Email this article Against the View That We Are Normally Required to Assist Wild Animals
Abstract
In this brief paper, I will defend the position that while sentient animals are morally considerable, we are not normally morally required to assist suffering wild animals, though this does not mean that it is ethically impermissible to do so. I will argue that this position can be defended without denying that we have obligations to assist distant suffering humans, and that it need not rely on the claim that there is something wrong with intervening in human-independent processes (“the wild”). For the purposes of this paper I will just assume that sentient animals are morally considerable. This view is widely accepted and not particularly controversial (see Palmer 2010 for a more substantial defense of this view).
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.7358/rela-2015-002-palm
Copyright (©) 2018 Clare Palmer – Editorial format and Graphical layout: copyright (©) LED Edizioni Universitarie
Relations. Beyond Anthropocentrism
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