Why Our Attitudes to Animal Minds Matter for Justice (opens in new tab)

In human relationships, we often operate with the ‘benefit of the doubt’. When a friend cancels a plan or a family member behaves differently to normal, we might assume there is something going on that has little to do with us. Although we might be uncertain, we operate on a presumption that works in their benefit. By analogy, our fundamental attitude to the subjective lifeworlds of other animals ought to begin with a presumption that works in their benefit, too: that there is a somebody ther...