With Power Comes Vulnerability more

The psychological approach and the vulnerability approach to animal ethics are thought to be competing frameworks and to generate independent arguments for or against current human practices involving non-human animals. The two approaches are rarely combined and it is even maintained that they have different areas of application. In this paper we argue that, at least within the debate on the treatment of non-human animals, the two approaches should not be seen as competitors. First, we maintain that whether non-human animals are minded is relevant both to whether they have moral status or moral rights and to whether they are vulnerable in some morally relevant respects and thus are the appropriate object of moral solicitude. Second, we defend the view that the possession of even the most sophisticated of psychological capacities does not rule out vulnerability. On the contrary, the possession of certain psychological capacities can increase an individual’s vulnerabilities to certain forms of harm.