Hsiao on the Moral Status of Animals: Two Simple Responses

Abstract

According to a common view, animals have moral status. Further, a standard defense of this view is the Argument from Consciousness: animals have moral status because they are conscious and can experience pain and it would be bad were they to experience pain. In a series of papers (J Agric Environ Ethics 28(2):277–291, 2015a, J Agric Environ Ethics 28(11):11270–1138, 2015b, J Agric Environ Ethics 30(1):37–54, 2017), Timothy Hsiao claims that animals do not have moral status and criticizes the Argument from Consciousness. This short paper defends the Argument from Consciousness by providing two simple responses to Hsiao’s criticism.