Philosophy Commons^™

Review Of Bug Music: How Insects Gave Us Rhythm And Noise, Jonathan L. Friedmann

Between the Species

Review of Bug Music: How Insects Gave Us Rhythm and Noise, by David Rothenberg. This book proposes that the human sense of rhythm derived in part from insect sounds.

Carnivorous Companions And The Vegetarian’S Dilemma, Patrick J. Clipsham

Between the Species

This paper is concerned with a problem that arises within ethical frameworks that imply that it is wrong for humans to consume meat or other animal products when vegan alternatives are available. The specific problem relates to the ethical difficulties associated with beginning a relationship with a companion animal that may require at least some animal-based foods in order to survive. I follow some psychologists in referring to the ethical problems associated with such companionship as the Vegetarian’s Dilemma. After approaching this dilemma from the perspective the animal rights approach and welfarist consequentialism, I argue that some important insights can …

The Owl, The Goldfish And The Bull - The Question Of The Animal And Romantic Poetry, Hui Zhang

Between the Species

This article argues that the representation of animals in Romantic poetry contributes to the contemporary philosophical and ethical discussion of the question of animals by providing a literary expression of the latter. Conversely, reading depictions of animals in Romantic poetry with their philosophical implications in mind throws light on the oppositions between different human groups, such as between Orientals and Occidentals, or between males and females, in Romantic poetry. These categories connect with each other in different ways in the works of three prominent Romantic poets: William Wordsworth, Lord Byron and Alexander Pushkin. Animals in their poetry reflect their views …

Just Meat: Chicken-Pain, Intergenerational Justice, And The American Diet, Stephen Scales

Between the Species

Peter Singer’s arguments against the morality of the typical American diet focus on the pain of animals, and lead to the conclusion that we must become committed vegans. His approach ignores the impact that different psychological capacities can legitimately have on our moral appraisal of the interests of beings. Although we ought to eat less meat because of the externalized environmental costs that factory farming inflicts upon future people, an ideal diet may contain some environmentally sustainably raised meat. Finally, the perception of ethical puritanism in committed vegans may be an obstacle to achieving the real reductions in animal suffering …

Animals And African Ethics, Luis Cordeiro-Rodrigues

Between the Species

This article is a book review of the book Animals and African Ethics by Kai Horsthemke. I argue this is a brilliant book that gives a clear overview of how Africans see animals. However, I also contend that Horsthemke could have had a more charitable approach to African ideas and explore how an African theory of animal rights can be built upon this.

You Can’T Buy Your Way Out Of Veganism, Bob Fischer

Between the Species

Let’s make three assumptions. First, we shouldn’t support factory farms. Second, if animal-friendly agriculture lives up to its name—that is, if animals live good lives (largely free of pain, able to engage in species-specific behaviors, etc.) and are slaughtered in a way that minimizes suffering—then there is nothing intrinsically wrong with killing them for food. Third, animal-friendly agriculture does, in fact, live up to its name. Given these assumptions, it might seem difficult to criticize individuals who source their animal products from “animal-friendly agricultural operations. However, I argue that they should drastically reduce their support for animal-friendly agriculture because it …

Common Arguments For The Moral Acceptability Of Eating Meat: A Discussion For Students, Dan Lowe

Between the Species

This paper is a teaching tool which instructors of animal ethics may assign to students to help them evaluate those students’ most frequent arguments for the moral acceptability of eating meat. Specifically, the paper examines (and finds inadequate) the arguments that eating meat is morally acceptable because it is (1) historically widespread, (2) necessary, and (3) natural. The aim of discussing these arguments is to pave the way for a more fruitful and focused discussion of the canonical texts of the animal ethics literature.

Veganism And 'The Analytic Question', Adam Reid

Between the Species

The (practical) dilemma I explore in this paper concerns two advocacy-oriented aims which, though not mutually exclusive per se, are nonetheless quite difficult for vegans to jointly satisfy in practice. The first concerns the need for individual vegans to rebuff (by example) certain familiar stereotypes about vegans as ‘militant,’ ‘angry,’ ‘self-righteous,’ etc.; the second concerns the need to tactfully resist familiar prompts to, as it were, conversationally parse the logic of one’s own convictions ad nauseam. To better explain, and partially respond to, this dilemma, I exploit an instructive analogy with the (so-called) ‘analytic question’ in epistemology (roughly, …

The Commonsense Case For Ethical Vegetarianism, Mylan Engel Jr.

Between the Species

The article defends ethical vegetarianism, which, for present purposes, is stipulatively taken to be the view that it is morally wrong to eat animals when equally nutritious plant-based foods are available. Several examples are introduced (i) to show that we all agree that animals deserve some direct moral consideration and (ii) to help identify and clarify several commonsense moral principles—principles we all accept. These principles are then used to argue that eating animals is morally wrong. Since you no doubt accept these principles, the argument demonstrates that consistency with your own beliefs and values commits you to the …

Review Of Slaves Of Our Affection: The Myth Of The Happy Pet, Katherine Allen

Between the Species

This article reviews Charles Danten’s Slaves of Our Affection: the Myth of the Happy Pet, outlining and evaluating Danten’s arguments for the abolition of the pet trade. The review delineates Danten’s main points; that the commodification of companion animals is antithetical to their welfare, that veterinarians, pet food manufacturers and breeders serve the dictates of the economic bottom line rather than the interests of animals, and that the majority of pet owners, while well-intentioned, are ill-equipped to meet the physiological and psychological needs of their animal companions.

The reviewer asserts that Danten’s arguments are generally successful, but suggests that …

Rights, Solidarity, And The Animal Welfare State, Jes L. Harfeld

Between the Species

This article argues that aspects of the animal rights view can be constructively modulated through a communitarian approach and come to promote animal welfare through the social contexts of expanded caring communities. The Nordic welfare state is presented as a conceivable caring community within which animals could be viewed and treated appropriately as co-citizens with solidarity based rights and duties.

Review Of Jean-Christophe Bailly, The Animal Side, Chandler D. Rogers

Between the Species

No abstract provided.

Animals And Causal Impotence: A Deontological View, Blake Hereth

Between the Species

In animal ethics, some ethicists such as Peter Singer argue that we ought not to purchase animal products because doing so causally contributes to unnecessary suffering. Others, such as Russ Shafer-Landau, counter that where such unnecessary suffering is not causally dependent on one’s causal contributions, there is no duty to refrain from purchasing animal products, even if the process by which those products are produced is morally abhorrent. I argue that there are at least two plausible principles which ground the wrongness of purchasing animal products produced by morally abhorrent means. First, respect for the wishes and dignity of animals …

Book Review: Loving Animals By Kathy Rudy, Nancy Williams

Between the Species

No abstract provided.

Wild-But-Not-Too-Wild Animals: Challenging Goldilocks Standards In Rewilding, Erica Von Essen, Michael P. Allen

Between the Species

Rewilding is positioned as ‘post’-conservation through its emphasis on unleashing the autonomy of natural processes. In this paper, we argue that the autonomy of nature rhetoric in rewilding is challenged by human interventions. Instead of joining critique toward the ‘managed wilderness’ approach of rewilding, however, we examine the injustices this entails for keystone species. Reintroduction case studies demonstrate how arbitrary standards for wildness are imposed on these animals as they do their assigned duty to rehabilitate ecosystems. These ‘Goldilocks’ standards are predicated on aesthetic values that sanction interventions inconsistent with the premise of animal sovereignty. These include culling, relocations and …

Book Review: Issa And The Meaning Of Animals: A Buddhist Poet’S Perspective By David G. Lanoue, Lisa Kemmerer

Between the Species

No abstract provided.

Animal Experimentation As A Form Of Rescue, Alexander Zambrano Mr.

Between the Species

In this paper I explore a new approach to the ethics of animal experimentation by conceiving of it as a form of rescue. The notion of rescue, I suggest, involves some moral agent(s) performing an action or series of actions, whose end is to prevent or alleviate serious harm to another party, harm that otherwise would have occurred or would have continued to occur, had that moral agent not intervened. Animal experiments that are utilized as a means to alleviate human illnesses mirror the structure of rescue cases and this means that we can and should apply principles of rescue …

One Earth, Mary De La Valette

Between the Species

ONE EARTH

When the birds are gone

Will we care ?

Will we sit outside

And mourn the quiet ?

Will there be

A sense of loss ?

Of missing beauty ?

Of Nature diminished ?

Or will we merely

Go inside

And turn on the TV ?

When there are

No more animals

And we own the earth

What will we do ?

When the wind

Is no longer

Soft and warm

But a raging monster

Tearing off roofs

And whipping fire,

Will we curse Nature

Or ourselves ?

And, when the oceans die

And we own

The stinking …

Pest Control, Josephine Donovan

Between the Species

No abstract provided.

Poems, Mary De La Valette

Between the Species

No abstract provided.

Review: Animal Oppression & Human Violence, Corey L. Wrenn

Between the Species

No abstract provided.

Fellow Creatures: The Humean Case For Animal Ethics, Robert M. Causey

Between the Species

In this article, I follow up on a suggestion made by Josephine Donovan that a Hume-inspired ethic of sympathy would be a better foundation for an animal ethic than more rationalistic approaches of both utilitarianism and deontology. I then expand on Donovan’s suggestion by further suggesting that Hume’s “sentiment of humanity” could easily be expanded to include other animals. Hume’s ethic of sympathy, I argue, answers the need for an ethic that is at once both personal, contextual, and sufficiently universalizable to incorporate the political need for something like justice. I say, “something like justice,” because animals are explicitly ruled …

A Is For Animal: The Animal User’S Lexicon, Joel Marks

Between the Species

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice, “When I use a word … it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” When Alice questions this license, Humpty Dumpty replies, “The question is … which is to be master — that’s all.” The present article offers a lexicon of words that are used by human beings, however unintentionally or ingenuously, to maintain their mastery or prerogatives over other animals. A motivating assumption of the article is that putting on display the verbal menagerie in animal agriculture, animal experimentation, and …

Egalitarianism And Animals, Oscar Horta

Between the Species

The moral consideration of nonhuman animals and the critique of speciesism have been defended by appeal to a variety of ethical theories. One of the main approaches in moral and political philosophy today from which to launch such a defense is egalitarianism, which is the view that we should aim at favoring the worse off by reducing inequality. This paper explains what egalitarianism is and shows the important practical consequences it has for nonhuman animals, both those that are exploited by humans and those in need of aid in the wild. Egalitarianism implies rejecting speciesism, and in practice it prescribes …

Why We Should Stop Creating Pets With Lives Worth Living, Chelsea Haramia

Between the Species

Pedigreed breeding often leads to severe health problems for, say, those dogs who exist as a result of the practice. It is also the case that virtually all of those unhealthy animals would not exist at all if it were not for the practice of pedigreed breeding. If those animals have lives worth living, then it follows that they are not harmed by the practice—assuming that a life worth living is better than no life at all. It would seem, then, that the standard account of harm cannot account for the wrongness of our intentionally creating pets with lower welfare. …

King Of The Meat Eaters, Anonymous

Between the Species

This article is a word for word reproduction of an unexpected resignation speech. It was given as—or rather, in place of—the presidential address of a recent annual meeting of ISEA (the International Society for the Eating of Animals). Because this is a secret society, the speaker’s and the transcriber’s names have been omitted. Those of us who were there for this speech will remember the anger and outrage that it provoked. Many of us still cannot believe the ridiculous spin-off resignations that this underwhelming speech somehow managed to provoke. This speech is reprinted here (where it cannot be returned to …

Review Of Animal Rights Without Liberation: Applied Ethics And Human Obligations, Mark Suchyta

Between the Species

This submission is a book review for Alasdair Cochrane's Animal Rights Without Liberation: Applied Ethics and Human Obligations

Review Of Science And Ethics, Gregory L. Bock

Between the Species

No abstract provided.

Decentering Anthropocentrisms: A Functional Approach To Animal Minds, Matthew C. Altman

Between the Species

Anthropocentric biases manifest themselves in two different ways in research on animal cognition. Some researchers claim that only humans have the capacity for reasoning, beliefs, and interests; and others attribute mental concepts to nonhuman animals on the basis of behavioral evidence, and they conceive of animal cognition in more or less human terms. Both approaches overlook the fact that language-use deeply informs mental states, such that comparing human mental states to the mental states of nonlinguistic animals is misguided. In order to avoid both pitfalls -- assuming that animals have mental lives just like we do, or assuming that they …

The Animal Question In Deconstruction, Rafe Mcgregor

Between the Species

Review of The Animal Question in Deconstruction, edited by Lynn Turner (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013)