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Is it Wrong to Kill
Non-Human Animals?
II
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Tom Regan: “The Case for Animal Rights ”
Background
• This paper is a condensed version of the central argument
presented in Regan’s 1983 book, The Case for Animal
Rights.
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Regan’s Central Argument
P1 Typical human beings have the right not to be treated as
mere resources for others.
P2 If typical human beings have the right not to be treated as
a mere resource for others, then the individual that is the
experiencing subject of a life has a right not to be treated
as a mere resource for others.
P3 Many nonhuman animals are the experiencing subjects of
a life.
C Therefore, many nonhuman animals have the right not to
be treated as a mere resource for others.
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Goals of the Animal Rights Movement
The animal rights movement calls for (or should call for) no
less than the following:
(1) The total abolition of the use of animals in science;
(2) The total dissolution of commercial animal agriculture;
(3) The total elimination of commercial and sport hunting and
trapping.
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What’s the Problem?
• The problem with the way animals are treated (whether as
potential food, or as subjects of experimentation) is not a
case-by-case problem, but a problem with the whole system
of how we treat animals.
 The problem isn’t the pain.
 The problem isn’t the suffering.
 The problem isn’t the deprivation.
 These only compound what’s wrong.
 The fundamental problem is that the system allows us to
view animals as our resources, to be eaten, surgically
manipulated, or exploited for sport or money.
• A veal calf raised “free range” to be killed is treated in this
way just as much as is one raised in close confinement to be
killed.
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How are the Rights of Animals Traditionally Denied?
I. Indirect Duty Views
• We have duties regarding animals, but not duties to animals.
• We have duties regarding animals insofar as:
i. they are the property of people, and we have duties to
their owners not to harm their property; or
ii. they are beloved by people, and we have duties to the
such people not to harm what they love.
• If I kick your dog, then I have done something wrong to you,
but not to your dog.
• I no more harm your dog than I would harm your car if I
smashed its windshield. Rather, I harm you.
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How are the Rights of Animals Traditionally Denied?
How Would We Justify Indirect Duty Views?
• Not on the basis that the dog feels no pain.
• Not on the basis that the dog’s pain doesn’t matter, that only
the human’s does.
• Rather, we need some underlying moral theory.
(i) “Crude” Contractarianism
• Morality consists of assent to rules that individuals voluntarily
agree to abide by, as we do when we sign a contract.
• Those who understand and accept the terms of the contract
are covered directly – their rights are created by, and
protected under, the contract.
• Beings who lack the necessary level of understanding
(children, animals, the mentally retarded) cannot enter into
the contract, and so have no rights of their own.
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How are the Rights of Animals Traditionally Denied?
• But they may be protected by others who can because of
their sentimental value to them.
• Where humans have little-to-no sentimental attachment to
some animals (farm animals, lab rats, crab lice…), our duties
regarding them are weaker and weaker.
• If no one cares about them, their pain and deaths simply do
not matter.
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How are the Rights of Animals Traditionally Denied?
Problems with Crude Contractarianism:
• According to Contractarianism, morality consists in rules that
people agree to abide by.
 What people?
• The ones with the power to enforce them, apparently.
• This isn’t very good for those who don’t agree.
• As a result, this approach could sanction blatant forms
of social, economic, moral, and political injustice
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How are the Rights of Animals Traditionally Denied?
(ii) John Rawls’ Contractarianism
• A more subtle form of Contractarianism, set forth in A Theory
of Justice.
• Contractors are forced to ignore the “accidental” features of
being a human being.
 Race
 Sex
 Intelligence
• Despite the obvious improvements to “Crude”
Contractarianism, it still systematically excludes those without
any sense of justice, and so claims we have no duties to them.
 Children
 The Mentally Retarded
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How are the Rights of Animals Traditionally Denied?
• It seems reasonable that, were I to torture a child or a
mentally-retarded adult, I would be doing some wrong to that
individual.
• If Rawls’ Contractarianism does not work for children and the
mentally retarded, it will not work for animals.
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How are the Rights of Animals Traditionally Denied?
II. Direct Duty Views
(i) Cruelty-Kindness View
• We have a direct duty to be kind to animals and a direct duty
not to be cruel to them.
 Problem 1: That an act is kind does not necessarily show
that it is a right act, nor does an act have to be kind in
order to be right.
 Problem 2: The absence of cruelty in an act does not
show that the act is not wrong.
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How are the Rights of Animals Traditionally Denied?
(ii) Utilitarianism
• The Utilitarian Maxim: An action is right insofar as it brings
about (or tends to bring about) the most good on aggregate.
• Utilitarianism implies two moral principles:
i. Everyone’s interests count (recall Singer’s argument);
ii. One should do the act that will bring about the best
balance between satisfaction and frustration for everyone
affected by the outcome.
• What makes Utilitarianism so appealing is that everyone’s
interests count as much as the like interests of everyone
else.
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How are the Rights of Animals Traditionally Denied?
• Problem 1: Utilitarianism has no room for the equal moral
rights of different individuals because it has no room for their
equal inherent value or worth.
 What has value for the Utilitarian is the individual’s
interests, not the individual himself.
• Problem 2: It appears not only that it is not wrong
to kill an innocent person to benefit a number
of others, but moreover that it is our duty
to do so.
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Human Value
• The value of individuals is inherent value – we are something
more than mere receptacles of valuable things.
• All who have inherent value have it equally, regardless of sex,
race, religion, birthplace, etc.
• As such, all who have inherent value have equal right to be
treated with respect, not as resources for others.
• Your value as an individual is not dependent on your
usefulness to others.
• To fail to treat someone in ways that show respect for their
independent value is to act immorally: to violate their rights.
• In principle, then, racial, sexual, and social discrimination are
immoral.
• It would, as such, be wrong to kill an innocent person to benefit
a number of others: that would be to sanction the disrespectful
treatment of the individual in the name of a social good.
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Animal Value
• Non-human animals lack the abilities that humans possess,
like rationality.
• Of course, so do many humans, and we don’t, or shouldn’t, say
that they therefore lack inherent value.
• “It is the similarities between those human beings who most
clearly, most non-controversially have such value […], not our
differences, that matter most. And the really crucial, the basic
similarity is simply this: we are each of us the experiencing
subject of a life, a conscious creature having an individual
welfare that has importance to us whatever our usefulness to
others.” (149)
• It is also true of many non-human animals that they must be
viewed as the experiencing subjects of a life, with inherent
value of their own.
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Animal Value
How might one deny that animals have inherent value?
 That only humans have the requisite intelligence,
autonomy, or reason?
• Clearly, we view children as having inherent value, so
this can’t be the basis.
 That only humans belong to the right species, i.e. Homo
sapiens?
• This is blatant speciesism, so this can’t be the basis.
 Perhaps animals have some inherent value, only less
than we have?
• Seemingly, we would have to make such an argument
on the basis that they have less intelligence, autonomy,
reason, or some other capacity. But, again, if that is the
case, then the same would be true for some humans,
and there seems no reason to think so.
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Animal Value
• Rather, it seems that all beings with inherent value have it
equally, whether they are human or not.
• Since the vast majority of animals qualify as subjects of a life,
they have inherent value.
• Thus, we must recognize the equal inherent value of animals,
and treat them with this respect.
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Repercussions
• “The theory that rationally grounds the rights of animals also
grounds the rights of humans. Thus those involved in the
animal rights movement are partners in the struggle to secure
respect for human rights—the rights of women, for example, or
minorities, or works. The animal rights movement is cut from
the same moral cloth as these.” (150)
• The respect we owe animals is routinely ignored when we raise
them, hunt them, eat them, and use them in experimentation.
This view categorically implies that we should cease all such
practices.