Animal Ethics

JANUARY 9, 2009

A third of a century ago, when the modern animal-liberation movement was in its infancy, Martin published an essay entitled “A Critique of Moral Vegetarianism,” Reason Papers (fall 1976): 13-43. I suspect that many readers of this blog are Christians but not vegetarians. The contrast would be, for example, “health vegetarianism.”

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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

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

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

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 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. Most people hold that it is wrong to cause animals unnecessary suffering.

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Animal Person

MARCH 29, 2009

There is a general consensus that vegetarianism and veganism are different philosophically. And human psychology says that humans are far more social than rational creatures. One of the most important aspects determining human behaviour is their social environment. How about this?

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 17, 2008

More barbarous, or less barbarous, such slaughtering may undoubtedly be, according to the methods employed, but the "humane" slaughtering, so much bepraised of the sophist, is an impossibility in fact and a contradiction in terms.

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Animal Person

FEBRUARY 5, 2010

Do they suffer any more or less in death? There is a rational, and for some people a spiritual, case for being a vegetarian: Killing animals is wrong. But as Cohen experiences, humans don't live "in theory." The theory that the mind finds inescapably well-formulated is often overwhelmed and overturned by human emotions.

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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

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

JULY 7, 2008

What have humane people to say to the tremendous mass of animal suffering inflicted in the interests of the Table? Salt , The Logic of Vegetarianism: Essays and Dialogues [London: The Ideal Publishing Union, 1899], 42 [italics in original])

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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'. Interests arise, Singer contends, from the capacity to feel pain, which he labels a 'prerequisite' for having interests at all; and animals can and do suffer, can and do feel pain.

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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. Also, the have families (as if other animals don't). Meanwhile, the lizard has a male name so you'd think he'd be called "he."

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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 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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4 The Love Of Animals

JULY 3, 2010

About Animal Defenders International (ADI): With offices in Los Angeles, London and Bogota, Animal Defenders International (ADI) campaigns to protect animals in entertainment; replacement of animals in experiments; worldwide traffic in endangered species; vegetarianism; factory farming; pollution and conservation.

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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). . Much of the book deals with topics vegans have likely pondered, likely frequently.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 28, 2010

This last implies of course an improvement in ethics, as opposed to morality, as I have defined it, unless we already understand 'Do as you would be done by' as applicable to whales, cattle, chickens, and so on, as it is to human beings. Perhaps in order to qualify for a moral elite one should become a heroic vegetarian like Peter Singer.

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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 Person

SEPTEMBER 22, 2009

With regard to cruelty and suffering, it's clear from the film that the human animal has been profoundly negatively affected by climate change, but there is no attention given to nonhuman animals. I think those are the only references to diet.

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Animal Person

MAY 30, 2009

If any "drastic measures" are employed, they are to remove animals from suffering, not to impose our dietary choices on others. The Humane Society of the United States is the big bully on this strange playground. "The The Humane Society of the United States is the big bully on this strange playground.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 4, 2008

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. McCloskey , "Rights," The Philosophical Quarterly 15 [April 1965]: 115-27, at 122 [footnote omitted])

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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

APRIL 16, 2009

To the Editor: Re “ Humanity Even for Nonhumans ,” by Nicholas D. Animals raised for food suffer miserably. 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? Laura Frisk Encinitas, Calif.,

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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

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 Person

JANUARY 23, 2010

God thinks vegetarians are evil, and we want to please god. Ingesting suffering can't possibly be good for anyone's karma. But in my experience, humans will draw from anybody's history--or dig their heels deep into their own--in order to justify what they want to do: Eat animals because they enjoy the taste of them.

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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 clearly thinks that it is wrong to cause animals to suffer unnecessarily, but he appears to be somewhat ambivalent about killing animals (provided the killing is carried out humanely).

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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

DECEMBER 18, 2006

I simply believe that when animals are killed it ought to be for a good purpose, and in a manner that is respectful to their capacity to suffer. Also, I am not a vegetarian, though I attempted to be one last year (an experience I plan on posting about).

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 2, 2008

If you are already a vegetarian, make this the year that you decide to go vegan. 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. A list of Humane Charities is available here. Do it for the animals.

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