Animal Ethics

MAY 4, 2008

If Smith thinks that plant rights and animal rights stand or fall together, then he is confused, for there is a morally relevant difference between plants and animals, namely, that only the latter are sentient. Addendum: Smith appears not to understand the animal-rights movement. Animals have weight on the moral scale.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 12, 2009

First, if my explanation of the importance of moral conduct is correct, then Kant should not be viewed as a man obsessed with duty for duty's sake. He believed, of course, that one ought always to do one's duty and also that only acts motivated by respect for moral law have moral worth. not from duty ).

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 18, 2006

Keith has not only been my favorite Philosophy professor that I have studied under during the course of my college experience, but my favorite professor in general. Currently, I am very interested in social and political philosophy and ethical issues. Currently, I do not believe that killing an animal is prima facie morally wrong.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 23, 2009

There are two approaches a vegetarian might take in arguing that rearing and killing animals for food is morally offensive. He might argue that eating animals is morally bad because of the pain inflicted on animals in rearing and killing them to be eaten. Or he could object to the killing itself.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 10, 2009

Does my proposal as to what makes killing another human being generally a major moral wrong in any way help us with deciding what, if anything, is wrong with killing non-human animals and foetuses? Systematic cullings in the absence of feasible alternatives, therefore, may be morally permissible. I believe it does help.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 6, 2007

The dark secret behind factory farm profits—cruel and inhumane animal husbandry—is getting out. Factory farmers treat animals inhumanely for no good reason. Since morally decent individuals oppose treating animals inhumanely for no good reason, factory farming is becoming an increasingly hard sell.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 31, 2008

But animals lack that reflective awareness which enables us to see our experiences and acts as our own (and thereby, of course, unlike animals, to be responsible for our acts). ( Animals are moral patients, but not moral agents. Like children, they can be wronged but cannot wrong. You and I have both.

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 29, 2008

Once a definite social movement got under way in the West with its objective the restricting of man's treatment of animals, it moved with relative rapidity. Moral philosophers began to regard it as an obvious truth that it is wrong to treat animals cruelly. But not so far as seriously to limit man's domination of the world.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 11, 2008

Many of the higher animals at least have appetites, conative urges, and rudimentary purposes, the integrated satisfaction of which constitutes their welfare or good. But it seems to me, nevertheless, that in general, animals are among the sorts of beings of whom rights can meaningfully be predicated and denied.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 30, 2007

This arises from the fact that we have duties to animals and to infants. We had better therefore take the less complicated case of animals, which we commonly suppose not to be even potential moral agents. It may of course be denied that we have duties to animals. It is not at all clear which is the true view.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 27, 2012

Not in words, of course, but they can answer in ways that we can understand if we are paying attention. The idea that eggs from free-range chickens are somehow morally superior to other eggs is, frankly, weird. No one, Mr. Hurst and me included, wants animals to be subjected to unnecessary pain.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 27, 2008

Thus Socrates turned his back on the great speculations about the nature of the universe and focused his whole attention on "the good for man" Twenty centuries later men lament that they pursue loneliness, and that their morals and politics lag dangerously behind their natural science. True Irrationality.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 15, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. Most moral vegetarians list fish and fowl as animals one should not eat. The ability to feel pain is not an obviously plausible way of morally distinguishing microorganisms from other organisms. What Meat Should Not Be Eaten?

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 4, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. In fact, animals used for food do suffer a great deal. But is it true that by eating meat one is giving one’s tacit consent to the cruel treatment of animals? Such a supposition seems ludicrous to me.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 2, 2008

Second, many of the things you can do to stop supporting animal cruelty—like not buying or wearing fur or fur trim—require minimal effort and no expense! Of course, since that is so easily accomplished, you may have already fully succeeded in carrying out that aspect of resolution 11 long ago. Do it for the animals.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 31, 2006

Second, many of the things you can do to stop supporting animal cruelty—like not buying or wearing fur—require minimal effort and no expense! Of course, since that is so easily accomplished, you may have already fully succeeded in carrying out that aspect of resolution 11 long ago. Join me in resolving to do right by animals in 2007.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 31, 2006

How many problems can be solved—in their entirety—by a single person, even over the course of a lifetime? That's what moral integrity—being an integrated person rather than a fragmented one—is all about. Don't focus on how little you can do, for that will depress you and destroy your moral motivation.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 23, 2006

Jonathan Hubbell, a philosophy major at the University of Texas at Arlington, is the newest member of the Animal Ethics blog, and once again, I would like to welcome him aboard. In his fresh and candid first post (available here ), Jonathan admitted that he is struggling with the issue of ethical vegetarianism.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 24, 2006

Each semester when I teach Contemporary Moral Issues, on the first day of class I begin with a survey. One of the questions on the survey is: "Is it morally permissible to kill animals for fur coats?" One immediate consequence of the prima facie wrongness of causing animals to suffer is that it is ultima facie wrong (i.e.,

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