PHI 2630 1st Edition Lecture 8 Outline of Last Lecture I Lecture Notes a Moral Agents vs Moral Patients II Carl Cohen Do Animals Have Rights a Two Reasons for Answering No b Rights c Objections to Tom Regan Outline of Current Lecture II Nadine Strossen Why Censoring Pornography Would Not Reduce Discrimination Or Violence Against Women III Peter Singer All Animals are Equal a Lecture Notes b Reading Notes Current Lecture I What is the morally relevant difference between humans and non human animals II If one wants to justify treating non human animals differently than humans one has to explain what grounds there are for this kind of treatment III Compare the following scenarios a Torturing animals for fun b Hunting sports trophy c Using animals for medical tests d Using animals for beauty product testing e Eating animals f Do you think all of the above scenarios are morally justifiable g If not which ones and why What is the difference between the acceptable and unacceptable cases if any IV Moral agents and moral patients a Moral agents have a variety of sophisticated abilities including in particular the ability to bring impartial moral principles to bear on the determination of what These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute all considered morally ought to be done and having made this determination to freely choose or fail to choose to act as morality as they conceive it requires b Moral patients In contrast to moral agents moral patients lack the prerequisites that would enable them to control their own behavior in ways that would make them morally accountable for what they do A moral patient lacks the ability to formulate let alone bring to bear moral principles in deliberating about which one among a number of possible acts it would be right or proper to perform Moral patients in a word cannot do what is right nor can they do what is wrong V Carl Cohen Do Animals Have Rights a Cohen believes no i Non human animals lack moral rights even though humans have moral obligations with regard to them ii Rebuttal of Tom Regan whose argument depends on the claim that nonhuman animals like human beings have inherent value and therefore have moral rights 1 This commits the fallacy of equivocation by attributing different meanings to the term inherent value b Right a valid claim or potential claim made by a moral agent under principles that govern both the claimant and the target of the claim i If animals have rights they certainly have the right not to be killed even to advance our important interests ii Rights differ from interests We may have an interest in learning how to vaccinate against certain diseases but we do not have a right to learn such things 1 We use mice or monkeys because there is no other way There is and will be no way to determine the reliability and safety of new vaccines without repeated tests on live organisms We cannot use people so we must use animals or we will never have such lifesaving vaccines c Objections to Tom Regan i Regans s Position 1 Believing that rats have rights as humans do Regan was convinced that killing them in medical research was morally intolerable a The harms others might face as a result of the dissolution of some practice or institution is no defense of allowing it to continue No one has a right to be protected against being harmed if the protection in question involves violating the rights of others No one has a right to be protected by the continuation of an unjust practice one that violates the rights of others b On the rights view we cannot justify harming a single rat merely be aggregating the many human and humane benefits that flow from doing it Not even a single rat is to be treated as if that animal s value were reducible to his possible utility relative to the interests of others ii Cohen s Objections 1 Cohen s argument has extraordinary consequences a We can no longer eat animals b Live saving studies will have to stop and there is generally no alternative to the use of animals in these studies iii Animals do not have rights 1 Rights entail obligations However obligations do not entail rights a Therefore although many obligations are owed by humans to animals it does not follow that animals have rights 2 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 To say of a rat that it has rights is to confuse categories to apply to its world a moral category that has content only in the human moral world a Imagine a lioness attacking a baby zebra to feed her young If the zebra has a right to live we ought to intervene if we can on behalf of right But we do not intervene though we surely would if the lioness was about to attack a human baby We justify different responses to humans and to zebras on the ground implicit or explicit that their moral stature is very different b Rights are of the highest moral consequence but lions and zebras and rats are totally amoral there is no morality for them they do no wrong ever This is because they are moral patients not moral agents see above To be a moral agent is to be able to grasp the generality of moral restrictions on our will i Humans understand that some things which may be in our interest must not be willed We exhibit moral autonomy by laying down moral laws for ourselves 1 Though infants and some mentally handicapped people cannot make moral claims or judgments it must be noted that it is not individual persons who qualify for the possession of rights but rather rights are universally human ii Dogs know there are certain things they must not do but they know this only as the outcome of learning about avoiding the pains they may suffer is they do what had been taught forbidden It is in their interest to obey They do not however know that any conduct is wrong
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