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Animal Rights

Animal Ethics

I'm a longtime proponent of animal rights, but this suit is ridiculous. Applying it to nonhuman animals is a stretch. Second, it is not a necessary condition for the possession of rights (legal or otherwise) that one be a person. Nonhuman animals can suffer. Dentists make people suffer.)

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H. J. McCloskey on Animal Rights

Animal Ethics

If, for instance, it is determined that gravely mentally defective human beings and monsters born of human parents are not the kinds of beings who may possess rights, this bears on how we may treat them. Similarly, important conclusions follow from the question as to whether animals have rights.

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Why Justice for Animals Is the Social Movement of Our Time

Animal Ethics

"There is no longer dispute among serious scientists that humans aren’t the only animals who have the capacity to suffer physically and mentally. Elephants, great apes, orcas, dogs, cats, and many other animals can experience depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and compulsive disorders.

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Tom Regan on Utilitarianism

Animal Ethics

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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H. B. Acton (1908-1974) on Animal Rights

Animal Ethics

When it is asked whether animals have rights, and whether human beings have duties to them, the question, I think, is partly moral and partly verbal. Let us consider the moral question first.

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Tom Regan on Cruelty

Animal Ethics

The central case of cruelty appears to be the case where, in Locke's apt phrase, one takes "a seeming kind of Pleasure" in causing another to suffer. Some cruel people do not feel pleasure in making others suffer. Let us term this sadistic cruelty. Indeed, they seem not to feel anything.

Cruelty 40
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Moral Vegetarianism, Part 9 of 13

Animal Ethics

The Argument from Animal Rights A stronger argument is made by people who maintain that animals have rights. In particular, it has been argued that animals have a right to life. So, even if animals are killed painlessly and raised for food in humane ways, it is wrong to kill them.

Morals 40