Philosophy Commons^™

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 …

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 …

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.

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 …

Imagine: A Critical Examination Of Activist Methods, Lisa Kemmerer

Between the Species

Activists perpetually seek new methods for confronting, reducing, and ultimately ending animal/anymal exploitation. Powerful industries repeatedly work to shut down every means that activists adopt. Through creative analogy, this piece facilitates critical analysis of one of the contemporary movement’s most popular methods of direct action.

Humans, Elves, And Greenland Sharks: Against Kagan’S Distributive Argument For Hierarchical Moral Status, Dustin R. Crummett

Between the Species

Shelly Kagan argues that “unitarianism,” the claim that animals and humans have equal moral status, has intuitively implausible distributive implications. I argue that Kagan’s reasoning can, with certain modifications, be applied equally well to undermine his own view, and that the responses Kagan can make to this modified reasoning are also available to the unitarian responding to Kagan’s original argument. Accordingly, Kagan cannot consistently hold his own view while also endorsing his main against unitarianism.

A Naturalistic Ethic Supporting A Vegan Diet, Michael Morris

Between the Species

Nutritional evidence suggests that a vegan diet is the most adaptive one for humans. An ethical principle based on following our biological nature (naturalistic ethic) could therefore provide additional support for a vegan diet. However, some argue that humans in the natural world could not eat a vegan diet, since it relies on supplements, particularly vitamin B12. This leads to the conclusion that humans are naturally omnivores, and therefore our natural diet should include small amounts of animal products.

Three approaches to this conclusion are discussed. The first rejects a naturalistic ethic in favour of normative principles based on animal …

Noble Animals, Brutish Animals, Marcus William Hunt

Between the Species

The paper begins with a description of a grey seal performing conspecific infanticide. The paper then gives an account of “nobleness” and “brutishness.” Roughly, a behavioural-disposition is noble/brutish if it is one that would be a moral virtue/vice if the possessor of the behavioural-disposition were a moral agent. The paper then advances two pairs of axiological claims. The first pair of claims is that nobleness is good and that brutishness is bad. The second pair of claims is about an axiological interaction between nobleness/brutishness and well-being. That any non-human animal lacks well-being is bad. Yet, it is worse that …

Girl, Timothy Eves

Between the Species

“Girl” is a short story about the relationship a family has with their dog. Over the course of the dog’s life, the family grapples with a series of moral issues, including abuse of companion animals, euthanasia of companion animals, and the ethics of diet.

Review Of Lori Gruen's Critical Terms For Animal Studies, Angus Taylor

Between the Species

Review of Critical Terms for Animal Studies, edited by Lori Gruen

Living Like A Dog: Can The Life Of Non-Human Animals Be Meaningful?, Michael Hauskeller

Between the Species

Most philosophers addressing the issue of meaning in life seem to think that non-human animals cannot have a meaningful life because only humans have what it takes to do so. In this paper, I discuss three prominent philosophical theories of meaning in life, all of which implicitly or explicitly deny non-human animals the possibility of living a meaningful life. I will argue that none of them is convincing and that we should embrace a more comprehensive and inclusive understanding of meaning in life that allows for non-human lives to be meaningful and in their own right worth living.

Torture And The Corrida, Andrew Brei

Between the Species

In recent years the debate over the moral status of bullfighting has been focused on whether or not it should be characterized as a form of torture. Francis Wolff has argued that it should not be, and Gabriel Andrade has claimed that it should be. But in my view neither author adequately defines bullfighting or torture. In this essay I have three goals. The first is to provide an adequate account of bullfighting, including its structure and meaning. The second is to define the necessary conditions for torture. And the third is to show that bullfighting meets those conditions. Thus, …

Review Of The Oxford Handbook Of Food Ethics, Josh Milburn

Between the Species

The Oxford Handbook of Food Ethics, edited by Anne Barnhill, Mark Budolfson, and Tyler Doggett, contains 35 chapters over 8 sections. Many of these chapters are directly relevant to animal ethicists. Even many of those that do not initially appear to be, however, should be of interest. I thoroughly recommend The Oxford Handbook of Food Ethics to all animal ethicists interested in addressing food-related questions in their research or teaching.

Review Of Dominique Lestel's Eat This Book: A Carnivore's Manifesto, Angus Taylor

Between the Species

Dominique Lestel sets out to demolish the fundamental claims of ethical vegetarianism (including veganism) and to propose as an alternative what he calls ethical carnivorism. Although he fails to present a logically sound case against ethical vegetarianism, that fact is unlikely to diminish the lure of the “circle of life” ideology that he articulates.

Review Of Christine Korsgaard's Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations To The Other Animals, A. G. Holdier

Between the Species

No abstract provided.

Fishy Reasoning And The Ethics Of Eating, Mylan Engel Jr.

Between the Species

Ethical vegetarians believe that it is morally wrong to eat meat. Yet, many self-ascribed “ethical vegetarians” continue to eat fish. The question I explore here is this: Can one coherently maintain that it is morally wrong to eat meat, but morally permissible to eat fish? I argue that it is morally inconsistent for ethical vegetarians to eat fish, not on the obvious yet superficial ground that fish flesh is meat, but on the morally substantive ground that fish are sentient intelligent beings capable of experiencing morally significant pain and thus deserve moral consideration equal to that owed birds and mammals.

On The Ethical Significance Of Ecological Restoration: Domination Or Collaboration?, Roger J.H. King

Between the Species

Ecological restoration is essential both to a sustainable human culture and to the well being of the more-than-human world. Yet some philosophers criticize enthusiasm for restoration as yet another manifestation of human domination and anthropocentric arrogance. The paper critiques this view as persistently presented by Eric Katz, and offers an alternative view of restoration’s ethical significance. Rather than seeing restoration as a unilateral human imposition on nature, restoration deserves defense as an expression of an interspecies etiquette, attentive to collaboration with the more-than-human world. But the full ethical significance of ecological restoration will not be realized without deep change in …

Bentham And The “Famous Footnote”, Randall Otto

Between the Species

It is the contention of this paper that animal liberationists have misconstrued and misused Bentham’s “famous footnote” as an advocacy of species equivalency of interests, as though he were an incipient opponent of what has come to be known as “speciesism.” The context of Bentham’s footnote was of mistreatment of others that are capable of feeling pain. He was advocating in the footnote for laws that would end what he viewed as instances of cruelty toward animals. He was not advocating for vegetarianism or an end to killing animals where they can be of benefit to human beings, where “we …

Scavengers Of The In-Between: Feminist Ruminations On Dogs, Love, And Pragmatism, Cathryn Bailey

Between the Species

Abstract:

Western philosophy’s frequent conflation and denigration of animals, human others, embodiment and emotions has been powerfully documented over the past many decades. I explore the impact of this fear and loathing of the body, a somatophobia that infects much of the Western philosophical canon and its orientation toward people of color, white women, and animals. As I share reflections that are meant to enact and reveal an embodied pragmatism, I consider the potential of our love for dogs to ground a more embodied philosophical approach to love. Rooted in my own journey (as philosopher and dog lover), I pose …