Over the last few months as i grew accustomed to the theories and arguments set forth by animal ethicist and other concerned individuals, i realized that they all had one thing in common; they propose a single reason origin for the value of animals and consequentially the claim for their equal treatment. Be it the subject of a life criteria introduced by Tom Regan, the hypotheses of active or passive moral valuers by Mathew Silliman or better yet, the concept of emotions are stipulated by Josephine Donovan, they all argue to some degree that those independent concepts are primarily the sole origins for the moral value of animals and those why we should treat them with respect and justice. This got me thinking, why should we limit a concept of such gravity to one or two well supported concepts? Wouldn't it be better that we maintained an eclectic theoretical orientation school of thought like the one adopted by psychologists engaged in theories of human development?
This concept of mutifactorialism as applied to animal ethics is to my suggestion a much more valid argument for the value of animals because it proposes the concepts of subject of a life, moral valuers, emotions (love),moral agency or patiency and even "ends in themselves and not means to an ends" (Immanuel Kant) collectively as the source of animal value rather than either one or the other independently. Animal value as a product of this multifactorial theory is difficult to refute because of the collective strengths of the independent theories arguing as one.
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What you describe sounds very much like the "multicriterial value incrmentalism" of Silliman and Johnson. See the appendix to Sentience and Sensibility.
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