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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
What The Wild Things Are: A Critique On Clare Palmer’S “What (If Anything) Do We Owe Wild Animals?”, Joel P. Macclellan
What The Wild Things Are: A Critique On Clare Palmer’S “What (If Anything) Do We Owe Wild Animals?”, Joel P. Macclellan
Between the Species
In this critique of “Clare Palmer’s “What (if anything) do we owe wild animals?”, I develop three points. First, I consider the case study which opens her essay and argue that that there are good empirical reasons to think that we should assist domesticated horses and not wild deer. Then, I critique Palmer’s claim that “wildness is not a capacity”, arguing that wildness connotes certain capacities which wild animals generally have and which domesticated animals generally lack. Lastly, I develop what I call the “supererogation problem” against Palmer’s preferred contextualist view, claiming that while the contextualist view doesn’t obligate us …
What (If Anything) Do We Owe Wild Animals?, Clare A. Palmer
What (If Anything) Do We Owe Wild Animals?, Clare A. Palmer
Between the Species
It’s widely agreed that animal pain matters morally – that we shouldn’t, for instance, starve our animal companions, and that we should provide medical care to sick or injured agricultural animals, and not only because it benefits us to do so. But do we have the same moral responsibilities towards wild animals? Should we feed them if they are starving, and intervene to prevent them from undergoing other forms of suffering, for instance from predation? Using an example that includes both wild and domesticated animals, I outline two contrasting ways of thinking about our moral responsibilities with respect to assisting …