The book also draws heavily on empirical research on consciousness and cognition in non-human animals as a way of approaching the question of which animals, if any, are "persons," or at least "near-persons".

In Cognitive Kin, Moral Strangers?, Judith Benz-Schwarzburg reveals the scope and relevance of cognitive kinship between humans and non-human animals. She presents a wide range of empirical studies on culture, language and theory of mind in animals and then leads us to ask why such complex socio-cognitive abilities in animals matter. Her focus is on ethical theory as well as on the practical ways in which we use animals. Are great apes maybe better described as non-human persons? Should we really use dolphins as entertainers or therapists? Benz-Schwarzburg demonstrates how much we know already about animals’ capabilities and needs and how this knowledge should inform the ways in which we treat animals in captivity and in the wild.

Gregory F. Tague’s An Ape Ethic and the Question of Personhood argues that great apes are moral individuals because they engage in a land ethic as ecosystem engineers to generate ecologically sustainable biomes for themselves and other species. Tague shows that we need to recognize apes as eco-engineers in order to save them and their habitats, and that in so doing, we will ultimately save earth’s biosphere. The book draws on extensive empirical research from the ecology and behavior of great apes and synthesizes past and current understanding of the similarities in cognition, social behavior, and culture found in apes. Importantly, this book proposes that differences between humans and apes provide the foundation for the call to recognize forest personhood in the great apes. While all ape species are alike in terms of cognition, intelligence, and behaviors, there is a vital contrast: unlike humans, great apes are efficient ecological engineers. Therefore, simian forest sovereignty is critical to conservation efforts in controlling global warming, and apes should be granted dominion over their tropical forests. Weaving together philosophy, biology, socioecology, and elements from eco-psychology, this book provides a glimmer of hope for future acknowledgment of the inherent ethic that ape species embody in their eco-centered existence on this planet.

Since 2013, an organization called the Nonhuman Rights Project has brought before the New York State courts an unusual request—asking for habeas corpus hearings to determine whether Kiko and Tommy, two captive chimpanzees, should be considered legal persons with the fundamental right to bodily liberty. While the courts have agreed that chimpanzees share emotional, behavioural, and cognitive similarities with humans, they have denied that chimpanzees are persons on superficial and sometimes conflicting grounds. Consequently, Kiko and Tommy remain confined as legal "things" with no rights. The major moral and legal question remains unanswered: are chimpanzees mere "things", as the law currently sees them, or can they be "persons" possessing fundamental rights? In Chimpanzee Rights: The Philosophers’ Brief, a group of renowned philosophers considers these questions. Carefully and clearly, they examine the four lines of reasoning the courts have used to deny chimpanzee personhood: species, contract, community, and capacities. None of these, they argue, merits disqualifying chimpanzees from personhood. The authors conclude that when judges face the choice between seeing Kiko and Tommy as things and seeing them as persons—the only options under current law—they should conclude that Kiko and Tommy are persons who should therefore be protected from unlawful confinement "in keeping with the best philosophical standards of rational judgment and ethical standards of justice." Chimpanzee Rights: The Philosophers’ Brief—an extended version of the amicus brief submitted to the New York Court of Appeals in Kiko’s and Tommy’s cases—goes to the heart of fundamental issues concerning animal rights, personhood, and the question of human and nonhuman nature. It is essential reading for anyone interested in these issues.

THE argument for animal rights, a classic since its appearance in 1983, from the moral philosophical point of view. With a new preface.

Can animals be persons? To this question, scientific and philosophical consensus has taken the form of a resounding, 'No!' In this book, Mark Rowlands disagrees. Not only can animals be persons, many of them probably are. Taking, as his starting point, John Locke's classic definition of a person, as "a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself the same thinking thing, in different times and places," Rowlands argues that many animals can satisfy all of these conditions. A person is an individual in which four features coalesce: consciousness, rationality, self-awareness and other-awareness, and many animals are such individuals. Consciousness--something that is like to have an experience--is widely distributed through the animal kingdom. Many animals are capable of both causal and logical reasoning. Many animals are also self-aware, since a form of self-awareness is essentially built into the possession of conscious experience. And some animals are capable of a kind of awareness of the minds of others, quite independently of whether they possess a theory of mind. This is not just a book about animals, however. As well as being fascinating in their own right, animals, as Claude Levi-Strauss once put it, are "good to think." In this seamless interweaving of the empirical study of animal minds with philosophy and its history, this book makes a powerful case for the idea that reflection on animals allows us to better understand each of these four pillars of personhood, and so illuminates what means for any individual--animal or human--to be conscious, rational, self- and other-aware.

This volume is a collection of chapters all contributed by individuals who have presented their ideas at conferences and who take moderate stands with the use of animals in research. Specifically the chapters bear of the issues of: notions of the moral standings of animals, history of the methods of argumentation, knowledge of the animal mind, nature and value of regulatory structures, how respect for animals can be converted from theory to action in the laboratory. The chapters have been tempered by open discussion with individuals with different opinions and not audiences of true believers. It is the hope of all, that careful consideration of the positions in these chapters will leave reader with a deepened understanding--not necessarily a hardened position.