Animals Emancipating The Mind

According to animal liberation theory, animals have complex psychological experience, therefore, we should respect their feelings. And according to Utilitarian Ethics, the standard of judging one's moral status is the psychological experience, while the opponents of animal liberation theory are against putting nonhuman animals into our moral consideration by other standards. This essay first analyzes those counterviews, and on the basis of animadverting on the counterviews, discusses the theoretical opinions of animal liberation theory: anti-speciesism and the principle of equal consideration of interests. And in the opinion of Rule utilitarianism and Act utilitarianism, this essay concludes the practice of vegetarianism by using utilitarianism to calculate the interests. The essay holds that vegetarianism is necessarily the conclusion of utilitarianist animal ethnics, and discusses some viewpoints against vegetarianism in the sense of philosophical ethics. In theoretical circles, people often discuss animal right theory and animal liberation theory together, since those two theories are quite similar theoretically and practically, still they are never the same. The third chapter of this essay discusses the two forms of animal right theory, and compares them with animal liberation theory from two levels: theoretical level and practical level, then discusses their relation and difference.