Humans, Elves, and Greenland Sharks: Against Kagan’s Distributive Argument for Hierarchical Moral Status

• Main Author: Crummett, Dustin R
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: DigitalCommons@CalPoly 2020
• Subjects: Kagan; speciesism; egalitarianism; unitarianism; distributive justice; moral status; Philosophy; Greenland; Kagan’
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/vol24/iss1/6; https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/context/bts/article/2214/viewcontent/Crummett.pdf

Shelly Kagan argues that “unitarianism,” the claim that animals and humans have equal moral status, has intuitively implausible distributive implications. I argue that Kagan’s reasoning can, with certain modifications, be applied equally well to undermine his own view, and that the responses Kagan c...