The Animal Rights Debate (original) (raw)

Tom Regan on Kind Arguments against Animal Rights and for Human Rights

See also my "Carl Cohen's 'Kind' Argument FOR Animal Rights and AGAINST Human Rights" : https://www.academia.edu/823781/Carl\_Cohens\_kindarguments\_FOR\_animal\_rights\_and\_AGAINST\_human\_rights Abstract: Tom Regan argues that human beings and some non-human animals have moral rights because they are “subjects of lives,” that is, roughly, conscious, sentient beings with an experiential welfare. A prominent critic, Carl Cohen, objects: he argues that only moral agents have rights and so animals, since they are not moral agents, lack rights. An objection to Cohen’s argument is that his theory of rights seems to imply that human beings who are not moral agents have no moral rights, but since these human beings have rights, his theory of rights is false, and so he fails to show that animals lack rights. Cohen responds that this objection fails because human beings who are not moral agents nevertheless are the “kind” of beings who are moral agents and so have rights, but animals are not that “kind” of being and so lack rights. Regan argues that Cohen’s “kind” arguments fail : they fail to explain why human beings who are not moral agents have rights and they fail to show that animals lack rights. Since Cohen’s “kind” arguments are influential, I review and critique Regan’s objections . I offer suggestions for stronger responses to arguments like Cohen’s.

Tom Regan’s Philosophy of Animal Rights: Subjects-of-a-Life in the Context of Discussions of Intrinsic and Inherent Worth

Problemos

Modern animal rights debates began in the 1970s, mainly as part of the budding field of applied ethics in Anglo-American philosophy. In just a short time, these animal rights discourses received international academic respect, especially through analytically trained philosophers. Central for this development was the analysis that rights language can be principally used species neutrally. This paper’s contribution is to examine the central terms of Tom Regan’s still widely discussed theory for their actuality and usefulness. Hence strengthening these arguments for modern animal rights theory as a serious approach in (inter)national ethical and legal disputes. Translated from German by Gary Steiner, Bucknell University

Respect, Inherent Value, Subjects-of-a-Life Some. Reflections on the Key Concepts of Tom Regan’s Animal Ethics

Relations. Beyond Anthropocentrism, 2020

This article reconstructs the theoretical premises of Tom Regan’s animal ethics, the American philosopher recently disappeared who has given a fundamental contribution to this area of practical ethics, by developing a theory of rights based on the extension to all subjects-of-a-life of Kantian notions such as inherent value and respect. Regan’s theory still remains the most rigorous foundation of an animal ethics alternative to the utilitarian approach of Peter Singer, but it is not without unresolved problems or not entirely satisfactory solutions. To remedy some of them, in the final part the author tries to insert into the Reganian theoretical framework elements of gradualism.