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Animal Rights
Animal Rights E Pluhar, Pennsylvania State University, Uniontown, PA, USA ª 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Glossary Anthropocentrism The view that human beings are the only, or the primary, bearers of moral rights. Ethology The study of nonhuman animal behavior from an evolutionary and comparative perspective. Moral agents Beings capable of understanding and acting upon moral principles. Moral rights Justified claims against moral agents by or on behalf of morally considerable beings – for example, noninterference and assistance. Moral rights, basic Moral rights shared by all highly morally significant beings – for example, the right to life and the right not to be tortured. Moral rights, nonbasic Moral rights held by a subset of morally considerable beings – for example, the right to freedom.
Introduction Animal rights, or more precisely nonhuman animal rights, would entitle certain nonhumans to respectful treatment by moral agents. As far as is known, human beings alone are capable of understanding and acting on moral princi ples – that is, of being moral agents – so it is they who would be obliged to treat, and refrain from treating, nonhumans in respectful or disrespectful ways. If these nonhumans have moral rights, it follows that they are morally significant beings – that is, beings worthy of moral consideration. Beings who are equally morally sig nificant (e.g., a child and a typical human adult) need not have all the same rights, but they do share basic rights, such as a right to life and a right not to be tortured. (Note that basic rights are prima facie: They are not claimed to be absolute or indefeasible. Moral agents’ infliction of death or suffering upon one might be justified if it is one’s own rational choice or in one’s own best interests, or if moral agents cannot avoid such consequences when they act in self-defense.) Equally morally significant beings, while sharing basic rights, do not all have the same rights as any typical adult human, however. Nonbasic moral rights, such as autonomy rights, are held only by beings with the capacity to exercise those rights. Different humans may have widely different nonbasic rights; the same might hold for dogs, cows, tigers, and the like, in comparison to typical adult humans. The
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Moral rights, prima facie Rights that may justifiably be overridden. For example, a morally significant being’s right not to be made to suffer may be overridden by moral agents if suffering is required to save the being’s life. Morally significant beings Beings who are proper subjects of moral agents’ concerns. Sentient beings Beings capable of having experiences, including pleasurable and painful experiences. Speciesism The view that moral weight should be given to species membership. Utilitarianism The view that moral agents have one fundamental obligation – (roughly) to maximize nonmoral value (‘utility,’ which has most often been identified with happiness or preference satisfaction).
debate over animal rights is a debate about basic moral rights. Do any nonhuman animals have a prima facie right to life or a prima facie right not to be made to suffer at human hands? Current practices indicate that humans have not thought so. Raising and killing nonhumans for food, rai ment, research, education, and product testing presume that they have no significant right to life. Sport hunting and trapping make the same presumption. Agriculture, research, and testing claim the most nonhuman lives, with hunting, trapping, and recreation claiming significant lives as well. Worldwide, animals raised for food number in the tens of billions; those killed for research, product testing, and education number in the tens of millions. One might hold that some animals have no serious right to life but do have a prima facie right not to be treated inhuma nely. Currently, many animals used for the preceding purposes are subjected to conditions that would be very painful for humans. Some of the pain caused is often defended as an unavoidable consequence of procedures claimed to be important to human life and health. This position is compatible with the attribution of some rights to nonhumans: One might hold that they have a prima facie right to humane treatment that can be overridden by the need to preserve allegedly more morally significant lives. However, no such justification is possible when the pain is avoidable or the purpose nonessential for human welfare. Defenders of such practices as confining calves to
Animal Rights
2-foot-wide crates or five hens to a cage the size of a folded newspaper, as well as those who see nothing wrong with crushing the chest of an animal caught in a leghold trap or with beating circus animals, assume that these beings have no right to humane treatment at all. Animal rights supporters have directly challenged these assump tions and the practices based on them, making the case that many nonhumans have highly morally significant lives. One may hold that nonhuman animals have significant moral status without attributing rights to them, however. As we shall discuss, utilitarianism offers a different per spective – one that rights theorists reject.
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moral status of nonhuman animals. This much may be said, however: According to rights theorists, any version of utilitarianism, no matter how carefully conceived it may be, fails to provide sufficient warrant for the protec tion of innocent life. Only aggregate utility counts, regardless of how unjust such an outcome seems to be. Throwing an innocent prisoner to an infuriated mob might lead to more satisfaction in the world, but it is grossly disrespectful of that person. If overall satisfaction were to be increased by the calibrated forced breeding of ‘utility generators,’ that is what we should do as utilitar ians, even if the quality of life for each created individual is very low. Therefore, the philosophical nonhuman ani mal rights movement is opposed to utilitarianism.
The Rights View versus Utilitarianism The Roots of Anthropocentrism The contemporary philosopher who named and is most associated with the twentieth-century animal liberation movement, Peter Singer, is not a philosophical advocate of rights, although he originally spoke loosely of rights in the purely legalistic sense. Singer is a utilitarian. Utilitarianism in its classic form is the view that moral agents have one fundamental obligation: to maximize utility (which has most often been identified with happi ness or, as Singer has argued, preference satisfaction). Singer traces the roots of his view to the original utilitar ian, Jeremy Bentham (1748–1842), who held that society’s goal should be the greatest happiness for the greatest number of individuals. Bentham held that any being cap able of suffering (i.e., any sentient being) should have his or her experiences taken into account by utilitarian cal culations. Thus, the overall utility that would be generated by a given action determines the rightness of that action. By contrast, rights theorists hold that the rightness of an act is not exhausted by the act’s conse quences. Individuals with basic moral rights should have those rights respected by moral agents, even if the sum total of happiness generated might be less than would result if those rights were violated. Since Bentham’s day, many sophisticated variations on classic hedonistic utilitarianism, which identifies utility with pleasure and disutility with pain, have been proposed. Some versions are pluralistic (identifying utility with a variety of goods, not merely with pleasure) rather than hedonistic; moreover, not every type of utilitarianism iden tifies rightness with the utility produced by an act. One might focus instead on the utility generated by following a given rule or by following a rule that would be generally accepted by society. In his later writings, Singer proposes ‘‘preference utilitarianism,’’ which stipulates that, at least for self-conscious beings, satisfied preferences, and not just unreflective pleasures, are equivalent to utility. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the ramifications of different utilitarian theories for the
The view that nonhumans have basic moral rights stands in opposition to anthropocentrism, the presumption that humans are the sole or the primary morally significant beings on the planet. Although we humans have always made exceptions for favored nonhumans, we have typically accorded substantially less moral significance to nonhuman animals than to ourselves. Anthropocentrism is deeply rooted in religious and philosophical points of view. Religious Influences Religions traditionally reflect and reinforce a culture’s deepest ideals. The place of nonhumans in various reli gious doctrines is therefore quite revealing. The major religious traditions of the West and the East cannot be said to have attributed rights to nonhumans. Nonetheless, some of these traditions accord a higher moral signifi cance to nonhuman animals than do others. Indeed, some, upon first glance, appear to be the opposite of anthropo centric. Approximately 3000 years before Christ’s birth, the ancient Sanskrit Vedas spelled out the doctrine of ahimsa, according to which all life should be respected. This doctrine continues to be fundamental to many Eastern religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism. The ahimsa doctrine is compatible with the attri bution of different degrees of moral significance to varieties of living beings, however. According to some soul transmigration beliefs, a soul that is reincarnated as a nonhuman is a former human who is being punished for misdeeds. This is an anthropocentric doctrine, although its implications for the treatment of nonhumans are more favorable than is the case for straightforward Western anthropocentrism. Ahimsa has been interpreted to pre suppose that a soul (either one world soul or many individual souls) changes bodily identities through a suc cession of lives, unless and until ultimate enlightenment is obtained. The chicken you eat may be your grandmother;
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the fly your grandchild swats 30 years from now may be you. Compassion toward living beings thus appears to be an extension of regard for oneself and one’s human loved ones. This too is an anthropocentric doctrine. Moreover, this compassion is compatible with some killing for human purposes: The soul cannot be killed, according to such a view, and in fact the soul may be thought to be benefited if it is released to a worthier body. Thus, even followers of ahimsa could consistently support some forms of animal exploitation. The Western religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have traditionally been more openly supportive of anthropocentrism, although not uni formly so. Holy writings have been translated and interpreted in a multitude of ways, and religious leaders have held diametrically opposed views on the moral status of nonhumans. To this day, observant Jews are not supposed to hunt for sport, but the Mosaic law included provisions for animal sacrifices to honor the deity or to expiate one’s sins (see Leviticus 19:20 for an Old Testament example). Jewish vegetarians and nonve getarians argue passionately for their views, based on different understandings of sacred texts. Muslims can argue similarly, pointing to different passages in the Koran, and the same holds for Christians who take differ ent views on the moral status of nonhumans. Anthropocentrism is a dominant theme in Western religious traditions, however. One much-discussed pas sage, Genesis 1:26, states that man is made in God’s image and given dominion over all other living beings. Some argue that this implies nonhumans exist only for human convenience and may be treated in any way whatever; others interpret it as meaning that God is giving humans stewardship over nonhuman animals, requiring us to use them responsibly rather than giving us carte blanche. Regardless of which way the passage is construed, it implies that the writer or writers of this verse believed humans to have a privileged moral place in creation. Those who do not regard the verse as a mere expression of anthropocentrism debate about the special respect in which humans may resemble the Deity. Some have claimed that the source of our alleged moral preeminence is the possession of an immortal soul, a gift from the immortal and eternal Creator. Skeptics would dismiss this interpretation entirely, but believers too have cause to reject it. There is in fact no evidence that the author(s) of Judeo-Christian scriptures believed that humans alone have immortal souls. In various passages of the Bible, souls, however that concept may be understood, are attributed to every living being and not just to human beings, and souls are nowhere denied to nonhuman ani mals. For example, Job 12:10 refers to ‘‘the soul of every living thing,’’ as does Jeremiah 9:10. See also Hosea 2:18 and Isaiah 65:17, 25. Moreover, as Cardinal (later ‘Saint’) Bellarmine (1542–1621) noted, if it were true that only
humans have immortal souls, it would seem that the infliction of pain on nonhumans would be even more morally reprehensible than making human beings suffer because nonhumans could not be compensated for their undeserved pain in an afterlife. Thus, the frequently held belief that humans alone have immortal souls is not only unsupported but also irrelevant to the issue of nonhuman moral significance. Other theists hold that humans resemble God by being the only rational or intelligent creatures, finite though those capacities are. Some, in fact, identify the rational capacity with the having of an immortal soul. Could this be a major morally relevant difference between humans and nonhuman animals? Such was the contention of the still enormously influential St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–74). Because the belief that human rationality gives us a higher degree of moral significance than nonhumans is often given secular expression, Aquinas’ arguments will now be addressed in a broader, philosophical, context. Traditional Philosophical Views on Human and Nonhuman Moral Significance Aquinas’ chief philosophical inspiration was a pagan phi losopher, Aristotle (384–322 BCE). Aquinas made it his life’s work to reconcile Aristotle’s writings with Holy Scriptures and their interpretations by church fathers. ‘‘The Philosopher,’’ as Aquinas always called him, attrib uted souls to all living things, but these souls were ordered from lowest to highest: the nutritive, the appeti tive, the sensory, the locomotive, and the intellectual. Aristotle held that each soul a step higher on the scale retained the lower soul capacities. Not surprisingly, the intellectual soul gets pride of place. Only humans (although not all humans) can have such souls. Beings with irrational souls are inferior, he believed, and there fore properly subservient to their superiors. Hence the rational should rule the irrational, the latter having been created by nature to serve the former. Aristotle took his views to have similar implications for irrational humans, who ought to be slaves of their alleged superiors. Aquinas added his own interpretation of the scriptures to ‘the Philosopher’s’ views, substituting God for nature. ‘‘The divine likeness’’ between humans and God pro claimed in Genesis 1:26 is intellect, and ‘‘dominion’’ of humans over beasts is interpreted as the proper rule of the rational over the irrational. The latter have no value as such in God’s eyes: They exist purely for the purposes of the rational. Although Aquinas did not use the language of rights, his view entails that humans alone can be morally significant. Half a millennium later, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) likewise expressed the view that rational beings alone are ends in themselves, whereas nonrational beings are merely means for the satisfaction of the former. One can wrong rational beings but not things.
Animal Rights
How does Aquinas reconcile his views with the parts of the Bible that appear to enjoin kindness to beasts and birds? Ingeniously, he postulates that cruelty to nonhu mans can only be wrong if it indirectly harms only morally significant creatures: humans. One either damages someone’s (perhaps one’s own) property or, more significantly, becomes more likely to practice cruelty against humans. Many criticisms have been raised against Aquinas’ discussion of cruelty. Perhaps the best way to dramatize misgivings would be to imagine the following situation. Suppose the neighbors’ cognitively challenged child is playing by himself in their yard. Presumably, all agree that it would be wrong to use the child for target practice. According to Aquinas’ account, however, it would be wrong because either (1) one is damaging one’s neighbors’ property without their consent or (2) one’s action may make it more likely that you will target your rational neighbors next. Something seems seriously amiss with this account. One is instead inclined to believe that the child would be the chief victim of one’s action, which presumes that he is morally significant in his own right. He is, after all, not an unattended mechanical toy but, rather, an innocent sentient being. Why should his lack of rationality disqualify him from moral consideration? It appears that the child’s ability to suffer is a morally relevant characteristic. If so, sentient nonhumans can also be wronged. French philosopher Rene´ Descartes (1596–1650) offered a way out of the preceding dilemma. He proposed that beings that are not rational are incapable of suffering. He held that nonhuman animals are merely organic machines without consciousness, unlike humans, who allegedly are amalgams of material bodies and immaterial minds (souls). Although he claims he does not deny that nonhuman ani mals are capable of sensation, he is denying that they can suffer. Because a nonhuman’s ‘sensation’ is supposedly not present to a mind, it cannot result in any experiences. It follows that one cannot be cruel to such a being, any more than one could be cruel (to use a current analogy) to a heatseeking missile when one blows it out of the sky. Descartes argues for his machine model of nonhuman animals by pointing out that (1) conscious beings are capable of language, whereas ‘beasts’ are not, and (2) nonhuman animal behavior is in no way indicative of thought. Both the premises and the inference from those premises have been roundly criticized throughout the years. Despite the fact that Descartes’ argument has seemed implausible to many, a number of scientists have accepted its conclusion, arguing that nonhuman animals are governed by instinct and stimuli, having no conscious ness to link outside forces and mechanical responses. Some philosophers, most notably Peter Carruthers, have also defended neo-Cartesian denials of nonhuman suffer ing. These new arguments have also been thoroughly
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criticized. Even if the Cartesian and neo-Cartesian argu ments had withstood all the counterarguments mounted against them, however, an implication disturbing to many would follow: Irrational humans (e.g., infants) would be incapable of suffering and thus have no right not to be tortured. Is cruelty to infants really an impossibility? How different are such humans from other animals?
Similarities between Humans and Other Animals Because these are empirical questions, we now turn to biology and ethology. Humans and nonhuman animals share a common ancestry, according to evolutionary the ory. Unlike Aquinas and Descartes, Charles Darwin (1809–82) viewed humans as part of the animal world, with mental attributes that might be more complex but not fundamentally different from those possessed by other animals. Here we have a secular version of St. Francis’ vision of the family of living beings. If all life on Earth has a common origin, with differences explainable in terms of the interaction of external factors and natural selection, as evidence overwhelmingly indicates, it would be extraor dinarily unlikely for humans to be the only creatures capable of consciousness. Consider the human brain, also known as the triune brain. It consists of the reptilian brain, shared by all vertebrates and correlated with terri toriality, homing, mating; the Paleomammalian brain or limbic system, shared by all mammals and intimately associated with emotions; and the neo-mammalian brain, present in more recently evolved mammals and closely connected to problem-solving and the like. Ethology, the field devoted to the study of nonhuman animal behavior from an evolutionary and comparative perspective, is rife with observations of behaviors that seem irreducible to mindless responses. Ethology pioneer Donald Griffin has meticulously documented such behaviors, as has Marc Bekoff. Even behaviorists assume that nonhumans can learn from experience: Indeed, they take dogs, pigeons, rats, etc., to be good models for human learning. Their cognitive ability can be at a very high level indeed. The capacity for self-awareness has long been thought to be restricted to rational beings. Besides humans, all the apes, elephants, and some birds have demonstrated this capa city. Griffin and his fellow ethologists appeal to Occam’s razor: It is far more difficult to explain complex behavior such as toolmaking (a skill that must be taught to baby chimpanzees by their elders) without the assumption of consciousness than it is to hypothesize problem-solving abilities. Similarly, behavior we associate with pain in ourselves in circumstances that would indeed be quite painful to us is most economically explained as a response to pain sensations. The same applies to apparently joyful, fearful, or angry behavior.
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The one capacity some humans have that might not be shared by nonhumans is the ability to make moral judg ments at the level required for moral responsibility. As far as we know, humans alone are capable of moral agency and thus appropriately subject to the criminal justice system. However, here too we see evidence of continuity between our species and others. Bekoff’s work, as well as neurologist and biologist Marc Hauser’s research, docu ments the nonhuman roots of so-called human moral behavior. Moral agency does not spring from nowhere: It has its psychological basis in a capacity we share with a number of other animals. The ability to empathize, to put oneself in another’s place, is necessary if one is to take moral account of the other’s concerns. Humans are not the only animals apparently able to imagine the situation of another, nor are they the only animals who act altruisti cally toward nonrelated beings. Sympathy springs from empathy. We see this in small human children, although they are not moral agents. Once more, the dilemma for opponents of nonhuman animal rights surfaces: If moral agency is thought to be required for the possession of basic moral rights, quite a large number of humans would be morally insignificant. If we make no such requirement, the moral significance of a large number of nonhumans cannot be excluded. In dealing with one another, moral agents take sen tience, the ability to experience pleasure and pain, to be highly relevant to moral decision making. When we con sider the consequences of our actions for others, we take account of their preferences, their goals, and whether they can care about what happens to them. Neurophysiological evidence indicates that all vertebrates are sentient; that all beings with limbic systems (i.e., all mammals) are capable of emotion; and that adult mammals, at least, are able to act purposefully. If the characteristics mentioned are morally relevant, are there any conclusions that could be drawn about the attribution of basic moral rights to nonhumans?
Human and Nonhuman Rights: Three Possible Positions It is plausible to hold that moral rights should be related to the capacities certain beings might have. Rocks can hardly be said to have a right to life, and plants cannot be said to have a right to humane treatment. When we consider humans and many nonhuman animals, as we have seen, it is difficult to find a morally relevant capacity shared by all humans and only by humans. In the case of capacities directly related to rationality, we find a differ ence in the complexity of the capacity – a difference in degree – among species and among humans. We do not find a fundamental difference in kind that sets humans apart from all nonhumans. With regard to sentience, it is
not even clear that there is a difference in degree. We have no good reason to deny that a cat – or, indeed, a human baby – subjected to strong electrical shock experi ences essentially the same pain as an adult human. Three rights positions are consistent with the empirical evi dence, as detailed next. Denial of Basic Rights to All If one assumes that nonhumans have no moral rights of any kind, the evidence that humans differ from certain nonhu mans in degree but not kind could lead one to deny rights to humans as well. Humans would be devalued to the nonhuman level, according to this view. Experimentation without informed consent, even if it leads to death, would be acceptable for humans and nonhumans alike. Raising and killing humans as well as nonhumans for food, if one has the taste for it, would likewise be permissible. Affirmation of Equal Basic Rights to Humans and Certain Nonhumans One might just as well conclude that humans and the other animals that share morally relevant properties with them are equally morally significant, possessing the same prima facie basic moral rights. Here, we see that certain nonhumans are elevated to the moral level of humans. An equal rights position is compatible with kill ing in self-defense, if no other option is open to one. However, if a moral agent respects a being’s right to life and that being poses no threat, he or she cannot rightfully eat or experiment on that being without consent, even if he or she would otherwise die. The Unequal Rights Position Finally, one can hold that the apparently higher degree to which humans are rational, creative, intelligent, and morally concerned entitles us to more rights than other animals. Sentient nonhumans might have the right to humane treatment, for example, but not the right to life. Another example of an unequal rights position would be the view that sentient nonhumans have a limited right to life, making it wrong for moral agents to kill them frivo lously or maliciously, but a right to life that is weaker (i.e., more easily overrideable) than that which humans pos sess. For example, if a human needs a baboon liver transplant, the human’s need overrides the life of the baboon, but a hunter who kills a baboon to make ash trays out of its hands would be violating the baboon’s right to life. The thoughtful and humane sacrifice of nonhumans for humans’ sake would be morally justified, respectful but cognizant of differences in moral signifi cance. As previously discussed, the unequal rights position has become increasingly popular in many circles.
Animal Rights
Let us now turn to the philosophical debate on these three rights positions.
Determining the Basis of Moral Rights Although he is a utilitarian rather than a rights theorist, Peter Singer made the following powerful point in his early writing on animal liberation. Our decision about who is entitled to such rights should not be based on morally irrelevant characteristics. Historically, powerful humans have assigned rights on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, ideology, class sta tus, wealth, and the like. These are classic forms of bigotry. If two individuals differ primarily in terms of race, gender, etc., they should not be treated differently morally. This does not mean that they should be treated in identical ways; for example, only adults can have autonomy rights. Singer puts it this way: The individuals’ interests – that is, their primary goals, such as life and well-being – should receive equal consideration (assum ing, of course, that those interests do not include the violation of others’ rights). Let us assume for now that living humans have the same basic moral rights. What could justify the ascription of these rights to them? Several different proposals have been made. As we progress through the proposals, the boundaries of moral consideration increase. Moral Agency Linked to the Concept of Rights It has been argued that only those capable of compre hending and making justified claims against others can meaningfully be said to have moral rights themselves. Political philosopher Carl Cohen and others have held that it is literally unintelligible (i.e., self-contradictory) to ascribe rights of any kind to beings who are not partici pants (for good or ill) in the moral community. Saying that beings who are not moral agents have moral rights is as incoherent as saying that bachelors have wives. As we have seen, nonhumans fall short of moral agency; there fore, Cohen concludes, rights are ‘‘necessarily human.’’ This argument makes short work of the animal rights position, but it fails the test of plausibility. It implies that supporters of nonhuman animal rights are massively con fused about language, which is a doubtful claim at best. Even if there is a concept of moral rights that entails the moral agency of rights bearers, this can hardly be the only concept. Beings with welfares, like infants, can sensibly be said to have the prima facie right not to be harmed. Were it literally self-contradictory to make such a claim, there would be no competent users of the language who would do so. In the face of the definitional move’s implausibility, one could try to argue instead that only moral agents are
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justifiably members of the moral community, which encompasses everyone qualified for moral consideration. Thus, a normative claim replaces the dubious definitional claim. Supporters of nonhuman animal rights would no longer be portrayed as contradicting themselves; they would simply be taking an unjustified position. Despite being an improvement on the first argument, however, the normative link between moral agency and moral rights is also implausible. Although it is highly relevant to the issue of moral responsibility to ask if a killer was capable of understanding the gravity of the deed, one may well wonder why moral agency should be thought to be necessary for moral significance. Again, if this were the case, babies, older children, psychotics, and other men tally disadvantaged humans would possess no moral rights. Finally, then, it is evident that the moral agency argument for rights actually contradicts the assertion that living humans – not just some of them – have basic moral rights. (As we shall see, however, some opponents of nonhuman animal rights are willing to accept this implication.) Rights Linked to Higher Intelligence One might hold that humans are more morally significant than nonhumans because their higher intelligence makes their lives more intrinsically valuable. Intelligence is not denied to other animals, but its lesser degree (as far as is known to us) is held to warrant either the denial alto gether of basic moral rights to nonhumans or the attribution of fewer basic moral rights to them than to humans. The latter position is identical to the ‘unequal rights’ view discussed previously. What reason can be given in favor of such a view? It may seem self-evident that greater intelligence leads to greater moral significance. After all, it results in a more complex life, a more variegated hierarchy of preferences, and an altogether richer way of experiencing and influen cing the world. Such a life has more value in itself, one might hold, than the far simpler existence possible for the less aware. On the other hand, one might well be suspi cious of the high value we place on a characteristic that is so closely linked to our species. This can hardly be called a disinterested point of view. Although this observation does not show the higher intelligence proposal to be false, it does shake one’s confidence in its alleged self-evidence. One’s confidence is further shaken by the following consideration. Anyone who believes that all living humans have basic moral rights unmatched by any that nonhumans might possess must reject this account of the basis of those rights. If one’s degree of intelligence largely determines one’s moral significance, some nonhuman animals would be more significant morally than some members of our own species. Chimpanzees, even dogs or cats, are more intelligent than some unfortunate
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humans. Moreover, the view implies that more intelligent humans would possess more rights, or stronger rights, than those who are less well endowed mentally would posses. This implication has been accepted by some, most notably Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), but it is not a position that can consistently be held by advocates of equal (basic) human rights. Rights Linked to Humanity One can, to be sure, retreat to the position that all and only living humans have basic moral rights precisely because they are human. This is the standard anthropo centric view. The difficulty raised by such a view, as Singer pointed out, is arbitrariness. Why should the char acteristic of being human be any more relevant morally than being white or male? Anthropocentrism is a variety of speciesism. Speciesists think it is morally permissible to discrimi nate between two otherwise similar individuals who differ in terms of species membership. The term was coined by Richard Ryder and popularized by Singer, who characterizes it as bias toward one’s conspecifics and against individuals belonging to other species. Speciesism, thus construed, is no more defensible than racism or sexism. James Rachels terms this position ‘‘unqualified speciesism.’’ Can the humanity proposal be buttressed by a more defensible concept of specie sism? Rachels distinguishes ‘‘qualified speciesism’’ from its prejudicial cousin. A qualified speciesist holds that species membership, in itself a morally irrelevant prop erty, is correlated with characteristics that are morally relevant. But do all humans possess morally relevant characteristics lacked by all nonhumans? The findings of ethology and moral psychology, as discussed pre viously, suggest a negative answer to this question. Rachels arrives at this answer himself, concluding that human and nonhuman characteristics overlap instead of being mutually exclusive. Other attempts have been made to show that species membership can be a morally relevant characteristic. In particular, it has been argued that any members of a species whose typical adults are moral agents should have full moral rights, even if they themselves are incap able of moral agency. Thus, a mentally handicapped human could be accorded maximum moral significance while a mentally equivalent chimpanzee would be denied it – without prejudice. Moreover, a nonhuman that is more intelligent than a human could justifiably have its organs harvested to save the life of that human, other things being equal, so long as its species – unlike the human species – is not characterized by moral agency. Attributing full basic moral rights to moral agents is not controversial, given one of our standard concepts of moral rights. However, how can advocates of this variety
of qualified speciesism justify the extension of those rights to beings who are not moral agents, although they belong to moral-agency-characterized species? Various defenses of this extension have appealed to charity, potential, mis fortune, kinship, and the like. Each such argument has been strongly challenged. Unless a case can be made for according moral rights on the basis of membership in a species characterized by moral agency, regardless of one’s own capacities, this version of speciesism also fails to account for human rights.
Rights Linked to Sentience The search for a lowest common denominator to justify the ascription of equal basic moral rights to living humans leads one to the sentience proposal. Singer originally suggested sentience as the basis of moral consideration, although not of rights because as a utilitarian he rejects that concept. (However, he soon thereafter qualified his view to assign greater moral significance to a subset of sentient beings: self-conscious beings. Because the latter have more preferences, they could contribute more to aggregate utility. Singer’s revised proposal is subject to the same objections lodged against the higher intelligence proposal as well as to those objections made against uti litarianism.) Sentient beings are capable of having experiences and preferences, and they seem able to care about what happens to them, on however primitive a level. If we accord basic moral rights to them on this basis, consistency requires us to include all sentient beings within the sphere of moral consideration, regardless of their species. Moral agents should not deprive other sen tient beings of life or well-being if self-defense does not demand it or if those beings’ own best interests are not served by such actions (euthanasia, for example, might be in a being’s best interests). Any human who is not irreversibly insentient would have maximum moral significance on this view; as would any such nonhuman. (Note that if a case can be made for the moral relevance of potential sentience, moral signif icance would also be attributable to pre-sentient fetuses. It is beyond the scope of this article to pursue this issue.) It is unlikely in the extreme that bacteria and sponges, for example, are sentient, and it is overwhelmingly prob able that mammals and birds are sentient; indeed, it is probable that all vertebrates are sentient. Other animals are far less likely to be sentient. Empirical science is the best guide to which beings are probably capable of hav ing experiences. The sentience proposal forces anthropocentrists to examine their moral consistency. If living humans who are not irreversibly incapable of having experiences have equal basic moral rights, then so do many nonhuman animals.
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Two Arguments for the Rights of Sentient Beings It does not follow from these arguments that sentient beings are therefore due moral rights. One may attain consistency by simply rejecting the view that all humans have basic moral rights, attributing rights to some humans only and to no nonhumans. The higher intelligence proposal thus res urfaces in an unabashedly nonanthropocentrist manner. Proponents of nonhuman, let alone human, rights need to move beyond appeals to consistency and offer positive non speciesist arguments for the ascription of basic moral rights to sentient beings.
Regan’s Appeal to the Criteria for a Satisfactory Moral Theory Tom Regan, author of the classic The Case for Animal Rights, is the father of animal rights theory. He argues that a satisfactory moral theory must be consistent, have an adequate scope, be precise, be simple, and must con form to our reflective intuitions about rightness and wrongness. He holds that nothing less than his view, which attributes basic moral rights to ‘‘subjects-of-lives,’’ qualifies as a satisfactory moral theory. Here, Regan joins Singer in according moral significance to beings with interests expressed by preferences, even as he departs from Singer in making the case for our according moral rights to each such being. Subjects-of-lives have beliefs and preferences, even if only on a rather low level: Clear cases, he holds, include normally developed mammals of at least 1 year. According to Regan, all subjects of lives, regardless of their varying mental capacities, have ‘‘equal inherent value’’ (i.e., equal moral significance), and that value requires moral agents to accord them maximum respect. In short, all of them, independently of their species and their value for moral agents, have equal basic moral rights. Regan argues that alternative moral theories fail to satisfy one or more criteria for a satisfac tory moral theory, unlike his own rights view. Utilitarianism is rejected because of its clash with our considered intuitions about rightness and wrongness, anthropocentrism is dismissed as groundless, and views connecting higher moral significance to higher intelli gence are shown to clash with our intuitions that children and the mentally disadvantaged are no less important than normal adults. Regan’s opponents have responded that he has biased the case against them by including the highly subjective intuition criterion, how ever reflective those intuitions may be. Those willing to accept devalued rights for less intelligent humans (and no significant rights for nonhumans) will be unmoved by the argument.
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The Appeal to the Preconditions of Agency Evelyn Pluhar has offered another way of making a case for the rights of beings with preferences, even if they are not capable of moral agency, which is as follows. Philosopher Alan Gewirth provides the inspiration for the theory, although he would not endorse its extension to nonhuman animals. The following argument pertains to any being capable of acting to achieve goals (i.e., to any agent). Its conclusion is in keeping with Aristotle’s tele ological emphasis and Singer’s principle of the equal consideration of interests, but it is firmly rooted in moral rights theory. Agents by definition act intentionally (i.e., purposefully); they seek goals. To act purposefully requires that one values the goal pursued. General goals pursued by agents qua agents are life, health, and some qualities of life. Fundamental to achieving these are the basic goods of freedom and well being, without which action cannot occur. Agents capable of reflection and of linking the goal with what is needed to achieve the goal must hold that others should not interfere with their freedom and well-being. Otherwise, agents would contradict themselves, holding both (1) ‘‘I must have freedom and well-being’’ and (2) ‘‘Others are permitted to deprive me of them.’’ Thus, they claim the basic right of noninterference, and their justification for doing so is the very fact that they are agents. Now, the next step is that consistency requires agents to extend the same right of noninterference to other agents, who have the same justified claims to make against them. The rights claim is thus universalized, obligating agents to respecting one another’s freedom and well-being. Empirical psychological and ethological evidence supports the conten tion that numerous nonhumans and humans are agents, even though they may not be capable of the abstract conceptual thought required for moral agency. However, what about humans and nonhumans who have desires and needs, as agents do, but who are unable to fulfill their desires on their own? Individuals who are too young or too physically or mentally impaired to be agents still have desires and needs that they want satisfied (e.g., food, water, warmth, shelter, and love). They are sentient. The fact that they cannot achieve these goals on their own does not mean that they have no rights: It means that they need more assistance than nonin terference. Babies, children, the severely mentally disabled, the insane, and the senile are sentient nonagents. So are some very young and relatively simple nonhuman animals. If reflective agents must, to be consistent, accord rights to others with desires they want to have fulfilled, all sentient nonagents who have preferences should likewise have rights accorded to them. Two defenses of a rights theory that encompasses sentient humans and nonhumans have now been offered. Some critics have targeted the conclusion each reaches as flawed, as we shall now see. Two such objections and replies to them shall now be considered.
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The Predation Objection Environmental ethicists have charged that the sentience proposal for rights would obligate moral agents to protect the rights of prey as well as predators in the wild. If prey and predators are all rights bearers, this gives moral agents contradictory obligations: Whose rights should prevail? Regan has replied that nonhuman predators, because they are not moral agents, do not violate the rights of their prey. Noninterference is required on our part if we are to avoid violating the rights of wolves or rabbits. Therefore, moral agents such as ourselves have no general obligation to assist the prey, which are in any case evolutionarily equipped to fend for themselves, but we do have the general obligation to refrain from interfering in preda tor–prey relations.
The Feminist Objection Feminist ethicists and ecofeminists have raised a more fundamental objection. They hold that any rights view, whether anthropocentrist or not, entails that logic, impar tial justice, and individualism trump emotions (especially caring), partiality, and the community. According to these critics, the first three qualities are quintessentially male, whereas the last three are feminine. Thus, rights theories are rejected as patriarchal. Regan and others have replied that the feminist-based objection is as biased as any patriarchal view, albeit in the opposite direction. Moreover, putting reason and justice in opposition to emotion and caring commits the fallacy of false dilemma. Logic and consistency can and should go hand in hand with empathy and sympathy.
Conclusion: Implications of the Rights View for Nonhuman Animal Treatment If all sentient beings have basic moral rights, many of the ways in which humans routinely treat nonhumans are morally wrong. Inhumane treatment of nonhumans on factory farms, in laboratories, and in the wild would not be permissible. Human moral agents would not be entitled to treat any sentient being, no matter how huma nely, as a mere means to their own ends. If it is wrong to confine and harm or kill humans for food, research, or product testing, it would be equally wrong to so treat sentient nonhumans. Conversely, if it were ever accepta ble to kill a human being, as in a case of self-defense, it would be equally acceptable in those circumstances to kill a sentient nonhuman.
Currently, animal rights activists are debating about the best strategies to pursue in order to change the traditional uses of animals. Opponents of nonhuman animal rights are fighting such attempts philosophically and politically. Each side needs to take the others’ argu ments very seriously because a great deal depends on who is correct. See also: Abortion; Anthropocentrism; Animal Research; Autonomy; Discrimination, Concept of; Environmental Ethics, Overview; Feminist Ethics; Fetus; Human Rights; Racism; Rights Theory; Sexism; Speciesism; Utilitarianism.
Further Reading Aquinas T and Rickaby J (2006) Of God and His Creatures: An Annotated Translation of the Summa Contra Gentiles of St. Thomas Aquinas. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger. Aristotle (1941) The Basic Works of Aristotle (McKeon R, trans.). New York: Random House. Bentham J (1945). Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. New York: Columbia University Press. Bekoff M (2007) The Emotional Lives of Animals. Novato, CA: New World Library. Cohen C (1986) The case for the use of animals in biomedical research. New England Journal of Medicine 315: 865–870. Descartes R (2007) Discourse on Method (Kennington R, trans.). Newburyport, MA: Focus. Gewirth A (1978) Reason and Morality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Griffin D (1992) Animal Minds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hauser M (2007) Moral Minds: The Nature of Right and Wrong. New York: HarperCollins. Kant I (1981) Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals (Ellington J, trans.). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Pluhar E (1995) Beyond Prejudice: The Moral Significance of Human and Nonhuman Animals. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Rachels J (1990) Created from Animals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Regan T (1983) The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press. Regan T (2001) Defending Animal Rights. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Singer P (1975) Animal Liberation. New York: Avon.
Biographical Sketch Evelyn Pluhar was born in Harlan, Kentucky. She received her B.A. with Honors in Philosophy from the University of Denver. She received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Michigan. She is Professor of Philosophy at The Pennsylvania State University, Fayette Campus. She has received three Excellence in Teaching Awards, including the 2009 George W. Atherton Award for Excellence in Teaching. She has also received three Excellence in Research and Scholarship Awards. Her research specialty is moral theory. She has authored more than 30 scholarly articles, contributed to many books, and is the author of Beyond Prejudice: The Moral Significance of Human and Nonhuman Animals.
Glossary Anthropocentrism The view that human beings are the only, or the primary, bearers of moral rights. Ethology The study of nonhuman animal behavior from an evolutionary and comparative perspective. Moral agents Beings capable of understanding and acting upon moral principles. Moral rights Justified claims against moral agents by or on behalf of morally considerable beings – for example, noninterference and assistance. Moral rights, basic Moral rights shared by all highly morally significant beings – for example, the right to life and the right not to be tortured. Moral rights, nonbasic Moral rights held by a subset of morally considerable beings – for example, the right to freedom.
Introduction Animal rights, or more precisely nonhuman animal rights, would entitle certain nonhumans to respectful treatment by moral agents. As far as is known, human beings alone are capable of understanding and acting on moral princi ples – that is, of being moral agents – so it is they who would be obliged to treat, and refrain from treating, nonhumans in respectful or disrespectful ways. If these nonhumans have moral rights, it follows that they are morally significant beings – that is, beings worthy of moral consideration. Beings who are equally morally sig nificant (e.g., a child and a typical human adult) need not have all the same rights, but they do share basic rights, such as a right to life and a right not to be tortured. (Note that basic rights are prima facie: They are not claimed to be absolute or indefeasible. Moral agents’ infliction of death or suffering upon one might be justified if it is one’s own rational choice or in one’s own best interests, or if moral agents cannot avoid such consequences when they act in self-defense.) Equally morally significant beings, while sharing basic rights, do not all have the same rights as any typical adult human, however. Nonbasic moral rights, such as autonomy rights, are held only by beings with the capacity to exercise those rights. Different humans may have widely different nonbasic rights; the same might hold for dogs, cows, tigers, and the like, in comparison to typical adult humans. The
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Moral rights, prima facie Rights that may justifiably be overridden. For example, a morally significant being’s right not to be made to suffer may be overridden by moral agents if suffering is required to save the being’s life. Morally significant beings Beings who are proper subjects of moral agents’ concerns. Sentient beings Beings capable of having experiences, including pleasurable and painful experiences. Speciesism The view that moral weight should be given to species membership. Utilitarianism The view that moral agents have one fundamental obligation – (roughly) to maximize nonmoral value (‘utility,’ which has most often been identified with happiness or preference satisfaction).
debate over animal rights is a debate about basic moral rights. Do any nonhuman animals have a prima facie right to life or a prima facie right not to be made to suffer at human hands? Current practices indicate that humans have not thought so. Raising and killing nonhumans for food, rai ment, research, education, and product testing presume that they have no significant right to life. Sport hunting and trapping make the same presumption. Agriculture, research, and testing claim the most nonhuman lives, with hunting, trapping, and recreation claiming significant lives as well. Worldwide, animals raised for food number in the tens of billions; those killed for research, product testing, and education number in the tens of millions. One might hold that some animals have no serious right to life but do have a prima facie right not to be treated inhuma nely. Currently, many animals used for the preceding purposes are subjected to conditions that would be very painful for humans. Some of the pain caused is often defended as an unavoidable consequence of procedures claimed to be important to human life and health. This position is compatible with the attribution of some rights to nonhumans: One might hold that they have a prima facie right to humane treatment that can be overridden by the need to preserve allegedly more morally significant lives. However, no such justification is possible when the pain is avoidable or the purpose nonessential for human welfare. Defenders of such practices as confining calves to
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2-foot-wide crates or five hens to a cage the size of a folded newspaper, as well as those who see nothing wrong with crushing the chest of an animal caught in a leghold trap or with beating circus animals, assume that these beings have no right to humane treatment at all. Animal rights supporters have directly challenged these assump tions and the practices based on them, making the case that many nonhumans have highly morally significant lives. One may hold that nonhuman animals have significant moral status without attributing rights to them, however. As we shall discuss, utilitarianism offers a different per spective – one that rights theorists reject.
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moral status of nonhuman animals. This much may be said, however: According to rights theorists, any version of utilitarianism, no matter how carefully conceived it may be, fails to provide sufficient warrant for the protec tion of innocent life. Only aggregate utility counts, regardless of how unjust such an outcome seems to be. Throwing an innocent prisoner to an infuriated mob might lead to more satisfaction in the world, but it is grossly disrespectful of that person. If overall satisfaction were to be increased by the calibrated forced breeding of ‘utility generators,’ that is what we should do as utilitar ians, even if the quality of life for each created individual is very low. Therefore, the philosophical nonhuman ani mal rights movement is opposed to utilitarianism.
The Rights View versus Utilitarianism The Roots of Anthropocentrism The contemporary philosopher who named and is most associated with the twentieth-century animal liberation movement, Peter Singer, is not a philosophical advocate of rights, although he originally spoke loosely of rights in the purely legalistic sense. Singer is a utilitarian. Utilitarianism in its classic form is the view that moral agents have one fundamental obligation: to maximize utility (which has most often been identified with happi ness or, as Singer has argued, preference satisfaction). Singer traces the roots of his view to the original utilitar ian, Jeremy Bentham (1748–1842), who held that society’s goal should be the greatest happiness for the greatest number of individuals. Bentham held that any being cap able of suffering (i.e., any sentient being) should have his or her experiences taken into account by utilitarian cal culations. Thus, the overall utility that would be generated by a given action determines the rightness of that action. By contrast, rights theorists hold that the rightness of an act is not exhausted by the act’s conse quences. Individuals with basic moral rights should have those rights respected by moral agents, even if the sum total of happiness generated might be less than would result if those rights were violated. Since Bentham’s day, many sophisticated variations on classic hedonistic utilitarianism, which identifies utility with pleasure and disutility with pain, have been proposed. Some versions are pluralistic (identifying utility with a variety of goods, not merely with pleasure) rather than hedonistic; moreover, not every type of utilitarianism iden tifies rightness with the utility produced by an act. One might focus instead on the utility generated by following a given rule or by following a rule that would be generally accepted by society. In his later writings, Singer proposes ‘‘preference utilitarianism,’’ which stipulates that, at least for self-conscious beings, satisfied preferences, and not just unreflective pleasures, are equivalent to utility. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the ramifications of different utilitarian theories for the
The view that nonhumans have basic moral rights stands in opposition to anthropocentrism, the presumption that humans are the sole or the primary morally significant beings on the planet. Although we humans have always made exceptions for favored nonhumans, we have typically accorded substantially less moral significance to nonhuman animals than to ourselves. Anthropocentrism is deeply rooted in religious and philosophical points of view. Religious Influences Religions traditionally reflect and reinforce a culture’s deepest ideals. The place of nonhumans in various reli gious doctrines is therefore quite revealing. The major religious traditions of the West and the East cannot be said to have attributed rights to nonhumans. Nonetheless, some of these traditions accord a higher moral signifi cance to nonhuman animals than do others. Indeed, some, upon first glance, appear to be the opposite of anthropo centric. Approximately 3000 years before Christ’s birth, the ancient Sanskrit Vedas spelled out the doctrine of ahimsa, according to which all life should be respected. This doctrine continues to be fundamental to many Eastern religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism. The ahimsa doctrine is compatible with the attri bution of different degrees of moral significance to varieties of living beings, however. According to some soul transmigration beliefs, a soul that is reincarnated as a nonhuman is a former human who is being punished for misdeeds. This is an anthropocentric doctrine, although its implications for the treatment of nonhumans are more favorable than is the case for straightforward Western anthropocentrism. Ahimsa has been interpreted to pre suppose that a soul (either one world soul or many individual souls) changes bodily identities through a suc cession of lives, unless and until ultimate enlightenment is obtained. The chicken you eat may be your grandmother;
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the fly your grandchild swats 30 years from now may be you. Compassion toward living beings thus appears to be an extension of regard for oneself and one’s human loved ones. This too is an anthropocentric doctrine. Moreover, this compassion is compatible with some killing for human purposes: The soul cannot be killed, according to such a view, and in fact the soul may be thought to be benefited if it is released to a worthier body. Thus, even followers of ahimsa could consistently support some forms of animal exploitation. The Western religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have traditionally been more openly supportive of anthropocentrism, although not uni formly so. Holy writings have been translated and interpreted in a multitude of ways, and religious leaders have held diametrically opposed views on the moral status of nonhumans. To this day, observant Jews are not supposed to hunt for sport, but the Mosaic law included provisions for animal sacrifices to honor the deity or to expiate one’s sins (see Leviticus 19:20 for an Old Testament example). Jewish vegetarians and nonve getarians argue passionately for their views, based on different understandings of sacred texts. Muslims can argue similarly, pointing to different passages in the Koran, and the same holds for Christians who take differ ent views on the moral status of nonhumans. Anthropocentrism is a dominant theme in Western religious traditions, however. One much-discussed pas sage, Genesis 1:26, states that man is made in God’s image and given dominion over all other living beings. Some argue that this implies nonhumans exist only for human convenience and may be treated in any way whatever; others interpret it as meaning that God is giving humans stewardship over nonhuman animals, requiring us to use them responsibly rather than giving us carte blanche. Regardless of which way the passage is construed, it implies that the writer or writers of this verse believed humans to have a privileged moral place in creation. Those who do not regard the verse as a mere expression of anthropocentrism debate about the special respect in which humans may resemble the Deity. Some have claimed that the source of our alleged moral preeminence is the possession of an immortal soul, a gift from the immortal and eternal Creator. Skeptics would dismiss this interpretation entirely, but believers too have cause to reject it. There is in fact no evidence that the author(s) of Judeo-Christian scriptures believed that humans alone have immortal souls. In various passages of the Bible, souls, however that concept may be understood, are attributed to every living being and not just to human beings, and souls are nowhere denied to nonhuman ani mals. For example, Job 12:10 refers to ‘‘the soul of every living thing,’’ as does Jeremiah 9:10. See also Hosea 2:18 and Isaiah 65:17, 25. Moreover, as Cardinal (later ‘Saint’) Bellarmine (1542–1621) noted, if it were true that only
humans have immortal souls, it would seem that the infliction of pain on nonhumans would be even more morally reprehensible than making human beings suffer because nonhumans could not be compensated for their undeserved pain in an afterlife. Thus, the frequently held belief that humans alone have immortal souls is not only unsupported but also irrelevant to the issue of nonhuman moral significance. Other theists hold that humans resemble God by being the only rational or intelligent creatures, finite though those capacities are. Some, in fact, identify the rational capacity with the having of an immortal soul. Could this be a major morally relevant difference between humans and nonhuman animals? Such was the contention of the still enormously influential St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–74). Because the belief that human rationality gives us a higher degree of moral significance than nonhumans is often given secular expression, Aquinas’ arguments will now be addressed in a broader, philosophical, context. Traditional Philosophical Views on Human and Nonhuman Moral Significance Aquinas’ chief philosophical inspiration was a pagan phi losopher, Aristotle (384–322 BCE). Aquinas made it his life’s work to reconcile Aristotle’s writings with Holy Scriptures and their interpretations by church fathers. ‘‘The Philosopher,’’ as Aquinas always called him, attrib uted souls to all living things, but these souls were ordered from lowest to highest: the nutritive, the appeti tive, the sensory, the locomotive, and the intellectual. Aristotle held that each soul a step higher on the scale retained the lower soul capacities. Not surprisingly, the intellectual soul gets pride of place. Only humans (although not all humans) can have such souls. Beings with irrational souls are inferior, he believed, and there fore properly subservient to their superiors. Hence the rational should rule the irrational, the latter having been created by nature to serve the former. Aristotle took his views to have similar implications for irrational humans, who ought to be slaves of their alleged superiors. Aquinas added his own interpretation of the scriptures to ‘the Philosopher’s’ views, substituting God for nature. ‘‘The divine likeness’’ between humans and God pro claimed in Genesis 1:26 is intellect, and ‘‘dominion’’ of humans over beasts is interpreted as the proper rule of the rational over the irrational. The latter have no value as such in God’s eyes: They exist purely for the purposes of the rational. Although Aquinas did not use the language of rights, his view entails that humans alone can be morally significant. Half a millennium later, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) likewise expressed the view that rational beings alone are ends in themselves, whereas nonrational beings are merely means for the satisfaction of the former. One can wrong rational beings but not things.
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How does Aquinas reconcile his views with the parts of the Bible that appear to enjoin kindness to beasts and birds? Ingeniously, he postulates that cruelty to nonhu mans can only be wrong if it indirectly harms only morally significant creatures: humans. One either damages someone’s (perhaps one’s own) property or, more significantly, becomes more likely to practice cruelty against humans. Many criticisms have been raised against Aquinas’ discussion of cruelty. Perhaps the best way to dramatize misgivings would be to imagine the following situation. Suppose the neighbors’ cognitively challenged child is playing by himself in their yard. Presumably, all agree that it would be wrong to use the child for target practice. According to Aquinas’ account, however, it would be wrong because either (1) one is damaging one’s neighbors’ property without their consent or (2) one’s action may make it more likely that you will target your rational neighbors next. Something seems seriously amiss with this account. One is instead inclined to believe that the child would be the chief victim of one’s action, which presumes that he is morally significant in his own right. He is, after all, not an unattended mechanical toy but, rather, an innocent sentient being. Why should his lack of rationality disqualify him from moral consideration? It appears that the child’s ability to suffer is a morally relevant characteristic. If so, sentient nonhumans can also be wronged. French philosopher Rene´ Descartes (1596–1650) offered a way out of the preceding dilemma. He proposed that beings that are not rational are incapable of suffering. He held that nonhuman animals are merely organic machines without consciousness, unlike humans, who allegedly are amalgams of material bodies and immaterial minds (souls). Although he claims he does not deny that nonhuman ani mals are capable of sensation, he is denying that they can suffer. Because a nonhuman’s ‘sensation’ is supposedly not present to a mind, it cannot result in any experiences. It follows that one cannot be cruel to such a being, any more than one could be cruel (to use a current analogy) to a heatseeking missile when one blows it out of the sky. Descartes argues for his machine model of nonhuman animals by pointing out that (1) conscious beings are capable of language, whereas ‘beasts’ are not, and (2) nonhuman animal behavior is in no way indicative of thought. Both the premises and the inference from those premises have been roundly criticized throughout the years. Despite the fact that Descartes’ argument has seemed implausible to many, a number of scientists have accepted its conclusion, arguing that nonhuman animals are governed by instinct and stimuli, having no conscious ness to link outside forces and mechanical responses. Some philosophers, most notably Peter Carruthers, have also defended neo-Cartesian denials of nonhuman suffer ing. These new arguments have also been thoroughly
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criticized. Even if the Cartesian and neo-Cartesian argu ments had withstood all the counterarguments mounted against them, however, an implication disturbing to many would follow: Irrational humans (e.g., infants) would be incapable of suffering and thus have no right not to be tortured. Is cruelty to infants really an impossibility? How different are such humans from other animals?
Similarities between Humans and Other Animals Because these are empirical questions, we now turn to biology and ethology. Humans and nonhuman animals share a common ancestry, according to evolutionary the ory. Unlike Aquinas and Descartes, Charles Darwin (1809–82) viewed humans as part of the animal world, with mental attributes that might be more complex but not fundamentally different from those possessed by other animals. Here we have a secular version of St. Francis’ vision of the family of living beings. If all life on Earth has a common origin, with differences explainable in terms of the interaction of external factors and natural selection, as evidence overwhelmingly indicates, it would be extraor dinarily unlikely for humans to be the only creatures capable of consciousness. Consider the human brain, also known as the triune brain. It consists of the reptilian brain, shared by all vertebrates and correlated with terri toriality, homing, mating; the Paleomammalian brain or limbic system, shared by all mammals and intimately associated with emotions; and the neo-mammalian brain, present in more recently evolved mammals and closely connected to problem-solving and the like. Ethology, the field devoted to the study of nonhuman animal behavior from an evolutionary and comparative perspective, is rife with observations of behaviors that seem irreducible to mindless responses. Ethology pioneer Donald Griffin has meticulously documented such behaviors, as has Marc Bekoff. Even behaviorists assume that nonhumans can learn from experience: Indeed, they take dogs, pigeons, rats, etc., to be good models for human learning. Their cognitive ability can be at a very high level indeed. The capacity for self-awareness has long been thought to be restricted to rational beings. Besides humans, all the apes, elephants, and some birds have demonstrated this capa city. Griffin and his fellow ethologists appeal to Occam’s razor: It is far more difficult to explain complex behavior such as toolmaking (a skill that must be taught to baby chimpanzees by their elders) without the assumption of consciousness than it is to hypothesize problem-solving abilities. Similarly, behavior we associate with pain in ourselves in circumstances that would indeed be quite painful to us is most economically explained as a response to pain sensations. The same applies to apparently joyful, fearful, or angry behavior.
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The one capacity some humans have that might not be shared by nonhumans is the ability to make moral judg ments at the level required for moral responsibility. As far as we know, humans alone are capable of moral agency and thus appropriately subject to the criminal justice system. However, here too we see evidence of continuity between our species and others. Bekoff’s work, as well as neurologist and biologist Marc Hauser’s research, docu ments the nonhuman roots of so-called human moral behavior. Moral agency does not spring from nowhere: It has its psychological basis in a capacity we share with a number of other animals. The ability to empathize, to put oneself in another’s place, is necessary if one is to take moral account of the other’s concerns. Humans are not the only animals apparently able to imagine the situation of another, nor are they the only animals who act altruisti cally toward nonrelated beings. Sympathy springs from empathy. We see this in small human children, although they are not moral agents. Once more, the dilemma for opponents of nonhuman animal rights surfaces: If moral agency is thought to be required for the possession of basic moral rights, quite a large number of humans would be morally insignificant. If we make no such requirement, the moral significance of a large number of nonhumans cannot be excluded. In dealing with one another, moral agents take sen tience, the ability to experience pleasure and pain, to be highly relevant to moral decision making. When we con sider the consequences of our actions for others, we take account of their preferences, their goals, and whether they can care about what happens to them. Neurophysiological evidence indicates that all vertebrates are sentient; that all beings with limbic systems (i.e., all mammals) are capable of emotion; and that adult mammals, at least, are able to act purposefully. If the characteristics mentioned are morally relevant, are there any conclusions that could be drawn about the attribution of basic moral rights to nonhumans?
Human and Nonhuman Rights: Three Possible Positions It is plausible to hold that moral rights should be related to the capacities certain beings might have. Rocks can hardly be said to have a right to life, and plants cannot be said to have a right to humane treatment. When we consider humans and many nonhuman animals, as we have seen, it is difficult to find a morally relevant capacity shared by all humans and only by humans. In the case of capacities directly related to rationality, we find a differ ence in the complexity of the capacity – a difference in degree – among species and among humans. We do not find a fundamental difference in kind that sets humans apart from all nonhumans. With regard to sentience, it is
not even clear that there is a difference in degree. We have no good reason to deny that a cat – or, indeed, a human baby – subjected to strong electrical shock experi ences essentially the same pain as an adult human. Three rights positions are consistent with the empirical evi dence, as detailed next. Denial of Basic Rights to All If one assumes that nonhumans have no moral rights of any kind, the evidence that humans differ from certain nonhu mans in degree but not kind could lead one to deny rights to humans as well. Humans would be devalued to the nonhuman level, according to this view. Experimentation without informed consent, even if it leads to death, would be acceptable for humans and nonhumans alike. Raising and killing humans as well as nonhumans for food, if one has the taste for it, would likewise be permissible. Affirmation of Equal Basic Rights to Humans and Certain Nonhumans One might just as well conclude that humans and the other animals that share morally relevant properties with them are equally morally significant, possessing the same prima facie basic moral rights. Here, we see that certain nonhumans are elevated to the moral level of humans. An equal rights position is compatible with kill ing in self-defense, if no other option is open to one. However, if a moral agent respects a being’s right to life and that being poses no threat, he or she cannot rightfully eat or experiment on that being without consent, even if he or she would otherwise die. The Unequal Rights Position Finally, one can hold that the apparently higher degree to which humans are rational, creative, intelligent, and morally concerned entitles us to more rights than other animals. Sentient nonhumans might have the right to humane treatment, for example, but not the right to life. Another example of an unequal rights position would be the view that sentient nonhumans have a limited right to life, making it wrong for moral agents to kill them frivo lously or maliciously, but a right to life that is weaker (i.e., more easily overrideable) than that which humans pos sess. For example, if a human needs a baboon liver transplant, the human’s need overrides the life of the baboon, but a hunter who kills a baboon to make ash trays out of its hands would be violating the baboon’s right to life. The thoughtful and humane sacrifice of nonhumans for humans’ sake would be morally justified, respectful but cognizant of differences in moral signifi cance. As previously discussed, the unequal rights position has become increasingly popular in many circles.
Animal Rights
Let us now turn to the philosophical debate on these three rights positions.
Determining the Basis of Moral Rights Although he is a utilitarian rather than a rights theorist, Peter Singer made the following powerful point in his early writing on animal liberation. Our decision about who is entitled to such rights should not be based on morally irrelevant characteristics. Historically, powerful humans have assigned rights on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, ideology, class sta tus, wealth, and the like. These are classic forms of bigotry. If two individuals differ primarily in terms of race, gender, etc., they should not be treated differently morally. This does not mean that they should be treated in identical ways; for example, only adults can have autonomy rights. Singer puts it this way: The individuals’ interests – that is, their primary goals, such as life and well-being – should receive equal consideration (assum ing, of course, that those interests do not include the violation of others’ rights). Let us assume for now that living humans have the same basic moral rights. What could justify the ascription of these rights to them? Several different proposals have been made. As we progress through the proposals, the boundaries of moral consideration increase. Moral Agency Linked to the Concept of Rights It has been argued that only those capable of compre hending and making justified claims against others can meaningfully be said to have moral rights themselves. Political philosopher Carl Cohen and others have held that it is literally unintelligible (i.e., self-contradictory) to ascribe rights of any kind to beings who are not partici pants (for good or ill) in the moral community. Saying that beings who are not moral agents have moral rights is as incoherent as saying that bachelors have wives. As we have seen, nonhumans fall short of moral agency; there fore, Cohen concludes, rights are ‘‘necessarily human.’’ This argument makes short work of the animal rights position, but it fails the test of plausibility. It implies that supporters of nonhuman animal rights are massively con fused about language, which is a doubtful claim at best. Even if there is a concept of moral rights that entails the moral agency of rights bearers, this can hardly be the only concept. Beings with welfares, like infants, can sensibly be said to have the prima facie right not to be harmed. Were it literally self-contradictory to make such a claim, there would be no competent users of the language who would do so. In the face of the definitional move’s implausibility, one could try to argue instead that only moral agents are
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justifiably members of the moral community, which encompasses everyone qualified for moral consideration. Thus, a normative claim replaces the dubious definitional claim. Supporters of nonhuman animal rights would no longer be portrayed as contradicting themselves; they would simply be taking an unjustified position. Despite being an improvement on the first argument, however, the normative link between moral agency and moral rights is also implausible. Although it is highly relevant to the issue of moral responsibility to ask if a killer was capable of understanding the gravity of the deed, one may well wonder why moral agency should be thought to be necessary for moral significance. Again, if this were the case, babies, older children, psychotics, and other men tally disadvantaged humans would possess no moral rights. Finally, then, it is evident that the moral agency argument for rights actually contradicts the assertion that living humans – not just some of them – have basic moral rights. (As we shall see, however, some opponents of nonhuman animal rights are willing to accept this implication.) Rights Linked to Higher Intelligence One might hold that humans are more morally significant than nonhumans because their higher intelligence makes their lives more intrinsically valuable. Intelligence is not denied to other animals, but its lesser degree (as far as is known to us) is held to warrant either the denial alto gether of basic moral rights to nonhumans or the attribution of fewer basic moral rights to them than to humans. The latter position is identical to the ‘unequal rights’ view discussed previously. What reason can be given in favor of such a view? It may seem self-evident that greater intelligence leads to greater moral significance. After all, it results in a more complex life, a more variegated hierarchy of preferences, and an altogether richer way of experiencing and influen cing the world. Such a life has more value in itself, one might hold, than the far simpler existence possible for the less aware. On the other hand, one might well be suspi cious of the high value we place on a characteristic that is so closely linked to our species. This can hardly be called a disinterested point of view. Although this observation does not show the higher intelligence proposal to be false, it does shake one’s confidence in its alleged self-evidence. One’s confidence is further shaken by the following consideration. Anyone who believes that all living humans have basic moral rights unmatched by any that nonhumans might possess must reject this account of the basis of those rights. If one’s degree of intelligence largely determines one’s moral significance, some nonhuman animals would be more significant morally than some members of our own species. Chimpanzees, even dogs or cats, are more intelligent than some unfortunate
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humans. Moreover, the view implies that more intelligent humans would possess more rights, or stronger rights, than those who are less well endowed mentally would posses. This implication has been accepted by some, most notably Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), but it is not a position that can consistently be held by advocates of equal (basic) human rights. Rights Linked to Humanity One can, to be sure, retreat to the position that all and only living humans have basic moral rights precisely because they are human. This is the standard anthropo centric view. The difficulty raised by such a view, as Singer pointed out, is arbitrariness. Why should the char acteristic of being human be any more relevant morally than being white or male? Anthropocentrism is a variety of speciesism. Speciesists think it is morally permissible to discrimi nate between two otherwise similar individuals who differ in terms of species membership. The term was coined by Richard Ryder and popularized by Singer, who characterizes it as bias toward one’s conspecifics and against individuals belonging to other species. Speciesism, thus construed, is no more defensible than racism or sexism. James Rachels terms this position ‘‘unqualified speciesism.’’ Can the humanity proposal be buttressed by a more defensible concept of specie sism? Rachels distinguishes ‘‘qualified speciesism’’ from its prejudicial cousin. A qualified speciesist holds that species membership, in itself a morally irrelevant prop erty, is correlated with characteristics that are morally relevant. But do all humans possess morally relevant characteristics lacked by all nonhumans? The findings of ethology and moral psychology, as discussed pre viously, suggest a negative answer to this question. Rachels arrives at this answer himself, concluding that human and nonhuman characteristics overlap instead of being mutually exclusive. Other attempts have been made to show that species membership can be a morally relevant characteristic. In particular, it has been argued that any members of a species whose typical adults are moral agents should have full moral rights, even if they themselves are incap able of moral agency. Thus, a mentally handicapped human could be accorded maximum moral significance while a mentally equivalent chimpanzee would be denied it – without prejudice. Moreover, a nonhuman that is more intelligent than a human could justifiably have its organs harvested to save the life of that human, other things being equal, so long as its species – unlike the human species – is not characterized by moral agency. Attributing full basic moral rights to moral agents is not controversial, given one of our standard concepts of moral rights. However, how can advocates of this variety
of qualified speciesism justify the extension of those rights to beings who are not moral agents, although they belong to moral-agency-characterized species? Various defenses of this extension have appealed to charity, potential, mis fortune, kinship, and the like. Each such argument has been strongly challenged. Unless a case can be made for according moral rights on the basis of membership in a species characterized by moral agency, regardless of one’s own capacities, this version of speciesism also fails to account for human rights.
Rights Linked to Sentience The search for a lowest common denominator to justify the ascription of equal basic moral rights to living humans leads one to the sentience proposal. Singer originally suggested sentience as the basis of moral consideration, although not of rights because as a utilitarian he rejects that concept. (However, he soon thereafter qualified his view to assign greater moral significance to a subset of sentient beings: self-conscious beings. Because the latter have more preferences, they could contribute more to aggregate utility. Singer’s revised proposal is subject to the same objections lodged against the higher intelligence proposal as well as to those objections made against uti litarianism.) Sentient beings are capable of having experiences and preferences, and they seem able to care about what happens to them, on however primitive a level. If we accord basic moral rights to them on this basis, consistency requires us to include all sentient beings within the sphere of moral consideration, regardless of their species. Moral agents should not deprive other sen tient beings of life or well-being if self-defense does not demand it or if those beings’ own best interests are not served by such actions (euthanasia, for example, might be in a being’s best interests). Any human who is not irreversibly insentient would have maximum moral significance on this view; as would any such nonhuman. (Note that if a case can be made for the moral relevance of potential sentience, moral signif icance would also be attributable to pre-sentient fetuses. It is beyond the scope of this article to pursue this issue.) It is unlikely in the extreme that bacteria and sponges, for example, are sentient, and it is overwhelmingly prob able that mammals and birds are sentient; indeed, it is probable that all vertebrates are sentient. Other animals are far less likely to be sentient. Empirical science is the best guide to which beings are probably capable of hav ing experiences. The sentience proposal forces anthropocentrists to examine their moral consistency. If living humans who are not irreversibly incapable of having experiences have equal basic moral rights, then so do many nonhuman animals.
Animal Rights
Two Arguments for the Rights of Sentient Beings It does not follow from these arguments that sentient beings are therefore due moral rights. One may attain consistency by simply rejecting the view that all humans have basic moral rights, attributing rights to some humans only and to no nonhumans. The higher intelligence proposal thus res urfaces in an unabashedly nonanthropocentrist manner. Proponents of nonhuman, let alone human, rights need to move beyond appeals to consistency and offer positive non speciesist arguments for the ascription of basic moral rights to sentient beings.
Regan’s Appeal to the Criteria for a Satisfactory Moral Theory Tom Regan, author of the classic The Case for Animal Rights, is the father of animal rights theory. He argues that a satisfactory moral theory must be consistent, have an adequate scope, be precise, be simple, and must con form to our reflective intuitions about rightness and wrongness. He holds that nothing less than his view, which attributes basic moral rights to ‘‘subjects-of-lives,’’ qualifies as a satisfactory moral theory. Here, Regan joins Singer in according moral significance to beings with interests expressed by preferences, even as he departs from Singer in making the case for our according moral rights to each such being. Subjects-of-lives have beliefs and preferences, even if only on a rather low level: Clear cases, he holds, include normally developed mammals of at least 1 year. According to Regan, all subjects of lives, regardless of their varying mental capacities, have ‘‘equal inherent value’’ (i.e., equal moral significance), and that value requires moral agents to accord them maximum respect. In short, all of them, independently of their species and their value for moral agents, have equal basic moral rights. Regan argues that alternative moral theories fail to satisfy one or more criteria for a satisfac tory moral theory, unlike his own rights view. Utilitarianism is rejected because of its clash with our considered intuitions about rightness and wrongness, anthropocentrism is dismissed as groundless, and views connecting higher moral significance to higher intelli gence are shown to clash with our intuitions that children and the mentally disadvantaged are no less important than normal adults. Regan’s opponents have responded that he has biased the case against them by including the highly subjective intuition criterion, how ever reflective those intuitions may be. Those willing to accept devalued rights for less intelligent humans (and no significant rights for nonhumans) will be unmoved by the argument.
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The Appeal to the Preconditions of Agency Evelyn Pluhar has offered another way of making a case for the rights of beings with preferences, even if they are not capable of moral agency, which is as follows. Philosopher Alan Gewirth provides the inspiration for the theory, although he would not endorse its extension to nonhuman animals. The following argument pertains to any being capable of acting to achieve goals (i.e., to any agent). Its conclusion is in keeping with Aristotle’s tele ological emphasis and Singer’s principle of the equal consideration of interests, but it is firmly rooted in moral rights theory. Agents by definition act intentionally (i.e., purposefully); they seek goals. To act purposefully requires that one values the goal pursued. General goals pursued by agents qua agents are life, health, and some qualities of life. Fundamental to achieving these are the basic goods of freedom and well being, without which action cannot occur. Agents capable of reflection and of linking the goal with what is needed to achieve the goal must hold that others should not interfere with their freedom and well-being. Otherwise, agents would contradict themselves, holding both (1) ‘‘I must have freedom and well-being’’ and (2) ‘‘Others are permitted to deprive me of them.’’ Thus, they claim the basic right of noninterference, and their justification for doing so is the very fact that they are agents. Now, the next step is that consistency requires agents to extend the same right of noninterference to other agents, who have the same justified claims to make against them. The rights claim is thus universalized, obligating agents to respecting one another’s freedom and well-being. Empirical psychological and ethological evidence supports the conten tion that numerous nonhumans and humans are agents, even though they may not be capable of the abstract conceptual thought required for moral agency. However, what about humans and nonhumans who have desires and needs, as agents do, but who are unable to fulfill their desires on their own? Individuals who are too young or too physically or mentally impaired to be agents still have desires and needs that they want satisfied (e.g., food, water, warmth, shelter, and love). They are sentient. The fact that they cannot achieve these goals on their own does not mean that they have no rights: It means that they need more assistance than nonin terference. Babies, children, the severely mentally disabled, the insane, and the senile are sentient nonagents. So are some very young and relatively simple nonhuman animals. If reflective agents must, to be consistent, accord rights to others with desires they want to have fulfilled, all sentient nonagents who have preferences should likewise have rights accorded to them. Two defenses of a rights theory that encompasses sentient humans and nonhumans have now been offered. Some critics have targeted the conclusion each reaches as flawed, as we shall now see. Two such objections and replies to them shall now be considered.
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Animal Rights
The Predation Objection Environmental ethicists have charged that the sentience proposal for rights would obligate moral agents to protect the rights of prey as well as predators in the wild. If prey and predators are all rights bearers, this gives moral agents contradictory obligations: Whose rights should prevail? Regan has replied that nonhuman predators, because they are not moral agents, do not violate the rights of their prey. Noninterference is required on our part if we are to avoid violating the rights of wolves or rabbits. Therefore, moral agents such as ourselves have no general obligation to assist the prey, which are in any case evolutionarily equipped to fend for themselves, but we do have the general obligation to refrain from interfering in preda tor–prey relations.
The Feminist Objection Feminist ethicists and ecofeminists have raised a more fundamental objection. They hold that any rights view, whether anthropocentrist or not, entails that logic, impar tial justice, and individualism trump emotions (especially caring), partiality, and the community. According to these critics, the first three qualities are quintessentially male, whereas the last three are feminine. Thus, rights theories are rejected as patriarchal. Regan and others have replied that the feminist-based objection is as biased as any patriarchal view, albeit in the opposite direction. Moreover, putting reason and justice in opposition to emotion and caring commits the fallacy of false dilemma. Logic and consistency can and should go hand in hand with empathy and sympathy.
Conclusion: Implications of the Rights View for Nonhuman Animal Treatment If all sentient beings have basic moral rights, many of the ways in which humans routinely treat nonhumans are morally wrong. Inhumane treatment of nonhumans on factory farms, in laboratories, and in the wild would not be permissible. Human moral agents would not be entitled to treat any sentient being, no matter how huma nely, as a mere means to their own ends. If it is wrong to confine and harm or kill humans for food, research, or product testing, it would be equally wrong to so treat sentient nonhumans. Conversely, if it were ever accepta ble to kill a human being, as in a case of self-defense, it would be equally acceptable in those circumstances to kill a sentient nonhuman.
Currently, animal rights activists are debating about the best strategies to pursue in order to change the traditional uses of animals. Opponents of nonhuman animal rights are fighting such attempts philosophically and politically. Each side needs to take the others’ argu ments very seriously because a great deal depends on who is correct. See also: Abortion; Anthropocentrism; Animal Research; Autonomy; Discrimination, Concept of; Environmental Ethics, Overview; Feminist Ethics; Fetus; Human Rights; Racism; Rights Theory; Sexism; Speciesism; Utilitarianism.
Further Reading Aquinas T and Rickaby J (2006) Of God and His Creatures: An Annotated Translation of the Summa Contra Gentiles of St. Thomas Aquinas. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger. Aristotle (1941) The Basic Works of Aristotle (McKeon R, trans.). New York: Random House. Bentham J (1945). Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. New York: Columbia University Press. Bekoff M (2007) The Emotional Lives of Animals. Novato, CA: New World Library. Cohen C (1986) The case for the use of animals in biomedical research. New England Journal of Medicine 315: 865–870. Descartes R (2007) Discourse on Method (Kennington R, trans.). Newburyport, MA: Focus. Gewirth A (1978) Reason and Morality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Griffin D (1992) Animal Minds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hauser M (2007) Moral Minds: The Nature of Right and Wrong. New York: HarperCollins. Kant I (1981) Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals (Ellington J, trans.). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Pluhar E (1995) Beyond Prejudice: The Moral Significance of Human and Nonhuman Animals. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Rachels J (1990) Created from Animals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Regan T (1983) The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press. Regan T (2001) Defending Animal Rights. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Singer P (1975) Animal Liberation. New York: Avon.
Biographical Sketch Evelyn Pluhar was born in Harlan, Kentucky. She received her B.A. with Honors in Philosophy from the University of Denver. She received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Michigan. She is Professor of Philosophy at The Pennsylvania State University, Fayette Campus. She has received three Excellence in Teaching Awards, including the 2009 George W. Atherton Award for Excellence in Teaching. She has also received three Excellence in Research and Scholarship Awards. Her research specialty is moral theory. She has authored more than 30 scholarly articles, contributed to many books, and is the author of Beyond Prejudice: The Moral Significance of Human and Nonhuman Animals.