This is true of probably all the properties that are typically appealed to when trying to justify the specialty of humans. All these properties that are meant to grant moral worth (and rights) to members of the human species and not to animals falling prey to the standard problem of species overlap: some members of the human species do not possess the required (level of) property necessary to feature as having moral worth, while some nonhuman animals do. In the market of the properties to grant moral worth, sentience has been used as an alternative to personhood, moral agency, rational capacities, and so on. The appeal to sentience has been wide and convincing for many. This detour on sentience and the basis of equality will provide us with further considerations concerning the problems of an egalitarian theory in animal ethics and the more general problem of the basis of equality. I will focus on the idea that sentience can overcome the problems of range properties (personhood and being the subject-of-a-life) that are considered unduly discriminatory. I will argue that it has similar problems as other, less inclusive concepts such as the idea of personhood. In this paper, I want to challenge the all-purpose function that sentience has played in animal ethics, particularly with respect to its egalitarian credentials. However, this seemingly universal acceptance might have some unscrutinised issues. Another advantage is that it seems to be acceptable by consequentialist as well as deontological perspectives. In other words, it seems to be a “natural” concept with obvious implications that nobody could reject. Moreover, it seems to be uncontroversial in its meaning, and its possession seems easily ascertainable. Part of the success of sentience is due to it being less controversial than other morally relevant properties such as Tom Regan’s being a subject-of-a-life. Sentience has become the hallmark to individuate morally relevant individuals. It is not only employed in academic literature but also appealed to as a morally relevant characteristic in public debates. Sentience is the most popular currency in animal ethics. I conclude in a more positive tone by arguing that, irrespective of the troubles of range property egalitarianism, animal ethics can rely on other normative resources to defend the cause of animals. Moreover, it outlines a weak egalitarian basis because it relies on the presumption of equality of interests in virtue of our lack of knowledge of the weight of individuals’ interests. Despite its seeming non-controversiality, I argue that it cannot do without referring to the moral status of a being in order to determine the weight of a being’s interests. After criticizing the approaches seeking to ground animals’ equal status, I turn to Singer’s principle of equal consideration of interests. By analysing the nature of range properties, I will show that sentience cannot provide such a solution because it is constructed as a sui generis range property. Sentience seems to eschew the standard problems of egalitarian accounts that are based on range properties. In particular, I criticize the idea that sentience can provide a sound basis of equality, as has been recently proposed by Alasdair Cochrane. This paper aims to put in question the all-purposes function that sentience has come to play in animal ethics. I conclude by outlining the conditions that a sound theory in animal ethics should meet. I argue that this principle has weak egalitarian credentials. The latter dispenses with equal moral worth altogether by defending the principle of equal consideration of interests. His attempt fails because this property has the same problems as range properties. The former seeks to eschew the problem of range properties by appealing to a binary property naturally possessed by all sentient beings (the property of having interests). In this paper, I critically discuss two different attempts to defend an egalitarian theory in animal ethics: Alasdair Cochrane’s and Peter Singer’s. How can we ground equality given that all human and nonhuman individuals vary in all the morally considerable features? John Rawls claimed that we can use range properties, namely properties that are equally possessed by all people who pass a certain threshold of moral relevance (e.g., the age of majority gives equal right to vote). Equal moral worth in animal ethics is an elusive moral notion not only because of the notorious human prejudice but also because grounding equal moral worth requires attending to the problem of the basis of equality.
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