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Originally Posted by
That Alpaca Guy 
How anyone perceives the inherent value of an animal may inform that persons morality in regards to any given act, but it is not a moral act in and of itself.
Of course the view of someone having or not having inherent value is not an
act, it's a moral view/belief/attitude.
But my point was that saying that vivisection victims are treated as mere instruments for science is, or can be, a moral/political evaluation of vivisection, and not a psychological attribution of the statement "I think animals are mere instruments for science" to vivisectors. And as such an evaluation, it's not something that vivisectors themselves, or those who know them, can claim to correct, or inform about. They can merely disagree and provide a different moral view on the situation.
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I also think any given researcher is more then capable of informing others about their own personal morality on the subject.
Sorry but there's very little reason to hold persons' own descriptions of their morality and actions as sufficient to determine the moral nature of those actions. If what one presented was not a moral characterization of what vivisectors do to animals, but an attribution of some statement like "I think animals are worthless" to vivisectors,
then they could inform others that such a claim would be incorrect.
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I disagree. Objects and instruments do not have inherent value. Research animals do. In order for animal research to be ethical the value of the results of the research must be greater then the inherent value of the animals. I just happen to think that over all it is. Others have differing opinions. If your statement was true then research that was inhumane would never be prevented due to concern for the welfare of the animals involved, and that simply is not the case.
Your use of the expression 'inherent value' is highly idiosyncratic, at least in the context of a discussion on animal rights (or the absence of them). According to your usage of the term (let's call it "schminherent value", in order to make clear it is your meaning that we're talking about), even the most callous factory farmers could be said to see sentient beings as inherently valuable individuals, since those factory farmers could be made to agree on the immorality of
some ways of treating animals.
It would be difficult to find any person who would
not hold all sentient beings (with the exception of those whose sentience is more controversial) as schminherently valuable: even for the most sadistic sociopath, there might be
some level of suffering that he/she would consider unnecessary or cruel -- thereby attributing schminherent value.