Alan Clune

Until now, arguments for the distribution of resources by those who care about the plight of human-used animals have been either utilitarian or libertarian in nature. The utilitarian case has been made in writing by both activists and philosophers. The libertarian case is more a position that I have found comes naturally to many in the animal movement. In this article I make use of elements of Rawls’ A Theory of Justice to make a case for two principles of justice for the distribution of human resources by those in the animal rights community. My argument arises within the tradition of Tom Regan and Marc Rowlands where animals are held to possess negative rights. This is an argument largely by analogy to Rawls’ manner of making a case for his two principles.

In this paper I will argue that there is a way to reconcile the goals of two seemingly incompatible perspectives on the subject of research involving nonhuman animals: the utilitarian position and the inherent value position. The utilitarian holds that humans generally have a higher moral status than nonhumans. The rights theorist holds that the moral status of some nonhuman animals is equivalent to that of humans in virtue of their both possessing inherent value. These two positions are in opposition because the former allows promising research on nonhuman animals where the latter prohibits such research.

In ‘An Almost Absolute Value in History’ John T. Noonan criticizes several attempts to provide a criterion for when an entity deserves rights. These criteria, he argues are either arbitrary or lead to absurd consequence. Noonan proposes human conception as the criterion of rights, and justifies it by appeal to the sharp shift in probability, at conception, of becoming a being possessed of human reason. Conception, then, is when abortion becomes immoral.The article has an historical and a philosophical goal. The historical goal is to carefully present the probability argument in a charitable manner. The philosophical goal is to offer a unique criticism of Noonan's probability argument against abortion. I argue that, even on a very charitable reading of Noonan's argument for the conception criterion, this criterion is also susceptible to charges of arbitrariness and absurdity. Noonan's claim that probability shifts have anything to do with the moral rights of fetuses cannot be made coherent. I also show that there are problems with Noonan's assumptions about moral rights and the potential to become a being possessed of human reason