On the subject of recognizing the moral worth of animals, Subhuman: The Moral Psychology of Human Attitudes to Animals by TJ Kasperbauer offers a good summary of issues. In particular, he argues that there are psychological processes at work that humans frequently use to distance themselves from animals that are different than what they apply to humans, though there are cases of overlap too.
Fwiw, I didn’t find anything particularly actionable in the book. But I do think he argues well that different approaches to motivating people to morally care about animals (namely, welfarism and abolitionism) are both premised on moral psychological beliefs that we don’t have very much empirical evidence to help adjudicate.
On the subject of recognizing the moral worth of animals, Subhuman: The Moral Psychology of Human Attitudes to Animals by TJ Kasperbauer offers a good summary of issues. In particular, he argues that there are psychological processes at work that humans frequently use to distance themselves from animals that are different than what they apply to humans, though there are cases of overlap too.
Fwiw, I didn’t find anything particularly actionable in the book. But I do think he argues well that different approaches to motivating people to morally care about animals (namely, welfarism and abolitionism) are both premised on moral psychological beliefs that we don’t have very much empirical evidence to help adjudicate.