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

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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10,000 Birds

AUGUST 12, 2015

Although lip service was paid to the fact that lions are endangered and a lion was poached, the language of anger was the language of animals rights. The killing of Cecil was equated with murder, a moral crime rather than a symptom of a ecological problem. This is of course an anathema for many in the animal rights camp.

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Critter News

MAY 22, 2009

Disappointing results from Gallup's annual "moral acceptability" measure. The article also shows results on non-animal issues as well. Tags: ethics animal rights us. Not surprisingly, Republicans tend to take more conservative stances than Democrats.

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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

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 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 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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Critter News

APRIL 16, 2009

There are a lot of similarities between that movement and today's animal rights movement (such as it is.but that's another post). The drive to emancipate slaves was grounded on religious and moral grounds. Where is that religious outrage over the treatment of animals? Just look at the pro-life movement.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 19, 2009

I assumed that Hume was right in thinking that ultimately morality depends on how we feel about things. Many prominent animal-rights advocates (such as Tom Regan ) are deontologists rather than consequentialists. I described the feelings to which I wished to appeal as "generalized benevolence."

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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. Philosophers are trained to do this.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 5, 2008

According to a great many philosophers and jurisprudents, animals do not have rights for the simple reason that they are not the kinds of beings who can have rights. In respect to having rights, animals are more like pebbles and sunbeams than they are like full-fledged 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. 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

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. Hominum causa omne ius constitutum.)

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Critter News

OCTOBER 26, 2008

I came across this 2005 book from the Society & Animals Journal titled Confronting Cruelty Moral Orthodoxy and the Challenge of the Animal Rights Movement. Readership: This book will be of interest to anyone who wishes to understand the animal rights movement in England, the United States and Australia.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 10, 2008

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. I have little to say about rights because rights are not important to my argument. But this is not my position at all.

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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. First, it may be argued that only animals who can feel pain are not to be eaten. What should our moral attitude be toward eating members of these species?

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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. 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 Person

AUGUST 5, 2009

Twice in the past 24 hours (once here and once on Stephanie's blog, in the comments )I have come across the following statement: "[insert animal here] are safe from predators, get fed regularly, and are better off on farms than if they were in 'the wild.'" The animals on farms are created for the sole purpose of human consumption.

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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. Nobody wants existing animals to be slaughtered.

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Animal Person

MAY 30, 2009

Bea directed me to an interview with Dr. Elizabeth Parker , the "chair man " (my emphasis) of the Animal Agriculture Alliance at CattleNetwork, which apparently is "The Source for Cattle News." If any "drastic measures" are employed, they are to remove animals from suffering, not to impose our dietary choices on others.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 11, 2008

So far McCloskey is on solid ground, but one can quarrel with his denial that any animals but humans have interests. I should think that the trustee of funds willed to a dog or cat is more than a mere custodian of the animal he protects. The animal itself is the beneficiary of his dutiful services.

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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. Now there is no doubt that the actual treatment of animals used for food is immoral, that animals are made to suffer needlessly.

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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 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

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

OCTOBER 26, 2009

I immensely enjoyed "EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED" (even on the big screen) and eagerly anticipated "EATING ANIMALS" by Jonathan Safran Foer. Finally, if you know someone who gravitates toward the philosophical issues around our use of animals, this is a good book. Ever, in fact. Not great, but good. Imagine being served a plate of sushi.

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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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Critter News

APRIL 26, 2009

I not only learned about Harvey Milk, but about the early stages of the gay rights movement (which is ongoing today when one looks at all the right-wing flutterings over gay marriage.) It made me think though about the animal rights movement. Are we really a social movement like gay rights and civil rights?

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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. Professor D.

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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 1, 2009

But " Minding the Animals: Ethology and the Obsolescence of Left Humanism " is a great look back at how we humans have managed to always find a way to consider ourselves unique, despite what the reality of the nonhuman world tells us. Having misled us for so long about animals, science is initiating a revolution in our understanding.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 17, 2008

What the utilitarian who defends human carnivorousness must say, then, is something like this: that the amount of pleasure which humans derive per pound of animal flesh exceeds the amount of discomfort and pain per pound which are inflicted on the animals in the process, all things taken into account. Is this plausible?

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Animal Person

APRIL 1, 2010

Meanwhile, "new speciesism" is the notion that within a paradigm where rights are included for nonhuman animals, some are more deserving of rights than others for any of a variety of reasons (e.g., We're not asking that any nonhumans have freedom of speech or voting rights. Instead, it is the campaign to modify it.

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Animal Person

APRIL 26, 2009

Vamsee Juluri, Professor of Media Studies at the University of San Francisco, takes me back to graduate school when he writes of the importance of the stories we tell ourselves in " Use Free Speech to Celebrate Animal Life, Not to Enjoy Their Suffering." They certainly depict cruelty to animals, right? What do you think?

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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. After all, they "love" the animals they kill.

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Animal Person

JULY 22, 2009

Kelly wondered whether the term "vegan" is " worth fighting for " given the latest trend of seemingly oxymoronish (waiting for that one to hit Webster's) terminology from the mouths of people who want to find a way to use animals, yet make it appear that they're not. Before 6pm, he doesn't eat animals. And they're all pretty obvious.

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