In the previous posts we saw Pluhar make a two-step argument for moral rights. First, she argued that any agent, reflecting on the nature of her own agency, must advocate for herself basic rights to freedom and well-being, simply because she is a purposive agent. Second, Pluhar contends that the principles of consistency and universalizability require that agent to affirm moral rights for other purposive agents.

But, to get to the heart of Pluhar’s project, what does this have to do with nonhuman animals? How does she make the case for extending generic rights to freedom and well-being to them?

Pluhar contends that “all preferentially autonomous agents” meet the requirement that is sufficient for possessing basic rights. Preferentially autonomous agents are simply “beings who act to satisfy preferences” (p. 249).

This class of beings is considerably larger than the subclass of reflective, rights-claiming agents. Preferentially autonomous beings need some minimal requirements in order to function, regardless of their level of intellectual sophistication. As Paul Taylor points out with regard to the sense of freedom relevant to this issue, absence from constraint is essential to nonhumans and humans alike: “[Absence of constraint] is a concept of freedom that is of central importance for every creature which has a good of its own to realize. For being free in this sense is being in a position to be able to preserve one’s existence and further one’s good, and being unfree in this sense is being unable to do these things.” Equally essential is life and the capacities that allow one to pursue that life when one is given a chance to do so: minimum “well-being.” Following Gerwith’s line of reasoning, it seems that agents as such, not just conceptually well-developed agents, should have the rights of freedom and well-being attributed to them. (p. 249, emphasis in the original, footnotes omitted)

As we saw earlier, Pluhar follows Gerwith in arguing that being a purposive agent–having things one wants to do–is by itself sufficient for claiming basic rights, and, to be consistent, attributing such rights to any being meeting that condition. Undeniably, many nonhuman animals meet this condition–they have goals and wants; they seek to pursue them; and they require minimum conditions of freedom and well-being in order to do so. Once they’ve crossed this threshold, their relative intellectual inferiority just isn’t relevant when it comes to attributing basic rights to them.

This view has the merit, lacking in views Pluhar has rejected (such as the full-personhood view), of explaining why so-called marginal humans also have basic moral rights:

All consciously conative beings are goal directed; they have preferences or purposes that they want to have satisfied. This holds for very young and mentally limited humans just as much as it holds for the most intelligent of human agents. The intelligent agent must logically recognize, Gerwith argues, that those whom he calls “marginal agents” are individuals striving to survive just as she is, seeking shelter, food, drink, and companionship. As such, they are due full moral consideration. Purposiveness is the key similarity between these others and normal human adults; it justifies the attribution of rights to the former by the latter, despite the fact that the individuals compared differ greatly in their ability to fulfill their purposes. (p. 250, emphasis in the original, footnotes omitted)

(Interestingly, this leads Pluhar to a relatively conservative view on abortion: she argues that a fetus, once it has achieved sentience and purposiveness, has a prima facie right to life “in the last half of gestation (earlier, if evidence warrants it)” (p. 253). Though, on her view, abortions prior to sentience would not be wrong (much less should they be legally prohibited), and abortions after sentience occurs might be right if “the woman is protecting her own physical or mental health by making this choice” (p. 253).)

To try and put Pluhar’s case in a somewhat more intuitive way: you could see it as a variation on the Golden Rule (a comparison she makes at one point). Reflecting on our own situation, we claim the right to pursue our own lives and seek our flourishing, which requires at least a minimum level of freedom and well-being. And recognizing in all sentient, purposive creatures a similar striving to live their own lives and seek their own goods, we should treat them as we would like to be treated if our situations were reversed. This doesn’t really seem like much to ask when you think about it. It may be that our chief resistance to accepting the basic rights of other creatures to live their own lives isn’t so much the intellectual difficulty as that it would require a radical revision to many of our current practices.