Ethics Finder

Animal Welfare / Rights

The question of whether non-human animals have rights, and if so how extensive those are, turns on the issue of what gives a subject ‘moral standing’. One view is that it relates to rationality, another is that it has to do with the capacity for suffering, a third that it is either of these, and/or other features (such as being created by God) that require moral consideration. The general idea is that some characteristic confers value on a being such that to harm it, without justification, is wrong. Until the 19th century most ethical thinking about animals tended to assume, or argue, that their lives were of very little or no intrinsic moral value but sometimes held that it was nevertheless wrong to treat them cruelly because this showed bad character and made it more likely than such a person would act cruelly to human beings also. With the rise of utilitarianism, however, especially in the work of Jeremy Bentham, which connected right and wrong to the cause or avoidance of suffering, people began to be concerned that harming animals is directly wrong. More precisely the idea is that in considering how to treat animals one has to take their welfare into account along with that of human beings. This would still allow for harm to be done to them, e.g. in scientific and medical experimentation, if it produced a greater overall benefit. Animal rights advocates counter that the right not to be harmed is inviolable.

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