Alasdair Cochrane (born 31 March 1978) is a British political theorist and ethicist who is currently Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield. He is known for his work on animal rights from the perspective of political theory, which is the subject of his two books: An Introduction to Animals and Political Theory (2010, Palgrave Macmillan) and Animal Rights Without Liberation (2012, Columbia University Press). His third book, Sentientist Politics, was published by Oxford University Press in 2018. He is a founding member of the Centre for Animals and Social Justice, a UK-based think tank focused on furthering the social and political status of nonhuman animals. He joined the Department at Sheffield in 2012, having previously been a faculty member at the Centre for the Study of Human Rights, London School of Economics. Cochrane is a sentientist. Sentientism is a naturalistic worldview that grants moral consideration to all sentient beings.
Cochrane's work forms part of the political turn in animal ethics—that is, the emergence of academic literature exploring the normative aspects of human/nonhuman animal relationships from a political perspective. He is known for his interest-based account of animal rights, a theory of justice according to which animals have rights based on their possession of normatively-significant interests. The account is a two-tiered one, with individuals' strong interests grounding prima facie rights, and some prima facie rights becoming concrete, or all-things-considered, rights. In this picture, the violation of concrete rights, but not necessarily prima facie rights, represents an injustice. In particular, Cochrane argues that sentient animals' interests against suffering and death ground prima facie rights against the infliction of suffering and death. These prima facie rights convert to concrete rights in, for example, animal agriculture and animal testing, meaning that killing nonhuman animals or making them suffer for these purposes is unjust.
Cochrane argues that nonhuman animals do not possess an intrinsic interest in freedom. Therefore, owning or using nonhuman animals is not, in itself, unjust. This aspect of his thought has generated responses by others, including the political theorist Robert Garner and the philosopher John Hadley, who argue that there may be reasons to claim that nonhuman animals do possess an interest in freedom. Cochrane has also proposed a cosmopolitan alternative to Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka's picture of a political animal rights, explicated in their 2011 book Zoopolis. Though Donaldson and Kymlicka have defended their account against Cochrane's criticism, they have said that they welcome attempts to develop alternative political theories of animal rights to their own. Cochrane's other research focusses variously on bioethics, punishment, just war and human rights.
Life
Education Alasdair Cochrane studied in the Department of Politics at Sheffield as an undergraduate. There, he was taught by James Meadowcroft, a specialist in environmental politics, who sparked his interest in political and environmental philosophy. During a course on environmental politics, Cochrane read Joel Feinberg's "The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations", which he recalled as probably the first piece of "pro-animal" scholarship he read. The first piece of "pro-animal" scholarship he wrote was his undergraduate dissertation, in which he explored the possibility of a reconciliation between sustainable development and animal rights. Cochrane received a first-class honours degree in politics in 2000 from the university. He subsequently obtained an MSc in political theory from the London School of Economics (LSE). It was during this time that he met Cécile Fabre, who went on to become his PhD supervisor. In 2007, Cochrane received a PhD from the Department of Government at the LSE. His thesis, supervised by Fabre with Paul Kelly acting as an advisor, was entitled Moral obligations to non-humans. In that year, Cochrane published his first peer-reviewed research article: "Animal rights and animal experiments: An interest-based approach". The paper, a reworked version of chapter five ("Non-human animals and experimentation") of Moral obligations to non-humans, appeared in Res Publica, and was the winner of the journal's second annual postgraduate essay prize.
Academic career
In 2007, after completing his postgraduate studies, Cochrane joined the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the LSE. He was initially a fellow, then became a lecturer. In 2009, he published articles in Utilitas and Political Studies defending his "liberty thesis", the idea that nonhuman animals lack an intrinsic interest in freedom. This claim has attracted article-length responses from the political theorist Robert Garner, and the philosophers John Hadley, Andreas T. Schmidt, and Valéry Giroux. Cochrane's first book, An Introduction to Animals and Political Theory, was published in 2010, and was one of the first to consider nonhuman animals from the perspective of political theory. The book introduces readers to the debate about the inclusion of nonhuman animals within accounts of justice. He first addresses the historical dimension of the question, arguing that there was disagreement in classical exploration of the issue, unanimous rejection in medieval considerations and disagreement in contemporary treatments. He then considers the place of nonhuman animals in utilitarian, liberal, communitarian, Marxist and feminist political theory, concluding that no single tradition is sufficient to account for the place nonhuman animals should have in politics, but that all have something worthwhile to offer to the debate.
In 2011 Cochrane became a founding member of the Centre for Animals and Social Justice (CASJ). The CASJ is a think tank that aims to bring academics and policy makers together with a view to understanding and furthering the social and political status of nonhuman animals. In January 2012 Cochrane became a faculty member in the Department of Politics at the University of Sheffield, first as a lecturer in political theory, and then as a senior lecturer in political theory. His second book, Animal Rights Without Liberation, was released that year by Columbia University Press. The book is based upon the research he completed during his PhD at LSE, and offers an extended defence of the theoretical basis and practical consequences of his interest-based rights account of animal ethics. In 2013 he edited a special section in the journal Global Policy entitled "International Animal Protection"; the section included articles by the philosopher Oscar Horta, the environmental law scholar Stuart R. Harrop and the animal law scholar Steven White, with an introduction by Cochrane. He also contributed to the inaugural issue of the journal Law, Ethics and Philosophy as a part of a symposium on Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka's Zoopolis. Cochrane's paper argued for a "cosmozoopolis", a cosmopolitan alternative to Donaldson and Kymlicka's proposal for a "zoopolis"—a picture of a mixed human/nonhuman animal state with group-differentiated political rights for nonhuman animals. A reply to Cochrane's piece (as well as the other contribution, by Horta) from Donaldson and Kymlicka was also included. In 2014, he was named a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinker for his work on animal rights. Cochrane's third book, Sentientist Politics, was released by Oxford University Press in 2018. The book addresses the topic of animal rights and global justice, covering questions of cross-border obligations to nonhuman animals and the idea of international politics taking the rights of all sentient beings seriously.
Research Cochrane has research interests in animal ethics, bioethics, environmental ethics, rights theory, and human rights, as well as contemporary political theory more broadly. He is a leading figure in what Garner calls the "political turn in animal ethics", though precisely what this means is disputed.Garner, Robert (forthcoming). "Political Animals and Animal Politics (Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series) ". Environmental Values. Similarly, Tony Milligan characterises Cochrane as a key figure in the "political turn in animal rights", while Svenja Ahlhaus and Peter Niesen identify a discipline of "Animal Politics", of which Cochrane's work is a major part, separate from animal ethics. The literature to which these authors variously refer explores the relationships of humans and nonhuman animals from the perspective of normative political theory.
Cochrane has himself—writing with Garner and Siobhan O'Sullivan—explored the nature of the political turn. Cochrane, Garner and O'Sullivan argue both that the new literature is importantly unified and that it is distinct from more traditional approaches to animal ethics, presenting the focus on justice as the key feature. They write that "the crucial unifing and distinctive feature of these contributions—and what can properly be said to mark them out as a 'political turn'—is the way in which they imagine how political institutions, structures and processes might be transformed so as to secure justice for both human and nonhuman animals".
Interest-based rights approach
Cochrane advocates the "interest-based rights approach" to animal rights, which he distinguishes from the intrinsic value approach of Tom Regan and the relational account of Donaldson and Kymlicka. Rights set limits on what can be done, even in the pursuit of aggregative well-being. Cochrane suggests that rights should be grounded in interests, and follows Joseph Raz's formulation that
'X has a right' if and only if X can have rights and, other things being equal, an aspect of X's well-being (his interest) is a sufficient reason for holding some other person(s) to be under a duty.
Cochrane draws out several aspects of this account, which serves as the basis of the analysis in his Animal Rights Without Liberation and elsewhere. First, interests must be "sufficient to give grounds for holding another to be under a duty". Judging this entails considering the strength of an interest as well as "all other considerations"; so, for example, individuals may have a very strong interest in free expression, but, "all things considered", this fact does not necessitate the protection of slander. The greater interest of the victim of slander can outweigh the interest in free expression, and so context is important. This is the difference between prima facie rights and concrete rights. The former exist on an abstract level outside of particular circumstances. Prima facie rights can translate into concrete rights when considered in particular situations, but they do not always, as the free expression example illustrates. The account is for moral rights, and Cochrane's normative claims are intended to form part of a "democratic underlaboring", informing and persuading political communities.