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North American Philosophical Publications

Do Animal Rights Entail Moral Nihilism?Author(s): Louis PojmanSource: Public Affairs Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Apr., 1993), pp. 165-185Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of North American Philosophical PublicationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40435842 .

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PUBLIC AFFAIRS QUARTERLYVolume 7, Number 2, April1993

DO ANIMAL RIGHTSENTAIL MORAL NIHILISM?

Louis Pojman

INTRODUCTION: A DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM

W HAT is the problem concerning the moral status of animals? Just this:On the one hand, we normally regard human beings as possessinghigh intrinsic worth, dignity. We say with Kant that humans, qua rationalbeings, are ends in themselves and may not be used as mere means for thegood of others. We affirm with our founding fathers that "these truths areself-evident that all" humans are equal and possess "certain inalienablerights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

On the other hand, our growing understanding of evolutionary biologyleads us to believe that the similarities (common physical properties) between some primates and humans turn out to be greater than the differences.The Absolute Gap Thesis which posits a clear axiological distinctionbetween humans and other animals is false. As Darwin said, "There is nofundamental difference between man and the higher animals." We are essentially animals. Whereas our forebearers judged humans as occupyingaxiological space between angels and animals, some contemporary views putus between the animal and the computer, as reasonably accurate consciouscalculators.Now put these two propositions together. Since we have intrinsic or inherent worth and animals-at least mammals, such as cetaceans (e.g.,whales, dolphins, and porpoises), primates (e.g., chimpanzees and monkeys), and pigs, dogs, cats, elephants, cows, horses, rats, rabbits andmice-are relevantly similar to us, these mammals must also have intrinsic worth. Since intrinsic worth yields basic civil rights, higher animalsmust be treated with the respect usually accorded to humans. We mustrecognize that they possess natural rights, including the right of life, theright not to be harmed, and the right of liberty. It follows, given suitablesupporting premises, that our present practices, based on the AbsoluteGap Thesis, of eating meat, hunting, and animal experimentation are morallywrong.

165


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166 PUBLIC AFFAIRS QUARTERLYThis is the heart of the Animal Rights Argument. It begins with the

Egalitarian Thesis, what Tom Regan called "a consensus view in philosophy," that all adult humans are of equal worth and proceeds to show that theimplications of this thesis lead to viewing animals as having equal positiveworth, Animal or Mammal Egalitarianism. 1 Since humans have equal rights,it follows that animals have them as well.

In this paper I will primarily use the term "rights" to cover the idea ofnatural rights, the idea that certain natural properties in animals give themspecial moral consideration, cause them to have claims over and against us.I call this the strong rights view and contrast it with a weak rights view inwhich rights are simply correlative to duties. The weak view denies that abeing has inherent rights but affirms that we still have duties to those creatures. That is, if I have a duty to some being B, then B has a right againstme, whether he can claim it or not. So in this weaker sense of rights,flowing from deontic ("ought") language, we can speak of animals havingrights even if we do not want to accept a stronger view of natural rights.My arguments are mainly levelled against the stronger thesis, although theyare applicable to Singer's version of the weaker thesis.

In what follows I briefly outline seven theories of the moral status ofanimals, three which grant them little or no status, one which grants themsubstantial but not equal status, and three which grant some kind of equalstatus with ourselves. My primary goal in this paper is to consider variousversions of the Egalitarian Animal Rights Argument, especially those ofPeter Singer, Tom Regan, and Paul Taylor, in order to determine whetherthese radical versions entail moral nihilism, the thesis that we have nomoral duties at all. I answer that they do indeed.

SEVEN THEORIES OF THE MORAL STATUS OF ANIMALS1. The No Status TheoryThe "No Status Theory" was set forth by Rene Descartes (1596-1650) whoheld that an absolute gap exists between animals and human beings. Unlikehumans animals have no rights or moral status because they have no souls.Since, according to Descartes, the soul is necessary to consiousness, animals cannot feel pain or pleasure. They are mere machines. Their superiority over man-made machines derives from their source. "From thisaspect the body is regarded as a machine which, having been made by thehands of God, is incomparably better arranged, and possesses in itselfmovements which are much more admirable than any of those which can beinvented by man."2

According to Descartes, animals are automata who move and bark andutter sounds like well wound clocks. Because they lack a soul, which is thelocus of consciousness and value, they have no moral status whatsoever. It


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ANIMAL RIGHTS AND MORAL NIHILISM 167is no more morally wrong to pull the ears off a dog or eat a cow than it isto kick a stone or eat a carrot.

There is every reason to believe that Descartes was wrong. Higher animals, having a similar nervous system to our own, do feel pain and pleasure.They have consciousness and engage in purposeful behavior. Dogs and catsmanifest intelligence, gorillas, and chimpanzees exhibit complex abstracting and reasoning abilities and appear to communicate through language.The differences between humans and other animals are more a matter ofdegree than of kind. 3

Although implausible in the extreme, the Cartesian view still has advocates. I've heard it defended by hunters and owners of animal factories.Witness the words of Roy Johnson in the trapper's journal, Trapline Ram-blings. " I f a man beats his wife every day, she suffers because she has animmortal soul. But if a man beats his hound-dog, it may yelp some but itwon't suffer because it has no soul." And again in a book sponsored by thefur industry, Animals and Men-Past, Present and Future, we read thetestimony of a hunter, "I have the impression, based on field observation,that many shot animals do not especially show feelings of pain. There areno 'rights' in the natural world-to the victor belongs the spoils. It is hardto know what people mean by 'cruel' or 'inhumane' ."42. The Minimal Status TheoryThe nineteenth-century British philosopher William Whewell seems to haveheld a somewhat less radical view of animals than Descartes, for Whewelldoesn't deny that animals have feelings, only that we have an obligation toenhance their pleasure. "The pleasures of animals are elements of a verydifferent order from the pleasures of man. We are bound to endeavor toaugment the pleasures of men, not only because they are pleasures, butbecause they are human pleasures. We are bound to men by the universal tieof humanity, of human brotherhood. We have no such tie to animals.''5

The nineteenth-century British philosopher J. Austin adds that while wehave no positive duties to animals, we ought not to be cruel to them. "Animals should be treated with personal indifference; they should not be petted, they should not be ill-treated. It should always be remembered thatthey are our slaves, not our equals and for this reason it is well to keepup such practices as hunting and fishing, driving and riding, merely todemonstrate in a practical way man's dominion."6 Perhaps this minimalistview should be called the "Slave Status Theory," for so long as we do notpurposefully torture animals, we may use them however we wish. Theyhave no inherent value, are not to be taken into consideration in anyutilitarian calculus.

Philosophers like Stephen Stich and R. G. Frey acknowledge that animalsdo feel pain and pleasure but deny that they can be said to have interests or


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168 PUBLIC AFFAIRS QUARTERLYbeliefs.7 Frey argues that rights are predicated upon beliefs and interests,and since animals fail to have these, they fail to possess rights. In order tohave a belief one must be able to conceptualize and entertain a propositionor sentence, but there is no evidence that animals can do this. In order tohave interests, according to Frey, one must be able to have desires, butdesires also involve propositional content, beliefs, and this is somethingthat animals don't possess. Since only beings with interests can have rights,it follows that animals don't have rights.

Animals may not have rights, but Stitch and Frey's arguments are notcompelling. First of all, animals, such as dogs, chimpanzees, and gorillashave memories of where they have placed objects. For example, at mealtime Fido scratches at the door to the next room. His master interprets thatto mean that Fido wants him to open the door so that he (Fido) can fetch hismeaty bone. This hypothesis is confirmed when the master opens the doorand watches Fido make a dash to a heap of paper at the corner of the roomfrom which Fido procures a bone.

There is no consensus of the correct analysis of human beliefs, but whatsoever beliefs are, they seem functionally equivalent with what causes Fidoto scratch on the door and make a dash for the stack of papers in the cornerof the room. His behavior is intentional, if any behavior is.Likewise, there seems no good reason for withholding the concept ofinterests from animals. Having food, water, sleep and a comfortable dwelling is in an animal's interest, just as these items are normally in a humananimal's interest.3. The Indirect Obligation TheoryThe dominant position in Western philosophy and religion has been theview that while animals have no inherent rights, we ought to treat themkindly. Why? Because they are the property of others who do have moralrights. We have indirect duties to dumb animals because we have directobligations to rational beings, God, and other people who own them.

The creation story of Genesis supports a stewardship model of creation.Animals and the rest of nature and God's property, loaned to humanity forour good use, which we are obligated to cultivate and protect for God'ssake. "And God blessed [man and woman] and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion overthe fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thingthat moves upon the earth.' And God said, 'Behold, I have given you everyplant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every treewith seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food."'

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) hold thatcruelty to animals is wrong because it forms bad character and it leads tocruelty to human beings. Kant argues that we have "no direct rules" to


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ANIMAL RIGHTS AND MORAL NIHILISM 169animals, for they "are not self-conscious and are there merely as a means toan end."

The end is man .... Our duties towards animals are merely indirect duties towards humanity. Animal nature has analogies to human nature, and by doingour duties to animals in respect to manifestations of human nature, we indirectly do our duty to humanity .. I f a man shoots his dog because the animal isno longer capable of service, he does not fail in his duty to the dog, for thedog cannot judge, but his act is inhuman and damages in itself that humanitywhich it is his duty to show towards mankind. I f he is not to stifle his humanfeelings, he must practice kindness towards animals, for he who is cruel toanimals becomes hard also in his dealing with men (Lectures on Ethics, p.239).

The weakness of the Indirect Obligation Theory is that it makes rationalself-consciousness the sole criterion for being morally considerable. Whilesuch self-consciousness may be the criterion for having full-blooded rightsand for being a morally responsible agent, it is not the only thing which isof moral importance. Pain and suffering are bad in themselves, and we haveduties both to refrain from causing these things and to ameliorate and eliminate them.4. Moderate Egalitarianism: The Equal Consideration TheoryThe Equal Consideration Theory was first set forth by Jeremy Bentham(1748-1832), the father of classical Utilitarianism, and developed by PeterSinger in his epoch-making book, Animal Liberation (1976). Utilitarianismis a non-speciesist, egalitarian moral theory in which animals are givenequal vote to humans. Bentham's egalitarian dictum, "Each to count for one,no one for more than one," applies to all sentient creatures regardless ofspecies, and takes the pleasures and pains of each individual, whether amouse or a man, equally into consideration, weighing them both in thehedonic calculus. Each pain (evil) and pleasure (good) is measured according to its intensity, duration, certainty, nearness, fecundity, and purity. Wethen are to "sum up all the values of all the pleasures on the one side, andthose of all the pains on the other. The balance, if it be on the side ofpleasure, will give the good tendency of the act upon the whole, with respect to the interest of that individual person; if on the side of pain, the badtendency of it upon the whole." Pain being equated with the evil and pleasure with the good, the goal of moral action is to produce the optimal aggregate balance of pleasure over pain. In a classical passage Benthamcompares the irrationality of our views toward other races and argues thatthe important question is not whether creatures can reason, but "can theysuffer?"8

Bentham's hedonic act of utilitarianism has been subject to two hundredyears of cogent and familiar criticism, and I have criticized his doctrine


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170 PUBLIC AFFAIRS QUARTERLYelsewhere,9 so I must be content to leave his version and turn to PeterSinger's contemporary rendition of act-utilitarianism.Singer (like Mill before him) aware of the profound difficulties of classical Utilitarianism, that it reduces moral reasoning to a crude and unworkable hedonic calculus in which agents are mere pain/pleasure receptacles,has attempted to set forth a more sophisticated version of utilitarianism.Singer's theory is a type of preference act-utilitarianism in which an act ismoral if and only if it satisfies the highest aggregate of preferences. An actcontrary to the preference of any being is wrong, unless it is outweighed bya stronger contrary preference. Three further theses are set forth, yielding acomprehensive ethic and including global duties to animals.

(1) The Principle of Equality: every sentient being deserves to have hisor her interests (i.e., desires) given equal consideration. Singer rejects theJudeo-Christian notion that human beings have equal inherent value, andinstead bases the equality principle upon our capacity to have preferences.

Equality is a moral idea, not an assertion of fact. There is no logically compelling reason for assuming that a factual difference in ability between two peoplejustifies any difference in the amount of consideration we give their needs andinterests. The principle of equality of human beings is not a description ofan alleged actual equality among humans: it is a prescription of how weshould treat humans (Animal Liberation, p. 5).

Appealing to Benthams's dictum, each sentient being is to count for oneand only for one. Status and privilege should play no part in doling outbenefits. Rather we should distribute goods on the basis of need and desire.The interests of everyone affected by an action should be taken into accountand given the same weight as the like interests of any other being.

(2) Speciesism, which constitutes a violation of the Principle of Equality,must be rejected. Singer compares speciesism, the arbitrary favoring ofone's species with racism. "The racist...[gives] greater weight to the interests of members of his own race, when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of another race. Similarly the speciesist allows theinterests of his own species to override the greater interests of members ofother species." 10

Suffering is suffering no matter whose it is. I f a dog and a human are inequal pain and we have only a single pain reliever, it is not obvious whoshould get it. I f the dog is in greater pain, the dog should. I f the child is ingreater pain, the child should. "What, for instance, are we to do aboutgenuine conflicts of interest like rats biting slum children? I am not sure ofthe answer, but the essential point is just that we do see this as a conflict ofinterest, that we recognize that rats have interests too." 11

(3) The Importance of Self-consciousness. There is a difference betweenour ability to suffer and our equal worth as rational, self-conscious agents.Here Singer separates himself from Bentham who simply compares pleas-


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ANIMAL RIGHTS AND MORAL NIHILISM 171ures and pains. He argues that rational self-consciousness has a deep effecton how and what we desire, over and above mere sentience. Sentience, orthe ability to suffer, gives us a base line equality for some considerations,but not all.

The difference between him and Bentham is revealed in Singer's discussion of the killing. Whereas for Benthamite classical utilitarianism, "thereis no direct significance in the fact that a person's desires for the future gounfulfilled when he or she is killed," Singer argues that a self-consciousperson possesses a concept of himself as a distinct individual with a definitepast and a future, who is "capable of having desires about its own future."Humans have more complex needs than animals, are capable of abstractthought and these special needs ~ a r r a n t special consideration.

But even though humans in general possess capacities which merit special consideration in some areas, this fact becomes irrelevant when it comesto suffering. In suffering we are to be given equal consideration. Sincesentience lies at the core of our moral thinking, and language and intelligence lie at the periphery, a large part of our morality will have to do withliberating people and animals from suffering.

The outcome of this theory is that we ought to become vegetarians, doeverything in our power to end the harmful, torture factories in which animals are raised and prepared for human consumption. Furthermore, weought to curtail the vast majority of scientific research on animals whichpromotes unjustified suffering. Finally, we should end most hunting andtrapping of animals for fur.

Critique: Although Singer's views on the prejudice of speciesism compelus to rethink the moral status of animals, they still have problems. Firstpoint out that his theory doesn't yield the results that he wants: vegetarianism, the end of animal factories and a moratorium of all but the most urgentanimal experiments. At least, it is not obvious that Singer has made a convincing case against these practices. The Achilles Heel in his argument isthe idea of preference. How does Singer know that the abolition of factoryfarms will result in a net gain of preference satisfaction? Imagine the suffering that would be incurred by such abolition. Besides losing the delicioustaste of meat in our diet (which by itself might not outweigh the animal'splight) hundreds of thousands of factory farm workers, transporters, business owners, and butchers would be unemployed. Their families would suffer. Social chaos might ensue. How do we weigh the preferences of chicken,pigs, and cows? Perhaps, as R. G. Frey has argued, the utilitarian thing todo would be to work for reforms in the factory farm, permitting animalsmore space, exercise and pleasure. 12

Furthermore, even if we should take steps, gradual or sudden, to end thefactory farm system, my becoming vegetarian will not make a notable difference. I f I alone cease eating meat, probably not one less pig or chicken


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172 PUBLIC AFFAIRS QUARTERLYwill be raised for consumption, so that my suffering the loss of the taste ofmeat will yield a net disvalue in the scheme of things. Besides, meat eaterscould always nullify any move on the part of vegetarians to create a positivesituation simply by devouring more meat themselves. For exampel, supposethat 10,000 students and faculty suddenly decide to become vegetarians,thus saving 10,000 veal calves in a year and making it uneconomical forOld McDonald's Factory Farm to continue. Suppose the loss of the taste ofmeat adds up to 10,000 preference points and the closing of one animalfactory results in 1 000,000 preference points. The utilitarian thing to do bya factor of 100 would be to become a vegetarian. But not necessarily. Allthe Meat Lovers of America have to do is eat more meat this year, so thatMcDonald's stays open and we vegetarians end up with a minus aggregatepreference balance. By utilitarian standards, because we've deprived ourselves of preference satisfaction (10,000 preference units) for no reason,we've been immoral.

But there is a deeper problem with Singer's Preference Act Utilitarianismwhich resides in the very notion of preference itself. For Singer the morallyright act is the one that yields the highest preference satisfaction. No doubtthat an animal's desire not to suffer outweighs my desire for the taste ofmeat, but this is not to get us to the conclusion that preferences should beconsidered equally or that preference maximization is the only relevantcriterion to be considered.

Even though a dog is suffering more pain than a child, I take it as deeplycounter-intuitive to say that we have a duty to give the single pain relieverto the dog. I f the child is my child, then I think I have a strong duty to giveit to him or her-even if the dog is my dog. The utilitarian might respondthat this may be true because the child will live longer than the dog andhave painful memories of the pain for a longer time. Well, then imagine thatit is an elderly man who is not likely to live longer than the puppy. I stillsense that it would be right (or at least not wrong) to give the pill to theelderly man.

In fact, it seems to me that I should prefer my grandfather's vital interests more than the preferences of all the dogs in the world. I f my grandfather were in danger of losing a leg and forty dogs were each in danger oflosing a leg, and I could either save my grandfather's leg or all the legs ofthe forty dogs, I wouldn't hesitate to operate on my grandfather. No matterhow many dogs' legs I could save. I'd feel it my duty to save my grandfather's.

Singer, of course, might argue that this only proves that I am still animmoral speciesist. Isolated institutions prove nothing. And so they don't.So let's proceed further.

Suppose that ten people will inherit my grandmother's vast wealth. Eachhas a strong preference that my grandmother die so that they can pay theirbills. The total of their preference-units is 1 000. Suppose my grand-


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ANIMAL RIGHTS AND MORAL NIHILISM 173mother's desire to continue to live is only 900 units. Wouldn't I, supposingthat I, as a utilitarian, can pull it off without too much guilt,-wouldn't Ihave a duty to kill my grandmother as painlessly as possible?

"No," the Preference Utilitarianism exclaims. "For you have forgottenthe unintended side-effects of creating fear in the minds of others that thismight be done to them so magnifying the negative preference points."

Well, then, all I have to do is be pretty sure that the poison I administerto grandmother's tea which induces a heart attack, is the kind that leaves notrace.

In fact, can't the Preference Utilitarian do anything he or she wants,including killing people, taking their property, and breaking promises tothem, just so long as his or her preference (or the aggregate preferences ofhis group) outweigh the preference of the victim? I f you suddenly becomedespondent and no longer value life, why can't I utilitarianly kill you if itsatisfies a preference to do so? I f I can get you to care less than you doabout your Mercedes Benz, and can ensure that only minimal bad sideeffects will follow, can I not steal your car with complete utilitarian approval?

Perhaps you would reply that this would be exploitation. Well, why isexploitation wrong? I f I desire to exploit you more than you dislike beingexploited, doesn't my preference win out over yours?

Likewise, couldn't we justify slavery just by brainwashing the slaves toprefer slavery to freedom or at least not to value freedom more than wevalue having slaves?

In the end Singer doesn't gain any advantages over Bentham's crudehedonic calculus. It's simply that instead of people being pleasure/painreceptacles, they now become preference receptacles.

Finally, it turns out that Singer's Principle of Equality is not really aboutequality at all. Self-consciousness gives higher animals more considerationthan merely sentient ones. The Principle of Equality is merely the rule ofimpartiality: Apply your principles in a disinterested manner, according tothe relevent criteria, not according to irrelevant ones. In the words of Aristotle, "Treat equals equally, and unequals unequally." It is purely a formalprinciple without any substantive force, one which could be used (as it wasby Aristotle) to justify slavery and to justify the secret killing of innocents.It is compatible with Nietzsche's Superman with his magnificent Will (read"Preference") for Power.

To conclude, Singer's preference utilitarianism gets us no further thanclassical utilitarianism. It fails in particular to give a strong argument forvegetarianism or the abolition of animal factories. And it fails as a theoryto establish the kind of equal consideration of interests which he aims at.But attempts have been made to salvage the essential core of Singer's program in a inter-species compromise. To this we now turn.


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174 PUBLIC AFFAIRS QUARTERLY5. Weak Anthropocentrism: The Split Level TheoryThe Split level theory is found in the work of Martin Benjamin, DonaldVanDeVeer, and Louis Lombardi. 13 It aims at correcting the above positions.The Cartesian No Status Theory, the Minimal Status Theory, and the Indirect Obligation Theory contain the insight that rational self-consciousnessendows human beings with special worth, but they err on two counts, (1) inholding that animals don't have this quality at all (we know now that somedo to some extent), and (2) in holding that only rational self-consciousnessgives one any rights, or makes one morally considerable. At the other extreme, the Equal Consideration Theory and even more radical the EqualStatus Theory (see below) recognize the importance of sentience and theability to suffer as morally considerable, but these views tend to neglect theaspect of rational self-consciousness as setting the majority of humans apartfrom the majority of animals.

The Split Level Theory combines the insights of both types of theories.I t is non-speciesist in that it recognizes that some animals, like chimpanzeesand dolphins, may have an element of rational self-consciousness and somehumans may lack it (say, fetuses, babies, the senile, and severely retardedpeople). The Split Level Theory recognizes that both sentience and rationalself-consciousness are important in working out a global inter-species morality. This view rejects Singer's equal consideration of interests principle.Rational self-consciousness does make a difference. A higher sort of beingdoes emerge with humanity (and perhaps some higher primates and dolphins), so that we ought to treat humans with special respect.

This theory distinguishes between trivial needs and important needs. Itsays that with regard to important needs, human needs override animalneeds, but animal's important needs override human trivial needs. For example, the need for sustenance and the need not to be harmed are importantneeds, whereas the need for having our tastes satisfied is a trivial need. Sowhile humans have the right to kill animals if animals are necessary forhealth or life, we do not have the right to kill higher animals simply tosatisfy our tastes. I f there are equally good ways of finding nourishment,then humans have an obligation to seek those ways and permit animals tolive unmolested.

The above applies to higher animals who have a highly developed nervous system, enabling them to suffer and develop a sense of consciousness.Since there is no evidence that termites or mosquitoes have a sense of self,it is permissible to exterminate the termites and kill the mosquitoes whenthey threaten our interests. I f we suddenly discovered that termites andmosquitoes were highly self-conscious, we would be obliged to act differently, but until we have evidence to that effect, we may continue our presentpractices.

Although the Split Level Theory seems commonsensical, it needs a sup-


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ANIMAL RIGHTS AND MORAL NIHILISM 175porting argument. The clearest attempt at such an argument is given byLouis Lombardi, who argues that while all animals have inherent worth,some have superior inherent worth. 14 Inherent worth is tied up with a being's possessing valuable kinds (rather than degrees) of capacities. Humanbeings have the capacity for moral agency, which while it may not be superior to the other kinds of capacities, is, nevertheless, and additional type ofcapacity. Having this greater range of capacities endows humans with superior inherent worth. We might set forth the argument this way.

(1 ) Animals and humans are different types of living things.(2) These types are differentiated by the range of their (individual's) capacities.(3) The greater the range of an individual's capacity, the higher the degree ofits inherent worth.(4) Humans have all (or most of) the basic capacities that animals have butsignificant additional ones besides.(5) Therefore humans are of more inherent worth than animals.

There are several problems with Lombardi's argument. First of all, Lombardi's distinction between a kind of capacity and a degree of that capacityis made to do more work than is justified. I f an additional capacity gives aspecies additional inherent worth, why doesn't the greater degree of thatcapacity give an individual greater worth than others with less of it? Furthermore, why can't a large amount (say 10 units) of one capacity in entityA equal a small amount of that capacity (5 units) plus a small amount ofanother capacity (5 units)? A dog's superior ability to smell might equal ourweak capacity to smell plus our weak capacity for taste. An eagle's capacityfor sight and flight may equal or exceed our capacity for deliberations. I frationality is inherently worthy, why doesn't possessing more of it grant anindividual more inherent value than possessing less of it? Lombardi needsto explain why it is that only kinds of (rather than degrees of a kind) count.Until he does so, we may well doubt his conclusion.

Secondly, premise (3) needs a defense. Doesn't Lombardi commit thenaturalistic fallacy in moving from a natural capacity to an inherent value?Speed, beauty, pleasure, knowledge, literacy, practical rationality, the ability to smell or see may be functionally valuable to different individuals, butfunctional value is only an instrumental value, not an inherent value. Byvirtue of what criterion do we decide which capacities are not merely functional but inherently valuable to the degree that their possession gives individuals inherent value? Until Split-Level Theorists like Lombardi set forththeir grounds for inherent value, their theory must remain merely an interesting hypothesis.


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176 PUBLIC AFFAIRS QUARTERLY6. Radical Egalitarianism: The Equal Status ThesisThe co-director of the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatmentof Animals (PETA) has said, "There is no rational basis for separating outthe human animal. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They're all mammals . .lntime, we'll look on those who work in [animal laboratories] with the horrornow reserved for the men and women who experimented on Jews in Auschwitz...That, too, the Nazis said, was 'for the greater benefit of the masterrace. onl5

We call the view that equates human beings with animals the EqualStatus Thesis. Its foremost proponent is the philosopher, Tom Regan, whoseeks to achieve three goals related to the treatment of animals: (1) the totalabolition of the use of animals in science; (2) the total dissolution of commercial animal agriculture; and (3) the total elimination of commercial andsport hunting and trapping. Even though Regan concedes that some individuals' uses of animals for bio-medical experimentation might be justifiedand free range grazing farming is better than factory farming, all of theseuses constitute infringements on animal rights, and the exceptional casesare so isolated as to serve only to confuse the issue.

According to Regan, what is wrong is not the pain caused, the suffering,or the deprivation, though these compound the wrong. What's fundamentally wrong is "the system that allows us to view animals as our resources,here for us-to be eaten, or surgically manipulated, or put in our cross hairsfor sport or money." 16

Why is it wrong to treat animals as our resources? Because they haveinherent value and are ends in themselves just like ourselves. They are ofequal worth to human beings.

To say we have such value is to say that we are something more than, something different from, mere receptacles. Moreover, to insure that we do not pavethe way for such injustices as slavery or sexual discrimination, we must believe that all who have inherent value have it equally, regardless of their sex,race religion, birthplace, and so on. Similarly to be discarded as irrelevant areone's talents or skills, intelligence or wealth, personality or pathology, whetherone is loved or admired-or despised and loathed. The genius and the retardedchild, the prince and the pauper, the brain surgeon and the fruit vendor, MotherTeresa and the most unscrupulous used car salesman-all have inherent value,all possess it equally, and all have an equal right to be treated with respect, tobe treated in ways that do not reduce them to the status of things, if they existas resources for others. 17

What is the basis of the equal inherent value? Just this: "we are each ofus the experiencing subject of a life, each of us a conscious creature havingan individual welfare that has importance to us whatever our usefulness toothers. We want and prefer things; believe and feel things; recall and expectthings."


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ANIMAL RIGHTS AND MORAL NIHILISM 177Regan's Deontological Egalitarianism (Rights and Respect) Argument

can be stated thus.l. All Humans (or all subject-of-life humans) have equal positive value.2. There is no morally relevant difference between humans and (some) animals (e.g., mammals).3. Therefore all (some) animals have equal posit ive worth with humans.4. Moral rights derive from the possession of value.5. Since humans have rights (to life, not to be harmed, etc.,) animals have

those same rights.Several problems arise in Regan's theory of equal inherent value. First,

he hasn't explained why being an experiencing subject entails possessinginherent value. How do we know that being "subject-to-a-life" grants onesuch inalienable positive value? Is it supposed to be intuitively self-evident? I f so, then it would also seem self-evident to some, that merely beingconscious entails less value than being self-conscious, especially rationally self-conscious. Someone in a daze or a dream may be minimally conscious, but that is a state less valuable than being fully self-conscious withplans and projects. It is desirable to have more reason or intelligence ratherthan less reason or intelligence. Intelligence, knowledge, and freedom areinherent values, but animals have less of them than humans. It's true thathumans have varying degrees of them, but as a species (or on average) wehave more of what makes for worth than other species, so that there wouldseem to be degrees of value inter-species and intra-species. I f so, we mustfeel dissatisfied with Regan's assessment. He simply had not given anyevidence for the thesis that all animals have equal worth and are to betreated with equal respect.

Regan rejects the notion of differing degrees of inherent value based ondiffering degrees of self-awareness or some other mental capability, affirming that this leads to the view that mentally superior people have strongermoral rights than mentally inferior people.

There are at least two ways to respond to Regan here. First, followingdeontologists like Kant and Rawls, some may appeal to the threshold viewof self-consciousness and argue that all and only those who are capable ofrational deliberation and life plans are to be accorded a serious right to life.While there may be differences between humans with regard to the abilityto reason, almost all (excepting infants, the mentally ill, the senile, theseriously retarded and brain damaged) have sufficient ability to be countedwithin the circle of full moral citizenry. Some higher animals, such as dolphins, gorillas, and chimpanzees, may also belong to this group. I haveargued elsewhere that the threshold argument is arbitrary, ad hoc, and unsound.18


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178 PUBLIC AFFAIRS QUARTERLYThere is one further problem with Regan's approach which should be

mentioned. It fails to explain why we shouldn't intervene in the animalworld, eliminating animal cruelty. Shouldn't radical zoophiles go into thewild and protect helpless rabbits, deer, and birds from marauding predators,members of the cat family (lions, tigers, leopards), wolves, and other carni-vores? Perhaps carnivores could be confined to separate quarters and fedthe carcasses of other animals, including human beings. How can theseanimal egalitarians rest until all of nature is turned into the Peaceable King-dom, where the lion is made to lie down with the lamb? The suffering thatwolves cause rabbits or leopards and tigers cause antelope and deer is farmore devasting than what the clean shot of an expert hunter's rifle inflicts.Both Regan and Paul Taylor (below) have difficulty with the violentbehavior of wild animals. It doesn't fit their vision of a Peaceable Kingdom,but they can't say that we have duties to eliminate all predatory behavior,let alone all carnivores, to make the world safe for pacifist herbivores andplants, for carnivores can't help their need for meat. Their "respect fornature" doesn't allow humans to intervene as environmental impirialists. Sowhat are we to say about the rights of sheep and rabbits not to be tornasunder and harmed by wolves and other predatory animals? Here is Re-gan's reply. Even though the sheep and rabbits have a right to life and aright not to be harmed, the wolf has no duty to respect those rights, sinceought implies can and the wolf is only doing what is natural and cannot dootherwise. I f we intervene we are violating the wolf's right to dinner. 19

I think that Regan is wrong here. I f the sheep has a positive right to livein peace, then we have a duty to try to help him. I f a boulder came hurlingdown and was about to crush the sheep, wouldn't we be remiss in our dutyif we didn't take reasonable steps to get the sheep out of harm's way?Likewise, even if the wolves' actions are natural, we have a duty to thesheep to save him from the wolf.Furthermore can't Regan's argument be used to prohibit us from savinghumans from wild animals? From bacteria? From insane humans who areonly following their nature in raping and killing. Consider the policemancoming to the distraught parents of a child who had been brutally raped andkilled by a homicidal maniac. "Well, I would have intervened when I sawMr. Smith brutalizing your daughter, Mrs. Brown, but then I realized thathe was only following his nature as a violent animal, so I was obliged toleave him alone." Or to paraphrase Regan, "You see, Mrs. Brown, in claim-ing that we have a prima facie duty to assist those children whose rightshave been violated, we are not claiming that we have a duty to assist thechild against the attack of the mad man, since the mad man neither can nordoes violate anyone's rights."

One should note that Regan is inconsistent, for (only eleven pages aftersaying that we may not intervene in favor of the sheep) he argues that we


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ANIMAL RIGHTS AND MORAL NIHILISM 179may kill a rabid dog when it attacks a human. How is this different from arabid wolf or dog's attacking a sheep?20

In the end Regan hasn't justified either his position or the implicationsof that position. He holds a deep intuition that all people are of equal worthand appeals to a philosophical consensus on that assumption, which provides a basis for his entire moral theory. From there he argues that sincethere is no relevant difference between humans and mammals (over the ageof one), we should treat all such mammals equally, as possessing equalworth. But if there is no reason to believe that all people, let alone allmammals over the age of one, possess equal positive value, Regan's moralsystem breaks down and leaves us with no morality at all. We are left withmoral nihilism.7. Super-Egalitarianism: Biocentric Ethics

"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beautyof the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise." (Aldo Leopold:Sand County Almanac pp. 224-5)

One way to approach animal rights is to break our hold on anthropocentrismaltogether and view all of life from a perspective of species impartiality.

In this regard, one of the most intriguing hypotheses to be put forth inrecent years is the Gaia Hypothesis of James Lovelock which views thebiosphere as a grand macroorganism, whose several parts interrelate andrespond to each other as do the various cells and organs of the body. "Livingmatter, the air, the oceans, the land surfaces are parts of a giant system ... [exhibi ting] the behavior of a single organism, even a living creature."21 "Gaia" is the name of the Greek goddess of earth. According to thisview Gaia has become self-conscious in Man, but overall Man is only anepiphenomenon, being dependent on Gaia but causally insignificant in thescheme of things. Gaia can and will get along without him. Adopting aGaian Ethic would mean that we seek to promote global or biocentricflourishing. It would constitute a Getsalt switch from anthropocentric tobiocentric thinking.

Humans may protest that humans are on average far superior to animals,for we are rational. We can use deductive, abductive and inductive reasoning in ways that animals can't. True enough. We do have that virtue, but thequestion is, why should that virtue count more than the virtues of variousanimals? The eagle values his visual acuity, and ability to soar through theair more than he does human rationality. The leopard values his fiery speedand ability to leap over bushes and branches in the hunt and scorns our needfor weapons with which to kill game. We cannot match the monkey's dexterity, swinging gymnastically from branch to branch, nor the squirrel'stight-rope walking ability, nor the graceful play of the shark cutting asmooth knife-like path through the sea. We can't digest grass or produce a


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180 PUBLIC AFFAIRS QUARTERLYquantity of milk that a cow gives; we can't use ultrasonic waves like a batto get around in the dark. The spider seems to enjoy spinning fine, complexwebs which are beyond our power, and if genetic reproduction is the benchmark of evolutionary success, the cockroach has us beat hands down.

Stumbling, bumbling, clumsy, land-lubbers are we, whose main talentseems to be destroying the ecosystem, threatening animals, and self-servingly prizing ourselves as superior to all others-"homo sapiens"-"thewise ones" we label ourselves-no other creature approaches our arrogance.

I f we take such an impartial Gaian view of the matter, wouldn't we beforced to give up our anthropocentric bias and take on a more biocentricappreciation of the matter? Rather than over-valuing reason we would seethat it has a special role to play but that other virtues are equally importantin the "global scheme of things." All of life is valuable, equally valuable.The new vision is one of biocentric egalitarianism in which Man occupiesbut one niche among many important niches, where rather than the conqueror, he becomes a steward and plain citizen on a par with other lifeforms.

But, of course, animals are not normally considered as moral agents.They are moral patients, worthy of consideration, but they do not deliberateon right or wrong, do not make moral judgments; so they are not morallyresponsible for their behavior. A mountain lion who tears up a sheep or deerfor dinner or a wolf who ravishes a rabbit is not a bad animal. They are justfollowing their nature, doing what comes naturally, as it were. They cannotact morally or immorally, cannot be praised or blamed, but are innocent.But as living beings, who can be helped or harmed, they are worthy of ourmoral consideration. They have a right to be left alone, not interfered with,and possibly they should be helped to avoid suffering.

To deny that animals (mammals at least) have rights (or are considerable)on the basis of not being rational would force us to deny that small children,the senile, and the retarded humans have rights or are morally considerable,since they are relevantly similar to animals in this regard.

While in some ways different from the Gaian hypothesis, especially inthat it focuses on individuals rather than on wholes, Paul Taylor's theory of"Respect for Nature," is the most sustained defense of the biocentric approach to ethics.22 Taylor sets forth four considerations which together constitute a coherent picture of a species impartial vision of the value of life.These considerations take on the form of a cumulative argument for biocentric egalitarianism.

1. Humans are not conquerors but simply plain citizens of the Earth's com-munity. Their membership is evolutionarily on the same basis as all thenon-human members.2. The Earth's ecosystem is a complex web of interconnected elements, eachsound, functioning element being mutually dependent on the rest.


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ANIMAL RIGHTS AND MORAL NIHILISM 1813. Each individual organism is conceived of as a teleological center of life,

pursuing its own good in its own way. Each living being has a particularrole to play within a particular niche in the ecosystem, so that each mayfluorish in its own particular way.4. Whether we are concerned with standards of merit or with the concept ofinherent worth, the claim that humans by their very nature are superior toother species is a groundless claim, and in the light of (1-3) must berejected as nothing more than an irrational bias in our own favor.5. Therefore, all life forms are of equal inherent positive worth. The good ofevery individual organism has equal worth and deserves our equal moralconsideration.

This is not a valid argument as it stands, for nothing has been said aboutpositive value in the first four premises. So Taylor needs and additionalpremise. What he offers is something like

I* Every living thing which has a good is valuable.That is, living things have interests. It is in the interest of the flower to

fluorish, in the interest of a tree to grow tall and spread its branches intothe sky, in the interest of the eagle to soar gracefully in the heavens, in theinterest of a pig to eat in peace, being left alone by humans, and in theinterest of humans to live healthy, cooperative, nonviolent, educated lives.We each and all thrive in our own particular way. All living things who haveinterests, are inherently good.

I think that 1* commits the naturalist fallacy. It is true that everythinghas a good, a way of fluorishing (maybe many ways), but that says nothingabout the value of the thing itself. Having a good and being good or possessing inherent value are separate concepts and the inference from one tothe other needs justification. Someone may be a good thief without beinggood. And a properly functioning Human Immune Deficiency virus (HIV)lodged snugly in a cell is fluorishing, but I see no reason to say it hasinherent worth. Ivan the Assassin is good at assassinating Tzars and commissars, but that doesn't give him any worth.

Being good and having inherent value seem relative to having an interest.Consider the concept of good weather. Whether weather is good depends onwhose interests are being considered. With regard to the farmer, rain mayconstitute good weather, whereas this may be bad weather for the sunbather, whereas the skier may call a snow storm "good weather," and aruined businessman may view a huricane as good weather, if he has justtaken out a million dollar insurance policy on his deteriorating coastalestate.

Indeed, Taylor needs to give us an argument for the view that the conceptof inherent objective worth is a coherent concept, let alone whether theconcept is instantiated. The natural locus of value seems to be the activityof evaluating, which conscious beings engage in. To say that something is


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182 PUBLIC AFFAIRS QUARTERLYvaluable is short hand for the formula "Some conscious agent A wants orcommends some entity E relative to some standardS and for some purposeP."

So we value speedster Spike who runs the mile in less than 4 minutesrelative to the standards of humans running the mile in races or in huntingfor wild animals. Relative to the speed of a cheetah or leopard or sports caror a light wave, Spike's talents are less impressive.

Could we not one-up Taylor's egalitarianism which equates our highworth with that of animals and plants? Could we not argue that Taylor isright to say that we all, plants, animals and humans are of equal value-butwrong in thinking that we have any positive value at all. We all are valueless, worthless (de trop, as Sartre would say). Both Regan and Taylor'sarguments seem to lead to this conclusion.

A second criticism of Taylor's egalitarian biocentricism is this. By hislogic it would be wrong for doctors to kill bacteria or viruses which arethreatening the lives of humans. Why prefer a human to an HIV's existence?Of course, you could say that the AIDS patient himself has a right of selfdefense to destroy the HIV, but what grounds are there for third parties, likeexperimenting scientists or doctors, to take sides and engage in viral destruction? Are our scientists and physicians well-paid hit men and women,hired guns to knock off innocent enemies? On Taylor's logic, the HIV virusoccupies a niche in the ecosystem, and as such is just as valuable as we are.

But, further, if racism, sexism, and speciesism are sins, isn't biocentrismalso a prejudice? Why ascribe value only to living things and not non-livingthings like computers, cars, mountins, rocks, stars, helium atoms, and dormrooms? Dorm rooms can flourish and run down just like living entities, soif we accept that emendation then it is just as bad or wrong to smash a rockor destroy a computer or dorm room as it is to kill a student who lives in adorm room. So much for the dictum "People before Property."Regan and Taylor seem to hold a Moorean Version of the Good. ForMoore "good" refers to an unanalyzable, simple property like the coloryellow, only, unlike yellow, it is nonnatural. It's not empirically identifiable, but known through the intuitions. Moore asks us to "imagine oneworld exceedingly beautiful. Imagine it as beautiful as you can ... and thenimagine the ugliest world you can possibly conceive. Imagine it simply asone heap of filth." (Principia Ethica p. 83). Even if there were no conscious beings who might derive pleasure or pain in either world, Mooreavers, the beautiful one should exist. It would be a good thing for it to existand a bad thing for the ugly one to exist. For Taylor, apparently, it wouldbe better for trees to exist in peace than for both humans and trees to existif humans unjustly went about cutting down trees, say for the purposes ofmaking paper for books-even books about environmental ethics.

Taylor goes so far as to advocate reparations for offended species. We


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ANIMAL RIGHTS AND MORAL NIHILISM 183must atone for our former crimes and give special treatment to wetlands andwild flowers. But how do we pay the bees for all the honey we have stolenfrom them or the salmon for all the fish we have eaten or all the flukes orroundworms or viruses we have annihilated-we genocidal monsters! Whatinfinite compensation do we owe nature? How can we possibly repay thetermites that we have exterminated in favor of our lifeless property?

In the end Taylor's position equates to a moral misanthropy. Killing awildflower is tantamount to killing a human and may be worse. 23 Sincehumans are the conscious perpetrators of anti-biocentric behavior, their demise would not be a bad thing. Note similar sentiments in Edward Abbey'sDesert Solitaire where he says that he would sooner shoot a man than asnake. 24 Note Aldo Leopold's famous dictum (quoted above), "A thing isright when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of thebiotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise." It would follow thatif the destruction of the human race would promote the integrity, stabilityand beauty of the biotic community, human genocide would be justified.Taylor develops his thesis in great detail. It goes as follows. The well-beingof humans is dependent on the well-being of the biosphere (ecosystem)rather than vice-versa. From the point of view of the ecosystem humans areunnecessary, gratuitous, spongers, parasites.

Every last man, woman, and child could disappear from the face of the Earthwithout any significant detrimental consequence for the good of wild animalsand plants. On the contrary many of them would be greatly benefited. Thedestruction of their habitats by human "developments" would cease. The poisoning and polluting of their environment would come to an end. The Earth'sland, air, and water would no longer be subject to the degradation they are nowundergoing as the result of large-scale technology and uncontrolled populationgrowth. Life communities in natural ecosystems would gradually return totheir former healthy state. Tropical forests, for example, would again be ableto make their full contribution to a life-sustaining atmosphere for the wholeplanet. The river, lakes, and oceans of the world would (perhaps) eventuallybecome clean again. Spilled oil, plastic trash, and even radioactive wastemight finally, after many centuries, cease doing their terrible work. Ecosystems would return to their proper balance, suffering only the disruptions ofnatural events such as volcanic eruptions and glaciation. From these the community of life could recover, as it has so often done in the past. But theecological disasters now perpetrated on it by humans-disasters from which itmight not recover-these it would no longer have to endure.25

The conclusion seems to be: annihilate humanity for the good of the ecosystem!

CONCLUSION

I have argued that while the Cartesian view on the status of animals has thefacts wrong, Singer's act utilitarianism cannot withstand the classical criticisms of that version of utilitarianism, which are now even more perplexing


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184 PUBLIC AFFAIRS QUARTERLYfor the theory, for the scope of moral patiency is now extended to includeall sentient beings. The Split Level Theory, which seeks to correct Singer'sapproach, fails to stop the slide to radical mammalian and biocentric egalitarianism since it commits the naturalistic fallacy.

Animal egalitarianism leads to biocentric egalitarianism which in turnleads to object egalitarianism which reduces to an absurdity, egalitarianismnihilism, wherein no one has value. I f everything is equal, then there are norelevant moral distinctions. We are all equal, equally worthless. As Humeput it, "The life of a man is of no greater importance to the universe thanan oyster. " 26

The animal rights debate forces us back to Square One, forces us to askwhat the point of ethics is in the first place. What is the warrant of practiceslike rule following, the institution of duties and rights? Well, perhaps thereare many, but one significant point has to do with the resolution of conflictsof interests in a way that staves off a Hobbesian state of nature. Perhaps weare forced back to a contractarian approach to morality. In this case, sincewe normally cannot or need not make contracts with animals, the correctview may be some combination of the second and third theories discussed:the Minimal Status Theory and the Indirect Obligation Theory on the statusof animals. But all of this calls for a separate study.

University of MississippiReceived June 20, 1991

NOTES*John Jagger, John Kleinig, Wallace Matson, Michael Levin, and anonymous reviewer, and especially Sterling Harwood, made helpful criticisms of a previous draftof this paper for which I am grateful.

1. I think Regan is correct about the egalitarian consensus. I have examined severalversions of contemporary egalitarianism in my paper, "A Critique of ContemporaryEgalitarianism" in Faith and Philosophy, vol. 8 (1991).2. Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method in The Philosophical Works of Descartes,trans. Haldane and Ross, (Carr bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911 ), vol. I.3. For work on animal consciousness, see Daisie and Michael Radner, AnimalConsciousness (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1989).4. Both quotations are cited in Cleveland Amory, Man Kind?: Our Incredible Waron Wildlife (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), p. 219, 244. Richard Garner made me

aware of these citations.5. William Whewell, Lectures, p. 233 cited in Animal Rights and Human Obliga-tions, eds. Peter Singer and Tom Regan (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1976), p.131.6. Philip Austin, Our Duties to Animals, (London: 1885).1. Stephen Stich "Do Animals Have Beliefs?" Australian Journal of Philosophy,


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ANIMAL RIGHTS AND MORAL NIHILISM 185vol. 57 (March 1979) and R. G. Frey, Interests and Rights: The Case Against AnimalRights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980).8. Jeremy Bentham, The Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), ch. XVII,Section 1.

9. Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth PublishingCompany, 1990), ch. 5.10. Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (New York: Avon Books, 1976), p. 108. Notethat Singer interprets interests broadly as desires.11. Peter Singer, "Animal Liberation" The New York Review of Books (April 5,1973), p. 15.12. R. G. Frey, Rights, Killing and Suffering (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), ch.

4. 13. Martin Benjamin, "Ethics and Animal Consciousness" in Social Ethics, ThomasMappes and Jane Zembaty, eds. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1982). DonaldVanDeVeer, "Interspecific Justice" in Donald VanDeVeer and Christine Pierce, eds.,People, Penguins, and Plastic Trees (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1986);Louis Lombardi, "Inherent Worth, Respect, and Rights," Environmental Ethics, vol. 5(1983).

14. Louis Lombardi, op. cit., (1990).15. The quotation is attributed to Ingrid Newberg. K. McCabe, "Who Will Live,Who Will Die," The Washingtonian (August 1986); and "Beyond Cruelty," op. cit.

(February 1990)16. Tom Regan, "The Case for Animal Rights," In Defense ofAnimals, Peter Singer,ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985). In criticizing Regan's position I should note that I havelearned much from him and consider his work of a high calibre.

17. Ibid.18. See references in note 1.19. Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1983), p. 284f. Paul Taylor argues in a similar vein that we may not interferewith animals and kill natural predators of a species, such as the wolf attacking a deer.Why non-interference for wolves but not wolf-like men? Respect for Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 195.20. Op. cit., p. 296.21. James Lovelock and Sidney Epton, "The Quest of Gaia," New Scientists, vol. 65(1975), p. 304.22. Paul Taylor, "The Ethics of Respect for Nature," Environmental Ethics, vol. 3( 1981 ); and Respect for Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).23. Paul Taylor, "The Ethics of Respect for Nature" (op. cit.).24. Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire (New York: Ballantine Books, 1968), p. 20.25. Paul Taylor, Respect for Nature, p. 176.26. David Hume, "On Suicide."

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