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I'd love to know whether philosophical reflection and argumentation has had an impact on your moral attitudes toward animals or on the moral attitudes towards animals of someone you know. Let us hear from you.
There are intractable practical differences between environmental ethics and the animal liberation movement. Very different moral obligations follow in respect, most importantly, to domestic animals, the principal beneficiaries of the humane ethic. Every paragraph is interesting.
For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. CONCLUSION There is no doubt that moral vegetarianism will continue to be a position that attracts people concerned with the plight of animals and with humanitarian goals. One final point.
For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. One might assume—although again this assumption may not be jusitified [sic]—that Mr. One might assume—although again this assumption may not be jusitified [sic]—that Mr. Morse was using this consideration as a moral argument for vegetarianism.
For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. ARGUMENTS FOR MORAL VEGETARIANISM A variety of arguments have been given for vegetarianism. Sometimes they take such a sketchy form that it is not completely clear they are moral arguments. Tags: Moral Vegetarianism.
Ethical vegetarianism is the thesis that killing and eating animals is morally wrong whenever equally nutritious plant-based alternatives are available. The case for ethical vegetarianism starts with several uncontroversial premises. It is not just a few outspoken animal rights fanatics who hold this view.
Let us think of the more moral members of society as a moral elite, much as the generality of scientists form a scientific elite. I hope I do not need to stress that such a moral elite must not be confused with a social or intellectual elite. I am myself not so heroic. I eat eggs though they may come from battery hens.
Again, all or most men in whom the moral consciousness is strongly developed find themselves from time to time in conflict with the commonly received morality of the society to which they belong: and thus—as was before said—have a crucial experience proving that duty does not mean to them what other men will disapprove of them for not doing.
Since a number of "AnimalEthics" readers reside in the northern Illinois area, I thought I would call your attention to an exciting lecture that is taking place on Northern Illinois University's campus. She specializes in Environmental Ethics, Human-AnimalEthics, and Moral Psychology. Jenni, Ph.D.
For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. What Is an Animal Part? The last example suggests the difficulty of making a clear distinction between an animal part and an animal product. They suggest that any simple moral vegetarianism is impossible. KBJ: Bingo.
Surely any sentient or conscious being has states that matter to it in a positive or negative way—pleasure matters to an animal in a positive way, pain or fear in a negative way. Given the logic of morality, we should extend our moral attention to those states that matter to it when our actions affect that being.
First of all, I want to tell you how much I enjoy AnimalEthics. I especially liked your posting from Gardner Williams’ “The Moral Insignificance of the Total of All Value.” I would love if you could mention AnimalWork.org on AnimalEthics to let your readers know about it. I read it all the time.
A third of a century ago, when the modern animal-liberation movement was in its infancy, Martin published an essay entitled “A Critique of Moral Vegetarianism,” Reason Papers (fall 1976): 13-43. You will, therefore, agree with Martin about moral vegetarianism but not about Christianity. Another reason is moral.
In the past I have been concerned to advocate a normative utilitarian theory from the point of view of a non-cognitivist meta-ethics. I assumed that Hume was right in thinking that ultimately morality depends on how we feel about things. Perhaps Smart was still thinking (in 1980) of Kant versus Bentham, rationality versus sentience.
For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. SOME PROBLEMS OF MORAL VEGETARIANISM With respect to traditional moral vegetarianism some problems immediately come to the fore. Who exactly is not supposed to eat animals or products of animals?
Dear Professor Burgess-Jackson, The Michigan Law Review ’s companion journal First Impressions this week published an online symposium on Agricultural Animals and Animal Law. The symposium includes contributions that discuss the moral status of nonhuman animals.
For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. People who do not eat meat for moral reasons tend to be less brutal than people who do eat meat. People who eat meat after reflection on the morality of eating meat are less brutal than people who eat meat without such reflection.
I've been an ethical vegan for 12 years; for me it was a straightforward transition. Once I put two and two together and realized where my food came from and the moral inconsistency of it all there was no turning back. I must advocate on behalf of the animals in other ways. AnimalEthics has helped me become a better coach.
There is a difficulty about drawing from all this a moral for ourselves. But then we can say this because we can say that all those are bad moralities, whereas we cannot look at our own moralities and declare them bad. It is natural to feel sympathy for animals who are suffering. This is bad faith.
It was the first lecture series of its kind in german speaking world organized by the members of the Interdisziplinäre Arbeitsgemeinschaft Tierethik (literally “Interdisciplinary Study Group on AnimalEthics”) – an initiative of students. The results of the lectures are written down in this book.
He seems to think that the demand for free-range pork is a demand for wild pork, when in fact it's a demand for morally acceptable conditions for the pigs. Here is a New York Times op-ed column about free-range pigs. The author is confused. In other words, people want to eat not wild pigs but domestic pigs raised in humane conditions.
For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. The Argument from Animal Rights A stronger argument is made by people who maintain that animals have rights. In particular, it has been argued that animals have a right to life. According to Benn, only moral agents have rights.
My basic moral position (as my emphasis on pleasure and pain and my quoting Bentham might have led Fox to suspect) is utilitarian. I make very little use of the word 'rights' in Animal Liberation , and I could easily have dispensed with it altogether. I have little to say about rights because rights are not important to my argument.
For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. The Argument from Human Grain Shortage All of the clearly moral arguments for vegetarianism given so far have been in terms of animal rights and suffering. Tags: Moral Vegetarianism. KBJ: I’m speechless.
Philosophers have shown that the standard reasons offered to exclude animals from the moral circle, and to justify not assessing our treatment of them by the same moral categories and machinery we use for assessing the treatment of humans, do not meet the test of moral relevance. 41 in A Companion to Bioethics , 2d ed.,
Currently, I am very interested in social and political philosophy and ethical issues. I felt a strong sense of connection to the ideas of Peter Singer while taking Ethics from Keith. Currently, I do not believe that killing an animal is prima facie morally wrong. So, I took the plunge.
One restriction on the absolutism of man's rule over Nature is now generally accepted: moral philosophers and public opinion agree that it is morally impermissible to be cruel to animals. Controversies no doubt remain.
A nice moral bond of union, truly, between colonies and motherland! "We interknit ourselves with every part of the English-speaking world," said the journal of the Cosme colony , in Paraguay, describing its Christmas celebration of 1898, "by the most sacred ceremony of over-eating." Good living," unfortunately, is a somewhat equivocal term.
It would remain true, of course, that the vegetarian diet is more limited, since every pleasure available to the vegetarian is also available to the carnivore (not counting the moral satisfactions involved, of course—which would be question-begging), plus more which are not available to the vegetarian so long as he remains one.
But when a moral being is feeling a pleasure or pain that is deserved or undeserved, or a pleasure or pain that implies a good or a bad disposition, the total fact is quite inadequately described if we say 'a sentient being is feeling pleasure, or pain'.
If Smith thinks that plant rights and animal rights stand or fall together, then he is confused, for there is a morally relevant difference between plants and animals, namely, that only the latter are sentient. Addendum: Smith appears not to understand the animal-rights movement. Animals have weight on the moral scale.
Now when we ask what is the general nature of morally good actions, it seems quite clear that it is in virtue of the motives that they proceed from that actions are morally good. Thus a morally good action need not be the doing of a right act, and the doing of a right act need not be a morally good action.
If you'd like to read Andrew Tardiff's 1996 essay "Simplifying the Case for Vegetarianism," write to me (by clicking "Contact" in the sidebar) and I'll send a copy. The essay is fabulous.
Moral philosophers, even those belonging to the Critical School [the followers of Kant and Fries], have often represented duties to animals as indirect duties to oneself or to other men. Now, maltreatment of animals may have just that effect; nevertheless the argument in question takes no account of the whole truth.
First, if my explanation of the importance of moral conduct is correct, then Kant should not be viewed as a man obsessed with duty for duty's sake. He believed, of course, that one ought always to do one's duty and also that only acts motivated by respect for moral law have moral worth. not from duty ).
Failure to understand this leads to the above-mentioned false restriction of the scope of duties—a dangerous error far more prevalent in ethics than the opposite error of fallaciously extending the scope of duties. Leonard Nelson , System of Ethics , trans. His "subject of rights" is what philosophers now call a moral patient.
Some indication of the genuinely biocentric value orientation of ethical environmentalism is indicated in what otherwise might appear to be gratuitous misanthropy. The biospheric perspective does not exempt Homo sapiens from moral evaluation in relation to the well-being of the community of nature taken as a whole.
Some suspicion may arise at this point that the land ethic is ultimately grounded in human interests, not in those of nonhuman natural entities. The question of ultimate value is a very sticky one for environmental as well as for all ethics and cannot be fully addressed here.
One of the central propositions in Kant 's ethical system is that persons, and persons alone, are proper objects of respect. But since something can correctly be regarded as an object of moral action if, and only if, it is worthy of respect, it follows that persons, and persons only, can be objects of moral action.
I suspect that many regular readers of AnimalEthics are already vegetarians. That's because those who read AnimalEthics with regularity know that there are many compelling reasons to adopt a vegetarian lifestyle. This precept is variably stated as follows: Avoid killing or harming any living being.
The dark secret behind factory farm profits—cruel and inhumane animal husbandry—is getting out. Factory farmers treat animals inhumanely for no good reason. Since morally decent individuals oppose treating animals inhumanely for no good reason, factory farming is becoming an increasingly hard sell.
The predicament in such a non-moral case will concern only the individual and a few associates. When the ultimate values concerned are moral ones, on the other hand, and more particularly altruistic ones, the case is different; for the individual in such a dilemma has all society on his conscience. It need not.
Nor is it true that the worth of an animal''s life, any more than of a man''s, can be measured simply by the amount of "agreeable sensation," a fallacy often put forward by those who cage animals in menageries, on the plea that they are there well tended and saved from the struggle for existence.
I propose that the moral significance of the suffering, mutilation, and death of non-human animals rests on the following, which may be called the overflow principle: Act towards that which, while not itself a person, is closely associated with personhood in a way coherent with an attitude of respect for persons.
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