Ricordo di Tom Regan. Intervista con Luigi Lombardi Vallauri

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Unitarianism or Hierarchical Approach for Moral Status? A Very Subtle Difference

The article is inspired by Shelly Kagan’s recent book “How to Count Animals”, which focuses on the alternative between a unitarian and a hierarchical conception of the moral status of beings in the animal ethics debate. The paper finds a way of compromise between the two perspectives in the principle of equal consideration of interests, but above all it lessens the role of such opposition – especially its practical relevance – by emphasizing that, regardless of the fact of conceiving moral status in terms of all or nothing or in gradual terms, what really counts in our attitude towards non-human animals is to assign them an important moral consideration, that protects them not only from suffering, but also from an induced death in advance of natural times, a thesis that is compatible with both unitarianism and a hierarchical approach

The Importance of Tom Regan for Animal Ethics

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Ethics and Animal Experimentation. The Relevance of Beauchamp and DeGrazia’s Principles

In a perspective that assigns non-human sentient beings an important moral status, animal experimentation appears justified only when it is a necessary and sufficient condition to preserve our health, namely when it is the only means to achieve this goal (at least in principle the greater cognitive, emotional and social complexity of human beings would seem to justify a preference for them over less mentally complex individuals in dilemmatic situations). My paper examines Beauchamp and DeGrazia’s recent book on Principles of Animal Research Ethics, which, by developing and integrating the old conception of the Three R’s, helps us to identify the specific moral rules that must govern the scientific research involving animals

Conflicting Values and Moral Pluralism in Normative Ethics

This article explores the characteristics and problems of moral pluralism, a model of theory of obligation in normative ethics according to which (1) there is a plurality of basic moral principles; (2) these different principles may conflict with one another; (3) there is no strict order of priority for resolving conflicts between them. The author argues that this kind of theory satisfies better than competing proposals the requirement of conformity with our reflexive intuitions and, while not having a general resolution procedure, is able to settle the problem of conflict between the principles. He concludes pointing out that, despite all that can be done to improve conflict resolution methodologies, some margin of indeterminacy in moral theories is inevitable. And it is good that there is. Moral theories should not be a handbook of answers to be applied mechanically, without leaving room for autonomy of judgment by the evaluating subject