{"title":"The moral status of animals: Degrees of moral status and the interest-based approach","authors":"Zorana Todorovic","doi":"10.2298/fid2102282t","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This paper addresses the issue of the moral status of non-human animals, or\n the question whether sentient animals are morally considerable. The\n arguments for and against the moral status of animals are discussed, above\n all the argument from marginal cases. It is argued that sentient animals\n have moral status based on their having interests in their experiential\n well-being, but that there are degrees of moral status. Two interest-based\n approaches are presented and discussed: DeGrazia?s view that sentient\n animals have interests in continuing to live, and that their interests\n should be granted moral weight; and McMahan?s TRIA which similarly\n postulates that animals have interests and that in a given situation we\n should compare the human and animal interests at stake. Finally, the paper\n concludes that the anthropocentric approach to animal ethics should be\n abandoned in favour of the biocentric ethics.","PeriodicalId":41902,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy and Society-Filozofija i Drustvo","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Philosophy and Society-Filozofija i Drustvo","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2298/fid2102282t","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"PHILOSOPHY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper addresses the issue of the moral status of non-human animals, or
the question whether sentient animals are morally considerable. The
arguments for and against the moral status of animals are discussed, above
all the argument from marginal cases. It is argued that sentient animals
have moral status based on their having interests in their experiential
well-being, but that there are degrees of moral status. Two interest-based
approaches are presented and discussed: DeGrazia?s view that sentient
animals have interests in continuing to live, and that their interests
should be granted moral weight; and McMahan?s TRIA which similarly
postulates that animals have interests and that in a given situation we
should compare the human and animal interests at stake. Finally, the paper
concludes that the anthropocentric approach to animal ethics should be
abandoned in favour of the biocentric ethics.