Animal Rights
Tom Regan
Contemporary American Philosopher
Deontologist, in the tradition of Kant
Specialist in animal rights
The Case for Animal Rights (1983)
“Animal Rights, Human Wrongs” (1980)
Animal Rights
Utilitarians are wrong to focus only on pleasure and pain.
What is important is respecting the dignity of others, and to
treat those with moral standing as ends in themselves, not
means (c.f. Kant).
What is wrong with eating veal, for example, is not that the
animal suffers, rather:
“the fundamental wrong is the system that allows
us to view animals as our resources, here for us,
to be eaten, or surgically manipulated, or put in
our cross hairs for sport or money.”
Moral Standing
Distinguishes “moral agents” from “moral patients”
Moral agents typified by competent human adults
Moral patients include everything that has interests, e.g.
babies, the mentally incompetent and animals.
Both moral agents and moral patients have moral standing,
i.e. are ends of themselves and are subject to rights
What has interests?
Subjects-of-a-life.
Subjects-of-a-life
“To be the subject-of-a-life … involves more than merely being alive
and more than merely being conscious. To be the subject-of-a-life is
to … 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 welfareinterests; a psychophysical identity over time; and an individual
welfare in the sense that their experiential life fares well or ill for
them, independent of their utility for others.”
Not all animals, but only animals that meet these criteria.
Typically “mentally normal mammals of a year
or more”, although potentially other animals
with the relevant cognitive capacity.
Implications
The following violate animals’ rights:
Raising animals for food or fur
Hunting for sport or money
Keeping pets
Keeping animals in circuses or zoos
(Most) vivisection
Like Singer, holds that only individuals have moral standing, not species or
biosystems.
More inclusive than Singer as to what causes harm to animals – e.g. pets,
raising well-cared-for animals for food, keeping happy animals in a zoo,
etc.
Not as inclusive as Singer as to which animals matter: mostly only mammals
of over a year old compared to everything that is at least as sentient as a
shrimp
Objections to Singer and Regan
1) Too inclusive: only humans or only humans and some other higher animals
(e.g. the Great Apes) should count.
2) Not inclusive enough: should include all animals, maybe even plants
(Goodpaster: anything alive should have moral standing)
Ironically animal rights is criticized as being essentially anthropocentric – still
maintains that only persons count, but some animals count as persons
What about species, biosystems, larger ecological systems?
3) Practical complications
The devil is in the details
e.g. should we protect prey from predators? Should we inoculate wild animals
from disease? Should we shoot some members of overpopulated herds
(e.g. deer) to prevent mass starvation? How can we judge between
competing interests/rights?
Readings
Required:
G. Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 (1968), pp. 1243-1248,
available at: http://dieoff.org/page95.htm
Guha, Ramachandra, “Radical American Environmentalism and Wilderness
Preservation: A Third World Critique” in Environmental Ethics, Vol. 11,
No.1 (Spring 1989), pp. 71-83 , available at:
www.eci.ox.ac.uk/~dliverma/articles/Guha%20on%20radical%20environm
entalism.pdf
Optional:
Goodpaster, Kenneth, “On Being Morally Considerable”, in Environmental
Philosophy, pp. 49-65, available on reserve at the Philosophy Office