EQUAL CONSIDERATION AND UNEQUAL MORAL STATUS

1993 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
David DeGrazia
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Equal Consideration

scholarly journals David DeGrazia on Animal Rights: A Critical Analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michał Pełka
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Animal Minds ◽  
Famous People ◽  
Social Philosopher ◽  
Equal Consideration

The article aims to critically discuss the theory of animal rights developed by American social philosopher David DeGrazia. It consists of two parts. The first one describes the main elements of DeGrazia’s approach, namely his views on animal minds, the principle of equal consideration, the idea of unequal moral status, the concept of border persons, and practical remarks concerning improving the treatment of animals by humans. The second part presents remarks about the points where DeGrazia’s proposals should be supplemented and corrected so as to make them more convincing and widely accepted. The conclusion of the essay is the proposal of a cultural revolution for the benefit of animals, which should be initiated by famous people, like actresses, actors, sportswomen and sportsmen, because of their influential position in contemporary societies.

Some Animals are More Equal Than Others

Philosophy ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 53 (206) ◽  
pp. 507-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Pickering Francis ◽  
Richard Norman
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Racial Equality ◽  
Moral Issue ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Animal Liberation ◽  
Women’S Liberation ◽  
Academic Philosophy ◽  
Liberation Movements ◽  
Equal Consideration ◽  
Human Liberation

It is a welcome development when academic philosophy starts to concern itself with practical issues, in such a way as to influence people's lives. Recently this has happened with one moral issue in particular—but infortunately it is the wrong issue, and people's actions have been influenced in the wrong way. The issue is that of the moral status and treatment of animals. A number of philosophers have argued for what they call ‘animal liberation’, comparing it directly with egalitarian causes such as women's liberation and racial equality and suggesting that, if racism and sexism are rationally indefensible, so is ‘speciesism’. If one ought to give equal consideration to the interests of all human beings, then, so they daim, one must on the same grounds and in the same way recognize that ‘all animals are equal’, be they human or non-human. We believe that this assimilation of ‘animal liberation’ to human liberation movements is mistaken.

scholarly journals Does Being Human Matter Morally? Five Correctives to the Speciesism Debate

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeroen Hopster
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Equal Weight ◽  
Moral Significance ◽  
Moral Relevance ◽  
Moral Treatment ◽  
Ethical Debate ◽  
Ethical Inquiry ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Species Membership ◽  
Equal Consideration

This article argues for five correctives to the current ethical debate about speciesism, and proposes normative, conceptual, methodological and experimental avenues to move this debate forward. Firstly, it clarifies the Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests and points out limitations of its scope. Secondly, it disambiguates between ‘favouritist’ and ‘species-relative’ views about moral treatment. Thirdly, it argues that not all moral intuitions about speciesism should be given equal weight. Fourthly, it emphasizes the importance of empirical research to corroborate statements about ‘folk speciesism’. Fifthly, it disambiguates between the moral significance of species and the moral status of their individual members. For each of these issues, it is shown that they have either been overlooked, or been given inapt treatment, in recent contributions to the debate. Building on the correctives, new directions are proposed for ethical inquiry into the moral relevance of species and species membership.

scholarly journals David DeGrazia o prawach zwierząt – analiza krytyczna

2020 ◽  
pp. 52-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michał Pełka
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Animal Minds ◽  
Famous People ◽  
Social Philosopher ◽  
Equal Consideration

The article aims to critically discuss the theory of animal rights developed by American social philosopher David DeGrazia. It consists of two parts. The first one describes the main elements of DeGrazia’s approach, namely his views on animal minds, the principle of equal consideration, the idea of unequal moral status, the concept of border persons, and practical remarks concerning improving the treatment of animals by humans. The second part presents remarks about the points where DeGrazia’s proposals should be supplemented and corrected so as to make them more convincing and widely accepted. The conclusion of the essay is the proposal of a cultural revolution for the benefit of animals, which should be initiated by famous people, like actresses, actors, sportswomen and sportsmen, because of their influential position in contemporary societies.

Moral Vegetarianism from a Very Broad Basis

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
David DeGrazia
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Animal Protection ◽  
Moral Vegetarianism ◽  
Cruelty To Animals ◽  
Equal Consideration

AbstractThis paper defends a qualified version of moral vegetarianism. It defends a weak thesis and, more tentatively, a strong thesis, both from a very broad basis that assumes neither that animals have rights nor that they are entitled to equal consideration. The essay's only assumption about moral status, an assumption defended in the analysis of the wrongness of cruelty to animals, is that sentient animals have at least some moral status. One need not be a strong champion of animal protection, then, to embrace moral vegetarianism. One need only assume some reasonable view of animals' moral status.

scholarly journals Misadventures of Sentience: Animals and the Basis of Equality

Animals ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 1044 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Zuolo
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Animal Ethics ◽  
Equal Status ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Equal Consideration ◽  
Lack Of Knowledge

This paper aims to put in question the all-purposes function that sentience has come to play in animal ethics. In particular, I criticize the idea that sentience can provide a sound basis of equality, as has been recently proposed by Alasdair Cochrane. Sentience seems to eschew the standard problems of egalitarian accounts that are based on range properties. By analysing the nature of range properties, I will show that sentience cannot provide such a solution because it is constructed as a sui generis range property. After criticizing the approaches seeking to ground animals’ equal status, I turn to Singer’s principle of equal consideration of interests. Despite its seeming non-controversiality, I argue that it cannot do without referring to the moral status of a being in order to determine the weight of a being’s interests. Moreover, it outlines a weak egalitarian basis because it relies on the presumption of equality of interests in virtue of our lack of knowledge of the weight of individuals’ interests. I conclude in a more positive tone by arguing that, irrespective of the troubles of range property egalitarianism, animal ethics can rely on other normative resources to defend the cause of animals.

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