Online research in philosophy

In On Their Own Terms (Darien, CT: Nectar Bat Press, 2010), Lee Hall articulates a theory that wild animals, due to their autonomous nature, are endowed with rights, but domesticated animals lack rights because they are not autonomous. Hall then argues that the rights of wild animals require that humans let them alone, and that, despite the fact that domestic animals lack rights, humans are required to take care of them because it is humans who brought them into existence. While sympathetic to Hall's aims, this review concludes that Hall’s theory denies rights to domestic animals only by employing theoretical means that are uncomfortably analogous to how others have denied rights to all nonhuman animals.

Human moral rights place justified limits on what people are free to do to one another. Animals also have moral rights, and arguments to support the use of animals in scientific research based on the benefits allegedly derived from animal model research are thus invalid. Animals do not belong in laboratories because placing them there, in the hope of benefits for others, violates their rights.

This timely and provocative book examines the theories behind the most commonly held contemporary assumptions about animal rights. Focusing on the writings of prominent pro-liberation activists such as Peter Singer, Tom Regan and Mary Midgley, Michael P. T. Leahy argues that the animal rights movement is based upon a series of fundamental misconceptions about the basic nature of animals--beliefs which define them rationally, emotionally, and morally in too human terms. Leahy gives particular emphasis to the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein and his highly influential philosophy of language, and concludes that much of our talk about animals is dangerously anthropomorphic and encourages us to elevate them to quasi-human status. He examines such crucial issues as animal experimentation, the use of animals for food and fur, animals in captivity and vegetarianism.

Animals have moral standing; that is, they have properties (including the ability to feel pain) that qualify them for the protections of morality. It follows from this that humans have moral obligations toward animals, and because rights are logically correlative to obligations, animals have rights.

'Animals sell papers' : the value of animal stories -- Media and animal debates : welfare, rights, 'animal lovers' and terrorists -- Stars : animal performers -- Wild : authenticity and getting closer to nature -- Experimental : the visibility of experimental animals -- Farmed : selling animal products -- Hunted : recreational killing -- Monsters : horrors and moral panics -- Beginning at the end : re-imagining human-animal relations.

In Section I, the purely conceptual issue as to whether animals other than human beings, all or some, may possess rights is examined. This is approached via a consideration of the concept of a moral right, and by way of examining the claims of sentience, consciousness, capacities for pleasure and pain, having desires, possessing interests, self-consciousness, rationality in various senses. It is argued that only beings possessed actually or potentially of the capacity to be morally self-determining can be possessors of rights. In Section II, normative questions concerning the rights animals might possess if they were to be capable of possessing rights are discussed. The approach followed is that of considering the kinds of argument advanced in support of human rights, and whether these arguments, and the rights they are claimed to establish, are transferable to animals, and whether there are or might be specifically animal rights. In Section III the question of what is or could be the goal of one who recognizes and seeks to respect all rights, animal and human, is raised. In particular, the issue as to whether a goal of maximizing the satisfaction of rights could remain a coherent one if animal rights are acknowledged, is explored.

Discusses the history of animal rights; laws about how animals are treated; moral issues involved in using animals in such fields as medical research and ...

The question of the nature and extent of our moral obligations to non-human animals has featured prominently in recent moral debate. This book defends the novel position that a contradictarian moral theory can be used to justify the claim that animals possess a substantial and wide-ranging set of moral rights. Critiquing the rival accounts of Peter Singer and Tom Regan, this study shows how an influential form of the social contract idea can be extended to make sense of the concept of animal rights.

This volume provides a general overview of the basic ethical and philosophical issues of animal rights. It asks questions such as: Do animals have moral rights? If so, what does this mean? What sorts of mental lives do animals have, and how should we understand welfare? By presenting models for understanding animals' moral status and rights, and examining their mental lives and welfare, David DeGrazia explores the implications for how we should treat animals in connection with our diet, zoos, and research. Animal Rights distinguishes itself by combining intellectual rigor with accessibility, offering a distinct moral voice with a non-polemical tone.

Animal rights and moral theories -- Arguing for one's species -- Utilitarianism and animals : Peter Singer's case for animal liberation -- Tom Regan : animal rights as natural rights -- Virtue ethics and animals -- Contractarianism and animal rights -- Animal minds.