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Which Beings Deserve Ethical Consideration? – From the Sentience Criterion to the Life Criterion1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 January 2009
Extract
There are a variety of arguments regarding which entities on earth have intrinsic value and therefore deserve ethical consideration. The thesis that only human beings have intrinsic value has waned considerably in recent years, mainly thanks to the efforts of animal liberationists. There now seems to be wide agreement that ethical consideration should be extended to entities beyond human beings. Disagreements are concerned with how far it should be extended: to animals with similar capacities to humans, to all sentient beings, or to all living beings, or even to the whole ecosystem?
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996
Footnotes
1
I would like to express my thanks to professors P. Singer, J. B. Schneewind, A. Cohen, and an anonymous referee for comments on earlier versions of this paper. The shortcomings that remain are mine.
References
2 Feinberg, Joel, ‘The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations’, Philosophy and Environmental Crisis, ed. Blackstone, W. T., Athens, Georgia, 1974Google Scholar.
3 Singer, Peter, Practical Ethics, Cambridge, 1st ed., 1979, and 2nd ed., 1993Google Scholar. The page numbers in the quotations are from the second edition.
4 Feinberg, p. 51.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., p. 52. The italics are mine.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid., pp. 52–3.
9 Practical Ethics, p. 23.
10 Ibid., p. 126.
11 Ibid., p. 57.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid., pp. 57–8.
14 Ibid., p. 277. The italics are mine.
15 Ibid., p. 31.
16 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, Mass., 1971, p. 505Google Scholar.
17 See Practical Ethics, p. 18.
18 According to the life criterion, the needs of ‘lower’ animals are important, just as those of plants are. Hereafter, for simplicity's sake, I will often refer to plants as the representative of non-conscious organisms.
19 Hare, R. M., Freedom and Reason, Oxford, 1963, p. 126Google Scholar.
20 Ibid., p. 127.
21 Ibid., p. 128.
22 In the second edition of Practical Ethics, Singer adds some qualifications to this argument, but he still seems to believe that such a ranking ‘does not seem impossible’. See pp. 107–9.
23 Ibid., p. 70.
24 Singer, Peter, Animal Liberation, New York, 1975, p. 11Google Scholar. The page references are to the 1977 Avon Books edition.
25 Ibid., p. 248.
26 Practical Ethics, pp. 277–80.
27 Ibid., p. 277.
28 Ibid., p. 90.
29 Attfield, Robin, The Ethics of Environmental Concern, 2nd ed., Athens, Georgia, 1991, p. 153Google Scholar.
30 Varner, G. E., ‘Biological Functions and Biological Interests’, Southern Journal of Philosophy, xxviii (1990)Google Scholar. Here Varner proposes a biological theory of welfare which includes two kinds of interests: preference interests and biological interests. See p. 265.