Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all sentient animals have moral worth independent of their utility to humans, and that their most basic interests—such as avoiding suffering—should be afforded the same consideration as similar interests of human beings. [2]
Moral circle expansion is an increase over time in the number and type of entities given moral consideration. [1] The general idea of moral inclusion was discussed by ancient philosophers and since the 19th century has inspired social movements related to human rights and animal rights.
Gary Francione questions the concept of granting personhood on the basis of whether the animal is human-like (as some have argued) and believes sentience should be the sole criteria used to determine if an animal should enjoy basic rights. He asserts that several other animals, including mice and rats, should also be granted such rights. [26]
Its proponents hold that if human infants, senile people, the comatose, and cognitively disabled people have direct moral status, non-human animals must have a similar status, since there is no known morally relevant characteristic that those marginal-case humans have that animals lack. "Moral status" may refer to a right not to be killed or ...
Edward Nicholson (1849–1912), head of the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, argued in Rights of an Animal (1879) that animals have the same natural right to life and liberty that human beings do, disregarding Descartes' mechanistic view—or what he called the "Neo-Cartesian snake"—that they lack consciousness. [66]
Animal ethics is a branch of ethics which examines human-animal relationships, the moral consideration of animals and how nonhuman animals ought to be treated. The subject matter includes animal rights, animal welfare, animal law, speciesism, animal cognition, wildlife conservation, wild animal suffering, [1] the moral status of nonhuman animals, the concept of nonhuman personhood, human ...
English writer and animal rights advocate Henry S. Salt, in his 1892 book Animals' Rights, argued that for humans to do justice to other animals, they must look beyond the conception of a "great gulf" between them, claiming instead that we should recognize the "common bond of humanity that unites all living beings in one universal brotherhood ...
The Case for Animal Rights is a 1983 book by the American philosopher Tom Regan, in which the author argues that at least some kinds of non-human animals have moral rights because they are the "subjects-of-a-life", and that these rights adhere to them whether or not they are recognized. [1]