Workshop on Animal Agency and Cognition - Part 3 : Angie Pepper & Richard Healey

“When Assent is Not Enough – Animal Agency and Just Interspecies Relations” Speakers | Conférenciers : Angie Pepper (University of Roehampton) & Richard Healey (University College London) Organisation : François Jaquet & Charles Fontaine (GRÉEA) Abstract: We have argued that animals sometimes have rights to self-determination: rights that will be recognised as normatively authoritative within certain domains of action. We further argued that an animal assents to an activity or interaction when they wilfully affirm it. When this is so, their assent can enable permissible interactions consistent with their rights to self-determination. It was our (ambitious) contention that this account of assent “makes the project of interspecies justice possible” and “paves the way for the realisation of just interspecies relations.” In this talk, we examine and problematize the transformative potential of our account. In particular, we suggest that valid animal assent depends on animals being (i) com