Challenging Anthropocentrism: The Inherent Value of Animals

Objections and Responses:

Three objections that could be raised against my argument are; (1) Animals cannot be considered to have inherent value, (2) Only some animals can have value only due to indirect value to humans, and (3) According to Regan’s criterion permanently comatose humans would no longer have moral rights. There are many people out there that deny the idea that animals have inherent value and believe that only humans have inherent value. This is an anthropocentric view that believes humans have inherent value and everything else only has instrumental value as long as humans can use it. This view is what Regan says is “the fundamental wrong is the system that allows us to view animals as our resources, here for us—to be eaten,

This view is called contractarianism. To have value there are rules and stipulations that individuals must agree and abide by, like signing a contract, only “those who understand and accept the terms of the contract are covered directly”(Regan, 16). Those who are covered directly have rights that are recognized and protected in the contract. Those who sign can also sign for others that “lack the ability to understand morality and so cannot sign the contract themselves”, but are “loved or cherished by those who can”(Regan, 16). These secondary contractors are only recognized and protected in the contract because they are of sentimental value to others. These secondary contractors would include pets and children. While these secondary contractors lack rights themselves, they are protected because they are interests of the primary contractors that do have rights. The example Regan uses to illustrate this is if someone were to kick your dog, they would be morally wrong, not because they hurt the dog, but because they kicked your property and it would upset you; the wrong is not done to the dog fore it has no moral standing, but the wrong is done to you because you have moral value. The problem with contractarianism is that moral value applies to only animals that have value to someone else. Other animals with little or no sentimental value to others, like farm animals and lab rats, have no moral rights because no one cares about