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<p>This article engages with Raffael Fasel’s More Equal Than Others and his concern that granting fundamental rights to non-human animals may theoretically or practically undermine the equal rights of profoundly cognitively disabled humans. This paper challenges this premise by arguing that: (1) The most significant intellectual threat to the rights of vulnerable humans comes not from animal rights theories, but from traditional human rights theories. (2) A robust sentience-based theory of rights, such as Alasdair Cochrane’s, can successfully ground rights for both cognitively disabled humans and sentient animals. (3) The most pressing practical threat to vulnerable humans also stems from the rights of other less vulnerable humans, not from animals. (4) While it is true that granting some rights to animals could in practice undermine some of the rights of the most vulnerable humans, Fasel’s proposed ‘Species Membership Approach’ cannot solve this problem. The article shows that the challenges Fasel attributes to animal rights are exceeded within human rights, and we should therefore embrace a consistent, sentience-based equality for both humans and other animals.</p>

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Should Animals Be Our Equals?

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年1月22日

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  • John Olusegun Adenitire

摘要

This article engages with Raffael Fasel’s More Equal Than Others and his concern that granting fundamental rights to non-human animals may theoretically or practically undermine the equal rights of profoundly cognitively disabled humans. This paper challenges this premise by arguing that: (1) The most significant intellectual threat to the rights of vulnerable humans comes not from animal rights theories, but from traditional human rights theories. (2) A robust sentience-based theory of rights, such as Alasdair Cochrane’s, can successfully ground rights for both cognitively disabled humans and sentient animals. (3) The most pressing practical threat to vulnerable humans also stems from the rights of other less vulnerable humans, not from animals. (4) While it is true that granting some rights to animals could in practice undermine some of the rights of the most vulnerable humans, Fasel’s proposed ‘Species Membership Approach’ cannot solve this problem. The article shows that the challenges Fasel attributes to animal rights are exceeded within human rights, and we should therefore embrace a consistent, sentience-based equality for both humans and other animals.