Statistics

This blog had 1,266 visits during May, which is an average of 40.8 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 43.1.

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from June 2007.

Statistics

This blog had 1,519 visits during April, which is an average of 50.6 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 57.5.

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from May 2007.

Statistics

This blog had 1,549 visits during March, which is an average of 49.9 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 44.0.

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from April 2007.

Animal Rights

I'm rooting for Steven Wise.

Statistics

This blog had 1,903 visits during February, which is an average of 67.9 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 39.8.

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from March 2007.

Tom Regan (1938-2017), R.I.P.

Yesterday, the world lost its most powerful voice for animal rights, Tom Regan. Regan devoted his professional life to defending animal rights in his numerous books (including: The Case for Animal Rights; The Animal Rights Debate; Animal Rights, Human Wrongs; and Empty Cages), in his countless articles and public lectures, and in his testimony before Congress. No one has done more to explain what "animal rights" means and why animals have rights than Tom Regan. In a society (the U.S.) where 10 billion animals are raised and slaughtered needlessly for food each year, Regan's books remain as relevant today as when they were first published. As Regan expressed so simply and straightforwardly, what animal rights advocates want is for "people to stop doing terrible things to animals." Each of us can help bring an end to these terrible things by not eating animals, not wearing animals, not purchasing products tested on animals, and not consuming animal products. While the animal rights community has lost its biggest advocate, we can be grateful that his words will live on to inspire countless others to give animals the moral respect they are due.

It is obvious from the outpouring of love and admiration already expressed in social media that Tom Regan had a profoundly positive impact on many people's lives. Those wishing to honor him and to help further his legacy can make a tax-deductible donation in his name to the Culture & Animal Foundation [CAF], which Regan founded in 1985. CAF takes a distinctive approach to animal advocacy: it is the only all-volunteer organization exclusively dedicated to fostering intellectual and artistic expression aimed at furthering awareness of animal rights. Indeed, CAF is one of the few granting agencies that funds academic and artistic projects designed to raise public awareness about concern for animals. CAF’s grants help make possible the next generation of animal rights scholarship and artistry. To donate, simply make a check out to the “Culture & Animals Foundation” and mail it to:

Culture & Animals Foundation

3509 Eden Croft Dr.

Raleigh, NC 27612

You can learn more about the Culture & Animals Foundation and its mission here.

Statistics

This blog had 1,072 visits during January, which is an average of 34.5 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 31.2.

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from February 2007.

Statistics

This blog had 1,068 visits during December, which is an average of 34.4 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 43.1.

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from January 2007.

Statistics

This blog had 1,600 visits during November, which is an average of 53.3 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 54.9.

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from December 2006.

Anniversary

I started this blog 13 years ago today. There have been 310,008 visits, which is an average of 23,846.7 visits per year, 457.0 visits per week, and 65.2 visits per day (taking leap years into account). Here is the first post, on 28 November 2003.

Bernard E. Rollin on the Moral Status of Animals

Philosophers have shown that the standard reasons offered to exclude animals from the moral circle, and to justify not assessing our treatment of them by the same moral categories and machinery we use for assessing the treatment of humans, do not meet the test of moral relevance. Such historically sanctified reasons as “animals lack a soul,” “animals do not reason,” “humans are more powerful than animals,” “animals do not have language,” “God said we could do as we wish to animals” have been demonstrated to provide no rational basis for failing to reckon with animal interests in our moral deliberations. For one thing, while the above statements may mark differences between humans and animals, they do not mark morally relevant differences that justify harming animals when we would not similarly harm people. For example, if we justify harming animals on the grounds that we are more powerful than they are, we are essentially affirming “might makes right,” a principle that morality is in large measure created to overcome. By the same token, if we are permitted to harm animals for our benefit because they lack reason, there are no grounds for not extending the same logic to non-rational humans, as we shall shortly see. And while animals may not have the same interests as people, it is evident to commonsense [sic] that they certainly do have interests, the fulfillment and thwarting of which matter to them.

(Bernard E. Rollin, "The Moral Status of Animals and Their Use as Experimental Subjects," chap. 41 in A Companion to Bioethics, 2d ed., ed. Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer [Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009], 495-509, at 497 [italics in original])

Uppity Human

See here.

Leonard Nelson (1882-1927) on Duties to Animals

Moral philosophers, even those belonging to the Critical School [the followers of Kant and Fries], have often represented duties to animals as indirect duties to oneself or to other men. For instance, maltreatment of animals is forbidden on the ground that it encourages cruelty, that is, a disposition that obstructs fulfillment of duty. Now, maltreatment of animals may have just that effect; nevertheless the argument in question takes no account of the whole truth. For according to this argument, maltreatment of animals is reprehensible because of the incidental effects it has on the character of the agent or of other men. Where the effects are not harmful, maltreatment of animals would thus be permitted.

If we examine the arguments on the basis of which the existence of direct duties to animals has been denied, we are compelled to conclude regretfully that most of these arguments are sophistical—indeed, they are so threadbare that we find it surprising that they could be advanced by people who claim to be schooled in scientific method. The treatment this problem has received in ethics would be devastating testimony to the limitations of human understanding, if it were not clear that interest rather than error accounts for it.

(Leonard Nelson, System of Ethics, trans. Norbert Guterman [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956], 137 [footnote inserted into text in brackets])