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Tom Regan on Cruelty

Animal Ethics

Cruelty is manifested in different ways. 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. Let us term this sadistic cruelty. Cruelty of either kind, sadistic or brutal, can be manifested in active or passive behavior.

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H. J. McCloskey on Punishment of Cruelty to Animals

Animal Ethics

[T]here is another class of cases where the state is accorded the right to interfere with the individual when he is not interfering with any other person, namely, where cruelty to animals is involved. who cannot protect their interests. who cannot protect their interests.

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The Florida FWC illegally killed 34 pythons and one 10-year-old pregnant Boa constrictor

Reddit Animals

Reptiles that are not treated ethically simply do not make good pets. And their behavior is completely consistent with what we would understand as "animal sentience." Whether we like to admit it or not, we (culturally) view animals on a "sentience spectrum."

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Leonard Nelson (1882-1927) on Duties to Animals

Animal Ethics

Moral philosophers, even those belonging to the Critical School [the followers of Kant and Fries], have often represented duties to animals as indirect duties to oneself or to other men. For instance, maltreatment of animals is forbidden on the ground that it encourages cruelty, that is, a disposition that obstructs fulfillment of duty.

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

Animal Ethics

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. It is this latter view, I believe, that is in the minds of some of those who deny that animals have rights.

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Steven M. Wise on Farm Animals

Animal Ethics

The problem of the unjust use of farm animals is large, growing, historical, institutionalized, governmentally encouraged, and fundamentally unregulated at either the state or federal level. Farm animals are treated essentially as raw materials. Instead it aids industry boards that exist solely to sell animal products.

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

Animal Ethics

Once a definite social movement got under way in the West with its objective the restricting of man's treatment of animals, it moved with relative rapidity. Moral philosophers began to regard it as an obvious truth that it is wrong to treat animals cruelly. But not so far as seriously to limit man's domination of the world.