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On ANIMAL EQUALITY, by Joan Dunayer

Animal Person

Dunayer devotes a chapter each to the language used in hunting, zoos, "marine parks," vivisection and "animal agriculture." Minus that role, the term implies, such an animal has no place; if they aren't some human's companion, or their companionship fails to please, they can be abandoned or killed" (8).

Animal 100
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From Today's New York Times

Animal Ethics

To the Editor: In “ Hunting Deer With My Flintlock ” (Op-Ed, Dec. He has volunteered to kill a deer cruelly, ineptly and with an outdated weapon that causes additional suffering to the deer. He says he hunts out of a need to take responsibility for his family, who evidently live where the supermarkets offer no meat.

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John Passmore (1914-2004) on the Moral Status of Animals

Animal Ethics

In other words, what they hated—and by no means perversely—was the enjoyment of animal suffering; to the mere fact that the bears suffered as a consequence of human action they were indifferent. That, on the whole, is the Christian tradition. Controversies no doubt remain.

Morals 40
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John Passmore (1914-2004) on the History of Animal Cruelty

Animal Ethics

The degree of restriction placed on human behavior, furthermore, is relatively slight. Whereas it once used to be argued, as by Newman , that the least human good compensates for any possible amount of animal suffering, the current doctrine is that it requires a considerable good to compensate for such suffering.

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H. B. Acton (1908-1974) on Animal Rights

Animal Ethics

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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Prima Facie vs. Ultima Facie Wrongness

Animal Ethics

He clearly thinks that it is wrong to cause animals to suffer unnecessarily, but he appears to be somewhat ambivalent about killing animals (provided the killing is carried out humanely). Of course, when hamburgers aren't at stake, most of us think that it would be morally wrong to kill an animal for no good reason.