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- Review of Dance of the Dung Beetles: Their Role in Our Changing World
Authors: Jennifer Schell
PubDate: Wed, 20 Mar 2024 12:11:59 PDT
- Review of Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question, by
Bénédicte Boisseron
Authors: Thomas Aiello
Abstract: This review evaluates Bénédicte Boisseron's Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question. In the process, it tracks the development of the academic relation between Blackness and animality.
PubDate: Wed, 20 Mar 2024 12:11:55 PDT
- A Review of Dan C. Shahar’s Why It's OK to Eat Meat and Per
Bauhn’s Animal Suffering, Human Rights, and the Virtue of Justice
Authors: Josh Milburn
Abstract: It’s tricky to find decent defences of meat-eating of the kind practiced by most westerners. I was thus intrigued to pick up two short books defending meat-eating. Dan Shahar’s Why It’s Ok to Eat Meat (2022) is in Routledge’s series of short books called Why It's OK: The Ethics and Aesthetics of How We Live. Per Bauhn’s Animal Suffering, Human Rights, and the Virtue of Justice (2023) is from Palgrave Pivot, which publishes books falling somewhere between journal articles and monographs. Shahar’s book is worth reading: it’s well-written, raising interesting questions, and offering a coherent defence of meat. Bauhn’s book is not recommended.It’s tricky to find decent defences of meat-eating. I don’t mean defences of eating (say) roadkill or cultivated meat. I mean defences of the meat-eating practiced by most westerners. This is jarring when putting together reading lists. I was thus intrigued to pick up two short books defending meat-eating. Dan Shahar’s Why It’s Ok to Eat Meat (2022) is in Routledge’s series of short books called Why It's OK: The Ethics and Aesthetics of How We Live. Per Bauhn’s Animal Suffering, Human Rights, and the Virtue of Justice (2023) is from Palgrave Pivot, which publishes books falling somewhere between journal articles and monographs. Shahar’s book is worth reading: it’s well-written, raising interesting questions, and offering a coherent defence of meat. Bauhn’s book is not recommended.
PubDate: Wed, 20 Mar 2024 12:11:51 PDT
- A HAPPY LIE
Authors: nina collin
Abstract: I recently went to a zoo. Wild animals living in confinement with one single purpose: to entertain. When contemplating the concept of a zoo it will become surreal, I promise.
PubDate: Wed, 20 Mar 2024 12:11:46 PDT
- Avoiding Anthropomoralism
Authors: Julian Friedland
Abstract: The Montreal Declaration on Animal Exploitation, which has been endorsed by hundreds of influential academic ethicists, calls for establishing a vegan economy by banning what it refers to as all unnecessary animal suffering, including fishing. It does so by appeal to the moral principle of equal consideration of comparable interests. I argue that this principle is misapplied by discounting morally relevant cognitive capacities of self-conscious and volitional personhood as distinguished from merely sentient non-personhood. I describe it as a kind of anthropomorphizing moralism which I call anthropomoralism, defined as the tendency to project morally relevant characteristics of personhood onto merely sentient non-persons by discounting their existing differences with actual persons. I show that this attitude can lend support to the resurgent attempt to treat fetal pain as equally morally considerable to that of childbearing persons they gestate within. I explain that the only sound way to apply the principle of equal consideration of comparable interests is to compare experiences of actual persons. Therefore, while supporting a vegan economy may be morally praiseworthy, it should not be deemed morally obligatory.
PubDate: Wed, 20 Mar 2024 12:11:40 PDT
- Recognizing Exploitation and Rejecting Analogy: An Analysis of the
Meat-Commodity
Authors: Teddy Duncan Jr.
Abstract: This paper is a two-part project. First, I reject the analogous relationship between the Holocaust and slaughterhouses (found in the anti-meat novel The Lives of Animals) and cross-species analogical thinking entirely; instead, I opt for modes of analysis that can examine the specific circumstances of animals within slaughterhouses. Secondly, I assert that a socio-economic Marxist analysis is the best prism in which to recognize the suffering of pre-slaughter animals and the causation of their suffering (the ostensibly necessary circulation and production of the meat-commodity).
PubDate: Wed, 20 Mar 2024 12:11:33 PDT
- Mending the Broken Bond: Exploring Human-Elephant Conflict in K. V.
Dominic’s Poems
Authors: Ramya Kalaivani K et al.
Abstract: Mountains are the immovable totem of the landscape which stand out from the surrounding environment as they are the elevated portion of the earth’s crust. In mountain regions, wildlife is one of the essential factors to be considered for developing a holistic environment. As a result of the rapid dwindling of resources for wildlife, the ecological balance is affected. It deteriorates the relationship and instigates conflict between human beings and animals. Mountains are home to various species. Among various animals, elephants are the significant animals seen in the mountain region. K.V. Dominic’s poems depict humans’ cruelty and brutal treatment towards elephants. The investigation of human-elephant conflict is indispensable to protect the elephant species. This paper titled “Mending the Broken Bond: Exploring Human-Elephant Conflict in K. V. Dominic’s Poems” analyses the mode of relation between humans and elephants in the mountain region and identifies the factors that affect their relationship. Dominic’s poems reveal the negative impact of technology upon elephants and the humans’ superiority towards elephants. This paper analyses the factors that provokes the human-elephant conflict and suggests solutions to develop a kith and kin relationship between humans and elephants.
PubDate: Wed, 20 Mar 2024 12:11:27 PDT
- Kantian Ethics and our Duties to Nonhuman Animals
Authors: Samuel Kahn
Abstract: Many take Kantian ethics to founder when it comes to our duties to animals. In this paper, I advocate a novel approach to this problem. The paper is divided into three sections. In the first, I canvass various passages from Kant in order to set up the problem. In the second, I introduce a novel approach to this problem. In the third, I defend my approach from various objections. By way of preview: I advocate rejecting the premise that nonhuman animals are nonrational.
PubDate: Wed, 20 Mar 2024 12:11:21 PDT
- Two Distinctions About Eating Animals
Authors: A.G. Holdier
Abstract: In this paper I describe two distinctions about what “eating animals” entails which are often confused in conversations or arguments aimed against meat-based diets and try to show how both distinctions, on their own lights, ultimately support a concern for all fellow creatures, regardless of species or other biological categories. The distinctions in question are: the distinction between moral and nonmoral actions, presumptions about which serve to define whether or not particular topics (like meat consumption) deserve moral consideration whatsoever, and the distinction between moral and immoral actions, about which suppositions bear on both reflexive and considered moral judgments to inform agents in making meaningful normative decisions.
PubDate: Wed, 20 Mar 2024 12:11:14 PDT
- Does Suffering Really Predominate in Wild Ecosystems'
Authors: Elliot Buss
Abstract: In recent discussions of the moral value of wild ecosystems it has been claimed that wild ecosystems contain more suffering than positive wellbeing, and therefore that wild ecosystems are overall morally bad for animals. This papers critically assesses this argument. Despite its popularity, I find that this argument is defective, as it rests on unexamined empirical assumptions about the quality of certain animals’ lives. Moreover, I argue that even if we grant these assumptions, the conclusion does not follow unless we make further controversial assumptions about how moral claims are aggregated across different animals. As a result, there is no particular reason to accept the idea that wild ecosystems are morally bad for animals.
PubDate: Wed, 20 Mar 2024 12:11:08 PDT
- Ethical Extensionism Defended
Authors: Joel P. MacClellan
Abstract: Ethical extensionism is a common argument pattern in environmental and animal ethics, which takes a morally valuable trait already recognized in us and argues that we should recognize that value in other entities such as nonhuman animals. I exposit ethical extensionism’s core argument, argue for its validity and soundness, and trace its history to 18th century progressivist calls to expand the moral community and legal franchise. However, ethical extensionism has its critics. The bulk of the paper responds to recent criticisms, including (1) environmental ethicists’ objection against its austere conception of moral value (2), feminist ethicists’ claim that extensionism fails to account for the moral significance of difference, (3) disability theorists’ concern that extensionist arguments are offensive, and (4) animal rights theorists’ lament that extensionism is a practical failure. While something is to be gained from each criticism, I argue that they ultimately fail and that extensionism remains compelling.
PubDate: Wed, 20 Mar 2024 12:11:03 PDT
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Open Access journal
