M W PERRY
Matthew Wray Perry
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
The University of British Columbia
I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Ethics and Political & Social Philosophy at The University of British Colombia. While I have interest in all areas of contemporary moral and political philosophy, my work focuses on dignity, rights, moral status, animal ethics, and dignitarian social norms. I received my PhD from the Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT) in October 2023. My PhD research argued that dignity and human rights should apply to nonhuman animals. Read more about my research, publications, and teaching below.
Outside of academia, I am a nature photographer, runner and cyclist.
See my photography here.
Research
Dignity and Rights
Do animals have rights? And if so, are those rights similar to or fundamentally different from our own? In order to answer these questions in my PhD research (supervised by Dr Liam Shields and Dr Richard Child), I started by investigating the notion that Human Rights are grounded in “Human Dignity”. I argued that if we understand Dignity to be a signifier for moral status, then there is no justification for a distinctly human dignity. From this, I argued that a recharacterization of Dignity as the grounds of basic rights is required and I offered that recharacterization, in terms of the capacity to value. Since this is possessed by humans and nonhumans alike, I argued that it constitutes a grounds for “human” rights that are possessed beyond the human. While I passed my PhD (with no corrections) in Oct 2023, I am continuing to extend and developing this work based on feedback from my examiners (Prof Alasdair Cochrane and Dr Christian Schemmel).
Interspecies Relations
If "human dignity" (as a grounds of rights) can be extended to nonhuman animals, then can we meaningfully extend the social senses of dignity (e.g. norms of rank, shame, and social recognition) to nonhumans, as well? In my research at UBC (working with Prof Kimberley Brownlee), I aim to investigate what implications extending social dignity to nonhumans would have for interspecies social relations. Not only are there questions concerning how we should accommodate the varying social capacities of nonhumans, but there are also questions concerning the extent to which it is even possible to extend the social senses of dignity beyond the human. What value do social relationships have to, and with, nonhumans? How should we understand the intrinsically unequal relationship between humans and animals? And might improved interspecies relations positively affect our own (human) social needs?
Publications
"Sentient Dignity and the Plausible Inclusion of Animals", Politics, Philosophy and Economics (2025).
Dignity often serves as the cornerstone for a justification of rights. However, it has been criticised for its exclusion of nonhuman animals, and many human individuals: dignity is traditionally grounded in a capacity that some, but not all humans and animals possess e.g., rationality. To successfully overcome this problem of exclusion, this paper argues that we should adopt an account of sentient dignity, i.e., an account of dignity based on sentience alone. The paper thus makes three contributions. First, it demonstrates that the basis of dignity has yet to receive a plausible justification. To illustrate this, it outlines the problem of exclusion, and it exposes three problems with a prominent solution offered by Pablo Gilabert. According to Gilabert’s view, dignity should be based on several valuable capacities including rationality, sentience and cooperation, among others. However, basing dignity on several capacities (i) risks over-inflating the scope of dignity, (ii) struggles to account for internal complexity, and (iii) produces problematic moral distinctions. Second, the paper argues that sentient dignity overcomes these three problems whilst being plausibly inclusive. Finally, it contends that an account of sentient dignity vindicates the non-redundancy of dignity, renders sociopolitical discourse philosophically coherent, and harnesses dignity’s potential strategic value.
"Dignity and The Grounds of Basic Rights: From Concept to Conception", in Pribytkova, E. (ed) In Search for a Social Minimum, Springer: London (forthcoming). The attached link is to a final draft (please cite the published version).
The notion of dignity is the supposed grounds for the possession of basic ‘human rights’ regarding how people ought to be treated by others. However, the idea that basic rights have a dignity-based moral foundation has been called into question. Furthermore, it is not always clear what it would mean for there to be a connection between a being’s dignity and respect for the social minimum, in the form of a respect for basic rights. In this paper, I seek to rectify this. First, I explain the need for a positive account of the connection between dignity and basic rights. Second, I distinguish the concept of dignity from its possible conceptions. Third, I defend a working conception of dignity which holds that dignity is grounded in a being’s capacity to value. Fourth, I draw out an account of obligations to respect individual’s basic needs on the back of this conception. I claim this constitutes a case in favour of a grounding for basic rights in dignity – akin to the social minimum of acceptable treatment proposed in International Human Rights Law.
"Why Sentience Should be the Only Basis of Moral Status", The Journal of Ethics. 28: 719-741 (2024).
Accepted draft available here (please cite the published version).
It is fairly commonplace to think that the capacity for sentience need not be the only basis of moral status. Pluralists contend that moral status is grounded in several other valuable capacities as well as, or instead of, sentience, such as agency, empathy, or sociality. However, this contention contrasts with a standard assumption in animal ethics: that sentience should be the only basis of moral status. This article vindicates that assumption. Whilst classical utilitarians have defended a similar claim about sentience in relation to ultimate value, the merits of this view have gone relatively unnoticed in contemporary debates about moral status and animal ethics. An account based on sentience alone avoids conceptual redundancy and has greater explanatory power than pluralist alternatives. An account of moral status based exclusively on sentience also yields two significant and revisionary implications that have not been recognised. First, the distinction between persons and nonpersons cannot hold, so all moral patients, including nonhuman animals, should feature as primary subjects in ethical theories, public policies, and research agendas. Second, we ought to favour nonhuman interests far more often than we tend to suppose.
""Human" Dignity Beyond the Human", Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (2023).
Many approaches to dignity endorse the Human Scope Thesis (HST), according to which almost all humans and almost only humans have dignity. I argue that justifications for this thesis are doomed to fail. Proponents of the HST can be broadly divided into two camps, according to how they defend this thesis against the Scope Challenge. This challenge states that there is no non-arbitrary way of restricting the scope of dignity that includes almost all and almost only humans. Naturalistic Accounts attempt to find a property which roughly matches the HST, while Conventionalist Accounts attempt to explain why endorsing the HST is necessary to achieve coherence with the human rights project. I argue that neither strategy overcomes the Scope Challenge. I then draw out the important implications of this. Even as dignity retains relevance to all humans, it must move beyond the mere human, so as to include nonhuman animals.
"The Dignitarian Return", European Journal of Political Theory (2023).
Dignity underlies much philosophical debate, but the concept and its place in a broader theory of justice have received renewed analytic attention of late. In this article, I examine several recent books on dignity: Human Dignity and Political Criticism, by Colin Bird; Human Dignity and Human Rights, and Human Dignity and Social Justice, both by Pablo Gilabert; Contours of Dignity by Suzanne Killmister; and Humanity Without Dignity: Moral Equality, Respect, and Human Rights, by Andrea Sangiovanni. As I outline, each book develops and defends a position in an established disagreement between so-called ‘Naturalistic’ views, which hold that dignity inheres in natural properties, and ‘Conventionalist’ perspectives, which hold that dignity is socially defined. With these contemporary accounts in mind, I expose the contours of this disagreement and suggest that further work should focus on developing a hybrid conception of dignity consistent with Naturalism and Conventionalism.
PhD Thesis: "Dignity Beyond the Human: A Deontic Account of the Moral Status of Animals" Student thesis: Phd, The University of Manchester (2023).
Dignity is traditionally thought to apply to almost all and almost only humans. My PhD thesis argued that an account of a distinctly human dignity cannot achieve a coherent and non-arbitrary justification; either it must exclude some humans or include some nonhumans. This conclusion is not as worrying as might be first thought. Rather than attempting to vindicate human dignity, dignity should extend beyond the human, to include a range of nonhuman animals. Not only can we develop a widely inclusive account of dignity by pursuing this route, but we can still defend the three core principles that lie at the heart of contemporary thinking about dignity: that bearers of dignity possess dignity to an equal degree, in virtue of possessing the same intrinsic worth, and that this generates direct and claimable rights. I thus develop an account of dignity that includes nonhuman animals. I argue that the capacity to value most plausibly grounds dignity. This capacity arises from valenced sentience: a being values insofar as they have experiences that matter to them. I then characterise what follows from this. First, I contend that it is only the capacity to value grounds dignity because this produces the most plausible, simplest, and most explanatorily powerful account of dignity. We ought to reject pluralist accounts which assert a sharp distinction between bearers and non-bearers of rational agency, and biocentric accounts which include non-sentient organic entities. Second, I argue this property grounds an account of dignity that is non-hierarchical. There are no degrees of dignity. Instead, all possessors of the capacity to value have the same kind of intrinsic value, and the same equal fundamental right: to consideration of their interest in leading a life of value. Finally, I argue that since the fundamental right is to consideration, moral agents have claimable duties to engage in a deliberative procedure with actionable requirements. Specific rights are instantiations of this general procedure. Certain revisionist conclusions follow on my view, for instance, that nonhumans should be given greater weight and inclusion in a far wider range of cases, but my account is sensitive to the range of different things different beings value, so it does not generate counterintuitive implications. I conclude that dignity extends beyond the human.
Book Reviews:
More Equal Than Others: Humans and the Rights of Other Animals, written by Raffael N. Fasel. In: Philosophical Quarterly. (2025)
Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves: Why Animals Matter for Pandemics, Climate Change, and other Catastrophes, written by Jeff Sebo. In: Journal of Moral Philosophy (2023), 20(3-4), 350-353.
Public Philosophy
More Than a Name: Decolonising Wildlife
in Justice Everywhere
Vancouver’s official city bird is the small but charming Anna’s Hummingbird. This bird’s namesake was a 19th Century Italian Duchess – Anna Masséna. These hummingbirds are not found in Europe, so the chances are Anna never even saw one in flight. And yet, the whole species unknowingly trills through the sky carrying her banner. The colonial practice of giving birds eponyms (names after a particular person) was frequently used to uphold a person’s legacy, curry favour, or directly honour them. In North America alone, there are over 150 bird species with eponyms.[1] They include the Stellar’s Jay, the Scott’s Oriole and the Townsend’s Warbler. And this practice is not reserved just for our feathered friends. Many mammals, reptiles and fish are named eponymously, too. The mammals include the Abert’s Squirrel, the Heaviside’s Dolphin, and the Schmidt’s Monkey.
Why is the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness Morally Important?
in Justice Everywhere
Last week was a milestone for animals. Prominent scientists, philosophers and policy experts came together to sign the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness, a statement detailing a consensus that mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, amphibians, cephalopods (like octopuses), crustaceans (like crabs) and even insects most probably have subjective experiences, known as “sentience”. This may not come as a surprise to many of us, but academic research is often characterised by disagreement. A public announcement of consensus is not only profoundly unusual, it also brings into view just how substantial the evidence is that many more animals have conscious experiences than we often assume.
Human dignity doesn’t make sense – but animal dignity might
in Justice Everywhere
No where else is the human-animal divide more enthusiastically defended than when someone talks about human dignity. According to advocates of this widespread idea, our “human dignity” captures the exceptional value and status that humans uniquely possess. Not only is it thought to elevate us above other animals, but it acts as the basis for distinctly human rights, as enshrined in several international covenants, and constitutions. In other words, dignity seems to do a lot of work in explaining why we have value above and beyond that which other animals possess.
Teaching
I have been awarded a Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy in recognition of my teaching. I also hold a UCL Excellence in Student Feedback Award. I have over 5 years of teaching experience.
Current Teaching
At UBC, I am currently the instructor for PHIL 102 - Introduction to Philosophy for students studying Politics, Philosophy and Economics through the Coordinated Arts Program. I am also supervising an MA level directed reading in Animal Ethics.
Courses taught in the past:
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2nd year course: Ethics and Public Policy
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2nd year course: Injustice and Resistance
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2nd year course: Ideals of Social Justice
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1st year course: Issues in PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics).
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1st year course: Introduction to Political Theory.
Widening Participation Work
Previously, I was also a Widening Participation Fellow. I supported the University of Manchester in both increasing access to HE for pre-university students from under-represented socio-economic backgrounds and helping current Widening Participation students in facing the challenges posed by progressing through university. During that time, I produced three sessions for the pre-university side of my role, which schools were able to book for in-person delivery or listen to via pre-recording (one on “Why Study Politics” at University and two are a guided Philosophy Subject Taster Workshop, with activities, on “Should animals have human rights?” and "Corruption - Bad People or Bad Institutions?"). For current university students, I organised and ran (alongside the WP Lead for Politics) a series of workshops to support current students through their undergraduate journeys and beyond.
Get in Touch
Please contact me via email. I am currently located at:
Department of Philosophy
Buchanan, 1866 Main Mall,
Vancouver, BC
V6T 1Z1
Canada