Three Different moral views
• Anthropocentric ethics: Only human
beings have intrinsic value
• Sentience-centered ethics: all conscious
beings have intrinsic value
• Biocentric ethics: all living things have
intrinsic value.
Singer on Biocentric ethics
• Many living things are not conscious, so it
does not really make sense to harm them.
They therefore cannot have interests. We
can talk about a tree being harmed, but
this “harm” means nothing to the tree. So
trees, in themselves, have no value
• Trees and other non-conscious living
things may have great instrumental value
for conscious creatures.
Singer on Anthropocentric Ethics.
• Human beings are given equal
consideration regardless of their
intellectual, moral, or physical abilities.
• Therefore, it is inconsistent to refuse to
give equal consideration to non-human
animals on the basis of these factors.
• Being human, as a biological category, is
as irrelevant as race or sex to moral worth.