The moral permissibility of zoos turns on two major issues, utilitarian issues and animal rights issues. Those who concur with the animal rights issues hold that the assessment of a zoo should be done with considerations of how the animals are being treated, better still their rights. It also turns on the second issue that is the utilitarian grounds. From this perspective, the interests of the animals in the zoo must factor in when carrying out an assessment of a zoo. These particular interests include the interests of the animals in terms of freedom of movement as well as adequate and sufficient nourishment too.
The environment should be conducive for the existence of the animals. In order to answer the central equation, whether zoos are morally permissible, one has to insist that the interests of the animals in captivity are duly taken into account and be counted equitably. This is a mandatory practice that is performed on those who are at the zoo as workers and their visitors as well. This is done to ensure that the needs of both the animals and the people around them because everyone’s interest counts.
It is morally irrelevant to be resolute that zoos provide significant recreational and educational opportunities for human being or those animals in captive serve as useful models in important scientific research, or that regions within the vicinity of the zoos are situated benefit economically. This is morally wrong. The freedom of these animals is conciliated, to varying degrees, by the circumstances in their captivity. The rights view recognizes the justification of limiting another's freedom but only in a narrow range of cases. It is because of this that Regan view the zoos as morally impermissible.
An ethical agent is to be able to seize and understand the generality of ethical restrictions on our willpower. It is necessary that an individual has to internalize some things, which may be in our concern, must not be determined; we lay down ethical laws for ourselves, and thus exhibit, as no other animal can exhibit, moral autonomy. There are some criticisms that Reagan presents about utilitarianism. First is that, the theory of Utilitarianism is that it needs a further in depth knowledge than what we as humans are capable of getting a hold on. The theory of Utilitarianism also has very damaging moral criticism. It commits us to withholding the assessment our moral set of interests until everyone’s’ else’s interest have been considered. This is morally wrong. Moral agents are the individuals that have the ability to bring moral principles that are impartial and morally ought to be taken accountable for everything they do. Moral patients do not have the prerequisite that enables them to dictate their own behavior and hold them accountable for all their doings.
Cohen criticizes Regan’s position regarding animals on the grounds that animals do not have moral rights, even though humans have moral obligations with regard to them and their existence. Secondly, he differs on the grounds that non-human animals have rights, unlike how Reagan had put it that animals have inherent value, and therefore have moral rights. Inherent value, as used by Reagan, is used with two different senses, one of which is that those who have inherent values have rights and in others where the inherence is not fully guaranteed. Reagan used the principle that equates both the moral agents with moral patients: animals that are like human beings in having inherent value. This is the key for the arguments for animal rights and the possession of inherent value.
Cohen criticized this theory by arguing that Inherent value is possessed by all human beings but not by all animals, that demand the assertion of humane treatment, is diverse from inherent significance in a wider scope, which warrants no such claim. The uniqueness that animals possess, their inherent worthiness as individual living things, does not lay ground for the possession of rights and has nothing to do with the moral condition in which rights arise. According to Cohen, animals have to be human in order for it to have rights, but it necessarily does not mean that we as human beings have any form of moral compulsion towards animals. The animal has to have the power to analyze its surroundings in order to have rights. It is morally correct that a right comes with an obligation and hence, it is equally fair that it if a thing has no rights, and then one has no obligations towards it.
Curnutt’s arguments for vegetarianism are mainly seven, all of which are listed here;
[1] Causing harm to an animal is considered to be morally wrong.
[2] The killing of animals causes them bodily harm.
[3] Therefore, the killing of animals is prima facie morally wrong.
[4] All-embracing animal-eating requires the killing of animals.
[5] Consequently, eating animals is prima facie morally not accepted.
[6] The wrongness of eating animals is not sidelined.
[7] Therefore, the eating of animals is ultimately a morally wrong thing to do.
Yes, it in indeed as straight forward as it is put. This is because animals too have feelings and they all hope for a better tomorrow. Killing makes them inflict pain and suffering that ultimately leads to death, and hence, is not done at the best interests of the animal but that of the humans. It is through this that I strongly believe in the notion that animals should be accorded some moral status and we as human beings have duties towards animals. Animals are beings, though non-human and have to be accorded all the duties due to them.
