This is philosophy bites with me Nigel Warburton and me David Edmonds.

Philosophy bites is unfunded. Please help us keep it going by subscribing or donating at W.W.

philosophy bites.com or you can become a patron at Patreon.

Many mole philosophers argue that it really matters how we treat animals. We can't justify

factory farms or much of our experimentation on animals and so forth.

Harvard Professor Christine Korsgarde agrees, but she doesn't do so for the usual reasons.

Christine Korsgard, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Thank you for having me.

The topic we're going to focus on is the moral status of animals.

Now, post-Arwin, we know that biologically non-human animals are very closely related to us,

yet we're still developing a clear notion of what the moral status of

non-human animals is.

What's your main stance on this?

Well, unlike many defenders of animal rights, I do think there's strong and distinctive differences between human beings and the other animals.

I think human beings, I use the traditional word rational to describe these differences but I don't think it follows from

this differences that human beings have a superior moral status to animals.

Just to get clear what does it mean to be rational in this context? To be rational

is to have a certain form of self-consciousness namely consciousness of the

grounds of your beliefs and actions

so that you're aware of the things that prompt you to believe and act as you do

and therefore have the capacity to evaluate those grounds and assess them and decide whether they're good reasons or not.

Now in the area of animal rights considerations about animal welfare, I think it's fair to say that utilitarianism

...