Animal Ethics

JANUARY 20, 2008

Ethical vegetarianism is the thesis that killing and eating animals is morally wrong whenever equally nutritious plant-based alternatives are available. The case for ethical vegetarianism starts with several uncontroversial premises. It is not just a few outspoken animal rights fanatics who hold this view.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 31, 2008

My view, then, is not that which it has often been taken to be in discussion and which Singer, Regan, Clark, and others blast in their work; I am not suggesting that, because they lack language, animals can be factory farmed without suffering. Animals can suffer, which they could not unless they were conscious; so they are conscious.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 21, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. SOME PROBLEMS OF MORAL VEGETARIANISM With respect to traditional moral vegetarianism some problems immediately come to the fore. Who exactly is not supposed to eat animals or products of animals?

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 30, 2011

But when a moral being is feeling a pleasure or pain that is deserved or undeserved, or a pleasure or pain that implies a good or a bad disposition, the total fact is quite inadequately described if we say 'a sentient being is feeling pleasure, or pain'.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 25, 2008

One restriction on the absolutism of man's rule over Nature is now generally accepted: moral philosophers and public opinion agree that it is morally impermissible to be cruel to animals. Controversies no doubt remain.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 9, 2009

A third of a century ago, when the modern animal-liberation movement was in its infancy, Martin published an essay entitled “A Critique of Moral Vegetarianism,” Reason Papers (fall 1976): 13-43. You will, therefore, agree with Martin about moral vegetarianism but not about Christianity. Another reason is moral.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 30, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. The Argument from Human Grain Shortage All of the clearly moral arguments for vegetarianism given so far have been in terms of animal rights and suffering. Tags: Moral Vegetarianism. KBJ: I’m speechless.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 2, 2011

I propose that the moral significance of the suffering, mutilation, and death of non-human animals rests on the following, which may be called the overflow principle: Act towards that which, while not itself a person, is closely associated with personhood in a way coherent with an attitude of respect for persons.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 24, 2012

The initial attractiveness of utilitarianism as a moral theory on which to rest the call for the better treatment of animals was noted in an earlier context. Because animals are sentient (i.e., Because animals are sentient (i.e.,

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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

DECEMBER 18, 2006

Currently, I am very interested in social and political philosophy and ethical issues. I felt a strong sense of connection to the ideas of Peter Singer while taking Ethics from Keith. Currently, I do not believe that killing an animal is prima facie morally wrong. So, I took the plunge.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 24, 2009

To the Editor: Re “ Animal, Vegetable, Miserable ,” by Gary Steiner (Op-Ed, Nov. 22): Mr. Steiner might feel less lonely as an ethical vegan—he says he has just five vegan friends—if he recognized that he has allies in mere vegetarians (like me), ethical omnivores and even carnivores. Alexander Mauskop New York, Nov.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

I suspect that many regular readers of Animal Ethics are already vegetarians. That's because those who read Animal Ethics with regularity know that there are many compelling reasons to adopt a vegetarian lifestyle. This precept is variably stated as follows: Avoid killing or harming any living being.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 7, 2008

This is a moral principle, and states that 'the interests of every being affected by an action are to be taken into account and given the same weight as the like interests of any other being'. This, however, is precisely what factory farming does.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

If our liking for meat is in fact more intense than our revulsion at the suffering endured on factory farms, then we are going to remain meat-eaters, with the result that, if the vegetarian has grounded his case in an appeal to our feelings, then that case is in jeopardy.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

This passage puzzles me: Unsurprisingly, I believe it is wrong to inflict pain and death unnecessarily on a creature capable of suffering. Peter Singer more broadly examines the moral standing of animals here.) Here is a New York Times blog post about wolf hunting.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 25, 2008

If all pain is evil, as Bentham thought, then the pain of animals—assuming only that they can feel pain—ought not to be ignored in man's moral decisions. The pains of animals might be less, as not including the pains of anticipation, than the pains felt by man, but that is no reason for not taking them into account.

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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

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.

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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 31, 2011

He has volunteered to kill a deer cruelly, ineptly and with an outdated weapon that causes additional suffering to the deer. I’m tired of hearing people who enjoy killing justify it with specious moral platitudes. Animals suffer when killed. To the Editor: In “ Hunting Deer With My Flintlock ” (Op-Ed, Dec.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 26, 2007

It might be argued that any decrease in suffering for farmed animals is good, morally speaking. Imagine arguing not that human chattel slavery ought to be abolished, but that it ought to be reformed so as to inflict less suffering on the slaves. But doesn't decreasing animal suffering make abolition less likely?

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 23, 2009

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. Similar considerations, I suggest, apply when we ask whether it is proper to say that animals have moral rights.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 4, 2006

Note that this debate is independent of the debate about the moral permissibility of eating fish. If organically raised fish suffer less than nonorganically raised fish, it is an accident, morally speaking. It's possible, in other words, that some organic methods inflict greater pain on the animals than nonorganic methods.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 24, 2009

For pastoralism belongs rightly to another and earlier phase of the world's economics, and as civilisation spreads it becomes more and more an anachronism, as surely as flesh-eating, by a corresponding change, becomes an anachronism in morals. Henry S.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 27, 2012

20, 2012 To the Editor: Blake Hurst asserts that “production methods should not cause needless suffering,” but the position he takes does just that. Farm Animal Welfare, ASPCA New York, Feb. The idea that eggs from free-range chickens are somehow morally superior to other eggs is, frankly, weird. SUZANNE McMILLAN Dir.,

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 3, 2008

The argument for vegetarianism is not based on any claim about the wrongness of killing animals—although some careless reviewers read this claim into my book, no doubt because they assumed that any moral argument for vegetarianism must be based on the wrongness of killing.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 14, 2007

She simply wants to minimize their suffering before they are killed (painlessly?) Perhaps she would argue that there is no double standard, i.e., that there is a morally relevant difference between human animals and nonhuman animals that justifies the difference in treatment. and their bodies dismembered and processed.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 11, 2007

Animals as well as humans can suffer pain, deprivation, and unwanted death. An exception for vegetables is thus consistent with the categorical imperative; an exception for humans with respect to eating animals is not. Vegetables cannot. Hence there is a very fundamental and relevant sense in which we cannot harm a vegetable.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 24, 2008

But this question of Butchery is not merely one of kindness or unkindness to animals, for by the very facts of the case it is a human question of no slight importance, affecting as it does the social and moral welfare of those more immediately concerned in it. Henry S.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 17, 2011

It is asking the burger-stuffer to come clean ; to show just why it is that his greed should be indulged in this way, and just where he fits into the scheme of things, that he can presume to kill again and again for the sake of a solitary pleasure that creates and sustains no moral ties.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 17, 2008

The plea that animals might be killed painlessly is a very common one with flesh-eaters, but it must be pointed out that what-might-be can afford no exemption from moral responsibility for what-is.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 2, 2008

Kristof’s thoughtful exploration of animal rights, I was astonished to read that he continues to eat animals, like geese and pigs, for which he obviously has such affection and respect. Doesn’t he realize that he does not have to engage in this voluntary activity, which causes moral conflict for himself and suffering for the animals?

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 4, 2007

Inequality per se is morally irrelevant. How many are suffering for lack of food, fuel, shelter, clothing, or medical care? Once we create this floor, who cares whether some dogs are above it? Who cares that some dogs are spoiled when every dog has a decent life? Do you see the distinction I'm drawing? What's important is welfare.

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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. Now there is no doubt that the actual treatment of animals used for food is immoral, that animals are made to suffer needlessly. That is absurd.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 6, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. The Argument from Speciesism If there is some doubt whether the arguments from monkeys and from glass walls should be considered moral arguments, there can be no doubt about the moral import of the argument from speciesism.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 23, 2007

I’ll leave the question of infant care to the physicians, but I know firsthand that an adult vegan can enjoy robust physical health without contributing to the cruel suffering of animals on today’s factory farms. It’s appalling that anyone would think that a diet based on a dubious morality would build a human infant.

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