Bonnie Steinbock

Bonnie Steinbock is a professor emerita of philosophy at the University at Albany and a specialist in bioethics who has written on topics such as abortion and (in one article) animal rights. Questions from her examinations have appeared in the "Education Life" section of the New York Times. Steinbock received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a fellow of the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution.

Views on animal pain

According to Steinbock, the pain of animals is a morally relevant consideration but is not morally decisive. This differs from Peter Singer's view that there is no essential difference between the pain of non-human animals and that of human beings, and also differs from William Baxter's view that animals have no moral consideration on their own whatsoever.

Also, she argues that there are morally good reasons for taking our own species as morally special, and thus the interests of non-human animals in relation to pain are not as important as those of human beings—though she admits those interests to be existent.

Furthermore, Steinbock affirms speciesism. For her, humans are more important than non-human animals, though non-human animals, in their own right, have moral status because they have interests of their own. Beings without interests of their own (e.g., plants, wilderness areas, species, works of art, embryos) do not have moral status, but may have moral value, if there are moral reasons to protect or preserve them. These reasons do not stem from their interests, since they do not have any interests of their own, and so are not "golden-rule type" reasons, but may be morally very important.

External links

• Bonnie Steinbock's home page