Animal Ethics

JUNE 12, 2010

Unlike Kantians, who are primarily concerned with the rationality of those with whom we deal, Bentham, for example, was clear that the important question was not whether animals were rational, but was whether they can suffer.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 24, 2012

Because animals are sentient (i.e., can experience pleasure and pain) and because they not only have but can act on their preferences, any view that holds that pleasures or pains, or preference-satisfactions or frustrations matter morally is bound to seem attractive to those in search of the moral basis for the animal rights movement.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 3, 2013

For example: Does Kristof own stock in a rival company?) This is cynicism. Kristof should address SeaWorld''s argument, not question its motives. How would he like it if his readers questioned (or speculated about) his motives? Charity requires that good (or at least benign) motives be imputed to arguers.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 12, 2012

That individuals can be harmed without knowing it has important implications for the proper assessment of the treatment of animals. Modern farms (so-called factory farms), for example, raise animals in unnatural conditions.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 8, 2009

What Is an Animal Part? The last example suggests the difficulty of making a clear distinction between an animal part and an animal product. If a genetically engineered animal’s legs periodically fell off, would not its legs be more like a product of an animal (analogous to eggs) than a part of the animal?

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Animal Ethics

MAY 30, 2008

Here , for example, is a news release from the U.S. Here is a New York Times editorial opinion about the removal of the gray wolf ( Canis lupus ) from the endangered-species list. The editorial board of the Times is intellectually dishonest, so please don't let this be your only source of information about the delisting.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 9, 2009

For example, we will not claim that Martin is opposed to moral vegetarianism because he likes to eat meat without a guilty conscience. The contrast would be, for example, “health vegetarianism.” For example, there may be an argument for lactovo moral vegetarianism that is not also an argument for vegan moral vegetarianism.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 27, 2011

For example, how many people around the world die of extreme cold as opposed to extreme heat, and how would that change if the globe warmed? What is the optimal temperature for the alleviation of suffering, for both humans and sentient nonhuman animals?

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 20, 2010

[T]here is another class of cases where the state is accorded the right to interfere with the individual when he is not interfering with any other person, namely, where cruelty to animals is involved.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 25, 2007

It does a great deal of harm to animals. See here for one example. With friends like PETA, animals don't need enemies. As many of you know, I despise PETA.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 6, 2008

We should make an example of Isenhour the way we made an example of Vick. I would also like to see the PGA ban him from the Tour for a period of years. As a society, we should not tolerate such wanton acts of cruelty. Sadly, I suspect that Isenhour will receive no penalty at all. I hope I'm wrong.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 19, 2011

As examples, I would give the following: (1) abstaining from meat for the sake of the animals; (2) abstaining from meat for health reasons; (3) eating meat because one believes (with, say, Roger Scruton) that doing so redounds to the benefit of the animals themselves; (4) eating meat because one likes the taste.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 10, 2009

Nor is it only among schoolboys that over-eating is rampant, for the tables of the wealthy are everywhere loaded with flesh-meat, and the example thus set is naturally followed, first in the servants' hall, and then, as far as may be, in the homes of the working classes.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 18, 2007

Animal rights is neither progressive nor conservative. Think of all the progressives— Michael Moore , for example—who either eat meat or go out of their way to ridicule vegetarians. Why does it not call for the abolition of factory farming? Instead, it seeks to reform it. Many progressives care only about human beings.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 30, 2012

The legal rights of nonhuman animals might first be achieved in any of three ways. For example, the Treaty of Amsterdam that came into force on May 1, 1999, formally acknowledged that nonhuman animals are “sentient beings” and not merely goods or agricultural products.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 9, 2008

pries into and generates examples and counter-examples, both realistic and hypothetical, and so on. To this end, he deploys the tools and canons of logic on behalf of accuracy in argument, explores questions of meaning, implication, presupposition, derivation, relation, compatibility, etc.,

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 4, 2008

Here is a brilliant example of this approach. If I can show you that one of your moral principles entails that it's wrong to eat meat, then, to avoid contradiction, you must either abandon the principle or abstain from meat. If you're unwilling to abandon the principle, then you must abstain from meat.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 25, 2007

The real story here is our tireless commitment to fighting animal cruelty. We would welcome greater public support for our programs, which set a shining example for animal welfare across the nation. We constantly stretch our limited resources to save lives as a nonprofit organization. New York, July 23, 2007

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 6, 2010

Think of the difference between eating a hamburger and eating a veggie burger, for example. So the choice is between inflicting terrible pain and deprivation on animals and getting slightly less pleasure from eating. It is not as though the latter produces no pleasure!

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 23, 2009

A vegetarian of the first sort has no grounds for objecting to the eating of animals—molluscs for example—too rudimentary in their development to feel pain. Nor could he object to meat-eating if the slaughter were completely painless and the raising of animals at least as comfortable as life in the wild.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

Pacifists like Gandhi are often cited as examples of people who are vegetarians and who are opposed to violence. For example, the Vegetarian News Digest argued that “there is no information that indicates [Hitler] eliminated flesh food for humanitarian reasons.” But Hitler was also a vegetarian.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 21, 2008

By comparing the common mind-set that has produced both the past injustices against humans and the current abuses of animals, we can and do inspire debate and convince many people that it is a human obligation to speak out against injustice to all beings. Animal suffering and human suffering are undeniably interconnected.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

I, for example, am a demi-vegetarian. I have had no other animal products (no beef, pork, lamb, or turkey, for example) since 1982. First is the question of whether one is living up to one's ideals. I eat chicken, fish, and eggs. Am I a hypocrite?

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Animal Ethics

MAY 25, 2008

But now the situation has changed; not only cruelty—the enjoyment of animal suffering—but callousness, indifference to animal suffering, not taking it into account in deciding how one ought to act, is morally condemned. Controversies no doubt remain.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 5, 2008

Everyone who cares about animals must emphatically denounce (as well as renounce ) the use of force, coercion, or manipulation to improve the lot of animals. When someone from PETA, for example, refuses to denounce those who use violent means to pursue their ends, it links PETA with those means.

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 13, 2008

While well intended, Proposition 2 is primarily based on emotion and not on a thorough scientific evaluation of all factors that contribute to animal well-being. Just because something sounds good on the surface does not necessarily make it a wise decision.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 1, 2010

Elsewhere in this blog (see here , here , and here ), I have written about ethical synergy , the regularly observed phenomenon that simultaneously showing respect for persons (including oneself), animals, and the environment typically benefits all three groups (including oneself).

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Animal Ethics

JULY 15, 2008

Can you think of other such examples in the history of philosophy? John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) defended utilitarianism from the charge that, because it exalts pleasure, it is "a doctrine worthy only of swine." He also said that "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied."

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 2, 2011

Finally, those who do not accept the argument from potentiality will have to rely on the overflow principle to generate any restraints whatever on our behaviour towards the foetus, the infant, the curably or incurably mad, and even, it would seem, the deeply but reversibly unconscious (someone in dreamless sleep for example).

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 24, 2008

An organ, the Cartesian Rouhault argues, makes more noise when I play it than an animal when it cries out, yet we do not ascribe feelings to the organ. These teachings, it should be observed, were more than metaphysical speculations.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 20, 2008

Even the most ardent defenders of the morality of using animals for food and as “tools” in scientific experiments admit that premises (1) and (2) are true and acknowledge that (1) and (2) capture something central to our moral relationship to animals. What’s good for us is good for the animals. Ethical synergy at work.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 11, 2007

This line of reasoning also helps to explain why we recognize certain duties towards both men and animals, but certain others towards men only. For example, nobody would be thought to be oppressing animals because he did not allow them self-government; but, on the other hand, it is generally thought to be wrong to torture animals for fun.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 4, 2008

Thus, since both animals and humans feel pain, animal rights advocates believe that what is done to an animal should be judged morally as if it were done to a human being. Some ideologues even compare the Nazi death camps to normal practices of animal husbandry.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 21, 2008

Yet, in the case of domesticated animals especially, many people, particularly lonely people, regard (and often want to regard) their pet as a kind of lesser human being, with a less rich but still plentiful mental life which explains why their cat or dog behaves as it does.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 11, 2008

It's a problem for animals, particularly aquatic animals, as well. For example, exposure to these substances is negatively impacting the reproductive abilities of some fish species, threatening their extinction. Here is an AP story highlighting the impact these pharmaceutical substances are having on aquatic and avian species.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 17, 2008

The point, of course, is that there is no necessary connection between (1) a person's attitude toward animals or the environment and (2) his or her normative political theory. You and I, for example, share a concern for animals, but I'm a conservative and you're a progressive.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 16, 2009

The overwhelming passage in November of Proposition 2 in California, which banned tight confinement of many of the animals raised for food, is a fine example of the power of publicity to educate people about the atrocities we commit to those animals who have no voice of their own. Laura Frisk Encinitas, Calif.,

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