On a Case for Animal Rights

Abstract

This essay discusses tom regan's "the case for animal rights". its central argument is identified and analyzed and found to be both invalid and to proceed from questionable premises. further, regan's argument depends strongly on appeals to intuition, especially intuitions about the rights of "marginal humans." but there are other ways to account for them, and besides, regan's view that animals have strong rights, requiring us to be vegetarians and to refrain from research on them, is also unintuitive. a contractarian account is offered, contra regan, which gives animals no "basic" rights.