Animal Ethics

JULY 7, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. So, even if animals are killed painlessly and raised for food in humane ways, it is wrong to kill them. It is also probable that very subnormal adult human beings do not.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 16, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. The Argument from Glass-Walled Slaughter Houses Mel Morse, former president of the Humane Society of the United States, once remarked: “If every one of our slaughter houses were constructed of glass this would be a nation of vegetarians.”

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 8, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. If so, the lactovo vegetarian should have no qualms about someone’s eating such legs. But keep in mind that many lactovo vegetarians care about how animal products are produced, not just the fact that they are animal products.

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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. The next assumption is no less dubious.

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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. Becoming a vegetarian is not merely a symbolic gesture. First, it is dubious that becoming a vegetarian would have much effect on present practice. In fact, animals used for food do suffer a great deal. causing a decline in U.S.

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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 Ethics

AUGUST 2, 2009

This man argues that vegetarianism is immoral. on the principle that animals are morally equivalent to humans." Vegetarianism is based on the principle that animals matter, morally. It says nothing about whether animals are "morally equivalent" to humans (whatever that means). Why is it immoral?

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 6, 2010

Either the vegetarian argues on utilitarian premises, or he tries to supplement or replace his utilitarianism with some plausible non-utilitarian principles implying the wrongfulness of rearing and killing animals for food. Either the vegetarian argues on utilitarian grounds or the vegetarian argues on nonutilitarian grounds.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 28, 2010

Let us think of the more moral members of society as a moral elite, much as the generality of scientists form a scientific elite. I hope I do not need to stress that such a moral elite must not be confused with a social or intellectual elite. I am myself not so heroic. I eat eggs though they may come from battery hens.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 15, 2006

According to this study published today in the British Journal of Medicine , "Higher IQ at age 10 years was associated with an increased likelihood of being vegetarian at age 30." The study itself doesn't explain why individuals with higher IQs are more likely to be vegetarians as adults, but Catharine L.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 21, 2007

The author, Daniel Lazare, is hostile to vegetarianism. Why is it that so many progressives think it's silly to accord moral status to animals? Then again, progressives think abortion is merely a medical procedure, devoid of moral significance. Here is an essay from The Nation, which bills itself as " a progressive journal."

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Animal Person

FEBRUARY 6, 2010

He writes: There is a rational, and for some people a spiritual, case for being a vegetarian: Killing animals is wrong. If you eat meat you cannot logically find it morally or ethically repugnant to eat a particular meat (I’m setting cannibalism aside here.). I'll set it aside here.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 20, 2008

Ethical vegetarianism is the thesis that killing and eating animals is morally wrong whenever equally nutritious plant-based alternatives are available. The case for ethical vegetarianism starts with several uncontroversial premises. It is not just a few outspoken animal rights fanatics who hold this view.

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Animal Person

FEBRUARY 5, 2010

There is a rational, and for some people a spiritual, case for being a vegetarian: Killing animals is wrong. If you eat meat you cannot logically find it morally or ethically repugnant to eat a particular meat (I’m setting cannibalism aside here.). But as Cohen experiences, humans don't live "in theory." The theory is sound.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 6, 2008

Even if, contrary to fact, none of this feed grain could be used to nourish humans elsewhere in the world, at least the land which yields the grain could be sown with high-protein-yielding crops, such as soybeans, according to Singer. But even this fails to establish a case for vegetarianism.

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Animal Person

AUGUST 16, 2011

The bottom line is that there are many reasons why human-animal interactions are so often inconsistent and paradoxical. Thousands of studies have demonstrated that human thinking about nearly everything is surprisingly irrational” (65). . The campaign to moralize meat has largely been a failure. But I’m merely making his point.

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 31, 2009

Salt , The Logic of Vegetarianism: Essays and Dialogues [London: The Ideal Publishing Union, 1899], 109-10 [italics in original]) The only real cure for the evil is the growing sense that the lower animals are closely akin to us, and have Rights.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 17, 2008

The plea that animals might be killed painlessly is a very common one with flesh-eaters, but it must be pointed out that what-might-be can afford no exemption from moral responsibility for what-is. Salt , The Logic of Vegetarianism: Essays and Dialogues [London: The Ideal Publishing Union, 1899], 51-2 [italics in original])

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Animal Person

APRIL 30, 2009

Here were some odd points to ponder: I think Bella, the main character, is a vegetarian. The good ones have chosen not to "feed" on humans, but the bad ones haven't. The good ones are morally superior to the bad ones because they don't eat humans. She is not a vegan. There are good vampires and bad vampires.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 2, 2011

I propose that the moral significance of the suffering, mutilation, and death of non-human animals rests on the following, which may be called the overflow principle: Act towards that which, while not itself a person, is closely associated with personhood in a way coherent with an attitude of respect for persons.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 4, 2009

A second vegetarian strategy is simply to reject as immoral the balancing of animal pains against human pleasures. Deontological stops are not uncommon in philosophical discussions of moral questions. We can call this move the deontological stop. We can call this move the deontological stop. Perhaps the best known is in G.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 24, 2009

22): Mr. Steiner might feel less lonely as an ethical vegan—he says he has just five vegan friends—if he recognized that he has allies in mere vegetarians (like me), ethical omnivores and even carnivores. Go vegan, go vegetarian, go humane or just eat less meat. Alexander Mauskop New York, Nov. Chris Taylor Lawrence, Kan.,

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 17, 2011

It is asking the burger-stuffer to come clean ; to show just why it is that his greed should be indulged in this way, and just where he fits into the scheme of things, that he can presume to kill again and again for the sake of a solitary pleasure that creates and sustains no moral ties. Duty requires us, therefore, to eat our friends.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 3, 2008

There I argued that the interests of animals ought to be considered equally with our own interests and that from this equality it follows that we ought to become vegetarian. Peter Singer , "Killing Humans and Killing Animals," Inquiry 22 [summer 1979]: 145-56, at 145 [italics in original; endnote omitted])

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

which may be called the Consistency Trick—akin to that known in common parlance as the tu quoque or "you're another"—the device of setting up an arbitrary standard of "consistency," and then demonstrating that the Vegetarian himself, judged by that standard, is as "inconsistent" as other persons.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 16, 2010

Keith: As a historian or even an anthropologist, one could make the argument that being a vegetarian limits one's ability to understand other cultures. I, like you, am not a complete vegetarian. Do you eat the human flesh served to you by your hosts? In other words, there are moral limits to science, as to law.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 7, 2008

According to Singer , the principle of the equal consideration of interests 'requires us to be vegetarians'. This is a moral principle, and states that 'the interests of every being affected by an action are to be taken into account and given the same weight as the like interests of any other being'.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 14, 2009

It will be said that animal husbandry is one of the most inefficient and destructive industries on the planet, and that the planet cannot survive unless humans change their diets. I believe that as time passes, humans will, for various reasons, change their diets. Some will reduce their consumption of meat for the sake of the animals.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 24, 2009

For pastoralism belongs rightly to another and earlier phase of the world's economics, and as civilisation spreads it becomes more and more an anachronism, as surely as flesh-eating, by a corresponding change, becomes an anachronism in morals.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 23, 2006

In his fresh and candid first post (available here ), Jonathan admitted that he is struggling with the issue of ethical vegetarianism. He thinks that the treatment of animals in factory farms is morally unjustifiable, and yet, he continues to support those practices financially by purchasing and eating meat and animal products.

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Animal Person

MAY 30, 2009

The Humane Society of the United States is the big bully on this strange playground. Often confused with American Humane Association, they raise tens of millions, not to ‘save the animals’ as most people assume but to further the causes of vegetarianism and ending animal agriculture."

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

I suspect that many regular readers of Animal Ethics are already vegetarians. That's because those who read Animal Ethics with regularity know that there are many compelling reasons to adopt a vegetarian lifestyle. a vegetarian diet is associated with a lower risk of death from ischemic heart disease.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 24, 2008

But this question of Butchery is not merely one of kindness or unkindness to animals, for by the very facts of the case it is a human question of no slight importance, affecting as it does the social and moral welfare of those more immediately concerned in it.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 18, 2007

She specializes in Environmental Ethics, Human-Animal Ethics, and Moral Psychology. Some of her notable publications include: “The Power of the Visual,” “Western Environmental Ethics,” “Vices of Inattention,” and “The Moral Responsibilities of Intellectuals.”

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Animal Ethics

MAY 21, 2008

Of the many dense prejudices through which, as through a snow-drift, Vegetarianism has to plough its way before it can emerge into the field of free discussion, there is none perhaps more inveterate than the common appeal to "Nature." Never underestimate the human capacity for rationalization !

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 18, 2006

Currently, I do not believe that killing an animal is prima facie morally wrong. Also, I am not a vegetarian, though I attempted to be one last year (an experience I plan on posting about). I think this is a very powerful moral argument that is compelling to anyone who gives animals moral consideration.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 2, 2008

As a recent convert to vegetarianism, I found that it reinforced my feeling that the eating of living, thinking, emotional creatures is just plain wrong. We pay lip service to more humane treatment of the animals that we eat, but how many of us look beyond the label on the package of chicken cutlets? To the Editor: Nicholas D.

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