Online research in philosophy

According to Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach (CA) to justice, a (liberal) society is just if it provides people with the means to actualize basic capabilities that are necessary for a dignified human life. In Frontiers of Justice, Nussbaum (2006) expands the CA to include sentient nonhuman animals in the sphere of justice (as opposed, for instance, to the sphere of compassion). As it does for humans, justice requires that sentient creatures have the ability to access capabilities necessary for their flourishing, (...) as specified by a ‘species norm’ dictating the central capabilities typical to an animal’s kind. Although Nussbaum (2006) does not extend the CA beyond sentient creatures, I will argue .. (shrink)

In “Do Animals have an Interest in Liberty?” Alasdair Cochrane brings some much needed attention to the ethics of animal confinement (2009a). Of particular significance is the question of whether confinement in itself is bad for nonhuman animal (hereafter, animal) well-being. If confinement conditions cause animals to suffer or frustrate their preferences it is safe to assume that liberty or freedom (following Cochrane, I use the terms interchangeably) would be instrumentally good for them. But, what about seemingly benign conditions of (...) confinement in which animals are not suffering or having their preferences frustrated? Is confinement in such cases bad for their well-being? In other words, do animals have an .. (shrink)

Canada is the world’s highest per capita municipal solid waste producer. By 2000, Canadians produced more annual waste per person than Americans; and by 2005, Canada produced nearly twice as much garbage as Japan (Conference Board of Canada 2008). By 2006, Canadians produced over 1000 kg of waste per person; 35 million tons of waste in a single calendar year (Statistics Canada 2008). The bulk of this waste ended up in landfills (ibid). In 2010, thirty percent of existing Canadian landfills (...) reached or surpassed capacity. Over one million tons of waste were exported out of Canada in 2002, much of it headed from southern Ontario to rural regions of Canada or to the United States (Statistics Canada 2005). Some cities .. (shrink)

In the Ethics,1 Spinoza presents a rigorous naturalistic view of man and nature. Man is a part of nature, a subject of the same domain—not a domain separate from it, nor a domain within that of nature. Man cannot act against nature or in an unnatural way; in comparison with any other part or creature of nature, man is not special, more important or qualitatively different. All general laws of nature apply equally to animals, inanimate objects, humans, God, the mind, (...) and the affects. Nature can be explicated based on necessary causes, and there are no extra-natural factors that affect it or anything in it: no supernatural power or metaphysical principles create or regulate it, and no separate methods of explanation .. (shrink)

Society is a system of cooperation between generations over time. While John Rawls was perhaps the most influential political philosopher of the twentieth century, he dedicated comparatively little space to questions of intergenerational justice. As one sympathetic reader puts it, “despite the small number of pages Rawls devoted to the issue of justice between generations, his account of it has drawn an impressive amount of criticism” (Wissenberg 1999, 175). Nonetheless, Rawls recognized both the importance of intergenerational justice and its challenges, (...) which “subject any ethical theory to severe if not impossible tests” (Rawls 1999, 251). In this paper, I argue that a Rawlsian can ground a .. (shrink)

I have been teaching an undergraduate course called “Ethics and Animals” for almost a decade now. It counts as a core course for the ethics certificate at my university, and is housed in my home department, Women’s Studies, so there is some presumption of feminist or progressive content. I have the syllabi from all these years laid out in front of me on my desk. What strikes me immediately is that the turnover of the reading list is at least 75 (...) percent, and sometimes even 100 percent, from year to year. Early on, I see Singer (1975) and Regan (1983), Adams (1990), DeGrazi (2002), Francione (1996), Singer and Regan again, Linzey (1987), Haraway (1989), Francione again, Wolfe (2003), Derrida (2008), Waldau (2006) .. (shrink)

Scientists and engineers often are not much interested in theoretical-ethics discussions. Frequently, like Harvard’s Cass Sunstein (2002), they propose “freemarket environmentalism,” basing environmental decisions on cost-benefit analysis and on saving the greatest number of lives for the fewest number of dollars. They say that when society overregulates, by emotively and irrationally rejecting environmental-risk decisions based only on cost-benefit analysis (CBA), it reduces manufacturing jobs, shrinks the economic pie, makes people poorer, and thus causes unnecessary deaths. To avoid these economic problems—that (...) harm everyone—Sunstein (2002, ix, 7) and others argue “for a kind of cost-benefit state” that .. (shrink)