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.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 14, 2012

It is simply projustice, insisting only that the scope of justice be seen to include respect for the rights of animals. The animal rights movement is not for the faint of heart. How we change the dominant misconception of animals—indeed, whether we change it—is to a large extent a political question.

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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 Person

APRIL 14, 2009

There is a profound difference between what Sea Shepherd does and what the Animal Liberation Front does, but there are also similarities, and those similarities increase in number if a direct action by the ALF (or anyone else) is an open rescue and therefore a direct defense of sentient nonhumans being attacked by humans.

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Animal Person

APRIL 1, 2010

Here are some of the my favorite quotes: In reality, species don't evolve toward greater humanness but toward greater adaptiveness in their ecological niche (105). No living group of nonhuman animals--no existing species of invertebrate, fish, amphibian, reptile, bird or nonhuman mammal--is ancestral to humans.

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Animal Person

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

This morning I posted " On California's Animal Abuse Registry Proposal " over at Animal Rights & AntiOppression and welcome any discussion about it. The outcome: "worship of human beings." Tags: Activism Current Affairs Ethics Language. What a fitting addition to discussions about speciesism!

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Animal Person

FEBRUARY 26, 2010

I've been having a difficult time blogging both here and at Animal Rights & AntiOppression lately because I feel like my thoughts are like " Groundhog Day." There are few animal rights stories in the news. The stories we humans create for ourselves to justify--or even glorify--our behavior are fictions.

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Animal Person

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

is clearly someone who advocates for animal rights. Ernst believes we don't have a right to use sentient nonhumans and all of her posts (and those of Alex Melonas, who also posts at animalrights.change.org) are unequivocal about animal use. Tags: Activism Current Affairs Ethics Language.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 28, 2012

This is human chauvinism. The anthropomorphic side reads: "It is anthropomorphic to attribute characteristics to nonhumans that belong only to humans." The human chauvinism side reads: "It is chauvinistic not to attribute characteristics to those nonhumans who have them and to persist in the conceit that only humans do."

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Animal Person

JUNE 5, 2009

Why are Leftists to shoulder the blame for the exploitation of animals simply because of their tardiness in arriving on the animal rights scene? But they apparently don't think animals are important enough to stand up for, as they're not part of the platform of the average Leftist. And I think they should be.

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Critter News

MARCH 28, 2009

The German constitutional court has ruled that animal rights organisation PETA (People for Ethical Treatment of Animals) must end its campaign in which it draws a comparison between the Holocaust and industrial farming.

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Animal Person

AUGUST 12, 2010

The marketing of an operation of breeding and slaughtering sentient nonhumans as a family farm (here, Bell straddles the line) is supposed to trigger some kind of compassion for the humans. Tags: Activism Current Affairs Ethics Language animal rights factory farms family farms. After all, he's part of a family business.

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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 Person

MAY 11, 2009

Yesterday's " Do Small Victories Affect Big Picture in Animal Rights Debate? Both, of course, were seen as victories, but the article's author, Richard Foot, asks: Do such successes mean the animal rights movement is winning its long, controversial campaigns to gain the same legal protections for animals as those ascribed to humans?

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Critter News

APRIL 4, 2009

They're not necessarily questioning the ethics, but the efficacy. The feud between animal rights activists and researchers is among the bitterest in science. Indeed, it often isn't even the best science: New drugs that show great promise in mice, for example, often confer zero benefit to humans, or even prove harmful.

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Animal Person

AUGUST 5, 2009

The animals on farms are created for the sole purpose of human consumption. And their lives of exploitation, torment, torture and slaughter cannot be compared to an animal's life in the wild. I can, however, question the motives of a human who has no need to kill a sentient being or have someone kill for him, yet does so anyway.

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Animal Person

JUNE 16, 2010

From the Introduction : "Humans are fascinated by animals. For all our devotion, though, we sometimes seem not to recognize the needs and wants of animals. Do animals have rights? Do human beings have duties toward them regardless of whether they have rights? What kind of souls do animals have?

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Animal Person

AUGUST 16, 2011

Hal Herzog’s “ Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat ” (Harper 2011), though fascinating, is ultimately depressing for vegans and animal rights activists. Over at Animal Rights and AntiOppression , we’ve been discussing tactics and sharing our thoughts and experiences about what works and doesn’t work when it comes to advocacy.

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Animal Person

NOVEMBER 18, 2009

Because I've been thinking about the evolution of my own thinking--and languaging--regarding animal rights. Both animal rights groups and animal welfare groups use "compassion" frequently. Then again, so do people who kill animals for a living. No matter how they are treated, is it right to use them?

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Animal Person

MAY 9, 2009

My self-appointed job in this blog is to think critically about how our human lives intersect with those of sentient nonhumans, in action and thought. The message I hear is: tormenting animals before you brutally torture and slaughter them is wrong, but brutally torturing and slaughtering them without the preceding torment is okay.

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Animal Person

JUNE 20, 2009

Bea sent me a link to an article in Gourmet called " Humane Slaughterhouses ," by Rebecca Marx, that is absurd. They believe you can take a life that doesn't want to be taken in a humane way, and I don't agree. It’s how we treat humans, too. To treat animals fairly, he needs to treat his workers fairly."

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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 Person

MAY 23, 2009

I notice that if I use "animal rights activist" or anything with the word "rights" in it, because it's loaded and misunderstood, my listener often has an immediate bias of some kind. People have a relationship, whether or not they are aware, to the term "animal rights." They've hijacked enough already!

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Animal Person

AUGUST 16, 2009

Many bloggers who are pro-animal rights have either not used Google's AdSense or stopped because they discovered that, for instance, their anti-fur post was surrounded by ads for fur. pro creating-animals-to-skin-them-for-their-fur. Tags: Activism Current Affairs Economics Ethics.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 10, 2008

I think that the only right I ever attribute to animals is the "right" to equal consideration of interests, and anything that is expressed by talking of such a right could equally well be expressed by the assertion that animals' interests ought to be given equal consideration with the like interests of humans.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 5, 2008

In respect to having rights, animals are more like pebbles and sunbeams than they are like full-fledged human beings. Joel Feinberg , "Human Duties and Animal Rights," chap. Joel Feinberg , "Human Duties and Animal Rights," chap.

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Animal Person

JANUARY 27, 2010

I've been blogging here less partly because I've been blogging at Animal Rights & AntiOppression (check out my latest post " On Corporate Personhood and Animal Rights " and the better-than-the-post comments) but also because I've been feeling like a broken record and I don't want to bore anyone. What do you think?

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Animal Person

NOVEMBER 21, 2010

It has entertaining stories, includes animals people care about because they like them (and also addresses that concept), and it describes how the numbers of various species decreased to the point of being classified as "endangered" or worse. if we believe it's our right to do what we want with the lives of other animals. . . .

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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 Person

APRIL 26, 2009

Juluri's focus on animals used to entertain humans is intentional and speaks to the legal battle he refers to. Free Speech may be a noble ideal, but perhaps we are better served by thinking of it not only as a right but also as a privilege. They certainly depict cruelty to animals, right? What do you think?

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Animal Person

MAY 25, 2010

I've decided that 20 lessons is a good number to stop at, and today I'll discuss what are probably the two most controversial ones, about the animal rights movement. The Appeal of Cliques The first six Lessons Learned from 4 Years of Animal Person and numbers 7-10 hinted about cliques, but only the negative aspects. Lesson #11.

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10,000 Birds

JULY 11, 2012

In responding to Suzie’s post defending wildlife rehabilitation I began to think again about the areas in which animal rights and animal welfare overlap with the field of conservation, and the ways in which they don’t. And people that work in either conservation or animal welfare tend to like animals.

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Animal Person

OCTOBER 30, 2010

And when you read the reviews on various sites that sell the book, there is no mention of how we enslave animals. I'm giving the book a vegan/animal rights message because that's my lens. And the animals all go there after they are set free. Tags: Activism Books Ethics Language.

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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. It is this latter view, I believe, that is in the minds of some of those who deny that animals have rights. Let us consider the moral question first.

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Animal Person

MAY 30, 2009

Let's deconstruct: The interview reminds me of how the industry views us and how little they know about the community of people who care about the lives of the animals brought into this world for one reason only: to kill and eat them. The Humane Society of the United States is the big bully on this strange playground.

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Animal Person

AUGUST 18, 2009

While spending hours in the car I've been thinking about various issues related to sentient nonhumans, animal rights and veganism. Why is it always open season on children as long as you're teaching them about mainstream beliefs, regardless of how ethically contradictory they may be? I am an abolitionist.

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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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