Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Review Of Shelly Kagan's How To Count Animals, More Or Less, Benjamin A. Elmore

Between the Species

In How to Count Animals, more or less, Shelly Kagan sketches and argues for a hierarchical account of moral status. Although the book is fairly lengthy at 304 pages of text, Kagan is correct in calling it a sketch, since what this book provides us with is a foray into one aspect that a comprehensive ethical theory must include, in his view, if it is to be plausible. Even so, the work that he does, if one accepts hierarchy, opens up many different avenues to be further pursued in animal ethics.

The Question Of Veganism, The Dangers Of Moral Extensionism, And A Pragmatist Ecofeminist Alternative, Erin Mckenna

Between the Species

In this paper I argue that the framework of moral extensionism relies on human exceptionalism and human centeredness. I discuss the dangers of human exceptionalism and human centeredness using the work of ecofeminist philosophers Val Plumwood, Carol Adams, Lori Gruen, A. Breeze Harper, and Lisa Kemmerer. These ecofeminists each articulate alternative approaches to human relations with other animal beings. There are tensions among these alternatives, though, and I use a pragmatist perspective to interrogate their different positions on how other animal beings should or should not figure into the diets of human beings. I will argue that we need a …

Extending The Impairment Argument To Sentient Non-Human Animals, Christopher A. Bobier

Between the Species

I defend a new argument against raising and killing sentient non-human animals for food: It is immoral to non-lethally impair sentient non-human animals for pleasure, and since raising and killing sentient animals for gustatory pleasure impairs them to a much greater degree, that also is immoral. This argument is structurally analogous to Perry Hendricks’s impairment argument for the immorality of abortion. Proponents of the anti-abortion argument have to be, on grounds of moral consistency, proponents of the anti-meat eating argument: the very same considerations they appeal to to justify their anti-abortion impairment argument apply to the impairment argument against raising …

Jati Kutta: The Street Dog, The Servant, And Me, Lisa Warden Phd

Between the Species

Caste, class, race, and species collide in this narrative nonfiction piece about an injured street dog, his foreign rescuer, and her Dalit housekeeper in Ahmedabad, India.

Animal Morality: Control Without Reflective Self-Awareness, Sabina M. Schrynemakers

Between the Species

Non-human animals can act morally by acting on the basis of moral emotions such as concern without being morally responsible in the sense of deserving praise or blame. They can unconsciously select from different motivations and so have the requisite control over their behavior for moral normativity yet lack awareness of their reasons as reasons and so lack the self-reflection and understanding required for full moral responsibility. This is an alternative to Mark Rowlands’ compatibilist construal of non-human animals as moral subjects.

Review Of Federico Zuolo's Animals, Political Liberalism And Public Reason, Josh Milburn

Between the Species

No abstract provided.

Skill Or Slaughter In ‘Fair Chase:’ What Does Animal Resistance Tell Us About Modern Sports Hunting, Erica Von Essen, Michael P. Allen

Between the Species

In philosophy of sport, the internal justification for sports hunting is often that the chase empowers hunters to become skilled performers. However, this internal justification for sport hunting is challenged by two factors. One is the growing awareness that the hunted non-human animals themselves are skilled performers, demonstrating agency is resisting their hunters. Another is that recent developments in hunting practice undermine the internal justification by reducing the necessity for hunters to refine their performance skills, in effect allowing them to rely on technology and shortcuts in place of sportsmanship. Both factors reveal important justificatory deficits in modern sports hunting …

The Intuitiveness Of Animal Rights: Audi's Epistemology, Kantian Ethics, And Regan's Case, Andrew Nesseler

Between the Species

In this paper, I will argue that ethical intuitionism and Robert Audi’s work on its moral epistemology as applied to Kant’s formula of humanity can offer grounding and support for an animal rights position that approaches that of a view articulated by Tom Regan. The combination of these positions will be done by testing our intuitions concerning non-rational individuals—leading one, I argue, to an animal rights view. Then I will briefly note the skeptical concerns about the role of intuitions in our knowledge of the moral status of human animals and non-human animals alike. Ultimately, I will conclude that intuitions …

"Porphyry, The Argument From Species Overlap, And Rationality", Daniel A. Dombrowski

Between the Species

No abstract provided.

Netting Nemo: A Moral Ontology For The Scaled And Slimy, Zachary Piso

Between the Species

Here I develop an ontology of aquarium fish that articulates the relationships that many fishkeepers hold with their fish and considers how these relationships generate moral responsibilities. The investigation explores the norms already regulating hobbyist discourse and practice, charting the values that are cited to justify recommendations and restrictions and demonstrating how morally responsible fishkeeping participates in a particular moral ontology. Principally I aim to show that the subject of moral consideration in fishkeeping is rarely the individual fish and only sometimes the fish species, but paradigmatically the “community tank.” In getting fish, one has responsibilities to pair compatible species …

Centering Animality In Law And Liberation: The Zoopolitics Of Reclaiming The Animal In Personhood, Paulina Siemieniec

Between the Species

Although there is widespread agreement that the property status of nonhuman animals is indefensible, the debate about how to remedy their situation is ongoing. This paper explores three possibilities for approaching the issue of legal status: (1) extending the existing concept of personhood beyond the human to other animals; (2) developing an alternative legal subjectivity for nonhuman animals that is neither property nor personhood; (3) redefining personhood in animal terms while retaining the rights-bearing significance of personhood and decentering the human from animal subjectivity in law. I offer a critique of the first two strategies and defend the third on …

A Critique Of Scanlon On The Scope Of Morality, Benjamin A. Elmore

Between the Species

In this essay, I argue that contractualism, even when it is actually used to construe our moral duties towards non-human animals, does not do so naturally. We can infer from our experiences with companion animals that we owe moral duties to them because of special relationships we are in with them. We can further abstract that we owe general moral duties to non-human animals because they are the kinds of beings that we can have relationships with, and because of the capacities that make possible this relational capacity. This type of approach better explains our duties to non-human animals and …

Review Of Andy Lamey's Duty And The Beast: Should We Eat Meat In The Name Of Animal Rights?, Angus Taylor

Between the Species

In Duty and the Beast, Andy Lamey confronts arguments for what he calls new omnivorism – recent arguments that profess to undermine the moral injunction against eating meat that is so prominent in the animal protection (animal rights) movement. Instead of rejecting animal protection as such, the new critics claim that in the pursuit of this objective the consumption of some meat is permissible or even obligatory.

Wild Animal Suffering And The Laissez-Faire Intuition, Beka Jalagania

Between the Species

Are we required to assist wild animals suffering due to natural causes? The laissez-faire intuition (LFI) says that we are not. On this view, although we may have special duties to assist wild animals, there are no general requirements to care for them. In this article I critically examine the origins of the LFI and assess its reliability. In particular, I attempt to provide answers to the questions such as how people who have come to endorse this intuition form it and whether it is a genuine moral intuition. I conclude that the LFI is the result of various external …

Arguing For Vegetarianism: (Symbolic) Ingestion And The (Inevitable) Absent Referent — Intersecting Jacques Derrida And Carol J. Adams, Mariana Almeida Pereira

Between the Species

In this paper I draw together the notion of the absent referent as proposed by Carol J. Adams, and the notions of literal and symbolical sacrifice by eating the other — or ingestion — advanced by Jacques Derrida, to characterize how animals are commonly perceived, which ultimately forbids productive arguments for vegetarianism. I discuss animals as being literally and definitionally absent referents, and I argue, informed by Derrida’s philosophy, that it is impossible to aim at turning them into present referents without reinforcing symbolic ingestion by linking symbolic ingestion to epistemic appropriation or conceptualization. With this, I highlight the ethical …

Review Of Lorraine Daston's Against Nature, Kyle Johannsen

Between the Species

Lorraine Daston's Against Nature seeks to explain why, in spite of compelling objections to the contrary, human beings continue to invest nature with moral authority. More specifically, she claims that our propensity to moralize nature is traceable in part to human nature. Though I criticize Daston for not paying adequate attention to John Stuart Mill's narrow sense of 'nature', I also highly recommend her book.

Human Identity, Animal Identity, And Reflective Endorsement, Rachel D. Robison-Greene

Between the Species

In this paper, I will argue that philosophers have overestimated the value of reflective endorsement. Introspection does not, as many philosophers have supposed, shine a searchlight on a person’s authentic identity. Our “selves” are not as transparent to us as we would like to think. In fact, much of the work done in an introspective mood is confabulation or rationalization rather than genuine self-discovery. I will argue that if this is the case, the outputs of the reflective endorsement process are not inherently normative in the way that thinkers like Harry Frankfurt and Christine Korsgaard have suggested.

If this is …

Review Of Lisa Kemmerer's Sister Species: Women, Animals, And Social Justice, Marine Lercier

Between the Species

What do we have in common with animals, and what do these women have in common? We are Sister Species, if not sisters at all. Lisa Kemmerer invites us to realize that we are more alike than different and to become aware of what our animal brothers and especially sisters experience: the suffering they endure because of our absurd inconsistencies and oppositions - even within the animal rights movement, often unbeknownst to us. The goal: more effective discourse and action, educating us to the other in the face of a norm imposed by a power, a discourse of normalization …