Animal Ethics

JULY 7, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. Consequently, the killing of some animals for food, if done painlessly, is not morally objectionable. According to Benn, only moral agents have rights. It is clear that few animals, if any, are moral agents in this sense.

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Animal Person

JANUARY 18, 2010

While no study has documented how frequent these clashes have become, therapists agree that the green issue can quickly become poisonous because it is so morally charged. She warns wives and mothers not to move a family toward vegetarianism before everyone is ready. Tags: Current Affairs Ethics Gray Matters.

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Animal Person

JULY 22, 2009

Or bake some vegan cookies for a vegetarian friend who's convinced that she cannot survive without eggs and butter. I'm not talking about morality here, I'm talking about language. And the real question is, is there thought--or is there morality-without language? Tags: Activism Current Affairs Ethics Language.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 12, 2007

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.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 17, 2008

And the other is taking up vegetarianism. But what about the vegetarian alternative? How do we know but what, once we got used to a vegetarian diet, we would find that our pleasure is scarcely diminished at all? Here what one needs to do is calculate the pleasure, interest, satisfaction, etc.,

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Animal Person

AUGUST 12, 2009

But they also haven't made a moral choice to not use animals. If PCRM can get more people to try a "vegan diet" for 21 days as suggested, which is what in my experience used to be called "strict vegetarianism" (and which is no better), that's an actual decrease in animal use for those people. My dogs eat vegan dog food.

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Animal Person

AUGUST 16, 2011

He is an unabashed speciesist, putting humans on “a different moral plane from that of other animals” (11) due to various reasons, such as our “vastly greater capacity for symbolic language, culture, and ethical judgment” (11). The campaign to moralize meat has largely been a failure. But I’m merely making his point.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 2, 2009

This man argues that vegetarianism is immoral. on the principle that animals are morally equivalent to humans." Vegetarianism is based on the principle that animals matter, morally. It says nothing about whether animals are "morally equivalent" to humans (whatever that means). Why is it immoral?

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 28, 2010

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.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 6, 2008

There is no doubt a good deal of truth in this last point as well, and we are here presented with a serious moral problem concerning the world food supply. But even this fails to establish a case for vegetarianism. Michael Fox , "'Animal Liberation': A Critique," Ethics 88 [January 1978]: 106-18, at 116-7)

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 23, 2009

There are two approaches a vegetarian might take in arguing that rearing and killing animals for food is morally offensive. He might argue that eating animals is morally bad because of the pain inflicted on animals in rearing and killing them to be eaten. Or he could object to the killing itself.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 24, 2009

According to this BBC story, city officials in Ghent, Belgium, are encouraging all residents to go vegetarian one day a week. As a result, the main menu in restaurants on Thursdays will be vegetarian. Starting in September, schools will serve vegetarian meals to schoolchildren on Thursdays as well.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 6, 2010

Either the vegetarian argues on utilitarian premises, or he tries to supplement or replace his utilitarianism with some plausible non-utilitarian principles implying the wrongfulness of rearing and killing animals for food. Either the vegetarian argues on utilitarian grounds or the vegetarian argues on nonutilitarian grounds.

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Animal Person

MAY 30, 2009

Often confused with American Humane Association, they raise tens of millions, not to ‘save the animals’ as most people assume but to further the causes of vegetarianism and ending animal agriculture." Perhaps it is the industry's inability to evolve morally that is behind the times. I wish their mission was to end animal agriculture.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 10, 2009

A nice moral bond of union, truly, between colonies and motherland! Salt , The Logic of Vegetarianism: Essays and Dialogues [London: The Ideal Publishing Union, 1899], 81) What is likely to be the effect on the national character of such swinish gorging? Good living," unfortunately, is a somewhat equivocal term.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 18, 2007

Since a number of "Animal Ethics" 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-Animal Ethics, and Moral Psychology. Jenni, Ph.D.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 15, 2007

Hi Keith, I'm writing to request a copy of Andrew Tardiff's essay "Simplifying the Case for Vegetarianism." 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.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 18, 2006

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.

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 31, 2009

Salt , The Logic of Vegetarianism: Essays and Dialogues [London: The Ideal Publishing Union, 1899], 109-10 [italics in original]) The only real cure for the evil is the growing sense that the lower animals are closely akin to us, and have Rights.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 6, 2009

Beyond the environmental impacts of meat production there is a basic ethical issue involved. To suggest that eating one and not the other represents a conflict of ethics is preposterous. In the name of moral consistency I became a vegetarian four years ago. 31), while humorous enough, masks more serious issues.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 26, 2008

Prince Fielder of the Milwaukee Brewers is a moral vegetarian.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 3, 2008

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.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

which may be called the Consistency Trick—akin to that known in common parlance as the tu quoque or "you're another"—the device of setting up an arbitrary standard of "consistency," and then demonstrating that the Vegetarian himself, judged by that standard, is as "inconsistent" as other persons.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 7, 2008

According to Singer , the principle of the equal consideration of interests 'requires us to be vegetarians'. This is a moral principle, and states that 'the interests of every being affected by an action are to be taken into account and given the same weight as the like interests of any other being'.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 17, 2008

The plea that animals might be killed painlessly is a very common one with flesh-eaters, but it must be pointed out that what-might-be can afford no exemption from moral responsibility for what-is. Salt , The Logic of Vegetarianism: Essays and Dialogues [London: The Ideal Publishing Union, 1899], 51-2 [italics in original])

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 5, 2007

Indeed, the ability of intelligent and educated people to avoid confronting the issue, or to offer endless evasions and rationalizations of delay on a question as straightforward as vegetarianism, even when they have heard and (reluctantly) accepted the argument in favor, is astonishing as well as depressing.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 14, 2008

The question of whether animals possess rights is once again topical, largely as a result of the recent surge of interest in animal welfare and in the moral pros and cons of eating animals and using them in scientific research. Arguments to show that animals do have rights, therefore, are at a premium. (

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Animal Ethics

MAY 24, 2009

For pastoralism belongs rightly to another and earlier phase of the world's economics, and as civilisation spreads it becomes more and more an anachronism, as surely as flesh-eating, by a corresponding change, becomes an anachronism in morals.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 21, 2008

Of the many dense prejudices through which, as through a snow-drift, Vegetarianism has to plough its way before it can emerge into the field of free discussion, there is none perhaps more inveterate than the common appeal to "Nature."

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

We may grant that so long as no scruple has arisen concerning the morality of flesh-eating, or any other barbarous usage, such practices may be carried on in innocence and good faith, and therefore without personal demoralisation to those who indulge in them.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Of all the ways of influencing behavior, rational persuasion is the most effective, the most secure (in the sense of long-lasting), and the most defensible from a moral point of view. Still others will do so because they believe, rightly or wrongly, that vegetarianism (or demi-vegetarianism) is good for human beings.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 2, 2008

If you are already a vegetarian, make this the year that you decide to go vegan. If you are like most people, you think that it is seriously morally wrong to contribute to unnecessary animal suffering. Below, I offer several reasons as to why you should add resolution 11 to your list of resolutions, but first a reality check.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 30, 2009

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. It is argued that beef cattle and hogs are protein factories in reserve.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 4, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. Becoming a vegetarian is not merely a symbolic gesture. First, it is dubious that becoming a vegetarian would have much effect on present practice. In fact, animals used for food do suffer a great deal. causing a decline in U.S.

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Animal Person

FEBRUARY 5, 2010

There is a rational, and for some people a spiritual, case for being a vegetarian: Killing animals is wrong. If you eat meat you cannot logically find it morally or ethically repugnant to eat a particular meat (I’m setting cannibalism aside here.). Tags: Current Affairs Ethics Food and Drink Gray Matters.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 6, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. The Argument from Speciesism If there is some doubt whether the arguments from monkeys and from glass walls should be considered moral arguments, there can be no doubt about the moral import of the argument from speciesism.

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Animal Person

FEBRUARY 6, 2010

He writes: There is a rational, and for some people a spiritual, case for being a vegetarian: Killing animals is wrong. If you eat meat you cannot logically find it morally or ethically repugnant to eat a particular meat (I’m setting cannibalism aside here.). Tags: Current Affairs Ethics Language.

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