Perhaps the most common defence of animal rights is based on the claim that it is wrong to discriminate on the grounds of species. Just as it is wrong to treat people differently on the basis of race or sex—so animal rights advocates argue—it is wrong to treat other animals differently on the basis of their species membership. In this article, Sophie Grace Chappell argues against this dominant view in animal ethics. Chappell argues for the inherent value of animals, not based on detached reasoning about discrimination, but instead based on an ethics of love and attention.
How should we think about the (other) animals? I believe we should think about them as inherently valuable and deserving of protection—in short, as having rights. In that broad sense, this essay is a defence of animal rights.
At first glance, it might not look like that. In philosophy we don’t just want the right conclusions; we want the right conclusions for the right reasons. And a lot of the commonest arguments for animal rights don’t, in my view, give us the right reasons. So I start by unpicking some bad arguments for animal rights. Then I present what I hope is a better argument.
Perhaps the commonest argument you hear for animal rights is built on this claim:
Anti-Speciesism: It is morally wrong to discriminate on the grounds of species.
Often Anti-Speciesism is argued for by analogy with two other positions allegedly parallel to it:
Anti-Racism: It is morally wrong to discriminate on the grounds of race.
Anti-Sexism: It is morally wrong to discriminate on the grounds of sex.
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