Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 19, 2011

Now when we ask what is the general nature of morally good actions, it seems quite clear that it is in virtue of the motives that they proceed from that actions are morally good. Thus a morally good action need not be the doing of a right act, and the doing of a right act need not be a morally good action.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 24, 2013

Nor is it true that the worth of an animal''s life, any more than of a man''s, can be measured simply by the amount of "agreeable sensation," a fallacy often put forward by those who cage animals in menageries, on the plea that they are there well tended and saved from the struggle for existence.

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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

SEPTEMBER 14, 2012

In issuing its condemnation of established cultural practices, the rights view is not antibusiness, not antifreedom of the individual, not antiscience, not antihuman. It is simply projustice, insisting only that the scope of justice be seen to include respect for the rights of animals.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 27, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. ARGUMENTS FOR MORAL VEGETARIANISM A variety of arguments have been given for vegetarianism. Sometimes they take such a sketchy form that it is not completely clear they are moral arguments. Tags: Moral Vegetarianism.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 4, 2008

There is no inconsistency in rejecting plant rights while accepting animal rights. 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.

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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'. Pleasure is good when, and only when, it is deserved.

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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

AUGUST 19, 2009

In the past I have been concerned to advocate a normative utilitarian theory from the point of view of a non-cognitivist meta-ethics. I assumed that Hume was right in thinking that ultimately morality depends on how we feel about things.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 14, 2008

I've been reading the literature of animal rights for nearly three decades, and contributing to it for the past decade or so. fails to tell his readers what it is to have a right), fails to distinguish between positive rights and negative rights, and in general glosses over all the important questions, philosophical and otherwise.

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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. Let us consider the moral question first. Hominum causa omne ius constitutum.)

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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

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. Wise , “ The Evolution of Animal Law Since 1950 ,” chap.

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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

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

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

MAY 14, 2008

The question of whether animals possess rights is once again topical, largely as a result of the recent surge of interest in animal welfare and in the moral pros and cons of eating animals and using them in scientific research. Arguments to show that animals do have rights, therefore, are at a premium. (

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 17, 2008

It would remain true, of course, that the vegetarian diet is more limited, since every pleasure available to the vegetarian is also available to the carnivore (not counting the moral satisfactions involved, of course—which would be question-begging), plus more which are not available to the vegetarian so long as he remains one.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 11, 2008

We can, of course, with consistency treat animals as mere pests and deny that they have any rights; for most animals, especially those of the lower orders, we have no choice but to do so. We must now ask ourselves for whose sake ought we to treat (some) animals with consideration and humaneness?

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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

JUNE 27, 2012

That Kant should hold such a view should not be surprising; it is a direct consequence of his moral theory, the main outlines of which may be briefly, albeit crudely, summarized. As such, no moral agent is ever to be treated merely as a means. Moral agents are not nonrational, do not have "only a relative value," and are not things.

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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

AUGUST 15, 2012

The rights view is not opposed to efforts to save endangered species. If people are encouraged to believe that the harm done to animals matters morally only when these animals belong to endangered species, then these same people will be encouraged to regard the harm done to other animals as morally acceptable.

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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.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 13, 2008

First of all, I want to tell you how much I enjoy Animal Ethics. I especially liked your posting from Gardner Williams’ “The Moral Insignificance of the Total of All Value.” What makes the site special is that a portion of every sale is donated to animal rights and rescue organizations. I read it all the time.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 5, 2007

I don't expect that many readers will be converted to the cause of animal rights by reading this book. Nor have I dealt with advances in the legal protection of animals both in practice and in theory. I have focused exclusively on moral theory. Nevertheless, I believe that a good theoretical argument is worth the effort.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 4, 2008

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. Philosophers are trained to do this. Their only tool is the law of noncontradiction, which says that no proposition can be both true and false.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 30, 2007

The volume „Tierrechte – eine interdisziplinäre Herausforderung“ (literally „Animal Rights – an interdisciplinary challenge“ has just been released from Harald Fischer Verlag (publisher), Germany. The results of the lectures are written down in this book. More information on the book can be found here. We really appreciate it!

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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

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

DECEMBER 11, 2013

"In our conduct to animals," he wrote, "one plain rule may determine what form it ought to take, and prove an effectual guard against an improper treatment of them—a rule universally admitted as a foundation of moral rectitude: Treat the animal in such a manner as you would willingly be treated, were you such an animal."

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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? The zoo, surely, carries responsibility for deficiencies in its enclosure. Finally, what of the audience?

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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

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

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. There are two types of rights: autonomy-rights and welfare-rights.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 24, 2009

Note from KBJ: I'm sure Mylan will agree with me that it would be better, morally, if the vegetarian diet were being adopted for the sake of the animals. A Kantian (though not Kant himself) would say that while the act is right, in the sense of being in accordance with duty, it has no moral worth, since it is not done from duty.

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 21, 2008

But since something can correctly be regarded as an object of moral action if, and only if, it is worthy of respect, it follows that persons, and persons only, can be objects of moral action. From this it follows that any being that is not a person can, with moral justification, be used merely as a means.

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