Title

Animal Interests

Document Type

Contribution to Book

Publication Date

2016

Abstract

Most people have inconsistent views about the nature of animals and their interests. Many animals fare well or ill, and are benefitted or harmed, because of what happens to them. Or so most of us think, and strong empirical evidence backs us up. Most of us also think that we are not animals. (We will acknowledge that human animals exist. How could we not? They are everywhere we go! One of them has eyes scanning this sentence. Still, they are one thing, and we are another; perhaps we are inside of these animals, and perhaps we overlap with them-only a trained metaphysician can detect where the one creature leaves off and the other begins.) However, one or the other view must be false, for, as I will show later, if we are not animals, no animal has interests. So if we insist that we are not animals, we must argue as follows:

1. We are not animals.
2. If we are not animals, then no animals have interests.
3. No animals, therefore, have interests.

Editor

Tatjana Višak & Robert Garner

Publisher

Oxford University Press

City

Oxford

ISBN

9780199396078

Publication Information

The Ethics of Killing Animals

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS