He puts the issue of animal rights in historical context, drawing parallels between animal rights activism and other social movements, including the anti-slavery movement in the nineteenth century and the gay-lesbian struggle today. He also outlines the challenges to animal rights posed by deep ecology and ecofeminism to using animals for human purposes and addresses the ethical dilemma of the animal rights advocate whose employer uses animals for research."--BOOK JACKET.

The question of the nature and extent of our moral obligations to non-human animals has featured prominently in recent moral debate. This book defends the novel position that a contradictarian moral theory can be used to justify the claim that animals possess a substantial and wide-ranging set of moral rights. Critiquing the rival accounts of Peter Singer and Tom Regan, this study shows how an influential form of the social contract idea can be extended to make sense of the (...) concept of animal rights. (shrink)

More than twenty years after its original publication, The Case for Animal Rights is an acknowledged classic of moral philosophy, and its author is recognized as the intellectual leader of the animal rights movement. In a new and fully considered preface, Regan responds to his critics and defends the book's revolutionary position.

More than twenty years after its original publication, _The Case for Animal Rights _is an acknowledged classic of moral philosophy, and its author is recognized as the intellectual leader of the animal rights movement. In a new and fully considered preface, Regan responds to his critics and defends the book's revolutionary position.

In his new book Animals and African Ethics, Kai Horsthemke examines whether an African morality can be extended to include animal rights. He argues that the African ethical systems of ubuntu and ukama, because they are anthropocentric at heart, do not adequately make space for animal rights. In his defense of animal rights, Horsthemke responds to arguments claiming that there is a difference between racism and speciesism, and that the latter is morally justifiable even (...) though the former is not. I examine this discussion and agree with Horsthemke that the arguments in favor of speciesism are weak. I defend the claim that—like racism—speciesism is morally unjustifiable. (shrink)

In this essay, I explore the moral foundations of the treatment of animals. Alternative views are critically examined, including (a) the Kantian account, which holds that our duties regarding animals are actually indirect duties to humanity; (b) the cruelty account, which holds that the idea of cruelty explains why it is wrong to treat animals in certain ways; and (c) the utilitarian account, which holds that the value of consequences for all sentient creatures explains our duties to animals. These views (...) are shown to be inadequate, the Kantian account because some of our duties regarding animals are direct duties to animals; the cruelty account because it confuses matters of motive or intent with the question of the rightness or wrongness of the agent’s actions; and the utilitarian account because it could be used to justifyidentifiable speciesistic practices. I defend a fourth view. Only if we postulate basic moral rights in the case of humans, can we satisfactorily account for why it is wrong to treat humans in certain ways, and it is only by postulating that these humans have inherent value that we can attribute to them basic moral rights. Consistency requires that we attribute this same kind of value to many animals. Their havinginherent value provides a similar basis for attributing certain basic moral rights to them, including the right not to be harmed. Possession of this right places the onus of justification on anyone who would harm these animals. I set forth conditions for such a justification which those who would abuse animals have failed to meet. (shrink)

In this article, I show how it is possible, working from a Thomistic perspective, to affirm the existence of animal rights. To start, I show how it is possible to ascribe indirect rights to animals—in particular, the indirect right to not be treated cruelly by us. Then, I show how it is possible to ascribe some direct rights to animals using the same reasoning that Aquinas offers in defending the claim that animals have indirect (...) class='Hi'>rights. Next, I draw on elements of Aquinas’s metaphysical worldview in order to buttress the claim that animals have direct rights. I then respond to an attempt to ground the ethical treatment of animals, but not direct rights for animals, in natural law. In conclusion, I affirm that it is permissible to use animals to further the human good so long as in doing so we respect the direct rights that they possess. (shrink)

In this essay, I explore the moral foundations of the treatment of animals. Alternative views are critically examined, including the Kantian account, which holds that our duties regarding animals are actually indirect duties to humanity; the cruelty account, which holds that the idea of cruelty explains why it is wrong to treat animals in certain ways; and the utilitarian account, which holds that the value of consequences for all sentient creatures explains our duties to animals. These views are shown to (...) be inadequate, the Kantian account because some of our duties regarding animals are direct duties to animals; the cruelty account because it confuses matters of motive or intent with the question of the rightness or wrongness of the agent’s actions; and the utilitarian account because it could be used to justifyidentifiable speciesistic practices. I defend a fourth view. Only if we postulate basic moral rights in the case of humans, can we satisfactorily account for why it is wrong to treat humans in certain ways, and it is only by postulating that these humans have inherent value that we can attribute to them basic moral rights. Consistency requires that we attribute this same kind of value to many animals. Their havinginherent value provides a similar basis for attributing certain basic moral rights to them, including the right not to be harmed. Possession of this right places the onus of justification on anyone who would harm these animals. I set forth conditions for such a justification which those who would abuse animals have failed to meet. (shrink)

In his paper, "animal rights" ("analysis" 37.4), R g frey claims to refute "the most important argument" for the view that animals have rights. We show that no prominent defender of the rights of animals has argued, Or should argue, In the way that frey suggests. Furthermore, We show that there is a plausible argument for the view that animals have rights that is left undiscussed by frey.

A journey across the lush, complex, and uneven landscapes of animal protection reveals that the wellbeing of animals is deeply connected to the work and the wellbeing of people.

In this paper, the conception of Anthony J. Cesario about the philosophy of animal rights is critically reviewed. His approach is a valiant effort to defend the philosophy of animal rights. He is a moderate on this matter, offering all sorts of compromises. He applies an unusual insight to this matter with using the libertarian doctrine of evictionism.

It is widely accepted, by both friends and foes of animal rights, that contractarianism is the moral theory least likely to justify the assigning of direct moral status to non-human animals. These are not, it is generally supposed, rational agents, and contractarian approaches can grant direct moral status only to such agents. I shall argue that this widely accepted view is false. At least some forms of contractarianism, when properly understood, do, in fact, entail that non-human animals possess (...) direct moral status, independently of their utility for rational agents, and independently of whatever interests rational agents may have in them. The version of contractarianism I shall focus upon is that defended by John Rawls. (shrink)

According to the mysteriousness objection, moral rights are wholly mysterious, metaphysically suspect entities. Given their unexplained character and dubious metaphysical status, the objection goes, we should be ontologically parsimonious and deny that such entities exist. I defend Tom Regan's rights view from the mysteriousness objection. In particular, I argue that what makes moral rights seem metaphysically mysterious is the mistaken tendency to reify such rights. Once we understand what moral rights are and what they are (...) not, we will see that rights talk is neither mysterious nor nonsensical. I then consider a second aspect of Regan’s rights view that some critics have found “mystifying.” I circumvent this objection by identifying and defending an alternative rights-conferring property. I conclude by pointing out the moral significance of these findings vis-à-vis our current treatment of nonhuman animals. (shrink)

Arguments against inflicting violence on people to defend animal rights have relied on the view that inflicting violence is always wrong. But these arguments end up prohibiting too much, as defensive violence should be permissible in certain extreme cases. We argue that considerations about the counterproductiveness of defensive violence are better at distinguishing permissible and impermissible instances of animal rights violence than a blanket rejection of violence. We respond to the objection that assuming violence to be (...) counterproductive is ad hoc, discussing real-world and fictional examples of animal rights violence. We argue that defensive violence on behalf of animals should almost always be assumed to be counterproductive because it threatens to trigger self-reinforcing reactions on the part of the socio-technical regimes that violate animal rights in the first place. (shrink)

This book offers a powerful response to what Varner calls the "two dogmas of environmental ethics"--the assumptions that animal rights philosophies and anthropocentric views are each antithetical to sound environmental policy. Allowing that every living organism has interests which ought, other things being equal, to be protected, Varner contends that some interests take priority over others. He defends both a sentientist principle giving priority to the lives of organisms with conscious desires and an anthropocentric principle giving priority to (...) certain very inclusive interests which only humans have. He then shows that these principles not only comport with but provide significant support for environmental goals. (shrink)

Animal rights positions face the ‘predator problem’: the suggestion that if the rights of nonhuman animals are to be protected, then we are obliged to interfere in natural ecosystems to protect prey from predators. Generally, rather than embracing this conclusion, animal ethicists have rejected it, basing this objection on a number of different arguments. This paper considers but challenges three such arguments, before defending a fourth possibility. Rejected are Peter Singer’s suggestion that interference will lead (...) to more harm than good, Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka’s suggestion that respect for nonhuman sovereignty necessitates non-interference in normal circumstances, and Alasdair Cochrane’s solution based on the claim that predators cannot survive without killing prey. The possibility defended builds upon Tom Regan’s suggestion that predators, as moral patients but not moral agents, cannot violate the rights of their prey, and so the rights of the prey, while they do exist, do not call for intervention. This idea is developed by a consideration of how moral agents can be more or less responsible for a given event, and defended against criticisms offered by thinkers including Alasdair Cochrane and Dale Jamieson. (shrink)

The spectacle of the relentless use and abuse of animals in various human enterprises led some human beings to formulate animal welfare policies and to offer philosophical arguments on the basis of which the humane treatment of animals could be defended rationally. According to the animal welfare concept, animals should be provided some comfort and freedom of movement in the period prior to the moment when they are killed. This concept emphasizes the physiological, psychological, and natural aspects of (...) animal life with the focus on freedom. Ironically, however it is not concerned with the rights of animals; nor is it interested in their remaining alive. So, animals are least benefitted by such provisions, which is the major concern for those who defend animal rights. It seems dubious to demand comfort for a being in life, but not security for its actual life, since rights and freedom are essential for the maintenance of a normal life. This paper aims to critically analyze the animal welfare system, which prioritizes only freedom; to demonstrate how animal welfare is incomplete without animal rights and how they are closely related to each other; and to bridge the gap between animal welfare and animal rights. The underlying principle of animal welfare concept is restricted by its anthropocentric framework with the result that the ethical element is missing. Mere ‘freedom’ is not sufficient for constituting an ideal animal welfare domain. In order to achieve real animal well-being, it is necessary to consider both the rights as well as the welfare of animals. (shrink)

Animal ethicists have worried that hoping for the success of the animal rights movement is epistemically irrational because it contradicts our best evidence and practically irrational because it makes animal rights advocates complacent. Against these worries, this article defends the claim that animal rights advocates can rationally hope for the success of their movement despite grim prospects. To this end, the article draws on Philip Pettit's (2004) account of hope to articulate the novel (...) notion of “careful substantial hope.” Hope in this sense is a cognitive strategy of thinking as if movement success is likely because the right strategies and tactics will be employed. The article concludes with suggestions for how philosophers can encourage this kind of hope. (shrink)

You might be wondering what an article 0n animal rights is doing in a journal devoted to the defence of human life. It turns out that the connections are closer than you may think. Grasping them is crucial to a proper understanding of just why innocent human life must be defended, of why the killing of even the tiniest, youngest member of the human species is an unspeakable crime. For it is by analysing the issue of whether animals (...) have rights that we come to see the core differences between humans and other animals1—-the differences in the nature of humans and animals that mean.. (shrink)

Hobbes’s political and ethical theories are rarely viewed as places by which those who protect the weak seek refuge. It would seem odd, then, to suggest that such a theory might be able to protect the weakest among us—non-human animals. In this paper, however, I will defend the possibility of a Hobbesian justification for animal rights. The Hobbesian response to the problem of compliance allows contractarianism to extend (at least some) normative protection to animals. Such protection, as I (...) will argue, has a similar justificational foundation as the protection we offer other humans. (shrink)

The new classical natural law theorists have been decidedly skeptical about claims that non-human animals deserve serious moral consideration. Their theory features an array of incommensurable, nonfungible basic aspects of welfare and a set of principles governing participation in and pursuit of these goods. Attacks on animals’ interests seem to be inconsistent with one or more of these principles. But leading natural law theorists maintain that animals do not participate in basic aspects of well being in ways that merit protection, (...) that the so-called “argument from marginal cases” is unsuccessful as a basis for claims that animals have moral standing, and that affirming that animals have rights leaves one with no basis for maintaining that humans do as well. In response, I suggest that animals can be understood to participate in some aspects of well being, defend the argument from marginal cases, and offer reasons why we might believe that affirming that animals have rights does not undermine the claim that humans have rights. (shrink)

I argue that the equal rights views of Tom Regan and Evelyn B. Pluhar must be rejected because they have unacceptable consequences. My objection is similar to one made in the literature by Mary Anne Warren, but I develop it in more detail and defend it from several plausible responses that an equal rights theorist might make. I formulate a theory, a moderate form of perfectionism, that makes a valuedistinction between moral agents and moral patients according to which (...) although both have rights, these rights are not equal. This theory avoids the unacceptable consequences of the equal rights view and is immune to the marginal cases arguments that typical full-personhood theories succumb to. This moderate perfectionism generates an obligation for people to be vegetarians (in most cases) and to severely curtail animal experimentation. (shrink)

I argue that the equal rights views of Tom Regan and Evelyn B. Pluhar must be rejected because they have unacceptable consequences. My objection is similar to one made in the literature by Mary Anne Warren, but I develop it in more detail and defend it from several plausible responses that an equal rights theorist might make. I formulate a theory, a moderate form of perfectionism, that makes a valuedistinction between moral agents and moral patients according to which (...) although both have rights, these rights are not equal. This theory avoids the unacceptable consequences of the equal rights view and is immune to the marginal cases arguments that typical full-personhood theories succumb to. This moderate perfectionism generates an obligation for people to be vegetarians (in most cases) and to severely curtail animal experimentation. (shrink)

ration onward. In fact, some of the speakers on. the program were inclined to that view philosophically, but the conference was intended to analyze the issues raised by many views, not to defend. any ideological stance. In short, it was set up to examine the medical, legal and ethical issues that arise when the question is asked, ls a fetus a person? It was not intended to be a philosophical, and certainly not a theological, discussion. It succeeded admirably, with factual (...) and analytical data richer than is to be found in any other symposium on the subject, within the parameters given. in the book's title. (shrink)

Mark Rowlands defends a Rawlsian argument for animal rights, according to which animals have rights because we would assign them rights when deciding on the principles of morality from behind a veil of ignorance. Rowlands’s argument depends on a non-standard interpretation of the veil of ignorance, according to which we cannot know whether we are human or non-human on the other side of the veil. Rowlands claims that his interpretation of the veil is more consistent with (...) a core commitment of Rawlsian justice—the intuitive equality principle—than either Rawls or his critics realize. Here I argue that Rawls is not committed to the intuitive equality principle, as Rowlands articulates it, and hence Rowlands’s argument is in fact only superficially Rawlsian. Furthermore, Rowlands’s intuitive equality principle is dubious on its own terms, and thus a poor principle on which to base a case for animal rights. (shrink)

Eleni Panagiotarakou | : The focus of this paper is on the “right to place” as a political theory of wild animal rights. Out of the debate between terrestrial cosmopolitans inspired by Kant and Arendt and rooted cosmopolitan animal right theorists, the right to place emerges from the fold of rooted cosmopolitanism in tandem with environmental and ecological principles. Contrary to terrestrial cosmopolitans—who favour extending citizenship rights to wild animals and advocate at the same time large-scale (...) humanitarian interventions and unrestricted geographical mobility—I argue that the well-being of wild animals is best served by the right to place theory on account of its sovereignty model. The right to place theory advocates human non-interference in wildlife communities, opposing even humanitarian interventions, which carry the risk of unintended consequences. The right to place theory, with its emphasis on territorial sovereignty, bases its opposition to unrestricted geographical mobility on two considerations: the non-generalist nature of many species and the potential for abuse via human encroachment. In a broader context, the advantage of the right to place theory lies in its implicit environmental demands: human population control and sustainable lifestyles. | : Le présent article porte principalement sur le « droit territorial » en tant que théorie politique des droits des animaux sauvages. Issu du débat entre théoriciens cosmopolitistes du droit animal, soit terrestres inspirés par Kant et Arendt, soit enracinés, le droit territorial trouve ses sources dans le cosmopolitisme enraciné qui va de concert avec certains principes environnementaux et écologiques. Contrairement aux cosmopolitistes terrestres, qui préconisent d’étendre les droits de citoyenneté aux animaux sauvages tout en défendant les interventions humanitaires à grande échelle et la mobilité géographique illimitée, j’estime que la théorie du droit territorial est davantage en mesure d’assurer le bien-être des animaux sauvages, grâce à son modèle basé sur la souveraineté. La théorie du droit territorial préconise la non-ingérence dans les communautés fauniques, allant jusqu’à s’opposer aux interventions humanitaires, qui risquent de provoquer des conséquences non désirées. Cette théorie, en mettant l’accent sur la souveraineté territoriale, base son opposition à la mobilité géographique illimitée sur deux considérations : le caractère non généraliste de bon nombre d’espèces, et le risque de mauvais traitements par empiètement humain. Dans un contexte plus large, l’intérêt de la théorie du droit territorial réside dans ses exigences environnementales implicites : le contrôle de la population humaine et l’adoption de modes de vie durables. (shrink)

An argument is examined and defended for extending basic moral rights to animals which assumes that humans, including infants and the severely mentally enfeebled, have such rights. It is claimed that this argument proceeds on two fronts, one critical, where proposed criteria of right-possession are rejected, the other constructive, where proposed criteria are examined with a view to determining the most reasonable one. This form of argument is defended against the charge that it is self-defeating, various candidates for (...) the title, 'most reasonable criterion of right-possession', are critically examined, and it is argued that this criterion is to be found in the notion of inherent value: What underlies the ascription of rights to any given x is that x has value logically independently of anyone's valuing x; thus, to treat x as if x had value only if or as it served one's interests, etc., is to violate x 's rights. It is argued that many animals, owing to their being subjects of a life that is more or less valuable for them logically independently of the interests of others, can satisfy this criterion and therefore have certain basic moral rights, if humans, including the severely mentally enfeebled, do. Finally, the question, What basic moral rights do animals have? is explored. (shrink)

Those who conduct research on animals and those who advocate on behalf of animals have more in common than is generally supposed. A more nuanced understanding of the arguments defending animals' interests can help replace the current politics of confrontation with a genuine conversation.

In her book, Moral Status, Mary Anne Warren defends a comprehensive theory of the moral status of various entities. Under this theory, she argues that animals may have some moral rights but that their rights are much weaker in strength than the rights of humans, who have rights in the fullest, strongest sense. Subsequently, Warren believes that our duties to animals are far weaker than our duties to other humans. This weakness is especially evident from the (...) fact that Warren believes that it is frequently permissible for humans to kill animals for food. Warren’s argument for her view consists primarily in the belief that we have inevitable practical conflicts with animals that make it impossible to grant them equal rights without sacrificing basic human interests. However, her arguments fail to justify her conclusions. In particular, Warren fails to justify her beliefs that animals do not have an equal right to life and that it is permissible for humans to kill animals for food. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Old Orders for New Ecology, Animal Rights, and the Poverty of HumanismCary Wolfe (bio)Luc Ferry. The New Ecological Order. Trans. Carol Volk. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995.1Early on in The New Ecological Order, the French philosopher Luc Ferry characterizes the allure and danger of ecology in the postmodern moment. What separates it from various other issues in the intellectual and political field, he writes, is thatit (...) can call itself a true “world vision,” whereas the decline of political utopias, but also the parcelization of knowledge and the growing “jargonization” of individual scientific disciplines, seemed to forever prohibit any plan for the globalization of thought.... At a time when ethical guide marks are more than ever floating and undetermined, it allows the unhoped-for promise of rootedness to form, an objective rootedness, certain of a new moral ideal.[xx]As we shall see, for Ferry—a staunch liberal humanist in the Kantian if not quite Cartesian tradition—this vision conceals a danger to which contemporary European intellectuals are especially sensitive: not holism, nor even moralism, exactly, but that far more charged and historically freighted thing, totalitarianism. Ferry’s concern is that such “world visions,” incarnated in contemporary environmentalism in movements such as Deep Ecology and ecofeminism, threaten “[o]ur entire democratic culture,” which “since the French Revolution, has been marked, for basic philosophical reasons, by the glorification of uprootedness, or innovation” [xxi]. Ferry’s thesis—it becomes quite explicit in his comparison of environmental legislation under the Third Reich with tenets of Deep Ecology in the book’s second section—is that Deep Ecology and its ilk have moved in to occupy the space left open by the passing of the political imaginaries of fascism and communism, so that denunciations of liberalism (and its corollary in political praxis, reformism) may now be unmasked for what they are: critiques “in the name of nostalgia, or, on the contrary, in that of hope: either the nostalgia for a lost past, for national identity flouted by the culture of rootlessness, or revolutionary hope in a radiant future, in a classless and free society” [xxvi]. To which Ferry responds—literally—“Grow up!” Late in the book, he tells us that we must see through “the adult development of the secular and democratic universe” [137] by rejecting totalizing revolutionary visions of the sort purveyed by Deep Ecology, and by adhering instead to liberal reformism, “the only [End Page 21] position consistent with leaving the world of childhood” [138].Ferry is certainly right to draw our attention to the often uncritical nostalgia and romantic holism of some varieties of environmental thought—problems that have been noted before by critics from points on the map very different politically from Ferry’s avowed liberal humanism. And it is certainly understandable, given the historical context, that he would join a long list of other European intellectuals in pointing out the manifold dangers to democratic society of totalizing moral schemes—dangers often represented for liberal intellectuals like Ferry by the rise of the Greens in European politics. 1 We do well to remember, too (as Fredric Jameson and others have pointed out), that for European intellectuals such as Ferry, liberalism retains, for understandable historical reasons, a viability and a promise about which many American intellectuals are skeptical or even jaded. European intellectuals, conditioned by the experience of fascist authoritarianism and the strong but problematic presence historically of the Communist party in social and intellectual life, may find in liberalism a refreshing and indeed radical democratic openness and dynamism, while American intellectuals, conditioned to the absence of any other major political contenders, have long since grown accustomed to liberalism as the name for that “end of ideology” position which, as Jameson puts it, “can function more effectively after its own death as an ideology, realizing itself in its most traditional form as a commitment to the market system that has become sheer common sense and no longer a political program” [249, my emphasis].But in defending democratic difference, everything hinges, of course, on precisely how such terms are framed and how difference is articulated—an index of which often may be found in how its imagined... (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to respond to the thoughtful commentaries contained in the 'Wild Animal Ethics' book symposium.

This paper discusses two central themes of the work of Alan Holland: the relations between the natural and the normative and how our duties regarding animals cohere with our obligations to respect nature. I explicate and defend an anti-speciesist argument that entails strong moral demands on how we should live and what we should eat. I conclude by discussing the implications of anti-speciesism for rewilding and reintroduction programmes.

In this paper I defend a theory of welfare rights for nonhuman animals. I do this by demonstrating that a well-established framework for protecting the interests of farm animals, the ‘Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare’, is already functioning just as a set of rights. To support this claim I adopt a common approach to detecting evidence for deontological reasoning and look at the structural features of rights. I first consider Hohfeld’s system of legal rights and (...) consider whether the Five Freedoms may be understood as liberties or claim rights, before making a more successful comparison with side constraints and an interest theory of rights as understood by Nozick and Raz. I also respond to a likely objection that it is not possible to have some welfare rights without a right to freedom from exploitation. The argument therefore contributes to breaking down the stubborn division between ‘animal welfare’ and ‘animal rights’. (shrink)

As members of the most evolutionarily developed species on earth, most of us share the common-sensical belief that our treatment of animals should be based more or less on moral grounds. However, it is also an undeniable fact that for more than two millennia, from the appearance of the first moral theories in Ancient Greece until almost the last quarter of the 20th century, this traditional moral concern for animals has gone hand in hand with their systematic exclusion from the (...) moral community of human beings, which deprives them of basic protective rights against moral abuse and mistreatment. A radical paradigm shift in ethics emerges, especially in the last quarter of the 20th century, when some philosophers begin to question this anthropocentric conception of ethics and the “otherness” of animals in terms of their traditional location outside the ethical discourse. Peter Singer, who is a utilitarian, and Tom Regan, who defends the “rights view” against Singer’s utilitarianism, are two prominent representatives of this new ethical approach. After showing how Singer and Regan reject speciesism, this paper focuses on Regan’s critique of Singer’s account and adds new objections that show that utilitarianism has serious general defects even if it is restricted to human beings. Moreover, these defects give rise to more complicated problems when utilitarianism is applied to animals. After pointing to some weak aspects in Regan’s theory, the paper spells out the sketch of an alternative account that points to the possibility of a synthesis of utility principle and right principle. Accordingly, Regan’s worse-off principle deduced from the rights view is interpreted as a formal principle, while the utility principle as the material content of it is accepted: as long as there is no violation of the worse-off principle, one ought to deduce particular commands to maximize utility for specific cases out of the application of the utility principle. In this context, the worse-off principle has only a negative and formal function that prevents the utility principle from overriding individual rights by giving it its obligatory form. (shrink)

In his reply to the Nobis-Graham review of Tibor Machan's book, Putting Humans First, John Altick defends Machan's and Rand's theories of moral rights, specifically as they relate to the rights of non-human animals and non-rational human beings. Nobis and Graham argue that Altick's defense fails and that it would be wrong to eat, wear, and experiment on non-rational—yet conscious and sentient—human beings. Since morally relevant differences between these kinds of humans and animals have not been identified to (...) justify a difference in treatment or consideration, it is wrong to harm animals for these purposes also. (shrink)

This article brings animal protection theory to bear on Temple Grandin’s work, in her capacity both as a designer of slaughter facilities and as an advocate for omnivorism. Animal protection is a better term for what is often termed animal rights, given that many of the theories grouped under the animal rights label do not extend the concept of rights to animals. I outline the nature of Grandin’s system of humane slaughter as it (...) pertains to cattle. I then outline four arguments Grandin has made defending meat-eating. On a protection-based approach, I argue, Grandin’s system of slaughter is superior to its traditional counterpart. Grandin’s success as a designer of humane slaughterhouses however is not matched by any corresponding success in offering a moral defence of meat-eating. Despite, or perhaps because of, the popularity of her work, Grandin’s arguments for continuing to eat animals are noteworthy only in how disappointing and rudimentary they are. If we can thank Grandin for making a difference in the lives of millions of farm animals, her work can also be criticized for not engaging the moral status of animals with the depth and rigor that it deserves. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the claim that many sentient nonhuman animals have a right to privacy. I begin by outlining the view that the human right to privacy protects our interest in shaping different kinds of relationships with one another by giving us control over how we present ourselves to others. I then draw on empirical research to show that nonhuman animals also have this interest, which grounds a right to privacy against us. I further argue that we can (...) violate this right even when other animals are unaware that we are watching them. (shrink)

In the United States of America, and in much of the world, corporations are afforded a great deal of rights to both protect themselves and others against legal action and mistreatment. To gain these rights, they defended themselves or were defended many times throughout the years in courts under the framework of “legal personhood”—but this same legal personhood is not afforded to most actual living creatures. There is enough similarity in the legal framework afforded to corporations that should (...) be afforded to animals as well, and more than enough evidence to show that it is increasingly necessary to protect and expand animal rights in this way. The argument is simple: because of their sentience, cognition, and emotional intelligence, animals deserve legal personhood. If we can make the argument that a corporation, which is incapable of these things listed above, should have certain unalienable rights, then it is illogical for us to make the argument that animals should not. (shrink)