Animal Ethics

AUGUST 21, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. Would they have the right to treat you as you treat animals you breed, keep, and kill for food? Most human beings and presumably all of Harris’s aliens are persons. It is wrong for superior aliens to eat humans.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 27, 2009

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. I outline two arguments of this sort in what follows in order to illustrate some of the difficulties in evaluating moral vegetarianism.

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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

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

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 Ethics

MAY 4, 2008

The issue as to who or what may be a possessor of rights is not simply a matter of academic, conceptual interest. If, for instance, it is determined that gravely mentally defective human beings and monsters born of human parents are not the kinds of beings who may possess rights, this bears on how we may treat them.

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Animal Person

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

Several designers, one of whom is a vegetarian, are using parts of dead animals they found on the side of the road to make everything from shoes to hats to cufflinks, which evidently are difficult to produce because "[f]inding two animals who have little heads roughly the same size is just a nightmare.”. We should all be so lucky.”.

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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 Person

APRIL 30, 2009

The idea is to cultivate discussion in the forum in order to better suit visitors needing help from people like you on going vegan or understanding animal rights. 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.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 7, 2010

And here we see the inevitable logic of Vegetarianism, if our belief in the Rights of Animals is ever to quit the stage of theory and enter the stage of fact; for just as there can be no human rights where there is slavery, so there can be no animal rights where there is eating of flesh. "To

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 17, 2011

And I suspect that people become vegetarians for precisely that reason: that by doing so they overcome the residue of guilt that attaches to every form of hubris, and in particular to the hubris of human freedom. Piety is the remedy for religious guilt, and to this emotion we are all witting or unwitting heirs.

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 31, 2009

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

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Animal Person

JULY 9, 2009

I do know people who became vegan (also after watching " Earthlings ") who are now vegetarians, pescetarians and run-of-the-mill omnivores. Just that we humans can know one thing to our core, we can believe it entirely, and yet, we can do what basically is the opposite. What does this mean? Exhibit A: Mary Martin, PhD--Animal Person.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 19, 2011

To the Editor: Re “ Egg Producers and Humane Society Urging Federal Standard on Hen Cages ” (Business Day, July 8): I’m a vegetarian who turned vegan after coming to terms with the fact that just because I was eating hormone-free, antibiotic-free, even free-range organic eggs didn’t mean that egg-producing hens were living a cruelty-free life.

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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

AUGUST 14, 2009

To the so-called ethical, no less than to the political school of thought, the question of Vegetarianism is unwelcome, obtruding as it does on the polite wordiness of academic discussion with an issue so coarsely downright: "You are a member of an Ethical Society—do you live by butchery?"

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Animal Person

DECEMBER 7, 2009

I've also found that there are all kinds of activists and videos and concerts and demonstrations and books that I've never even heard of, that cause omnivores and vegetarians to go vegan. What I have discovered is that people like my husband, who went vegan overnight from omnivore, aren't exactly common, but they're also not that rare.

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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

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 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

SEPTEMBER 18, 2007

Animal rights is neither progressive nor conservative. Think of all the progressives— Michael Moore , for example—who either eat meat or go out of their way to ridicule vegetarians. Many progressives care only about human beings. Many conservatives care about animals as well as human beings.

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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

MAY 24, 2009

It seems, generally speaking, that the foods which are the costliest in suffering are also the costliest in price, whereas the wholesome and harmless diet to which Nature points us is at once the cheapest and most humane.

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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 Person

APRIL 7, 2010

Vetsulin was the perfect new product, except for the fact that it's animal (pig) based, unlike human insulins, and then there was the problem with quality control that was first reported last year. Furthermore, the insulin that was best for her back then, a long-acting one called Humulin U, for Ultralente, is no longer in production.

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Animal Person

JUNE 8, 2009

For Engber, who dispassionately describes procedures most of the time, the "advances" in the medical care of humans are all well worth what he and other vivisectionists do to dogs and other sentient nonhumans. The tiresome Hitler was a well-known vegetarian comment is included in this segment, but I found it irksome long before that.

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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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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 30, 2009

In 2008, the FDA issued its second limit on the use of cephalosporins in cows, pigs, and chickens, citing the importance of cephalosporin drugs for treating disease in humans. Protect your own health and the future effectiveness of antibiotics: Go vegetarian in 2010! Make a conscious choice to not eat meat.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 16, 2009

To the Editor: Re “ Humanity Even for Nonhumans ,” by Nicholas D. If human beings were confined, mutilated and killed, would we call it “humane” if the cages were a few inches bigger, the knife sharper, the death faster? Animals rescued from so-called humane farming establishments have been found in horrific condition.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 18, 2006

Also, I am not a vegetarian, though I attempted to be one last year (an experience I plan on posting about). I believe it will be interesting to see if these characteristics about me change, and how they change, in exploring Animal Rights issues more.

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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. Vegan vegetarians who eat only vegetables, fruit, and nuts do not completely remove all microorganisms from their food, even with repeated cleaning.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 6, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. According to this argument, the view that eating the meat of nonhuman animals is morally permissible but eating the meat of human beings is morally forbidden is analogous to racism or sexism. This argument of the vegetarian has a point.

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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. Vegetarianism is not obviously the best strategy, and its worth would have to be shown.

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Animal Person

MARCH 29, 2009

There is a general consensus that vegetarianism and veganism are different philosophically. The underlying premise is that you can know what is right (such as me knowing what's right then eating cow flesh in the form of filet mignon for a year), but that by no means will necessarily manifest in your behavior. How about this?

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 2, 2008

Eat right. If you are already a vegetarian, make this the year that you decide to go vegan. What counts as eating right? i) Do attend socially conscious circuses like Cirque de Soleil that exclusively feature human performers. (j) j) Donate only to Humane Charities that don't test on animals. Lose weight.

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Animal Person

MARCH 18, 2010

The reason we need to save the gorillas and their habitats (it's a book on gorilla "conservation") is--and this is from memory so there could be more--that gorillas have thumbs, just like humans do. We do that with cats and dogs already, right? Also, the have families (as if other animals don't).

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