Animal Ethics

APRIL 19, 2016

"There is no longer dispute among serious scientists that humans aren’t the only animals who have the capacity to suffer physically and mentally. Elephants, great apes, orcas, dogs, cats, and many other animals can experience depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and compulsive disorders.

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Animal Person

JULY 25, 2010

Thanks, once again, to James LaVeck and Jenny Stein of Tribe of Heart for kindly and carefully bringing attention to what should be a stunningly-obvious moment of hypocrisy by groups that exist to advocate for and save animals. Tags: Activism Current Affairs Ethics Film animal rights Tribe of Heart.

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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 23, 2009

I've used the term "animal activism" lately as an experiment. 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. First, note that now PeTA is an "animal advocacy group."

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Critter News

JUNE 5, 2009

Thanks to Patty at Animal Rights-Do Whatever is Necessary for reposting this list of 40 ways to help lab animals. There are many excellent books on issues related to animal research. Know Your Adversary Part of being an effective activist on animal research issues is knowing the arguments in support of animal research.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 4, 2010

Here is a New York Times blog post about legal rights for animals.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 9, 2009

Here is a New York Times op-ed column about legal rights for animals. Peter Singer is quoted.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 10, 2008

Why is it surprising that I have little to say about the nature of rights? It would only be surprising to one who assumes that my case for animal liberation is based upon rights and, in particular, upon the idea of extending rights to animals. But this is not my position at all.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 4, 2008

For the record, I am opposed to violence in behalf of animals. I can't think of anything that does more harm to the cause of animal liberation. In the long run, the best thing we can do for animals is engage in rational persuasion. You might wonder how this could work. You might wonder how this could work.

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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. If they are to be swayed, the change is likely to come from witnessing the realities of the fate endured by animals. Nor have I dealt with advances in the legal protection of animals both in practice and in theory.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 28, 2008

From this perspective, the animal-rights debate seems considerably less urgent and a relatively "safe" area of controversy. One wonders why here (as elsewhere) there is so much concern for the plight of animals and evidently so little for that of humans.

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Animal Person

AUGUST 26, 2009

Today's message and call to action is from David Cantor of Responsible Policies for Animals (thanks, Mike!). Responsible Policies for Animals Members & Friends! Meanwhile, donate when you can, get friends to become Responsible Policies for Animals members --and thank you for your support! . Best wishes, . David Cantor.

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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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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 30, 2012

The legal rights of nonhuman animals might first be achieved in any of three ways. For example, the Treaty of Amsterdam that came into force on May 1, 1999, formally acknowledged that nonhuman animals are “sentient beings” and not merely goods or agricultural products. Wise , “ The Evolution of Animal Law Since 1950 ,” chap.

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Animal Person

OCTOBER 30, 2010

What begins as a personal quest becomes a mission as the brave little acorn-cracker realizes that animals are enslaved everywhere. I understand this is a children's book, but particularly if you're trying to be a voice for animals, it would behoove you to make connections that might be missed otherwise. Or any vegan message.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 24, 2012

With regard to wild animals, the general policy recommended by the rights view is: let them be! Tom Regan , The Case for Animal Rights , updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 361 [italics in original] [first edition published in 1983]) Too little is not enough. (

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 5, 2008

Sharon McEachern has a blog post about animal rights in Switzerland.

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10,000 Birds

JULY 24, 2012

Today I’m exploring a couple questions that have been bouncing in my head for a while…I’d love to hear your thoughts…I’m not calling into question animal rights, just the focus of the movement. – The Great Ornithologist Felonious Jive Animal rights. This makes perfect sense.

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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 Ethics

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Hi Keith, You may be interested in a new post on Ethics Soup regarding rights of farm animals. Ethics Soup is a fairly new blog and I'm looking for ways to drive traffic to the blog to gain some readers. If you find this post informative, would you consider providing a link to it? You can read the post here.

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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., To secure the philosophical foundation for animal rights requires abandoning utilitarianism. (

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 12, 2012

That individuals can be harmed without knowing it has important implications for the proper assessment of the treatment of animals. Modern farms (so-called factory farms), for example, raise animals in unnatural conditions. Those animals who are raised intensively, then, let us assume, do not know what they're missing.

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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. Perhaps Smart was still thinking (in 1980) of Kant versus Bentham, rationality versus sentience.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 6, 2008

Here is a common argument in favor of animal rights: 1. If babies have rights, then animals have rights. Babies have rights. Animals have rights. Frey, "Animal Rights," Analysis 37 [June 1977]: 186-9.) Frey, "Animal Rights," Analysis 37 [June 1977]: 186-9.)

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 27, 2012

Unlike [John] Rawls, whose considered views on our duties regarding animals are unclear at best, [Immanuel] Kant provides us with an explicit statement of an indirect duty view. Moral agents are not nonrational, do not have "only a relative value," and are not things. Moral agents (rational beings) are ends in themselves. (

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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. But I read two types of articles about 4-H: either about how the kids are proud of what they've done, or about how upset they are that the animal they have come to love is going to his or her death.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 23, 2008

Hi Keith, My name is Evelyn and I'm a big fan of Animal Ethics, reading it regularly, I enjoy your posts and share your love for animals. I'm writing a blog about animal rights and have linked back to you here.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 20, 2014

To the Editor: Once again people associated with the animal rights group PETA ( letter , June 19) have tried to disparage the commitment circuses have for animal care and conservation. and Barnum & Bailey are dedicated to providing the very best of care for all our animals, especially the Asian elephant.

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Animal Person

MAY 26, 2010

My random number of 20 Lessons Learned From 4 Years of Blogging at Animal Person (for the others go to #1-6 , #7-10 and #11 & 12 ) ends today with #13-20, which is far longer than I thought it would be. The design of Animal Person is probably as uninviting as it could possibly be. Big fail here for Animal Person.

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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. This is not what the rights view implies.

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Animal Person

JUNE 8, 2009

There's a vague sense that perhaps he cares about the dogs or thinks that what he does to them might present an ethical dilemma, but the overwhelming feeling is that it's all worth it. You can buy some extra time by presoaking the animal in a basin of ice water.)" How long should one animal be used in the lab before it is euthanized?"

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Animal Ethics

MAY 28, 2012

With the argument of the present chapter serving as the backdrop, the conclusion we reach is that to deny consciousness or a mental life to mammalian animals is an expression of human chauvinism. (

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 20, 2007

By disguising anthropomorphic (in other words, pre-scientific) ways of thinking as science, Wise rediscovers the enchanted world of childhood, in which animals live as Beatrix Potter describes them, in an Eden where “every prospect pleases, and only man is vile.” And that explains, in part, the appeal of the animal-rights movement.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 8, 2012

Indeed, precisely because one expects indifference from animals but pity or mercy from human beings, people who are cruel by being insensitive to the suffering they cause often are called "animals" or "brutes," and their character or behavior, "brutal" or "inhuman."

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Critter News

AUGUST 23, 2011

The fur is flying over plans by the People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals to run a porn site in the group’s fight against animal abuse. Peta.xxx will have sexually explicit content and address animal rights issues. They are worried about animals but they don’t care about the value of women,” Landolt said.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 14, 2012

Theoretically, one could, it is true, create legal rights that accord with or protect moral rights, but that is not the same as creating these moral rights in the first place. If there are moral rights, they do not "come to be" in the way legal rights do. (

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