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There is a profound difference between what Sea Shepherd does and what the AnimalLiberation Front does, but there are also similarities, and those similarities increase in number if a direct action by the ALF (or anyone else) is an open rescue and therefore a direct defense of sentient nonhumans being attacked by humans.
There are intractable practical differences between environmental ethics and the animalliberation movement. Very different moral obligations follow in respect, most importantly, to domestic animals, the principal beneficiaries of the humane ethic. Every paragraph is interesting.
If there has been progress in ethics recently it has been through the realization of some ethicists that animal happiness and suffering has to be considered equally with that of human beings. I should draw attention here to the remarkable book AnimalLiberation by Professor Peter Singer of Monash University.
One of the more distressing aspects of the animalliberation movement is the failure of almost all its exponents to draw a sharp distinction between the very different plights (and rights) of wild and domestic animals. But this distinction lies at the very center of the land ethic. Domestic animals are creations of man.
It would only be surprising to one who assumes that my case for animalliberation is based upon rights and, in particular, upon the idea of extending rights to animals. I make very little use of the word 'rights' in AnimalLiberation , and I could easily have dispensed with it altogether.
From this perspective, the animal-rights debate seems considerably less urgent and a relatively "safe" area of controversy. One wonders why here (as elsewhere) there is so much concern for the plight of animals and evidently so little for that of humans.
The land ethic, it should be emphasized, as Leopold has sketched it, provides for the rights of nonhuman natural beings to a share in the life processes of the biotic community. as is the humane ethic. as is the humane ethic. On the top, from left to right, distinguish between (nonhuman) animals and plants.
Some indication of the genuinely biocentric value orientation of ethical environmentalism is indicated in what otherwise might appear to be gratuitous misanthropy. Baird Callicott , "AnimalLiberation: A Triangular Affair," Environmental Ethics 2 [winter 1980]: 311-38, at 326 [ footnote omitted])
In the past I have been concerned to advocate a normative utilitarian theory from the point of view of a non-cognitivist meta-ethics. If so, then he is to be excused; but nobody today can think that any particular moral theory has an advantage over the others based on the status it accords animals.
The net result would be fewer nonhuman beings and more human beings, who, of course, have requirements of life far more elaborate than even those of domestic animals, requirements which would tax other "natural resources" (trees for shelter, minerals mined at the expense of topsoil and its vegetation, etc.)
From the perspective of the land ethic, the immoral aspect of the factory farm has to do far less with the suffering and killing of nonhuman animals than with the monstrous transformation of living things from an organic to a mechanical mode of being.
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.
According to the HPMAJ column, "Loos told cattle producers the livestock industry must show the public that there are moral and ethical justifications for taking the life of an animal to feed a person. There is no ethical justification for treating an animal inhumanely for no good reason. They need our money.
In setting out to write this paper, my intention was to fill a gap in my book AnimalLiberation. There I argued that the interests of animals ought to be considered equally with our own interests and that from this equality it follows that we ought to become vegetarian.
For the record, I am opposed to violence in behalf of animals. I can't think of anything that does more harm to the cause of animalliberation. In the long run, the best thing we can do for animals is engage in rational persuasion. I leave you this fine evening with a column by Debra Saunders.
ones to do with the painfulness of the methods of rearing and killing.) It is worth noticing that my proposal does not rule out killings which have the effect overall of fostering the wants of the largest subset of some group like a wild herd where otherwise the wants of an even larger subset will be thwarted.
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. His book on atheism is among the best I have read on that topic, which is why I used it in my Philosophy of Religion course many years ago. (I
KBJ: Nobody in the animal-rights or animal-liberation movement views intelligence as a morally significant property, at least intrinsically. What should our moral attitude be toward eating members of these species? This problem becomes crucial when the notion of consent is brought in.
As he puts it, “Until we boycott meat we are, each one of us, contributing to the continued existence, prosperity, and growth of factory farming and all the other cruel practices used in rearing animals for food” ( AnimalLiberation, 167).
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