Ethics and Nonhuman Animals: A Philosophical Overview

Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 2013

Law, Culture and the Humanities, 2010

The animal welfare position, which represents the prevailing paradigm for thinking about our moral and legal obligations to nonhuman animals, maintains that animal life has a lesser value than human life and, therefore, it is morally acceptable to use animals as human resources as long as we treat them ‘humanely’ and do not inflict ‘unnecessary’ suffering on them. According to this position, animals are not self-aware and live in an eternal present; they do not have an interest in continuing to live as distinguished from an interest in not suffering. The use and killing of animals does not per se involve inflicting harm on them. The view that animal life has a lesser moral value cannot be justified in that all sentient beings are self-aware and have an interest in continuing to live. Although we do not treat all humans equally, we accord all humans the right not to be treated as property. We cannot justify not according this one right to all sentient nonhumans.

Research in Phenomenology, 2010

The concepts of animal, human, and rights are all part of a philosophical tradition that trades on foreclosing the animal, animality, and animals. Rather than looking to qualities or capacities that make animals the same as or different from humans, I investigate the relationship between the human and the animal. To insist, as animal rights and welfare advocates do, that our ethical obligations to animals are based on their similarities to us reinforces the type of humanism that leads to treating animals-and other people-as subordinates. But, if recent philosophies of difference are any indication, we can acknowledge difference without acknowledging our dependence on animals, or without including animals in ethical considerations. Animal ethics requires rethinking both identity and difference by focusing on relationships and responsivity. My aim is not only to suggest an animal ethics but also to show how ethics itself is transformed by considering animals.

Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics, 2017

This paper reflects on the question, "Is there a sound justification for the existential view that humans have a higher moral status than other animals?" It argues that the existential view that humans have a higher moral status than animals is founded on a weak and inconclusive foundation. While acknowledging various arguments raised for a common foundation between human and non-human animals, the paper attempts to establish a common ground for moral considerability of human and non-human animals. The first common foundation is based on the existential notion of being in the world, which is common for both human and non-human animals. The second idea is based on the common desire to actualize different needs. The paper demonstrates these common foundations by referring to Heidegger and Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 2005

Годишен зборник на Филозофскиот факултет/The Annual of the Faculty of Philosophy in Skopje

In the last few decades we have witnessed a proliferation of works in the field widely defined as "studies of the relationship between man and animals", "studies of animals", or "anthrozoology", and even "studies of animal ethics". Among the avant-garde in this field there is a confrontation with this naturalized discourse. Over time, this has led to a growing need to reconsider, analyse and upgrade the validity of the argument of different ethical views and their theories that serve to determine and evaluate our behaviour towards animals as morally acceptable or not. Hence, what the author is primarily concerned with, is critical reflection on a wide range of theories that seek to explain relevant positions on our relationship to animals and wildlife on Earth. Taking on this new responsibility in relation to our treatment of animals modifies not only our way of more direct treatment of animals, but also the way we should be constituted as entities in the world. It is an assumption that we share the world with other beings and that this implies a moral obligation that goes beyond the category of belonging to the same species. A new culture of human coexistence with other non-human beings needs to be inaugurated, in line with modern living conditions on this planet.

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.

The aim of this research study is to provide an overview of ontological and ethical paradigms on nonhuman animals in Western philosophy and the accounts those paradigms give on the moral status of animals, in the sense that whether interests of nonhuman animals or nonhuman animals themselves morally matter for their own sake. Instead of strictly following a chronological order; this study is maintained on three key concepts that are related to the subject: First, the Antique Greek concept of « logos » in the sense of reasoning and meaningful speech, then the concept of « sentience » which refers to a certain form of consciousness that enables a being to experience pain and pleasure, and finally the concept of « moral personhood » which designates a being who possesses inviolable moral (prelegal) rights. By focusing these concepts, the historical relationship between the "invention" of logos as a characteristic that is distinctively human and the exclusion of nonhuman animals from moral concern is inquired, as well as, practical implications and limitations of utilitarian ethics that propose the equal consideration of suffering and interests of nonhuman animals. After having presented and discussed these concepts along with the different theories that have contributed to their shaping, the work concludes that a moral rights approach that holds sentience as the only prerequisite for the equal moral consideration is a consistent and justified position and in practice this position would mean that account of nonhuman animals as a 'thing' or as a 'resource' is needed to be abandoned.