Improving ethical attitudes to animals with digital technologies: the case of apes and zoos

Ethics and Information Technology 23 (4):825-839 (2021)
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Abstract

This paper examines how digital technologies might be used to improve ethical attitudes towards nonhuman animals, by exploring the case study of nonhuman apes kept in modern zoos. The paper describes and employs a socio-ethical framework for undermining anti-ape prejudice advanced by philosopher Edouard Machery which draws on classic anti-racism strategies from the social sciences. We also discuss how digital technologies might be designed and deployed to enable and enhance rather than impede the three anti-prejudice strategies of contact and interaction, enlightenment, and individualization. In doing so, the paper illuminates the broad potential and limitations of digital technology to both harm and benefit animals via its effects on human ethical attitudes. This examination provides guidance for future projects and empirical work on using digital technologies to promote moral respect for a range of nonhuman animals in different settings.

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Simon Coghlan
University of Melbourne

References found in this work

Tactical deception in primates.A. Whiten & R. W. Byrne - 1988 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 11 (2):233-244.
Ethics and Animals: An Introduction.Lori Gruen - 2011 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Entangled empathy: an alternative ethic for our relationships with animals.Lori Gruen - 2015 - New York: Lantern Books, a division of booklight.
Human rights without human supremacism.Will Kymlicka - 2018 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 48 (6):763-792.

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