Philosophy 220

1. Philosophy 220 The Moral Status of the Non-Human World: Cohen and Warren

2. Regan and Animal Rights • Tom Regan makes clear his commitment to the animal rights movement in his book The Case for Animal Rights. • As he articulates it, that movement has three central goals. • Abolition of the use of animals in science. • The dissolution of commercial agriculture. • The elimination of sport hunting and trapping. • Only abolition is possible. “You don’t change unjust institutions by tidying them up.”

3. Some Key Assumptions • Regan specifies three assumptions central to his effort to establish that NHAs have moral rights and thus that we are wrong when we treat them like resources. • Some creatures are possessed of inherent value. • Those that are, are possessed of it equally. • Inherent value necessitates respect, where respect is understood (following Kant) as requiring treating possessors of inherent value as ends in themselves rather than means.

4. Advantages of the Rights View • According to Regan, there are a number of advantages to thinking about moral standing in terms of rights. • In principle this view finds all forms of racial, sexual and social discrimination immoral. • In principle it denies that it is ever acceptable to trample on rights in pursuit of good consequences (the Justice Problem of consequentialism).

5. The Argument • Moral respect (the basis for the possession of rights) is a function of inherent value. • The property that explains our inherent value is being “the experiencing subject of a life.” In our other vernacular, this is the property that establishes DMS. • We do not know (can not?) how far this notion extends, but we do not need to. It is clear that NHAs exhibit this characteristic. • Therefore, they have inherent value and thus the same right to respect as human beings.

6. Cohen, ”Do Animals Have Rights?" • Cohen takes up Regan's argument, ultimately rejecting his claim on the grounds of a different account of DMS. • From his account, talk of animal rights is mistaken, as is Regan’s characterization of a Cohen-type position as morally equivalent to racism or sexism (speciesism). • He also disputes Regan’s analysis of the moral status of the use of non-human animals on basically consequentialist grounds.

7. Rights and Animals • Cohen begins his discussion with a definition of rights. • “A right (unlike an interest) is a valid claim, or potential claim, made by a moral agent, under principles that govern both the claimant and the target of the claim” (348c1). • Important features: distinction of rights from interests (disputed by other accounts of rights); specification of the function of moral agency. • Cohen then test our intuitions about rights by discussing the use of humans and animals in medical research, disputing Regan’s insistence that we have not more grounds for testing on animals than on humans, on essentially consequentialist grounds.

8. Animals don’t have Rights? • Cohen acknowledges that we have many obligations to the animals around us, both domestic and wild. • He refuses, however to accept that these obligations flow from rights possessed by animals. • Though rights do impose obligations, not all obligations are grounded in correlative rights. • Ultimately, animals don’t have rights according to Cohen, because they are not the right sort of creature. • Serengeti thought experiment (351). Of course, we often excuse the behavior of children on similar grounds.

9. Moral Standing and Rights • Cohen’s rejection of the claim that animals have rights is ultimately founded in a claim about DMS. • “Animals cannot be the bearers of rights because the concept of rights is essentially human; it is rooted in, and has force within, a human moral world.” (351c2). • So for Cohen, DMS is coextensive with biological humanity. • We’ve seen that this sort of answer faces obvious objections. • Cohen makes an interesting move and locates the ground of the human moral community in our moral/rational faculties (the capacity for moral self-legislation—there’s a Kantian influence here). • Obviously, many humans don’t possess the relevant faculties, but Cohen insists that the issue is not their possession by individuals, but by the species.

10. Where Regan Goes Wrong • As we’ve seen, Regan’s argument rests on the assertion that animals have inherent value. • Cohen accuses Regan of equivocating between two different sense of inherent value. • Sense 1: inherent value as the source of (human) moral dignity; all of us, from the highest to the lowest, are moral equals. • Sense 2: being more than “just a thing,” being in ourselves unique and irreplaceable. • Animals are inherently valuable in sense 2, but Cohen denies that they are inherently valuable in sense 1. • Since in is sense 1 that counts, morally speaking, Regan’s claim that animals have rights fails.

11. Questions for Cohen • Both Cohen’s argument and his critique of Regan are open to important objections. • First, with regard to his insistence that DMS overlaps with the human species, he faces the charge of speciesism. • In another essay, he responds to the charge by insisting that while racism has, "no rational grounds,” preferring humans to other animals does. Why? They have rights (which seems to beg the question). • Second, with regard to his claim that Regan equivocates, we should note that his analysis of Regan’s use of the concept of inherent value never addresses the account of DMS that Regan develops: being the experiencing subject of a life. • If we took this idea seriously, it’s not clear that there is an equivocation.

12. Warren, “Rights Compared” • Remember Warren from our discussion of abortion. Here she takes up the question of animal rights. • The common moral intuition about the rights of Non-Human Animals seems to be that if they have rights, these rights are limited relative to human rights. • If you could only save one would it be your new born infant or a loyal family dog that you’ve had for a decade? • Warren thinks that advocates of rights for NHAs need to account for this intuited difference and she aims to provide it.

13. Strength and Content • Warren focuses our attention on two different features of rights where differences between rights of humans and rights of NHAs might be apparent. • Content: what the right protects. • Strength: how strong overriding reasons would have to be.

14. Human v. NHA: Content • Given the differences between the forms of consciousness and activity of humans and NHAs, there are going to be many, specific distinctions in content between human and NHA rights. • Ex. Freedom of Movement • These distinctions should not mask a great deal of commonality in terms of content. • Ex. Right to Life

15. Human v. NHA: Strength • In those places of overlapping content, the distinguishing feature of human and NHA rights is strength. • In general, human rights can only be overwhelmed by reasons stronger than those which would overwhelm the rights of NHAs. • Even if this is not true, the lack of autonomy and reciprocity in the granting and respecting of rights is good reason to hierarchize rights holders.

16. Infanticide, Again? • Does this argument once again strand the human infant or the severely retarded individual on the side of the limited rights holders? • Warren thinks not, both because they are potentially or partially autonomous and have value for us