Philosophy and Policy

Abstract

In Chapter 1, we identified five conceptions of what counts as an animal, namely the lay conception, the zoo conception, those presupposed respectively by Singer and Regan in their philosophy of animal welfare/animal rights, and the zoological conception. The subsequent chapters investigated the fundamental issue concerning the different ontological status of zoo (captive) animals on the one hand and that of animals-in-the-wild on the other. It is now time to look more closely at this fundamental issue in the context of the five conceptions raised in Chapter 1. There are some surprising conclusions which emerge from this examination.