Birch, Jonathan
(2022)
Should Animal Welfare Be Defined in Terms of Consciousness?
[Preprint]
Abstract
Definitions of animal welfare often invoke consciousness or sentience. Marian Stamp Dawkins has
argued that to define animal welfare this way is a mistake. On Dawkins’s alternative view, an animal with good welfare is one that is healthy and “has what it wants”. The dispute highlights a source of strain on the concept of animal welfare: consciousness-involving definitions are better able to capture the normative significance of welfare, whereas consciousness-free definitions facilitate the validation of welfare indicators. I reflect on how the field should respond to this strain, ultimately recommending against splitting the concept and in favour of consciousness-involving definitions.
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