Sympathy and Subjectivity

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Date

1999-12

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Citation

Peter Carruthers. "Sympathy and Subjectivity," Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 77, No. 4 December 1999 , p. 465 - 482.

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Abstract

This paper shows that even if the mental states of non-human animals lack phenomenological properties, as some accounts of mental-state consciousness imply, this need not prevent those states from being appropriate objects of sympathy and moral concern. The paper argues that the most basic form of mental (as opposed to biological) harm lies in the existence of thwarted agency, or thwarted desire, rather than in anything phenomenological.

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