Abstract

It is well established that nonhuman animals are sentient, have feelings, have desires, and are conscious. For many of us, some set of those points is sufficient to ground moral duties to nonhuman animals. Yet, others retain doubts about whether humans have such duties. Perhaps these doubters set even higher standards—standards that they believe nonhuman animals are incapable of meeting. The task of this paper is to consider how nonhuman animals fare against an incredibly high standard for moral duties: autonomy. Given that we use autonomy as our theoretical starting point, this paper’s arguments will only apply to...