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.

Los Angeles 40

Los Angeles Animal Rights Movement Factory Farm Factory Farming 40

Animal Ethics

JULY 8, 2012

The central case of cruelty appears to be the case where, in Locke's apt phrase, one takes "a seeming kind of Pleasure" in causing another to suffer. Some cruel people do not feel pleasure in making others suffer. Let us term this sadistic cruelty. Indeed, they seem not to feel anything.

Cruelty 40

Cruelty Los Angeles Suffering Inhumane 40

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.

Rights 40

Rights Animal Rights Movement Morals Ethical Treatment 40

Animal Ethics

MARCH 11, 2007

Animals as well as humans can suffer pain, deprivation, and unwanted death. An exception for vegetables is thus consistent with the categorical imperative; an exception for humans with respect to eating animals is not. Vegetables cannot. Hence there is a very fundamental and relevant sense in which we cannot harm a vegetable.

Unwanted 40

Unwanted Animal 2005 Morals 40