Biology Reference
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Liberationists might worry that in this deflation of the argument in favor of reform,
we end up with overly lean moral operators. Theoretical minimization is usually a
virtue. Yet in the animal context, the remaining framework must be substantial, cap-
able of mobilizing controversial moral prescriptions and dislodging deeply engrained
practices. The rights approach or utilitarianism provide sufficient machinery for this
purpose: if animals possess rights, then some weighty conduct reform is called for.
Reforms follow too, if the hedonic calculus determining the overall pleasure and pain
(which, according to utilitarians, should guide our actions) includes animals. Libera-
tionists would worry that when compared to rights or utilitarian-based approaches, the
negative arguments proposed earlier as sufficient lack theoretic force. The problem is
not merely that such arguments are eclectically assembled in the sense of being unre-
lated to an overall principled theory, but that they carry little probative force when
clashing against opposing and diverse antireform human interests. In absence of rights
or an overall moral theory like utilitarianism, the problem becomes one of balancing
moral limitations on conduct against considerations that many regard as more power-
ful and that tap interests that are closer to home.
Consider severe limitation of movement. Restricting movement calls for a justifica-
tion when it is applied to another human. Since we have no reason to suppose that
animals do not experience severe limitation of movement as a harm, we need to ask
what it is that animals lack that legitimates limiting their movement (a “negative ar-
gument” according to the typology proposed above). In the case of some companion
animals, the justification will appeal to the animal's own welfare and the quasi-pater-
nalistic framework of pet-owner relations that may support such restriction. Some
companion animals would never exist in the wild, and so placing them outside the
confines of a human home would be detrimental to them. Caging birds, on the other
hand, does not admit of similar excuse; nor does the capture of animals that live in
the wild, to put them on display in zoos. Suppose now that a defender of zoos ad-
mits that the institution is morally dubious, but that the pleasure for numerous visitors
offsets the moral transgression done to animals. Parallel formulations exist regarding
other areas of animal welfare. Killing animals as part of scientific enquiry, diet, hunt-
ing, and the clothing industry can all appear undesirable as such, but as minor
wrongs in comparison with the human interests that are being promoted. The more
ambitious theories to which I am proposing a thinner alternative contain handy dis-
missals of such appeals: if animals have rights, or if their interests or suffering are
part of the overall morally relevant state of affairs that ought to guide utilitarian de-
cision making, the construction “trumping human interest” encounters substantial coun-
terarguments. Rights cannot be easily “trumped” (indeed, that is what sets rights apart
from mere interests). As for the utilitarian framework, “human interest”—even if the
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