Wild animals and ethical perspectives

In this thesis, I will claim that—based on a few reasonable assumptions about the capacities many nonhumans most probably possess—capacity-oriented accounts of ethics must recognize the full moral considerability of all sentient animals. Once moral considerability has been established, I will maintain that there are strong reasons to intervene in nature to prevent or reduce the harms wild animals suffer. Even though many animal ethicists have traditionally claimed that humans should stay away as far as possible from the natural habitats of wild animals, I will show that all arguments to relieve us from our general obligation to intervene in nature on their behalf are either inconsistent, or based on a very skewed conception of life in the wild. Consequently, I will argue that (1) we have to raise concern about the subject of wild animal suffering, (2) we have to convince ecologists to shift their resources from conservation biology to "welfare biology," and (3) we must question speciesism, as most of us already accept that we should intervene in nature when human interests are at stake.

Between the Species: An Online Journal for the Study of Philosophy and Animals, 2003

2022

Significant disagreement remains in ethics about the duties we have towards wild animals. This paper aims to mediate those disagreements by exploring how they are supported by, or diverge from, the common-sense ethical principles of non-maleficence, beneficence, autonomy and justice popular in medical ethics. We argue that these principles do not clearly justify traditional conservation or a 'hands-off ' approach to wild-animal welfare; instead, they support natural negative duties to reduce the harms that we cause as well as natural positive duties to promote the welfare of wild animals.

2023

Animals, like humans, suûer and die from natural causes. This is particularly true of animals living in the wild, given their high exposure to, and low capacity to cope with, harmful natural processes. Most wild animals likely have short lives, full of suûering, usually ending in terrible deaths. This book argues that on the assumption that we have reasons to assist others in need, we should intervene in nature to prevent or reduce the harms wild animals suûer, provided that it is feasible and that the expected result is positive overall. It is of the utmost importance that academics from diûerent disciplines as well as animal advocates begin to confront this issue. The more people concerned with wild animal suûering, the more probable it is that safe and eûective solutions to the plight of wild animals will be implemented in the future.

Broadview Press, 2009

Can animals be regarded as part of the moral community? To what extent, if at all, do they have moral rights? Are we wrong to eat them, hunt them, or use them for scientific research? Can animal liberation be squared with the environmental movement? Taylor traces the background of these debates from Aristotle to Darwin and sets out the views of numerous contemporary philosophers – including Peter Singer, Tom Regan, Mary Anne Warren, J. Baird Callicott, and Martha Nussbaum – with ethical theories ranging from utilitarianism to eco-feminism. The new edition also includes provocative quotations from some of the major writers in the field. As the final chapter insists, animal ethics is more than just an “academic” question: it is intimately connected both to our understanding of what it means to be human and to pressing current issues such as food shortages, environmental degradation, and climate change.

Ethical issues are per definition issues of public concern and interest. Media plays a vital role in presenting and shaping them. From the beginnings of modern animal ethics, paradigm cases -e.g. factory farming, laboratory animal science and fur farming -were used in the public debate and presented offensively. The moral wrong of these paradigm cases has a high plausibility in the wider public. Of course, nobody is against respectful treatment of animals. However, these paradigm cases do not raise the question of moral duties towards animals only. Further, they implicitly conflict with a wide range of values and provide the platform for the societal debate about values. Under this perspective, the character of the ongoing debate can be much better understood. Ethics can help to address moral issues in human-animal relations with explicit respect to conflicting (morally relevant) values. To focus solely on the moral status of animals in animal ethics loses sight of the related societal problem at stake. This position runs the risk of putting forward a perspective under which ethical issues in human-animal relations appear to be problems of the real world where moral outlaws mistreat animals for unworthy reasons. If our duties towards animals were the only duties we had, this view would be justified. However, this is not the case and a number of other values are at stake. Animal protection is an important value but other values like human welfare, gaining knowledge, etc. are equally important. Therefore, the moral issues of animal ethics should not be framed irrespectively of conflicting values and under the perspective of 'the right treatment of animals' only. In a wider sense animal ethics should use the frame of 'normative orientation of societies' in general. This shifts the role of animal ethics within society. I will argue in favor of a 'healthy social distance' or in other words 'academic freedom' that provides the basis for trustworthy mediation of societal conflicts without losing sight of practical demands. There is no stepping back into the ivory tower. However, looking at these issues from a distance can serve as a powerful source of philosophical insights that can be used in future practice-oriented animal ethics.

This article considers whether a morally relevant distinction can be drawn between wild and domesticated animals. The term "wildness" can be used in several different ways, only one of which (constitutive wildness, meaning an animal that has not been domesticated by being bred in particular ways) is generally paired and contrasted with "domesticated." Domesticated animals are normally deliberately bred and confined. One of the article's arguments concerns human initiatives that establish relations with animals and thereby change what is owed to these animals. The main relations of interest in ethics are the vulnerability and dependence in animals that are created when humans establish certain relations with them on farms, in zoos, in laboratories, and the like. Domestication is a pervasive way in which humans make animals vulnerable, and thereby duties of animal care and protection arise in a persistent way.

Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2021

This review essay considers five recent books that address the ethical dimensions of human-animal relations. The books are David Favre, Respecting Animals: A Balanced Approach to our Relationship with Pets, Food, and Wildlife; T. J.