Essay on ethics, animals and great apes available on the web

The current issue of the open source journal BioScience includes an essay by Paola Cavalieri of the Great Ape Project

Here is an excerpt from the article:

Another age-long assumption that has been undermined is the agent-patient parity principle, according to which the class of moral patients – the beings whose treatment may be subject to moral evaluation – coincides with the class of moral agents – the beings whose behaviour may be subject to moral evaluation (Warnock 1971; Miller 1994). We have long assumed that (full) moral protection was only due to those beings (rational, autonomous, etc.) which can reflect morally on how to act, and can be held accountable for their actions. Beings which can be harmed but cannot act morally have instead been excluded from the moral community, or have been granted a much weaker moral protection, that allowed for their use as mere means to others’ ends.

The full text of the article, entitled "Ethics, animals and the nonhuman great apes," is available online in the open source journal BioSciences.