More than twenty years after its original publication, The Case for Animal Rights is an acknowledged classic of moral philosophy, and its author is recognized as the intellectual leader of the animal rights movement. In a new and fully considered preface, Regan responds to his critics and defends the book's revolutionary position.

This chapter formulates a rational uniqueness principle holding that those who are epistemic peers on a proposition, in that they know that they share all rational considerations concerning the truth of the proposition, cannot be justified in having different attitudes toward it. It then argues against the principle, primarily on the grounds that such peers may rationally regard themselves as differing in their basis for rational belief, or their evidence, on the topic. The rationality of their differing perspectives can justify (...) having different attitudes toward the disputed proposition. (shrink)

Anti-vivisectionists charge that animal experimenters are speciesists people who unjustly discriminate against members of other species. Until recently most defenders of experimentation denied the charge. After the publication of `The Case for the Use of Animals in Biomedical Research' in the New England Journal of Medicine , experimenters had a more aggressive reply: `I am a speciesist. Speciesism is not merely plausible, it is essential for right conduct...'1. Most researchers now embrace Cohen's response as part of their defense of animal (...) experimentation. Cohen asserts that both rights and utilitarian arguments against the use of animals in research fail because they `refuse to recognize the moral differences among species'.2 If we appreciate the profound differences between humans and non-human animals, he says, we would understand why animals do not and could not have rights and why animal pain does not have as much moral weight as human pain. Animal liberationists think speciesism is immoral because they mistakenly equate it with racism and sexism. Cohen claims this equation is `unsound', `atrocious', `utterly specious', and `morally offensive'. Doubtless Cohen is right that the charge of speciesism is founded on an analogy with racism and sexism. He is mistaken, however, in asserting that the comparison is categorically illicit. (shrink)

I defend the bold claim that self-described speciesists are not really speciesists. Of course, I do not deny that self-described speciesists would assent to generic speciesist claims (e.g. Humans matter more than animals). The conclusion I draw is more nuanced. My claim is that such generic speciesist beliefs are inconsistent with other, more deeply held, beliefs of self-described speciesists. Crucially, once these inconsistencies are made apparent, speciesists will reject the generic speciesist beliefs because they are absurd by the speciesists’ own (...) lights. (shrink)

Shelly Kagan argues in his ‘What's Wrong with Speciesism?’ for four provocative claims: 1. speciesism is not necessarily a mere prejudice; 2. most people are not speciesists; 3. ‘modal personism’ more closely reflects what most people believe, and 4. modal personism might be true. In this article, I object to Kagan's account of what constitutes a ‘mere prejudice’, and I object to the sort of argument he uses to show that most people are not speciesist. I then attempt to motivate, (...) and defend what I take to be the best version of modal personism; answer several problems for the view; and raise other problems that I think are harder to answer. (shrink)

In Animal Liberation I argued that we commonly ignore or discount the interests of sentient members of other species merely because they are not human, and that this bias in favour of members of our own species is, in important respects, parallel to the biases that lie behind racism and sexism. Shelly Kagan, in ‘What's Wrong With Speciesism’ misconstrues this argument, as well as the principle of equal consideration of interests, which I offer as an alternative to speciesism. Kagan also (...) offers, as an alternative explanation of, and possible justification for, our discounting the interests of nonhuman animals, the suggestion that your interests count more if you are a member of a species whose typical adult members are persons. Although this view is not a form of speciesism, Kagan seems not to be aware of the fact that it is a view commonly defended by advocates of natural law ethics, on which there is already an extensive critical literature. (shrink)

Many people believe that all human life is of equal value. Most of them also believe that all human beings have a moral status superior to that of nonhuman animals. But how are these beliefs to be defended? The mere difference of species cannot in itself determine moral status. The most obvious candidate for regarding human beings as having a higher moral status than animals is the superior cognitive capacity of humans. People with profound mental retardation pose a problem for (...) this set of beliefs, because their cognitive capacities are not superior to those of many animals. I argue that we should drop the belief in the equal value of human life, replacing it with a graduated view that applies to animals as well as to humans. (shrink)

Species egalitarianism is the view that all living things have equal moral standing. To have moral standing is, at a minimum, to command respect, to be more than a mere thing. Is there reason to believe that all living things have moral standing in even this most minimal sense? If so—that is, if all living things command respect—is there reason to believe they all command equal respect?1 I explain why members of other species command our respect but also why they (...) do not command equal respect. The intuition that we should have respect for nature is one motive for embracing species egalitarianism, but we need not be species egalitarians to have respect for nature. This paper questions whether species egalitarianism is even compatible with respect for nature. (shrink)

Species egalitarianism is the view that all species have equal moral standing. To have moral standing is, at a minimum, to command respect, to be something more than a mere thing. Is there any reason to believe that all species have moral standing in even this most minimal sense? If so — that is, if all species command respect — is there any reason to believe they all command equal respect. The article summarises critical responses to Paul Taylor’s argument for (...) species egalitarianism, then explains why other species command our respect but also why they do not command equal respect. The intuition that we should have respect for nature is part of what motivates people to embrace species egalitarianism, but one need not be a species egalitarian to have respect for nature. The article closes by questioning whether species egalitarianism is even compatible with respect for nature. (shrink)

When a person acts from ignorance, he is culpable for his action only if he is culpable for the ignorance from which he acts. The paper defends the view that this principle holds, not just for actions done from ordinary factual ignorance, but also for actions done from moral ignorance. The question is raised whether the principle extends to action done from ignorance about what one has most reason to do. It is tentatively proposed that the principle holds in full (...) generality. (shrink)

In ‘What's Wrong with Speciesism?’, Shelly Kagan sketches an account on which both actually being a person and possibly being a person are relevant to one's moral status, labelling this view ‘modal personism’ and supporting its conclusions with appeals to intuitions about a range of marginal cases. I tender a pessimistic response to Kagan's concern about motivating modal personism: that is, of being able to ‘go beyond the mere appeal to brute intuition, eventually offering an account of why modal personhood (...) should matter in the ways we may intuitively think that it does.’. (shrink)

How far do our ethical and evaluative standards reach across the divides of space and time? Can we appropriately judge people remote from our own setting by the criteria we would apply locally? Do our norms project across spatiotemporal distance to apply to them as well?

There has been a recent explosion of interest in the epistemology of disagreement. Much of the recent literature is concerned with a particular range of puzzle cases (discussed in the Cases section of my paper). Almost all of the papers that contribute to that recent literature make mention of questions about religious disagreement in ways that suggest that there are interesting connections between those puzzle cases and real life cases of religious disagreement. One important aim of my paper is to (...) cast doubt on that suggestion. More generally, the aim of my paper is to give a reasonably full account of the recent literature on the epistemology of disagreement, and then to give a serious discussion of some of the epistemological issues that are raised by real world religious disagreements. (shrink)

The conclusion of animal liberationists that the underlying assumptions of modern egalitarian humanism can be construed to imply an equal moral desert for the higher nonhuman animals has recently been challenged by R. G. Frey on the grounds that linguistic incompetence and lack of self-consciousness on the part of animals preclude them from having desires, beliefs, interests, and rights. AlthoughFrey’s arguments fail, they challenge us to provide alternative accounts of these descriptive and normative categories of human and animal psychology. Phenomenological (...) and behavioral analyses demonstrate both the meaningfulness and the truthfulness ofattributing desires, beliefs, and interests to many nonhuman animals. Principles ofaxiology and ethics prescribe that animal interests ought to be objects of our moral concern, but do not vindicate an egalitarian interpretation of animal liberation. A fundamental challenge of the anima1liberation debate is how to frame a nonegalitarian ethic that can nevertheless preserve the moral gains of various liberation movements inspired by principles of equality. (shrink)

Christopher Grau argues that the genetic basis for moral agency account of rightholding is problematic because it fails to grant all human beings the moral status of rightholding; it grants the status of rightholding to entities that do not intuitively deserve such status; and it assumes that the genetic basis for moral agency has intrinsic/final value, but the genetic basis for moral agency only has instrumental value. Grau also argues that those who are inclined to hold that all human beings (...) are rightholders should reconsider speciesism. In this paper, I argue that Grau's objections do not undermine the genetic basis for moral agency account of rightholding, and I also offer criticisms of Grau's defense of speciesism. (shrink)

When philosophers consider what moral status human beings have, they tend to find themselves either supporting the idea that not all human beings are rightholders or adopting what Peter Singer calls a 'speciesist' position, where speciesism is defined as morally favoring a particular species—in this case, human beings—over others without sufficient justification. In this paper, I develop what I call the 'genetic basis for moral agency' account of rightholding, and I propose that this account can allow all human beings to (...) be rightholders without being speciesist. While my aim is to set out this account clearly rather than to defend it, I explain how this account is different from a potentiality account and I argue that it is preferable to an actual moral agency account of human moral status. (shrink)

This paper concentrates on the issue of what happens to the confidence one has in the justification of one's belief when one discovers an epistemic peer with conflicting higher and/or lower order evidences. Certain symmetries surface during epistemic peer disagreement, which tend to make one less confident. The same happens in religious disagreements. Mostly externalist perspectives are considered. The epistemology of ordinary disagreements and that of religious ones behave similarly, such that principles used in the former can be seen to (...) apply also in the latter. (shrink)

This paper concentrates on the issue of what happens to the confidence one has in the justification of one's belief when one discovers an epistemic peer with conflicting higher and/or lower order evidences. Certain symmetries surface during epistemic peer disagreement, which tend to make one less confident. The same happens in religious disagreements. Mostly externalist perspectives are considered. The epistemology of ordinary disagreements and that of religious ones behave similarly, such that principles used in the former can be seen to (...) apply also in the latter. (shrink)

In this article I examine the proposition that severe cognitive disability is an impediment to moral personhood. Moral personhood, as I understand it here, is articulated in the work of Jeff McMahan as that which confers a special moral status on a person. I rehearse the metaphysical arguments about the nature of personhood that ground McMahan’s claims regarding the moral status of the “congenitally severely mentally retarded” (CSMR for short). These claims, I argue, rest on the view that only intrinsic (...) psychological capacities are relevant to moral personhood: that is, that relational properties are generally not relevant. In addition, McMahan depends on an argument that species membership is irrelevant for moral consideration and a contention that privileging species membership is equivalent to a virulent nationalism (these will be discussed below). In consequence, the CSMR are excluded from moral personhood and their deaths are less significant as their killing is less wrong than that of persons. To throw doubt on McMahan’s conclusions about the moral status and wrongness of killing the CSMR I question the exclusive use of intrinsic properties in the metaphysics of personhood, the dismissal of the moral importance of species membership, and the example of virulent nationalism as an apt analogy. I also have a lot to say about McMahan’s empirical assumptions about the CSMR. (shrink)

I want to argue for the importance of the notion human being in ethics. Part I of the paper presents two different sorts of argument against treating that notion as important in ethics. A. Here is an example of the first sort of argument. What makes us human beings is that we have certain properties, but these properties, making us members of a certain biological species, have no moral relevance. If, on the other hand, we define being human in terms (...) which are not tied to biological classification, if we treat as the properties which make us human the capacities for reasoning or for self-consciousness, then indeed those capacities may be morally relevant, but if they are morally significant at all, they are significant whether they are the properties of a being who is a member of our species or not. And so it would be better to use a word like ‘person’ to mean a being that has these properties , to bring out the fact that not all human beings have them and that non-human beings conceivably might have them. (shrink)

In “The Human Prejudice”, Bernard Williams discusses our treating human beings differently in our moral thinking from the ways we treat other creatures. He criticises the idea that this expresses a prejudice, speciesism, analogous to racism and sexism. His essay has been misunderstood by some of its critics, including Peter Singer and Jeff McMahan. My essay sets out several questions one may have about Williams's essay, and explains how they can be answered. I make clear the connections between “The Human (...) Prejudice” and some main elements in Williams's thinking about ethics, including his criticisms of moral theory. (shrink)

A right, unlike an interest, is a valid claim, or potential claim, made by a moral agent, under principles that govern both the claimant and the target of the claim. Animals cannot be the bearers of rights because the concept of rights is essentially human; it is rooted in and has force within a human moral world.

Most of us believe that we are entitled to treat members of other species in ways which would be considered wrong if inflicted on members of our own species. We kill them for food, keep them confined, use them in painful experiments. The moral philosopher has to ask what relevant difference justifies this difference in treatment. A look at this question will lead us to re-examine the distinctions which we have assumed make a moral difference.

ABSTRACT Because of the existence of severely defective humans it is commonly held that whatever consideration is due to all humans is also due to many other animals, and that therefore speciesism, or the readiness to prefer the interest of humans to those of other animals, is unjustified. After criticism of this reasoning a ‘naturalised’ speciesism, acknowledging, for example, the affinities between species, is articulated and defended. A key to this defence is the separation of the task of specifying morally (...) significant differences between humans and other animals from the task of justifying the extension of consideration to defective humans. The conclusion is that more traditional vices than speciesism are chiefly to blame for the shabby treatment of animals by humans. (shrink)

I BELIEVE THAT the intellectual capacity of women is on the whole inferior to that of men. By "on the whole," I do not mean just "on the average"; though I do mean that much. My belief is, if you take any degree of intellectual capacity which is above the average for the human race, as a whole, then a possessor of that degree of intellectual capacity is a good deal more likely to be man than a woman.

In recent years a number of oppressed groups have campaigned vigorously for equality. The classic instance is the Black Liberation movement, which demands an end to the prejudice and discrimination that has made blacks second-class citizens. The immediate appeal of the black liberation movement and its initial, if limited, success made it a model for other oppressed groups to follow. We became familiar with liberation movements for Spanish-Americans, gay people, and a variety of other minorities. When a majority group—women—began their (...) campaign, some thought we had come to the end of the road. Discrimination on the basis of sex, it has been said, is the last universally accepted form of discrimination, practiced without secrecy or pretense even in those liberal circles that have long prided themselves on their freedom from prejudice against racial minorities. (shrink)