Animal Ethics

MAY 20, 2008

A few years ago, philosopher David Oderberg published an essay entitled " The Illusion of Animal Rights " in The Human Life Review. A few months ago, having belatedly discovered Oderberg's essay, I wrote a critique entitled " Oderberg on Animal Rights ," which I duly submitted to The Human Life Review for publication.

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 23, 2009

I will conclude with some remarks about the rights of animals. 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. This could be either because no pain is bad, or because no animal pain is bad.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 5, 2009

It may also now be time for humanity to consider that its responsibilities go beyond humankind and extend to other beings as well—to animals and even to plants. What is the basis of the assumption that I have the right to cut down trees that were growing before I was born? It is might, sheer might and might alone.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 11, 2008

One aspect of the question of whether animals have rights may now be treated. If animals have rights, then these are welfare rather than option-rights. My pet turtle does not exercise, at his option, any rights over itself, things, or people. a nonhuman animal) the sort of being that can have rights?

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Animal Ethics

MAY 4, 2008

The issue as to who or what may be a possessor of rights is not simply a matter of academic, conceptual interest. 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.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 11, 2008

So far McCloskey is on solid ground, but one can quarrel with his denial that any animals but humans have interests. I should think that the trustee of funds willed to a dog or cat is more than a mere custodian of the animal he protects. The animal itself is the beneficiary of his dutiful services.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 18, 2017

Yesterday, the world lost its most powerful voice for animal rights, Tom Regan. No one has done more to explain what "animal rights" means and why animals have rights than Tom Regan. CAF’s grants help make possible the next generation of animal rights scholarship and artistry.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 20, 2008

In 1792, Englishman Thomas Taylor (1758-1835), a prominent translator of Plato and other Greek philosophers, published a satirical pamphlet entitled A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes. If women have rights, then animals have rights. Animals do not have rights. Animals do not have rights.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 5, 2008

According to a great many philosophers and jurisprudents, animals do not have rights for the simple reason that they are not the kinds of beings who can have rights. In respect to having rights, animals are more like pebbles and sunbeams than they are like full-fledged human beings.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 23, 2008

For every person, being a subject of interests, has rights, i.e., has a claim to respect of his interests under the law of equality of persons. Under the moral law, all beings who have interests are subjects of rights, while all those who in addition to having interests, are capable of grasping the demands of duty, are subjects of duties.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 19, 2016

"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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Animal Ethics

MARCH 12, 2009

It was, I suggest, to a large extent because he felt that the noblest feature of humanity is the capacity to be self-governing, to adopt principles without being influenced by sensuous motives and then to live by them whatever the contingencies. For Kant, then, worthy acts are (given human fallibility) a proper subset of right acts.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 5, 2008

On the one hand, it improves the lives of many farm animals. On the other hand, it entrenches the idea that they may be used as mere means to human ends. In the long run, measures such as this may make things worse for farm animals. I'm ambivalent about the proposition.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 30, 2007

A general discussion of right or duty would hardly be com­plete without some discussion, even if only a brief one, of the closely related subject of rights. It is commonly said that rights and duties are correlative, and it is worth while to inquire whether and, if at all, in what sense this is true. Professor D.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 25, 2016

Philosophers have shown that the standard reasons offered to exclude animals from the moral circle, and to justify not assessing our treatment of them by the same moral categories and machinery we use for assessing the treatment of humans, do not meet the test of moral relevance. Bernard E.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 24, 2015

Forty years ago, the suggestion that nonhuman animals have moral rights—indeed, many of the same rights as human beings—would have been met with incredulous stares, if not outright ridicule. Fast forward to the present. Other results from this Gallup poll can be found here.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 24, 2012

With regard to wild animals, the general policy recommended by the rights view is: let them be! Since this will require increased human intervention in human practices that threaten rare or endangered species (e.g., Too little is not enough. (

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 11, 2013

I do not know that it can be better done than in the words of George Nicholson, one of those early pioneers to the influence of whose writings, though now almost forgotten, the cause of humaneness owes so much. "In

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 7, 2016

In light of this horrible incident, is it right for the zoo to carry on a breeding program that subjects more animals to such unnatural lives? It is estimated that due to conflicts with humans, the bushmeat and body parts trade, disease and habitat destruction, large mammals in Africa may be extinct by the end of this century.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

All that the rights view prohibits is science that violates individual rights. There are also some things we cannot learn by using humans, if we respect their rights. The rights view merely requires moral consistency in this regard. ( If that means that there are some things we cannot learn, then so be it.

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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. That's right, free!

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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

JULY 7, 2009

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.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 16, 2011

9): The Fish and Wildlife Service is right to propose a ban on the sale of nine large constricting snakes for the pet trade. In addition to the effects of these invasive species on ecosystems, there are also compelling humane and public safety arguments for restricting trade.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 21, 2009

Suppose that tomorrow a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth, beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals. Would they have the right to treat you as you treat animals you breed, keep, and kill for food? Most animals are probably not persons.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 12, 2008

The land ethic, it should be emphasized, as Leopold has sketched it, provides for the rights of nonhuman natural beings to a share in the life processes of the biotic community. The conceptual foundation of such rights, however, is less conventional than natural, based upon, as one might say, evolutionary and ecological entitlement.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 30, 2011

Ross, The Right and the Good [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1988], 137 [first published in 1930]) Note from KBJ: Since the concepts of desert and good or bad disposition do not apply to animals (who are not moral agents), their pleasure is intrinsically good and their pain intrinsically bad.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 22, 2008

The Unalienable Rights of Chimps ,” by Adam Cohen (Editorial Observer, July 14): The Spanish Parliament’s decision to grant rights to apes is indeed groundbreaking, and will foster philosophical discussion about animal protection for some time. Suffering is far from a uniquely human experience.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 8, 2012

Indeed, precisely because one expects indifference from animals but pity or mercy from human beings, people who are cruel by being insensitive to the suffering they cause often are called "animals" or "brutes," and their character or behavior, "brutal" or "inhuman." Cruelty is manifested in different ways.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 6, 2008

Here is a common argument in favor of animal rights: 1. If babies have rights, then animals have rights. Babies have rights. Animals have rights. Frey, "Animal Rights," Analysis 37 [June 1977]: 186-9.) Therefore, 3. In 1977, philosopher R. What is Frey's argument? Similarity.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 19, 2011

To the Editor: Re “ Egg Producers and Humane Society Urging Federal Standard on Hen Cages ” (Business Day, July 8): I’m a vegetarian who turned vegan after coming to terms with the fact that just because I was eating hormone-free, antibiotic-free, even free-range organic eggs didn’t mean that egg-producing hens were living a cruelty-free life.

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 31, 2009

The only real cure for the evil is the growing sense that the lower animals are closely akin to us, and have Rights. Salt , The Logic of Vegetarianism: Essays and Dialogues [London: The Ideal Publishing Union, 1899], 109-10 [italics in original])

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 1, 2012

Farm animals remain helpless, because they are legally incompetent, and assertion of their interests are barred by the traditional legal doctrine of "standing," a concept that is sound only when applied to competent human beings. Consumers should have the right to know in order to make informed decisions.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 12, 2010

A Humane Egg The life of animals raised in confinement on industrial farms is slowly improving, thanks to pressure from consumers, animal rights advocates, farmers and legislators. In California last week, Gov.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 25, 2010

Like humans, animals have a right to enjoy life. Most will never know sunlight, breezes, plants or soil. At our farm sanctuary, we see how much chickens rescued from factory farms delight in these experiences. Bill Crain Ellen Crain Poughquag, N.Y., 15, 2010 The writers are co-founders of Safe Haven Farm Sanctuary.

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 19, 2008

Wild animals belong in the wild. Like humans, they have a right to liberty. Mark Spahn sent a link to this blog. At the risk of being a killjoy, let me say that there should ( morally ) be no zoos. They do not exist for our amusement, entertainment, or education.

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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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