Animals, predators, the right to life, and the duty to save lives

Ethics and the Environment 14 (1):pp. 15-27 (2009)
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Abstract

One challenge to the idea that animals have a moral right to life claims that any such right would require us to intervene in the wild to prevent animals from being killed by predators. I argue that belief in an animal right to life does not commit us to supporting a program of predator-prey intervention. One common retort to the predator challenge contends that we are not required to save animals from predators because predators are not moral agents. I suggest that this retort fails to overcome the predator challenge. I seek to articulate a more satisfactory argument explaining why we are not required to save wild prey from predators and how this position is perfectly consistent with the idea that animals have a basic right to life.

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Aaron Simmons
Marywood University

References found in this work

The Case for Animal Rights.Tom Regan - 2004 - Univ of California Press.
The case for animal rights.Tom Regan - 2009 - In Steven M. Cahn (ed.), Noûs. Oxford University Press. pp. 425-434.
The Case for Animal Rights.Tom Regan & Mary Midgley - 1986 - The Personalist Forum 2 (1):67-71.
The Case for Animal Rights.Tom Regan - 1985 - Human Studies 8 (4):389-392.
The Animal Rights Debate.Carl Cohen & Tom Regan (eds.) - 2001 - Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

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