WHY ANIMALS MATTER - Ethics and the Beast - page 16

committees authorizing scientific experiments aim to ensure that the pain experienced
by animals is minimized, and that the least number of animals is being used. My
claim is not that the present status quo is morally satisfying, but that it encapsulates
the realization that animals are entitled to some moral defense, that it is universally
recognized that something in animals calls for morally restricting what may be done
to them.
Of course, a majority of people would prohibit only a few animal-related ac-
tions—for most such restriction typically consists in disallowing cruelty—and this
means that moral philosophizing that challenges the present practices should strive to
enlarge the set of banned actions. Such extension is possible without invoking the no-
tion of moral status, or adopting utilitarianism, or arguing that animals have rights.
Two-stage thinking is to be abandoned. But fortunately, this does not mean that all
the incisive work into moral considerability in the last three decades is valueless. I
will now offer a broad distinction between two kinds of status-establishing arguments.
I will then say what may be retained from such moves if we discard the vocabulary
of moral status.
POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE ARGUMENTS
Liberationists offer two kinds of status-establishing arguments. I will call these
“positive” and “negative” arguments, respectively. A “positive” case for the moral
considerability of animals isolates properties that animals have, making them eligible
for substantial moral status. In highlighting particular properties—e.g., the capacity to
suffer, feel, or think—positive arguments relate to content that either underlies or
ought to underlie moral entitlement. “Negative” pro-animal arguments, on the other
hand, undermine attempts to deny to animals considerable moral entitlement. Negative
arguments do not ask what morally relevant properties animals possess, but challenge
opponents of pro-animal reform to specify the morally relevant properties that animals
lack . Negative arguments concern form, not content. They do not harp on this or that
property. Instead, such arguments first denaturalize the assumption that substantial
moral status includes humans alone. Negative moves enforce a rethinking of this
grouping principle (an undertheorized principle in traditional moral philosophy). Neg-
ative arguments are not primarily about human/nonhuman similarities. They underscore
arbitrary exclusion.
Take, for example, the appeal to animal rights. 2 A “positive” variant of the rights
argument is a case for the moral considerability of animals that, in turn, gives rise to
rights. A negative version is that animals are eligible for substantive moral consider-
ability if no morally relevant difference between human and nonhuman animals can
explain why rights ought to be confined to humans. Appealing to species membership