Philosophy 140 Regan Main claim All living things possess inherent value Not treated as mere means resource Inherent value To have inherent value you have an equal right to be treated with respect An entity has inherent value just in case it is an experience subject of life Experiencing means individual welfare wanting and preferring things and believing and feeling things P1 everything that is the experiencing subject of a life has inherent value P2 animals are experiencing subjects of life P3 from p1 and p3 animals have inherent value P4 it is wrong to treat anything with inherent value as a means to an end C it is wrong to treat animals as a mean to end Against p4 animals don t respect rights why should we respect theirs If we don t need to respect the rights of the entities that do not respect rights then it is not always wrongs to treat things with inherent value as means to an end However the fact that X is relevant to the moral consideration in perhaps independent from having the capacity to follow a rule about X Thus even if animals do not have the capacity to respect rights they can still be deemed worthy of moral consideration Against P4 Artwork analogy they may be beautiful they may have inherent value but this does not mean they have rights God is more valuable Both singer and Regan can argue that since their views do such a good job explaining there must be something right about them However what can be granted is that while sentience singer and being an experiencing subject of a life Regan are not the traits that determine whether an entity deserves moral consideration they are still morally relevant traits Cohen s aim is to argue to against arguments like Singer and Regan While singer was a consequentialist and Regan was a deontologist Cohen s view is essentially the contractarian view Moral norms derive their normative force from the idea of contract or mutual agreement Only those who have the capacity to make moral claims can be either in such contracts and only they have rights by default Rights is a a claim or potential claim that one party may exercise To comprehend any genuine right fully we must know who holds the right against whom it is held and what the right is
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