Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition: Situating Animals in Hare's Two-Level Utilitarianism

摘要

The insistence of utilitarian philosophers on the moral relevance of the fact that animals can suffer has made utilitarian moral thinking central to debates on animal ethics at least since Jeremy Bentham ([1823] 1879, pp. 310-311) argued that animals' apparent lack of the ability to speak or reason did not disqualify them from moral consideration. Gary Varner's Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition, an extended defense of, and elaboration on, R. M. Hare's specific version of utilitarianism, fits well into this tradition of utilitarian moral reasoning about animals. This book is worth reading for the numerous interesting philosophical contributions it makes to the literatures on animal ethics, personhood, and utilitarianism in general.