In these lectures I will raise some fundamental questions about the moral and legal standing of the other animals: the basis of our moral obligations to them, and whether it makes sense to think that animals might have legal rights.
Legitimate differences in the ways we treat animals, human beings, and other entities that have moral or legal rights – legal persons – must be based on the differences between them. Philosophers have traditionally cited a variety of factors – rationality, sentience, having interests – as morally significant. In this lecture I discuss what the morally relevant similarities and differences between these kinds of entities might be.
