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The Gap Between Wildlife and the Animal Rights Movement

10,000 Birds

I know on some level, I think that’s something almost all of us can get behind…no one, except the most callous and cold-hearted of the human race things its fine to torture animals, or deny that they are capable of pain and suffering. For example, when the U.S. This makes perfect sense. The logic of this is ridiculous.

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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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Plant Rights

Animal Ethics

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.

Rights 40
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Majority Rules in the Language of Animal Rights

Animal Person

Here's a hint from the authors: In the end, it's not the grammarians and usage experts who decide what's right. In the eighteenth century, for example, grammarians tried to stamp out the use of "wrote" as the past tense of "write." The animal rights movement, such as it is, is experiencing somewhat of a crisis of usage.

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When conservation and animal rights collide

10,000 Birds

By way of an example take the Western Gulls that I studied on the Farallon Islands in California. Worse still, there will be situations where the two forces come into direct opposition, where the goals of animal rights clash outright with those of wildlife conservation. This is a very serious business here in New Zealand.

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On the Psychological Continuum

Animal Person

So, while this fact does not need to concern us, if we are thinking about ethical principles, for example based on rational arguments leading to deontological ethics, that changes when we are talking about how to move society towards this ethical ideal. I assume Francione does not disagree.