More than Zombies: Considering the Animal Subject in De-Extinction (Preprint)

Katz (2022) provides arguments drawn from the environmental philosophy literature to criticize the conceptualisation and practice of de-extinction with a focus on the ontological and epistemological issues - the human dimension of de-extinction, using concepts relevant only to us and our understanding of the world. In this commentary we wish to draw attention to how this can erase the animals as subjects, instead taking them as objects that are instantiations of other values – naturalness, authenticity, wildness, human artifice, domination. We need also to include the perspective and interests of the animals themselves as additional sources of value for consideration