ABSTRACT
One of the most powerful arguments for animal rights involves an analogy which appeals to our intuitions about the treatment of humans who are 'nonparadigmatic', example, the severely mentally deficient. Opponents of animal rights, as well as one prominent initial supporter of animal rights, generally agree that there are important differences in the capacities of paradigmatic and nonparadigmatic humans. Nevertheless, they maintain that certain types of treatment are appropriate or permissible for animals, but reprehensible if extended to paradigmatic humans. This chapter discusses the ways in which the opponent of animal rights might try to accommodate our moral intuition, and it argues that they cannot do so. It considers the position a utilitarian opponent of animal rights can take, then the position of a partially utilitarian deontologist opponent of animal rights who wants to defend 'Kantianism for paradigmatic humans, utilitarianism for everyone else'. Finally, the chapter concludes that some humans and some animals are indeed in the same moral boat.
