FYI: Nathan Nobis, a philosophy professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta, recently published Animals and Ethics 101: Thinking Critically About Animal Rights. A well-reviewed introduction to animal ethics, the textbook (created to accompany an online course on the same subject) evaluates the arguments for and against various uses of animals, including:
- Is it morally wrong to experiment on animals? Why or why not?
- Is it morally permissible to eat meat? Why or why not?
- Are we morally obligated to provide pets with veterinary care (and, if so, how much)? Why or why not?
You can buy the paperback on Amazon for $5.99 or Kindle for $2.99. But Nobis has also made the text available free online, under a Creative Commons license. You can download it in multiple formats here.
Ethics 101: Thinking Critically About Animal Rights will be added to our list of Free Textbooks.
Related Content:
Watch Glass Walls, Paul McCartney’s Case for Going Vegetarian
Free Online Philosophy Courses
To answer this question we need to address what, if any, is the meaningful difference between human animals, and other animals.
Canada just outlawed genetic discrimination in the “Human Rights” act, for example. Taken literally, that would potentially make it illegal to discriminate against chimpanzees.
Notably, we can still discriminate against our future robot overlords. Not sure how long they’ll put up with that. Unlike animals, they get really smart, really fast, and they never forget it, and teaching is as simple as copying the files.
But if we are (as I think seems plausible) going to recognize rights for smart robots, there will be even less ground for failing to recognize rights for non-human animals.
Multiple sources, but not multiple formats I think.
to the david rothkopf and his magazine. another editor from more magazine abby perlman got envolved in dirty coraption business with crazy cbs anchor otis livingston to steal money from foreign policy magazine’s employees bank accounts. never trust otis livingston and abby perlman they belongs in jail.