Abstract

Th is paper seeks an explanation for the overwhelming prevalence of anthropocentrism in the thinking of Western moral philosophers. It has been thought that such philosophers have been anthropocentric on the basis of reasons for which a rational defense may be given. When this view has been challenged, it has been challenged only by arguing that human interests stand in for rationally defensible reasons. Th is paper challenges the view that the only explanations of the prevalence of anthropocentrism are rationally defensible reasons or human interests by advancing a competing explanation located in human psychology. The psychological experiments of Stanley Milgram and other empirical work by psychologists provide evidence of a psychological mechanism that supplies this competing explanation.