In research employing animals we commonly do things to them which would be grossly immoral to do to humans. This paper discusses three possible justifications for so treating animals: (a) it is violating the autonomy of rational beings which makes actions immoral, and animals are not autonomous; (b) due to our participation in the human community, we have special obligations to humans that we do not have to animals; and (c) human life is morally more worthy than animal life. The (...) conclusion of this discussion is that none of these three propositions justifies the routine sacrifice of animal interests for human benefit. Particular attention is paid to the idea that human life is morally more worthy than animal life, because I believe that to be the most common justification for our sacrifice of animal interests in research. The claim of greater worth is considered and criticized from both utilitarian and Kantian perspectives, and the inference from superior worth to being entitled to exploit one's inferiors is also criticized. The paper concludes by recommending a governing principle for research with animals which would bring that research into line with the rejection of hierarchical worldviews, social orders, and value systems which characterizes modern moral progress. Keywords: animal rights, animal research, moral worth, moral superiority, moral community, fairness CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

John Alexander entered the Powell Street branch of the San Francisco Savings Bank shortly after 2:00 p.m. yesterday. He took his place in line and quietly waited his turn. But when he reached the window of teller Jane East, he quickly took a pistol from his pocket and began to order her to give him all the money in her cash drawer. Just as Alexander started to make his demand, Barney Gleason, a bank customer, rushed up to East’s window, shoved (...) Alexander to the side, and simultaneously knocked Alexander’s pistol to the floor. Bob Mann, the guard on duty, saw the gun, quickly scooped it up, and turned the tables on Alexander, who was soon handcuffed and taken off by the police. James Metzger, the bank manager, warmly thanked Gleason and said he would recommend him for a “San Francisco Certificate of Merit.” These certificates are awarded monthly to citizens who risk their lives for their fellow San Franciscans. (shrink)

This article is a critical review of Richard Ryder’s recent book, Speciesism, Painism and Happiness: A Morality for the Twenty-First Century. There are brief summaries of Ryder’s positions on the moral significance of happiness, the meaning of "speciesism," the moral theory he calls "painism," and his criticisms of democracy and the moral importance of death. Though sympathetic with Ryder’s overall project, the reviewer questions whether Ryder has discovered the essence of morality, the prejudice of speciesism, a more coherent and workable (...) morality, a fault with democracy, and the moral value of death. (shrink)

This article is a critical review of Richard Ryder’s recent book, Speciesism, Painism and Happiness: A Morality for the Twenty-First Century. There are brief summaries of Ryder’s positions on the moral significance of happiness, the meaning of "speciesism," the moral theory he calls "painism," and his criticisms of democracy and the moral importance of death. Though sympathetic with Ryder’s overall project, the reviewer questions whether Ryder has discovered the essence of morality, the prejudice of speciesism, a more coherent and workable (...) morality, a fault with democracy, and the moral value of death. (shrink)

Abstract:During the early 19th century, a peculiarly systematic way of organizing books emerged in Germany. This systematization, which purported to be a rational organization of subject matter, was an outgrowth of the philosophy of Hegel. This article attempts to outline Hegel's organizational practice. It argues that Hegel's encyclopedia was a reaction against the Enlightenment encyclopedia, and that it attempted to restore the systematic mindset of pre-modern reference books. Yet it did this, not in a straightforward fashion, but by developing a (...) method for organizing material that both stresses the interconnectedness of knowledge and promises to be highly scalable. In its attempt to trace the Hegelian organizational method, this article revisits and calls attention to a forgotten work in Hegel scholarship by Michael John Petry, who was the first writer to seriously stress the importance of classification in Hegel's work. This article is an attempt to demonstrate that Hegelianism and information organization can be brought into fruitful and mutually beneficial dialogue. (shrink)

The title of this symposium, “Formal Simplicity as a Weight in the Acceptability of Scientific Theories,” to some people might seem to suggest that we are to be making positive proposals about how the concept of simplicity could be defined for formalized languages, defined so as to figure in a formalized theory of confirmation. I must confess at the start that I do not have any such ambitious object in view. I now feel, indeed, that premature formalizations have little power (...) to illuminate the philosophically interesting questions which cluster round the problem of the role of simplicity in scientific thinking. So in this short paper I wish merely to present some elementary considerations, not very novel ones, concerning the role which simplicity seems to me to play in our non-demonstrative reasoning about matters of empirical fact. Although many writers have sought to analyze the logical character of such reasoning, little unanimity has been attained in their over-all views; thus it is that though the considerations which I wish to present are elementary, they are not wholly uncontroversial. But because these matters are elementary in nature, I do feel it appropriate in discussing them to use homely examples of uncomplicated kinds, rather than elaborate examples drawn from the more sophisticated reaches of scientific theory; in doing so, I am taking it for granted that scientific inference as regards its logical character is fundamentally a refinement of everyday thinking, rather than a procedure of some essentially different nature. (shrink)