Alasdair Cochrane
Alasdair Cochrane | |
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Born | United Kingdom | 31 March 1978
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Awards | BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinker |
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Alasdair Cochrane (born 31 March 1978) is a British
Cochrane's work forms part of the political turn in
Cochrane argues that nonhuman animals do not possess an intrinsic interest in
Life
Education
Alasdair Cochrane studied in the Department of Politics at Sheffield as an undergraduate. There, he was taught by James Meadowcroft, a specialist in environmental politics, who sparked his interest in political and environmental philosophy.[3] During a course on environmental politics, Cochrane read Joel Feinberg's "The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations", which he recalled as probably the first piece of "pro-animal" scholarship he read. The first piece of "pro-animal" scholarship he wrote was his undergraduate dissertation, in which he explored the possibility of a reconciliation between sustainable development and animal rights.[4] Cochrane received a first-class honours degree in politics in 2000 from the university. He subsequently obtained an MSc in political theory from the London School of Economics (LSE).[5][6] It was during this time that he met Cécile Fabre, who went on to become his PhD supervisor.[3] In 2007, Cochrane received a PhD from the Department of Government at the LSE.[5][7] His thesis, supervised by Fabre with Paul Kelly acting as an advisor,[8] was entitled Moral obligations to non-humans.[9][10] In that year, Cochrane published his first peer-reviewed research article: "Animal rights and animal experiments: An interest-based approach".[11] The paper, a reworked version of chapter five ("Non-human animals and experimentation") of Moral obligations to non-humans,[12] appeared in Res Publica, and was the winner of the journal's second annual postgraduate essay prize.[11]
Academic career
In 2007, after completing his postgraduate studies, Cochrane joined the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the LSE. He was initially a
In 2011 Cochrane became a founding member of the
Research
Cochrane has research interests in animal ethics, bioethics, environmental ethics, rights theory, and human rights, as well as contemporary political theory more broadly.[23] He is a leading figure in what Garner calls the "political turn in animal ethics", though precisely what this means is disputed.[31] Similarly, Tony Milligan characterises Cochrane as a key figure in the "political turn in animal rights",[32] while Svenja Ahlhaus and Peter Niesen identify a discipline of "Animal Politics", of which Cochrane's work is a major part, separate from animal ethics.[33] The literature to which these authors variously refer explores the relationships of humans and nonhuman animals from the perspective of normative political theory.[34]
Cochrane has himself—writing with Garner and Siobhan O'Sullivan—explored the nature of the political turn. Cochrane, Garner and O'Sullivan argue both that the new literature is importantly unified and that it is distinct from more traditional approaches to animal ethics, presenting the focus on justice as the key feature. They write that "the crucial unifing and distinctive feature of these contributions – and what can properly be said to mark them out as a 'political turn' – is the way in which they imagine how political institutions, structures and processes might be transformed so as to secure justice for both human and nonhuman animals".[35]
Interest-based rights approach
Cochrane advocates the "interest-based rights approach" to animal rights,'s formulation that
'X has a right' if and only if X can have rights and, other things being equal, an aspect of X's well-being (his interest) is a sufficient reason for holding some other person(s) to be under a duty.[39]
Cochrane draws out several aspects of this account, which serves as the basis of the analysis in his Animal Rights Without Liberation The strength of an interest is determined by a consideration of the value of something to an individual (though this is not understood purely subjectively) and the relationship between the individual at this time and the individual when he or she has the interest satisfied (see In his interest-based rights approach, Cochrane draws upon a number of normative theories, but most particularly utilitarianism and liberalism, Cochrane's "liberty thesis" P1: To have a moral right to freedom, one needs to have a sufficient intrinsic interest in freedom. Though Cochrane argues that nonhuman animals are not the victim of an injustice simply because they are owned, he claims that ownership of an animal must be understood as not entailing absolute control over said animal.[13] He conceptualises owned animals as "individual sentient creatures with interests of their own". In understanding owned animals in this way, he challenges alternative accounts that frame owned animals variously as living artifacts, slaves, co-citizens or beings who have strategically situated themselves alongside humans.[56] In Animal Rights Without Liberation, Cochrane argues that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with using or owning animals, and so, as long as their interests are respected, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with using them, for example, in scientific tests,[57] or for agricultural purposes.[58] Ahlhaus and Niesen characterise the book as a whole as a critique of Singer's Animal Liberation, saying that the former explores the latter's "undeclared premise that liberation is what animals want or need".[59]
Schmidt criticises Cochrane's liberty thesis on the grounds that nonhuman animals may have a non-specific instrumental interest in freedom, meaning that although freedom is not intrinsically valuable for these animals, it may be that they can achieve other things that are intrinsically valuable only through possessing freedom. Thus, Cochrane's thesis underestimates the value that freedom could have for nonhuman animals.[17] Hadley criticises Cochrane's non-pragmatic approach, arguing that Cochrane, as an animal advocate, is wrong to deny that nonhuman animals possess an "intrinsic" interest in freedom. Hadley links freedom to the value of nonhuman animals, arguing that the latter can be undermined by arguing against the former.[16] Garner criticises Cochrane's thesis on the grounds that Cochrane has, Garner claims, underestimated the weight of the argument from marginal cases. To the extent that Cochrane's argument works for nonhuman animals, Garner suggests, it will also work for many humans, leading to counter-intuitive consequences. Garner ties autonomy not merely to liberty, but also life, which means that Cochrane's argument would imply that some humans have less of an interest in life than others. Nonetheless, Garner argues that Cochrane's liberty thesis is not destructive of animal rights, and that animal rights positions can still make claims of significance without endorsing the claim that nonhuman animal use is, in itself, problematic. Indeed, merely a right against suffering, Garner suggests, could go a long way towards achieving the abolitionist goal of the end of animal industry.[15] All three authors praise Cochrane for drawing attention to the previously under-examined issue.[60]
The abolitionist theorist Jason Wyckoff draws attention to Cochrane's argument that nonhuman animals do not have an interest in not being owned.[61] He formalises Cochrane's argument as follows:
1. Possession (understood as restriction of freedom) is something to which we do not object across the board even in the case of human children, so there is
no across-the-board objection to possession when the case involves animals. He claims that Cochrane's argument is invalid because it assumes that nonhuman animals are harmed by being owned only if they are killed or have suffering inflicted on them and because it assumes that ownership is permissible when it does not compromise the interests of the particular owned animal. Both of these assumptions are false, claim Wyckoff, as though "instances of possession, use, and transfer may possibly not violate the interests of an individual, the systematic treatment of that individual as the kind of entity that can be possessed, used, and transferred constructs that entity and others like it (or him, or her) as an object, and when that entity is a moral patient with interests, that construction as an object subordinates the interests of that patient and similar patients to those who benefit from the objectification of the individual".[62] The philosopher Friederike Schmitz draws upon Wyckoff's argument in her challenge to Cochrane, arguing that it is necessary not only to consider whether ownership will harm animals in particular cases, but to explore the effects of the institution of animal ownership.[63]
Some of Cochrane's research concerns animal rights from an international or cosmopolitan perspective. As an alternative to Donaldson and Kymlicka's proposal for a "zoopolis", Cochrane proposes a "cosmozoopolis", drawing upon cosmopolitan theory. The zoopolis picture, Cochrane suggests, unfairly elevates the interests of nonhuman "citizens" over other nonhuman animals, even though these other animals may have comparable interests, and, in offering sovereignty to free-living animals, denies the importance of nonhuman animal mobility.[27] Ahlhaus and Niesen consider Cochrane's criticism of Donaldson and Kymlicka valuable, but question the extent to which his "cosmozoopolis" picture is compatible with his liberty thesis.[64] Donaldson and Kymlicka offer a defence of their zoopolis picture against Cochrane's criticism, affirming the importance of nonhuman animals' interests in their territory and the legitimacy of offering benefits to members of particular societies denied to non-members.[28] Despite this, they say that, citing Cochrane's cosmozoopolis picture as an example, "one of [their] aims is to inspire people to develop ... alternative political theories of animal rights" to their own.[65]
Cochrane is of the view that "a lack of a clear, focused and coherent set of international standards and policies for animal protection is an important contributing factor" to the gulf between the theoretical and legal valuation of nonhuman animals and their treatment around the world. Cochrane is critical of the use of claims about dignity in debates about the genetic engineering of nonhuman animals,[68] in questions about the use of nonhuman animals in human entertainment,[69] and in the bioethics literature.[70] He holds that nonhuman animals do not possess an interest against being treated in undignified ways,[69] and endorses "undignified bioethics"—bioethics without the concept of dignity. Cochrane has sympathy for the standard criticisms of dignity in bioethics (that the concept is indeterminate, reactionary and redundant), and, in a 2010 paper, defends these criticisms against counter-claims from those who endorse various understandings of dignity.[70] The bioethicist Inmaculada de Melo-Martín responded to Cochrane's article, claiming that the problems Cochrane identifies are problems with common understandings of the concepts of dignity, not with the concepts themselves, and arguing that Cochrane's conclusion leads to a conception of bioethics almost devoid of ethics.[71]
Recent literature exploring bioethical questions from a human rights perspective has been criticised on the grounds that human rights theory contains unresolved problems. Bioethicists have claimed that bioethical inquiry can contribute to resolving these problems. Cochrane claims that this contribution to human rights literature offers three insights, but that these are not entirely original. These insights are questions about institutional fairness, rights as trumps and rights as solely belonging to humans.[72] Cochrane holds that human rights should be reconceptualised as sentient rights. The grounding of human rights, he claims, are not distinct from the grounding of human obligations to nonhuman animals, and attempts to distinguish human rights from the rights of other sentient beings ultimately fail.[73]
Cochrane has also published work on environmental ethics[74] and punishment. Concerning the latter, he argues, building upon Thomas Mathiesen's claim that prison is not justified by classic theories of punishment, that the institution cannot be justified on the basis of Antony Duff's "communicative" account of punishment.[75]
External audio Labour Rights for Animals with Alasdair Cochrane
Cochrane discusses labour rights for animals with Siobhan O'Sullivan for the Knowing Animals podcast.Liberty thesis
P2: To have a sufficient and intrinsic interest in freedom implies that freedom by itself contributes to a person's wellbeing.
P3: Only in case of autonomous persons does freedom contribute by itself to their wellbeing (because only for autonomous persons does unfreedom undermine the ability to 'frame and pursue
their own conception of the good'[54]).
P4: Non-human animals are not autonomous persons.
C1: Therefore, freedom does not by itself contribute to the wellbeing of non-human animals.
C2: Therefore, non-human animals do not have an intrinsic interest in freedom.
C3: Therefore, non-human animals do not have a moral right to freedom.[55]
2. Non-lethal use of animals that does not cause suffering is consistent with full respect for the interests of those animals, provided that those animals are not
treated exclusively as means to human ends.
3. At least some transferals of animals (including sales) are consistent with full respect for those animals’ interests, provided that the transfer does not cause
suffering.
4. The rights to possess, use, and transfer items are at the core of our concept of property.
5. Therefore, the property status of animals is compatible with full respect for the interests of animals.[62]
International animal rights
Other research
External videos "Human Rights: Animal Rights"
Cochrane discusses the relationship between human rights and animal rights.See also
Select bibliography
Books
Articles
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Notes
References
External links