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

MARCH 23, 2009

There are intractable practical differences between environmental ethics and the animal liberation movement. Very different moral obligations follow in respect, most importantly, to domestic animals, the principal beneficiaries of the humane ethic. Every paragraph is interesting.

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Critter News

JUNE 12, 2009

We want to take a building that has been a flashpoint for conflict on one moral issue and turn it into a place of dialogue on another one," said Bruce Friedrich, vice president for policy at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. PETA wants to buy the clinic owned by slain Dr. Tiller. "We

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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 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

JULY 7, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. 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.

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Animal Person

AUGUST 5, 2009

The next argument is usually something along the lines of: But animals in the wild might starve to death, and get injured, maimed or killed by predators! Finally, people who object to our moral stance jump species and say we should object to the lion killing the gazelle. Tags: Ethics Language. Yes, that's true.

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Animal Person

MAY 28, 2009

One complaint many of us have with "liberals" and "progressives" is that they tend to leave veganism and animal rights out of their sphere of concern. The Morality Of Food (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com). Related articles by Zemanta Doctors endorse vegan and vegetarian diets for healthy pregnancies (scienceblog.com).

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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

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

DECEMBER 1, 2010

As regards animals, the position is clear. If an animal has the relevant moral capacities, actually or potentially, then it can be a possessor of rights. It may for this reason be morally appropriate for us meanwhile to act towards the former animals as if they are possessors of rights. (H.

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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

FEBRUARY 10, 2008

I have little to say about rights because rights are not important to my argument. My basic moral position (as my emphasis on pleasure and pain and my quoting Bentham might have led Fox to suspect) is utilitarian. Peter Singer, " The Fable of the Fox and the Unliberated Animals ," Ethics 88 [January 1978]: 119-25, at 122)

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 15, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. Most moral vegetarians list fish and fowl as animals one should not eat. The ability to feel pain is not an obviously plausible way of morally distinguishing microorganisms from other organisms. What Meat Should Not Be Eaten?

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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 Ethics

SEPTEMBER 5, 2008

I believe that this view of the moral status of animals is radically mistaken, not because its distinguished proponents are somehow misinformed about the facts or insensitive in their attitudes, but rather because they misunderstand the basic terms of their own moral vocabulary even as applied to human beings.

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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

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 Person

APRIL 1, 2010

Citing abilities such as nonhuman great apes' ability to learn human languages suggest that animal rights advocates seek nonhuman participation in human society. We're not asking that any nonhumans have freedom of speech or voting rights. Tags: Books Ethics Language animal rights Joan Dunayer speciesism.

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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

APRIL 26, 2009

But the ease with which we can tell our stories and post our videos must not render us incapable of moral judgment and decency. It may be for the courts to decide whether cruelty to animals can pass off as free speech, but we must also rethink these important ideas as a culture. They certainly depict cruelty to animals, right?

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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. But is it true that by eating meat one is giving one’s tacit consent to the cruel treatment of animals? KBJ: I addressed this claim earlier.

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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 Person

JULY 22, 2009

I'm not saying give up on "animal rights," either. I'm not talking about morality here, I'm talking about language. I'm not talking about morality here, I'm talking about language. And the real question is, is there thought--or is there morality-without language?

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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

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. Even congenital idiots look like men.

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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 Person

AUGUST 12, 2009

They don't have collars made from animals. But they also haven't made a moral choice to not use animals. animals in research, in schools or as food). And they concentrate on the health aspects of removing animals from your diet. Tags: Activism Current Affairs Ethics Language. My dogs eat vegan dog food.

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Animal Person

OCTOBER 26, 2009

Then again, he is not against the consumption of animals, " in general " (198). There's not enough evidence for an accusation of moral relativism, but for me the message is a mixed one. And what follows, as you might imagine, is his support of "ethical meat" (for those who insist on eating animals).

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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

AUGUST 15, 2012

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 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. Perhaps it is the industry's inability to evolve morally that is behind the times.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 11, 2008

But it seems to me, nevertheless, that in general, animals are among the sorts of beings of whom rights can meaningfully be predicated and denied. We must now ask ourselves for whose sake ought we to treat (some) animals with consideration and humaneness? Joel Feinberg , "The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations," chap.

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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 30, 2007

This arises from the fact that we have duties to animals and to infants. We had better therefore take the less complicated case of animals, which we commonly suppose not to be even potential moral agents. It may of course be denied that we have duties to animals. It is not at all clear which is the true view.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

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. ( Tom Regan , The Case for Animal Rights , updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 388 [first edition published in 1983])

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Animal Person

JUNE 20, 2009

They have no moral justification for taking the lives of the nonhumans other than that certain humans like the taste of their flesh but don't want to do the killing themselves. It's absurd that this has to be said, but respecting the needs of cows is the same thing as respecting the needs of dogs. It involves not killing them.

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