animal rights thesis statement

• Dissertation
• PowerPoint Presentation
• Book Report/Review
• Research Proposal
• Math Problems
• Proofreading
• Movie Review
• Cover Letter Writing
• Personal Statement
• Nursing Paper
• Argumentative Essay
• Research Paper
• Discussion Board Post

How to Deal with Animal Right Essays: Quick & Simple Prompts

Table of Contents

Whether you’re a student at the Ethics, Biology, or Medicine department, you can receive an assignment to write animal right essays from time to time.

On the one hand, the task may seem simple and manageable at first glance. On the other hand, such essays (as any other type of academic work) require careful research, outlining, structuring, and writing in line with top academic standards. Thus, if you’re stuck on this task with no ideas in mind, read on to find valuable tips for this kind of essay.

Here we compiled valuable recommendations from our writing experts about:

• Finding an interesting, relevant topic.
• Composing an animal rights outline.
• Developing an effective animal rights thesis statement.
• Researching credible sources for animal right essays.
• Structuring your arguments.
• Effective editing and proofreading of the assignment.

Why It Is Important to Discuss Animal Rights

Whenever you approach writing about animal rights, this topic’s relevance always surfaces as a critical vantage point of your animal rights essays. It’s a commonly recognized fact that throughout history, humans have been too cruel toward animals, and they have ruined much of the authentic wildlife ecosystems in the process of industrialization and urbanization. As a result, numerous species lost their habitats and were urged to seek shelter elsewhere, thus altering other natural habitats by residing in places where they shouldn’t be.

Even in cities, where people and animals seem to have different lives, cruel treatment and abuse of human authority are evident.

First, pets are not always treated ethically and respectfully, mainly because of their legal status as human property.

Second, many pets are abandoned and flood the streets, where they are either killed by other street animals or are doomed to wandering the streets and surviving by eating trash and food remnants.

Third, corporate breeding animals for food (e.g., children farms and daily factories) is highly inhumane, involving cruel treatment of animals and their stay in awful conditions.

The situation with wildlife is not much better, with hunters and poachers killing wild animals for fun and entertainment. Fires and floods caused by human-made climate change also urge wild animals to seek shelter and food in human residences, which often ends in their killing or captivation.

Thus, as one can see, the problem of animal rights and human oppression of the planet’s fauna is pressing, with so many manifestations of unethical, inconsiderate, and cruel attitudes to all creatures, great and small.

Main Points to Elaborate on

Given the problems surrounding animal protection and rights today, you can approach the subject from numerous perspectives in your academic assignment:

• Legal rights of animals in your country or abroad. Comparison of legal policies towards wildlife and pet protection.
• Pet protection and a new legal status for pets.
• Legal and ethical standards for corporate farming.
• Legal and ethical standards for animal use with medical/experimental purposes.
• Wildlife protection and conservation.
• Protection of marine life from exploitative industrial practices.

How to Write Animal Rights Essay Introduction

All animal right essays should start with an impactful introduction so that your audience understands what you’re talking about, what you’re driving at, and what your key arguments are.

To achieve this goal, we recommend structuring an introduction as follows:

• First, discuss the broad context of the paper – animal rights in general, what kinds of rights they possess, and what abuses of those rights are observed globally.
• You may also boost the interest of your readers by citing some shocking stats or providing some anecdotal evidence. Anyway, this information should be relevant, pointing to the serious, pressing problem in the field of animal rights you have identified.
• Next, it’s vital to formulate the problem clearly and indicate how you will resolve/discuss it. It will be your thesis statement.

Following this structure, you’re sure to make a captivating intro that will urge your audience to read the paper until its end.

Animal Rights Essay Outline

To complete animal right essays quickly and effectively, you need to perform some pre-writing work. Composing an outline is always a helpful approach to organizing the basis for your writing process as you receive a roadmap for the further composition of your essay’s vital parts.

Here is a sample outline for a paper about pet rights and legal status. Still, you can successfully appropriate this outline for any other topic by following the instructions about each part’s content.

INTRODUCTION

Introduce your subject and give some background information. Underline the problem’s significance. State your key idea of the paper.

Pets are typically a part of the family in which they live, causing warm feelings and enjoying commitment from the people who invited them to their homes. Still, sadly, pets are considered property by law in 90% of countries, limiting the protection of cruelly treated and abandoned animals. Thus, a legal change is required to improve pet coverage by law and enable animal rights advocates to take measures against pet maltreatment.

BODY OF THE PAPER

Paragraph #1-3 – Indicate a topic sentence with each paragraph’s key idea. Support that key idea with some supporting data from credible sources. Offer your interpretation of the information in those external sources. Make a transition to the next paragraph and then to the conclusion.

Paragraph #1 – statistics on pet maltreatment. Animal abandonment and abuse.

Paragraph #2 – protective legislation. E.g., the UK Animal Welfare Act (2007), felony animal cruelty laws in the USA.

Paragraph #3 – animal rights advocacy organizations (e.g., ALDF). Actions they take to prevent and minimize pet maltreatment.

Summarize your arguments concisely and refer them back to the general argument. Clarify the arguments’ significance for the broader subject of your research. Again, stress the importance of dwelling on this subject theoretically and with practical steps.

Pet abuse is still commonplace because of the legal status of home animals as human property. Still, numerous laws and activist organizations work to change the situation. A broader legal change is required to change pets’ status and enhance their protection.

How to Write Animal Rights Thesis Statement

The thesis statement for animal right essays should be clear and concise, communicating your central message and purpose of the paper. The thesis should not be too long or too short. It should also incorporate the central arguments you’ll expand in the following sections of your text.

In this way, this statement will function as your readers’ roadmap leading them from one argument to another one and helping them follow your logic.

20 Animal Topics for Research Papers – Choose the Best Idea

Looking for some bulletproof animal topics for research papers? Here is a list you can use on all occasions to compose various academic works with ease.

• Is it realistic to protect all animal rights today?
• Is the animals’ right to no selective breeding compatible with the human needs?
• What is the best way to protect animals from the harmful impact of humans?
• Is hunting ethical on any grounds?
• Hunting and animal species extinction – a need for a more effective protective policy.
• Is experimentation on animals generally avoidable?
• How does the human-made climate change affect the well-being of fauna?
• Is pet euthanasia a reality?
• The impact of massive fishing on biodiversity and fish species survival.
• Increasing peopling of suburbs and the loss of animal habitat – a reverse side of people’s flight from the vices of urbanization.
• What is the impact of invasive species on the local wildlife? Discuss with examples.
• Cruel handling of corporately farmed animals.
• Is overbreeding of pets a pressing problem? What are the far-reaching consequences of overbreeding?
• Destroying predators – a step towards human safety or an ecological crime? Discuss the fundamental role of predators in local wildlife and the adverse effects of these species’ minimization.
• Are police and military dogs given similar rights upon retirement as people who served their motherland? Discuss more extensive coverage of police/military dog health and care services.
• What kinds of experiments on animals are unavoidable to save people’s lives? And what are senseless and cruel?
• Animal abuse in zoos – the reverse side of human entertainment and endangered species conservation.
• Is it ethical to use animals in hard manual/agricultural labor?
• What can people do to enhance animal rights protection?
• Is it ethical to consider animals human property? The need for a legal change of pet status as a vital contribution to the more humane treatment of home pets.

With these topics, you’re sure to beat all professors’ expectations and develop an attention-grabbing, exciting argument.

Need Professional Help?

Writing animal right essays is an exciting activity that can help you hone your writing skills and, at the same time, enhance your understanding of the topic. But what can you do if the task seems too complicated or you have too little time for composing several urgent papers?

No panic; our service is available 24/7, and experts employed here are ready to respond to all student needs quickly and effectively. So, if you’re short of time or are stuck with no ideas in mind, no need to get an F for that essay. Contact us today, and our skilled authors will compose an impressive A-grade assignment to cover your back.

Place an order today and sit back, relaxing and knowing that your task is in the expert hands.

How To Write A Vivid Euthanasia Argumentative Essay?

Covering the Basics When Writing A Gender Inequality Essay

100+ motivational speech topics that guarantee good grades.

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

Animal Matters: A Critical Theory of Animal Rights and Justice for All Animals (November 2021 draft

In this book of lectures about the politics and ethics of animal and human relations, I explore Animal Liberation by Peter Singer, Zoopolis by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, and Animal Rights and Human Morality by Bernard Rollin. I criticize the Rawlsian political liberalism and Taylorian multiculturalism of Zoopolis and develop a pragmatic anarchist alternative for resolving animal human relations in the future.

Related Papers

The Philosophical Quarterly

Tatjana Visak

published as “From Polis to Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights” in Karen Wendling (ed) Ethics in Canada: Ethical, Social and Political Perspectives (Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 255-63.

Sue Donaldson , Will Kymlicka

Christiane Bailey

Mark Rowlands

This paper examines the claim that our moral commitments to non-human animals (henceforth, “animals”) are best captured in terms of a framework of political, rather than ethical, theory – or, at the very least, that the former provides an essential antidote to the failings of the latter. In particular, I shall focus on what I take to be a canonical statement of this view: Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka’s book, Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights. In this book, Donaldson and Kymlicka (henceforth, D&K) argue that standard ethical animal rights theory (henceforth, following them, ART) is importantly incomplete, and requires supplementation with a political theory of animal rights (henceforth, PTAR). I going to argue that while ART, as it has standardly perceived, has shortcomings, these are more perception than reality, and are certainly not intrinsic or essential features of ART. Consequently, the supplementation of ART with PTAR is not necessary. The distinction between ART and PTAR is a disguised, and somewhat misleading way, of talking about another distinction: the distinction between animals as objects of moral concern and animals as subjects of motivation and action.

presented at Minding Animals International Conference, Utrecht, July 2012.

Dialogue Vol. 53/4 (2013): 769-96

Law, Ethics and Philosophy (Vol 1, #1, 2013), as part of symposium on Zoopolis. http://leap-journal.com/archives/LEAP1-Donalson-Kymlicka.pdf

Marcus Schultz-Bergin

This dissertation defends the following thesis: the legal status of non-human animals as property is politically illegitimate. Instead, I argue that humans should be legally understood as guardians over those animals under their tenure. This guardianship relation involves limits on what humans may do to animals, limits which do not currently exist in our society. Most notably, guardians are required to act in the interest of their wards, and so guardians cannot kill or transfer the animals under their tenure unless doing so would be best (or at least good) for the animal. My position broadly fits with, but importantly differs from, much of the recent political philosophy literature focused on animals. I agree that ownership is inappropriate, but argue that considerations of political legitimacy lead us to the guardianship relation rather than full legal personhood. This position falls out of taking seriously the public reason challenge to justice for animals, which appeals to public reason liberalism to argue that the pursuit of justice for animals would be illegitimate. Thus, I examine important debates in public reason liberalism to develop an attractive model of that theory of legitimacy and then apply it to the question of the legal status of animals.

Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues: Towards an Undivided Future

Andrew Woodhall , Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade

**Due to the publisher holding the copyright to the book, drafts of the book unfortunately cannot be circulated. This includes the introduction. Upon release of the book the freely available front matter will be made accessible online and here. Until this changes, which is beyond my authority, all I can do is direct you to the book's site and Amazon. Abstracts of the chapters will be available. Apologies, and thank you for being interested. A.** This book offers ethical and political approaches to issues that nonhuman animals face. The recent ‘political turn’ in interspecies ethics, from ethical to political approaches, has arisen due to the apparent lack of success of the nonhuman animal movement and dissatisfaction with traditional approaches. Current works largely present general positions rather than address specific issues and principally rely on mainstream approaches. This book offers alternative positions such as cosmopolitan, libertarian, and left humanist thought, as well as applying ethical and political thought to specific issues, such as experimentation, factory farming, nonhuman political agency, and intervention. Presenting work by theorists and activists, insights are offered from both ethics and politics that impact theory and practice and offer essential considerations for those engaging in interspecies ethics within the political turn era. === CONTENTS: Acknowledgements List of Contributors List of Figures Foreword (by Richard D. Ryder) 1. Introduction (Andrew Woodhall & Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade) 2. Making Light of the Ethical? The Ethics and Politics of Animal Rights (Mark Rowlands) 3. Far-persons (Gary Comstock) 4. Evolution to Liberation: Political Reflections on Morality and Nonhumans (Steve F. Sapontzis) 5. Robert Nozick on Nonhuman Animals: Rights, Value and the Meaning of Life (Josh Milburn) 6. Reinventing Left Humanism: Towards an Interspecies Emancipatory Project (Zipporah Weisberg) 7. Justice for Animals in a Globalizing World (Angie Pepper) 8. Animal Rights and the Distorting Power of Anthropocentric Prejudice (Gary Steiner) 9. Interspecies Encounters and the Political Turn: From Dialogues to Deliberation (Eva Meijer) 10. Gandhian Satyagraha and Open Animal Rescue (Tony Milligan) 11. Shame: From Defensive Fury to Epistemological Shifts and Political Change (Elisa Aaltola) 12. Are We Smart Enough to Know When to Take the Political Turn for Animals? (Kim Stallwood) 13. Interspecies Atrocities and the Politics of Memory (Guy Scotton) 14. Animal Research and the Political Theory of Animal Rights (Gardar Arnason) 15. Cross-Species Comparisons of Welfare (Tatjana Višak) 16. Population Dynamics Meets Animal Ethics: The Case for Aiding Animals in Nature (Oscar Horta) 17. Afterword (Carol J. Adams) Index

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

RELATED PAPERS

Alasdair Cochrane , Robert Garner

Christophe TRAINI

Per-Anders Svärd , Guy Scotton , Katherine Wayne

Nina Varsava

Animal Studies Journal

Paola Cavalieri

Animal Studies Journal, Vol. 6/1 (2017), pp. 175-181.

Will Kymlicka

Religion and Public Policy: Human Rights, Conflict, and Ethics, edited by Sumner B. Twiss, Marian Gh. Simion, Rodney L. Petersen

Grace Y Kao

Political Studies

Steve Cooke

Paul Waldau

Michael Stingl

Stephen Cicirelli

The Southern Journal of Philosophy

Jan Narveson

Kyle Johannsen

Essays in Philosophy

Chris MacDonald

Robert Briggs

Canadian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 47/1 (2014): 23-45.

University of North Bengal

Neelam Lama

Jeffrey Spring

Intervention or Protest: Acting for Nonhuman Animals

Guy Scotton , Katherine Wayne

Dinesh Wadiwel

Peter Niesen , Svenja Ahlhaus

Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues edited by Andrew Woodhall and Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade (Springer/Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)

Kim Stallwood

Philosophy in Review

International Library of Environmental Agriculture and Food Ethics

jozef keulartz

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

Animal Rights Essay: Topics, Outline, & Writing Tips

• 🐇 Animal Rights Essay: the Basics
• 💡 Animal Rights Essay Topics
• 📑 Outlining Your Essay
• ✍️ Sample Essay (200 Words)

🔗 References

🐇 animal rights essay: what is it about.

Animal rights supporters advocate for the idea that animals should have the same freedom to live as they wish, just as humans do. They should not be exploited or used in meat , fur, and other production. At long last, we should distinguish animals from inanimate objects and resources like coal, timber, or oil.

Interdisciplinary research has shown that animals are emotional and sensitive, just like we are.

Their array of emotions includes joy, happiness, embarrassment, resentment, jealousy, anger, love, compassion, respect, disgust, despair, and even grief.

However, animal rights legislation does not extend human rights to animals. It establishes their right to have their fundamental needs and interests respected while people decide how to treat them. This right changes the status of animals from being property to being legal entities.

The statement may sound strange until we recall that churches , banks, and universities are also legal entities. Their interests are legally protected by law. Then why do we disregard the feelings of animals , which are not inanimate institutions? Several federal laws protect them from human interference.

But the following statements are only some of the rules that could one day protect animal rights in full:

• Animals should not be killed by hunting.
• Animals’ habitats should allow them to live in freedom.
• Animals should not be bred for sale or any other purpose.
• Animals should not be used for food by industries or households.

Most arguments against the adoption of similar laws are linked to money concerns. Animal exploitation has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry. The lives of many private farmers depend on meat production, and most people prefer not to change the comfortable status quo.

Animal Rights Argumentative Essay

An animal rights argumentative essay should tackle a problematic issue that people have widely discussed. While choosing ideas for the assignment, opt for the most debatable topics.

Here is a brief list of argumentative essay prompts on animal rights:

• The pros and cons of animal rights.
• Can humanity exist without meat production?
• Do animals have souls?
• Should society become vegan to protect animal rights?

As you see, these questions could raise controversy between interlocutors. Your purpose is to take a side and give several arguments in its support. Then you’ll have to state a counterargument to your opinion and explain why it is incorrect.

Animal Rights Persuasive Essay

An animal rights persuasive essay should clearly state your opinion on the topic without analyzing different points of view. Still, the purpose of your article is to persuade the reader that your position is not only reasonable but the only correct one. For this purpose, select topics relating to your opinion or formulated in questionary form.

For example:

• What is your idea about wearing fur?
• Do you think people would ever ban animal exploitation?
• Is having pets a harmful practice?
• Animal factories hinder the development of civilization .

💡 53 Animal Rights Essay Topics

• Animal rights have been suppressed for ages because people disregard their mental abilities .
• Cosmetic and medical animal testing .
• Laws preventing unnecessary suffering of animals mean that there is some necessary suffering.
• Red fluorescent protein transgenic dogs experiment.
• Do you believe animals should have legal rights?
• Genetically modified animals and implications.
• Why is animal welfare important?
• Neutering animals to prevent overpopulation: Pros and cons.
• Animal testing: Arguments for and against.
• What is our impact on marine life?
• Some animals cannot stay wild.
• Animal testing for medical purposes .
• We are not the ones to choose which species to preserve.
• Pavlov’s dog experiment .
• Keeping dogs chained outdoors is animal neglect.
• The use of animals for research .
• Animal dissection as a learning tool: Alternatives?
• More people beat their pets than we think.
• Duties to non-human animals.
• If we do not control the population of some animals, they will control ours.
• Animals in entertainment: Not entertaining at all.
• Animals in research, education, and teaching.
• Which non-animal production endangers the species?
• Is animal testing really needed?
• Why do some people think that buying a new pet is cheaper than paying for medical treatment of the old one?
• Animal experiments: benefits, ethics, and defenders.
• Can people still be carnivorous if they stop eating animals?
• Animal testing role.
• Marine aquariums and zoos are animal prisons.
• Animal experimentation: justification arguments .
• What would happen if we replace animals in circuses with people, keeping the same living conditions?
• The ethics of animal use in scientific research .
• Animal sports: Relics of the past.
• Animal testing ban: counterargument and rebuttal .
• Denial to purchase animal-tested cosmetics will not change anything.
• Animal research, its ineffectiveness and amorality.
• Animal rights protection based on their intellect level: It tells a lot about humanity.
• Debates of using animals in scientific analysis .
• How can we ban tests on rats and kill them in our homes at the same time?
• Animal testing in experiments .
• What is the level of tissue engineering development in leather and meat production?
• Equal consideration of interests to non-human animals .
• Animals should not have to be our servants.
• Zoos as an example of humans’ immorality.
• We should feed wild animals to help them survive.
• Animal testing in biomedical research.
• Abolitionism: The right not to be owned.
• Do you support the Prima facie rights theory?
• Psychologist perspective on research involving animal and human subjects.
• Ecofeminism: What is the link between animals’ and women’s rights?
• No philosophy could rationalize cruelty against animals.
• Qualities that humans and animals share.
• Ancient Buddhist societies and vegetarianism: A research paper.

Need more ideas? You are welcome to use our free research topic generator !

📑 Animal Rights Essay Outline

An animal rights essay should be constructed as a standard 5-paragraph essay (if not required otherwise in the assignment). The three following sections provide a comprehensive outline.

Animal Rights Essay: Introduction

An introduction consists of:

• Background information,
• A thesis statement .

In other words, here you need to explain why you decided to write about the given topic and which position you will take. The background part should comprise a couple of sentences highlighting the topicality of the issue. The thesis statement expresses your plans in the essay.

For example: In this essay, I will explain why animal-based production harms the ecology.

Animal Rights Essay: Main Body

The main body is a place for you to argue your position . One paragraph equals one argument. In informative essays, replace argumentation with facts.

Start each section with a topical sentence consisting of a general truth. Then give some explanation and more specific points. By the way, at the end of this article, you’ll find a bonus! It is a priceless selection of statistics and facts about animal rights.

Animal Rights Essay: Conclusion

A conclusion restates your central ideas and thesis statement. Approach it as a summary of your essay, avoid providing new facts or arguments.

✍️ Animal Rights Essay Example (200 Words)

Why is animal welfare important? The term “animal welfare” evokes the pictures of happy cows from a milk advertisement. But the reality has nothing to do with these bright videos. Humane treatment of animals is a relative concept. This essay explains why animal welfare is important, despite that it does not prevent farms from killing or confining animals.

The best way to approach animal welfare is by thinking of it as a temporary measure. We all agree that the current state of the economy does not allow humanity to abandon animal-based production. Moreover, such quick decisions could make farm animals suffer even more. But ensuring the minimum possible pain is the best solution as of the moment.

The current legislation on animal welfare is far from perfect. The Animal Welfare Act of 1966 prevents cruelty against animals in labs and zoos. Meanwhile, the majority of suffering animals do not fall under its purview. For example, it says nothing about the vivisection of rats and mice for educational and research purposes, although the procedure is extremely painful for the creature. Neither does it protect farm animals.

Unfortunately, the principles of animal welfare leave too much room for interpretation. Animals should be free from fear and stress, but how can we measure that? They should be allowed to engage in natural behaviors, but no confined space would let them do so. Thus, the legislation is imprecise.

The problem of animal welfare is almost unresolvable because it is a temporary measure to prevent any suffering of domesticated animals. It has its drawbacks but allows us to ensure at least some comfort for those we unjustifiably use for food. They have the same right to live on this planet as we do, and animal farming will be stopped one day.

📊 Bonus: Statistics & Facts for Your Animal Rights Essay Introduction

Improve the quality of your essay on animal rights by working in the following statistics and facts about animals.

• According to USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service , about 4.6 billion animals — including hogs, sheep, cattle, chickens, ducks, lambs, and turkey — were killed and used for food in the United States last year (2015).
• People in the U.S. kill over 100 million animals for laboratory experiments every year, according to PETA .
• More than 40 million animals are killed for fur worldwide every year. About 30 million animals are raised and killed on fur farms, and nearly 10 million wild animals are hunted and killed for the same reasons — for their valuable fur.
• According to a report by In Defense of Animals , hunters kill more than 200 million animals in the United States yearly.
• The Humane Society of the United States notes that a huge number of cats and dogs — between 3 and 4 million each year — are killed in the country’s animal shelters. Sadly, this number does not include dogs or cats killed in animal cruelty cases.
• According to the ASPCA , about 7.6 million companion animals enter animal shelters in the United States yearly. Of this number, 3.9 Mil of dogs, and 3.4 Mil of cats.
• About 2.7 million animals are euthanized in shelters every year (1.4 million cats and 1.2 million dogs).
• About 2.7 million shelter animals are adopted every year (1.3 million cats and 1.4 million dogs).
• In total, there are approximately 70-80 million dogs and 74-96 million cats living as pets in the United States.
• It’s impossible to determine the exact number of stray cats and dogs living in the United States, but the number of cats is estimated to be up to 70 million.
• Many stray cats and dogs were once family pets — but they were not kept securely indoors or provided with proper identification.

Each essay on animals rights makes humanity closer to a better and more civilized world. Please share any thoughts and experience in creating such texts in the comments below. And if you would like to hear how your essay would sound in someone’s mind, use our Text-To-Speech tool .

• Why Animal Rights? | PETA
• Animal Rights – Encyclopedia Britannica
• Animal ethics: Animal rights – BBC
• Animal Health and Welfare – National Agricultural Library
• The Top 10 Animal Rights Issues – Treehugger
• Animal welfare – European Commission

Research Paper Analysis: How to Analyze a Research Article + Example

Film analysis: example, format, and outline + topics & prompts.

• Search Menu

Sign in through your institution

• Browse content in Arts and Humanities
• Browse content in Archaeology
• Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
• Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
• Archaeology by Region
• Archaeology of Religion
• Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
• Biblical Archaeology
• Contemporary and Public Archaeology
• Environmental Archaeology
• Historical Archaeology
• History and Theory of Archaeology
• Industrial Archaeology
• Landscape Archaeology
• Mortuary Archaeology
• Prehistoric Archaeology
• Underwater Archaeology
• Zooarchaeology
• Browse content in Architecture
• Architectural Structure and Design
• History of Architecture
• Residential and Domestic Buildings
• Theory of Architecture
• Browse content in Art
• Art Subjects and Themes
• History of Art
• Industrial and Commercial Art
• Theory of Art
• Biographical Studies
• Byzantine Studies
• Browse content in Classical Studies
• Classical Numismatics
• Classical Literature
• Classical Reception
• Classical History
• Classical Philosophy
• Classical Mythology
• Classical Art and Architecture
• Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
• Greek and Roman Papyrology
• Greek and Roman Archaeology
• Greek and Roman Epigraphy
• Greek and Roman Law
• Late Antiquity
• Religion in the Ancient World
• Social History
• Digital Humanities
• Browse content in History
• Colonialism and Imperialism
• Diplomatic History
• Environmental History
• Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
• Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
• Historical Geography
• History by Period
• History of Emotions
• History of Agriculture
• History of Education
• History of Gender and Sexuality
• Industrial History
• Intellectual History
• International History
• Labour History
• Legal and Constitutional History
• Local and Family History
• Maritime History
• Military History
• National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
• Oral History
• Political History
• Public History
• Regional and National History
• Revolutions and Rebellions
• Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
• Social and Cultural History
• Theory, Methods, and Historiography
• Urban History
• World History
• Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
• Language Learning (Specific Skills)
• Language Teaching Theory and Methods
• Browse content in Linguistics
• Applied Linguistics
• Cognitive Linguistics
• Computational Linguistics
• Forensic Linguistics
• Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
• Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
• History of English
• Language Evolution
• Language Reference
• Language Variation
• Language Families
• Language Acquisition
• Lexicography
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Linguistic Theories
• Linguistic Typology
• Phonetics and Phonology
• Psycholinguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Translation and Interpretation
• Writing Systems
• Browse content in Literature
• Bibliography
• Children's Literature Studies
• Literary Studies (Romanticism)
• Literary Studies (American)
• Literary Studies (Modernism)
• Literary Studies (Asian)
• Literary Studies (European)
• Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
• Literary Studies - World
• Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
• Literary Studies (19th Century)
• Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
• Literary Studies (African American Literature)
• Literary Studies (British and Irish)
• Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
• Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
• Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
• Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
• Literary Studies (History of the Book)
• Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
• Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
• Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
• Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
• Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
• Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
• Literary Studies (War Literature)
• Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
• Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
• Mythology and Folklore
• Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
• Browse content in Media Studies
• Browse content in Music
• Applied Music
• Dance and Music
• Ethics in Music
• Ethnomusicology
• Gender and Sexuality in Music
• Medicine and Music
• Music Cultures
• Music and Media
• Music and Culture
• Music and Religion
• Music Education and Pedagogy
• Music Theory and Analysis
• Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
• Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
• Musicology and Music History
• Performance Practice and Studies
• Race and Ethnicity in Music
• Sound Studies
• Browse content in Performing Arts
• Browse content in Philosophy
• Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
• Epistemology
• Feminist Philosophy
• History of Western Philosophy
• Meta-Philosophy
• Metaphysics
• Moral Philosophy
• Non-Western Philosophy
• Philosophy of Language
• Philosophy of Mind
• Philosophy of Perception
• Philosophy of Action
• Philosophy of Law
• Philosophy of Religion
• Philosophy of Science
• Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
• Practical Ethics
• Social and Political Philosophy
• Browse content in Religion
• Biblical Studies
• Christianity
• East Asian Religions
• History of Religion
• Judaism and Jewish Studies
• Qumran Studies
• Religion and Education
• Religion and Health
• Religion and Politics
• Religion and Science
• Religion and Law
• Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
• Religious Studies
• Browse content in Society and Culture
• Cookery, Food, and Drink
• Cultural Studies
• Customs and Traditions
• Ethical Issues and Debates
• Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
• Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
• Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
• Sports and Outdoor Recreation
• Technology and Society
• Travel and Holiday
• Visual Culture
• Browse content in Law
• Arbitration
• Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
• Commercial Law
• Company Law
• Browse content in Comparative Law
• Systems of Law
• Competition Law
• Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
• Government Powers
• Judicial Review
• Local Government Law
• Military and Defence Law
• Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
• Construction Law
• Contract Law
• Browse content in Criminal Law
• Criminal Procedure
• Criminal Evidence Law
• Sentencing and Punishment
• Employment and Labour Law
• Environment and Energy Law
• Browse content in Financial Law
• Banking Law
• Insolvency Law
• History of Law
• Human Rights and Immigration
• Intellectual Property Law
• Browse content in International Law
• Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
• Public International Law
• IT and Communications Law
• Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
• Law and Society
• Law and Politics
• Browse content in Legal System and Practice
• Courts and Procedure
• Legal Skills and Practice
• Legal System - Costs and Funding
• Primary Sources of Law
• Regulation of Legal Profession
• Medical and Healthcare Law
• Browse content in Policing
• Criminal Investigation and Detection
• Police and Security Services
• Police Procedure and Law
• Police Regional Planning
• Browse content in Property Law
• Personal Property Law
• Restitution
• Study and Revision
• Terrorism and National Security Law
• Browse content in Trusts Law
• Wills and Probate or Succession
• Browse content in Medicine and Health
• Browse content in Allied Health Professions
• Arts Therapies
• Clinical Science
• Dietetics and Nutrition
• Occupational Therapy
• Operating Department Practice
• Physiotherapy
• Radiography
• Speech and Language Therapy
• Browse content in Anaesthetics
• General Anaesthesia
• Clinical Neuroscience
• Browse content in Clinical Medicine
• Acute Medicine
• Cardiovascular Medicine
• Clinical Genetics
• Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
• Dermatology
• Endocrinology and Diabetes
• Gastroenterology
• Genito-urinary Medicine
• Geriatric Medicine
• Infectious Diseases
• Medical Toxicology
• Medical Oncology
• Pain Medicine
• Palliative Medicine
• Rehabilitation Medicine
• Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
• Rheumatology
• Sleep Medicine
• Sports and Exercise Medicine
• Community Medical Services
• Critical Care
• Emergency Medicine
• Forensic Medicine
• Haematology
• History of Medicine
• Browse content in Medical Skills
• Clinical Skills
• Communication Skills
• Nursing Skills
• Surgical Skills
• Medical Ethics
• Browse content in Medical Dentistry
• Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
• Paediatric Dentistry
• Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
• Surgical Dentistry
• Medical Statistics and Methodology
• Browse content in Neurology
• Clinical Neurophysiology
• Neuropathology
• Nursing Studies
• Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
• Gynaecology
• Occupational Medicine
• Ophthalmology
• Otolaryngology (ENT)
• Browse content in Paediatrics
• Neonatology
• Browse content in Pathology
• Chemical Pathology
• Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
• Histopathology
• Medical Microbiology and Virology
• Patient Education and Information
• Browse content in Pharmacology
• Psychopharmacology
• Browse content in Popular Health
• Caring for Others
• Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• Self-help and Personal Development
• Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
• Cell Biology
• Molecular Biology and Genetics
• Reproduction, Growth and Development
• Primary Care
• Professional Development in Medicine
• Browse content in Psychiatry
• Addiction Medicine
• Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Forensic Psychiatry
• Learning Disabilities
• Old Age Psychiatry
• Psychotherapy
• Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
• Epidemiology
• Public Health
• Browse content in Radiology
• Clinical Radiology
• Interventional Radiology
• Nuclear Medicine
• Radiation Oncology
• Reproductive Medicine
• Browse content in Surgery
• Cardiothoracic Surgery
• Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
• General Surgery
• Neurosurgery
• Paediatric Surgery
• Peri-operative Care
• Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
• Surgical Oncology
• Transplant Surgery
• Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
• Vascular Surgery
• Browse content in Science and Mathematics
• Browse content in Biological Sciences
• Aquatic Biology
• Biochemistry
• Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
• Developmental Biology
• Ecology and Conservation
• Evolutionary Biology
• Genetics and Genomics
• Microbiology
• Molecular and Cell Biology
• Natural History
• Plant Sciences and Forestry
• Research Methods in Life Sciences
• Structural Biology
• Systems Biology
• Zoology and Animal Sciences
• Browse content in Chemistry
• Analytical Chemistry
• Computational Chemistry
• Crystallography
• Environmental Chemistry
• Industrial Chemistry
• Inorganic Chemistry
• Materials Chemistry
• Medicinal Chemistry
• Mineralogy and Gems
• Organic Chemistry
• Physical Chemistry
• Polymer Chemistry
• Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
• Theoretical Chemistry
• Browse content in Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Architecture and Logic Design
• Game Studies
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Mathematical Theory of Computation
• Programming Languages
• Software Engineering
• Systems Analysis and Design
• Virtual Reality
• Browse content in Computing
• Business Applications
• Computer Games
• Computer Security
• Computer Networking and Communications
• Digital Lifestyle
• Graphical and Digital Media Applications
• Operating Systems
• Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
• Atmospheric Sciences
• Environmental Geography
• Geology and the Lithosphere
• Maps and Map-making
• Meteorology and Climatology
• Oceanography and Hydrology
• Palaeontology
• Physical Geography and Topography
• Regional Geography
• Soil Science
• Urban Geography
• Browse content in Engineering and Technology
• Agriculture and Farming
• Biological Engineering
• Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
• Electronics and Communications Engineering
• Energy Technology
• Engineering (General)
• Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
• History of Engineering and Technology
• Mechanical Engineering and Materials
• Technology of Industrial Chemistry
• Transport Technology and Trades
• Browse content in Environmental Science
• Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
• Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Environmental Sustainability
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
• Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
• Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
• Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
• History of Science and Technology
• Browse content in Materials Science
• Ceramics and Glasses
• Composite Materials
• Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
• Nanotechnology
• Browse content in Mathematics
• Applied Mathematics
• Biomathematics and Statistics
• History of Mathematics
• Mathematical Education
• Mathematical Finance
• Mathematical Analysis
• Numerical and Computational Mathematics
• Probability and Statistics
• Pure Mathematics
• Browse content in Neuroscience
• Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
• Development of the Nervous System
• Disorders of the Nervous System
• History of Neuroscience
• Invertebrate Neurobiology
• Molecular and Cellular Systems
• Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
• Neuroscientific Techniques
• Sensory and Motor Systems
• Browse content in Physics
• Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
• Biological and Medical Physics
• Classical Mechanics
• Computational Physics
• Condensed Matter Physics
• Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
• History of Physics
• Mathematical and Statistical Physics
• Measurement Science
• Nuclear Physics
• Particles and Fields
• Plasma Physics
• Quantum Physics
• Relativity and Gravitation
• Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
• Browse content in Psychology
• Affective Sciences
• Clinical Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Criminal and Forensic Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Health Psychology
• History and Systems in Psychology
• Music Psychology
• Neuropsychology
• Organizational Psychology
• Psychological Assessment and Testing
• Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
• Psychology Professional Development and Training
• Research Methods in Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Browse content in Social Sciences
• Browse content in Anthropology
• Anthropology of Religion
• Human Evolution
• Medical Anthropology
• Physical Anthropology
• Regional Anthropology
• Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Theory and Practice of Anthropology
• Browse content in Business and Management
• Business Ethics
• Business History
• Business Strategy
• Business and Technology
• Business and Government
• Business and the Environment
• Comparative Management
• Corporate Governance
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Entrepreneurship
• Health Management
• Human Resource Management
• Industrial and Employment Relations
• Industry Studies
• Information and Communication Technologies
• International Business
• Knowledge Management
• Management and Management Techniques
• Operations Management
• Organizational Theory and Behaviour
• Pensions and Pension Management
• Public and Nonprofit Management
• Social Issues in Business and Management
• Strategic Management
• Supply Chain Management
• Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Criminal Justice
• Criminology
• Forms of Crime
• International and Comparative Criminology
• Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
• Development Studies
• Browse content in Economics
• Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
• Asian Economics
• Behavioural Finance
• Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
• Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
• Economic History
• Economic Methodology
• Economic Systems
• Economic Development and Growth
• Financial Markets
• Financial Institutions and Services
• General Economics and Teaching
• Health, Education, and Welfare
• History of Economic Thought
• International Economics
• Labour and Demographic Economics
• Law and Economics
• Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
• Microeconomics
• Public Economics
• Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
• Welfare Economics
• Browse content in Education
• Adult Education and Continuous Learning
• Care and Counselling of Students
• Early Childhood and Elementary Education
• Educational Equipment and Technology
• Educational Strategies and Policy
• Higher and Further Education
• Organization and Management of Education
• Philosophy and Theory of Education
• Schools Studies
• Secondary Education
• Teaching of a Specific Subject
• Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
• Teaching Skills and Techniques
• Browse content in Environment
• Applied Ecology (Social Science)
• Climate Change
• Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
• Management of Land and Natural Resources (Social Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environment)
• Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Social Science)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
• Sustainability
• Browse content in Human Geography
• Cultural Geography
• Economic Geography
• Political Geography
• Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
• Communication Studies
• Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
• Browse content in Politics
• African Politics
• Asian Politics
• Chinese Politics
• Comparative Politics
• Conflict Politics
• Elections and Electoral Studies
• Environmental Politics
• Ethnic Politics
• European Union
• Foreign Policy
• Gender and Politics
• Human Rights and Politics
• Indian Politics
• International Relations
• International Organization (Politics)
• Irish Politics
• Latin American Politics
• Middle Eastern Politics
• Political Behaviour
• Political Economy
• Political Institutions
• Political Theory
• Political Methodology
• Political Communication
• Political Philosophy
• Political Sociology
• Politics and Law
• Politics of Development
• Public Policy
• Public Administration
• Qualitative Political Methodology
• Quantitative Political Methodology
• Regional Political Studies
• Russian Politics
• Security Studies
• State and Local Government
• UK Politics
• US Politics
• Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
• African Studies
• Asian Studies
• East Asian Studies
• Japanese Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Middle Eastern Studies
• Native American Studies
• Scottish Studies
• Browse content in Research and Information
• Research Methods
• Browse content in Social Work
• Addictions and Substance Misuse
• Adoption and Fostering
• Care of the Elderly
• Child and Adolescent Social Work
• Couple and Family Social Work
• Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
• Emergency Services
• Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
• International and Global Issues in Social Work
• Mental and Behavioural Health
• Social Justice and Human Rights
• Social Policy and Advocacy
• Social Work and Crime and Justice
• Social Work Macro Practice
• Social Work Practice Settings
• Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
• Welfare and Benefit Systems
• Browse content in Sociology
• Childhood Studies
• Community Development
• Comparative and Historical Sociology
• Disability Studies
• Economic Sociology
• Gender and Sexuality
• Gerontology and Ageing
• Health, Illness, and Medicine
• Marriage and the Family
• Migration Studies
• Occupations, Professions, and Work
• Organizations
• Population and Demography
• Race and Ethnicity
• Social Theory
• Social Movements and Social Change
• Social Research and Statistics
• Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
• Sociology of Religion
• Sociology of Education
• Sport and Leisure
• Urban and Rural Studies
• Browse content in Warfare and Defence
• Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
• Land Forces and Warfare
• Military Administration
• Military Life and Institutions
• Naval Forces and Warfare
• Other Warfare and Defence Issues
• Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
• Weapons and Equipment

• < Previous
• Next chapter >

Introduction: What Are Animal Rights?

• Published: November 2005
• Cite Icon Cite
• Permissions Icon Permissions

This introductory chapter explores the concept of animal rights. It shows the range of possible positions concerning the animal rights issue and explores what issues, of theory or fact, separate reasonable people. The chapter claims that in at least some sense, almost everyone believes in animal rights, and that the real question is about what the phrase ‘animal rights’ actually means. It discusses the provisions of some state laws concerning animal rights, and the difference between animal rights and animal welfare. The introduction also explains the objectives of this book, which are to bring some new clarity to the animal rights debate, and to chart some new directions for both practice and theory.

Personal account

• Sign in with email/username & password
• Get email alerts
• Save searches
• Purchase content
• Activate your purchase/trial code
• Add your ORCID iD

Institutional access

Sign in with a library card.

• Sign in with username/password
• Recommend to your librarian
• Institutional account management
• Get help with access

Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:

IP based access

Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.

Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic.

• Click Sign in through your institution.
• Select your institution from the list provided, which will take you to your institution's website to sign in.
• When on the institution site, please use the credentials provided by your institution. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.
• Following successful sign in, you will be returned to Oxford Academic.

If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institution’s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.

Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.

Society Members

Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:

Sign in through society site

Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see ‘Sign in through society site’ in the sign in pane within a journal:

• Click Sign in through society site.
• When on the society site, please use the credentials provided by that society. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.

If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.

Sign in using a personal account

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.

A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.

Viewing your signed in accounts

Click the account icon in the top right to:

• View your signed in personal account and access account management features.
• View the institutional accounts that are providing access.

Signed in but can't access content

Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.

For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.

Our books are available by subscription or purchase to libraries and institutions.

• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Rights and permissions
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Animal Rights

Essays on Animal Rights

As a college student, choosing the right essay topic is crucial to the success of your assignment. It's important to select a topic that not only interests you, but also allows for critical analysis and creative exploration. This webpage is designed to provide you with a variety of Animal Rights essay topics to consider, along with examples of and paragraphs for each topic.

Types of Animal Rights Essays and Topic Examples

Argumentative essays.

• The Ethics of Animal Testing
• Should Animals be Used for Entertainment?
• Animal Rights vs. Human Needs

Example Paragraph: The use of animals in scientific research has long been a controversial issue. While some argue that it is necessary for medical advancements, others believe it is unethical to subject animals to testing. In this essay, we will explore the ethical implications of animal testing and the potential alternatives.

Example Paragraph: The ethical implications of animal testing are complex and multifaceted. While there is no easy solution, it is crucial for society to continue exploring alternative methods that do not involve the use of animals.

Compare and Contrast Essays

• Differences in Animal Rights Laws Across Countries
• The Treatment of Domestic Animals vs. Wild Animals
• The Ethical Considerations of Eating Meat vs. Being Vegetarian

Example Paragraph: The treatment of animals varies significantly around the world, with different countries having their own laws and regulations. In this essay, we will compare and contrast the differences in animal rights laws across various countries, and explore the ethical implications of these differences.

Example Paragraph: It is clear that the treatment of animals is a complex issue that varies greatly depending on cultural, legal, and ethical considerations. By understanding these differences, we can work towards creating a more unified and compassionate approach to animal rights.

Descriptive Essays

• A Day in the Life of a Shelter Animal
• The Beauty of Wildlife Conservation
• The Emotional Lives of Farm Animals

Example Paragraph: The emotional lives of animals are often overlooked in discussions of animal rights. In this essay, we will delve into the emotional experiences of farm animals and the implications for their treatment and rights.

Example Paragraph: By acknowledging the emotional lives of farm animals, we can begin to reshape our perspective on their treatment and rights. It is crucial for society to recognize the emotional complexity of animals and work towards a more compassionate approach.

Persuasive Essays

• The Importance of Animal Rights Education
• Why We Should Ban Circuses that Use Animals
• The Moral Imperative to Protect Endangered Species

Example Paragraph: The use of animals in circuses has long been a topic of controversy. In this essay, we will explore the ethical implications of using animals for entertainment and argue for the banning of circuses that use animals.

Example Paragraph: It is clear that the use of animals in circuses raises significant ethical concerns. By advocating for the banning of these practices, we can work towards a more compassionate and ethical treatment of animals in entertainment.

Narrative Essays

• My Experience Volunteering at an Animal Shelter
• The Impact of Animal Rights Activism on My Life
• A Personal Reflection on the Importance of Compassion for Animals

Example Paragraph: My experience volunteering at an animal shelter opened my eyes to the challenges and joys of caring for animals in need. In this essay, I will reflect on the impact of this experience and the lessons I have learned about compassion and advocacy for animal rights.

Example Paragraph: Volunteering at the animal shelter has been a transformative experience that has deepened my understanding of the importance of compassion and advocacy for animal rights. It is crucial for individuals to continue advocating for the rights and welfare of animals in our society.

Should We Ban Animal Testing?

The issue of animal abuse in modern world, made-to-order essay as fast as you need it.

Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences

+ experts online

The Fight for Animal Rights and Its Importance

Why wild animals should be conserved in captivity, discussion of the issue of animal rights and cruelty to animals, discussion of the worst cases of animal abuse, let us write you an essay from scratch.

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

The Principle of Equality in Accordance to Animal Rights

Overview of the animal rights issues that can be identified nowadays, animal rights ethics: the moral dilemma with animal testing, animal rights and cruelty in the circus life, get a personalized essay in under 3 hours.

Expert-written essays crafted with your exact needs in mind

Animal Deserve Their Own Bill of Rights

Animal rights ethics and ineffectiveness of animal testing, the animal bill of rights is a step into the right direction, speciesism among animals, overview of the reasons and types of animal abuse, animals should not be kept in captivity, the arguments against keeping animals in captivity, discussion of whether animals should be kept in captivity, animal rights in the book of genesis, inhumane surgeries against animal rights, hostage animals: the reasons behind keeping animals in captivity, dangers of captivity: the issue of animal-welfare in zoos, the negative consequences of keeping animals in captivity, importance and significance of animal rights, the topic of animal rights in relation to the virtue theory, no more cat-hate: persuading the world to embrace feline companions, should animal testing be banned: a comprehensive analysis, zoos should be banned, the controversy of animal testing in scientific research and testing, stop the cruel and unnecessary animal testing.

Animal rights are moral or legal entitlements attributed to nonhuman animals, usually because of the complexity of their cognitive, emotional, and social lives or their capacity to experience physical or emotional pain or pleasure.

Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all sentient animals have moral worth that is independent of their utility for humans, and that their most basic interests — such as in avoiding suffering — should be afforded the same consideration as similar interests of human beings. More narrowly, "animal rights" refers to the idea that many animals have fundamental rights to be treated with respect as individuals—rights to life, liberty, and freedom from torture that may not be overridden by considerations of aggregate welfare.

Earliest examples of animal rights being acknowledged date to Ancient Greece and India, where figures like Pythagoras and Buddha advocated for a vegetarian diet. In 2014 Sandra, an orangutan at Buenos Aires Zoo was granted basic human rights in an unprecedented ruling. The Great Ape Project advocates for basic human rights to be extended to our closest primate relatives.

Relevant topics

• Animal Testing
• Gun Violence
• Controversial Issue
• Sexual Abuse
• Youth Violence
• Violence in Video Games
• Cyber Bullying
• Women's Rights

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Bibliography

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

Animal Rights and Human Responsibilities: Towards a Relational Capabilities Approach in Animal Ethics

PDF Version Also Available for Download.

Description

In this thesis, I analyze some of the most important contributions concerning the inclusion of animals in the moral and political sphere. Moving from these positions, I suggest that a meaningful consideration of animals' sentience demands a profound, radical political theory which considers animals as moral patients endowed with specific capabilities whose actualization needs to be allowed and/or promoted. Such theory would take human-animal different types of relationships into account to decide what kind of ethical and political responsibilities humans have towards animals. It would be also based on the assumption that animals' sentience is the necessary and sufficient feature … continued below

Physical Description

iii, 44 pages

Creation Information

Guerini, Elena May 2018.

This thesis is part of the collection entitled: UNT Theses and Dissertations and was provided by the UNT Libraries to the UNT Digital Library , a digital repository hosted by the UNT Libraries . It has been viewed 1027 times, with 14 in the last month. More information about this thesis can be viewed below.

People and organizations associated with either the creation of this thesis or its content.

• Guerini, Elena
• Ruderman, Richard Committee Chair

Committee Members

• Kaplan, David
• Greig, Michael
• University of North Texas Publisher Info: www.unt.edu Place of Publication: Denton, Texas

Rights Holder

For guidance see Citations, Rights, Re-Use .

Provided By

Unt libraries.

The UNT Libraries serve the university and community by providing access to physical and online collections, fostering information literacy, supporting academic research, and much, much more.

Descriptive information to help identify this thesis. Follow the links below to find similar items on the Digital Library.

Degree Information

• Name: Master of Arts
• Level: Master's
• Department: Department of Political Science
• College: College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
• Discipline: Political Science
• PublicationType: Master's Thesis
• Grantor: University of North Texas

In this thesis, I analyze some of the most important contributions concerning the inclusion of animals in the moral and political sphere. Moving from these positions, I suggest that a meaningful consideration of animals' sentience demands a profound, radical political theory which considers animals as moral patients endowed with specific capabilities whose actualization needs to be allowed and/or promoted. Such theory would take human-animal different types of relationships into account to decide what kind of ethical and political responsibilities humans have towards animals. It would be also based on the assumption that animals' sentience is the necessary and sufficient feature for assigning moral status. I start from the consideration that in the history of political philosophy, most theorists have excluded animals from the realm of justice. I then propose an examination of utilitarianism, capabilities approach, and relational-based theories of animal rights (in particular the works by Kymlicka and Donaldson, and Clare Palmer) and borrow essential elements from each of these approaches to build my theory. I claim that a political theory which attaches high importance to individual capabilities, as well as to the various types of relationships we have with animals, is the most appropriate to tackle the puzzle of human responsibilities to animals.

• Animal Ethics
• Animal Rights
• Capabilities Theory

Library of Congress Subject Headings

• Animal rights -- Political aspects.
• Animal welfare -- Political aspects.
• Thesis or Dissertation

Unique identifying numbers for this thesis in the Digital Library or other systems.

• Accession or Local Control No : submission_1129
• Archival Resource Key : ark:/67531/metadc1157548

Collections

This thesis is part of the following collection of related materials.

UNT Theses and Dissertations

Theses and dissertations represent a wealth of scholarly and artistic content created by masters and doctoral students in the degree-seeking process. Some ETDs in this collection are restricted to use by the UNT community .

What responsibilities do I have when using this thesis?

Digital Files

• 48 image files available in multiple sizes
• 1 file (.pdf)
• Metadata API: descriptive and downloadable metadata available in other formats

Dates and time periods associated with this thesis.

Creation Date

Added to the unt digital library.

• June 6, 2018, 1:19 p.m.

Description Last Updated

• Aug. 25, 2021, 8:11 a.m.

Usage Statistics

When was this thesis last used?

Interact With This Thesis

Here are some suggestions for what to do next.

Search Inside

• or search this site for other thesis or dissertations

Start Reading

• All Formats

Citations, Rights, Re-Use

• Citing this Thesis
• Responsibilities of Use
• Licensing and Permissions
• Linking and Embedding
• Copies and Reproductions

International Image Interoperability Framework

We support the IIIF Presentation API

Print / Share

Links for robots.

Helpful links in machine-readable formats.

Archival Resource Key (ARK)

• ERC Record: /ark:/67531/metadc1157548/?
• Persistence Statement: /ark:/67531/metadc1157548/??

International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF)

• IIIF Manifest: /ark:/67531/metadc1157548/manifest/

Metadata Formats

• UNTL Format: /ark:/67531/metadc1157548/metadata.untl.xml
• DC RDF: /ark:/67531/metadc1157548/metadata.dc.rdf
• DC XML: /ark:/67531/metadc1157548/metadata.dc.xml
• OAI_DC : /oai/?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_dc&identifier=info:ark/67531/metadc1157548
• METS : /ark:/67531/metadc1157548/metadata.mets.xml
• OpenSearch Document: /ark:/67531/metadc1157548/opensearch.xml
• Thumbnail: /ark:/67531/metadc1157548/thumbnail/
• Small Image: /ark:/67531/metadc1157548/small/
• In-text: /ark:/67531/metadc1157548/urls.txt
• Usage Stats: /stats/stats.json?ark=ark:/67531/metadc1157548

Guerini, Elena. Animal Rights and Human Responsibilities: Towards a Relational Capabilities Approach in Animal Ethics , thesis , May 2018; Denton, Texas . ( https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1157548/ : accessed September 15, 2024 ), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu ; .

• Animal Ethics
• Ethical Theory
• Animal Rights

Animal Rights: A New (Non)Human Rights Revolution?

• January 2023
• In book: One Rights: Human and Animal Rights in the Anthropocene (pp.1-15)
• This person is not on ResearchGate, or hasn't claimed this research yet.

Discover the world's research

• 25+ million members
• 160+ million publication pages
• 2.3+ billion citations

• Christopher Wolf

• Saskia Stucki
• James Rachels
• Andreas von Arnauld
• Jens T. Theilen
• David R. Boyd
• CONOR GEARTY
• Steven M. Wise

• Gary L. Francione
• Anna E. Charlton
• Recruit researchers
• Join for free
• Login Email Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google Welcome back! Please log in. Email · Hint Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google No account? Sign up

• Harmful Language Statement

The blood is on your hands: Existentialism in the animal rights movement

Featured Topics

Featured series.

A series of random questions answered by Harvard experts.

Explore the Gazette

Read the latest.

For this ring, I thee sue 

Speech is never totally free

EVs fight warming but are costly. So why aren’t we driving $10,000 Chinese imports?

They can think, feel pain, love. isn’t it time animals had rights.

Martha Nussbaum lays out ethical, legal case in new book

Martha Nussbaum

Excerpted from “Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility” by Martha C. Nussbaum, M.A. ’71, Ph.D. ’75

Animals are in trouble all over the world. Our world is dominated by humans everywhere: on land, in the seas, and in the air. No non-human animal escapes human domination. Much of the time, that domination inflicts wrongful injury on animals: whether through the barbarous cruelties of the factory meat industry, through poaching and game hunting, through habitat destruction, through pollution of the air and the seas, or through neglect of the companion animals that people purport to love.

In a way, this problem is age-old. Both Western and non-Western philosophical traditions have deplored human cruelty to animals for around two millennia. The Hindu emperor Ashoka (c. 304–232 bce), a convert to Buddhism, wrote about his efforts to give up meat and to forgo all practices that harmed animals. In Greece the Platonist philosophers Plutarch (46–119 ce) and Porphyry (c. 234–305 ce) wrote detailed treatises deploring human cruelty to animals, describing their keen intelligence and their capacity for social life, and urging humans to change their diet and their way of life. But by and large these voices have fallen on deaf ears, even in the supposedly moral realm of the philosophers, and most humans have continued to treat most animals like objects, whose suffering does not matter — although they sometimes make an exception for companion animals. Meanwhile, countless animals have suffered cruelty, deprivation, and neglect.

Because the reach of human cruelty has expanded, so too has the involvement of virtually all people in it. Even people who do not consume meat produced by the factory farming industry are likely to have used single-use plastic items, to use fossil fuels mined beneath the ocean and polluting the air, to dwell in areas in which elephants and bears once roamed, or to live in high-rise buildings that spell death for migratory birds. The extent of our own implication in practices that harm animals should make every person with a conscience consider what we can all do to change this situation. Pinning guilt is less important than accepting the fact that humanity as a whole has a collective duty to face and solve these problems.

So far, I have not spoken of the extinction of animal species, because this is a book about loss and deprivation suffered by individual creatures, each of whom matters. Species as such do not suffer loss. However, extinction never takes place without massive suffering of individual creatures: the hunger of a polar bear, starving on an ice floe, unable to cross the sea to hunt; the sadness of an orphan elephant, deprived of care and community as the species dwindles rapidly; the mass extinctions of song-bird species as a result of unbreathable air, a horrible death. When human practices hound species toward extinction, member animals always suffer greatly and live squashed and thwarted lives. Besides, the species themselves matter for creating diverse ecosystems in which animals can live well.

Extinctions would take place even without human intervention. Even in such cases we might have reasons to intervene to stop them, because of the importance of biodiversity. But scientists agree that today’s extinctions are between one thousand and ten thousand times higher than the natural extinction rate. (Our uncertainty is huge, because we are very ignorant of how many species there actually are, particularly where fish and insects are concerned.) Worldwide, approximately one-quarter of the world’s mammals and over 40 percent of amphibians are currently threatened with extinction. These include several species of bear, the Asian elephant (endangered), the African elephant (threatened), the tiger, six species of whale, the gray wolf, and so many more. All in all, more than 370 animal species are either endangered or threatened, using the criteria of the US Endangered Species Act, not including birds, and a separate list of similar length for birds. Asian songbirds are virtually extinct in the wild, on account of the lucrative trade in these luxury items. And many other species of birds have recently become extinct. Meanwhile, the international treaty called CITES that is supposed to protect birds (and many other creatures) is toothless and unenforced. The story of this book is not that story of mass extinction, but the sufferings of individual creatures that take place against this background of human indifference to biodiversity.

“The extent of our own implication in practices that harm animals should make every person with a conscience consider what we can all do to change this situation.”

There is a further reason why the ethical evasion of the past must end now. Today we know far more about animal lives than we did even 50 years ago. We know much too much for the glib excuses of the past to be offered without shame. Porphyry and Plutarch (and Aristotle before them) knew a lot about animal intelligence and sensitivity. But somehow humans find ways of “forgetting” what the science of the past has plainly revealed, and for many centuries most people, including most philosophers, thought animals were “brute beasts,” automata without a subjective sense of the world, without emotions, without society, and perhaps even without the feeling of pain.

Recent decades, however, have seen an explosion of high-level research covering all areas of the animal world. We now know more not only about animals long closely studied — primates and companion animals — but also about animals who are difficult to study — marine mammals, whales, fish, birds, reptiles, and cephalopods.

We know — not just by observation, but by carefully designed experimental work — that all vertebrates and many invertebrates feel pain subjectively, and have, more generally, a subjectively felt view of the world: the world looks like something to them. We know that all of these animals experience at least some emotions (fear being the most ubiquitous), and that many experience emotions like compassion and grief that involve more complex “takes” on a situation. We know that animals as different as dolphins and crows can solve complicated problems and learn to use tools to solve them. We know that animals have complex forms of social organization and social behavior. More recently, we have been learning that these social groups are not simply places where a rote inherited repertory is acted out, but places of complicated social learning. Species as different as whales, dogs, and many types of birds clearly transmit key parts of the species’ repertoire to their young socially, not just genetically.

What are the implications of this research for ethics? Huge, clearly. We can no longer draw the usual line between our own species and “the beasts,” a line meant to distinguish intelligence, emotion, and sentience from the dense life of a “brute beast.” Nor can we even draw a line between a group of animals we already recognize as sort of “like us” — apes, elephants, whales, dogs — and others who are supposed to be unintelligent. Intelligence takes multiple and fascinating forms in the real world, and birds, evolving by a very different path from humans, have converged on many similar abilities. Even an invertebrate such as the octopus has surprising capacities for intelligent perception: an octopus can recognize individual humans, and can solve complex problems, guiding one of its arms through a maze to obtain food using only its eyes. Once we recognize all this we can hardly be unchanged in our ethical thinking. To put a “brute beast” in a cage seems no more wrong than putting a rock in a terrarium. But that is not what we are doing. We are deforming the existence of intelligent and complexly sentient forms of life. Each of these animals strives for a flourishing life, and each has abilities, social and individual, that equip it to negotiate a decent life in a world that gives animals difficult challenges. What humans are doing is to thwart this striving — and this seems wrong.

But even though the time has come to recognize our ethical responsibility to the other animals, we have few intellectual tools to effect meaningful change. The third reason why we must confront what we are doing to animals now, today, is that we have built a world in which two of humanity’s best tools for progress, law and political theory, have, so far, no or little help to offer us. Law — both domestic and international — has quite a lot to say about the lives of companion animals, but very little to say about any other animals. Nor do animals in most nations have what lawyers call “standing”: that is, the status to bring a legal claim if they are wronged. Of course, animals cannot themselves bring a legal claim, but neither can most humans, including children, people with cognitive disabilities — and, to tell the truth, almost everybody, since people have little knowledge of the law. All of us need a lawyer to press our claims. But all the humans I have mentioned — including people with lifelong cognitive disabilities — count, and can bring a legal claim, assisted by an able advocate. The way we have designed the world’s legal systems, animals do not have this simple privilege. They do not count.

Law is built by humans using the theories they have. When those theories were racist, laws were racist. When theories of sex and gender excluded women, so too did law. And there is no denying that most political thought by humans the world over has been human-centered, excluding animals. Even the theories that purport to offer help in the struggle against abuse are deeply defective, built on an inadequate picture of animal lives and animal striving. As a philosopher and political theorist who is also deeply immersed in law and law teaching, I hope to change things with this book.

Copyright © 2022 by Martha Nussbaum. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Share this article

You might like.

Unhappy suitor wants $70,000 engagement gift back. Now court must decide whether 

Cass Sunstein suggests universities look to First Amendment as they struggle to craft rules in wake of disruptive protests

Experts say tension between trade, green-tech policies hampers climate change advances; more targeted response needed

Harvard releases race data for Class of 2028

Cohort is first to be impacted by Supreme Court’s admissions ruling

Parkinson’s may take a ‘gut-first’ path

Damage to upper GI lining linked to future risk of Parkinson’s disease, says new study

Professor tailored AI tutor to physics course. Engagement doubled.

Preliminary findings inspire other large Harvard classes to test approach this fall

• Table of Contents
• Random Entry
• Chronological
• Editorial Information
• About the SEP
• Editorial Board
• How to Cite the SEP
• Special Characters
• Advanced Tools
• Support the SEP
• PDFs for SEP Friends
• Make a Donation
• SEPIA for Libraries
• Entry Contents

Bibliography

Academic tools.

• Friends PDF Preview
• Author and Citation Info
• Back to Top

The Moral Status of Animals

Is there something distinctive about humanity that justifies the idea that humans have moral status while non-humans do not? Providing an answer to this question has become increasingly important among philosophers as well as those outside of philosophy who are interested in our treatment of non-human animals. For some, answering this question will enable us to better understand the nature of human beings and the proper scope of our moral obligations. Some argue that there is an answer that can distinguish humans from the rest of the natural world. Many of those who accept this answer are interested in justifying certain human practices towards non-humans—practices that cause pain, discomfort, suffering, and death. This latter group expects that in answering the question in a particular way, humans will be justified in granting moral consideration to other humans that is neither required nor justified when considering non-human animals. In contrast to this view, an increasing number of philosophers have argued that while humans are different in a variety of ways from each other and other animals, these differences do not provide a philosophical defense for denying non-human animals moral consideration. What the basis of moral consideration is and what it amounts to has been the source of much disagreement.

1.1 Speciesism

1.2 human exceptionalism, 1.3.1 rational persons, 1.3.2 legal persons, 1.4 sentience, 2.1 what interests do animals have, 2.2 how to count animals’ moral claims, 3. alternative perspectives on human relations to other animals, references cited, further reading, other internet resources, related entries, 1. the moral considerability of animals.

To say that a being deserves moral consideration is to say that there is a moral claim that this being can make on those who can recognize such claims. A morally considerable being is a being who can be wronged. It is often thought that because only humans can recognize moral claims, it is only humans who are morally considerable. However, when we ask why we think human animals are the only types of beings that can be morally wronged, we begin to see that the class of beings able to recognize moral claims and the class of beings who can suffer moral wrongs are not co-extensive. A variety of types of morally relevant factors have been invoked to to justify who is morally considerable.

The view that only humans should be morally considered is sometimes referred to as “speciesism”. In the 1970s, Richard Ryder coined this term while campaigning in Oxford to denote a ubiquitous type of human centered prejudice, which he thought was similar to racism. He objected to favoring one’s own species, while exploiting or harming members of other species. Peter Singer popularized the term and focused on the way speciesism, without moral justification, favors the interests of humans:

the racist violates the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of his own race, when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race. Similarly the speciesist allows the interests of his own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is the same in each case. (Singer 1974: 108)

Discrimination based on race, like discrimination based on species is thought to be prejudicial, because these are not factors that matter when it comes to making moral claims.

Speciesist actions and attitudes are prejudicial because there is no prima facie reason for preferring the interests of beings belonging to the species group to which one also belongs over the interests of those who don’t. That humans are considered to be members of the species Homo sapiens — humans share a genetic make-up and a distinctive physiology, we all emerge from a human pregnancy — is unimportant from the moral point of view. Species membership is morally irrelevant, a bit of luck that is no more morally interesting than being born in Malaysia or Canada. It thus cannot serve as the basis for a view that holds that our species deserves moral consideration that is not owed to members of other species.

As Oscar Horta (2022) and others have noted, speciesism is not only an individual attitude that some humans hold, but is a “collective phenomenon” that springs from ideological commitments that are generated within and shape institutions and social structures. Since membership in a species category is largely socially determined, analyzing the meanings of category membership can help illuminate further problems with speciesism. The social meanings of categories structure not only the institutions we operate within but also how we conceptualize ourselves and our world. Humans have developed moral systems as well as a wide range of other valuable practices, and by creating these systems, we separate the human from the rest of the animal kingdom. But the category “human” itself is morally contested. Some argue, for example, that racism is not simply, or even primarily about discrimination and prejudice, but rather a mechanism of dehumanizing blackness so as to provide the conditions that make humans white (see Fanon 1967; Jackson 2020; Kim 2015; Ko & Ko 2017). According to this line of thought, speciesism isn’t focused on discrimination or prejudice but is a central tool for creating human (and white) supremacy or exceptionalism.

Like speciesism, human exceptionalism can be understood in different ways. The most common way of understanding it is to suggest that there are distinctly human capacities and it is on the basis of these capacities that humans have moral status and other animals do not. But which capacities mark out all and only humans as the kinds of beings that can be wronged? A number of candidate capacities have been proposed—developing family ties, solving social problems, expressing emotions, starting wars, having sex for pleasure, using language, or thinking abstractly, are just a few. As it turns out, none of these activities is uncontroversially unique to humans. Both scholarly and popular work on animal behavior suggests that many of the activities that are thought to be distinct to humans occur in non-humans. For example, many species of non-humans develop long lasting kinship ties—orangutan mothers stay with their young for eight to ten years and while they eventually part company, they continue to maintain their relationships. Less solitary animals, such as chimpanzees, baboons, wolves, and elephants maintain extended family units built upon complex individual relationships, for long periods of time. Meerkats in the Kalahari desert are known to sacrifice their own safety by staying with sick or injured family members. All animals living in socially complex groups must solve various problems that inevitably arise in such groups. Canids and primates are particularly adept at it, yet even chickens and horses are known to recognize large numbers of individuals in their social hierarchies and to maneuver within them. One of the ways that non-human animals negotiate their social environments is by being particularly attentive to the emotional states of others around them. When a conspecific is angry, it is a good idea to get out of his way. Animals that develop life-long bonds are known to suffer from the death of their partners. Some are even said to die of sorrow. As Darwin noted in The Descent of Man: “So intense is the grief of female monkeys for the loss of their young, that it invariably caused the death of certain kinds” (1871: 40). Jane Goodall’s report of the death of the healthy 8 year old chimpanzee Flint just three weeks after the death of his mother Flo also suggests that sorrow can have a devastating effect on non-human animals (see Goodall 2000: 140–141 in Bekoff 2000). Coyotes, elephants and killer whales are also among the species for which profound effects of grief have been reported (Bekoff 2000) and many dog owners can provide similar accounts. While the lives of many, perhaps most, non-humans in the wild are consumed with struggle for survival, aggression and battle, there are some non-humans whose lives are characterized by expressions of joy, playfulness, and a great deal of sex (Woods 2010). Studies in cognitive ethology have suggested that some non-humans engage in manipulative and deceptive activity, can construct “cognitive maps” for navigation, and some non-humans appear to understand symbolic representation and are able to use language. [ 1 ]

It appears that most of the capacities that are thought to distinguish humans as morally considerable beings, have been observed, often in less elaborate form, in the non-human world. Because human behavior and cognition share deep roots with the behavior and cognition of other animals, approaches that try to find sharp behavioral or cognitive boundaries between humans and other animals remain controversial. For this reason, attempts to establish human uniqueness by identifying certain capacities are not the most promising when it comes to thinking hard about the moral status of animals.

1.3 Personhood

Nonetheless, there is something important that is thought to distinguish humans from non-humans that is not reducible to the observation of behavior best explained by possessing a certain capacity, and that is our “personhood”. The notion of personhood identifies a category of morally considerable beings that is thought to be coextensive with humanity. Historically, Kant is the most noted defender of personhood as the quality that makes a being valuable and thus morally considerable (for a contemporary utilitarian discussion of personhood, see Varner 2012). Kant writes:

…every rational being, exists as an end in himself and not merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by this or that will…Beings whose existence depends not on our will but on nature have, nevertheless, if they are not rational beings, only a relative value as means and are therefore called things. On the other hand, rational beings are called persons inasmuch as their nature already marks them out as ends in themselves. (Kant [1785] 1998: [Ak 4: 428])

The fact that the human being can have the representation “I” raises him infinitely above all the other beings on earth. By this he is a person….that is, a being altogether different in rank and dignity from things, such as irrational animals, with which one may deal and dispose at one’s discretion. (Kant [1798] 2010: 239 [Ak 7: 127])

More recent work in a Kantian vein develops this idea. Christine Korsgaard, for example, argues that humans “uniquely” face a problem, the problem of normativity. This problem emerges because of the reflective structure of human consciousness. We can, and often do, think about our desires and ask ourselves “Are these desires reasons for action? Do these impulses represent the kind of things I want to act according to?” Our reflective capacities allow us and require us to step back from our mere impulses in order to determine when and whether to act on them. In stepping back we gain a certain distance from which we can answer these questions and solve the problem of normativity. We decide whether to treat our desires as reasons for action based on our conceptions of ourselves, on our “practical identities”. When we determine whether we should take a particular desire as a reason to act we are engaging in a further level of reflection, a level that requires an endorsable description of ourselves. This endorsable description of ourselves, this practical identity, is a necessary moral identity because without it we cannot view our lives as worth living or our actions as worth doing. Korsgaard suggests that humans face the problem of normativity in a way that non-humans apparently do not:

A lower animal’s attention is fixed on the world. Its perceptions are its beliefs and its desires are its will. It is engaged in conscious activities, but it is not conscious of them. That is, they are not the objects of its attention. But we human animals turn our attention on to our perceptions and desires themselves, on to our own mental activities, and we are conscious of them. That is why we can think about them…And this sets us a problem that no other animal has. It is the problem of the normative…. The reflective mind cannot settle for perception and desire, not just as such. It needs a reason. (Korsgaard 1996: 93)

Here, Korsgaard understands “reason” as “a kind of reflective success” and given that non-humans are thought to be unable to reflect in a way that would allow them this sort of success, it appears that they do not act on reasons, at least reasons of this kind. Since non-humans do not act on reasons they do not have a practical identity from which they reflect and for which they act. So humans can be distinguished from non-humans because humans, we might say, are sources of normativity and non-humans are not.

But arguably, Kant’s view of personhood does not distinguish all and only humans as morally considerable. Personhood is not, in fact, coextensive with humanity when understood as a general description of the group to which human beings belong. And the serious part of this problem is not that there may be some extra-terrestrials or deities who have rational capacities. The serious problem is that many humans are not persons. Some humans—i.e., infants, children, people in comas—do not have the rational, self-reflective capacities associated with personhood. This problem, unfortunately known in the literature as the problem of “marginal cases”, poses serious difficulties for “personhood” as the criterion of moral considerability. Many beings whose positive moral value we have deeply held intuitions about, and who we treat as morally considerable, will be excluded from consideration by this account.

There are three ways to respond to this counter-intuitive conclusion. One, which can be derived from one interpretation of Kant, is to suggest that non-persons are morally considerable indirectly. Though Kant believed that animals were mere things it appears he did not genuinely believe we could dispose of them any way we wanted. In the Lectures on Ethics he makes it clear that we have indirect duties to animals, duties that are not toward them, but in regard to them insofar as our treatment of them can affect our duties to persons.

If a man shoots his dog because the animal is no longer capable of service, he does not fail in his duty to the dog, for the dog cannot judge, but his act is inhuman and damages in himself that humanity which it is his duty to show towards mankind. If he is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practice kindness towards animals, for he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. ([1784–5] 1997: 212 [Ak 27: 459])

And one could argue the same would be true of those human beings who are not persons. We disrespect our humanity when we act in inhumane ways towards non-persons, whatever their species.

This indirect view is unsatisfying—it fails to capture the independent wrong that is being done to the non-person. When someone rapes a woman in a coma, or whips a severely brain damaged child, or sets a cat on fire, they are not simply disrespecting humanity or themselves as representatives of it, they are wronging these non-persons. So, a second way to avoid the counter-intuitive conclusion is to argue that such non-persons stand in the proper relations to “rational nature” such that they should be thought of as morally considerable. Allen Wood (1998) argues in this way and suggests that all beings that potentially have a rational nature, or who virtually have it, or who have had it, or who have part of it, or who have the necessary conditions of it, what he calls “the infrastructure of rational nature”, should be directly morally considerable. Insofar as a being stands in this relation to rational nature, they are the kinds of beings that can be wronged.

This response is not unlike that of noted animal rights proponent, Tom Regan, who argues that what is important for moral consideration are not the differences between humans and non-humans but the similarities. Regan argues that because persons share with certain non-persons (which includes those humans and non-humans who have a certain level of organized cognitive function) the ability to be experiencing subjects of a life and to have an individual welfare that matters to them regardless of what others might think, both deserve moral consideration. Regan argues that subjects of a life:

want and prefer things, believe and feel things, recall and expect things. And all these dimensions of our life, including our pleasure and pain, our enjoyment and suffering, our satisfaction and frustration, our continued existence or our untimely death—all make a difference to the quality of our life as lived, as experienced, by us as individuals. As the same is true of … animals … they too must be viewed as the experiencing subjects of a life, with inherent value of their own. (Regan 1985: 24)

A third way of addressing this problem has been taken up by Korsgaard, who maintains that there is a big difference between those with normative, rational capacities and those without, but unlike Kant, believes both humans and non-humans are the proper objects of our moral concern. She argues that those without normative, rational capacities share certain “natural” capacities with persons, and these natural capacities are often the content of the moral demands that persons make on each other. She writes:

what we demand, when we demand … recognition, is that our natural concerns—the objects of our natural desires and interests and affections—be accorded the status of values, values that must be respected as far as possible by others. And many of those natural concerns—the desire to avoid pain is an obvious example—spring from our animal nature, not from our rational nature. (Korsgaard 2007: 7)

What moral agents construct as valuable and normatively binding is not only our rational or autonomous capacities, but the needs and desires we have as living, embodied beings. Insofar as these needs and desires are valuable for agents, the ability to experience similar needs and desires in patients should also be valued.

In the courts, all humans and some corporations are considered persons in the legal sense. But all animals, infants and adults, are not legal persons, but rather, under the law they are considered property. There have been a few attempts to change the legal status of some nonhuman animals from property to persons. The Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) founded by the late Steven Wise, has filed a series of cases in the New York courts seeking to establish legal personhood for particular chimpanzees being held in the state, with the goal of protecting their rights to bodily integrity and liberty, and allow them to seek remedy, through their proxies, when those rights are violated. Chimpanzees are a good test case for establishing nonhuman legal personhood as they are, according to the documents filed by NhRP, autonomous beings with sophisticated cognitive abilities including:

episodic memory, self-consciousness, self-knowing, self agency, referential and intentional communication, mental time-travel, numerosity, sequential learning, meditational learning, mental state modeling, visual perspective taking, understanding the experiences of others, intentional action, planning, imagination, empathy, metacognition, working memory, decision-making, imitation, deferred imitation, emulation, innovation, material, social, and symbolic culture, cross-modal perception, tool-use, tool-making, cause-and-effect. (petition of NhRP v. Samuel Stanley, p. 12, see Other Internet Resources )

The legal arguments to extend personhood beyond the human parallel more general ethical arguments that extend ethical consideration outward from those who occupy the moral center. Turning to empirical work designed to show that other animals are really similar to those considered legal persons, primatologists submitted affidavits attesting to what they have learned working with chimpanzees. Mary Lee Jensvold suggests:

there are numerous parallels in the way chimpanzee and human communication skills develop over time, suggesting a similar unfolding cognitive process across the two species and an underlying neurobiological continuity. (Jensvold affidavit, p. 4, in Other Internet Resources )

James King notes:

chimpanzees and humans resemble each other in terms of their ability to experience happiness and the way in which it relates to individual personality. (King affidavit, p. 8, in Other Internet Resources )

And Mathias Osvath makes remarkable claims about chimpanzee personhood:

Autonoetic consciousness gives an individual of any species an autobiographical sense of it self with a future and a past. Chimps and other great apes clearly possess an autobiographical self, as they are able to prepare themselves for future actions… they likely can, just as humans, be in pain over an anticipated future event that has yet to occur. For instance, confining someone in a prison or cage for a set time, or for life, would lose much of its power as punishment if that individual had no self-concept. Every moment would be a new moment with no conscious relation to the next. But, chimpanzees. and other great apes have a concept of their personal past and future and therefore suffer the pain of not being able to fulfill one’s goals or move around as one wants; like humans they experience the pain of anticipating a never-ending situation. (Osvath affidavit, pp. 4–7, in Other Internet Resources )

These claims, as well as those of others experts, identify the relevantly similar capacities that chimpanzees and other great apes share with humans and it is in virtue of these capacities that legal personhood is sought.

Using rational nature or cognitive capacities as the touchstone of moral considerability misses an important fact about animals, human and nonhuman. Our lives can go better or worse for us. Utilitarians have traditionally argued that the truly morally important feature of beings is unappreciated when we focus on personhood or the rational, self-reflective nature of humans, or the relation a being stands in to such nature, or being the subject of a life, or being legal persons. What is really important, utilitarians maintain, is the promotion of happiness, or pleasure, or the satisfaction of interests, and the avoidance of pain, or suffering, or frustration of interests. Bentham, one of the more forceful defenders of this sentientist view of moral considerability, famously wrote:

Other animals, which, on account of their interests having been neglected by the insensibility of the ancient jurists, stand degraded into the class of things . [original emphasis] … The day has been, I grieve it to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated … upon the same footing as … animals are still. The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized, that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the ossacrum , are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps, the faculty for discourse?…the question is not, Can they reason ? nor, Can they talk ? but, Can they suffer ? (Bentham 1780/1789: chapter xvii, paragraph 6)

Contemporary utilitarians, such as Peter Singer (1990, [1979] 1993), suggest that there is no morally justifiable way to exclude from moral consideration non-humans or non-persons who can clearly suffer. Any being that has an interest in not suffering deserves to have that interest taken into account. And a non-human who acts to avoid pain can be thought to have just such an interest. Even contemporary Kantians have acknowledged the moral force of the experience of pain. Korsgaard, for example, writes “it is a pain to be in pain. And that is not a trivial fact” (1996: 154).

When you pity a suffering animal, it is because you are perceiving a reason. An animal’s cries express pain, and they mean that there is a reason, a reason to change its conditions. And you can no more hear the cries of an animal as mere noise than you can the words of a person. Another animal can obligate you in exactly the same way another person can. …So of course we have obligations to animals. (Korsgaard 1996: 153)

When we encounter an animal in pain we recognize their claim on us, and thus beings who can suffer are morally considerable.

Though much work on sentience has been centered on mammals and birds, in recent years there has been a surge of literature defending a need to expand the circle of moral consideration to include other taxa, following evidence that sentience extends beyond those initial groups of animals. There are now sentience-based defenses of the moral status of fishes (Bovenkerk & Meijboom 2011; Balcombe 2017), octopuses (Mather 2020; King & Marino 2019; Jacquet et al. 2019), arthropods (Mikhalevich & Powell 2020), and decapod crustaceans (Crump et al. 2022). Nevertheless, sentience remains a non-observable capacity, and consequently despite the scientific advances there is a lot of uncertainty regarding the sentience of animals that are very phylogenetically distant from us, such as insects. As a result, several authors have defended the need to incorporate precautionary principles to guide our interactions with these animals, considering that we should err on the side of caution when dealing with beings whose sentience is uncertain (e.g. Fischer 2016; Birch 2017; Knutsson & Munthe 2017).

Some authors have sought to ground moral status in a being’s agency. Sebo (2017), for instance, distinguishes between propositional agency and perceptual agency. Propositional agency is the capacity to act on the basis of normative propositional judgments, and exemplifies the kind of agency that philosophers tend to think of when they argue that only humans can act, while animals can only behave. Perceptual agency, in contrast, is the capacity to act on the basis of what Sebo calls ‘normative perceptual experiences’, which happen when we experience entities in the world as calling for a certain treatment. Sebo considers that perceptual agency is widespread among animals, and indeed is often exercised by humans. He argues that insofar as we exercise the same kind of agency, we have the same kind of moral status, and that all beings who have perceptual agency have a right to life, liberty, and property. Jamieson (2018) also argues against the pervasive view that human agency is radically distinct from animal agency, and considers that acknowledging animal agency not only brings greater humility in our dealings with other species, but in addition allows us to appreciate that “[f]or many of them, as for us, the meaning and value of life turns on what affects agency as well as on what affects welfare” (p. 122). Wilcox (2020a) argues that agency is both a necessary and a sufficient condition for moral status. His reason for holding this view is that he considers agency and sentience to be co-extensive, so that all agents are sentient and vice versa. However, he believes it important to ground moral status in agency, rather than sentience, to emphasize that moral status entails not just a right to be protected from unnecessary suffering, but also a right to self-determination. Similarly, Lessard (2024) argues that grounding moral status in agency can offer a better alternative than sentience for the legal protection of animals, insofar as focusing solely on the reduction of suffering can still allow for the exploitation and killing of animals, which wouldn’t be warranted if we grant animal agents a right to make their own decisions about how their life should go.

2. The Moral Significance of Animals’ Moral Claims

Knowing that an animal has moral status only tells us that she is owed some moral consideration, but does not indicate how exactly she ought to be treated. In order to work out this issue, at least two further questions need to be addressed. A first question concerns the interests that an animal has, that is, what makes her life go well or badly for her. The second question concerns how to assess animals’ moral claims and how to weigh them against conflicting claims. We will now briefly consider each of these questions.

In order to know how we ought to treat an animal, we need to know what would make her life go better or worse. In other words, we need to know what her interests are. The word ‘interests’ is not meant to refer exclusively to the animal’s subjective (‘felt’) preferences, but rather to everything in which she has a stake, which may include objective as well as subjective goods. Different value theories give different accounts of what these goods are. Within animal ethics, there are three main approaches: (1) hedonism, (2) preference-satisfaction theories, and (3) objective list theories. (See also the SEP entry on well-being ).

Hedonistic theories consider that there is only one thing that is good – pleasure (broadly understood to encompass all positive affective states), and only one thing that is bad – pain (broadly understood to encompass all negative affective states). It simply seems intuitive that pleasure is good and that pain is bad for all beings who can experience pleasure and pain. Its simplistic character has made hedonism a popular value theory in much contemporary animal ethics.

This situation contrasts with contemporary human ethics, where hedonism is now thought to be a rather marginal axiology that has quite counterintuitive implications. One of the most widely cited thought experiments to illustrate the counterintuitive nature of hedonism is Robert Nozick’s ([1974] 2013) experience machine, an imaginary device that would give whomever plugged into it all the pleasurable experiences they like. That most of us would refuse to give up our lives to plug into such a machine is meant to illustrate that there’s more to a good life than pleasure and the absence of pain.

Animal ethicists who adhere to hedonism often embrace its counterintuitive implications. For instance, hedonism entails that the main problem involved in farming animals for food is the fact that animal agriculture generates vast amounts of suffering. This has led some proponents of this theory to argue that an acceptable solution for farmed animals’ plight would be to genetically engineer, or disenhance, them to make them incapable of experiencing any pain (McMahan 2008; Shriver 2009; Shriver & McConnachie 2018). Others have defended the need for large-scale interventions in nature to reduce wild animal suffering or even ‘engineer paradise’ wherever possible (Horta 2010; Kianpour & Paez 2022; Faria 2023). Yet others have embraced the view that it’s legitimate to deprive animals of their freedom so long as they do not suffer (Cochrane 2012) or that hedonism, coupled with utilitarianism, might entail a need to give moral priority to the creation of large amounts of small sentient animals, such as insects (Sebo 2023).

Although the simplicity of hedonism has an undeniable appeal, many reject its counterintuitive implications and find it to impoverish the notion of well-being by reducing it to pleasurable affective states. An alternative is provided by preference-satisfaction theories, which don’t determine a priori the contents of a good life, but rather assume that well-being consists of the satisfaction of whichever preferences one happens to have. Within animal ethics, Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation provided a strong defense of preference-satisfaction accounts of well-being, although Singer himself now endorses hedonism (Lazari-Radec & Singer 2016).

Preference-satisfaction accounts of well-being are subjective and pluralistic. These accounts have the problem that, while we all want our preferences satisfied, the satisfaction of our preferences isn’t always good for us. Take the obvious example of smoking. An addicted smoker has a preference to smoke, but given the health-risks associated with this activity it’s hard to see how smoking would contribute to her well-being. Further, not all preferences are formed under ideal conditions. One might be deceived, tricked, indoctrinated, or otherwise manipulated into having a preference that isn’t actually good for them. This seems particularly relevant in the case of domesticated animals, who have been bred for docility for millenia and might not always have the preferences that would most contribute to their well-being. A dog with an abusive owner, for instance, might have the will to please him rather than the preference of fighting back or running away, even though the latter would be better for her. We can also imagine instances of animals being trained or conditioned to have preferences whose fulfillment is bad for them, as might be the case of roosters who are trained to fight.

This generates the need for some theoretical qualification to ensure that the preferences in question are adequate. One option is to claim that only those preferences whose satisfaction leads to a net balance of pleasure over pain actually contribute to one’s well-being, but then the theory collapses into hedonism, since what ultimately matters is the pleasure generated, and the satisfaction of our preferences becomes a mere instrumental good (Appleby & Sandøe 2023). Another option is to claim that the preferences that contribute to well-being are those formed under adequate epistemic circumstances, which has often been interpreted as requiring that the individual be fully informed and that her preferences be her own autonomous choice. However, different authors have doubted that animals can form preferences in this sort of autonomous way (Korsgaard 2006, Bruckner 2021), which would imply that we may often have to decide on behalf of animals what a good life would look like for them. Those rejecting this kind of paternalism will be faced with the challenge of determining animals’ preferences, which is notoriously difficult even for species whose psychology has been extensively studied (Kirkden & Pajor 2006).

Some animal ethicists have opted for objective list accounts of well-being. According to this kind of value theory, there is a list of objective goods or opportunities that are central to living a good life. This list will typically include pleasure, but other goods as well, such as knowledge, autonomy, achievements, or friendship. Objective list theories identify goods that contribute value to an individual’s life regardless of whether she personally values and desires them or whether each of them brings a net balance of pleasure over pain.

Martha Nussbaum (2006) offers a list of central capabilities whose exercise is essential for an animal to flourish as the sort of being she is, and which includes life; bodily health; bodily integrity; senses, imagination, and thought; emotions; practical reason; affiliation; play; and control over one’s environment. As a result of growing evidence regarding many animals’ psychological, behavioral, and social complexity, other goods have been added to the list, such as freedom (Schmidt 2015; Giroux 2016; Wilcox 2020b), dignity (Cataldi 2002; Gruen 2014), meaning (Purves & Delon 2018; Thomas 2018; Hauskeller 2020; Abbate 2023), culture (Fitzpatrick & Andrews 2022), and care (Monsó et al. 2018; Benz-Schwarzburg & Wrage 2023).

Although objective list theories have some advantages over hedonism and preference-satisfaction theories, they also have a clear drawback: it’s very difficult to ground the objective value of these goods. While in the case of pleasure we can appeal to its positive phenomenology and in the case of preference satisfaction we can appeal to the fact that whatever is desired is what the individual wants in her life, in the case of these goods no such shortcut exists. Some, like Nussbaum, appeal to the norm of the species to ground the list of goods, but there is a danger of committing a naturalistic fallacy here, since what is natural for a species is often contentious and need not necessarily be good for any individual. For instance, it may be considered natural for stags to fight but fighting probably doesn’t contribute to the good life for a stag, given injury, infection, and death that can result. Although there are theoretical tools one can use to circumvent these worries, proponents of objective list theories need to be wary of projecting an anthropocentric ideal of a good life onto animals.

That non-human animals can make moral claims on us does not in itself indicate how such claims are to be assessed and conflicting claims adjudicated. Being morally considerable is like showing up on a moral radar screen—how strong the signal is or where it is located on the screen are separate questions. Of course, how one argues for the moral considerability of non-human animals will inform how we are to understand the force of an animal’s claims.

According to the view that an animal’s moral claim is equivalent to a moral right, any action that fails to treat the animal as a being with inherent worth would violate that animal’s right and is thus morally objectionable. According to the animal rights position, to treat an animal as a means to some human end, as many humans do when they eat animals or experiment on them, is to violate that animal’s right. As Tom Regan has written:

…animals are treated routinely, systematically as if their value were reducible to their usefulness to others, they are routinely, systematically treated with a lack of respect, and thus are their rights routinely, systematically violated. (Regan 1985: 24).

Any practice that fails to respect the rights of those animals who have them, e.g., eating animals, hunting animals, experimenting on animals, using animals for entertainment, is wrong, irrespective of human need, context, or culture. This doesn’t mean that it may not sometimes be justified to violate an animal’s rights, if the circumstances are dire enough and rights are in conflict. What is distinct about the rights position is that the violation of a right is still wrong, even if it can be justified in particular circumstances. And this means that the story doesn’t end there, but rather that certain forward-looking duties are generated in the moment a right is violated, duties that may call for the need to compensate the victims or to work towards ensuring that the circumstances that led to rights violations never arise again.

The animal rights theory that most characteristically incorporates the obligations that arise as a result of various relations is Donaldson and Kymlicka’s Zoopolis (2011). Donaldson and Kymlicka argue that rights apply differently to different animals who have moral status. While all sentient animals hold the same basic negative rights, meaning they are protected against killing, torture, slavery, and confinement, other rights arise as a result of the different relations that humans have had with specific animals. Domesticated animals, whom we have historically forced into a relationship of dependence with us, are owed the status of citizens. This means that they are full-blown members of our communities, which entails that we have specific duties towards them, such as a duty to socialize them properly, to give them free access to public spaces, to protect them from harm, to provide them medical care, or to ensure that their preferences are taken into account when making political decisions. In contrast, wild animals are owed a right to sovereignty over the territories they occupy, which means that they must be protected against colonization, invasion, and exploitation, as well as against any paternalistic management on our behalf. Donaldson and Kymlicka also discuss liminal animals, like squirrels and deer and racoons, who live in human spaces but aren’t domesticated. These animals, Donaldson and Kymlicka argue, are owed the status of denizens, which means that they have a right to secure residency once they have settled in our communities and their interests must be taken into account when designing our cities, but they have fewer rights and obligations than domesticated animals (not being entitled, for instance, to a protection from predation, nor being obligated to become socialized).

The utilitarian position on animals, most commonly associated with Peter Singer and popularly, though erroneously, referred to as an animal rights position, is actually quite distinct. Here the moral significance of the claims of animals depends on what other morally significant competing claims might be in play in any given situation. While the equal interests of all morally considerable beings are considered equally, the practices in question may end up violating or frustrating some interests but would not be considered morally wrong if, when all equal interests are considered, more of these interests are satisfied than frustrated. For utilitarians like Singer, what matters are the strength and nature of interests, not whose interests these are. So, if the only options available in order to save the life of one morally considerable being is to cause harm, but not death, to another morally considerable being, then according to a utilitarian position, causing this harm may be morally justifiable. Similarly, if there are two courses of action, one which causes extreme amounts of suffering and ultimate death, and one which causes much less suffering and painless death, then the latter would be morally preferable to the former.

Consider factory farming, the most common method used to convert animal bodies into relatively inexpensive food in industrialized societies today. An estimated 8 billion animals in the United States are born, confined, biologically manipulated, transported and ultimately slaughtered each year so that humans can consume them. The conditions in which these animals are raised and the method of slaughter causes vast amounts of suffering (see, for example, Safran Foer 2010, Singer 2023). Given that animals suffer under such conditions and assuming that suffering is not in their interests, then the practice of factory farming would only be morally justifiable if its abolition were to cause greater suffering or a greater amount of interest frustration. Certainly humans who take pleasure in eating animals will find it harder to satisfy these interests in the absence of factory farms; it may cost more and require more effort to obtain animal products. The factory farmers, and the industries that support factory farming, will also have certain interests frustrated if factory farming were to be abolished. How much interest frustration and interest satisfaction would be associated with the end to factory farming is largely an empirical question. But utilitarians are not making unreasonable predictions when they argue that on balance the suffering and interest frustration that animals experience in modern day meat production is greater than the suffering that humans would endure if they had to alter their current practices.

Importantly, the utilitarian argument for the moral significance of animal suffering in meat production is not an argument for vegetarianism. If an animal lived a happy life and was painlessly killed and then eaten by people who would otherwise suffer hunger or malnutrition by not eating the animal, then painlessly killing and eating the animal would be the morally justified thing to do. In many parts of the world where economic, cultural, or climate conditions make it virtually impossible for people to sustain themselves on plant based diets, killing and eating animals that previously led relatively unconstrained lives and are painlessly killed, would not be morally objectionable. The utilitarian position can thus avoid certain charges of cultural chauvinism and moralism, charges that the animal rights position apparently cannot avoid.

It might be objected that to suggest that it is morally acceptable to hunt and eat animals for those people living in Arctic regions, or for nomadic cultures, or for poor rural peoples, for example, is to potentially condone painlessly killing other morally considerable beings, like humans, for food consumption in similar situations. If violating the rights of an animal can be morally tolerated, especially a right to life, then similar rights violations can be morally tolerated. In failing to recognize the inviolability of the moral claims of all morally considerable beings, utilitarianism cannot accommodate one of our most basic prima facie principles, namely that killing a morally considerable being is wrong.

There are at least two replies to this sort of objection. The first appeals to the negative side effects that killing may promote. If, to draw on an overused and sadly sophomoric counter-example, one person can be kidnapped and painlessly killed in order to provide body parts for four individuals who will die without them, there will inevitably be negative side-effects that all things considered would make the kidnapping wrong. Healthy people, knowing they could be used for spare parts, might make themselves unhealthy to avoid such a fate or they may have so much stress and fear that the overall state of affairs would be worse than that in which four people died. Appealing to side-effects when it comes to the wrong of killing is certainly plausible, but it fails to capture what is directly wrong with killing.

A more satisfying reply would have us adopt what might be called a multi-factor perspective, one that takes into account the kinds of interest that are possible for certain kinds of morally considerable beings, the content of interests of the beings in question, their relative weight, and the context of those who have them. Consider a seal who has spent his life freely roaming the oceans and ice flats and who is suddenly and painlessly killed to provide food for a human family struggling to survive a bitter winter in far northern climes. While it is probably true that the seal had an immediate interest in avoiding suffering, it is less clear that the seal has a future directed interest in continued existence. If the seal lacks this future directed interest, then painlessly killing him does not violate this interest. The same cannot be said for the human explorer who finds himself face to face with a hungry family. Persons generally have interests in continued existence, interests that, arguably, non-persons do not have. So one factor that can be appealed to is that non-persons may not have the range of interests that persons do.

An additional factor is the type of interest in question. We can think of interests as scalar; crucial interests are weightier than important interests, important interests are weightier than replaceable interests, and all are weightier than trivial interests or mere whims. When there is a conflict of interests, crucial interests will always override important interests, important interests will always override replaceable interests, etc. So if an animal has an interest in not suffering, which is arguably a crucial interest, or at least an important one, and a person has an interest in eating that animal when there are other things to eat, meaning that interest is replaceable, then the animal has the stronger interest and it would be wrong to violate that interest by killing the animal for food if there is another source of food available.

Often, however, conflicts of interests are within the same category. The Inuit’s interest in food is crucial and the explorer’s interest in life is crucial. If we assume that the explorer cannot otherwise provide food for the hunter, then it looks as if there is a conflict within the same category. If you take the interests of an indigenous hunter’s whole family into account, then their combined interest in their own survival appears to outweigh the hapless explorer’s interest in continued existence. Indeed, if painlessly killing and eating the explorer were the only way for the family to survive, then perhaps this action would be morally condoned. But this is a rather extreme sort of example, one in which even our deepest held convictions are strained. So it is quite hard to know what to make of the clash between what a utilitarian would condone and what our intuitions tell us we should believe here. Our most basic prima facie principles arise and are accepted under ordinary circumstances. Extraordinary circumstances are precisely those in which such principles or precepts give way. [ 2 ]

The multi-factor utilitarian perspective is particularly helpful when considering the use of animals in medical research. According to the animal rights position, the use of animals in experimental procedures is a clear violation of their rights—they are being used as a mere means to some possible end—and thus animal rights proponents are in favor of the abolition of all laboratory research. The utilitarian position, particularly one that incorporates some kind of multi-factor perspective, might allow some research on animals under very specific conditions. Before exploring what a utilitarian might condone in the way of animal experimentation, let us first quickly consider what would be morally prohibited. All research that involves invasive procedures, constant confinement, and ultimate death can be said to violate the animal’s crucial interests. Thus any experiments that are designed to enhance the important, replaceable, or trivial interests of humans or other animals would be prohibited. That would mean that experiments for cosmetics or household products are prohibited, as there are non-animal tested alternatives and many options already available for consumers. Certain psychological experiments, such as those in which infant primates are separated from their mothers and exposed to frightening stimuli in an effort to understand problems teenagers have when they enter high school, would also come into question. There are many examples of experiments that violate an animal’s crucial interests in the hopes of satisfying the lesser interests of some other morally considerable being, all of which would be objectionable from this perspective.

There are some laboratory experiments, however, that from a multi-factor utilitarian perspective may be permitted. These are experiments in which the probability of satisfying crucial or important interests for many who suffer from some debilitating or fatal disease is high, and the numbers of non-human animals whose crucial interests are violated is low. The psychological complexity of the non-humans may also be significant in determining whether the experiment is morally justified. In the case of experimenting in this limited number of cases, presumably a parallel argument could be made about experimenting on humans. If the chances are very high that experimenting on one human, who is a far superior experimental animal when it comes to human disease, can prevent great suffering or death in many humans, then the utilitarian may, if side effects are minimal, condone such an experiment. Of course, it is easier to imagine this sort of extreme case in the abstract, what a utilitarian would think actually morally justified again depends on the specific empirical data.

In sum, the animal rights position takes the significance of morally considerable claims to be absolute. Thus, any use of animals that involves a disregard for their moral claims is problematic. The significance of an animal’s morally considerable interests according to a utilitarian is variable. Whether an action is morally justified or permissible will depend on a number of factors. The utilitarian position on animals would condemn a large number of practices that involve the suffering and death of billions of animals, but there are cases in which some use of non-human animals, and perhaps even human animals, may be morally justified (Gruen 2021: ch. 4; Gilbert, Kaebnick, & Murray 2012). In contrast to the framing of these cases within an animal rights theory, for utilitarians no forward-looking duties to repair the harm done are generated in these kinds of circumstances, since all that is required of moral agents is to choose the course of action that generates the most good.

Given the long-standing view that non-humans are mere things, there are still many who reject the arguments presented here for the moral considerability of non-humans and the significance of their interests. Nonetheless, most now realize that the task of arguing that humans have a unique and exclusive moral status is rather difficult. Yet even amongst those who do view animals as within the sphere of moral concern, there is disagreement about the nature and usefulness of the arguments presented on behalf of the moral status of animals.

Increasingly, philosophers are arguing that while our behavior towards animals is indeed subject to moral scrutiny, the kinds of ethical arguments that are usually presented frame the issues in the wrong way. Some philosophers suggest that rational argumentation fails to capture those features of moral experience that allow us to really see why treating animals badly is wrong. The point, according to philosophers such as Stephen R.L. Clark (1977) and Cora Diamond (2001), for example, is that members of our communities, however we conceive of them, pull on us and it is in virtue of this pull that we recognize what is wrong with cruelty. Animals are individuals with whom we share a common life and this recognition allows us to see them as they are. Eating animals is wrong not because it is a violation of the animal’s rights or because on balance such an act creates more suffering than other acts, but rather because in eating animals or using them in other harmful, violent ways, we do not display the traits of character that kind, sensitive, compassionate, mature, and thoughtful members of a moral community should display.

According to some in the virtue ethics tradition, carefully worked out arguments in which the moral considerability and moral significance of animals are laid out will have little if any grip on our thoughts and actions. Rather, by perceiving the attitudes that underlie the use and abuse of non-human animals as shallow or cruel, one interested in living a virtuous life will change their attitudes and come to reject treating animals as food or tools for research. As Rosalind Hursthouse recognized after having been exposed to alternative ways of seeing animals:

I began to see [my attitudes] that related to my conception of flesh-foods as unnecessary, greedy, self-indulgent, childish, my attitude to shopping and cooking in order to produce lavish dinner parties as parochial, gross, even dissolute. I saw my interest and delight in nature programmes about the lives of animals on television and my enjoyment of meat as side by side at odds with one another…Without thinking animals had rights, I began to see both the wild ones and the ones we usually eat as having lives of their own, which they should be left to enjoy. And so I changed. My perception of the moral landscape and where I and the other animals were situated in it shifted. (Hursthouse 2000: 165–166; see also Diamond 2001 [especially chs. 11 and 13], and Clarke 1977)

Alice Crary argues that shifting perceptions of our moral landscapes occur because these landscapes, and more precisely the rich worlds of those who inhabit them, are not morally neutral. The characteristics that philosophers tend to look for in other animals to determine whether or not they are morally considerable, according to Crary, are already infused with moral importance, “human beings and other animals have empirically discoverable moral characteristics” (2016: 85) that are, as she puts it, “inside ethics”. These values often sneak in under a supposedly neutral gloss. By explicitly locating these characteristics inside ethics, the texture, quality, and purposes of our ethical reflection on moral considerability changes. Arriving at an adequate empirical understanding requires non-neutral methods, identifying historical and cultural perspectives as shaping how we consider other animals morally. What ethical questions we think are important and how we frame and answer them, will be different if we see our lives and the lives of other animals as already imbued with moral values.

Other feminist philosophers have taken issue with the supposedly morally neutral methods of argumentation used to establish the moral status of animals. For many feminists the traditional methods of rational argumentation fail to take into account the feelings of sympathy or empathy that humans have towards non-humans, feelings they believe are central to a full account of what we owe non-humans and why (see Adams & Donovan 1995; Donovan & Adams 2007; Adams & Gruen 2022).

Feminist philosophers have also challenged the individualism that is central in the arguments for the moral status of animals. Rather than identifying intrinsic or innate properties that non-humans share with humans, some feminists have argued instead that we ought to understand moral status in relational terms given that moral recognition is invariably a social practice. As Elizabeth Anderson has written:

Moral considerability is not an intrinsic property of any creature, nor is it supervenient on only its intrinsic properties, such as its capacities. It depends, deeply, on the kind of relations they can have with us. (Anderson 2004: 289).

And these relationships needn’t be direct. The reach of human activity has expanded across the entire globe and humans are entangled with each other and other animals in myriad ways. We participate in activities and institutions that directly or indirectly harm others by creating negative experiences, depriving them of their well-being, or denying them opportunities to be who they are and pursue what they care about. Philosophers Elisa Aaltola (2018) and Lori Gruen (2015) have argued for refining our empathetic imagination in order to improve our relationships with each other and other animals.

Even though it is challenging to understand what it is like to be another, and even though we are limited by our inevitable anthropocentric perspectives, being in respectful ethical relation involves attempting to understand and respond to another’s needs, interests, desires, vulnerabilities, hopes, and perspectives. What Gruen calls, “entangled empathy” is a process that involves both affect and cognition (Gruen 2015). Individuals who are empathizing with others respond to the other’s condition and reflectively imagine themselves in the distinct position of the other while staying attentive to both similarities and differences between herself and her situation and that of the fellow creature with whom she is empathizing. Entangled empathy involves paying critical attention to the broader conditions that may negatively affect the experiences and flourishing of those with whom one is empathizing, and this requires those of us empathizing to attend to things we might not have otherwise. It could also help us to enhance our own experiences, develop our moral imagination, and become more sensitive perceivers.

• Aaltola, Elisa, 2018, Varieties of Empathy: Moral Psychology and Animal Ethics , Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
• Abbate, Cheryl, 2023, “People and Their Animal Companions: Navigating Moral Constraints in a Harmful, Yet Meaningful World”, Philosophical Studies , 180 (4): 1231–54.
• Adams, Carol J. and Josephine Donovan (eds.), 1995, Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explorations , Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
• Adams, Carol J. and Lori Gruen (eds.), 2022, Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth , second edition, New York: Bloomsbury Press.
• Anderson, Elizabeth, 2004, “Animal Rights and the Values of Nonhuman Life”, in Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions , Cass R. Sunstein and Martha C. Nussbaum (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, chapter 13. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195305104.003.0014
• Appleby, M. C., and P. Sandøe, 2002, “Philosophical Debate on the Nature of Well-Being: Implications for Animal Welfare”, Animal Welfare , 11 (3): 283–94.
• Attenborough, David, 1998, The Life of Birds , Princeton: Princeton University Press. [Attenborough 1998 excerpts available online, PBS Online.]
• Balcombe, Jonathan, 2017, What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins, Reprint edition, New York: Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
• Bekoff, Marc, 2000, The Smile of a Dolphin: Remarkable Accounts of Animal Emotion , New York: Discovery Books.
• –––, 2007, The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy—and Why They Matter , Novato, California: New World Library.
• Bekoff, Marc and John A. Byers (eds.), 1998, Animal Play: Evolutionary, Comparative, and Ecological Perspectives , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Bekoff, Marc, Colin Allen, and Gordon M. Burghardt (eds.), 2002, The Cognitive Animal , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Bekoff, Marc and Jessica Pierce, 2009, Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Bentham, Jeremy, [1780/1789] 1982, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation , edited by J.H. Burns and H.L.A. Hart, London: Methuen, 1982 (Athlone Press 1970).
• Benz-Schwarzburg, Judith, and Birte Wrage, 2023, “Caring Animals and the Ways We Wrong Them”, Biology & Philosophy , 38 (4): 25.
• Birch, Jonathan, 2017, “Animal Sentience and the Precautionary Principle”, Animal Sentience: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Animal Feeling , 2 (16).
• Bovenkerk, Bernice, and Franck L. B. Meijboom, 2011, “The Moral Status of Fish. The Importance and Limitations of a Fundamental Discussion for Practical Ethical Questions in Fish Farming”, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics , 25 (6): 843–60.
• Bruckner, Donald W, 2021, “Human and Animal Well-Being”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly , 102 (3): 393–412.
• Byrne, Richard W. Byrne and Andrew Whiten (eds.), 1988, Machiavellian Intelligence: Social Expertise and the Evolution of Intellect in Monkeys, Apes, and Humans I , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Cataldi, Suzanne Laba, 2002, “Animals and the Concept of Dignity:Critical Reflections on a Circus Performance”, Ethics and the Environment , 7 (2): 104–26.
• Cheney, Dorothy L. and Robert M. Seyfarth, 1990, How Monkeys See the World: Inside the Mind of Another Species , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Chevalier-Skolnikoff, Suzanne, 1989, “Spontaneous Tool Use and Sensorimotor Intelligence in Cebus Compared with other Monkeys and Apes”, Behavioral and Brain Sciences , 12(3): 561–588.
• Clark, Stephen R.L., 1977, The Moral Status of Animals , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Cochrane, Alasdair, 2012, Animal Rights Without Liberation: Applied Ethics and Human Obligations , New York: Columbia University Press.
• Crary, Alice, 2016, Inside Ethics: On the Demands of Moral Thought , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Crump, Andrew, Heather Browning, Alex Schnell, Charlotte Burn, and Jonathan Birch, 2022, “Sentience in Decapod Crustaceans: A General Framework and Review of the Evidence”, Animal Sentience , 7 (32).
• Darwin, Charles, 1871, The Descent of Man (2 volumes), London: John Murray, volume1. [Darwin 1871 available online]
• DeGrazia, David, 1996, Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2002, Animal Rights: A Very Short Introduction , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Diamond, Cora, 2001, The Realistic Spirit , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Donaldson, Sue, and Will Kymlicka, 2011, Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights , Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
• Donovan, Josephine and Carol J. Adams (eds.), 2007, The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics , New York: Columbia University Press.
• Fanon, Frantz, 1967, Black Skin, White Masks , New York: Grove Press.
• Faria, Catia, 2022, Animal Ethics in the Wild: Wild Animal Suffering and Intervention in Nature , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Fischer, Bob, 2016, “Bugging the Strict Vegan”, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics , 29 (2): 255–63.
• Fitzpatrick, Simon, and Kristin Andrews, 2022, “Animal Culture and Animal Welfare”, Philosophy of Science , 89 (5): 1104–13.
• Galdikas, Birute M.F., 1995, Reflections of Eden: My Years with the Orangutans of Borneo , Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
• Gilbert, Susan, Gregory E. Kaebnick, and Thomas H. Murray, 2012, Animal Research Ethics: Evolving Views and Practices , Hastings Center Special Report, 42(6): S1–S40. [Gilbert, Kaebnick, & Murray 2012 available online]
• Giroux, Valéry, 2016, “Animals Do Have an Interest in Liberty”, Journal of Animal Ethics , 6 (1): 20–43.
• Goodall, Jane, 1986, The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• –––, 2000, In the Shadow of Man , revised edition New York: Houghton Mifflin Co.
• Griffin, Donald R., 1992, Animal Minds , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Gruen, Lori, 2011, Ethics and Animals: An Introduction , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2014, “Dignity, Captivity, and an Ethics of Sight”, in The Ethics of Captivity , edited by Lori Gruen, 231–47. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2015, Entangled Empathy: An Alternative Ethic for Our Relationship with Animals , Brooklyn: Lantern Books.
• Hauser, Marc and Susan Carey, 1997, “Building a Cognitive Creature from a Set of Primitives: Evolutionary and Developmental Insights”, in Denise D. Cummins and Colin Allen (eds.), The Evolution of Mind , Oxford: Oxford University Press, chapter 3.
• Hauskeller, Michael, 2020, “Living Like a Dog: Can the Life of Non-Human Animals Be Meaningful?”, Between the Species , 23 (1). [ Hauskeller 2020 availble online ]
• Horta, Oscar, 2010, “Debunking the Idyllic View of Natural Processes: Population Dynamics and Suffering in the Wild”, Telos: Revista Iberoamericana de Estudios Utilitaristas , 17 (1): 73–90.
• –––, 2022, “Speciesism”, Oxford Public Philosophy . [ Horta 2022 available online
• Hursthouse, Rosalind, 2000, Ethics, Humans and Other Animals , London: Routledge.
• Jackson, Zakkiyyah Iman, 2020, Becoming Human , NY: NYU Press.
• Jacquet, Jennifer, Becca Franks, and Peter Godfrey-Smith, 2019, “The Octopus Mind and the Argument against Farming It”, Animal Sentience , 4 (26).
• Jamieson, Dale, 2003, Morality’s Progress: Essays on Humans, Other Animals, and the Rest of Nature , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2018, “Animal Agency”, The Harvard Review of Philosophy , 25 (October): 111–26.
• Kant, Immanuel, [1785] 1998, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten) , Mary J. Gregor (trans.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, [1798] 2010, “Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798)”, in Anthropology, History, and Education (Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant), Robert Louden and Gunter Zoller (eds. and trans.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 227–429. Original is Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht , published in the standard Akademie der Wissenschaften edition, volume 7. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511791925
• –––, [1784–5] 1997, “Moral Philosophy: Collin’s Lecture Notes”, in Lectures on Ethics (Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant), P. Heath and J.B. Schneewind (ed. and trans.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 37–222. Original is Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht , published in the standard Akademie der Wissenschaften edition, volume 27. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107049512
• Kheel, Marti, 2008, Nature Ethics: An Ecofeminist Perspective , Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
• Kianpour, Connor K., and Eze Paez, 2022, “Red in Tooth and Claw No More: Animal Rights and the Permissibility to Redesign Nature”, Environmental Values , 31 (2): 211–31.
• Kim, Claire Jean, 2015, Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species and Nature in a Multicultural Age , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• King, Barbara J., 2013, How Animals Grieve , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• King, Barbara, and Lori Marino, 2019, “Octopus Minds Must Lead to Octopus Ethics”, Animal Sentience , 4 (26).
• Kirkden, Richard D., and Edmond A. Pajor, 2006, “Using Preference, Motivation and Aversion Tests to Ask Scientific Questions about Animals’ Feelings”, Applied Animal Behaviour Science, Sentience in Animals , 100 (1): 29–47.
• Knutsson, Simon, and Christian Munthe, 2017, “A Virtue of Precaution Regarding the Moral Status of Animals with Uncertain Sentience”, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics , 30 (2): 213–24.
• Ko, Aph and Syl Ko, 2017, Aphro-ism , New York: Lantern Books.
• Korsgaard, Christine M., 1996, The Sources of Normativity , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2006, “Morality and the Distinctiveness of Human Action”, in Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved , edited by Stephen Macedo and Josiah Ober, 98–119. Princeton University Press.
• –––, 2007, “Facing the Animal You See in the Mirror”, Harvard Review of Philosophy , 16(1): 4–9. doi:10.5840/harvardreview20091611
• Lazari-Radek, Katarzyna de, and Peter Singer, 2016, The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Lessard, Michaël, 2024, “Beyond Sentience: Legally Recognizing Animals’ Sociability and Agency”, Journal of Animal Ethics , 14 (1): 89–109.
• Mather, Jennifer, 2022, “Why Are Octopuses Going to Be the ‘Poster Child’ for Invertebrate Welfare?”, Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science , 25 (1): 31–40.
• McMahan, Jeff, 2005, “Our Fellow Creatures” The Journal of Ethics , 9(3–4): 353–80.
• –––, 2008, “Eating Animals the Nice Way” Dædalus , 137 (1): 66–76.
• Mikhalevich, Irina, and Russell Powell, 2020, “Minds without Spines: Evolutionarily Inclusive Animal Ethics”, Animal Sentience , 5 (29).
• Monsó, Susana, Judith Benz-Schwarzburg, and Annika Bremhorst, 2018, “Animal Morality: What It Means and Why It Matters”, The Journal of Ethics , 22 (3): 283–310.
• Nozick, Robert, [1974] 2013, Anarchy, State, and Utopia ; reprinted, New York: Basic Books, 2013.
• Nussbaum, Martha C., 2006, Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, and Species Membership , Cambridge: The Belknap Press.
• Pepperberg, Irene Maxine, 1999, The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey Parrots , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Premack, David, 1986, Gavagai! or the Future History of the Animal Language Controversy , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Premack, David and Ann J. Premack 1984, The Mind of an Ape , New York: W W Norton & Co Inc.
• Purves, Duncan, and Nicolas Delon, 2018, “Meaning in the Lives of Humans and Other Animals”, Philosophical Studies , 175 (2): 317–38.
• Regan, Tom, 1985, “The Case for Animal Rights”, in Peter Singer (ed.), In Defence of Animals , Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 13–26.
• Rendell, Luke and Hal Whitehead, 2001, “Culture in Whales and Dolphins”, Behavioral and Brian Sciences , 24(2): 309–324.
• Roberts, W.A., 1998, Principles of Animal Cognition , Boston: McGraw-Hill.
• Rumbaugh, Duane M. and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, 1999, “Primate Language” in Robert A. Wilson & Frank Keil (eds.) The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Safran-Foer, Jonathan, 2010, Eating Animals , New York: Little Brown and Company.
• Schmidt, Andreas T., 2015, “Why Animals Have an Interest in Freedom”, Historical Social Research , 40 (4): 92–109.
• Sebo, Jeff, 2017, “Agency and Moral Status”, Journal of Moral Philosophy , 14 (1): 1–22.
• –––, 2023, “The Repugnant Conclusion: Utilitarianism, Insects, Microbes, and AI Systems”, Ethics, Policy & Environment , 26(2): 249-264. doi:10.1080/21550085.2023.2200724
• Singer, Peter, 2023, Animal Liberation Now , New York: Harper Perennial.
• –––, [1979] 1993, Practical Ethics , second edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; first edition, 1979.
• –––, 1974, “All Animals are Equal”, Philosophic Exchange , 5(1), Article 6.
• Shriver, Adam, 2009, “Knocking Out Pain in Livestock: Can Technology Succeed Where Morality Has Stalled?”, Neuroethics , 2 (3): 115–24.
• Shriver, Adam, and Emilie McConnachie, 2018, “Genetically Modifying Livestock for Improved Welfare: A Path Forward”, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics , 31 (2): 161–80.
• Thomas, Joshua Lewis, 2018, “Can Only Human Lives Be Meaningful?”, Philosophical Papers , 47 (2): 265–97.
• Tomasello, Michael and Josep Call, 1997, Primate Cognition , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• VanDeVeer, Donald, 1979, “Interspecific Justice”, Inquiry , 22(1–4): 55–79.
• Varner, Gary E., 2012, Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition: Situating Animals in Hare’s Two Level Utilitarianism , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Visalberghi, Elisabetta, 1997, “Success and Understanding in Cognitive Tasks: A Comparison Between Cebus apella and Pan troglodytes”, International Journal of Primatology , 18(5): 811–830.
• de Waal, Frans B.M., 1989, Peacemaking Among Primates , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• de Waal, Frans B.M. and Frans Lanting, 1997, Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape , Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Walker, Rebecca L., 2007, “Animal Flourishing: What Virtue Requires of Human Animals”, in Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems , Rebecca Walker and Philip J. Ivanhoe (eds.) Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Weir, Alex A.S., Jackie Chappell, and Alex Kacelnik, 2002, “Shaping of Hooks in New Caledonian Crows”, Science , 297(5583): 981. doi:10.1126/science.1073433
• Whiten, Andrew and Richard W. Byrne (eds.), 1997, Machiavellian Intelligence II: Extensions and Evaluations , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Whiten, A., J. Goodall, W.C. McGew, T. Nishida, V. Reynolds, Y. Sugiyama, C.E.G. Tutin, R.W. Wrangham, & C. Boesch, 1999, “Cultures in chimpanzees”, Nature , 399(6737): 682–685.
• Wilcox, Marc G, 2020a, “Animals and the Agency Account of Moral Status”, Philosophical Studies , 177 (7): 1879–99.
• –––, 2020b, “The Intrinsic Value of Liberty for Non-Human Animals”, The Journal of Value Inquiry , September.
• Wood, Allen W., 1998, “Kant on Duties Regarding Nonrational Nature” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplement , LXXII: 189–210. doi:10.1111/1467-8349.00042
• Woods, Vanessa, 2010, Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir of Love and Adventure in the Congo , New York: Gotham Books.
• Beauchamp, Tom L. and R.G. Frey (eds.) 2011, The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics , New York: Oxford. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195371963.001.0001
• Brambell, Ben and Bob Fisher, 2015, The Moral Complexity of Eating Meat , New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199353903.001.0001
• Chignell, Andrew, Terence Cuneo, and Matthew C. Halteman (eds.) 2015, Philosophy Comes to Dinner: Arguments About the Ethics of Eating , New York: Routledge.
• Derrida, Jacques, 2008, The Animal That Therefore I Am ( Animal que donc je suis ), Mary-Louise Mallet (ed.) and David Wills (trans.), New York: Fordham University Press.
• Donaldson, Sue and Will Kymlicka, 2011, Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Gruen, Lori, 2016, “Conscious Animals and the Value of Experience” in Stephen Gardiner and Allen Thompson (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics , New York: Oxford University Press, chapter 8.
• Haraway, Donna, 2003, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People and Significant Otherness , Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press.
• Jones, Robert C., 2013, “Science, Sentience, and Animal Welfare”, Biology and Philosophy , 28(1): 1–30. doi:10.1007/s10539-012-9351-1
• Kagan, Shelly, 2011, “Do I Make a Difference?”, Philosophy & Public Affairs , 39(2): 105–141. doi:10.1111/j.1088-4963.2011.01203.x
• Korsgaard, Christine M., 2013, “Getting Animals in View”, The Point , 6. [ Korsgaard 2013 available online ]
• McMahan, Jeff, 2008, “Eating Animals the Nice Way”, Daedalus , 127(1): 66–76. doi:10.1162/daed.2008.137.1.66
• Midgley, Mary, 1983, Animals and Why They Matter , Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
• Pachirat, Timothy, 2011, Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight , New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• Rachels, James, 1990, Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Rowlands, Mark, 2012, Can Animals Be Moral? New York: Oxford University Press.
• Ryder, Richard D., 1989, Animal Revolution: Changing Attitudes Toward Speciesism , Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
• Sapontzis, Steve F. (ed.), 2004, Food for Thought: The Debate Over Eating Meat , NY: Prometheus Press.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• The Moral Status of Animals , webpage at Ethics Updates (Larry Hinman, University of San Diego), now only available at the Internet Archive.
• Bentham, J., An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation , at the Library of Economics and Liberty.
• Affidavit by Mary Lee Jensvold
• Affidavit by James King
• Affidavit by Mathias Osvath

animal: cognition | animal: consciousness | Bentham, Jeremy | consequentialism | emotion | feminist philosophy, interventions: ethics | feminist philosophy, interventions: political philosophy | Kant, Immanuel | rights

Copyright © 2024 by Lori Gruen < lgruen @ wesleyan . edu > Susana Monsó < smonso @ fsof . uned . es >

• Accessibility

Support SEP

Mirror sites.

View this site from another server:

• Info about mirror sites

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright © 2024 by The Metaphysics Research Lab , Department of Philosophy, Stanford University

Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

Animal rights Pacifism

• Published: 25 May 2021
• Volume 178 , pages 4053–4082, ( 2021 )

Cite this article

• Blake Hereth   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9338-0417 1  

690 Accesses

2 Citations

1 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

The Animal Rights Thesis (ART) entails that nonhuman animals like pigs and cows have moral rights, including rights not to be unjustly harmed. If ART is true, it appears to imply the permissibility of killing ranchers, farmers, and zookeepers in defense of animals who will otherwise be unjustly killed. This is the Militancy Objection (MO) to ART. I consider four replies to MO and reject three of them. First, MO fails because animals lack rights, or lack rights of sufficient strength to justify other-defensive killing. Second, MO fails because those who unjustly threaten animals aren't liable or, if they are liable, their liability is outweighed by other considerations (e.g., a strong presumption against vigilante killing). I then argue both of these fail. Third, MO succeeds because animal militancy is permissible. Fourth, MO fails because there aren't liability justifications for defensive killing in general (i.e., pacifism is true). I argue that there's thoroughgoing epistemic parity between the Militancy View (MV) and the Pacifist View (PV), and that two considerations favor PV over MV. First, because under conditions of uncertainty, we should believe rights-bearers retain rather than lose their rights, which PV affirms and MV denies. Second, because PV is intrinsically likelier than MV to be true since PV at worst affirms wrongful letting die and MV at worst affirms wrongful killing, the latter of which is intrinsically harder to justify than the former.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save.

• Get 10 units per month
• Download Article/Chapter or eBook
• 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
• Cancel anytime

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Comment: Animals in ‘Non-Ideal Ethics’ and ‘No-Deal Ethics’

Are We Smart Enough to Know When to Take the Political Turn for Animals?

Is there a Rawlsian Argument for Animal Rights?

Explore related subjects.

• Medical Ethics

Though as Abbate ( 2015a ) powerfully shows, the nature of the justification for defensively harming nonhuman animals isn’t clear.

My argument, which I lack the space to develop fully here, is that mere failure to assist can make one liable to defensive harm. Here’s why: If you fail to help someone under threat of unjust harm H when you could reasonably do so (i.e., when it’s feasible and at little cost to you), then you share responsibility for the fact that H isn’t no longer a threat to that person, which entails that you are responsible for the fact that H is still a threat to that person, which entails that you bear some responsibility for the fact that the threat imposed by H is maintained . Since the threatened person has a reasonable claim against you that you not maintain threats, you are liable to defensive harm if you fail to help them when you reasonably could. Moreover, since you can’t be liable for acting permissibly and since every act is either permissible or impermissible, it follows that you acted impermissibly. Thus, you have an obligation to assist them resulting from a claim they have against you—which is identical to a right to assistance. For similar views, see Aas ( 2021 ) and Hanser ( 1999 ).

For more on a Militancy-Objection-style argument for the permissibility of abortion, see Tollefsen ( 1997 ). See also Kaczor ( 2015 : 220). For a powerful reply, see Williams (2021).

The full story can be viewed here: https://abc13.com/man-arrested-after-doorbell-cam-captures-dog-being-choked/6182160/ .

For an extended defense of this view, see Gunasekera ( 2018 ): 93–102.

An anonymous reviewer objects that the necessity condition isn’t satisfied. After all, the activists might discharge their obligation to rescue nonhuman animals by pursuing effective forms of nonviolent activism. This reveals two applications of the necessity condition: whether violence is necessary to save some animals and whether it’s necessary to save these animals. I have stipulated that violence is necessary to save these animals in the Zookeeper case and cases like it, but perhaps this misfocuses the moral problem (and its solution). I disagree. Suppose I encounter a human child about to be brutally murdered. I can either kill the unjust aggressor and save the child, or I can donate to Oxfam and save one child’s life, but I can’t do both. (Perhaps the donation window is closing at Oxfam and ‘rushed funds’ are needed to save a child by day’s end.) Surely I am at least permitted to save the child about to be brutally murdered, which is all the permission thesis requires. The necessity condition is satisfied for the same reason under the assistance thesis , though then we must adjudicate between competing rights to assistance. If donating to the Animal Legal Defense Fund saves some animals whereas killing Nour saves these animals, we might look to lesser-evil considerations to resolve the impasse. If the impasse is theoretically unresolvable and our obligation to assist can be discharged equally well under either action, then there’s no obligation to save some animals over these animals (or vice-versa), thereby ensuring that the necessity condition is satisfied under either course of action under the assistance thesis .

Think, for example, of naval personnel who utilize dolphins to identify mines, or ground forces which utilize canines and other animals to detect explosives. Similar arrangements are made by police personnel (e.g., K-9 units).

I say “perhaps” since poachers are less likely to be viewed favorably under commonsense moral views.

Abbate considers a case in which a human man hikes on a wilderness trail where grizzlies are known to roam. He comes across a grizzly, the grizzly growls, and the man fatally shoots the grizzly. Abbate describes this case as one in which the hiker engaged in and is responsible for risk-taking activities which resulted in a foreseeable violent conflict. Because the risk-imposition is non-reciprocal—that is, because “the hiker could have stayed home” and “the bear cannot be expected to just ‘stay in his den’”—the hiker is liable to defensive harm to an extent that the grizzly is not. Thus, the hiker, and not the grizzly, should bear the brunt of the ensuing harm. See Abbate ( 2015a : 122–124).

Cf. Ebert & Machan ( 2012 ). Ebert and Machan focus on a distinct objection, which they call the Predation Objection. According to this objection, the animal rights thesis implies that agents have a duty to defend animals from predation by other animals, which they claim is absurd. In the course of defending this objection, they note that since Regan denies that there is a duty to defend animals from such predation on the grounds that animals are ‘moral patients’ and therefore cannot violate rights, it follows that it is impermissible to harm or kill animals in defense of humans. They then claim such a view also implies that if, for example, a wolf attacks a human and the human responds with violent self-defense, it is permissible to harm or kill the human in defense of the wolf’s rights. This is notable for two reasons. First, it shows that the animal rights thesis pro tanto justifies animal rights militancy. Second, it portrays this implication as problematic. Under my formulation of the Militancy Objection, however, the assistance thesis explicitly restricts the scope of the right to defensive assistance to averting unjustified harms, which excludes the harms posed by nonhuman animals (and, for that matter, even human animals) who lack moral agency. For a fresh revisitation of this topic, see Abbate ( 2020 ). Notably, Abbate claims there is sometimes a moral obligation to harm some animals to prevent intolerable injustices to other animals.

See also McMahan’s objection to Judith Jarvis Thomson in McMahan ( 2002 : 398-421). Thomson assumes for argument’s sake that fetuses have strong rights and argues that abortion is nevertheless often permissible. McMahan replies that such a strong view of rights implies that a third party can permissibly defend fetuses under immediate threat of abortion.

Speciesists will doubtlessly defend an asymmetry here, contending that human slaves are importantly different from animals, such that ascriptions of rights are not undermined by the permitting of widespread violence in the case of slaves but are undermined in the case of animals. But that’s just to offer a distinct objection to the animal rights thesis .

I assume internalism about defensive liability merely for the sake of argument. According to internalism, Threat is liable to be harmed only if harming Threat would be necessary to avert some harm, narrowly proportionate, etc. In other words, these requirements are ‘internal’ to liability; someone isn’t liable without meeting the requirements. For more on this distinction, see Frowe ( 2014 : 88–89 and 91–94).

For an insightful critique of Regan’s conclusions about the Lifeboat Dogs case, see Abbate ( 2015b ).

Cf. McMahan ( 2016 ).

Notably, McMahan ( 2002 : 420) condemns animal rights militancy for these reasons.

This example is a more described variant of an example given in McMahan ( 2005 ).

For those keeping track of the math, that’s a combined 40 years for the elderly pedestrians and another 80 years for Driver. Since imposing 80 years of lost life is twice as bad as imposing 40 years of lost life, preventing the latter by causing the former appears to violate narrow proportionality.

Gordon-Solmon ( 2017 : 127, fn. 8) suggests that responsibility is internal to, or necessary for, narrow proportionality. I’m assuming the same is true of degrees of responsibility with respect to what counts as narrowly proportionate (or disproportionate) in a given case.

Nozick ( 2013 : 41) claims it’s impermissible to inflict slight discomfort on a human in order to spare 10,000 animals from extreme suffering. Nozick makes this claim as an example of what we’re forbidden to do to non-liable parties. He makes no claim about what we may do to liable parties, such as Nour. The same is true of Regan in his comments on the Lifeboat Dogs case: He claims no amount of animal sacrifice is disproportionate, but he fails to consider liable parties like Nour whose interests are discounted.

There may be other ways of denying or weakening the animal rights thesis . I lack the space to explore them here.

Any plausible moral theory on which the animal rights thesis is true will condemn Nour’s actions, since her actions would be morally comparable to someone guarding a prison filled with humans who will shortly be unjustly killed.

It’s thus an assumption of the diminished liability approach that it’s impermissible to defend human slaves even if pacifism is false. As I argue below, this is false. Slaves are permitted to defend themselves with violence, if anyone is.

Kaufman ( 2010 ) develops a similar case against the view that it’s impermissible to harm innocent aggressors in self-defense. Cf. Kaufman ( 2009 : 78-9).

A stronger variation of the vigilante principle might be that such violence is permissible only if it would be unlikely to bring about worse injustices. On this interpretation of the moral requirement, a mere lack of a positive likelihood is insufficient. What’s needed is a negative likelihood (i.e., an unlikelihood). Thus, in cases where the probability of bringing about greater injustices hovers at 0.5, or where there is no better reason to believe that greater injustices will be brought about than that they won’t be, it’s wrong (on the stronger vigilante principle ) for third parties to engage in defensive violence.

Or, per the above footnote, it’s unlikely to bring about worse injustices.

Might B mistakenly believe that employing x will prevent z ? No, because (per Uniacke’s stipulation) B knows that x won’t prevent z . Imagine that B used something else he believed wouldn’t help him successfully defend against z , like singing opera. If B sang opera, would he be employing it as a defensive measure? The answer, it seems to me, is that he obviously wouldn’t be.

This implication, too, strikes me as counterintuitive. John Brown fought in defense of slaves, acting more or less precisely as Rowlands envisions. It seems to me that if pacifism is false, then Brown surely acted permissibly.

A war in defense of mistreated animals might in some ways be easier to wage permissibly than a war in defense of slaves. Concerns about wide proportionality, for example, would be less of a concern, since there were millions of slaves but billions of abused animals. This will effectively permit a larger number of non-liable persons to be (unintentionally) killed, since the number of animals who would be saved would be considerably larger.

If the vigilante principle did condemn animal rights warfare in Canadian War , it would also condemn the war waged by the Northern States in American Civil War , which is implausible.

Kagan ( 2019 : 255) signals an openness to this view. For the fuller discussion, see 252–258.

Perhaps we should distinguish between posing a threat and aiding a threat. But even if we do, aiding a threat is surely going to entail liability to defensive harm, at least when one aids a threat in a morally responsible way, as Nour does. For example, perhaps only Assassin threatens to kill you with a gun, but I hold you in place for the kill shot. Moreover, perhaps I am unaware that Assassin is acting wrongly in doing so—for example, perhaps I mistake Assassin for a police officer doing their duty.

See, for example, section 3.2 where the solipsist and the person uneducated about human rights provide examples of appeals to ignorance. It seems to me that both persons are culpably ignorant because two reasonable pro tanto reasonable expectations are that individuals recognize that there are sentient individuals distinct from themselves and that it’s impermissible to harm such individuals without a sufficiently good reason. It also seems to me that neo-Cartesian views of animals are false and obviously so, or at the very least that it’s reasonable to expect most humans to recognize animal sentience since we think it’s reasonable to hold most humans morally and legally responsible for animal abuse. However, I can’t defend these positions at length here. These disputes are somewhat peripheral, however, since it seems permissible to harm the convinced solipsist whether or not they are culpably ignorant. The same, therefore, will be true of the lookout, Nour, certain animal researchers, and so on.

Someone is liable to harm just in case you would not wrong them by harming them. Thus, even if you harm a liable individual and thus don’t wrong them, you might in doing so still wrong someone else , and thus it might be impermissible to harm the liable individual. Moreover, even if it’s permissible to harm someone, it doesn’t follow that they’re liable to be harmed. For example, it might be permissible to harm them as an unintended side effect of preventing some immense harm. For more on distinction between liability and permissibility, see Frowe ( 2014 : 188).

Hadley’s appeal to factors like contributory causation appear to commit him to the view that it is the number of liable individuals that generates the counterintuitive nature of the Militancy Objection. Indeed, in his abstract, he refers to the problem as the Multiple Inappropriate Targets Problem. Whereas Hadley and I differ in our interpretation of the problematic nature of the Militancy Objection, our interpretations are not incompatible. Moreover, Hadley’s concerns appear to overlap with a similar problem in the broader literature on the ethics of self-defense. See Hadley ( 2009a : 168). For more on the more general problem, see McMahan ( 2011 : 24).

Here’s an objection: Militancy doesn’t permit us to kill all of these people (or people in comparable professions), since doing so would in many cases be disproportionate to the harms they threaten to impose on animals. For example, some animal researchers neither kill nor physically injure animals. At most, they imprison animals. Killing those animal researchers to free the imprisoned animals, then, would be objectionably disproportionate. But this objection fails for two reasons. First, the objection relies on the dubious assumption that killing (for example) kidnappers is objectionably disproportionate. It isn’t at all obvious that human abductees aren’t permitted to kill their kidnappers if doing so is necessary to escape. Second, the objection assumes that the intuitive implausibility of the militancy view is restricted to its moral implications for killing, but that’s false. Suppose that Nour was guarding not animals who will soon be killed but animals who will soon be tortured, and that in order to rescue them it’s necessary to torture Nour. The view that Nour is liable to such harm is again counterintuitive.

If pacifism is true, is anyone liable to defensive harm? As I pointed out in footnote 59, liability doesn’t entail actual permissibility (and nor does actual permissibility entail liability). By implication, impermissibility does not entail non-liability. Thus, even if pacifism entails that assault is always impermissible, it doesn’t follow that no one is liable to defensive assault.

Does pacifism falsify the Permission Thesis? As stated, the Permission Thesis merely claims that there’s a third-party permission to defend animals. Typically, invoking a permission to other-defense is a way of invoking a permission to other-defensive assault . On that reading, pacifism falsifies the Permission Thesis. However, since there are substantive ways of defending others that do not involve assault, it seems that pacifism does not rule out every form of other-defense, and thus is compatible with a broader interpretation of the Permission Thesis.

F.B.I. (2014). URL:

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/violent-crime

The number also reflects only crimes that actually occurred , and thus excludes attempted but unsuccessful violent crimes.

This criticism is from Narveson ( 2003 ), who argues that pacifists “have too many friends” and “terrorists” (which I’m calling “militants”) “have too many enemies.” On Narveson’s view, terrorism is wrong as a conceptual matter, since it condones the targeting of noncombatants who are not liable to defensive (or offensive) harm. Again, the worry here is not that the sheer number of persons liable to be defensively harmed is too many, as if there were some numerical threshold above which there is no liability to defensive harm. Rather, the worry is that these people don’t seem to be liable to defensive harm at all, and since the militancy view implies otherwise in so many cases, it gets the wrong judgment in an immense number of cases.

Helen Frowe (in conversation) objects that the epistemic par isn’t apparent. She concedes that there might be epistemic parity ‘downstream’, at the level of applied cases, but denies that there’s epistemic parity ‘upstream’, at the level of broad principles and ethical theory. Sometimes we use the independent plausibility of cases to determine the plausibility of moral theories and principles, and sometimes we use the independent plausibility of moral theories and principles to guide us through hard cases. Frowe claims we should rely on the independent plausibility of liability, like we did with the Burning Barn case in section §2, to guide us through hard cases like Zookeeper . Once we do, militancy will be the more plausible view. I can’t offer an extensive reply here, but I’ll offer one reply. Where militancy and pacifism part ways is at the crossroads of liability, and so (unless we’re to beg the question against either view) we need to look elsewhere for an independently plausible moral theory or principle that advantages militancy. Where might it be? So far as I can tell, the sort of ‘pre-liability’ moral story of the militancy view is the very same moral story as pacifism: Both accept that Nour and the pigs have rights, that there’s a pro tanto obligation against transgressing them, and so on. But if that’s true, then the epistemic parity appears thoroughgoing : There’s intuitive parity downstream with liability, and there’s parity upstream due to identical background moral assumptions.

For her reply to the Taxpayer Objection, see Frowe ( 2014 : 209–212).

That is, assuming my arguments in Sect. 3.1 are successful.

Here’s another objection: Our background knowledge also tells us that the human aggressor is aggressing unjustly , which is reason enough to prefer militancy over pacifism. But the objection fails because knowing that someone acts unjustly isn’t sufficient to know they’re liable to defensive harm or that it’s permissible to kill them. For example, I might know that you acted unjustly by failing to pay someone what you owed them, but I don’t thereby know that you’re liable to defensive harm or that it’s permissible to kill you.

It’s unclear to me whether this is logically distinct from the claim that killing is intrinsically worse than letting die. Rachels ( 1986 ) compares two examples in which you either drown your cousin or let him drown. He affirms both are impermissible but denies one violation is intrinsically worse than the other. Quinn ( 1989 : 289) argues that even if Rachels is right that neither violation is worse than the other, it doesn’t follow that the permissibility thresholds are the same.

This is a modified version of Singer’s ( 1972 : 231) classic case.

Cf. Tadros (2011: 252). Thomson (1971: 52) defends the stronger view that if even your bodily liberty is at stake, such that it’s necessary for you to remain plugged into a violinist for nine months to save his life, that’s sufficient to justify not saving his life because the cost to you is too great.

For similar cases and discussion, see Frowe ( 2014 : 51–71).

The distinction has been defended extensively elsewhere. For defenses, see Hill ( 2018 ), McMahan (2009: 94), Kamm ( 2007 : 17), and Quinn ( 1989 ).

Aas, S. (2021). Vital prostheses: Killing, letting die, and the ethics of de-implantation. Bioethics, 35 (2), 214–220.

Article   Google Scholar  

Abbate, C. E. (2020). Animal rights and the duty to harm: When to be a harm causing deontologist. Journal for Ethics and Moral Philosophy, 3 (1), 5–26.

Google Scholar  

Abbate, C. E. (2015a). The search for liability in the defensive killing of Nonhuman animals. Social Theory and Practice, 41 (1), 106–130.

Abbate, C. E. (2015b). Comparing lives and epistemic limitations: A critique of regan’s lifeboat from an unprivileged position. Ethics and the Environment, 20 (1), 1–21.

Ebert, R., & Machan, T. R. (2012). Innocent threats and the moral problem of carnivorous animals. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 29 (2), 146–159.

Fischer, B. (2016). What if Barren and Klein are right about insect sentience? Animal Sentience, 9 (8), 1–6.

Francione, G. L. (2000). Introduction to animal rights: Your child or the dog?  Temple University Press.

Frowe, H. (2021). The duty to save and the duty to minimize harm. In S. David, V. Peter, & W. Steven (Eds.), Oxford studies in political philosophy. (Vol. 7). New York: Oxford University Press.

Frowe, H. (2014). Defensive killing . Oxford University Press.

Gardner, M. (2016). The interspecies killing problem. In E. Mylan & L. C. Gary (Eds.), The moral rights of animals. (pp. 119–140). Lanham: Lexington.

Gordon-Solmon, K. (2017). Self-defense against multiple threats. Journal of Moral Philosophy, 14 (2), 125–133.

Guerrero, A. A. (2007). Don’t know, don’t kill: Moral ignorance, culpability, and caution. Philosophical Studies, 136 (1), 59–97.

Gunasekera, C. A. (2018). The ethics of killing ‘Surplus’ zoo animals. Journal of Animal Ethics, 8 (1), 93–102.

Hadley, J. (2009a). Animal rights and self-defense theory. Journal of Value Inquiry, 43 (2), 165–177.

Hadley, J. (2009b). Moral responsibility for harming animals. Think, 22 (8), 51–55.

Hadley, J. (2009c). Animal rights extremism and the terrorism question. Journal of Social Philosophy, 40 (3), 363–378.

Hadley, J. (2006). The duty to aid Nonhuman animals in dire need. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 23 (4), 445–451.

Hanser, M. (1999). Killing, letting die, and preventing people from being saved. Utilitas, 11 (3), 277–295.

Hill, S. (2018). Murdering an accident victim: A new objection to the bare-difference argument. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 96 (4), 767–778.

Kaczor, C. (2015). The ethics of abortion: Women’s rights, human life, and the question of justice . (2nd ed.). Routledge.

Kagan, S. (2019). How to count animals, more or less . Oxford University Press.

Kamm, F. M. (2007). Intricate ethics . Oxford University Press.

Kaufman, W. (2010). Self-defense, innocent aggressors, and the duty of martyrdom. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 91 (1), 78–96.

Kaufman, W. (2009). Justified killing: The paradox of self-defense . Lexington Books.

McMahan, J. (2016). The comparative badness for animals of suffering and death. In T. Višak & R. Garner (Eds.), The ethics of killing animals. (pp. 65–85). Oxford University Press.

McMahan, J. (2011). Killing in war . Oxford University Press.

McMahan, J. (2005). The basis of moral liability to defensive killing. Philosophical Issues, 15 (1), 386–405.

McMahan, J. (2002). The ethics of killing: Problems at the margins of life . Oxford University Press.

Mikhalevich, I., & Powell, R. (2020). Minds without spines: Evolutionary inclusive animal ethics. Animal Sentience, 29 (1), 1–25.

Narveson, J. (2003). Terrorism and Pacifism: Why we should condemn both. International Journal of Applied Philosophy, 17 (2), 157–172.

Nozick, R. (2013). Anarchy, state, and utopia . Basic Books.

Quinn, W. S. (1989). Actions, intentions, and consequences: The doctrine of doing and allowing. The Philosophical Review, 98 (3), 287–312.

Rachels, J. (1986). Active and passive Euthanasia. In A. Ethics (Ed.), Peter singer. (pp. 29–35). Oxford University Press.

Regan, T. (2004) [1983]. The case for animal rights . University of California Press.

Rosen, G. (2002). Culpability and ignorance. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 103 (1), 61–84.

Rowlands, M. (2002). Animals like us . Verso Press.

Rowlands, M. (1997). Contractarianism and animal rights. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 14 (3), 235–247.

Singer, P. (1972). Famine, affluence, and morality. Philosophy & Public Affairs , 1 (3), 229–243.

Statman, D. (2008). On the success condition for legitimate self-defense. Ethics, 118 (4), 659–686.

Tollefsen, C. (1997). Donagan, abortion, and civil rebellion. Public Affairs Quarterly, 11 (3), 303–312.

Uniacke, S. (2014). Self-defense, just war, and a reasonable prospect of success. In H. Frowe & G. Lang (Eds.), How we fight. (pp. 62–74). Oxford University Press.

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Williams, J. (Forthcoming). on anti-abortion violence. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research X.X: 1–24.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

University of Massachusetts, 883 Broadway St, Dugan Hall, Suite 200, Lowell, MA, 01852, USA

Blake Hereth

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Blake Hereth .

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This paper was graciously awarded the 2019 Frank Chapman Sharp Memorial Prize for the best essay on the ethics of war and peace. My thanks to Helen Frowe, Seth Lazar, Suzanne Uniacke, Holly Lawford-Smith, Jeff Sebo, Nathan Nobis, Mylan Engel Jr., Cheryl Abbate, John Hadley, Chris Cuomo, Paul Tubig, Karen Emmerman, Michael Blake, my students at the Washington Corrections Center for Women, and an anonymous reviewer at this journal for feedback and helpful conversation. Thanks also to those present at the 2017 Society for the Study of Ethics and Animals Inaugural Workshop at the University of Colorado, the Stockholm Center for the Ethics of War and Peace Graduate Reading Retreat at the Australian National University (Kioloa campus), and the invited symposium “Animal Rights Terrorism and Pacifism” at the 2017 APA Eastern Division Meeting in Savannah, Georgia. Shortly thereafter, on 22 February 2018, the paper was featured on the Blog of the APA. My thanks to the APA for featuring it and for those who commented.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Hereth, B. Animal rights Pacifism. Philos Stud 178 , 4053–4082 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01636-x

Download citation

Accepted : 26 March 2021

Published : 25 May 2021

Issue Date : December 2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01636-x

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Animal rights
• Militancy objection
• Self-defense
• Other-defense
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

• Centers & Clinics
• News & Events
• - - Apply Now
• LLM Admissions
• - - Apply for LLM
• Transfer/Visiting Students
• International
• Consumer Information (ABA Required Disclosures)
• Home For Current Students
• Emery (Intranet)
• Academic Calendar
• Course Schedule
• 1L Schedule
• Course Catalog
• Faculty Directory
• Career Management
• Graduation Requirements
• Law Technology
• Law Student Services
• In Residence Experts program
• Alumni Relations
• External Relations
• Alumni Events
• Discern Magazine
• Home for Faculty/Staff
• Staff Directory
• Google Apps
• Law Finance

Society of Animal Law

Student life.

The Society of Animal Law (SAL) seeks to raise the profile of the field of animal law and educate students and the community on the cruelty that animals face every day, from the evils of factory farming to criminal animal abuse that goes unprosecuted.

Our main purpose is to create a system where animals are free from suffering. This entails humane slaughter, humane treatment and conditions while alive, and being free from physical abuse.

Mission Statement

SAL seeks to promote a world where animals are free from suffering. We are committed to engaging the community on legal issues affecting animal rights, raising the profile of the field of Animal Law, advancing the interests and well-being of animals through outreach and fundraising, building a local community where students can share and expand their interest in humane treatment for animals, and making positive changes in the lives of local animals.

Officers 2019-2020:

Upcoming events:

‘The Animals of SCU Law’ Calendar Sale

Submissions: Please email your favorite photos of your pets to [email protected] and [email protected] . You can send us your dog, cat, bunny, fish, whatever pet you want! The top 12 submissions will be selected and used to print a calendar.

Sale: The calendars will be on sale in early January, the perfect and cutest way to start the new year! Sales will take place in the Atrium, times and dates still to be decided!

Active Member Organization, Student Bar Association 2019-2020

Of Cures and Creatures Great and Small

• Markkula Center for Applied Ethics
• Focus Areas
• Bioethics Resources

Growing criticism of painful experimentation on animals is matched by a growing concern over the threat restrictions on the use of animals would pose to scientific progress.

In the spring of 1987, a veterinary lab at the University of California at Davis was destroyed by a fire that caused $3.5 million in damage. Credit for the fire was claimed by the Animal Liberation Front, a clandestine international group committed to halting experimentation on animals. Three years earlier, members of the group invaded the Experimental Head Injury Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania where scientists had been engaged in research on head trauma, a condition which now claims more that 50,000 lives a year. They took videotapes recording the deliberate and methodical inflicting of severe head injuries on unanesthetized chained baboons. Copies of the videotape were sent to the media, to University officials, and to government agencies which eventually suspended federal funds for the experiments.

About 20 million animals are experimented on and killed annually, three-fourths for medical purposes and the rest to test various products. An estimated eight million are used in painful experiments. Reports show that at least 10 percent of these animals do not receive painkillers. Animal rights advocates are pressing government agencies to impose heavy restrictions on animal research. But this growing criticism of painful experimentation on animals is matched by a growing concern over the threat restrictions on the use of animals would pose to scientific progress. Whether such experiments should be allowed to continue has become a matter for public debate.

Those who argue that painful experimentation on animals should be halted, or at least curtailed, maintain that pain is an intrinsic evil, and any action that causes pain to another creature is simply not morally permissible. Pointing to the words of the nineteenth-century utilitarian, Jeremy Bentham, animal welfare advocates claim that the morally relevant question about animals is not "Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer ?" And, animals do in fact suffer, and do in fact feel pain. The researcher who forces rats to choose between electric shocks and starvation to see if they develop ulcers does so because he or she knows that rats have nervous systems much like humans and feel the pain of shocks in a similar way. Pain is an intrinsic evil whether it is experienced by a child, an adult, or an animal. If it is wrong to inflict pain on a human being, it is just as wrong to inflict pain on an animal.

Moreover, it is argued, the lives of all creatures, great and small, have value and are worthy of respect. This right to be treated with respect does not depend on an ability to reason. An insane person has a right to be treated with respect, yet he or she may not be able to act rationally. Nor does a right to be treated with respect rest on being a member of a certain species. Restricting respect for life to a certain species is to perform an injustice similar to racism or sexism. Like the racist who holds that respect for other races does not count as much as respect for his or her own race, those who support painful experimentation on animals assume that respect for other species does not count as much as respect for members of his or her own species. "Speciesism" is as arbitrarily unjust as racism or sexism. The right to be treated with respect rests, rather, on a creature's being a "subject of a life," with certain experiences, preferences, and interests. Animals, like humans, are subjects of a life. Justice demands that the interests of animals be respected, which includes respect for their interest to be spared undeserved pain.

Finally, animal welfare activists defend their position by countering the claim that halting painful animal experiments would put an end to scientific progress, with harmful consequences to society. Much animal experimentation, they say, is performed out of mere curiosity and has little or no scientific merit. Animals are starved, shocked, burned, and poisoned as scientists look for something that just might yield some human benefit. In one case, baby mice had their legs chopped off so that experimenters could observe whether they'd learn to groom themselves with their stumps. In another, polar bears were submerged in a tank of crude oil and salt water to see if they'd live. And, for those experiments which do have merit, there exist many non-animal alternatives. It is only out of sheer habit or ease that scientists continue to inflict pain on animals when, in fact, alternatives exist. And, where alternatives don't exist, the moral task of science is to discover them.

Those who argue for the continuation of painful experimentation on animals state that society has an obligation to act in ways that will minimize harm and maximize benefits. Halting or curtailing painful experimentation on animals would have harmful consequences to society. Indeed, pain is an evil to be minimized, and scientists do work to minimize pain when possible. Contrary to sensationalistic reports of animal rights activists, scientists are not a society of crazed, cruel, curiosity seekers. But there are instances when the use of alternatives, such as painkillers, would interfere with research that promises to vastly improve the quality and duration of human lives. Animal research has been the basis for new vaccines, new cancer therapies, artificial limbs and organs, new surgical techniques, and the development of hundreds of useful products and materials. These benefits to humans far outweigh the costs in suffering that relatively few animals have had to endure. Society has an obligation to maximize the opportunities to produce such beneficial consequences, even at the cost of inflicting some pain on animals.

Furthermore, many argue, while the lives of animals may be deserving of some respect, the value we place on their lives does not count as much as the value we place on human lives. Human beings are creatures that have capacities and sensibilities that are much more highly developed than that of animals. Because humans are more highly developed, their welfare always counts for more than that of animals. If we had to choose between saving a drowning baby and saving a drowning rat, we would surely save the baby. Moreover, if we move to consider animals as our moral equals, where do we draw the line? Technically, any living thing that is not a plant is an animal. Are oysters, viruses, and bacteria also to be the objects of our moral concern? While we may have a duty to not cause animals needless suffering, when we are faced with a choice between the welfare of humans and the welfare of animals, it is with humans that our moral obligation lies.

Others argue that moral rights and principles of justice apply only to human beings. Morality is a creation of social processes in which animals do not participate. Moral rights and moral principles apply only to those who are part of the moral community created by these social processes. Since animals are not part of this moral community, we have no obligations toward them. But we do have moral obligations to our fellow human beings, which include the duty to reduce and prevent needless human suffering and untimely deaths, which, in turn, may require the painful experimentation on animals.

Mice or men? Where do our moral obligations lie? The debate over painful experimentation on animals enjoins us to consider the wrongfulness of inflicting pain and the duty to respect the lives of all creatures, while also considering our obligations to promote human welfare and prevent human suffering, animals aside.

For further reading:

Michael Allen Fox, The Case for Animal Experimentation (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986).

Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983).

Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (New York: Random House, 1977).

Jerrold Tannenbaum and Andrew N. Rowan, "Rethinking the Morality of Animal Research," Hastings Center Report , Volume 1; (October 1985), pp. 32-43.

This article was originally published in Issues in Ethics - V. 1, N.3 Spring 1988

• Information Timeline
• Minutes to Hours After
• Days to Weeks After
• Months to Years After
• ...And More Years
• Research Cycle
• Quick Check
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• Check Your Understanding
• Humanities vs. Sciences
• Test Yourself!
• So Where Do You Start Researching?
• Step 1: Analyzing the Assignment (A)
• Step 1: Analyzing the Assignment (B)
• Step 1: Analyzing the Assignment (C)
• Step 2: Identifying a Topic (A)
• Step 2: Identifying a Topic (B)
• Step 3: Writing a Thesis Statement (A)
• Video: Writing an Effective Thesis Statement
• Avoiding Poor Thesis Statements (A)
• Avoiding Poor Thesis Statements (B)
• Avoiding Poor Thesis Statements (C)
• Forming Your Research Question
• Turn Your Topic Into a Question
• Test Yourself: Which is Better? (A)
• Test Yourself: Which is Better? (B)
• Step 4: Searching for Information
• Review of the Researching Process
• There Are a Variety of Information Sources
• When to Use the Internet
• Video: That's Where the Library Comes In
• Scholarly versus Mainstream Resources: What's the Difference?
• What Resources Are Best for Your Subject?
• Finding the Right Research Guide
• What Is a Database?
• Types of Searches
• Keyword Searching
• Narrowing a Keyword Search
• Subject Search
• Advantages of Subject Searching
• Now Try It Out
• Search in a Database
• The Info Doctor Is In (A)
• The Info Doctor Is In (B)
• More On Searching
• How Do I Get a Copy of the Article
• Find It Button
• Video: Using Find It
• Don't Overlook the Print Version
• Locating Books - Ebooks
• Locating Books -- Print
• Call Numbers = Library Address
• Video: Finding Your Book on the Shelf
• Review of the Locating Process
• Finding information is not the end of research
• How can you know if information is appropriate?
• Video: Evaluating Sources
• Questions: Apply the CRAAP Test (A)
• Questions: Apply the CRAAP Test (B)
• Questions: Apply the CRAAP Test (C)
• Questions: Apply the CRAAP Test (D)
• Questions: Apply the CRAAP Test (E)
• The CRAAP Test Applied
• Not All Criteria Are Alike
• How Does the Information Fit?
• Dishonesty, Theft & Plagiarism
• Famous Faces of Plagiarism
• Plagiarism: Why Should You Care? (A)
• Plagiarism: Why Should You Care? (B)
• Academic Dishonesty: You Can Read the Fine Print
• The technology that makes plagiarizing so easy...
• You Tell Us--Is It Plagiarism? (A)
• You Tell Us--Is It Plagiarism? (B)
• You Tell Us--Is It Plagiarism? (C)
• You Can Avoid Plagiarism
• What is Paraphrasing?
• Why Paraphrase?
• Paraphrasing Pitfalls
• Good Paraphrasing
• You Try It!
• MLA Citations
• APA Citations
• Review of the Utilizing Process
• Test for Class Credit

Avoiding Poor Thesis Statements

It is important not only to have a thesis statement, but to have a good one.  An inadequate thesis statement is almost as bad as not having one at all. Below and on the next few pages are examples of thesis statements you'll want to avoid -- because they'll lead to weak papers with poor grades:

• << Previous: Video: Writing an Effective Thesis Statement
• Next: Avoiding Poor Thesis Statements (B) >>
• Last Updated: Mar 28, 2024 12:52 PM
• URL: https://libguides.sjsu.edu/infopower