Why Animals Matter :Animal Consciousness, Animal Welfare, and Human Well-Being

摘要

In a dramatic shift from her previous work, prominent animal behaviorist Marian Stamp Dawkins argues in a new book that the animal welfare movement is at risk of being marginalized as a result of an overemphasis on what she thinks are unsubstantiated assertions about conscious experience in nonhuman animals. Dawkins argues it would be better, both in the sense of being more scientifically respectable and in being better "for the animals," to shift to an approach which emphasizes what animals want and what they need (p. 142), which she claims closely overlaps with an anthropocentric approach that appeals to human self-interest.