If, following Pluhar, we agree that any reflective agent has reason to affirm that she has basic rights to freedom and well-being, why should that agent extend those rights to others? In other words, must the reflective agent also be a moral agent?

To start, let’s review why Pluhar (following Gerwith) thinks that any reflective agent is warranted in asserting her right to basic rights to freedom and well-being.

The shift from the prudential to the moral point of view, according to which others’ interests count too, begins with the agent’s justification of the rights claim made in premise 5 [see previous post]. As Gerwith points out, rights claims, as opposed to bald demands, are claims that one is entitled to or due certain behavior on the part of others; hence, such claims need to be warranted. The warrant for an agent’s claim to basic (“generic”) rights is very straightforward: She has purposes she wants to fulfill; that is, she is a “prospective purposive agent.” This is the most fundamental “practical justifying reason” that can ever be given. As one who wishes to act, she must claim or advocate that she is entitled to the conditions that make action possible. Thus, she accepts:

(7) “I have rights to freedom and well-being because I am a prospective purposive agent.” (p. 243, emphasis in the original, footnotes omitted)

Once the agent has accepted premise 7, it’s a straightforward matter–one required by basic logical consistency–to universalize it:

The particular identity of the agent is not important here […] the fact that she has purposes she wants to achieve is what counts. This inevitably leads to the next step in the argumentative shift from the prudential to the moral point of view: the acceptance of the principle of universalizability.

(8) “If the having of some quality Q is a sufficient condition of some predicate P’s belonging to some individual S, then P must also belong to all other subjects that have Q.”

It follows, Gerwith argues, that the agent must hold:

(9) “All prospective purposive agents have rights to freedom and well-being.” (p. 243, footnotes omitted)

In other words, if I, as a “prospective purposive agent,” am led to claim my rights to freedom and well-being because they are necessary for me to pursue any goals–that is, my goal-seeking nature is enough to warrant the assertion of rights, then, to be consistent, I must affirm that any purposive agent likewise possesses such rights. This is because they would have the same quality (purposiveness) that warrants my own claim of rights.

We are led, according to Pluhar, to affirm what Gerwith refers to as “the supreme principle of morality”:

(10) “Act in accord with the generic rights of your recipients as well as of yourself.” (the Principle of General Consistency) (p. 244, footnotes omitted)

Astute readers will recognize this as a variation on the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If I recognize in myself basic (generic) rights to well-being simply by virtue of the fact that I have goals I want to pursue, I’m forced, on pain of inconsistency, to recognize those rights in other goal-pursuing agents. If I hold that I have rights, I have to hold that other (relevantly similar) beings have the same rights. Hence the transition from the prudential to the moral point of view.

But Pluhar wants to show that this applies not only to other human beings but to (at least some) other animals too. In the next post I’ll discuss her argument for why (some) animals count as purposive agents who fall under the scope of this version of the Golden Rule.