I argue that, contrary to what Tom Regan suggests, his rights view implies that subsistence hunting is wrong, that is, killing animals for food is wrong even when they are the only available food source, since doing so violates animal rights. We can see that subsistence hunting is wrong on the rights view by seeing why animal experimentation, specifically xenotransplanation, is wrong on the rights view: if it’s wrong to kill an animal to take organs to save a human life, (...) it’s wrong to kill an animal to eat that animal to save a human life or improve human health. I discuss these arguments’ implications for animal rights-based vegan advocacy, insofar as some people claim that they don’t feel their best on vegan diets and so their eating meat is morally justified. I argue that such an attempt to justify consuming animal products fails on Regan’s rights view, but discuss some attempts to morally excuse such violations of animals’ rights. These attempts are inspired by Regan’s attempts at potentially excusing animal rights advocates’ using medications developed using animals. (shrink)

According to the mysteriousness objection, moral rights are wholly mysterious, metaphysically suspect entities. Given their unexplained character and dubious metaphysical status, the objection goes, we should be ontologically parsimonious and deny that such entities exist. I defend Tom Regan's rights view from the mysteriousness objection. In particular, I argue that what makes moral rights seem metaphysically mysterious is the mistaken tendency to reify such rights. Once we understand what moral rights are and what they are not, we will see that (...) rights talk is neither mysterious nor nonsensical. I then consider a second aspect of Regan’s rights view that some critics have found “mystifying.” I circumvent this objection by identifying and defending an alternative rights-conferring property. I conclude by pointing out the moral significance of these findings vis-à-vis our current treatment of nonhuman animals. (shrink)

Because spaying/neutering animals involves the harming of some animals in order to prevent harm to others, some ethicists, like David Boonin, argue that the philosophy of animal rights is committed to the view that spaying/neutering animals violates the respect principle and that Trap Neuter Release programs are thus impermissible. In response, I demonstrate that the philosophy of animal rights holds that, under certain conditions, it is justified, and sometimes even obligatory, to cause harm to some animals in order to prevent (...) greater harm to others. As I will argue, causing lesser harm to some animals in order to prevent greater harm to others, as TNR programs do, is compatible with the recognition of the inherent value of the ones who are harmed. Indeed, we can, and do, spay/neuter cats while acknowledging that they have value in their own right. (shrink)

This article explores the question of what is a “subject-of-a-life,” Tom Regan’s celebrated term for a living entity to whom, he argued, we humans owe ethical duty. I return to ancient concepts of entelechy and teleological organization, arguing that, stripped of theological implications, they provide a usable basis for modern theorizing about organism and an ethical foundation for condemning such practices as transgenic engineering. Every creature, it is argued, has its own inherited formal identity, which it strives to sustain. This (...) reality is ethically pertinent knowledge which humans are obliged to respect and honor. (shrink)

Robert Nozick’s oft-quoted review of Tom Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights levels a range of challenges to Regan’s philosophy. Many commentators have focussed on Nozick’s putative defence of speciesism, but this has led to them overlooking other aspects of the critique. In this paper, I draw attention to two. First is Nozick’s criticism of Regan’s political theory, which is best understood relative to Nozick’s libertarianism. Nozick’s challenge invites the possibility of a libertarian account of animal rights – which is (...) not as oxymoronic as it may first sound. Second is Nozick’s criticism of Regan’s axiological theory, which is best understood relative to Nozick’s own axiological inegalitarianism. While Nozick’s axiology has distasteful consequences, it should not be dismissed out-of-hand. Nozick’s challenges to Regan – and Nozick’s wider animal ethics – are rich and original, warranting attention from contemporary theorists for reasons beyond mere historical interest. (shrink)

Tom Regan argued that animal sports cannot be morally permissible because they are cruel and the animals do not voluntarily participate. While Regan is correct about actual animal sports, we should ask whether substantially revised animal sports could be permissible. We can imagine significant changes to certain animal sports, such as horse racing, that would avoid cruelty and even allow the animals to make their own choices. Where alternative options are freely available, we can consider the horses to have preference (...) autonomy in that they make their own decisions, and we could thereby claim that we have their hypothetical consent. Though this scenario would be sufficient to constitute permissible animal games, these activities could not amount to sports because the events would be unpredictable with the animals not following the rules in the precise way that sport requires. Therefore, permissible animal sports are not possible. (shrink)

Review of Bug Music: How Insects Gave Us Rhythm and Noise, by David Rothenberg. This book proposes that the human sense of rhythm derived in part from insect sounds.

This article argues that the representation of animals in Romantic poetry contributes to the contemporary philosophical and ethical discussion of the question of animals by providing a literary expression of the latter. Conversely, reading depictions of animals in Romantic poetry with their philosophical implications in mind throws light on the oppositions between different human groups, such as between Orientals and Occidentals, or between males and females, in Romantic poetry. These categories connect with each other in different ways in the works (...) of three prominent Romantic poets: William Wordsworth, Lord Byron and Alexander Pushkin. Animals in their poetry reflect their views of various entities falling under the category of the self and that of the other; and indicate the relationships of these entities with such concepts as language, difference, passivity and subjectivity. These concepts find their formulations in the contemporary philosopher Jacques Derrida’s writing on the question of the animals. My analysis will focus on three poems: Wordsworth’s “There was a Boy”, Byron’s “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” and Pushkin’s “The Fountain of Bakhchisaray”. It will offer a reading of them side by side with Derrida’s essay “And Say the Animal Responded”. (shrink)

The Moral Complexities of Eating Meat, Ben Bramble and Bob Fischer eds., Oxford University Press, 2015. (An open-access version of this article is available at the link below.) -/- Vegans who do not eat roadkill are immoral. Consider that the most common rationale for veganism is avoiding unnecessary harm to animals. It is a well-known fact that animals are killed in the cultivation of plant foods such as wheat, corn and soybeans. Mice, rabbits and other field creatures are routinely run (...) over by tractors or cut in two by harvesters. To buy commercial plant food therefore is to sustain the system responsible for these deaths. Road-killed animals, by contrast, are already dead, so the decision to consume them does not perpetuate a lethal process. A diet that consists entirely of plant food therefore will be responsible for a greater number of animal fatalities than a mostly-plant diet that also includes roadkill but no other meat. -/- So goes the argument of Donald Bruckner’s cheeky paper, “Strict Vegetarianism is Immoral,” a standout chapter of The Moral Complexities of Eating Meat. Anyone who follows the animal ethics literature will be familiar with defences of meat eating premised on a rejection of animal rights. Bruckner’s ingenious argument by contrast is premised on animals having rights. This captures something of the collection in general, which offers original moves and thought-provoking conclusions with impressive frequency. (shrink)

This paper provides a review of Cynthia Willett's book Interspecies Ethics. Willett aims to outline the beginnings of biosocial eros ethics – an ethical outline that sketches the potentiality of a cross-species cosmopolitan ideal of compassion, derived through acknowledging and emphasizing the existence of spontaneous, playful interaction between social animals. Though this book is recommended for offering an innovative framework from which to explore the possibility of non-anthropocentric cross-species ethic, readers should be wary of expecting to find a fully-fledged moral (...) program detailing how this would work. (shrink)

This article is a book review of the book Animals and African Ethics by Kai Horsthemke. I argue this is a brilliant book that gives a clear overview of how Africans see animals. However, I also contend that Horsthemke could have had a more charitable approach to African ideas and explore how an African theory of animal rights can be built upon this.

In their recent book, Sherry Colb and Michael Dorf defend the following ethical theses: sentience is sufficient for possessing the right not to be harmed and the right not to be killed; killing sentient animals for food is almost always seriously wrong; aborting pre-sentient fetuses raises no moral concerns at all; and aborting sentient fetuses is wrong absent a reason weighty enough to justify killing the fetus. They also discuss strategies and tactics for activists: They oppose the use of graphic (...) images by activists on tactical grounds, and they categorically oppose the use of violence by activists in either movement. In the present review article, I provide additional support for theses and ; I raise concerns for their defense of thesis ; and I argue that their discussion of thesis is incomplete in important ways. Finally, I defend the judicious use of graphic images and videos on epistemic, psychological, and pedagogical grounds. (shrink)

This paper analyses and deconstructs the transhumanist commitment to animal rights and the well-being of all sentient beings. Some transhumanists have argued that such a commitment entails a moral imperative to help non-human animals overcome their biological limitations by enhancing their cognitive abilities and generally “uplifting” them to a more human-like existence. I argue that the transhumanist approach to animal welfare ultimately aims at the destruction of the animal as an animal. By seeking to make animals more like us the (...) freedom to live their life as the kind of creature they are is being denied to them. It is an attempt to tame the beast, to make it less alien and more acceptable to us, thus reaffirming the myth of human superiority. (shrink)

The dilemma I explore in this paper concerns two advocacy-oriented aims which, though not mutually exclusive per se, are nonetheless quite difficult for vegans to jointly satisfy in practice. The first concerns the need for individual vegans to rebuff certain familiar stereotypes about vegans as ‘militant,’ ‘angry,’ ‘self-righteous,’ etc.; the second concerns the need to tactfully resist familiar prompts to, as it were, conversationally parse the logic of one’s own convictions ad nauseam. To better explain, and partially respond to, this (...) dilemma, I exploit an instructive analogy with the ‘analytic question’ in epistemology. I conclude by suggesting that, just as not having a fully worked-out theoretical answer to this question is not grounds for epistemic skepticism, neither is not having a fully developed ‘theory of veganism’ a reason for not becoming vegan. (shrink)

Peter Singer’s arguments against the morality of the typical American diet focus on the pain of animals, and lead to the conclusion that we must become committed vegans. His approach ignores the impact that different psychological capacities can legitimately have on our moral appraisal of the interests of beings. Although we ought to eat less meat because of the externalized environmental costs that factory farming inflicts upon future people, an ideal diet may contain some environmentally sustainably raised meat. Finally, the (...) perception of ethical puritanism in committed vegans may be an obstacle to achieving the real reductions in animal suffering that they advocate. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with a problem that arises within ethical frameworks that imply that it is wrong for humans to consume meat or other animal products when vegan alternatives are available. The specific problem relates to the ethical difficulties associated with beginning a relationship with a companion animal that may require at least some animal-based foods in order to survive. I follow some psychologists in referring to the ethical problems associated with such companionship as the Vegetarian’s Dilemma. After approaching (...) this dilemma from the perspective the animal rights approach and welfarist consequentialism, I argue that some important insights can be gained by viewing this dilemma through a virtue ethical lens. In particular, I point out the ethical significance of the fact that the very same virtues that might lead one to adopt a vegan lifestyle may also support adoption of a carnivorous companion. (shrink)

This article reviews Charles Danten’s Slaves of Our Affection: the Myth of the Happy Pet, outlining and evaluating Danten’s arguments for the abolition of the pet trade. The review delineates Danten’s main points; that the commodification of companion animals is antithetical to their welfare, that veterinarians, pet food manufacturers and breeders serve the dictates of the economic bottom line rather than the interests of animals, and that the majority of pet owners, while well-intentioned, are ill-equipped to meet the physiological and (...) psychological needs of their animal companions. The reviewer asserts that Danten’s arguments are generally successful, but suggests that the text might have benefited had the author engaged more with the work of other animal ethicists, particularly when making potentially controversial claims about the moral acceptability of euthanizing healthy, but unwanted, animals. (shrink)

ONE EARTH When the birds are gone Will we care? Will we sit outside And mourn the quiet? Will there be A sense of loss? Of missing beauty? Of Nature diminished? Or will we merely Go inside And turn on the TV? When there are No more animals And we own the earth What will we do? When the wind Is no longer Soft and warm But a raging monster Tearing off roofs And whipping fire, Will we curse Nature Or (...) ourselves? And, when the oceans die And we own The stinking cesspool And the earth Is a giant landfill, Where will we go? Mary de La Valette July 2015 AND LANGUAGE The breeze weaves a path Through the forest. She bears messages. She is soft and warm and gentle But urgent. The poplar rustles her leaves. The spruce sways. The squirrels chatter. They understand. There is trouble coming. Mary de La Valette July 2015. (shrink)

This article argues that aspects of the animal rights view can be constructively modulated through a communitarian approach and come to promote animal welfare through the social contexts of expanded caring communities. The Nordic welfare state is presented as a conceivable caring community within which animals could be viewed and treated appropriately as co-citizens with solidarity based rights and duties.

The moral consideration of nonhuman animals and the critique of speciesism have been defended by appeal to a variety of ethical theories. One of the main approaches in moral and political philosophy today from which to launch such a defense is egalitarianism, which is the view that we should aim at favoring the worse off by reducing inequality. This paper explains what egalitarianism is and shows the important practical consequences it has for nonhuman animals, both those that are exploited by (...) humans and those in need of aid in the wild. Egalitarianism implies rejecting speciesism, and in practice it prescribes ceasing to exploit nonhuman animals as well as assisting them. Moreover, because they are worse off in comparison to humans, egalitarianism prescribes giving priority to the interests nonhuman animals. Due to this, egalitarianism gives us extra reasons to defend them beyond those entailed by other nonspeciesist approaches. (shrink)

This paper is a teaching tool which instructors of animal ethics may assign to students to help them evaluate those students’ most frequent arguments for the moral acceptability of eating meat. Specifically, the paper examines the arguments that eating meat is morally acceptable because it is historically widespread, necessary, and natural. The aim of discussing these arguments is to pave the way for a more fruitful and focused discussion of the canonical texts of the animal ethics literature.

Rewilding is positioned as ‘post’-conservation through its emphasis on unleashing the autonomy of natural processes. In this paper, we argue that the autonomy of nature rhetoric in rewilding is challenged by human interventions. Instead of joining critique toward the ‘managed wilderness’ approach of rewilding, however, we examine the injustices this entails for keystone species. Reintroduction case studies demonstrate how arbitrary standards for wildness are imposed on these animals as they do their assigned duty to rehabilitate ecosystems. These ‘Goldilocks’ standards are (...) predicated on aesthetic values that sanction interventions inconsistent with the premise of animal sovereignty. These include culling, relocations and sterilizations of animals that demonstrate the kind of autonomy championed in rewilding rhetoric. Drawing from Donaldson and Kymlicka’s framework for political animal categories, we conclude by arguing that rewilding needs to re-position itself in one of two ways. Either it should align itself more closely to mainstream conservation and embrace full animal sovereignty without Goldilocks conditions, or it should commit to taking full responsibility for reintroduced animals, including supplementary feeding and care. (shrink)

Cole and Stewart’s 2014 release, Our Children and Other Animals: The Cultural Construction of Human-Animal Relations in Childhood, offers an important sociological contribution to liberatory vegan research. The book's primary value is its critical examination of childhood socialization processes that habituate humans to speciesism through the institutions of family, education, and mass media.

In this paper I explore a new approach to the ethics of animal experimentation by conceiving of it as a form of rescue. The notion of rescue, I suggest, involves some moral agent performing an action or series of actions, whose end is to prevent or alleviate serious harm to another party, harm that otherwise would have occurred or would have continued to occur, had that moral agent not intervened. Animal experiments that are utilized as a means to alleviate human (...) illnesses mirror the structure of rescue cases and this means that we can and should apply principles of rescue to illuminate the moral status of animal experimentation. To do this I consider various principles of rescue that might justify animal experimentation. I’ll argue that all of these rescue principles are either not independently plausible, or else they fail to imply that animal experimentation is morally justified. This suggests that it is quite difficult to morally justify animal experimentation when conceived as a form of rescue. (shrink)

In animal ethics, some ethicists such as Peter Singer argue that we ought not to purchase animal products because doing so causally contributes to unnecessary suffering. Others, such as Russ Shafer-Landau, counter that where such unnecessary suffering is not causally dependent on one’s causal contributions, there is no duty to refrain from purchasing animal products, even if the process by which those products are produced is morally abhorrent. I argue that there are at least two plausible principles which ground the (...) wrongness of purchasing animal products produced by morally abhorrent means. First, respect for the wishes and dignity of animals who have been wrongly tortured and killed requires treating their losses as losses, and not exploiting the ‘spoils’ of their losses. Second, we ought to refrain from rewarding wrongdoing, which we fail to do when we purchase wrongfully produced animal products. (shrink)

The article defends ethical vegetarianism, which, for present purposes, is stipulatively taken to be the view that it is morally wrong to eat animals when equally nutritious plant-based foods are available. Several examples are introduced to show that we all agree that animals deserve some direct moral consideration and to help identify and clarify several commonsense moral principles—principles we all accept. These principles are then used to argue that eating animals is morally wrong. Since you no doubt accept these principles, (...) the argument demonstrates that consistency with your own beliefs and values commits you to the immorality of eating meat and requires you to alter your eating behavior accordingly. [Article available online at no cost at links listed above.]. (shrink)

Bell’s spaceship ‘paradox’ [1] in special relativity is a particularly good one to examine with students, because although it deals with accelerated motions, it can be dissolved with elementary space–time diagrams. Furthermore, it forces us to be very clear about the relativity of simultaneity, proper length, and the ‘reality’ of the Lorentz contraction.

Our goal here is to determine the spatial and temporal constraints on communication between two observers at least one of which moves with constant proper acceleration in two-dimensional Minkowski spacetime. We take as a simplified model of communication one observer bouncing a light signal off another observer. Our derivations use only elementary mathematics and spacetime diagrams, and hence are accessible to students taking their first course in special relativity. Furthermore, the qualitative features of our results can be easily explained to (...) non-physics students in courses that discuss special relativity at a ‘conceptual’ level. (shrink)

As with other emerging technologies, advanced robotics brings with it new ethical and policy challenges. This paper will describe the flourishing role of robots in society—from security to sex—and survey the numerous ethical and social issues, which we locate in three broad categories: safety & errors, law & ethics, and social impact. We discuss many of these issues in greater detail in our forthcoming edited volume on robot ethics from MIT Press.

The recent book Rush Rhees on Religion and Philosophy contains a stimulating collection of writin~s by Rush Rhees on a variety of topics in the philosophy of religion. Comprising accounts of personal, religious and moral struggles, these essays provide a refreshing change from the often dry, overly technical approach to philosophy writing. Despite spanning more than thirty years, Rhees' s essays disclose a fairly consistent philosophy.of religion with a clear emphasis. Since he was Wittgenstein's student and long-time friend as well (...) as a literary executor ofWittgenstein's writings, it is not surprising that Rhees's comments on the philosophy of religion reveal a distinctly Wittgensteinian approach, both in content and style. Moreover, Rhees's particular way of doing philosophy of religion seems, in retrospect, to have set the course that subsequent philosophy of religion of the Wittgensteinian type would take. (shrink)