Delimiting Justice: Animal, Vegetable, Ecosystem?

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    Abstract

    This paper attempts to bring some clarity to the debate among
    sentientists, biocentrists, and ecocentrists on the issue of who or what
    can count as a candidate recipient of justice. I begin by examining the
    concept of justice and argue that the character of duties and
    entitlements of justice sets constraints on the types of entities that can
    be recipients of justice. Specifically, I contend that in order to be a
    recipient of justice, one must be the bearer of enforceable moral claim
    rights. I then suggest that this has important implications for the
    dispute among sentientists, biocentrists, and ecocentrists. In brief, I
    show that sentientists cannot exclude nonsentient entities from the
    domain of justice merely by denying that they have “the right kind of
    interests,” and biocentrists and ecocentrists cannot move seamlessly
    from some feature of living things or ecosystems to entitlements of
    justice. I further argue that ultimately this disagreement on the bounds
    of justice bottoms out in a normative disagreement about which
    entities possess moral claim rights, and that the case for biotic or
    ecosystem rights has yet to be convincingly established.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)210-230
    Number of pages20
    JournalLes ateliers de l'ethique/The ethics forum
    Volume13
    Issue number1
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 19 Dec 2018

    Keywords

    • Justice
    • Sentience
    • Biocentrism
    • Ecocentrism
    • Duties
    • Rights

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