this interest. The same cannot be said for the human explorer who finds himself face to face with a hungry Inuit family. Persons generally have interests in continued existence, interests that, arguably, non-persons do not have. So one factor that can be appealed to is that non-persons may not have the range of interests that persons do.

An additional factor is the type of interest in question. We can think of interests as scalar; crucial interests are weightier than important interests, important interests are weightier than replaceable interests, and all are weightier than trivial interests or mere whims. When there is a conflict of interests, crucial interests will always override important interests, important interests will always override replaceable interests, etc. So if an animal has an interest in not suffering, which is arguably a crucial interest, or at least an important one, and a person has an interest in eating that animal when there are other things to eat, meaning that interest is replaceable, then the animal has the stronger interest and it would be wrong to violate that interest by killing the animal for food if there is another source of food available.

Often, however, conflicts of interests are within the same category. The Inuit’s interest in food is crucial and the explorer’s interest in life is crucial. If we assume that the explorer cannot otherwise provide food for the hunter, then it looks as if there is a conflict within the same category. If you take the interests of an indigenous hunter’s whole family into account, then their combined interest in their own survival appears to outweigh the hapless explorer’s interest in continued existence. Indeed, if painlessly killing and eating the explorer were the only way for the family to survive, then perhaps this action would be morally condoned. But this is a rather extreme sort of example, one in which even our deepest held convictions are strained. So it is quite hard to know what to make of the clash between what a utilitarian would condone and what our intuitions tell us we should believe here. Our most basic prima facie principles arise and are accepted under ordinary circumstances. Extraordinary circumstances are precisely those in which such principles or precepts give way. [ 2 ]

The multi-factor utilitarian perspective is particularly helpful when considering the use of animals in medical research. According to the animal rights position, the use of animals in experimental procedures is a clear violation of their rights—they are being used as a mere means to some possible end—and thus animal rights proponents are in favor of the abolition of all laboratory research. The utilitarian position, particularly one that incorporates some kind of multi-factor perspective, might allow some research on animals under very specific conditions. Before exploring what a utilitarian might condone in the way of animal experimentation, let us first quickly consider what would be morally prohibited. All research that involves invasive procedures, constant confinement, and ultimate death can be said to violate the animal’s crucial interests. Thus any experiments that are designed to enhance the important, replaceable, or trivial interests of humans or other animals would be prohibited. That would mean that experiments for cosmetics or household products are prohibited, as there are non-animal tested alternatives and many options already available for consumers. Certain psychological experiments, such as those in which infant primates are separated from their mothers and exposed to frightening stimuli in an effort to understand problems teenagers have when they enter high school, would also come into question. There are many examples of experiments that violate an animal’s crucial interests in the hopes of satisfying the lesser interests of some other morally considerable being, all of which would be objectionable from this perspective.

There are some laboratory experiments, however, that from a multi-factor utilitarian perspective may be permitted. These are experiments in which the probability of satisfying crucial or important interests for many who suffer from some debilitating or fatal disease is high, and the numbers of non-human animals whose crucial interests are violated is low. The psychological complexity of the non-humans may also be significant in determining whether the experiment is morally justified. In the case of experimenting in these limited number of cases, presumably a parallel argument could be made about experimenting on humans. If the chances are very high that experimenting on one human, who is a far superior experimental animal when it comes to human disease, can prevent great suffering or death in many humans, then the utilitarian may, if side effects are minimal, condone such an experiment. Of course, it is easier to imagine this sort of extreme case in the abstract, what a utilitarian would think actually morally justified, again depends on the specific empirical data.

In sum, the animal rights position takes the significance of morally considerable claims to be absolute. Thus, any use of animals that involves a disregard for their moral claims is problematic. The significance of an animal’s morally considerable interests according to a utilitarian is variable. Whether an action is morally justified or permissible will depend on a number of factors. The utilitarian position on animals would condemn a large number of practices that involve the suffering and death of billions of animals, but there are cases in which some use of non-human animals, and perhaps even human animals, may be morally justified (Gruen 2011: ch. 4; Gilbert, Kaebnick, & Murray 2012).

Given the long-standing view that non-humans are mere things, there are still many who reject the arguments presented here for the moral considerability of non-humans and the significance of their interests. Nonetheless, most now realize that the task of arguing that humans have a unique and exclusive moral status is rather difficult. Yet even amongst those who do view animals as within the sphere of moral concern, there is disagreement about the nature and usefulness of the arguments presented on behalf of the moral status of animals.

Increasingly, philosophers are arguing that while our behavior towards animals is indeed subject to moral scrutiny, the kinds of ethical arguments that are usually presented frame the issues in the wrong way. Some philosophers suggest that rational argumentation fails to capture those features of moral experience that allow us to really see why treating animals badly is wrong. The point, according to commentators such as Stephen R.L. Clark and Cora Diamond, for example, is that members of our communities, however we conceive of them, pull on us and it is in virtue of this pull that we recognize what is wrong with cruelty. Animals are individuals with whom we share a common life and this recognition allows us to see them as they are. Eating animals is wrong not because it is a violation of the animal’s rights or because on balance such an act creates more suffering than other acts, but rather because in eating animals or using them in other harmful, violent ways, we do not display the traits of character that kind, sensitive, compassionate, mature, and thoughtful members of a moral community should display.

According to some in the virtue ethics tradition, carefully worked out arguments in which the moral considerability and moral significance of animals are laid out will have little if any grip on our thoughts and actions. Rather, by perceiving the attitudes that underlie the use and abuse of non-human animals as shallow or cruel, one interested in living a virtuous life will change their attitudes and come to reject treating animals as food or tools for research. As Rosalind Hursthouse recognized after having been exposed to alternative ways of seeing animals:

I began to see [my attitudes] that related to my conception of flesh-foods as unnecessary, greedy, self-indulgent, childish, my attitude to shopping and cooking in order to produce lavish dinner parties as parochial, gross, even dissolute. I saw my interest and delight in nature programmes about the lives of animals on television and my enjoyment of meat as side by side at odds with one another…Without thinking animals had rights, I began to see both the wild ones and the ones we usually eat as having lives of their own, which they should be left to enjoy. And so I changed. My perception of the moral landscape and where I and the other animals were situated in it shifted. (Hursthouse 2000: 165–166; see also Diamond 2001 [especially chs. 11 and 13], and Clarke 1977)

Alice Crary argues that shifting perceptions of our moral landscapes occur because these landscapes, and more precisely the rich worlds of those who inhabit them, are not morally neutral. The characteristics that philosophers tend to look for in other animals to determine whether or not they are morally considerable, according to Crary, are already infused with moral importance, “human beings and other animals have empirically discoverable moral characteristics” (my emphasis, 2016: 85) that are, as she puts it “inside ethics”. These values often sneak in under a supposedly neutral gloss. By explicitly locating these characteristics inside ethics, the texture, quality, and purposes of our ethical reflection on moral considerability changes. Arriving at an adequate empirical understanding requires non-neutral methods, identifying historical and cultural perspectives as shaping how we consider other animals morally. What ethical questions we think are important and how we frame and answer them, will be different if we see our lives and the lives of other animals as already imbued with moral values.

Other feminist philosophers have taken issue with the supposedly morally neutral methods of argumentation used to establish the moral status of animals. For many feminists the traditional methods of rational argumentation fail to take into account the feelings of sympathy or empathy that humans have towards non-humans, feelings they believe are central to a full account of what we owe non-humans and why (see Adams & Donovan 1995; Donovan & Adams 2007; Adams & Gruen 2014).

Feminist philosophers have also challenged the individualism that is central in the arguments for the moral status of animals. Rather than identifying intrinsic or innate properties that non-humans share with humans, some feminists have argued instead that we ought to understand moral status in relational terms given that moral recognition is invariably a social practice. As Elizabeth Anderson has written:

Moral considerability is not an intrinsic property of any creature, nor is it supervenient on only its intrinsic properties, such as its capacities. It depends, deeply, on the kind of relations they can have with us. (Anderson 2004: 289).

And these relationships needn’t be direct. The reach of human activity has expanded across the entire globe and humans are entangled with each other and other animals in myriad ways. We participate in activities and institutions that directly or indirectly harm others by creating negative experiences, depriving them of their well-being, or denying them opportunities to be who they are and pursue what they care about. Philosophers Elisa Aaltola and Lori Gruen have argued for refining our empathetic imagination in order to improve our relationships with each other and other animals.

Even though it is challenging to understand what it is like to be another, and even though we are limited by our inevitable anthropocentric perspectives, being in respectful ethical relation involves attempting to understand and respond to another’s needs, interests, desires, vulnerabilities, hopes, and perspectives. What Gruen calls, “entangled empathy” is a process that involves both affect and cognition (Gruen 2015). Individuals who are empathizing with others respond to the other’s condition and reflectively imagine themselves in the distinct position of the other while staying attentive to both similarities and differences between herself and her situation and that of the fellow creature with whom she is empathizing. Entangled empathy involves paying critical attention to the broader conditions that may negatively affect the experiences and flourishing of those with whom one is empathizing, and this requires those of us empathizing to attend to things we might not have otherwise. It therefore also enhances our own experiences, develops our moral imagination, and helps us to become more sensitive perceivers.

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• The Moral Status of Animals , webpage at Ethics Updates (Larry Hinman, University of San Diego), now only available at the Internet Archive.
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The Moral Rights of Animals

Mylan Engel Jr. and Gary Lynn Comstock (eds.), The Moral Rights of Animals , Lexington, 2016, 296pp., $100.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781498531900.

Reviewed by Dan Hooley, University of Toronto

The attitudes of philosophers on our obligations to other animals and the view that other animals possess certain moral rights have shifted considerably in the last 40 years and a great deal of credit for this shift is owed to Tom Regan's The Case for Animal Rights and subsequent work. This excellent anthology grew out of a 2011 workshop held in Regan's honor and is dedicated to him. It features fourteen essays all of which intersect with Regan's views in some way. The authors largely defend the view that other animals have moral rights and those who don't hold that we have significant obligations to other animals. The essays succeed at exploring, critiquing, and expanding upon Regan's work in a way that is both rigorous and detailed, while accessible to those new to Regan or the animal rights literature.

The book has three parts. Part 1 focuses on the theoretical basis of animal rights, and responses to objections to animal rights. Part 2 looks at questions relating to the comparative value of human and nonhuman lives, with a focus on the comparative harm of death for humans and animals and the question of whether or not humans and animals have an equal right to life. Part 3 turns to the practical import of animal rights.

Part 1 begins with an essay by Regan, which succinctly summarizes the argument he made in The Case for Animal Rights that all individuals who are "subjects of a life" -- conscious, sentient individuals with an experiential welfare who have beliefs and desires and some awareness of the past and future -- have certain basic moral rights. This essay, combined with the relevant summaries in subsequent chapters, provide a sufficient overview of Regan's views, so those who have not read Regan before will not be lost.

In Chapter 2, Jeremy Garrett argues that deontological libertarians should accept animal rights. Garrett argues that libertarian views harmonize quite nicely with Regan's defense of animal rights and defends this view against objections from Nozick. In Chapter 3, Mylan Engel Jr. makes a straightforward and compelling case that if all humans have moral rights, then many other animals do as well since these animals have the properties that confer rights on humans. Engel also argues that most of the harmful uses of animals are wrong even if animals do not possess rights. In Chapter 4, Nathan Nobis considers some of the limitations of Regan's response to Carl Cohen's well-known "kind" argument, which holds that since animals are not of the kind of beings who are moral agents, they do not possess rights, and develops stronger objections to Cohen's position. In Chapter 5, Anne Baril argues that the equal inherent value of all animals does not demand intervention to prevent predation among wild animals. She argues that respect for wild animals, as the kinds of beings they are, does not require intervention to prevent predation.

Central or important to many of the essays in Part 1 is the much discussed (and poorly named) "Argument from Marginal Cases." [1] Versions and variations on this argument are put forward here by Regan, Garrett, Engel, and Nobis. Engel and Nobis, in particular, do a superb job challenging many of the common attempts to defend the view that all humans possess certain basic rights but all nonhumans do not. These essays present important challenges to those who think some form of human exceptionalism is defensible.

One important point made by Engel is that defenders of human exceptionalism must provide a plausible rationale for why any specific capacity, claimed to be both necessary and sufficient for the possession of a given right, is connected to that specific right in question. Many attempts to do this fail the test of having a plausible rationale. Moral autonomy is relevant to whether or not beings can be held morally accountable for their behavior, but it is far from clear why being morally autonomous is a necessary condition for possessing a right not to be harmed. This is because being morally autonomous is not necessary to have a morally relevant interest in not being harmed. As Engel notes, it is a much more plausible rationale to think that sentience is the morally relevant rights-conferring property for the right not to be harmed. This capacity has a much more plausible connection to the specific right in question.

A similar point is made by Nobis in response to Cohen's "kind" argument. Cohen claims all humans (regardless of cognitive capacities) have moral rights because they are members of a kind of being that possess moral agency. But this lacks a plausible rationale when it comes to the specific rights of non-rational humans (such as babies or individuals with severe cognitive disabilities). Cohen claims these individuals have rights related to autonomy because they are members of a kind that is morally autonomous. But even if we concede this, it would be wrong to let them make all the decisions about their lives that we allow paradigmatic adults to make (75). They seem to lack these rights because they do not possess the relevant interests. Once we recognize this, however, it is not clear why membership in a kind is morally relevant: we can be classified in different groups, but we don't always have the rights typical members of those groups possess.

Part 2 focuses primarily on the comparative harm of death for humans and animals and the question of whether or not humans and other animals have an equal right to life. In Chapter 6, Aaron Simmons argues that while life has less value for animals than for humans, they nevertheless possess an equal right to life, such that the negative rights they possess are just as stringent as those possessed by humans. In Chapter 7, Molly Gardner argues that Regan's rights view does not, as he claims, actually prohibit animal research in all cases. She develops an alternative position, what she calls the "attenuated rights view," that balances rights with a somewhat complex but interesting weighing principle. This view generates a strong presumption against animal research, but would not justify a categorical opposition to all harmful research involving animals. In Chapter 8, Evelyn Pluhar draws on ethological research to argue that all vertebrates and some cephalopod invertebrates should be seen as subjects of a life. She defends the view that all subjects of a life, who have satisfying lives and opportunities for future satisfaction, are harmed equally by death. In Chapter 9, Alastair Norcross argues that Singer's account of moral considerability -- where all sentient creatures deserve equal consideration -- can be combined with Regan's account of subjects of a life. Norcross argues that all sentient creatures deserve equal consideration, but that subjects of a life have a lot more to lose by dying than "merely" sentient beings. And in Chapter 10, Gary Comstock gives empirical evidence that suggests much of the time human behavior is controlled by non-conscious mechanisms. Comstock uses this to argue against the view that the ability of humans to control their behavior is a morally relevant difference separating humans from other animals: if animals act "on instinct" much of the time, so do we.

The question of whether or not humans are harmed more by death than animals and the related question of whether or not humans and animals have an equal right to life are some of the most difficult and perplexing questions in animal ethics. One notable feature of the essays in Part 2 is the diversity of views presented on these issues, despite the (mostly) shared belief that nonhuman animals possess basic moral rights.

Both Simmons and Gardner, for example, defend the common position that life has more value for (most) humans compared to most other animals because of our more sophisticated cognitive abilities. Simmons defends this by arguing that our more sophisticated cognitive capacities allow us to experience more creative and intellectual pleasures that are quantitatively and qualitatively superior to other pleasures (110).

One important objection not considered by either author concerns the ways in which the more sophisticated capacities of humans might allow for qualitatively and quantitatively worse forms of displeasure or negative experiences. If human life has more value because of the quantity and types of pleasures and valuable experiences we can enjoy, why are the distinct types of suffering, anxiety, and agony we can experience not relevant? If the claim is that humans have more valuable lives because of the net quantity and quality of pleasure and valuable experiences we can enjoy, then it isn't obviously true that humans have more valuable lives compared to animals, once we take the distinct types of displeasure we can experience into account. Further, even if it is true that some human lives contain more net value than other animals, this is likely not true for all of us.

More interesting, I think, is Simmons' suggestion that even if most humans are harmed more by death than most animals, this does not undermine an equal right to life. The assumption needed to ground this claim holds that two beings have an equal right to life only if the value of life for them is equal (112). But Simmons thinks we ought to reject this assumption because it entails that all humans do not have an equal right to life. Not only would this be the case for humans with severe cognitive disabilities but, Simmons rightly notes, there are reasons to think that among paradigmatic adult humans some are harmed more by death, as "some normal, adult humans seem to have greater capacities for reflective, creative, and intellectual activity than others" (112). This is an important point often ignored in this debate. Instead, Simmons suggests that to have an equal right to life only requires that the value of life for a being meets a certain threshold of value. And this threshold, he argues, should be set to include all individuals who are subjects of a life.

Norcross takes a different approach to these questions. He draws attention to an important element related to the harm of death not addressed in the other essays: the psychological relationship between an individual and her self in the future. Norcross argues that death is worse for animals who are subjects of a life (and who have some degree of self-consciousness) because of our psychological connection to our future selves: a fact we see when you must decide between a procedure that would extend your life for two years, or one that would extend "your" life by twenty years but sever all psychological connections between your present self and the future individual. Since it is rational to prefer the first procedure, Norcross argues that what is significant about death to individuals with a personal identity over time is the effect on their well-being (as opposed to the well-being of the organism) (171).

Subjects of a life, as beings with some degree of self-consciousness, have lives that matter to them . In this respect, their death is quite different from beings who are merely sentient and lack any psychological connection to their future selves. Their death may affect the net amount of well-being in the world, but it lacks personal significance to that being, in the same way that opting for the second procedure in the example above lacks any personal significance for me. This fact, Norcross argues, can ground a preference for subjects of a life over the merely sentient when it comes to issues of life and death (174).

Part 3 turns to more practical implications of animal rights and contains a variety of interesting and unique essays. In Chapter 11, Ramona Ilea argues that the capabilities approach to animals, articulated by Nussbaum, provides a useful and rigorous way to practically apply Regan's account of animal rights to questions of public policy and the law. In Chapter 13, Robert Bass develops an argument for veganism centered on moral caution. Bass argues that if there is a reasonable chance that an action is seriously wrong and no chance that it is morally required, then we ought to avoid that action. Bass thinks meat eating meets these criteria, and presents an array of arguments that attempt to show that the more modest conclusion is that there is a substantial chance meat-eating is wrong. In Chapter 14, Jason Hanna responds to arguments that animal rights views are consistent with "therapeutic hunting" aimed at reducing the suffering and future death of overabundant species. Hanna contends that hunters and wildlife managers are not in a situation where they must override an individual's rights, and that this blunts attempts to defend therapeutic hunting.

In Chapter 12, Scott Wilson argues that many who have made moral arguments for vegetarianism have failed to appreciate the significant interest meat-eaters have in consuming meat. He makes a strong case that the interest in consuming meat cannot be reduced to an interest simply in taste or nutrition, but instead reflects and involve a much wider variety of interests, including our self-conceptions of who we are, relationships with family and friends, convenience, and a variety of symbolic meanings. Wilson contends that this ultimately undermines utilitarian arguments for vegetarianism, and shows that rights-based approaches to animals are superior.

While I think Wilson is right to highlight some of the ways in which the consumption of meat reflects more than a simple interest in taste or pleasure, it is not clear his argument actually undermines a utilitarian argument for vegetarianism. Two points can be made in response to his argument. The first concerns the plasticity of our desires. We might think, against Wilson, that many meat-eaters overestimate the effect that switching to a vegetarian lifestyle will have on their welfare. If this is the case, it is not clear that any loss they might experience is as significant as they might initially be inclined to think (many vegetarians and vegans, for example, report enjoying food just as much or nearly as much as during their omnivorous days). Second, and related to this, there is a considerable body of evidence that suggests eating a plant-based diet makes it much more likely an individual will be healthier, avoid chronic diseases, and live longer. If this is the case, individuals who adopt a vegetarian diet may experience welfare gains (even if they miss eating meat), and even if they don't appreciate this fact.

This book offers an interesting and expansive exploration of current thought on animal rights. One downside it has, however, is that none of the essays engage with more recent work on the political status of non-human animals and their place in our legal and political institutions (Ilea's essay is in this ballpark, but it doesn't address any of the recent work on the topic). This omission is understandable: the anthology grew out of a 2011 conference, and much of the emerging literature on the political status of nonhuman animals was sparked by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka's (2011) Zoopolis . However, one of the volume's stated goals is to "reflect the current state of philosophical thought on the moral rights of animals" (x). The political turn that is happening in animal ethics (and among animal rights theorists) can be understood as a potential implication of the moral rights of animals (and would thus fit in Part 3). This omission leaves out a rather exciting current development in the field that is particularly relevant to advocates of the moral rights of animals.

Some of this new work, moreover, would connect the topics in Parts 2 and 3 in an interesting way. One question we might have concerns whether much hangs on questions about the comparative harm of death or claims to an equal right to life. If other animals are significantly harmed by death and have a right to life, then we might think this is all we need to see that harmful animal-use industries, like animal agriculture, must be stopped, even if humans are harmed more by death or possess a more stringent right to life.

However, if we frame our relationship to other animals in political terms, the question of the comparative harm of death may take on a new importance. If, to give just one example, we begin to look at other domesticated animals as fellow members of our political communities, then there might be additional reasons why it matters how much death harms these beings. Domesticated animals could have positive rights to things like health care, emergency services, research and development into present diseases, and the policing and investigation of crimes. How we think about these claims and their comparative strength may depend, in part, on how we think about the comparative harm of death, and whether or not humans and animals have an equal right to life. I highlight this not to fault the book for this omission, but to note how some of the more recent developments in animal ethics connect with some of the topics explored in the essays, and potentially make these questions more urgent and intriguing.

Overall, this anthology makes an excellent companion to the work of Regan, and contains a great collection of readings on current debates in the area of animal rights. It would work quite well in a class on animal ethics, and the material is suitable and accessible for undergraduates of all levels.

[1] One problem with this name is that it is misleading. The cognitive diversity that is characteristic of humans is not something that just affects those with cognitive disabilities or dementia, but all of us across our lives (when we are young, during periods of severe illness, and for many of us, as we age).

Animals & Ethics 101: Thinking Critically About Animal Rights

(13 reviews)

Nathan Nobis, Morehouse College

Copyright Year: 2016

Last Update: 2018

ISBN 13: 9780692471289

Publisher: Open Philosophy Press

Language: English

Formats Available

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Learn more about reviews.

Reviewed by Kevin DeCoux, Philosophy, Minnesota West Community & Technical College on 6/19/23

This text presents a good intro to animal ethics. It creates a context and way to consider this topic and then pretty systematically moves through the topic. It includes some additional resources and readings that touch on many of the ideas you... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

This text presents a good intro to animal ethics. It creates a context and way to consider this topic and then pretty systematically moves through the topic. It includes some additional resources and readings that touch on many of the ideas you would like an animal ethics section or class to know about. For example: Singer, Regan, and Rowlands.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

All ideas are presented clear and unbiased way. Opposing views are represented and the space is created for students to do their own thinking.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

The important ideas are presented here and the text feel current and up to date. This isn't a new text, but it doesn't feel old. I gave this a 4 as other positions could be considered more closely, but that isn't necessarily the goal of this book. As an instructor, I would encourage my class to consider these other perspectives.

Clarity rating: 5

This is a consistent book. I can tell it has been used and updated to work for a class. Ideas and vocabulary are explained with an appropriate amount of discussion.

Consistency rating: 5

This book is consistent and builds off of the ideas already discussed. It provides a reasonable framework for to be used in a class.

Modularity rating: 5

There are links to additional readings and materials. There are questions that could be used for discussions and paper topics. This is all helpful and could be used easily for a unit in a larger class.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

I appreciate the organization. It works here.

Interface rating: 5

I didn't see any interface issues. In the intro Nobis suggests that some links might break over time, but they worked for me.

Grammatical Errors rating: 3

There are some spelling and grammatical mistakes, but it doesn't really impact your ability to use the text.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

This text fits a western context well. Students will be able to approach the topics presented and have opinions on the topics. I found the book to be pretty neutral and I wouldn't be concerned using it in my class.

A reasonable introduction to animal ethics. The book looks pretty good and would be usable for a section in my environmental ethics course on animals.

Reviewed by Danae Wirth, Director of Accreditation for Education, Goshen College on 3/28/23

The text covers the subject appropriately and with appropriate references. Primary reading suggestions are listed at the beginning of the book. There is no formal index, readings and recommended resources are inserted in each chapter as links to... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

The text covers the subject appropriately and with appropriate references. Primary reading suggestions are listed at the beginning of the book. There is no formal index, readings and recommended resources are inserted in each chapter as links to information and or readings on websites. These readings are specific to each chapter and significantly add to the content. Footnotes are used throughout the text that help define terms and explain their meanings in this context. There is no formal glossary of terms.

The author presents the content in non-bias ways and through a consistent philosophical approach in which opposing view points are well represented.

The text addresses ongoing issues and debates concerning morals, ethics and the rights of animals. It describes the foundations of ethics and morals in a variety of contexts in the first chapter. This serves as a touchstone for thinking about animal rights as the book progresses. It would be quite easy to maintain the main content of this text if updates were needed to the references and supporting texts, however this resource is highly dependent on outside reading assignments which may or may not be relevant in the future.

Clarity rating: 3

The clarity of the text is inhibited by the use of long footnotes. In addition, sentences are long and at times grammatically confusing. However, terminology is clearly defined and used consistently in appropriate context.

Consistency rating: 4

The text is consistent in terms of both terminology and framework. There is a logical sequence in the structure of the chapters, and questions following each chapter are in a consistent format. Terminology that could be confusing or ambiguous is explained within the context of the writing.

Modularity rating: 4

The text is organized as a detailed course description with a series of classroom lessons that include readings, discussions, and end of chapter questions. It seems naturally divided into sections (chapters) that can be individually assigned or grouped as assignments.

The first chapter sets the tone for the rest of the text by providing background information on morals and ethics theory that frame the discussion in the following chapters. The author is forthcoming in the very beginning about the intent to inform but not influence the readers' thinking about these issues. Each chapter presents issues from opposing viewpoints and provides questions to facilitate deeper thinking about one's own views. Each chapter is consistently formatted with an introduction, suggested readings, theories/arguments, discussion, questions, and assignment. This structure culminates in the final additional readings that revisit the original premise of how human to human interactions influence the way we consider human to animal interactions.

Interface rating: 4

The author points out that at the time of the writing the links to web resources were active, however the reader may have to find the resources another way if they become inactive. This could be a problem since the text is heavily dependent on the readings in these links. A few other links were inactive at the time of this review. The text itself is in a straight forward format, it includes appropriately formatted illustrations with captions in the additional readings at the end of the book. There were no issues navigating through the pages or chapters.

Generally, the way sentences are structured throughout the text tends to be confusing for the reader and is distracting. At times, it is hard to understand the point of a given section of text without re-reading it several times. The slight grammatical (or typographical) errors and long sentences interrupt the intended content.

The nature of this topic and the way it is presented naturally lends itself to cultural neutrality. As philosophy does, the text confronts the established beliefs of the reader and challenges the reader to critically question their own ideas by reading and reflecting on the established ideas of others. There were no glaring insensitivities in the writing. It should be noted that references to issues surrounding human abortion in application to how animal rights are framed may be offensive to some.

This subject of this book is relevant and important in terms of current events and has considerable potential for addressing the subject matter. Just be aware it is a more of a detailed course outline that includes detailed descriptions of each class session than a textbook and it depends heavily on outside readings that may or may not be accessible in the future.

Reviewed by Puspa Damai, Associate Professor, Marshall University on 3/4/20

Though primarily focused on the works by Peter Singer, Tom Regan and Mark Rowlands, this book provides readers with a comprehensive list of ideas and arguments pertaining to the topics of animals and ethics. The content of the text is presented in... read more

Though primarily focused on the works by Peter Singer, Tom Regan and Mark Rowlands, this book provides readers with a comprehensive list of ideas and arguments pertaining to the topics of animals and ethics. The content of the text is presented in a very reader-friendly way while still maintaining its academic tone and texture. The book aims at being a comprehensive guide to the issues of animal ethics by covering or engaging with many of the popular questions in the field. The summary of moral theories on pages 14 &15 is a clear indication of the book’s ambitious plan to be as extensive as possible within the scope available to a supplementary text. The examples used in the book, and the discussion questions supplied at the end of each chapter also help readers get a detailed picture of the topics covered. Perhaps the most effective element of the book is the “Readings” section in which the author lists a bunch of sources with external links for the really inquisitive and adventurous learners. The author even tries to be “populist” by recommending YouTube videos of relevant figures. The result is an intertextual, interdisciplinary montage of sources, ideas and arguments. This book is ready to be used in an introductory course not just on animal studies but also on logic, ethics and even critical thinking in general.

The author clearly presents the arguments, and is faithful to the sources discussed.

This book will be quite useful and relevant to both the instructors and students looking for an easy-to-find and easy-to-follow textbook with ready discussion questions and ideas for short papers.

One of the strengths of this book is its lucid style. It reads as if the author was teaching a class, and we as readers were listening to the instructor explaining and expounding on the material.

The book presents its material in a consistent manner. In each chapter, the reader is guided through a nicely structured discussion of topics and questions.

The readings by all three authors (Singer, Regan and Rowlands) are distributed across the chapters in a very cohesive way; each new chapter builds its discussion on the last.

The book is divided into eight chapters. The opening chapter introduces the readers to ethics, logic and animal ethics. In the subsequent chapters, the author gradually moves from abstract philosophical issues (such as animal minds, animal rights to) more practical issues including wearing and eating animals, and petting and hunting animals. This shift from the abstract to the concrete culminates suitably in the last chapter on a discussion on activism.

The book is available in four different formats; and it clearly explains the conditions of use.

Grammatical Errors rating: 4

The book contains a few instances of grammatically inconsistent formulations: e.g. “Here this person probably does not mean to say your making these donations are [sic] morally obligatory, morally required, or a moral duty” (8).

Discussions of pets, hunting, factory farming, etc. make the text culturally relevant. The book is primarily written for a Western audience.

I am planning to use the book for my critical thinking course.

Reviewed by Cheri Carr, Associate Professor , LAGCC on 5/17/19

The book presents itself as supplemental to Singer's "Animal Liberation", Regan's "Empty Cages", and Rowland's "Animals Like Us." I would add that it is more of a teacher's guide than a book to ask introductory students to read. The questions... read more

The book presents itself as supplemental to Singer's "Animal Liberation", Regan's "Empty Cages", and Rowland's "Animals Like Us." I would add that it is more of a teacher's guide than a book to ask introductory students to read. The questions posed, the links to additional material, the argument summaries offered, the discussion questions collected, and the paper topics suggested are all excellent for helping a teacher craft their own class. These are the strengths of the book. But whereas many introductory texts expend much energy painting a story that will draw students along, motivating the questions posed, this book jumps straight to the meat of arguments. For some, this may be a strength as well. For others, this means that the book can be an excellent supplement and helpful preparatory tool, but that the student experience of context, narrative, and stakes will have to be presented in lecture or in other readings. While this text contains no index, the pdf is fully searchable. I was surprised that there is no discussion of animal euthanasia.

Nobis is careful to present as unbiased a view as possible, allowing students to draw their own conclusions from careful evaluation of the arguments presented. Feminist and indigenous scholarship could be presented more centrally to the dialogue and could inform the way in which the book is presented. Why focus so entirely on argumentation surrounding rights, obligations, and harms when it may be learning needs in basic empathy and appreciation of connectedness that are the primary root of why the types of questions presented in the book seem urgent at all?

When I noted that feminist and indigenous scholarship could be presented more centrally to the dialogue and could inform the way in which the book is presented, it is a point that has implications for the possible limits of the relevance of this text. As teaching shifts to more culturally relevant, inclusive practices, this book's focus on argumentation about rights and obligations can likely still be useful in the long run as a supplemental teaching guide, though some of the questions may seem less urgent as cultural awareness of our connectedness with the natural world increases. So, the questions will become versions of "how to do we think and act in environmentally inclusive ways?" instead of Nobis' various versions of "should we think and act in environmentally inclusive ways?"

Clarity rating: 4

As noted above, the book's mission is not primarily in building context or fleshing out a narrative. It is, however, very clear and analytic in presenting the arguments it's interested in.

The book is consistent and does build on it's own questions, such as ones surrounding "taking someone's interests seriously", criteria for "having a mind", and the centrality of "rights" discussions at all.

Short descriptions of the problems are followed by links to longer articles, short but deep dives into arguments, and suggestions for discussion questions and paper topics, all of which lead to a very modular, easily digested guide book for teachers looking to draw resources for their own classes.

The text is well organized, with a clear table of contents and a fully searchable pdf version

There are no interface problems that I noticed, and I appreciate that the pdf is fully searchable. The links I sampled all work, and Nobus even offers instructions for what to do in case of any technical difficulties in accessing the things he has linked to.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

Some sentences are long and technical, but not grammatically incorrect. Very clear argumentation throughout.

This text is not culturally insensitive or offensive, though I would love to see an updated version that takes seriously feminist and indigenous perspectives, not just as abstracted argument artifacts, but as interlocutors for the form of the narrative, the learning objectives, and the very questions being posed.

Reviewed by Matthew Haug, Associate Professor, College of William & Mary on 3/28/19

As stated in the author's preface, this text is not quite a stand-alone book on animal ethics but rather a companion or guide that can be read alongside some influential books on animals and ethics (in particular, Peter Singer's _Animal... read more

As stated in the author's preface, this text is not quite a stand-alone book on animal ethics but rather a companion or guide that can be read alongside some influential books on animals and ethics (in particular, Peter Singer's _Animal Liberation_, Tom Regan's _Empty Cages_, and Mark Rowlands' _Animals Like Us_). The first chapter helpfully clarifies what the core question of animal ethics is (e.g., explaining that it need not be whether animals have moral rights), explains some basic logical concepts, and connects animal ethics to some general approaches to human ethics. I think it would be helpful if later chapters were fleshed out more fully so that they are a bit closer to being self-standing. For example, in Ch. 2, the particular argument for the claim that animals have minds based on inference to the best explanation could be explained in a bit more detail. Similarly, a bit more detail could be added to the rather schematic treatment of the major arguments in later chapters (e.g., the arguments against using animals for food or clothing in Ch. 5, especially on pp.53-54).

The text provides an accurate overview of influential arguments in animal ethics.

The extensive lists of further readings and internet sources for each chapter are especially interesting and helpful.

Overall, the writing is clear and concise.

The book's terminology is consistent throughout.

Each chapter is fairly independent of the others. I think that any course that discussed topics in animal ethics would want to include the material covered in Ch.1 in one form or another.

The book is well-organized overall. One way of making the book closer to a self-standing text might be to incorporate the two "bonus essays" into the main text. For example, material from the second bonus essay could be incorporated into Ch. 6, perhaps with some critical discussion.

Overall, the formatting is attractive and readable. However, seemingly unneeded blank pages appear after the list of readings in some chapters and after some chapters.

I noticed a few grammatical mistakes/typos: in a section title in Ch. 1 (pp. ix and 9); in a set of sentences of the form "This chapter we ..." (pp.42,45,51,67) (probably a result of using 'replace' when editing); an instance where 'it' should be 'is' (p.61).

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

I did not notice any culturally insensitive examples.

Reviewed by Joey Tuminello, Instructor, Linn-Benton Community College on 3/3/19

The content of the text is appropriately comprehensive for an introductory volume on animal ethics. The theoretical emphasis is on Peter Singer, Tom Regan, and Mark Rowlands' ethical frameworks, as well as discussion of issues such as the use of... read more

The content of the text is appropriately comprehensive for an introductory volume on animal ethics. The theoretical emphasis is on Peter Singer, Tom Regan, and Mark Rowlands' ethical frameworks, as well as discussion of issues such as the use of animals in research and for food/fur. No index or glossary is included, but the author does clearly organize assigned and suggested reading throughout the text.

Nobis accurately frames arguments without dogmatism, promoting the reader's ability to think for themselves and to evaluate the strength of different lines of reasoning.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

The author drives home the perennial nature of debates regarding the moral status of, and moral obligations towards animals, and does so in a way that ensures the long-term efficacy of the book.

The book is very clearly written, and this clarity is reflected in the content of the book itself, which focuses on ways to clearly understand, articulate, and evaluate arguments regarding animal ethics. Technical terms are kept to a minimum and always clearly explained.

The text is completely consistent in its employment of terminology and philosophical/argumentative concepts.

This text would work wonderfully when covered in its entirety or when broken up into smaller readings. The text frames discussion within and between other readings in animal ethics, bringing these into conversation with one another in ways that spark the reader's critical thinking. At the same time, it is written in a way that is not overly self-referential, and it would be possible to use only excepts of the text without generating confusion.

The book begins with an introduction to the study of ethics and the nature of argumentation. It then moves into core theories in animal ethics, and ends by covering debates regarding various uses of animals and the ethics of animal-related advocacy.

The text's interface is straightforward and easily navigable.

The book's grammar is excellent throughout, making for a fluid, non-disruptive reading experience.

The text is not culturally insensitive or offensive, but examples and thinkers are fairly Anglo- and US-centric.

It is worth noting that this text was not designed to be a stand-alone volume. The author does a wonderful job of curating introductory readings in animal ethics and this text expertly serves as the "glue" that brings the readings together and cultivates argumentative/critical thinking skills on these topics. However, the text often references assigned readings that are listed but not included in their entirety (probably due to copyright). Links to web documents are included where available.

Reviewed by Bruce Mandeville, Associate Professor, Otterbein Univeristy on 5/21/18

The book covers some common important animal use discussions. I do not believe it is meant to be definitive, but it does provide many commonly used resources for further investigation. This book is a great place to start the debate but future... read more

The book covers some common important animal use discussions. I do not believe it is meant to be definitive, but it does provide many commonly used resources for further investigation. This book is a great place to start the debate but future resources would be necessary for an in-depth approach.

Content Accuracy rating: 4

The book is accurate. Sometimes in its lack of depth, some content is not fully developed (and perhaps some would view this a not accurate). It does seem to be slanted towards animal rights but it would not hinder me from using the text (as most students could be nudged further in that direction).

The links do not necessarily work so perhaps just using google searches for the appropriate materials might be more useful. It seems that the book could easily be updated. I found it to be relevant and helpful.

He assumes you know what Cohen, Regan etc say. He doesn't really go into their theories so to use this book I would need to expose students to these writers’ views. Would have been helpful to clearly summarize their theories. However, the book is very detailed in the common arguments later.

Extremely consistent. The book does an excellent job with terminology and approaches to animal ethics. The arguments for animal use are well separated and can be used individually or one argument building on the next. Very consistent approach.

It is easily divided into sections. I will be using chapters 3-7; that seems to speak to animal ethics and equine ethics most closely. It is helpful to have chapters on the specific areas of animal rights, so each area is accessible separately, such as medical research. It might be more helpful if the resources that remain in the chapters (not as footnotes) were attached directly to the arguments discussed.

Perhaps the resources could be elsewhere in the book so it wouldn’t disrupt the flow. . Perhaps as footnotes or reference section. Some of the links do not work so perhaps just suggesting google search terms would be more helpful? The topics and text flowed very well.

The interface worked well, especially if you have PDF reader where you can annotate and highlight.

There were a few grammatical errors but not many.

n/a in my opinion

This is a great resource to use and I will be using this text. The offers of questions and essay topics at the end of chapters is also very helpful.

Reviewed by Sarah Beighton, Research & Digital Resources Librarian, Staffordshire University on 2/1/18

There isn’t an index as such, which is a shame, as this would be extremely useful. However, it is broken down into chapters which is good, and these are further broken down into sections which are well described, and the book is easily searchable... read more

There isn’t an index as such, which is a shame, as this would be extremely useful. However, it is broken down into chapters which is good, and these are further broken down into sections which are well described, and the book is easily searchable which helps. The author does point out in the preface that the book is designed as a brief guide and companion to other in print books, which are listed in the ‘About this book’ section. This section is very comprehensive, going as far to describe the learning outcomes

The information in the book seems accurate and well balanced, it is based on readings by respected philosophers and gives links to these texts. The chapters seem well thought out and give an overview of the topics with information about further reading.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 3

The main issue I foresee is ensuring links stay relevant. Aside from that the arguments covered seem current and the structure gives the impression it can be updated easily without loosing relevance to current issues in animal ethics.

Overall the text is written in an accessible, readable manner. The explanations are easy to understand. I especially liked the ‘About this book section’ as it gives a clear overview of the purpose of the book along with the earning outcomes the reader is expected to achieve.

The terminology and framework used are extremely consistent

I love the way the author has included an ‘About this book’ section as it gives meaning to the book, the structure of the chapters is accurate and clear, and helps break the book down into manageable sections.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

The chapters are consistently organised with a clear overview, additional readings leading then on to the main chapter sections. I found this a refreshing way of organising a book and felt that this enhanced the learning experience.

There are no images or tables in the text, so there are no problems with the interface in the formats available.

I couldn’t find any obvious grammatical errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 3

The book is not insensitive or offensive from a cultural perspective, but neither does it specifically discuss in detail animal rights in the context of race, culture, ethnicity or background.

An enjoyable read which gives a broad overview of the issues surrounding animal rights in the context of the learning outcomes the book describes.

Reviewed by Christian Golden, Lecturer, University of Tennessee, Knoxville on 6/20/17

There is a militant but minority school within the modern animal movement that calls itself the “Abolitionist” approach to animal rights. Championed by legal scholar Gary Francione, the approach strictly opposes incremental animal welfare reform... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

There is a militant but minority school within the modern animal movement that calls itself the “Abolitionist” approach to animal rights. Championed by legal scholar Gary Francione, the approach strictly opposes incremental animal welfare reform and takes a hard line against all forms of animal use, treating veganism as the only defensible moral baseline. It has proven to be a divisive force within the animal rights movement, challenging some key assumptions behind mainstream animal advocacy, and as such deserves consideration in any discussion of the ethics and politics of animal use. Yet it is a minority view often ignored by philosophers and activists. I was pleasantly surprised that this text names Francione and “Abolitionism,” but discussion of its dispute with “welfarist” approaches was limited to about a page and a footnote. A more extensive textual treatment may do more justice to the many deep ethical and tactical issues raised by this controversy within the animal movement.

The text focuses on three main normative theories and explores their application to the human use of animals: one based on the demand for equal consideration of interests; another based on the right to respectful treatment; and another based on making moral choices via an impartial procedure. These approaches are surely different, but they do share an impartial/egalitarian thrust and an emphasis on rational procedures, rules, duties, rights, obligations, and so on. But not all moral theory (certainly not all ethical reflection) is like this, so this focus is somewhat restrictive.

One ethical framework that departs from many of the assumptions underlying these three theories is virtue ethics, whose emphasis is on what character traits make one the best sort of person, whose conduct is characteristically good and conducive to a worthwhile life. The text totally ignores this theory (besides mentioning that an author mentions it elsewhere), but discussing it could help bring out important features of the main views the text considers and illuminate questions about human-animal relations from a different direction, namely by examining character traits relevant to human-animal relations and ethics generally, such as cruelty, apathy, empathy, rationality, and so on.

Finally, the text ignores an extensive philosophical literature on feminist approaches to animal ethics, such as the “ecofeminist” critique of meat consumption offered by Lori Gruen, Greta Gaard, Carol J. Adams, and others. This is a significant oversight because feminist philosophy offers helpful and illuminating critiques of the commitment to liberalism (methodological individualism, ostensibly impartial, gender-neutral decision-procedures, and so on) underlying the three main normative theories the text considers.

The text does a good job of accurately describing and contrasting three normative theories as they apply to the moral relations between humans and between humans and other animals. I did not notice any mischaracterizations of the positions or arguments under discussion.

I worry that the text is apolitical in a way not helpful to students due to its tendency to avoid the intersection of animal ethics with questions about race, gender, sexuality, disability, and other embodied differences that invite comparison to supposed moral differences between species. The text offers a relatively abstract discussion of some conceptual tools commonly used by Anglo-American philosophers to analyze modern animal use (factory farming, zoos, hunting, etc.) without any systematic discussion of the history of these practices or their connection to other forms of oppression (racial, gendered, etc.). This is at least partly a question of style. But more abstract discussions of moral principle tend to involve lost opportunities to help students reflect critically and philosophically about their concrete circumstances and the social and political dimensions of the moral issues they face.

The text itself is largely clear and easy to follow. I found the “Learning Outcomes” section at the beginning of the book to be especially helpful, and think students will, too, in establishing expectations about the book’s central content and ambitions.

The “About This Book” section does a fairly nice job of laying out the project and the way there. It gives a good sense of the wide-ranging scope of the discussion, and flags some of the areas of investigation to be explored. The book's subsequent layout conforms to the expectations created by the introductory remarks (subject to a caveat I mention below under "organization/structure/flow”).

The text’s core chapters cohere fairly well but seem suitable for use separately or in other combinations. I would expect students to benefit from each of the chapters in isolation from the rest if my syllabus required doing it that way.

It was not as immediately clear as I would have liked what the primary business of the text was. The “About This Book” section mentions three main moral theories, but also a discussion of animal minds (clearly a metaphysical issue, not an ethical one), activism, some specific animal issues (wearing animals, owning pets, etc.), and other assorted topics. Looking at the table of contents, it was unclear to me where or how the three moral theories identified in the opening remarks fit into the broad structure of the text. I would have liked the introductory remarks to provide a roadmap for navigating the book that is more clearly reflected in the table of contents.

The text’s layout seems well-organized and fairly easy to navigate. Section headings are perspicuous and there are helpful “Overview,” “Discussion Questions,” and “Readings” headings to structure one’s attempt to navigate the text and find what one needs.

The text contains only a few minor grammatical and typographical errors (see e.g. p. v, vii, etc.).

Due to the text’s avoidance of feminist moral and political thought around human-animal relations (discussed above under “Comprehensiveness”), it fails to help prepare students to engage gender as an analytical category and a resource for thinking critically about, and keeping pace with, other political issues like race and sexuality with which debates about the status of nonhuman animals are interwoven. Generally speaking, the text takes seriously moral frameworks that fit comfortably within the liberal-democratic moral and political tradition to the exclusion of critical alternatives that, when contrasted with them, help illuminate their strengths and weaknesses.

I would suggest either eliminating or expanding the section entitled “Religion and Ethics: A Brief Comment,” found on p. 31. The section consists of two brief paragraphs explaining why the text adopts a secular approach, largely by quoting another philosopher’s argument that religious ethics rests on a rationally indefensible appeal to authority, as opposed to reasons and evidence. Such an offhand treatment cannot help being unfairly dismissive of theistic ethics and should be replaced with either a more extensive and balanced discussion that takes seriously the moral resources of actual religious traditions or a sentence in the Preface stating that the text will only consider secular frameworks.

Finally, I worry that the book may be too ambitious for its relatively short length. I do like that it strives to gather in lots of disparate philosophically important questions surrounding human-animal relations by contrasting and applying a few rival normative theories, exploring the nature of the creatures under discussion (the brief section on “animal minds”), handling specific practical issues of animal treatment as well as questions about activism itself, and so on. These are all important and related matters that raise serious questions. But in a book with roughly 100 pages of substantial discussion, it’s not surprising that (to me) much of the discussion seemed very cursory and elliptical. This is another question of style, but I find that a deeper dive into fewer topics produces better and more enduring learning outcomes for students (especially novices) than a longer series of more fleeting encounters. Teachers often have to fight for students’ attention, and students are less likely to remain engaged in any case when skimming over the surface.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Pannekoek, Graduate Student/Ph.D. Candidate, University of Tennessee on 6/20/17

The book does not offer much in the way of an index or glossary, but it is relatively short and searchable. read more

The book does not offer much in the way of an index or glossary, but it is relatively short and searchable.

The content of the book is accurate overall, and has no egregious errors. It comes across as unbiased. The approach seems to favor the thesis that harming animals is wrong, but this thesis itself, the extent to which it is true, and its possible implications are all carefully considered and up for question.

The book is meant to accompany three classic texts in the animal ethics literature. The most recent of these is from 2004 (although this is an updated version of a much earlier text, and the most recent original work is from 2002). This means that the relevant texts are not very recent, although their status as classics in the field is uncontroversial.

In terms of its discussion of these classical texts, the book will not easily be made obsolete. But in terms of where the debate is moving, insofar as it no longer limits itself to classically deontological and utilitarian theories and is becoming increasingly intersectional, the book remains much more traditional.

The primary issue with longevity is that there are a lot of online sources referenced that do not have a stable URL. This means that an increasingly large number of the link will cease to refer to the source listed. Although this is acknowledged in the text, it does date the work.

The book is exceedingly clear and suitable for an introductory audience in terms of its original content. The references to the other texts quickly become cumbersome to follow up on. Another potential problem is that the difficulty of some of the recommended texts far exceed the standards of the text, for instance the recommended readings on animal minds (page 50).

Overall, the text is consistent in terms of terminology and framework.

The text is relatively easily divisible into smaller sections. There is some cross-referencing that might make this process a little bit more difficult. The topics are clearly distinct, which lends itself well to a course division.

The topics are presented in a logical fashion. As noted above, some of the cross-referencing unnecessarily divides the same topic over distinct sections.

The interface is generally clear. However, it has a standard MS Word layout which means that the page-numbering is continuous and visible, even on empty pages. While this is not a big problem, it does make the book overall look less professional.

The texts contain no major grammatical errors. It has clearly been carefully edited.

The text is not necessarily culturally insensitive nor does it use offensive examples. However, the focus on traditional animal ethics theories means that the text lacks intersectionality.

(The following is my all-things-considered review of the book. Some of the comments will be repetitive given the notes above.)

Nathan Nobis’ Animals & Ethics 101: Thinking Critically About Animal Rights is not a standalone book that can be used as the primary text in an animal ethics course. It is best considered as an accompaniment to three of the major texts in the animal ethical literature.

It does well as a guided reading exercise for some of the animal ethics fundamentals, but it won’t meet the needs of anyone looking for a comprehensive introduction to the field. It might have been helpful for the title of the text to be more clear about the nature of the text. That being said, the rest of my commentary will judge the book as a guided reading text.

The texts the book focuses on are standard in the animal ethics tradition. On the one hand, this is understandable given the introductory nature of the text. On the other hand, it presents the debate in a very one dimensional way and this trend is continued in most of the recommended reading. That is to say, the vast majority of the voices represented are white and male.

The general approach of the text is to talk together a variety of other texts. This gets somewhat cumbersome. The reader is supposed to start a chapter, and then read a section from one book, another section from another, and so on, before getting back to this book from some unifying comments and further resources. These additional resources are offered in large numbers, but they are not contextualized. This means that sources that detract from the project of the book are not interpreted in the framework of the debate.

The section on activism is informative and does good work at covering a generally underrepresented topic. The final discussion considers the relation between animal ethics and abortion. The differences and similarities between these two topics is mutually elucidating, although the discussion is relatively long and feels somewhat detached from the rest of the project.

Finally, the text is a bit open ended. It comes across as unbiased, but being unbiased is not in every case a virtue. I think that the text could have taken a stronger position on the wrongs perpetuated against animals. The detached nature of the discussion reflects the emphasis on rationality of the classic utilitarian and deontological approaches to animal ethics. This underscores the lack of intersectionality.

In short, its a decent accompaniment to some of the classical texts in the animal ethics literature, but in my view it is not sufficient as an introduction to contemporary animal ethics more broadly.

Reviewed by Victor Matoush, Faculty Instructor, Rogue Community College on 4/11/17

Comprehensive would be an understatement as this text goes extremely in depth to explore and discover all aspects of how we as a society approach our rights, responsibilities and dangers of our interactions with animals. At times, this becomes... read more

Comprehensive would be an understatement as this text goes extremely in depth to explore and discover all aspects of how we as a society approach our rights, responsibilities and dangers of our interactions with animals. At times, this becomes very heavy reading as the author takes the reader into deep philosophical thought processes of each and every approach to a particular situation. I might have preferred to not get so bogged down with so much preparatory reading prior to getting to discussing the actual issue. It did give the reader a better idea of ALL points of view,but it often became burdensome to read all of this.

The book tends to make a lot of assumptions when discussing theories. The author seemed to lean slightly towards more protection for animals. Often there would be multiple approaches to a moral dilemma and the assumption made was for a protectionist viewpoint. I did not see over population control brought up during the discussion on the moral right/obligation to kill animals.

The judgements of the public on a particular issue can be changed almost overnight now. Harambe became a household name after being killed to protect a young boy who had fallen in the enclosure. This book wouldn't necessarily change a mind as much as confirm what you already thought. The moral issues aren't going away anytime soon so the longevity of discussion should maintain over time.

Text was heavy, with lengthy meandering discussions on different approaches to a topic that were too in depth before even discussing the actual topic. By the time I got to the topic, I hadn't digested the preamble yet. Many sentences could have been phrased in a way that would be much easier to understand what the author was trying to say.

Format was similar throughout the book. There was a preparation to discuss the topic,then the actual discussion followed by some moral questions followed by a written assignment of the expository type.

The first chapter was much more difficult than the rest of the chapters. The author proposes some theories like Regan's for example, be prepared to be referred back in the book so you must read the book sequentially to grasp the intended intent. Each chapter is it's own discussion in and of itself but requires understanding of previous chapters content.

The book was so comprehensive, it covered all contingencies. I don't think there was any particular flow to organizing the chapters that would be better than any other.

No problems

I did not notice any and I usually catch grammatical errors.

There is a movement right now to move to protect animals, be it a crackdown on sales of ivory, or the removal of elephants from a zoo, there are more people talking about animals rights right now than at any time in history.This book is very relevant to what is happening and will encourage more discussions hopefully.

Be ready to think, hard, while you are digesting the text of the book. Get through chapter 1 and the rest of the book becomes much easier to read.

Reviewed by Lutz Kramer, Instructor, Rogue Community College on 4/11/17

The text provides an extensive set of links to both print and online material related to our interaction with animals. There are sections dealing with animal minds, our various uses of animals (including eating and wearing, experimentation,... read more

The text provides an extensive set of links to both print and online material related to our interaction with animals. There are sections dealing with animal minds, our various uses of animals (including eating and wearing, experimentation, hunting, pets and zoos) and activism for animals. There is no specific index or glossary, but the entire text functions as a companion to primary readings from Peter Singer, Tom Regan, and Mark Rowlands.

The primary readings come from reputable philosophers, and the author includes links to critiques of their theories. Each section contains a brief overview of the topic which is an accurate representation of these philosophers’ views. The links to support material are accurate as well.

The issue of human to human ethics goes back to Plato, and our logic goes back to Aristotle, so the topic has a long history of relevance. By drawing on an analogy of our ethical and logical relationships with animals, the author establishes the relevance for a contemporary reader. Because of the layout, necessary updates will be easily implemented.

The author provides numerous examples to illustrate any of the technical terminology, and the text is jargon free. He also clearly states that instead of using the ambiguous term “morally right” it is of more value to use the terms “morally permissible,” “morally obligatory,” and “morally impermissible.”

Since it is a companion text, it is internally consistent in relation to the terminology encountered in the primary readings.

After Chapter One, each of the chapters could be included in a course independently. I could picture the chapter on activism for animals, for example, being used in an English composition class dealing with persuasion.

Again, since it is a companion text, there is a necessity to list the readings required for each chapter. Placing them at the end of the chapter would have given a better sense of flow. Being consistent with the discussion and paper topics was very helpful in terms of structure.

Since the text was entirely print in format, there were no issues with the interface. The font was fine.

It was discouraging to find a grammar error in the opening sentence of the Preface. There were similar errors on pages 23,46, and 57, to name a few. The text would benefit from a much closer proofreading.

The book deals with a controversial topic, but it does so in a respectful manner. There will obviously be cultural differences in how we feel animals should be treated, and these differences are taken in to consideration. The final chapter, a comparison of animal rights and abortion, shows the similarities between these two controversial topics.

Since the text is only 125 pages long, it is well worth a look if the topic is a part of your curriculum.

Reviewed by Priscilla Connors, Associate Professor, University of North Texas on 4/11/17

The author does a good job of outline the subject and defining the central focus of the chapters. Given these parameters the book is comprehensive. In the downloaded version I found a Table of Contents, however, there was no section distinctly... read more

The author does a good job of outline the subject and defining the central focus of the chapters. Given these parameters the book is comprehensive. In the downloaded version I found a Table of Contents, however, there was no section distinctly labeled as the glossary. A unique section with definitions of terms would be useful to those new to the subject.

Readings are reasonably balanced and supported with reference and links to major works. Overall the readings made sense and were current as the time of publication.

The book includes a number of links to websites which requires vigilance to avoid broken links, failed addresses, and deleted sites. A unique section at the end of each chapter that lists sites might help with updating by putting these connections all in one place rather than dispersed throughout the text. The flow of discussion in each chapter felt natural and logical. Overall structure allows for updating as the conversation on animal use evolves.

Overall, the book is quite readable. There were a few times where definitions of terms would have been helpful. In chapter 1, I expected a description of the term "premise" but was unable to find it. Since the book appears to be a publication based on a series of lectures the author may have assumed that readers were informed about basic terms. If wider use is expected, more definitions would be a good idea.

The book is consistent and flows easily from chapter to chapter. The discussion builds well. It does have a lecture feel and references to what "we" will be doing which can be distracting.

The modularity is with distinct sections and transitions between sections. The author's argument builds from chapter to chapter so reading in the order presented is the most likely approach.

The books organization is logical and easy to understand. More description and explanation of referenced works might be helpful.

Interface rating: 3

The download was a pdf file with wide margins, spacing between short paragraphs, and use of indentation to offset subtopics. Sometimes references to works outside the book were confusing and left me wondering if I'd see more about that topic within the book or would need to jump out and read it elsewhere. This is where the book conveyed a "wrote down the lecture" feel that made it seem less like a book and more like a compendium. Overall formatting could be improved with clear distinctions between text and footnotes. Perhaps a small thing, but blank pages between chapters seem unnecessary.

The book's grammar was appropriate and consistent.

Animals &amp; Ethics is relevant, strikes a cord, and provides a strategy for reasoning that is culturally flexible. I plan to use it as a reading book for my class which, interestingly, is not a philosophy course. It establishes common ground for an animal use conversation that is pertinent to eating behaviors and food choice, which is my field of work.

I enjoyed reviewing this book. I pondered, reflected, and learned. I will be using this book with my students in a nutrition course where meat consumption is of growing concern among students and a path for a reasoned conversation is needed. Thank you!

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1: Introductions to Ethics, Logic and Animals & Ethics
• Chapter 2: Animal Minds
• Chapter 3: Defending Animals
• Chapter 4: Defending Animal Use
• Chapter 5: Wearing & Eating Animals
• Chapter 6: Animal Experimentation
• Chapter 7: Pets, Zoos & Hunting
• Chapter 8: Activism

Ancillary Material

About the book.

This book provides an overview of the current debates about the nature and extent of our moral obligations to animals. Which, if any, uses of animals are morally wrong, which are morally permissible (i.e., not wrong) and why? What, if any, moral obligations do we, individually and as a society (and a global community), have towards animals and why? How should animals be treated? Why?

We will explore the most influential and most developed answers to these questions – given by philosophers, scientists, and animal advocates and their critics – to try to determine which positions are supported by the best moral reasons.

About the Contributors

Nathan Nobis, PhD  is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA. He has taught courses, given lectures and published articles and chapters on a wide variety of topics concerning ethics and animals, bioethics, ethical theory and other topics in philosophy. 

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1: Introduction to Ethics, Logic and Ethics and Animals

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• Page ID 31029

• Nathan Nobis
• Morehouse College via Open Philosophy Press

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Discussions of animal ethics are more fruitful when approached after an exposure to general thinking about ethics and methods of moral argument analysis. Theories of animal ethics are typically extensions or modifications of theories developed for addressing more familiar (and often less controversial) questions about human-to-human ethics. Therefore, it is important to be familiar with these theories and methods. These online readings will introduce readers to the more influential moral theories and methods of moral argument analysis, and we will read the introductions to our texts on animal ethics.

• 1.1: Readings
• 1.2: Moral Questions
• 1.3: Not “Morally Right,” but Morally Permissible and/or Morally Obligatory
• 1.4: Not Necessarily Animal "Rights"
• 1.5: Introduction to Logic
• 1.6: Introduction to Ethics
• 1.7: A Brief Comment
• 1.8: Introduction to Animal Ethics
• 1.9: Discussion Questions

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Animal Rights

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Animal Rights by Mark Rowlands LAST REVIEWED: 23 June 2023 LAST MODIFIED: 19 December 2012 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195396577-0124

The expression “animal rights” is employed in two different ways: one broad, the other narrow. When employed in the broad sense—animal rights with a small “r”—the claim that animals possess rights is used as a way of asserting that animals have moral standing: that they are morally considerable , the legitimate objects of moral concern. Even moral theories that are officially hostile to the concept of rights can accept that animals have rights in this sense. Thus, Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, described the idea of rights as “nonsense” but nevertheless argued that animals possess moral standing. And although subsequent utilitarians have generally inherited this antipathy toward the concept of rights, it was utilitarianism that underpinned Peter Singer’s ( Singer 1975 , cited under Introductory Works , the Basic Argument , and Utilitarianism and Animals ) seminal defense of the moral claims of animals. Thus, Singer, certainly in the minds of the general public, is associated with the idea of animal rights even though the moral theory he deploys is officially hostile to the concept of rights. The broad sense of animal rights is, therefore, a very loose sense, and the area of inquiry might instead be labeled “animal ethics.” In a stronger sense—animal rights with a capital “R”—the claim that animals possess rights is restricted to specific moral theories that endorse both the moral claims of animals and the apparatus of moral rights. In particular, the claim is strongly associated with the deontological framework developed by Tom Regan (see Animals and Natural Rights ), and also with certain contractualist approaches to understanding the rights of animals (see Contractualism and Animals ). This bibliography encompasses animal rights in the broad sense of animal ethics. It focuses on theoretical developments in animal ethics. Tracing the practical implications of each theory or tradition for issues such animal husbandry, experimentation, hunting and other blood sports, zoos, the keeping of pets, and so on has proved to be not only important in its own right but also a significant component in the overall theoretical elaboration of each tradition. Practical work is cited, and practical issues discussed, only to the extent they have impact on the theoretical frameworks.

There are numerous introductions to animal ethics. These may vary in their level of theoretical commitment or orientation. For example, Rowlands 2002 develops its case from a broadly contractualist perspective. The argument of Rachels 1999 is developed in the context of evolutionary theory. Francione 2000 , however, bases its case on inconsistencies in our commonsense attitudes toward animals. The works below are classified as introductions because they deal with the issue of animal ethics in a general way and are written for those with no prior acquaintance with this topic. DeGrazia 2002 and Taylor 2003 are very good examples of this genre, and even though Peter Singer’s position ( Singer 1975 ) is officially utilitarian, this plays no overt or essential role in the development of his arguments. Garner 2005 is a well-written and useful overview of the various positions that fall under the animal rights rubric.

DeGrazia, David. Animal Rights: A Very Short Introduction . New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

It does what it says on the cover: it provides a lucid, well-written, and very short introduction to the idea of animal rights.

Francione, Gary. Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000.

This introduction, from the leading proponent of the “leave them alone” stance, takes as its point of departure the inconsistencies in our moral attitudes about animals and builds an argument on that basis.

Garner, Robert. Animal Ethics . Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2005.

A useful guide to the current state of play in the animal rights debate. Garner writes clearly, identifies the major issues, and makes some interesting suggestions about how to think about them.

Rachels, James. Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism . New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Lucid and well-argued case for animal rights grounded in evolutionary theory. Human moral exceptionalism is incompatible with evolutionary theory.

Rowlands, Mark. Animals Like Us . London: Verso, 2002.

A combination of moral theory (of a broadly contractualist orientation) and a detailed discussion of practical issues, including using animals for food, experimenting on animals, hunting, companion animals, and zoos. There is also a discussion of the harm of death as it applies to humans and animals.

Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation . New York: New York Review of Books and Random House, 1975.

This book (arguably) initiated the contemporary discussion of the moral claims of animals and is still essential reading after all these years. In this book, Singer’s utilitarianism is sufficiently submerged to make this a general introduction to thinking about animals in a moral way. Discusses the ethics of eating animals and experimenting on them in lucid and compelling language.

Taylor, Angus. Animals and Ethics: An Overview of the Philosophical Debate . Peterborough, Canada: Broadview, 2003.

Taylor traces the animal rights debate back to its roots in Aristotle and Darwin, and carefully examines the relevant contemporary theories.

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Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Animals and ethics.

What place should non-human animals have in an acceptable moral system? These animals exist on the borderline of our moral concepts; the result is that we sometimes find ourselves according them a strong moral status, while at other times denying them any kind of moral status at all. For example, public outrage is strong when knowledge of “puppy mills” is made available; the thought here is that dogs deserve much more consideration than the operators of such places give them. However, when it is pointed out that the conditions in a factory farm are as bad as, if not much worse than, the conditions in a puppy mill, the usual response is that those affected are “just animals” after all, and do not merit our concern.  Philosophical thinking on the moral standing of animals is diverse and can be generally grouped into three general categories: Indirect theories, direct but unequal theories, and moral equality theories.

Indirect theories deny animals moral status or equal consideration with humans due to a lack of consciousness, reason, or autonomy.  Ultimately denying moral  status to animals, these theories may still require not harming animals, but only because doing so causes harm to a human being’s morality.  Arguments in this category have been formulated by philosophers such as Immanuel Kant , René Descartes , Thomas Aquinas , Peter Carruthers, and various religious theories.

Direct but unequal theories accord some moral consideration to animals, but deny them a fuller moral status due to their inability to respect another agent’s rights or display moral reciprocity within a community of equal agents. Arguments in this category consider the sentience of the animal as sufficient reason not to cause direct harm to animals.  However, where the interests of animals and humans conflict, the special properties of being human such as rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness accord higher consideration to the interests of human beings.

Moral equality theories extend equal consideration and moral status to animals by refuting the supposed moral relevance of the aforementioned special properties of human beings.  Arguing by analogy, moral equality theories often extend the concept of rights to animals on the grounds that they have similar physiological and mental capacities as infants or disabled human beings.  Arguments in this category have been formulated by philosophers such as Peter Singer and Tom Regan.

Table of Contents

• Worldview/Religious Theories
• Kantian Theories
• Cartesian Theories
• Contractualist Theories
• Implications for the Treatment of Animals
• The Argument From Marginal Cases
• Problems with Indirect Duties to Animals
• Why Animals have Direct Moral Status
• Only Human Beings Have Rights
• Only Human Beings are Rational, Autonomous, and Self-Conscious
• Only Human Beings Can Act Morall y
• Only Human Beings are Part of the Moral Community
• The Argument from Marginal Cases (Again)
• The Sophisticated Inegalitarian Argument
• Practical Implications
• Regan and Animal Rights
• Anthologies

1. Indirect Theories

On indirect theories, animals do not warrant our moral concern on their own, but may warrant concern only in so far as they are appropriately related to human beings. The various kinds of indirect theories to be discussed are Worldview/Religious Theories, Kantian Theories, Cartesian Theories, and Contractualist Theories. The implications these sorts of theories have for the proper treatment of animals will be explored after that. Finally, two common methods of arguing against indirect theories will be discussed.

a. Worldview/Religious Theories

Some philosophers deny that animals warrant direct moral concern due to religious or philosophical theories of the nature of the world and the proper place of its inhabitants. One of the earliest and clearest expressions of this kind of view comes to us from Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.). According to Aristotle, there is a natural hierarchy of living beings. The different levels are determined by the abilities present in the beings due to their natures. While plants, animals, and human beings are all capable of taking in nutrition and growing, only animals and human beings are capable of conscious experience. This means that plants, being inferior to animals and human beings, have the function of serving the needs of animals and human beings. Likewise, human beings are superior to animals because human beings have the capacity for using reason to guide their conduct, while animals lack this ability and must instead rely on instinct. It follows, therefore, that the function of animals is to serve the needs of human beings. This, according to Aristotle, is “natural and expedient” (Regan and Singer, 1989: 4-5).

Following Aristotle, the Christian philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) argues that since only beings that are rational are capable of determining their actions, they are the only beings towards which we should extend concern “for their own sakes” (Regan and Singer, 1989: 6-12). Aquinas believes that if a being cannot direct its own actions then others must do so; these sorts of beings are merely instruments. Instruments exist for the sake of people that use them, not for their own sake. Since animals cannot direct their own actions, they are merely instruments and exist for the sake of the human beings that direct their actions. Aquinas believes that his view follows from the fact that God is the last end of the universe, and that it is only by using the human intellect that one can gain knowledge and understanding of God. Since only human beings are capable of achieving this final end, all other beings exist for the sake of human beings and their achievement of this final end of the universe.

Remnants of these sorts of views remain in justifications for discounting the interests of animals on the basis of the food chain. On this line of thought, if one kind of being regularly eats another kind of being, then the first is said to be higher on the food chain. If one being is higher than another on the food chain, then it is natural for that being to use the other in the furtherance of its interests. Since this sort of behavior is natural, it does not require any further moral justification.

b. Kantian Theories

Closely related to Worldview/Religious theories are theories such as Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804). Kant developed a highly influential moral theory according to which autonomy is a necessary property to be the kind of being whose interests are to count direclty in the moral assessment of actions (Kant, 1983, 1956). According to Kant, morally permissible actions are those actions that could be willed by all rational individuals in the circumstances. The important part of his conception for the moral status of animals is his reliance on the notion of  willing . While both animals and human beings have desires that can compel them to action, only human beings are capable of standing back from their desires and choosing which course of action to take. This ability is manifested by our wills. Since animals lack this ability, they lack a will, and therefore are not autonomous. According to Kant, the only thing with any intrinsic value is a good will. Since animals have no wills at all, they cannot have good wills; they therefore do not have any intrinsic value.

Kant’s theory goes beyond the Worldview/Religious theories by relying on more general philosophical arguments about the nature of morality. Rather than simply relying on the fact that it is “natural” for rational and autonomous beings to use non-rational beings as they see fit, Kant instead provides an argument for the relevance of rationality and autonomy. A theory is a Kantian theory, then, if it provides an account of the properties that human beings have and animals lack that warrants our according human beings a very strong moral status while denying animals any kind of moral status at all. Kant’s own theory focused on the value of autonomy; other Kantian theories focus on such properties as being a moral agent, being able to exist in a reciprocal relation with other human beings, being able to speak, or being self-aware.

c. Cartesian Theories

Another reason to deny that animals deserve direct concern arises from the belief that animals are not conscious, and therefore have no interests or well-being to take into consideration when considering the effects of our actions. Someone that holds this position might agree that  if animals were conscious then we would be required to consider their interests to be directly relevant to the assessment of actions that affect them. However, since they lack a welfare, there is nothing to take directly into account when acting.

One of the clearest and most forceful denials of animal consciousness is developed by Rene Descartes (1596-1650), who argues that animals are automata that might act as if they are conscious, but really are not so (Regan and Singer, 1989: 13-19). Writing during the time when a mechanistic view of the natural world was replacing the Aristotelian conception, Descartes believed that all of animal behavior could be explained in purely mechanistic terms, and that no reference to conscious episodes was required for such an explanation. Relying on the principle of parsimony in scientific explanation (commonly referred to as Occam’s Razor) Descartes preferred to explain animal behavior by relying on the simplest possible explanation of their behavior. Since it is possible to explain animal behavior without reference to inner episodes of awareness, doing so is simpler than relying on the assumption that animals are conscious, and is therefore the preferred explanation.

Descartes anticipates the response that his reasoning, if applicable to animal behavior, should apply equally well to human behavior. The mechanistic explanation of behavior does not apply to human beings, according to Descartes, for two reasons. First, human beings are capable of complex and novel behavior. This behavior is not the result of simple responses to stimuli, but is instead the result of our reasoning about the world as we perceive it. Second, human beings are capable of the kind of speech that expresses thoughts. Descartes was aware that some animals make sounds that might be thought to constitute speech, such as a parrot’s “request” for food, but argued that these utterances are mere mechanically induced behaviors. Only human beings can engage in the kind of speech that is spontaneous and expresses thoughts.

Descartes’ position on these matters was largely influenced by his philosophy of mind and ontology. According to Descartes, there are two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive kinds of entities or properties: material or physical entities on the one hand, and mental entities on the other. Although all people are closely associated with physical bodies, they are not identical with their bodies. Rather, they are identical with their souls, or the immaterial, mental substance that constitutes their consciousness. Descartes believed that both the complexity of human behavior and human speech requires the positing of such an immaterial substance in order to be explained. However, animal behavior does not require this kind of assumption; besides, Descartes argued, “it is more probable that worms and flies and caterpillars move mechanically than that they all have immortal souls” (Regan and Singer, 1989: 18).

More recently, arguments against animal consciousness have been resurfacing. One method of arguing against the claim that animals are conscious is to point to the flaws of arguments purporting to claim that animals are conscious. For example, Peter Harrison has recently argued that the Argument from Analogy, one of the most common arguments for the claim that animals are conscious, is hopelessly flawed (Harrison, 1991). The Argument from Analogy relies on the similarities between animals and human beings in order to support the claim that animals are conscious. The similarities usually cited by proponents of this argument are similarities in behavior, similarities in physical structures, and similarities in relative positions on the evolutionary scale. In other words, both human beings and animals respond in the same way when confronted with “pain stimuli”; both animals and human beings have brains, nerves, neurons, endorphins, and other structures; and both human beings and animals are relatively close to each other on the evolutionary scale. Since they are similar to each other in these ways, we have good reason to believe that animals are conscious, just as are human beings.

Harrison attacks these points one by one. He points out that so-called pain-behavior is neither necessary nor sufficient for the experience of pain. It is not necessary because the best policy in some instances might be to not show that you are in pain. It is not sufficient since amoebas engage in pain behavior, but we do not believe that they can feel pain. Likewise, we could easily program robots to engage in pain-behavior, but we would not conclude that they feel pain. The similarity of animal and human physical structures is inconclusive because we have no idea how, or even if, the physical structure of human beings gives rise to experiences in the first place. Evolutionary considerations are not conclusive either, because it is only pain behavior, and not the experience of pain itself, that would be advantageous in the struggle for survival. Harrison concludes that since the strongest argument for the claim that animals are conscious fails, we should not believe that they are conscious.

Peter Carruthers has suggested that there is another reason to doubt that animals are conscious Carruthers, 1989, 1992). Carruthers begins by noting that not all human experiences are conscious experiences. For example, I may be thinking of an upcoming conference while driving and not ever consciously “see” the truck in the road that I swerve to avoid. Likewise, patients that suffer from “blindsight” in part of their visual field have no conscious experience of seeing anything in that part of the field. However, there must be some kind of experience in both of these cases since I did swerve to avoid the truck, and must have “seen” it, and because blindsight patients can catch objects that are thrown at them in the blindsighted area with a relatively high frequency. Carruthers then notes that the difference between conscious and non-conscious experiences is that conscious experiences are available to higher-order thoughts while non-conscious experiences are not. (A higher-order thought is a thought that can take as its object another thought.) He thus concludes that in order to have conscious experiences one must be able to have higher-order thoughts. However, we have no reason to believe that animals have higher-order thoughts, and thus no reason to believe that they are conscious.

d. Contractualist Theories

Contractualist Theories of morality construe morality to be the set of rules that rational individuals would choose under certain specified conditions to govern their behavior in society. These theories have had a long and varied history; however, the relationship between contractualism and animals was not really explored until after John Rawls published his  A Theory of Justice . In that work, Rawls argues for a conception of justice as fairness. Arguing against Utilitarian theories of justice, Rawls believes that the best conception of a just society is one in which the rules governing that society are rules that would be chosen by individuals from behind a veil of ignorance. The veil of ignorance is a hypothetical situation in which individuals do not know any particular details about themselves, such as their sex, age, race, intelligence, abilities, etc. However, these individuals do know general facts about human society, such as facts about psychology, economics, human motivation, etc. Rawls has his imagined contractors be largely self-interested; each person’s goal is to select the rules that will benefit them the most. Since they do not know who exactly they are, they will not choose rules that benefit any one individual, or segment of society, over another (since they may find themselves to be in the harmed group). Instead, they will choose rules that protect, first and foremost, rational, autonomous individuals.

Although Rawls argues for this conception as a conception of justice, others have tried to extend it to cover all of morality. For example, in  The Animals Issue , Peter Carruthers argues for a conception of morality that is based largely on Rawls’s work. Carruthers notes that if we do so extend Rawls’s conception, animals will have no direct moral standing. Since the contractors are self-interested, but do not know who they are, they will accept rules that protect rational individuals. However, the contractors know enough about themselves to know that they are not animals. They will not adopt rules that give special protection to animals, therefore, since this would not further their self-interest. The result is that rational human beings will be directly protected, while animals will not.

e. Implications for the Treatment of Animals

If indirect theories are correct, then we are not required to take the interests of animals to be directly relevant to the assessment of our actions when we are deciding how to act. This does not mean, however, that we are not required to consider how our actions will affect animals at all. Just because something is not directly morally considerable does not imply that we can do whatever we want to it. For example, there are two straightforward ways in which restrictions regarding the proper treatment of animals can come into existence. Consider the duties we have towards private property. I cannot destroy your car if I desire to do so because it is your property, and by harming it I will thereby harm you. Also, I cannot go to the town square and destroy an old tree for fun since this may upset many people that care for the tree.

Likewise, duties with regard to animals can exist for these reasons. I cannot harm your pets because they belong to you, and by harming them I will thereby harm you. I also cannot harm animals in public simply for fun since doing so will upset many people, and I have a duty to not cause people undue distress. These are two straightforward ways in which indirect theories will generate duties with regard to animals.

There are two other ways that even stronger restrictions regarding the proper treatment of animals might be generated from indirect theories. First, both Immanuel Kant and Peter Carruthers argue that there can be more extensive indirect duties to animals. These duties extend not simply to the duty to refrain from harming the property of others and the duty to not offend animal lovers. Rather, we also have a duty to refrain from being cruel to them. Kant argues:

Our duties towards animals are merely indirect duties towards humanity. Animal nature has analogies to human nature, and by doing our duties to animals in respect of manifestations of human nature, we indirectly do our duty to humanity…. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals (Regan and Singer, 1989: 23-24).

Likewise, Carruthers writes:

Such acts [as torturing a cat for fun] are wrong because they are cruel. They betray an indifference to suffering that may manifest itself…with that person’s dealings with other rational agents. So although the action may not infringe any rights…it remains wrong independently of its effect on any animal lover (Carruthers, 1992: 153-54).

So although we need not consider how our actions affect animals themselves, we do need to consider how our treatment of animals will affect our treatment of other human beings. If being cruel to an animal will make us more likely to be cruel to other human beings, we ought not be cruel to animals; if being grateful to animal will help us in being grateful to human beings then we ought to be grateful to animals.

Second, there may be an argument for vegetarianism that does not rely on considerations of the welfare of animals at all. Consider that for every pound of protein that we get from an animal source, we must feed the animals, on average, twenty-three pounds of vegetable protein. Many people on the planet today are dying of easily treatable diseases largely due to a diet that is below starvation levels. If it is possible to demonstrate that we have a duty to help alleviate the suffering of these human beings, then one possible way of achieving this duty is by refraining from eating meat. The vegetable protein that is used to feed the animals that wealthy countries eat could instead be used to feed the human beings that live in such deplorable conditions.

Of course, not all indirect theorists accept these results. However, the point to be stressed here is that even granting that animals have no direct moral status, we may have (possibly demanding) duties regarding their treatment.

f. Two Common Arguments Against Indirect Theories

Two common arguments against indirect theories have seemed compelling to many people. The first argument is The Argument from Marginal Cases; the second is an argument against the Kantian account of indirect duties to animals.

i. The Argument From Marginal Cases

The Argument from Marginal Cases is an argument that attempts to demonstrate that if animals do not have direct moral status, then neither do such human beings as infants, the senile, the severely cognitively disabled, and other such “marginal cases” of humanity. Since we believe that these sorts of human beings do have direct moral status, there must be something wrong with any theory that claims they do not. More formally, the argument is structured as follows:

• If we are justified in denying direct moral status to animals then we are justified in denying direct moral status to the marginal cases.
• We are not justified in denying direct moral status to the marginal cases.
• Therefore we are not justified denying direct moral status to animals.

The defense of premise (1) usually goes something like this. If being rational (or autonomous, or able to speak) is what permits us to deny direct moral status to animals, then we can likewise deny that status to any human that is not rational (or autonomous, able to speak, etc.). This line of reasoning works for almost every property that has been thought to warrant our denying direct moral status to animals. Since the marginal cases are beings whose abilities are equal to, if not less than, the abilities of animals, any reason to keep animals out of the class of beings with direct moral status will keep the marginal cases out as well.

There is one property that is immune to this line of argument, namely, the property of being human. Some who adhere to Worldview/Religious Views might reject this argument and maintain instead that it is simply “natural” for human beings to be above animals on any moral scale. However, if someone does so they must give up the claim that human beings are above animals due to the fact that human beings are more intelligent or rational than animals. It must be claimed instead that being human is, in itself, a morally relevant property. Few in recent times are willing to make that kind of a claim.

Another way to escape this line of argument is to deny the second premise (Cf. Frey, 1980; Francis and Norman, 1978). This may be done in a series of steps. First, it may be noted that there are very few human beings that are truly marginal. For example, infants, although not currently rational, have the potential to become rational. Perhaps they should not be counted as marginal for that reason. Likewise, the senile may have a direct moral status due to the desires they had when they were younger and rational. Once the actual number of marginal cases is appreciated, it is then claimed that it is not counter-intuitive to conclude that the remaining individuals do not have a direct moral status after all. Once again, however, few are willing to accept that conclusion. The fact that a severely cognitively disabled infant can feel pain seems to most to be a reason to refrain from harming the infant.

ii. Problems with Indirect Duties to Animals

Another argument against indirect theories begins with the intuition that there are some things that simply cannot be done to animals. For example, I am not permitted to torture my own cat for fun, even if no one else finds out about it. This intuition is one that any acceptable moral theory must be able to accommodate. The argument against indirect theories is that they cannot accommodate this intuition in a satisfying way.

Both Kant and Carruthers agree that my torturing my own cat for fun would be wrong. However, they believe it is wrong not because of the harm to the cat, but rather because of the effect this act will have on me. Many people have found this to be a very unsatisfying account of the duty. Robert Nozick labels the bad effects of such an act  moral spillover , and asks:

Why  should there be such a spillover? If it is, in itself, perfectly all right to do anything at all to animals for any reason whatsoever, then provided a person realizes the clear line between animals and persons and keeps it in mind as he acts, why should killing animals brutalize him and make him more likely to harm or kill persons (Nozick, 1974: 36)?

In other words, unless it is wrong in itself to harm the animal, it is hard to see why such an act would lead people to do other acts that are likewise wrong. If the indirect theorist does not have a better explanation for why it is wrong to torture a cat for fun, and as long as we firmly believe such actions are wrong, then we will be forced to admit that indirect theories are not acceptable.

Indirect theorists can, and have, responded to this line of argument in three ways. First, they could reject the claim that the indirect theorist’s explanation of the duty is unsatisfactory. Second, they could offer an alternative explanation for why such actions as torturing a cat are wrong. Third, they could reject the claim that those sorts of acts are necessarily wrong.

2. Direct but Unequal Theories

Most people accept an account of the proper moral status of animals according to which the interests of animals count directly in the assessment of actions that affect them, but do not count for as much as the interests of human beings. Their defense requires two parts: a defense of the claim that the interests of animals count directly in the assessment of actions that affect them, and a defense of the claim that the interests of animals do not count for as much as the interests of human beings.

a. Why Animals have Direct Moral Status

The argument in support of the claim that animals have direct moral status is rather simple. It goes as follows:

• If a being is sentient then it has direct moral status.
• (Most) animals are sentient
• Therefore (most) animals have direct moral status.

“Sentience” refers to the capacity to experience episodes of positively or negatively valenced awareness. Examples of positively valenced episodes of awareness are pleasure, joy, elation, and contentment. Examples of negatively valenced episodes of awareness are pain, suffering, depression, and anxiety.

In support of premise (1), many argue that pain and pleasure are directly morally relevant, and that there is no reason to discount completely the pleasure or pain of any being. The argument from analogy is often used in support of premise (2) (see the discussion of this argument in section I, part C above). The argument from analogy is also used in answering the difficult question of exactly which animals are sentient. The general idea is that the justification for attributing sentience to a being grows stronger the more analogous it is to human beings.

People also commonly use the flaws of indirect theories as a reason to support the claim that animals have direct moral status. Those that believe both that the marginal cases have direct moral status and that indirect theories cannot answer the challenge of the Argument from Marginal Cases are led to support direct theories; those that believe both that such actions as the torture of one’s own cat for fun are wrong and that indirect theories cannot explain why they are wrong are also led to direct theories.

b. Why Animals are not Equal to Human Beings

The usual manner of justifying the claim that animals are not equal to human beings is to point out that only humans have some property, and then argue that that property is what confers a full and equal moral status to human beings. Some philosophers have used the following claims on this strategy: (1) only human beings have rights; (2) only human beings are rational, autonomous, and self-conscious; (3) only human beings are able to act morally; and (4) only human beings are part of the moral community.

i. Only Human Beings Have Rights

On one common understanding of rights, only human beings have rights. On this conception of rights, if a being has a right then others have a duty to refrain from infringing that right; rights entail duties. An individual that has a right to something must be able to claim that thing for himself, where this entails being able to represent himself in his pursuit of the thing as a being that is legitimately pursuing the furtherance of his interests (Cf. McCloskey, 1979). Since animals are not capable of representing themselves in this way, they cannot have rights.

However, lacking rights does not entail lacking direct moral status; although rights entail duties it does not follow that duties entail rights. So although animals may have no rights, we may still have duties to them. The significance of having a right, however, is that rights act as “trumps” against the pursuit of utility. In other words, if an individual has a right to something, we are not permitted to infringe on that right simply because doing so will have better overall results. Our duties to those without rights can be trumped by considerations of the overall good. Although I have a duty to refrain from destroying your property, that duty can be trumped if I must destroy the property in order to save a life. Likewise, I am not permitted to harm animals without good reason; however, if greater overall results will come about from such harm, then it is justified to harm animals. This sort of reasoning has been used to justify such practices as experimentation that uses animals, raising animals for food, and using animals for our entertainment in such places as rodeos and zoos.

There are two points of contention with the above account of rights. First, it has been claimed that if human beings have rights, then animals will likewise have rights. For example, Joel Feinberg has argued that all is required in order for a being to have a right is that the being be capable of being represented as legitimately pursuing the furtherance of its interests (Feinberg, 1974). The claim that the being must be able to represent itself is too strong, thinks Feinberg, for such a requirement will exclude infants, the senile, and other marginal cases from the class of beings with rights. In other words, Feinberg invokes yet another instance of the Argument from Marginal Cases in order to support his position.

Second, it has been claimed that the very idea of rights needs to be jettisoned. There are two reasons for this. First, philosophers such as R. G. Frey have questioned the legitimacy of the very idea of rights, echoing Bentham’s famous claim that rights are “nonsense on stilts” (Frey, 1980). Second, philosophers have argued that whether or not a being will have rights will depend essentially on whether or not it has some other lower-order property. For example, on the above conception of rights, whether a being will have a right or not will depend on whether it is able to represent itself as a being that is legitimately pursuing the furtherance of its interests. If that is what grounds rights, then what is needed is a discussion of the moral importance of that ability, along with a defense of the claim that it is an ability that animals lack. More generally, it has been argued that if we wish to deny animals rights and claim that only human beings have them, then we must focus not so much on rights, but rather on what grounds them. For this reason, much of the recent literature concerning animals and ethics focuses not so much on rights, but rather on whether or not animals have certain other properties, and whether the possession of those properties is a necessary condition for equal consideration (Cf. DeGrazia, 1999).

ii. Only Human Beings are Rational, Autonomous, and Self-Conscious

Some people argue that only rational, autonomous, and self-conscious beings deserve full and equal moral status; since only human beings are rational, autonomous, and self-conscious, it follows that only human beings deserve full and equal moral status. Once again, it is not claimed that we can do whatever we like to animals; rather, the fact that animals are sentient gives us reason to avoid causing them unnecessary pain and suffering. However, when the interests of animals and human beings conflict we are required to give greater weight to the interests of human beings. This also has been used to justify such practices as experimentation on animals, raising animals for food, and using animals in such places as zoos and rodeos.

The attributes of rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness confer a full and equal moral status to those that possess them because these beings are the only ones capable of attaining certain values and goods; these values and goods are of a kind that outweigh the kinds of values and goods that non-rational, non-autonomous, and non-self-conscious beings are capable of attaining. For example, in order to achieve the kind of dignity and self-respect that human beings have, a being must be able to conceive of itself as one among many, and must be able to choose his actions rather than be led by blind instinct (Cf. Francis and Norman, 1978; Steinbock, 1978). Furthermore, the values of appreciating art, literature, and the goods that come with deep personal relationships all require one to be rational, autonomous, and self-conscious. These values, and others like them, are the highest values to us; they are what make our lives worth living. As John Stuart Mill wrote, “Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast’s pleasures” (Mill, 1979). We find the lives of beings that can experience these goods to be more valuable, and hence deserving of more protection, than the lives of beings that cannot.

iii. Only Human Beings Can Act Morally

Another reason for giving stronger preference to the interests of human beings is that only human beings can act morally. This is considered to be important because beings that can act morally are required to sacrifice their interests for the sake of others. It follows that those that do sacrifice their good for the sake of others are owed greater concern from those that benefit from such sacrifices. Since animals cannot act morally, they will not sacrifice their own good for the sake of others, but will rather pursue their good even at the expense of others. That is why human beings should give the interests of other human beings greater weight than they do the interests of animals.

iv. Only Human Beings are Part of the Moral Community

Finally, some claim that membership in the moral community is necessary for full and equal moral status. The moral community is not defined in terms of the intrinsic properties that beings have, but is defined rather in terms of the important social relations that exist between beings. For example, human beings can communicate with each other in meaningful ways, can engage in economic, political, and familial relationships with each other, and can also develop deep personal relationships with each other. These kinds of relationships require the members of such relationships to extend greater concern to other members of these relationships than they do to others in order for the relationships to continue. Since these relationships are what constitute our lives and the value contained in them, we are required to give greater weight to the interests of human beings than we do to animals.

3. Moral Equality Theories

The final theories to discuss are the moral equality theories. On these theories, not only do animals have direct moral status, but they also have the same moral status as human beings. According to theorists of this kind, there can be no legitimate reason to place human beings and animals in different moral categories, and so whatever grounds our duties to human beings will likewise ground duties to animals.

a. Singer and the Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests

Peter Singer has been very influential in the debate concerning animals and ethics. The publication of his  Animal Liberation marked the beginning of a growing and increasingly powerful movement in both the United States and Europe.

Singer attacks the views of those who wish to give the interests of animals less weight than the interests of human beings. He argues that if we attempt to extend such unequal consideration to the interests of animals, we will be forced to give unequal consideration to the interests of different human beings. However, doing this goes against the intuitively plausible and commonly accepted claim that all human beings are equal. Singer concludes that we must instead extend a principle of equal consideration of interests to animals as well. Singer describes that principle as follows:

The essence of the Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests is that we give equal weight in our moral deliberations to the like interests of all those affected by our actions (Singer, 1993: 21).

Singer defends this principle with two arguments. The first is a version of the Argument from Marginal Cases; the second is the Sophisticated Inegalitarian Argument.

i. The Argument from Marginal Cases (Again)

Singer’s version of the Argument from Marginal Cases is slightly different from the version listed above. It runs as follows:

• In order to conclude that all and only human beings deserve a full and equal moral status (and therefore that no animals deserve a full and equal moral status), there must be some property  P that all and only human beings have that can ground such a claim.
• Any  P that only human beings have is a property that (some) human beings lack (e.g., the marginal cases).
• Any  P that all human beings have is a property that (most) animals have as well.
• Therefore, there is no way to defend the claim that all and only human beings deserve a full and equal moral status.

Singer does not defend his first premise, but does not need to; the proponents of the view that all and only humans deserve a full and equal moral status rely on it themselves (see the discussion of Direct but Unequal Theories above). In support of the second premise, Singer asks us to consider exactly what properties only humans have that can ground such a strong moral status. Certain properties, such as being human, having human DNA, or walking upright do not seem to be the kind of properties that can ground this kind of status. For example, if we were to encounter alien life forms that did not have human DNA, but lived lives much like our own, we would not be justified in according these beings a weaker moral status simply because they were not human.

However, there are some properties which only human beings have which have seemed to many to be able to ground a full and equal moral status; for example, being rational, autonomous, or able to act morally have all been used to justify giving a stronger status to human beings than we do to animals. The problem with such a suggestion is that not all human beings have these properties. So if this is what grounds a full and equal moral status, it follows that not all human beings are equal after all.

If we try to ensure that we choose a property that all human beings do have that will be sufficient to ground a full and equal moral status, we seemed to be pushed towards choosing something such as being sentient, or being capable of experiencing pleasure and pain. Since the marginal cases have this property, they would be granted a full and equal moral status on this suggestion. However, if we choose a property of this kind, animals will likewise have a full and equal moral status since they too are sentient.

The attempt to grant all and only human beings a full and equal moral status does not work according to Singer. We must either conclude that not all human beings are equal, or we must conclude that not only human beings are equal. Singer suggests that the first option is too counter-intuitive to be acceptable; so we are forced to conclude that all animals are equal, human or otherwise.

ii. The Sophisticated Inegalitarian Argument

Another argument Singer employs to refute the claim that all and only human beings deserve a full and equal moral status focuses on the supposed moral relevance of such properties as rationality, autonomy, the ability to act morally, etc. Singer argues that if we were to rely on these sorts of properties as the basis of determining moral status, then we would justify a kind of discrimination against certain human beings that is structurally analogous to such practices as racism and sexism.

For example, the racist believes that all members of his race are more intelligent and rational than all of the members of other races, and thus assigns a greater moral status to the members of his race than he does do the members of other races. However, the racist is wrong in this factual judgment; it is not true that all members of any one race are smarter than all members of any other. Notice, however, that the mistake the racist is making is merely a factual mistake. His moral principle that assigns moral status on the basis of intelligence or rationality is not what has led him astray. Rather, it is simply his assessment of how intelligence or rationality is distributed among human beings that is mistaken.

If that were all that is wrong with racism and sexism, then a moral theory according to which we give extra consideration to the very smart and rational would be justified. In other words, we would be justified in becoming, not racists, but sophisticated inegalitarians. However, the sophisticated inegalitarian is just as morally suspect as the racist is. Therefore, it follows that the racist is not morally objectionable merely because of his views on how rationality and intelligence are distributed among human beings; rather he is morally objectionable because of the basis he uses to weigh the interests of different individuals. How intelligent, rational, etc., a being is cannot be the basis of his moral status; if it were, then the sophisticated inegalitarian would be on secure ground.

Notice that in order for this argument to succeed, it must target properties that admit of degrees. If someone argued that the basis of human equality rested on the possession of a property that did not admit of degrees, it would not follow that some human beings have that property to a stronger degree than others, and the sophisticated inegalitarian would not be justified. However, most of the properties that are used in order to support the claim that all and only human beings deserve a full and equal moral status are properties that do admit of degrees. Such properties as being human or having human DNA do not admit of degrees, but, as already mentioned, these properties do not seem to be capable of supporting such a moral status.

iii. Practical Implications

In order to implement the Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests in the practical sphere, we must be able to determine the interests of the beings that will be affected by our actions, and we must give similar interests similar weight. Singer concludes that animals can experience pain and suffering by relying on the argument from analogy (see the discussion of Cartesian Theories above). Since animals can experience pain and suffering, they have an interest in avoiding pain.

These facts require the immediate end to many of our practices according to Singer. For example, animals that are raised for food in factory farms live lives that are full of unimaginable pain and suffering (Singer devotes an entire chapter of his book to documenting these facts. He relies mainly on magazines published by the factory farm business for these facts). Although human beings do satisfy their interests by eating meat, Singer argues that the interests the animals have in avoiding this unimaginable pain and suffering is greater than the interests we have in eating food that tastes good. If we are to apply the Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests, we will be forced to cease raising animals in factory farms for food. A failure to do so is nothing other than speciesism, or giving preference to the interests of our own species merely because of they are of our species.

Singer does not unequivocally claim that we must not eat animals if we are to correctly apply the Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests. Whether we are required to refrain from painlessly killing animals will depend on whether animals have an interest in continuing to exist in the future. In order to have this interest, Singer believes that a being must be able to conceive of itself as existing into the future, and this requires a being to be self-conscious. Non-self-conscious beings are not harmed by their deaths, according to Singer, for they do not have an interest in continuing to exist into the future.

Singer argues that we might be able to justify killing these sorts of beings with The Replaceability Argument. On this line of thought, if we kill a non-self-conscious being that was living a good life, then we have lessened the overall amount of good in the world. This can be made up, however, by bringing another being into existence that can experience similar goods. In other words, non-self-conscious beings are replaceable: killing one can be justified if doing so is necessary to bring about the existence of another. Since the animals we rear for food would not exist if we did not eat them, it follows that killing these animals can be justified if the animals we rear for food live good lives. However, in order for this line of argumentation to justify killing animals, the animals must not only be non-self-conscious, but they must also live lives that are worth living, and their deaths must be painless. Singer expresses doubts that all of these conditions could be met, and unequivocally claims that they are not met by such places as factory farms.

Singer also condemns most experimentation in which animals are used. He first points out that many of the experiments performed using animal subjects do not have benefits for human beings that would outweigh the pain caused to the animals. For example, experiments used to test cosmetics or other non-necessary products for human beings cannot be justified if we use the Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests. Singer also condemns experiments that are aimed at preventing or curing human diseases. If we are prepared to use animal subjects for such experiments, then it would actually be better from a scientific point of view to use human subjects instead, for there would be no question of cross-species comparisons when interpreting the data. If we believe the benefits outweigh the harms, then instead of using animals we should instead use orphaned infants that are severely cognitively disabled. If we believe that such a suggestion is morally repugnant when human beings are to be used, but morally innocuous when animals are to be used, then we are guilty of speciesism.

Likewise, hunting for sport, using animals in rodeos, keeping animals confined in zoos wherein they are not able to engage in their natural activities are all condemned by the use of the Principle of the Equal Consideration of Interests.

b. Regan and Animal Rights

Tom Regan’s seminal work,  The Case for Animal Rights , is one of the most influential works on the topic of animals and ethics. Regan argues for the claim that animals have rights in just the same way that human beings do. Regan believes it is a mistake to claim that animals have an indirect moral status or an unequal status, and to then infer that animals cannot have any rights. He also thinks it is a mistake to ground an equal moral status on Utilitarian grounds, as Singer attempts to do. According to Regan, we must conclude that animals have the same moral status as human beings; furthermore, that moral status is grounded on rights, not on Utilitarian principles.

Regan argues for his case by relying on the concept of inherent value. According to Regan, any being that is a subject-of-a-life is a being that has inherent value. A being that has inherent value is a being towards which we must show respect; in order to show respect to such a being, we cannot use it merely as a means to our ends. Instead, each such being must be treated as an end in itself. In other words, a being with inherent value has rights, and these rights act as trumps against the promotion of the overall good.

Regan relies on a version of the Argument from Marginal Cases in arguing for this conclusion. He begins by asking what grounds human rights. He rejects robust views that claim that a being must be capable of representing itself as legitimately pursuing the furtherance of its interests on the grounds that this conception of rights implies that the marginal cases of humanity do not have rights. However, since we think that these beings do have moral rights there must be some other property that grounds these rights. According to Regan, the only property that is common to both normal adult human beings and the marginal cases is the property of being a subject-of-a-life. A being that is a subject-of-a-life will:

have beliefs and desires; perception, memory, and a sense of the future, including their own future; an emotional life together with feelings of pleasure and pain; preference- and welfare-interests; the ability to initiate action in pursuit of their desires and goals; a psychological identity over time; and an individual welfare in the sense that their experiential life fares well or ill for them, logically independently of their utility for others, and logically independently of their being the object of anyone else’s interests (Regan, 1983: 243).

This property is one that all of the human beings that we think deserve rights have; however, it is a property that many animals (especially mammals) have as well. So if these marginal cases of humanity deserve rights, then so do these animals.

Although this position may seem quite similar to Singer’s position (see section III, part A above), Regan is careful to point to what he perceives to be the flaws of Singer’s Utilitarian theory. According to Singer, we are required to count every similar interest equally in our deliberation. However, by doing this we are focusing on the wrong thing, Regan claims. What matters is the individual that has the interest, not the interest itself. By focusing on interests themselves, Utilitarianism will license the most horrendous actions. For example, if it were possible to satisfy more interests by performing experiments on human beings, then that is what we should do on Utilitarian grounds. However, Regan believes this is clearly unacceptable: any being with inherent value cannot be used merely as a means.

This does not mean that Regan takes rights to be absolute. When the rights of different individuals conflict, then someone’s rights must be overriden. Regan argues that in these sorts of cases we must try to minimize the rights that are overriden. However, we are not permitted to override someone’s rights just because doing so will make everyone better off; in this kind of case we are sacrificing rights for utility, which is never permissible on Regan’s view.

Given these considerations, Regan concludes that we must radically alter the ways in which we treat animals. When we raise animals for food, regardless of how they are treated and how they are killed, we are using them as a means to our ends and not treating them as ends in themselves. Thus, we may not raise animals for food. Likewise, when we experiment on animals in order to advance human science, we are using animals merely as a means to our ends. Similar thoughts apply to the use of animals in rodeos and the hunting of animals.

See also Animal Ethics .

4. References and Further Reading.

A. anthologies.

• Miller, H. and W. Miller, eds.  Ethics and Animals (Clifton, NJ: Humana Press, 1983).
• Regan, T. and P. Singer, eds.  Animal Rights and Human Obligations 2/e (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1989).
• Walters, K and Lisa Portmess, eds.  Ethical Vegetarianism: From Pythagoras to Peter Singer (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999).

b. Monographs

• Carruthers, Peter.  The Animals Issue: Morality in Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
• Clark, Stephen.  The Moral Status of Animals (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977).
• DeGrazia, David.  Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
• Dombrowski, Daniel.  Babies and Beasts: The Argument from Marginal Cases . (Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1997).
• Fox, Michael A.  The Case for Animal Experimentation: An Evolutionary and Ethical Perspective (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1986).
• Frey, R. G.  Interests and Rights: The Case Against Animals (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980).
• Kant, Immanuel.  Critique of Practical Reason (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993), originally published 1788.
• Kant, Immanuel.  Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1956), originally published 1785.
• Midgley, Mary.  Animals and Why They Matter (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1983).
• Mill, John Stuart.  Utilitarianism (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishers, 1979), originally published 1861.
• Noddings, Nell.  Caring: A Feminist Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1984).
• Nozick, Robert.  Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).
• Pluhar, Evelyn.  Beyond Prejudice: The Moral Significance of Human and Nonhuman Animals (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995).
• Rachels, James.  Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).
• Regan, Tom.  The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1983).
• Rodd, Rosemary.  Biology, Ethics, and Animals (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).
• Rollin, Bernard.  The Unheeded Cry: Animal Consciousness, Animal Pain, and Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
• Sapontzis, S. F.  Morals, Reasons, and Animals (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987).
• Singer, Peter.  Animal Liberation, 2/e (New York: Avon Books, 1990).
• Singer, Peter.  Practical Ethics, 2/e (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
• Warren, Mary Anne.  Moral Status: Obligations to Persons and Other Living Things (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

c. Articles

• Carruthers, Peter. “Brute Experience”,  The Journal of Philosophy 86 (1989): 258-69.
• Cigman, Ruth. “Death, Misfortune, and Species Inequality”,  Philosophy and Public Affairs  10 (1981): 47-64.
• Cohen, Carl. “The Case for the Use of Animals in Biomedical Research”,  The New England Journal of Medicine 315 (1986): 865-70.
• DeGrazia, David. “Animal Ethics Around the Turn of the Twenty-First Century”,  Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 11 (1999): 111-29.
• Diamond, Cora. “Eating Meat and Eating People”,  Philosophy 53 (1978): 465-79.
• Feinberg, Joel. “The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations”, in W. T. Blackstone, ed., Philosophy and Environmental Crisis (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1974).
• Fox, Michael A. “Animal Experimentation: A Philosopher’s Changing Views”,  Between the Species 3 (1987): 55-82.
• Francis, Leslie Pickering and Richard Norman. “Some Animals are More Equal than Others”,  Philosophy 53 (1978): 507-27.
• Goodpaster, Kenneth. “On Being Morally Considerable”,  The Journal of Philosophy 75 (1978): 308-25.
• Harrison, Peter. “Do Animals Feel Pain?”,  Philosophy 66 (1991): 25-40.
• McCloskey, H. J. “Moral Rights and Animals”,  Inquiry 22 (1979): 23-54.
• Miller, Peter. “Do Animals Have Interests Worthy of Our Moral Interest?”,  Environmental Ethics  5 (1983): 319-33.
• Narveson, Jan. “Animal Rights”,  Canadian Journal of Philosophy 7 (1977): 161-78.
• Steinbock, Bonnie. “Speciesism and the Idea of Equality”,  Philosophy 53 (1978): 247-56.
• Warren, Mary Anne. “Difficulties with the Strong Animal Rights Position”,  Between the Species  2 (1987): 161-73.
• Williams, Meredith. “Rights, Interests, and Moral Equality”,  Environmental Ethics 2 (1980): 149-61.
• Wilson, Scott. “Carruthers and the Argument From Marginal Cases”,  The Journal of Applied Philosophy 18 (2001): 135-47.
• Wilson, Scott. “Indirect Duties to Animals”,  The Journal of Value Inquiry , 36 (2002): 17-27.

Author Information

Scott D. Wilson Email:  [email protected] Wright State University U. S. A.

An encyclopedia of philosophy articles written by professional philosophers.

We shouldn't be mean to animals. Is that because animals have rights, like people do? Or is it just because people care about animals? Is it intrinsically worse to step on dog than on a spider? John and Ken play nice with Lori Gruen from Wesleyan University, author of Ethics and Animals: An Introduction.

Listening Notes

Is it wrong to cause animals pain? Is it morally wrong? Do animals have rights? Some pain is instrumentally good, like pain that alerts us of ailments. What kinds of pain are bad to cause? Why is it different to cause pain to humans rather than to do so to other animals? Ken thinks that humans have projects and goals, and so it is wrong to cause them pain as it interrupts their projects. John introduces Lori Gruen, professor at Wesleyan. Even if we admit that killing, say, puppies is wrong, does that mean we should say killing slugs is wrong? Gruen thinks this sort of question trivializes the issue. John distinguishes between sensation and consciousness.

Gruen says that killing animals for food is morally acceptable if there is no other way to get food. Is eating chickens that are raised under acceptable conditions morally all right? Ken asks if talk about rights gets used too much. Does rights talk get used instead of substantive moral arguments? By what principles do we distinguish which creatures have moral worth and which do not? Dogs and apes have emotions. Does this influence their moral status?

Are there different kinds of pleasures and pains that we should distinguish morally?  Mill thought so. How do we evaluate the relative weight of various pains and pleasures? Ken objects saying that he could structure his whole life around one sort of pleasure, say, fishing. Shouldn't that weigh more heavily for Ken than for someone else who thinks it is frivolous? Ken says that it is contingent if someone dislikes killing things and that there is a tendency to project one's dislikes to moral claims. Does utilitarianism view eating meat that as intrinsically bad? Gruen does not think so.

• Roving Philosophical Report (Seek to 05:00): Amy Standen interviews Dr. Elliot Katz, veterinarian and head of an animal rights group. Dr. Katz explains what he is hoping to change in animal rights law and why. 
• Philosophy Talk Goes to the Movies (Seek to 47:30): John and Ken talk about the philosophically interesting aspects of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Would one's life make sense if all the memories of one person were removed? What role does memory play in personal identity?

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• entry on the moral status of animals
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• The Wikipedia entry on animal rights
• The website of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)
• A comprehensive website on animal rights, Animal Concerns
• The website for Animal Law.com
• Tom Regan's animal rights archive
• A collection of online essays about animal rights
• An animal rights FAQ
• Peter Singer's essay “Do Animals Feel Pain?”
• Peter Singer's graphic book Animal Liberation
• Harold Guither's overview of the animal rights movement, Animal Rights: History and Scope of a Radical Social Movement
• Tom Regan's book The Case for Animal Rights
• A collection called the Animal Ethics Reader
• A collection on animal rights entitled Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions
• Steven Wise's book Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights
• Matthew Scully's book on animal rights, Dominion
• Gary Francione's treatment of animal rights, Animals, Property, and Law
• John Stuart Mill's On Utilitarianism which is discussed on the show
• John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding , which John talks about in Philosophy Talk Goes to the Movies
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Wednesday, March 6, 2024 -- 10:47 AM

As an advocate for animal rights, I believe in the ethical treatment and protection of all living beings. It's imperative to recognize animals as sentient creatures protective dog sales deserving of compassion and respect. Through education, legislation, and activism, we can work towards a more humane world where animals are free from exploitation and cruelty.

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Animal Rights: Definition, Issues, and Examples

Animal rights advocates believe that non-human animals should be free to live as they wish, without being used, exploited, or otherwise interfered with by humans.

T he idea of giving rights to animals has long been contentious, but a deeper look into the reasoning behind the philosophy reveals ideas that aren’t all that radical. Animal rights advocates want to distinguish animals from inanimate objects, as they are so often considered by exploitative industries and the law.

The animal rights movement strives to make the public aware of the fact that animals are sensitive, emotional , and intelligent beings who deserve dignity and respect. But first, it’s important to understand what the term "animal rights" really means.

What are animal rights?

Animal rights are moral principles grounded in the belief that non-human animals deserve the ability to live as they wish, without being subjected to the desires of human beings. At the core of animal rights is autonomy, which is another way of saying choice . In many countries, human rights are enshrined to protect certain freedoms, such as the right to expression, freedom from torture, and access to democracy. Of course, these choices are constrained depending on social locations like race, class, and gender, but generally speaking, human rights safeguard the basic tenets of what makes human lives worth living. Animal rights aim to do something similar, only for non-human animals.

Animal rights come into direct opposition with animal exploitation, which includes animals used by humans for a variety of reasons, be it for food , as experimental objects, or even pets. Animal rights can also be violated when it comes to human destruction of animal habitats . This negatively impacts the ability of animals to lead full lives of their choosing.

Do animals have rights?

Very few countries have enshrined animal rights into law. However, the US and the UK do have some basic protections and guidelines for how animals can be treated.

The UK Sentience Bill

In 2021, the United Kingdom's House of Commons introduced the Animal Sentience Bill . If passed, this bill would enshrine into law that animals are, in fact, sentient beings, and they deserve humane treatment at the hands of humans. While this law would not afford animals full autonomy, it would be a watershed in the movement to protect animals—officially recognizing their capacity to feel and to suffer, and distinguishing them from inanimate objects.

The US Animal Welfare Act

In 1966, the United States passed the Animal Welfare Act . While it is the biggest federal legislation addressing the treatment of animals to date, its scope is fairly narrow—the law excludes many species, including farmed animals , from its protections. The law does establish some basic guidelines for the sale, transport, and handling of dogs, cats, rabbits, nonhuman primates, guinea pigs, and hamsters. It also protects the psychological welfare of animals who are used in lab experiments, and prohibits the violent practices of dogfighting and cockfighting. Again, this law does not recognize the rights and autonomy of animals—or even their ability to feel pain and suffer—but it does afford non-human animals some basic welfare protections .

What are some examples of animal rights?

While few laws currently exist in the UK or US that recognize or protect animals' rights to enjoy lives free from human interference, the following is a list of examples of animal rights that could one day be enacted:

• Animals may not be used for food.
• Animals may not be hunted.
• The habitats of animals must be protected to allow them to live according to their choosing.
• Animals may not be bred.

What's the difference between animal welfare and animal rights?

Animal rights philosophy is based on the idea that animals should not be used by people for any reason, and that animal rights should protect their interests the way human rights protect people. Animal welfare , on the other hand, is a set of practices designed to govern the treatment of animals who are being dominated by humans, whether for food, research, or entertainment.

Do animals need rights? Pros and cons

The idea of giving animals rights tends to be contentious, given how embedded animal products are within societies such as the United States. Some people, including animal activists, believe in an all-or-nothing approach, where animal rights must be legally enshrined and animals totally liberated from all exploitation. On the other end of the spectrum are people whose livelihoods depend upon animal-based industries. Below are some arguments both in favor of and opposing animal rights.

Arguments in favor of animal rights

Should the rights of animals be recognized, animal exploitative industries would disappear, as would the host of environmental problems they cause, including water pollution, air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and deforestation.

Halting the widespread use of animals would also eliminate the systematic cruelty and denial of choice that animal industries perpetuate. The physical and psychological pain endured by animals in places like factory farms has reached a point many consider to be unacceptable , to say the least. Animals are mutilated by humans in several different ways, including castrations, dehorning, and cutting off various body parts, usually without the use of anesthetic.

“ Many species never see the outdoors except on their way to the slaughterhouse.

As their name suggests, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) pack vast numbers of animals in cramped conditions, often forcing animals to perpetually stand in their own waste. Many species—including chickens, cows, and pigs—never see the outdoors except on their way to the slaughterhouse. Recognizing animal rights would necessitate stopping this mistreatment for good.

Arguments against animal rights

Most arguments against animal rights can be traced back to money, because animal exploitation is big business. Factory farming for animal products is a multi-billion-dollar industry. JBS, the world’s largest meatpacker, posted $9 billion in revenue for the third quarter of 2020 alone.

A lesser-known, yet also massive, industry is that which supplies animals for laboratories. The US market for lab rats (who are far less popular than mice for experiments) was valued at over $412 million in 2016. Big industrial producers of animals and animal products have enough political clout to influence legislation—including passing laws making it illegal to document farm conditions—and to benefit from government subsidies.

Many people depend upon animal exploitation for work. On factory farms, relatively small numbers of people can manage vast herds or flocks of animals, thanks to mechanization and other industrial farming techniques. Unfortunately, jobs in industrial meatpacking facilities are also known to be some of the most dangerous in the US. Smaller farmers coming from multi-generational farming families more directly depend upon using animals to make a living and tend to follow welfare standards more judiciously. However, smaller farms have been decreasing in number, due to the proliferation of factory farms against which they often cannot compete.

Although people may lose money or jobs in the transition to animal alternatives, new jobs can be created in the alternative protein sector and other plant-based industries.

When did the animal rights movement begin in the US?

The modern day animal rights movement in the United States includes thousands of individuals and a multitude of groups who advocate for animals in a variety of ways—from lobbying legislators to support animal rights laws, to rescuing animals from situations of abuse and neglect. While individuals throughout history have believed in and fought for animal rights, we can trace back the modern, US-based animal rights movement to the founding of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) in 1866. The group's founder, Henry Burgh , believed that animals are "entitled to kind and respectful treatment at the hands of humans and must be protected under the law." The organization worked with the New York City government to pass and enforce anti-cruelty laws that prevented the abuse of carthorses and provided care for injured horses. Since then, the ASPCA has expanded its advocacy across different non-human animal species—including farmed animals—and many more animal protection groups have sprung up, both locally and nationwide. Currently, there are over 40,000 non-profit organizations identified as animal groups in the US.

Why are animal rights important?

Animal rights are important because they represent a set of beliefs that counteract inaccurate yet long-held assumptions that animals are nothing more than mindless machines—beliefs popularized by western philosopher Rene Descartes in the 17th century. The perception of animals as being unthinking, unfeeling beings justified using them for human desires, resulting in today’s world where farmed mammals outnumber those in the wild, and the majority of these farmed animals are forced to endure harsh conditions on factory farms.

“ Farmed mammals outnumber those in the wild.

But the science is increasingly clear: The animals we eat ( pigs, chickens, cows ), the animals we use in laboratories ( mice and rats ), the animals who provide us with clothing , and those whose backs we ride upon have all been found to possess more cognitive complexity, emotions, and overall sophistication than has long been believed. This sophistication renders animals more susceptible not only to physical pain but also to the psychological impacts caused by the habitual denial of choice. Awareness of their own subjugation forms sufficient reasoning to rethink the ways animals are treated in western societies.

The consequences of animal rights

Currently, laws in the US and UK are geared toward shielding animals from cruelty, not giving them the same freedom of choice that humans have. (Even these laws are sorely lacking, as they fail to protect livestock and laboratory animals.) However, the animal rights movement can still have real-world consequences. Calls for animal liberation from places like factory farms can raise public awareness of the poor living conditions and welfare violations these facilities perpetuate, sometimes resulting in stronger protections, higher welfare standards , and decreasing consumer demand. Each of these outcomes carries economic consequences for producers, as typically it is more expensive for factory farms to provide better living conditions such as more space, or using fewer growth hormones which can result in lower production yields.

Of course, should the animal rights movement achieve its goals , society would look much different than it does today. If people consume more alternative sources of protein, such as plant-based or lab-grown meat, the global environment would be far less impacted. Clothing would be made without leather or other animal products; alternative sources, such as pineapple leather created from waste products from the pineapple industry, could replace toxic tanneries. The fur industry is being increasingly shunned, with fashion labels rejecting fur in favor of faux materials. Ocean ecosystems would be able to recover, replenishing fish populations and seafloor habitats. Today these are razed by bottom trawling fishing, resulting in the clear-cutting of corals that can be thousands of years old .

How you can advocate for animals

A world in which animals are free from human exploitation still seems far off, but we can make choices that create a kinder world for animals, every day. We can start by leaving animals off our plate in favor of plant-based alternatives—a choice that recognizes animals as the sentient beings that they are, and not products for consumption.

When we come together, we can also fight for better protections for animals in the US and around the world. There's a robust movement to hold corporations accountability and end the cruelty of factory farming—an industry which causes immense amount of suffering for billions of animals. If you want to help end this suffering and spread compassion for animals, join our community of online animal activists and take action .

More like this

What Is Animal Welfare and Why Is It Important?

Though critics argue that advocating for animal welfare only cements animals’ exploitation in laboratories, on farms, and in other industrial situations, strengthening welfare standards makes these animals' lives more bearable.

The Ethical Case for Welfare Reform

Industry welfare commitments are good for animals. Here’s why.

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2 Animal Rights: Legal, Philosophical, and Pragmatic Perspectives

• Published: November 2005
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This chapter analyses the animal rights issue from legal, philosophical, and pragmatic perspectives. It argues that the best approach to the issue is a human-centric one that appeals to our developing knowledge and sentiments about animals, and which eschews on the one hand philosophical argument and a legal-formalist approach on the other. The chapter explains that on pragmatic grounds, people are not likely to want to give rights to animals and that some rights would be damaging to animals themselves. It also comments on the views of Steven Wise and Peter Singer.

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How Far Should We Carry the Logic of the Animal-Rights Movement?

By Kelefa Sanneh

One morning, in February of this year, Zahid Badroodien, who oversees the Committee on Water and Sanitation in Cape Town, South Africa, posted on X that he had been alerted to “a sewage smell blanketing parts of the city.” He assured residents that inspectors had been dispatched to wastewater-treatment facilities, but half an hour later he announced that a different culprit had been identified: a ship in the harbor that was transporting cattle—nineteen thousand in all—from Brazil to Iraq, with a brief layover in town to replenish their feed. On board, conditions were “awful,” according to a veterinary consultant who conducted an inspection. A single cow discovered in such a state might have become a cause célèbre, but it was harder to rally around nineteen thousand of them. Within a day, the cows were back at sea, where virtually no one could know, or smell, their plight.

There is a name for the cruel, and correspondingly clandestine, process by which many animals become meat: “factory farming,” a term that is usually wielded as an insult, especially since the publication, in 1975, of “Animal Liberation,” an incendiary book by the philosopher Peter Singer. “In general, we are ignorant of the abuse of living creatures that lies behind the food we eat,” Singer wrote, and he wanted to destroy both this ignorance and the industry behind the abuse. He halfway succeeded. “Animal Liberation” helped bring new militancy to a cause formerly associated with decorous humane societies and peaceable hippies. The book also helped inspire the Animal Liberation Front, a group devoted to direct action against farms and labs that abused animals. And it turned Singer into one of the most prominent philosophers in the world, especially among non-philosophers.

The movement against cruelty to animals is broadly popular, at least in theory—lots of people are bothered by the way livestock live and die, although not bothered enough to stop eating them. But Singer is a polarizing figure, known for his willingness to follow his logic to conclusions that some might find bizarre, or evil. Rejecting what he calls “speciesism,” Singer has argued that we ought to treat creatures according to their cognitive capacities; by this logic, he concedes, a “chimpanzee, dog, or pig” might demonstrate “a higher degree of self-awareness and a greater capacity for meaningful relations with others than a severely retarded infant or someone in a state of advanced senility.” Directly and indirectly, “Animal Liberation” has inspired generations of people who would never endorse many of the claims made by the person who wrote it, and it sometimes seems that Singer’s support for animal liberation is viewed today as the least objectionable thing about him.

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In “ Animal Liberation Now ” (HarperCollins), a revised version of his book, Singer considers all that has and hasn’t changed since 1975. “The media no longer ridicules animal rights activists; mostly, it takes them seriously,” he writes. He is curious about the prospect of lab-grown meat, and attentive to research indicating that a scallop is more sentient than an oyster, and therefore less edible, at least for someone with his commitments. He also seems slightly astonished that more people have not joined him in opposing the “tyranny” of speciesism. “There are now more animals suffering in laboratories and factory farms than ever before,” he writes, but he remains hopeful that one day people will attend to this suffering.

Martha Nussbaum, a fellow-philosopher, is one of many who admire Singer’s animal advocacy without fully endorsing his program. In “ Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility ” (Simon & Schuster), Nussbaum praises Singer as a “sophisticated” thinker while suggesting that it is wise to consider not just the suffering of animals but how best to help them live the kinds of lives they seem to want to live. Most of her proposals reflect a left-liberal world view: she has great faith in the ability of experts and government officials, working together, to better regulate our treatment of animals. And yet the movement to protect animals need not be a partisan cause. This, anyway, is the position of Matthew Scully, a Republican speechwriter who has spent decades arguing that conservatives ought to care more about the lives and deaths of animals. He made his case in “ Dominion ,” from 2002, which is one of the most bracing books on the topic since “Animal Liberation,” partly because it pushes so hard against Singer’s approach. Scully refines his argument in “ Fear Factories ” (Arezzo), a new collection of essays that urges both right- and left-leaning readers to reconsider their assumptions. One of them, from 2013, excoriates the “cheap nature worship” of contemporary environmentalists, who have, Scully says, been too distracted by climate concerns to pay attention to the slaughter of elephants. “It’s all carbon, all the time,” he writes, “and for all of the movement’s alarmism on other fronts, somehow the end days of the earth’s largest land animal have gone practically unremarked.”

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Debates about animals tend to be less about how to treat them and more about how much we should care when they are mistreated. (Nearly everyone can probably agree that, in an ideal world, nineteen thousand cattle would not be crowded onto a ship so fetid that it can’t come near land without alarming the authorities.) Historically, advocacy for animals often failed because the cause was judged unserious. This perception began to change in the late nineteenth century, thanks to a handful of activists, many of whom were also involved in other causes: abolition, child protection, temperance. A century later, animal welfare and temperance were joined again in the punk offshoot known as hardcore, in which a number of leading musicians embraced a “straight edge” ethos that was anti-drug and, relatedly, anti-meat. (Ian MacKaye, the musician credited with coining the term, has said that he viewed eschewing meat as a “logical extension” of straight edge.) It was through hardcore that I encountered and, for a few years, adopted the vegan diet, equally inspired by both the cause and the culture that surrounded it, or maybe unequally inspired. We are a self-obsessed species, and indeed self-obsession is part of what distinguishes us from other species; we are more different from, say, chimpanzees than chimpanzees are from orangutans. Perhaps it should not be a surprise that so many animal-centric movements spend so much time thinking and talking about humans instead.

Many religious traditions take killing an animal to be a grave act, though not necessarily a gravely wrong one. One of the first verses in the Bible is a vegan commandment: “Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” But, after the flood, God told Noah, “Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you,” balancing this permissive standard with a stern caveat: “But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.”

The idea of principled and thoroughgoing veganism seems to have arrived more recently, at least in the West. In England, in 1714, a Dutch-born writer named Bernard Mandeville published an odd and excellent book called “The Fable of the Bees,” which opened with an apian allegory in verse form about laissez-faire government, but also contained several essays, including one that framed meat eating as a moral evil. “I have often thought, if it was not for this Tyranny which Custom usurps over us, that Men of any tolerable Good-nature could never be reconcil’d to the killing of so many Animals for their daily Food, as long as the bountiful Earth so plentifully provides them with Varieties of vegetable Dainties,” Mandeville wrote. “I question whether ever any body so much as killed a Chicken without Reluctancy the first time.” When Jeremy Bentham’s “An Introduction to the Principles of Morals of Legislation” was first printed, in 1780, he included an extraordinary footnote that proposed a kind of beastly revolution. “The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny,” Bentham wrote. “The question is not, Can they reason ? nor, Can they talk ? but, Can they suffer ?” By the nineteenth century, animal-welfare groups were growing in England, and in 1848 the satirical magazine Punch noted the emergence of a “great Vegetarian movement,” imagining a kind of meatless mania. “There are vegetarian missionaries going about the country inculcating the doctrine of peas and potatoes,” the magazine reported, adding that “a silver medal will be awarded to the vegetarian who will dispose of one hundred heads of celery with the utmost celerity.”

In a new history titled “ Our Kindred Creatures ” (Knopf), Bill Wasik, a journalist, and Monica Murphy, a veterinarian and a writer, show how this movement took root in America. They compare the “rise of animal-welfare consciousness,” in the late nineteenth century, to the rapid growth in support of same-sex marriage, during the twenty-tens, but they decline to simplify what turns out to be a sprawling and rather diffuse story of complicated advocates and mixed messages. An astonishingly confident and well-connected activist named Henry Bergh founded the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1866, and during the next year he pushed New York City to make it illegal to “neglect, maliciously kill, maim, wound, injure, torture or cruelly beat” any animal. (Bergh also bemoaned the influence of immigrants with a taste for bullfighting and other “barbarous” practices; formed a complicated alliance with P. T. Barnum , the circus master; and emerged as a leading critic of vaccination, which he viewed as an affront to humans and animals alike.) In Massachusetts, a local chapter of the A.S.P.C.A. launched a publication with a name that was meant as a tribute, though it now sounds like an insult: Our Dumb Animals. They were, of course, “dumb” in the original sense of the word; the magazine pledged to “speak for those that cannot speak for themselves.” An activist named Caroline Earle White, who came from a family of abolitionists, called in 1887 for a total ban on medical experiments involving animals—an unpopular cause, but one that was, she maintained, no more far-fetched than “the abolition of Negro slavery” had recently been.

Despite these decades of foment, the publication of “Animal Liberation,” roughly a century later, came as a shock. In fearsomely logical prose, Singer argued not just that we ought to treat animals better but that we had no right to treat them any differently than we treat one another. His radical repudiation of speciesism, defined as “a prejudice or attitude of bias toward the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species,” forced readers to reconsider a range of practices that they had learned to regard as normal. The power of the idea lay in its simplicity, which left Singer free to devote much of the book to considering the practical implications: the intentional horrors of animal-research laboratories, and the unintentional—or perhaps just unnecessary—horrors of factory farming, in which animals are often crammed together in miserable conditions and subjected to painful operations such as “de-beaking,” to prevent chickens from pecking one another to death, and “tail-docking,” to prevent overstressed and understimulated pigs from gnawing one another’s tails into bloody stumps.

Singer followed the chapter on factory farming with one about how to become a vegetarian, and he included, at the end, a list of recipes, which probably introduced more than a few Western readers to a form of “bean curd, sometimes called bean cake, or tofu .” In “Animal Liberation Now,” the recipes have been updated, with more variety and no more cheese. Singer has become what he calls a “flexible vegan” (he has said that he sometimes eats eggs, provided they have been taken from free-range hens), but he doesn’t seem inclined to worry much about either the purity or the deliciousness of his diet. “Frying the tofu is optional,” he tells readers, in the new recipe section, adding that “it tastes better, but I don’t like to consume too much oil, so sometimes I do it, and sometimes not.” Generations of readers probably learned to loathe McDonald’s from reading Singer, but he himself is too practical-minded to hold a grudge, and so in February he startled some of his fans by praising the company, on X. “Let’s give credit where it is due: @McDonald’s have reached their goal of sourcing 100% their U.S. egg supply from cage-free hens, as they pledged they would,” he wrote. “It’s not nearly enough, but it’s a step forward on a long march.”

Singer acknowledges his debt to Bentham, whose question is at the heart of much of Singer’s work: “Can they suffer ?” But, as a consequentialist, he realizes that his book will likely do more good if it offends fewer people, and so he deëmphasizes his suggestion that infanticide might sometimes be justified, though he doesn’t retract it. He has excised his claim that there “seem to be certain measurable differences between both races and sexes,” and that “we do not yet know how much of these differences is really due to the genetic endowments of the different races and sexes.” Singer’s point, in 1975, was that these differences, whether between sexes or races or species, do not justify discrimination. Still, he believes that some differences do matter, especially differences in sentience, because sentience is what enables suffering, and suffering is what we ought to want to prevent.

In many ways, this is a generous approach, one that asks us to search everywhere for mistreatment, and redress any that we find. Bentham and Singer’s alertness to cruelty, when their contemporaries were happy to ignore it, is part of what can make them seem like visionaries today. But the focus on sentience and suffering can also seem pitiless. Singer’s approach leaves no room for speciesism, which means it leaves no room for the idea that every human is valuable because of his humanity—no room for what Christians call grace, the sense that all people have something precious and perhaps sacred in common. Singer puts every living creature on the same scale, each with its own chance to earn, through sentience, the right not to be mistreated. This means that humanity is on the scale, too, and so perhaps are individual humans, all of us liable to be judged on precisely how sentient we are.

Singer, to his credit, is motivated by a desire to solve big problems, but this means that the small lives of animals don’t figure much in his book. Nussbaum, by contrast, views a wide spectrum of creatures with both affection and awe; they seem “wonderful” to her, as to so many of us, and she thinks we should pay more attention to that intuition. (The book is dedicated to her daughter, Rachel, who worked as an attorney for an animal-welfare group, and died in 2019.) “Wonder suggests to us that animals matter directly, for their own sake—not because of some similarity they have to ourselves,” she writes. What she opposes is not speciesism but its cousin, anthropocentrism, a world view that puts humans at the center, and values animals only to the extent that we decide that “they are (almost) like us.” To her, Singer’s view, with its focus on suffering, misses much of what makes animal life meaningful—meaningful, that is, to the animals themselves. Nussbaum is known for developing, with the economist and philosopher Amartya Sen, a framework called the capabilities approach, which focusses on insuring that all people have the ability to thrive. Now she wants to adapt that approach to account for the different ways that nonhuman animals, too, “strive for flourishing,” and are frequently blocked. “We are all animals,” she writes, “thrown into this world together, striving to get the things we need, and often thwarted in the attempt.” Nussbaum is horrified by factory farming, deeply moved by the plight of whales, and cautiously optimistic about the future prospects of pets, which she refers to as “companion animals,” to remind us that they exist not merely to please their so-called owners but to flourish in their own ways.

What does flourishing entail? For humans, Nussbaum has developed a list of entitlements, which may seem suspiciously well matched to the interests of a humanities professor. (The list includes the ability to experience and produce “literary” and other works but not, explicitly, the ability to trade goods.) As for animals, the entitlements will depend on both the species and the individual. She suggests that we heed “experts who have lived closely with a certain type of animal and studied those animals over long periods of time”; working across national borders, those experts could help us draft “a legally enforceable constitution” for every kind of animal. Dolphins, for instance, would be granted the right to roam, to socialize, and to have as much or as little contact with humans as they choose. She holds that, because animals generally “seek maturity as a central goal,” killing the young is probably harder to justify than killing the old. And she writes that virtually all creatures under human control should be guaranteed “at least one or two chances at sex and reproduction.” This means that companion animals might permissibly be spayed or neutered, but only after they have had a chance to find some companionship for themselves.

But why care about the flourishing only of animals, and not of a coral reef, or an ocean, or a forest? Singer’s suffering test provides one answer. Nussbaum’s answer is complicated, and the more she explains it the closer she draws to the anthropocentrism she says she opposes. In one passage, she points out that a cat can be said to engage in the “active pursuit of ends.” Elsewhere, she notes that a plant “lacks the sort of situational flexibility that makes us conclude that fish are sentient creatures,” adding that “a plant is basically a cluster entity, a they , rather than an it .” It is not that the distinctions she makes are indefensible. On the contrary, they are eminently defensible, because they reflect the things (activity, flexibility, sentience, individuality) that we humans tend to value in one another, and therefore in the world around us. It is hard to imagine a more anthropocentric view than one that surveys the natural landscape and sees creditable strivers, surrounded by less consequential organisms and entities that don’t measure up in the striving department.

Speciesism is easier to renounce than it is to abandon, because most of us share a sense that human beings have rights and responsibilities that set us apart. “To speak of ‘animal rights’ is, in the end, as absurd as to speak of ‘animal duties,’ ” Matthew Scully wrote in National Review in 1993. He wanted to assure his readers that they could object to cruelty without endorsing any weird metaphysical claims. By the time he published “Dominion,” he was working as a speechwriter for President George W. Bush , for whom he helped coin the phrase “axis of evil,” and he was already rethinking his skepticism of “animal rights.” Observing that people seemed to have little trouble extending compassion for the weakest in their midst, at least in theory, Scully wondered why animals should be offered less. He defended pets, both the concept and the term. He remembered reading Singer’s book as a teen-ager and then scrutinizing his own beloved dog. “Try as I might, I could not discern in his furry face any desire at all for liberation,” Scully wrote. Indeed, he encouraged his readers to visit a factory farm, if they could, and consider the idea that the cattle confined there were “morally indistinguishable” from the animals they loved at home.

Scully took his title from the Book of Genesis , in which, shortly before His vegan commandment, God grants man “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” Scully wrote not necessarily as a Christian (in one early interview, he mentioned that he had never been a regular churchgoer) but as a thinker who took the Bible seriously, and who was sure that Biblical “dominion” meant taking gentle care of the natural world, rather than simply dominating it or, worse, emulating its cruellest attributes. Unlike Nussbaum, who endeavors to figure out what we are each striving for, Scully accepted the mysteriousness of life, suggesting that God made all creatures to “serve some purpose beyond our full knowing.” What he wanted for animals was not justice but mercy—a kind of gift, freely given by humans to animals. “There is no such thing as a right to mercy, not for the animals and not even for us,” he wrote.

This is a poignant formulation, but one that does not easily lend itself to a program of social reform. And so “Fear Factories” chronicles how, in the years since “Dominion,” Scully has grown increasingly comfortable advocating for the “rights” of animals, as a way of insisting that how they are often treated is wrong, in ways that demand government intervention. In 1868, the editors of Our Dumb Animals boasted that their board included “Roman Catholics and Protestants, Democrats and Republicans, License men and Prohibitory men.” Scully, by contrast, has found allies virtually nowhere: few politicians in either party seem eager to crack down on so-called “canned” hunting—in which the quarry has essentially no chance to escape—or to tighten regulations on hog farming. When, in 2000, he told the strategist Karl Rove that the Republican Party’s platform might add a line about animal cruelty, Rove’s response did not rise even to the level of noncommittal. “Hey, man, at least you’re thinking outside the box,” Rove apparently said. “I like that!” And though Scully defends his having worked with Governor Sarah Palin , who backed a government-supported program of aerial wolf hunting, he admits, “The pile of moose and deer antlers on the campaign plane, gifts bestowed on the candidate at every rural stop, did get to be a little much.”

Scully, in fact, has something important in common with Palin: like many of his fellow-Republicans, and vanishingly few animal-rights activists, he is firmly opposed to abortion. This sets him apart from Nussbaum, who has argued that “access to abortion” is an essential component of “human dignity.” And it sets him farther apart still from Singer, who has questioned whether even newborn infants have “an inherent right to life.” Scully can’t help but see parallels between factory farming and abortion. “Both industries are blunt, practical solutions to hard moral problems that the people who advocate them have despaired of dealing with in some gentler way,” he writes. “I have never heard a single compelling argument for why the unborn must die or why the animals must suffer.” Of course, there is a powerful movement in America to ban abortion, and no similarly robust effort to ban meat. When the pro-life and the animal-rights causes seem to be, in many ways, natural allies, why do they continue to belong to such separate worlds? It is certainly possible to oppose abortion while also opposing, on feminist or prudential grounds, efforts to force all pregnant women to give birth. But it’s strange that the people most concerned about the fate of human blastocysts take little interest in the fate of cattle or chimpanzees, and that the people who think carefully about the nervous systems of crabs take little interest in the nervous system of a human fetus. Often, the overlap occurs strictly at the level of rhetoric. “Voice of the Voiceless,” the title of a 1992 compilation of mainly vegan straight-edge bands which raised money for the Animal Liberation Front, is also a phrase used by pro-life advocates, who are equally convinced that they are expanding the circle of human compassion.

There is something unsettling about the animal-rights argument, which is partly a matter of scale: the dizzying numbers involved can make it hard to know where to start, or stop. The use and abuse of animals is tightly woven into our world, which is why people who think seriously about it so often end up calling for broad changes that might seem unwise or even indefensible—at least, at first. My own years of veganism ended gradually, as my social surroundings changed, and I found myself wanting to be less of an outlier. I returned to cheese, and then fish, and then meat, having convinced myself that killing an animal is not necessarily an act of cruelty. I’m not eager to be at the leading edge of the vegan revolution, which may yet succeed, but neither would I wish to be at the tail end of the meat-eating resistance. And I am sympathetic to the frustration of advocates who can’t figure out why, nearly half a century after “Animal Liberation,” cattle are still sailing the world knee-deep in shit. A weekend with the work of Singer, Nussbaum, or Scully will likely make your next trip to the supermarket significantly more uncomfortable, and probably that’s as it should be. But these advocates also, in different ways, remind us that important causes have a way of redrawing ideological lines, turning some of our opponents into allies, and some allies into opponents. It is not easy to think carefully and consistently about what we do to animals. If the people who try often end up endorsing proposals that make us recoil, this may say as much about us as about them. ♦

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