PHI 2396 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Intentionality, Tom Regan, Speciesism
Document Summary
What"s the difference: animals are not genuine moral agents; therefore they do not have rights and duties in the same way humans do. Conclusion: we best understand the concept of right in terms of the concept of interests. Animal liberation: singer rejects from the very start the claim that intellectual capacity has anything to do with moral equality. Suffering is intimately related to the concept of pain and pain is a mental event or state of conscious, a feeling which can never be directly observed by another being. Can know that someone is in pain by analogy with ourselves (you understand what pain is because you"ve felt it) or by reading external signs of behavior. As long as we think that an animal should die so that a humans can satisfy their taste for meat (which is acquired), we are still thinking of animals as pure means to an end.
