David Copp's Animal, Fundamental Moral Standing, And Speciesism

Is person limited to human? Some people think only human can be person but some consider it is possible to consider an animal as a person. Here are four of those people’s opinion. In David Copp‘s Animal, Fundamental Moral Standing, and Speciesism, Sarah Chan, John Harris’s, Human Animals and Nonhuman Persons, they argue their understanding on person theory and the moral status of nonhuman animals. Copp believes that us human have “a fundamental duty or virtue of compassion to animals as well as a fundamental duty to protect animal welfare” (334). And “morality is concerned to advance human welfare by enabling human beings to live together successfully in societies, despite competing interests that come into conflict” (333). He argues that his

He argues that the thesis of the fundamental standing of animals and the thesis of the fundamental concern of morality can be true at the same time.

In the first thesis, David argues that we have morally fundamental duties to nonhuman animals, “our duties to animals are due to the nature of the animals themselves and to what would undermine their welfare, not to considerations about human welfare” (333). Because in our fundamental morality, every life has its intrinsic value. He argues that it is wrong to torture animal for amusement is because animal’s life has way more value than our

“Morality is fundamentally concerned with advancing human welfare. More specifically, morality is concerned to advance human welfare by enabling human beings to live together successfully in the societies” (349). David states the reason it is wrong to killing animals for no reason is “permitting killing members of other societies would risk undermining society's ability to achieve needed peaceful and harmonious relations with other societies” (354). So, in our moral code unkind action like these are prohibited because people do want our society to become successful and allowing people killing is not going to help that. Besides that, David continues shows another argument that different culture value animal’s welfare differently. In the end Copp concludes that our obligations to treat animals decently are fundamental as we have obligation to make our society