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SPECIESISM, by Joan Dunayer, Part Deux

Animal Person

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., Today's nonhuman apes don't represent earlier stages in human development. Our common-ape like ancestor lived about 15 million years ago.

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H. J. McCloskey on Animal Rights

Animal Ethics

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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Moral Vegetarianism, Part 5 of 13

Animal Ethics

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. ARGUMENTS FOR MORAL VEGETARIANISM A variety of arguments have been given for vegetarianism. Sometimes they take such a sketchy form that it is not completely clear they are moral arguments. Tags: Moral Vegetarianism.

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On Dolphins as a Gateway to Animal Rights

Animal Person

The way I see it, there are three camps on this one: People who think that dolphins or Great Apes or chimps could function as a gateway to other animals getting rights. You could be for or against animal rights and believe the gateway theory. Would you actually actively campaign against rights for some species?

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Animal Companions

Animal Ethics

Here are three paragraphs from a recent essay by Roger Scruton : As I suggested, science provides authority for this weird morality only when clothed in moral doctrine. By abusing evolutionary biology in this way, we are able to read back the sophisticated conduct of people into the animal behavior that prefigures it.

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Leonard Nelson (1882-1927) on Duties and Rights

Animal Ethics

Under the moral law, all beings who have interests are subjects of rights, while all those who in addition to having interests, are capable of grasping the demands of duty, are subjects of duties. The defining characteristic of moral agency is autonomy ("rational self-determination"). Nonhuman animals (even apes) are in category 3.

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