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Since it is inarguable that humans have different degrees of rationality, were rationality to consti­ tute the special value imputed to humans, not all humans would be equally valuable. This tension in the inherentist position makes it impossible to main­ tain that all humans are equally valuable as humans and that rationality is what accounts for this fact. The second-most popular candidate for humankind's unique status re­ quires returning to Descartes. Recall that Descartes viewed animals as noth­ ing more than automatons, relatively complex machines incapable of any consciousness whatsoever.

Rsonal experiences around animals, just as we have. He knew that horses yelp when whipped and that dogs groan when beaten. These and many other animals certainly seem to feel pain and react to it. Descartes's ingenious rebuttal was to compare the agonizing sounds of the whipped and beaten animals to the noises emitted from machines when their gears grind. Just as we hear unpleasant sounds when we insert a stick into a machine, we hear unpleasant sounds when we beat a dog or horse. But just as we do not and should not credit machines with minds and the capacity to fed pleasure and pain, we ought not to conceive of animals as having these capacities.

In addition, the various articulations of the same principle may help clarify the principle it­ self. For example, once the PGS is explicirtly acknowledged as equivalent to the PGSO, some may find themselves with a better understanding of the prin­ ciple basic to all these incarnations. And this in turn may trigger the descrip­ tions of obviousness or intuitiveness that I have claimed for the principle. From a psychological perspective, forwardling different though equivalent for­ mulations of one idea is far from a trivial or vacuous exercise.