Article
The Problem with Person‐Rearing Accounts of Moral Status
Thought: A Journal of Philosophy
(2019)
Abstract
Agnieszka Jaworska and Julie Tannenbaum recently developed the ingenious and novel person‐rearing account of moral status, which preserves the commonsense judgment that humans have a higher moral status than nonhuman animals. It aims to vindicate speciesist judgments while avoiding the problems typically associated with speciesist views. We argue, however, that there is good reason to reject person‐rearing views. Person‐rearing views have to be coupled with an account of flourishing, which will (according to Jaworska and Tannenbaum) be either a species norm or an intrinsic potential account of flourishing. As we show, however, person‐rearing accounts generate extremely implausible consequences when combined with the accounts of flourishing Jaworska and Tannenbaum need for the purposes of their view.
Keywords
- speciesism,
- animal ethics,
- moral status,
- Agnieszka Jaworska,
- Julie Tannenbaum
Disciplines
Publication Date
June, 2019
DOI
10.1002/tht3.413
Citation Information
Travis Timmerman and Bob Fischer. "The Problem with Person‐Rearing Accounts of Moral Status" Thought: A Journal of Philosophy Vol. 8 Iss. 2 (2019) p. 119 - 128 ISSN: 2161-2234 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/travis-timmerman/18/