...Animals and Human culture Before the 19th century, the West viewed nonhumans as being outside the legal and moral community (Francione, 2008). In this respect, how they were treated or used raised no legal or moral concern. The Western community could use nonhumans for whatever purpose they felt like, inflicting suffering and pain to whatever magnitude they wanted and no obligation owed to them would be deemed as being violated. In other words nonhumans were not distinguished from other inanimate objects and as such had no legal or moral obligations (Nikki, 2012). There are those acts that from the surface appeared as obligation towards other animals, for instance an obligation not to injure a donkey or horse that belonged to the neighbor, in actual sense we owed the obligation not to the animal but to our neighbors. Issues of moral became a concern only to the limited scope when humans who were cruel or known to subject the nonhumans to suffering were generally thought to be capable of maltreating humans. Just like the above, the obligation related to the animal in question was actually owed to the other human beings. Nonhumans were viewed as having little moral significance. This essay will focus on Jane Goodall assertion that ‘Who are we to say that the suffering of human being is more terrible than the suffering of nonhuman being, or that it matters more’? (1990). Some scholars believe that human being suffer more as compared to the nonhuman beings and they...
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...Merissa Acuna Aretha Matt English 102 5 November 2014 Animals and the Exemption of Their Rights Almost every American grew up eating some kind of meat or wearing some type of fur, leather, or wool, we grow up going to zoos and circuses, and some people even have pets like birds and rabbits at home in cages. We unknowingly exploit animals in every way possible. The impact that our actions have on these animals is never taken into consideration. Due to animals serving us humans several different purposes, the animal is forgotten. The idea of whether animals should have rights is at a peak in controversy. Animal rights activist believe animals have legal and moral rights the same way humans do. On the other hand there are several corporations...
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...Matthew Adams Business Ethics 12, Oct 2014 Final Essay The Place of Nonhumans in Environmental Issues Peter Singers essay titled “The Place of Nonhumans in Environmental Issues”, focuses on a general question. How the effects of our actions should figure in our deliberations on what we ought to do in regards to nonhuman beings, or generally speaking, animals and our environment. Speciesism is defined as “involving the assignment of different values, rights, or special consideration to individuals solely on the basis of their species membership”. Simply put, we humans consider ourselves while discounting the effects of our actions on the nonhumans. When a new roadway is to be built that may directly interfere with Elk habitat, or a dam that is to be built where salmon flood the river during spawning season, we do a cost benefit analysis. But, when we do the analysis, we rarely figure in the impact on the surrounding wildlife and only figure the benefits to human beings. A new roadway will help us travel to work faster, but interferes with the surrounding wildlife that lives in these areas. And a new dam will help power hundreds of new homes, while decimating the already low salmon numbers. We humans calculate our benefit, while discounting the effects of our actions on nonhumans and the environment. We can use the example of the past racist white slave owners of the South. These slave owners only were concerned with benefiting themselves and those of their white race, while...
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...In his article, “The Case Against Animal Rights”, Carl Cohen makes the explicit claim that humans do not have a moral or ethical responsibility to uphold the rights of animals due to their lack of “moral capability.” I intend to argue that humans, as the highest level of morally autonomous sentient beings, like Cohen recognizes in his article, do, in fact, possess both moral and ethical obligations to recognize animal rights and take appropriate action to ensure their wellbeing. I will make use of statistics and information that displays the imperative need for animal welfare, primarily in relation to modern day agricultural practices, as well as philosophical claims in support of the rights of animals, to counter Cohen’s argument. This is...
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...so long, only because people do not want to find out the truth. “Don’t tell me, you’ll spoil my dinner,” is the usual reply to any attempt to tell someone just how that dinner was produced. Even people who are aware that the traditional family farm has been taken over by big business interest, that their clothes come from slaughtered cows, that their entertainment means the suffering and death of millions of animals, and that some questionable experiments go on in laboratories, still cling to a vague belief that conditions cannot be too bad (unless the government of animal welfare societies would have done something about it). But it is not the inability to find out what is going on as much as the desire to not know about facts that may lie heavy on one’s conscience that is responsible for this lack of awareness. After all, the victims of whatever it is goes on in these awful places are not members of one’s own group. It all comes down to pain and suffering, not intelligence, not strength, not social class or civil rights. Pain and suffering are in themselves bad and should be prevented or minimized, irrespective of the race, sex, or species of the being that suffers. We are all animals of this planet; we are all creatures. Nonhuman animals experience sensations just like we do. They too are strong, intelligent, industrious, mobile, and evolutional. They too are capable of growth and adaptation. Like us, first and foremost, they are earthlings. And like us, they are surviving. Like...
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...Singer’s main focus on “All Animals are Equal” is mainly their suffering and how they should have some sort of rights. Us humans eat these animals with no thoughts of the pain that they go through or even if they have pain. The same way we don't kill each other by their intelligence or understand when someone is in pain, we shouldn’t have animals suffering. He says most people are speciesism, which only thinks about themselves and not the cause of how animals can have moral rights. He compares racism, speciesism, and sexism to all be the same, meaning that they all have equality no matter what they believe in, so why can’t nonhumans have equality like humans do. In the chapter, All Animals are Equal what he is trying to say or show others is...
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...Journal for Critical Animal Studies, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2012 (ISSN1948-352X) Beyond Dehumanization: A Post-Humanist Critique of Solitary Confinement Lisa Guenther Abstract What does it mean to be treated like a nonhuman animal? In this paper, I analyze the discourse of “dehumanization” in Madrid v Gomez, a 1995 Eighth Amendment case concerning the treatment of prisoners at California’s Pelican Bay Supermax Penitentiary. I argue that the language of dehumanization fails to describe the harm of solitary confinement because it remains complicit with a hierarchical opposition between human and nonhuman animal that rebounds against prisoners, especially those who have been racialized and/or sexualized as less than human. Humanist discourse neglects the sense in which both human and nonhuman animals are affective, corporeal beings who rely upon the support of others for their own capacity to orient themselves within a mutually-perceived world. Drawing on the testimony of inmates in solitary confinement, and situating this testimony in relation to the political and scientific history of US incarceration practices, I develop a post-humanist critique of solitary confinement. Keywords: Solitary confinement, sensory deprivation, intercorporeal Malebranche would not have beaten a stone as he beat his dog, saying that the dog didn’t suffer. Merleau-Ponty, Nature, 166 Certain carceral practices are often condemned – both by prisoners and by their legal or political advocates –...
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...the articles in EE by Pollan (91-106) and Hurst (23-30). Then type your responses to the following questions and bring a completed hard copy to class on Monday. This assignment will help you find research problems as you read your sources, as it explains in CR p. 63. 1. Reverse outline Pollan’s article, which is a complex piece because he talks about many different positions before explaining his own. Reverse outlining means making a list of the main points he makes, in order—list 5-10 of these. * Animal liberation and how does intelligence entitle humans to exploit nonhumans * Speciesism & how it could just be like racism * Animal suffering and pain and not necessarily the killing is the issue * Vegetarian utopia & how it would make us more dependent on industrialized food chain * Polyface farm & animals with respectful deaths 2. Write Pollan’s main argument in the form of an enthymeme (E): claim because reason. It is alright to kill animals for their meat because it is moral right as long as we treat them with respect when they are alive. 3. Write Hurst’s main argument the form of an enthymeme (E): claim because reason. Farmers should not be criticized for using “industrial” farming methods because all farmers have reasons for their actions through their knowledge and experience of farming. 4. What evidence does Hurst give for his position? Remember to use in-text citations in your answer. Hurst gives evidence such as “biotech crops actually...
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...Ethical Treatment of Animals I. Introduction Animals have played an important role in many aspects of this world; some look upon these roles with favoritism, some with disgust. Animals give live birth and are considered different from humans by some people because of their behavior. Some animals are consumed as food by humans and other animals or trapped for their furs. Many times people get animals as pets and neglect them. Some animals are pulled out of their habitat and are used as research yet; some humans think they don't deserve any rights because they are animals. A. Thesis Statement Throughout this paper I will examples of possibilities that can be used to change the life of an animal in the food industry, as a pet and as research, we need to help them have a better life even if we are going to use them as food and pets. II. Body paragraph #1 - Topic Sentence #1 On today's factory farms, animals are crammed by the thousands into filthy, windowless sheds and confined to wire cages, gestation crates, barren dirt lots, and other cruel confinement systems. A. Supporting Evidence PETA made a investigation at Agriprocessors in 2004 revealed almost 300 instances of inhumane slaughter, in which cows' sensitive faces were shocked with electric prods, fully conscious cattle had their tracheas and esophagi ripped from their throats with meat hooks or knives, and they writhed in pools of their own blood, trying desperately to stand up for up to three minutes as...
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...Responsibility to Animals Animals only exist through the eyes of the beholder. They are cute kitties, sweet puppies, and then we have animals like rats, chickens, cows, and pigs. Some animals we have emotional commitment with and those we do not. We are arguing for animals to have the rights as humans do. There are animals being used in labs, in poor conditions on farms for mast productions, and animals being mistreated. Should any animal have the right to life? Should they have the right to be pain free? Have right to food? Animals cannot not speak for themselves, so people are having to speak up for them. Animals do have rights that are the same as humans. Whether or not proving if animals should have the right could change how they are treated and the usage of animals. "What we conclude about animal rights will have consequences for the food we eat and the clothes we wear, and it will have direct bearing on the kinds of science we think morally justifiable"(Cohen, 1986). The argument here other than animal rights is that humans think they are in control of their own rights or wrong ideas as long as society or culture goes along with them. When asking the question, “what are our moral obligations to animals,” the argument is that we do not have any obligations toward animals, due to them being species, not taking part of political contract or of determining what right or wrong is. Humans have laws in place that we have created, therefore, non-humans are expose to the rules...
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...Final 1. In James Turner Johnson’s article ‘Threats, values and defense: does the defense of values by force remain a moral possibility?’ (60) he cites four justifications for war. What are they? From a pacifist’s point of view why are these reasons problematic? In this article the four justifications for going to war are: defense of the innocent, recovery of something wrongly taken, punishment of evil, and defense of aggression in progress. From a pacifist's point of view there are some major problems with these justifications for war. Each and every justification is met with its own singular problem. The defense against the innocent seems like it is justified but there arises two arguments against it. In a war more than just soldiers are killed. Other civilians will be killed and many of the soldiers don’t want to fight, they are just ordered too. That means we are killing innocent civilians and soldiers to protect some innocent. From a utilitarian view we must ask if this the death of the innocent will outweigh the death of the other innocent if we do or don’t go to war. Yet, deontologists would say that killing is bad and that needs to be punished because killing is wrong. So kill people to stop killing. For a pacifist that is just wrong. The other problem from defending the innocent is that violence is key in war and many times over we have been shown that violence is not always the best way. We should try and support people and ideas like Gandhi, to win with non-violence...
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...All Animals Are Equal PETER SINGER In TOM REGAN & PETER SINGER (eds.), Animal Rights and Human Obligations. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1989, pp. 148-162 Available freely online at: http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/singer02.htm. In recent years a number of oppressed groups have campaigned vigorously for equality. The classic instance is the Black Liberation movement, which demands an end to the prejudice and discrimination that has made blacks second-class citizens. The immediate appeal of the black liberation movement and its initial, if limited, success made it a model for other oppressed groups to follow. We became familiar with liberation movements for Spanish-Americans, gay people, and a variety of other minorities. When a majority group— women—began their campaign, some thought we had come to the end of the road. Discrimination on the basis of sex, it has been said, is the last universally accepted form of discrimination, practiced without secrecy or pretense even in those liberal circles that have long prided themselves on their freedom from prejudice against racial minorities. One should always be wary of talking of "the last remaining form of discrimination." If we have learnt anything from the liberation movements, we should have learnt how difficult it is to be aware of latent prejudice in our attitudes to particular groups until this prejudice is forcefully pointed out. A liberation movement demands an expansion of our moral horizons and...
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...With the earth’s climate and air pollution changing, our health and environment as well as the animals’ are at risk. The consumption of animal products plays a big factor in not only our bodies but our ecosystem as well. Reducing the consumption of meat and dairy can help our environment as well as avoid many diseases that are grown by the farming of animals. Veganism is defined as a diet and lifestyle were the consumption or use of products does not contain anything derived from animal sources, as well as to help promote health and peace while reducing animal and human suffering(Dupler,1). People today continue to eat meat because of tradition, taste and convenience. Consuming meat has many factors such as the psychological and social effects....
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...People for ethical treatment of animals (PETA) is a large organization with the goal of ending animal cruelty and promoting animal rights. There mission statement is: “PETA focuses its attention on the four areas in which the largest numbers of animals suffer the most intensely for the longest periods of time: on factory farms, in the clothing trade, in laboratories, and in the entertainment industry. We also work on a variety of other issues, including the cruel killing of beavers, birds, and other “pests” as well as cruelty to domesticated animals.”(peta) Though PETA seem like an organization that does great things, they go about getting what they want in a deplorable way. “PETA resorts to soft porno-graphic female nudity and graphic video recordings of animal abuse, it instills feelings of ‘shock’ on the target audience in order to get its point across.” (Matusitz, J. and Forrester, M. 85-86) The term for this king of advertising is shock advertising. “Shock advertising that startles and offends its audience has become a popular tool in advertising, especially since the 1980s.”(Pflaumbaum 1). PETA using shock advertising and pornographic themes is an ineffective and deplorable way to achieve the organization’s goals, which hurts the cause rather than helps. PETA has done a good deal of good things.PETA’s website has a timeline of there major milestones and accomplishments. In 2008 PETA pursued a lawsuit against Aviagen Turkeys which is a major producer of turkeys worldwide...
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...Industrialized Hemp: A Revolutionary Idea PHL 354 Dr. Ozar Decmeber 16, 2010 Abstract: This paper will focus on the potential benefits that legalizing and producing (or “large-scale production of”) industrialized hemp could have on the environment and possibly the economy of the world. I shall argue that the United States should set a precedent and legalize industrialized hemp in order to hopefully spur on similar actions by other countries and world powers across the globe. I will begin by explaining a few of the beneficial uses of industrialized hemp in order to strengthen the case that will be presented in the latter part of the paper. Although the production of hemp has typically been looked down upon, it could in fact be the very thing we need to solve the ecological problems we currently face. I believe that allowing for the growth and sale of industrialized hemp could revolutionize the world and could ultimately save the environment and benefit all of the environmentally unfriendly industries across the world. I will examine the use of hemp to create textiles, renewable fuels, biodegradable plastics, paper, health foods, medicine, etcetera. The legalization of hemp cannot move forward unless we are willing to reexamine and reformulate our societal values. The modern system of agriculture has caused more problems than it has solved over the past few decades. Thus, I will be examining the legalization of hemp in the context of a postmechanistic concept...
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