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In Defence of Animal Sentience: A Critique of Cochrane's Liberty Thesis

In a recent article in Political Studies, Alasdair Cochrane argues that animals have an instrumental, but not – unlike humans – an intrinsic, interest in liberty. This, he argues, has important implications for our treatment of animals because it denies the argument, made by some animal rights ethicists and activists, that all uses of animals ought to be abolished. This response critiques Cochrane in two ways. Firstly, his perfunctory dismissal of the argument from marginal cases underestimates the counter-intuitive character of the conclusions that derive from attempting to show that marginal humans, like animals, do not have an intrinsic interest in liberty and, by extrapolation, life. Secondly, it is argued that even if we accept that animals do not have an intrinsic interest in liberty, there are important elements of the use of animals (as experimental subjects and as sources of food in particular) that cannot exist, or exist very easily, without the infliction of suffering. An ethic based on sentience therefore can go a long way, in practice, towards achieving the goals of the animal rights movement.