Animal Rights in a Diverse Society
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Tom Regan on 'Kind' Arguments Against Animal Rights and For
WellBeing International WBI Studies Repository 2015 Tom Regan on ‘Kind’ Arguments Against Animal Rights and For Human Rights Nathan Nobis Morehouse College Follow this and additional works at: https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/acwp_sata Part of the Animal Studies Commons, Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons, and the Politics and Social Change Commons Recommended Citation Nobis, Nathan (2016). Tom Regan on Kind Arguments against Animal Rights and for Human Rights. In Mylan Engel Jr & Gary Comstock (eds.), The Moral Rights of Animals. Lexington Books. pp. 65-80. This material is brought to you for free and open access by WellBeing International. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the WBI Studies Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Tom Regan on ‘Kind’ Arguments Against Animal Rights and For Human Rights Nathan Nobis Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA [email protected] www.NathanNobis.com 1/12/2014 2:10:42 PM; 7500 words Abstract: Tom Regan argues that human beings and some non-human animals have moral rights because they are “subjects of lives,” that is, roughly, conscious, sentient beings with an experiential welfare. A prominent critic, Carl Cohen, objects: he argues that only moral agents have rights and so animals, since they are not moral agents, lack rights. An objection to Cohen’s argument is that his theory of rights seems to imply that human beings who are not moral agents have no moral rights, but since these human beings have rights, his theory of rights is false, and so he fails to show that animals lack rights. -
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GENERATION V The Complete Guide to Going, Being, and Staying Vegan as a Teenager Claire Askew Going vegan is the single most important thing you can do if you want to get serious about animal rights. Yet, going vegan isn’t always easy when you’re young. You’re living under your parents’ roof, you probably don’t buy your own groceries, and your friends, family, and teachers might look at you like you’re nuts. So, how do you do it? In this essential guide for the curious, aspiring, and current teenage vegan, Claire Askew draws on her years of experience as a teenage vegan and provides the tools for going vegan and staying vegan as a teen. Full of advice, stories, tips, and resources, Claire covers topics like: how to go vegan and stay sane; how to tell your parents so they don’t freak out; how to deal with friends who don’t get it; how to eat and stay healthy as a vegan; how to get out of dissection assignments in school; and tons more. Whether you’re a teenager who is thinking about going vegan or already vegan, this is the ultimate resource, written by someone SUBJECT CATEGORY like you, for you. FOOd-VegetARiAniSM/ PhilOSOPhY-ethicS ABOUT THE AUTHOR PRICE Claire Askew was born in 1990 and went vegan a few days after her $14.95 fifteenth birthday. After growing up in the Midwest, she is currently studying English and gender at a small liberal arts college in Portland, ISBN OR. She has been featured in VegNews magazine, the Vegetarian 978-1-60486-338-3 Journal, the Kansas City Star, and several podcasts, as well as the 2009 edition of Fiske Real College Essays That Work. -
MAC1 Abstracts – Oral Presentations
Oral Presentation Abstracts OP001 Rights, Interests and Moral Standing: a critical examination of dialogue between Regan and Frey. Rebekah Humphreys Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom This paper aims to assess R. G. Frey’s analysis of Leonard Nelson’s argument (that links interests to rights). Frey argues that claims that animals have rights or interests have not been established. Frey’s contentions that animals have not been shown to have rights nor interests will be discussed in turn, but the main focus will be on Frey’s claim that animals have not been shown to have interests. One way Frey analyses this latter claim is by considering H. J. McCloskey’s denial of the claim and Tom Regan’s criticism of this denial. While Frey’s position on animal interests does not depend on McCloskey’s views, he believes that a consideration of McCloskey’s views will reveal that Nelson’s argument (linking interests to rights) has not been established as sound. My discussion (of Frey’s scrutiny of Nelson’s argument) will centre only on the dialogue between Regan and Frey in respect of McCloskey’s argument. OP002 Can Special Relations Ground the Privileged Moral Status of Humans Over Animals? Robert Jones California State University, Chico, United States Much contemporary philosophical work regarding the moral considerability of nonhuman animals involves the search for some set of characteristics or properties that nonhuman animals possess sufficient for their robust membership in the sphere of things morally considerable. The most common strategy has been to identify some set of properties intrinsic to the animals themselves. -
The Fragility of Consensus: Public Reason, Diversity, and Stability
The Fragility of Consensus: Public Reason, Diversity, and Stability (Forthcoming in The European Journal of Philosophy) John Thrasher and Kevin Vallier Abstract: John Rawls’s transition from A Theory of Justice to Political Liberalism was driven by his rejection of Theory’s account of stability. The key to his later account of stability is the idea of public reason. We see Rawls’s account of stability as an attempt to solve a mutual assurance problem. We maintain that Rawls’s solution fails because his primary assurance mechanism, in the form of public reason, is fragile. His conception of public reason relies on a condition of consensus that we argue is both unrealistic in modern, pluralistic democracies and fragile. Rejecting his conception of public reason as unable to maintain stability, we offer an “indirect alternative” that we believe is much more robust. We offer experimental evidence to back up this claim. John Rawls’s early conception of stability required a substantive ‘congruence’ between the right and the good (1999: 496-505).1 He later rejected this view, however, believing it was untenable in light of the fact of reasonable pluralism. Pervasive disagreement among reasonable members of a well-ordered society will inevitably lead to a breakdown in congruence; destabilizing institutions based on Justice as Fairness.2 In Political Liberalism, Rawls attempted to avoid this problem by developing a conception of stability ‘for the 1 (Rawls 1999) is hereafter TJ. Many readers may be unfamiliar with Rawlsian ‘congruence,’ but the concept is pivotal. See: (Weithman 2010), hereafter WPL? Throughout, we us PL to refer to (Rawls 2005). -
Public Reason1
charles larmore 10 Public Reason1 For John Rawls, public reason is not one political value among others. It envelops all the different elements that make up the ideal of a constitutional democracy, for it governs “the political relation” in which we ought to stand to one another as citizens (CP,p.574). Public reason involves more than just the idea that the principles of political association should be an object of public knowledge. Its concern is the very basis of our collectively binding decisions. We honor public reason when we bring our own reason into accord with the reason of others, espousing a common point of view for settling the terms of our political life. The conception of justice by which we live is then a conception we endorse, not for the different reasons we may each discover, and not simply for reasons we happen to share, but instead for reasons that count for us because we can affirm them together. This spirit of reciprocity is the foundation of a democratic society. Public reason has emerged as an explicit theme in Rawls’s writings only after A Theory of Justice with his turn to “political liberalism” and the pursuit of a common ground on which people can stand de- spite their deep ethical and religious differences. But the concept itself has always been at the heart of his philosophy. It runs through his first book in the guise of the idea of publicity, playing an in- dispensable part in the theory of justice as fairness. The notion of fairness itself, so central to Rawls’s thought, denotes that mutual acknowledgement of principles which public reason demands and which forms the real import of the language of social contract he has used to articulate his conception of justice. -
The Lukewarm Religions of Rawls' Overlapping Consensus
Aporia vol. 24 no. 2—2014 The Lukewarm Religions of Rawls’ Overlapping Consensus ALEXANDER SCHAEFER With regard to abortion, I accept my church’s position that life begins at conception. That’s the church’s judgment. I accept it in my personal life. But I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians and Muslims and Jews and—I just refuse to impose that on others, unlike my friend here, the congressman. I do not believe that we have a right to tell other people that women can’t control their body. It’s a decision between them and their doctor, in my view. —Vice President Joe Biden I. Introduction iden’s statement neatly exemplifies Rawls’ ideal separation of one’s Comprehensive Moral Doctrine (CMD) from the sphere of political Breason. Given what Rawls calls the “burdens of judgment,” it is un- reasonable for any citizen in a democratic society to expect all others to adopt his or her exact same doctrine (54).1 Therefore, it is also unreason- able to use the values and beliefs of one’s particular CMD to form laws that will apply equally to all citizens. Doing so would force those who reasonably disagree with one’s CMD to act in accord with it. If a legitimate and stable 1 Although a CMD can be any system of values that extends beyond the political (containing “nonpolitical values and virtues” (Rawls 175)) this paper will treat only religious CMDs. Whether parts of this critique can be extended to cover other types of CMDs is an open question. -
Fairness, Consensus, and the Justification of the Ideal Liberal Constitution
Fairness, Consensus, and the Justification of the Ideal Liberal Constitution Philip Cook LSE Law, Society and Economy Working Papers 4/2009 London School of Economics and Political Science Law Department This paper can be downloaded without charge from LSE Law, Society and Economy Working Papers at: www.lse.ac.uk/collections/law/wps/wps.htm and the Social Sciences Research Network electronic library at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1331374. © Philip Cook. Users may download and/or print one copy to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. Users may not engage in further distribution of this material or use it for any profit-making activities or any other form of commercial gain. Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1331374 Philip Cook The Justification of the Ideal Liberal Constitution Fairness, Consensus, and the Justification of the Ideal Liberal Constitution Philip Cook * Abstract: In Constitutional Goods Brudner argues that the justification of the ideal liberal constitutional must be based on an alternative conception of public reason from that that presented by Rawls in Political Liberalism. This paper sets out the disagreement between the two notions of justification, and argues that Brudner’s proposed account is problematic on two accounts. Firstly, it seems internally inconsistent. Brudner’s alternative to Rawls’s overlapping consensus, a convergent consensus on an inclusive conception of liberalism, will be impossible given the plural and often contradictory nature of differing liberal doctrines. Secondly, even if such a consensus is possible it will be characterized by modus vivendi rather than a reasonable agreement based on the value of fairness. -
Consensus on What? Convergence for What? Four Models of Political
Consensus on What? Convergence for What? Four Models of Political Liberalism* Gerald Gaus and Chad Van Schoelandt 1 A PROJECT, NOT AN EDIFICE In an early symposium on A Theory of Justice, John Chapman remarked that “Rawls’s theory has both the simplicity and the complexity of a Gothic cathedral.”1 In his recent important book on Rawls’s political turn, Paul Weithman notes and endorses this characterization. Weithman seeks a unified interpretation of Theory, Rawls’s political turn and its search for stability, overcoming the many partial interpretations that take only “one view of the cathedral.”2 When readers turn to Political Liberalism, the style that comes to mind is not gothic, but baroque.3 If one takes even the 1993 hardback edition of Political Liberalism as a single, unified construction — much less the paperback edition, which includes the important “Reply to Habermas”— it has the tension, movement, complexity and irregularity of the baroque. Nevertheless, at least as far as we can see, the baroque interpretation too fails — after numerous readings, we are unable to construct a reasonably coherent and viable interpretation that accounts for all the *An earlier version of this essay was delivered to the 25th anniversary of conference of Rawls's Political Liberalism, hosted by the Jean Beer Blumenfeld Center for Ethics, Georgia State University, May, 2016. Our thanks for the comments and suggestions of all the participants; subsequent comments by Paul Weithman were especially vaulable, as were discussions with Brian Kogelmann. 1 John W. Chapman, “Rawls’s Theory of Justice,” American Political Science Review, vol. -
Vegetarianism and Virtue: Does Consequentialism Demand Too Little?
WellBeing International WBI Studies Repository 1-2002 Vegetarianism and Virtue: Does Consequentialism Demand Too Little? Nathan Nobis University of Rochester Follow this and additional works at: https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/acwp_aafhh Part of the Animal Studies Commons, Other Anthropology Commons, and the Other Nutrition Commons Recommended Citation Nobis, N. (2002). Vegetarianism and Virtue: Does consequentialism Demand Too Little?. Social Theory & Practice, 28(1), 135-156. This material is brought to you for free and open access by WellBeing International. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the WBI Studies Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Vegetarianism and Virtue: Does Consequentialism Demand Too Little? Nathan Nobis Department of Philosophy, University of Rochester I will argue that each of us personally ought to be a vegetarian.1 Actually, the conclusion I will attempt to defend concerns more than one's eating habits in that I will argue that we should be "vegans." Not only should we not buy and eat meat, but we should also not purchase fur coats, stoles, and hats, or leather shoes, belts, jackets, purses and wallets, furniture, car interiors, and other traditionally animal-based products for which there are readily available plant-based or synthetic alternatives. (Usually these are cheaper and work just as well, or better, anyway.) I will argue that buying and eating most eggs and dairy products are immoral as well. (Since it's much easier -
Abolitionist Animal Rights: Critical Comparisons and Challenges Within the Animal Rights Movement
WellBeing International WBI Studies Repository 11-2012 Abolitionist Animal Rights: Critical Comparisons and Challenges Within the Animal Rights Movement Corey Lee Wrenn Colorado State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/anirmov Part of the Animal Studies Commons, Civic and Community Engagement Commons, and the Politics and Social Change Commons Recommended Citation Wrenn, C. (2012). Abolitionist animal rights: critical comparisons and challenges within the animal rights movement. Interface, 4(2), 438-458. This material is brought to you for free and open access by WellBeing International. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the WBI Studies Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Interface: a journal for and about social movements Article Volume 4 (2): 438 - 458 (November 2012) Wrenn, Abolitionist Animal Rights Abolitionist animal rights: critical comparisons and challenges within the animal rights movement Corey Wrenn Abstract The abolitionist movement is an emergent and radical approach to nonhuman animal rights. Calling for a complete cessation in nonhuman animal use through the abolishing of property status for nonhuman animals and an adoption of veganism and nonviolence, this approach stands in stark contrast to mainstream approaches such as humane production and welfare reform. This paper describes the goals and stances of abolitionism; the basic debate between abolitionism and other nonhuman animal rights movements; and the current state, challenges, and future prospects for abolitionism. It is argued that abolitionism, as developed by Francione, is the only morally consistent approach for taking the interests of nonhuman animals seriously. -
Nozick's Libertarian Critique of Regan
68 BETWEEN THE SPECIES Nozick’s Libertarian Critique of Regan ABSTRACT Robert Nozick’s oft-quoted review of Tom Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights levels a range of challenges to Regan’s philosophy. Many commentators have focused on Nozick’s putative defense of speciesism, but this has led to them overlooking other aspects of the critique. In this paper, I draw attention to two. First is Nozick’s criti- cism of Regan’s political theory, which is best understood relative to Nozick’s libertarianism. Nozick’s challenge invites the possibility of a libertarian account of animal rights – which is not as oxymo- ronic as it may first sound. Second is Nozick’s criticism of Regan’s axiological theory, which is best understood relative to Nozick’s own axiological inegalitarianism. While Nozick’s axiology has distaste- ful consequences, it should not be dismissed out-of-hand. Nozick’s challenges to Regan – and Nozick’s wider animal ethics – are rich and original, warranting attention from contemporary theorists for reasons beyond mere historical interest. Josh Milburn University of York Volume 21, Issue 1 Spring 2018 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/ 69 Josh Milburn Tom Regan published The Case for Animal Rights (hereaf- ter, The Case) in 1983, spawning a literature of responses, cri- tiques, developments and applications. It continues to have con- siderable influence on philosophical literature in animal ethics to this day – as this special issue demonstrates. Regan belongs on a short list of the most influential and significant normative philosophers of the 21st century. Another philosopher who un- doubtedly belongs on this list is Robert Nozick, most famous as the author of the 1974 Anarchy, State, and Utopia (hereafter, ASU), in which he offers a right libertarian theory of justice. -
Humane Intervention’: the International Protection of Animal Rights
This is a repository copy of ‘Humane intervention’: the international protection of animal rights. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/95205/ Version: Accepted Version Article: Cochrane, A. and Cooke, S. (2016) ‘Humane intervention’: the international protection of animal rights. Journal of Global Ethics, 12 (1). pp. 106-121. ISSN 1744-9626 https://doi.org/10.1080/17449626.2016.1149090 Reuse Unless indicated otherwise, fulltext items are protected by copyright with all rights reserved. The copyright exception in section 29 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 allows the making of a single copy solely for the purpose of non-commercial research or private study within the limits of fair dealing. The publisher or other rights-holder may allow further reproduction and re-use of this version - refer to the White Rose Research Online record for this item. Where records identify the publisher as the copyright holder, users can verify any specific terms of use on the publisher’s website. Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Alasdair Cochrane & Steve Cooke ‘Humane Intervention’: The International Protection of Animal Rightsi Abstract: This paper explores the international implications of liberal theories which extend justice to sentient animals. In particular, it asks whether they imply that coercive military intervention in a state by external agents to prevent, halt or minimise violations of basic animal rights (‘humane intervention’) can be justified.