Species Membership and the Veil of Ignorance: What Principles of Justice would the Representatives of all Animals Choose?

Utilitas 29 (3):299-320 (2017)
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Abstract

Mark Rowlands gives a compelling argument that, if John Rawls's contractarianism is consistently applied, and Rawls's premises fully explained, then we have powerful reasons to believe that representatives behind the Veil of Ignorance should be blind to species membership in the same way that they are blind to economic status and natural talent.1I argue that even if we suppose this to be correct, these agents would not choose the two principles of justice, but instead ones that more closely resemble utilitarian principles.

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Hallie Liberto
University of Maryland, College Park

Citations of this work

Thought Experiments and Experimental Ethics.Thomas Pölzler & Norbert Paulo - 2024 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 67:355-383.

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References found in this work

A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition.John Rawls - 1999 - Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press.
The Case for Animal Rights.Tom Regan & Mary Midgley - 1986 - The Personalist Forum 2 (1):67-71.
Justice as Fairness: A Restatement.C. L. Ten - 2003 - Mind 112 (447):563-566.
Overpopulation and the Quality of Life.Derek Parfit - 2013 - In Muresan Valentin & Majima Shunzo, Applied Ethics: Perspectives from Romania. Center for Applied Ethics and Philosophy, Hokkaido University. pp. 145-164.

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