Search Results

Conclusion

Donna Yarri

in The Ethics of Animal Experimentation: A Critical Analysis and Constructive Christian Proposal

The ultimate goal in animal experimentation is not necessarily to eliminate all experiments, but rather to establish a benign ethic for its practice. An interim ethic is described, which includes ... More

The ultimate goal in animal experimentation is not necessarily to eliminate all experiments, but rather to establish a benign ethic for its practice. An interim ethic is described, which includes changes in current animal legislation, specifically with regard to the Animal Welfare Act. Paying attention to animal husbandry conditions and utilizing preference tests can go a long way in establishing a more humane practice of animal experimentation. Finally, the idea of pet keeping is offered as a model for treating experimental animals much as we would pets. The result would be a movement away from simply an instrumental and often harmful use of animals, to one which is based on the intrinsic value of animals.Less

Animal Minds

Donna Yarri

in The Ethics of Animal Experimentation: A Critical Analysis and Constructive Christian Proposal

The question of animal minds is a central one in the debate on the ethical treatment of animals in general, and on the issue of animal experimentation in particular. This chapter argues that animals ... More

The question of animal minds is a central one in the debate on the ethical treatment of animals in general, and on the issue of animal experimentation in particular. This chapter argues that animals possess at least rudimentary levels of cognition, including rationality, language, intelligence, consciousness, beliefs and desires, autonomy, and personhood. The existence of marginal humans, who lack to some degree the cognition of normal adult humans, challenges the notion of speciesism, in which automatic favor is granted to or denied to one simply by virtue of species membership. Thus, the conclusion is reached that the differences between humans and animals are differences of degree rather than differences of kind.Less

Introduction

Donna Yarri

in The Ethics of Animal Experimentation: A Critical Analysis and Constructive Christian Proposal

The ethical treatment of animals in general, and in particular the issue of animal experimentation, continues to be a disputed moral issue. This chapter surveys the history of the use of animals in ... More

The ethical treatment of animals in general, and in particular the issue of animal experimentation, continues to be a disputed moral issue. This chapter surveys the history of the use of animals in experimentation, beginning with the ancient Greek period and going through the contemporary era. It presents the history of experimentation as well the eventual opposition to it on the part of some. The chapter concludes by laying out how the book will proceed, which addresses the following topics: animal legislation, animal minds, animal sentience, animal rights, Christian theology and its perspective on animals, and the burdens and benefits of animal experimentation.Less

Animal Pain

Donna Yarri

in The Ethics of Animal Experimentation: A Critical Analysis and Constructive Christian Proposal

The issue of animal sentience, particularly animal pain and suffering, is probably the most significant one in animal experimentation. Many experimental procedures cause significant harm for ... More

The issue of animal sentience, particularly animal pain and suffering, is probably the most significant one in animal experimentation. Many experimental procedures cause significant harm for laboratory animals. After arguing for the reality of the harm caused to animals, this chapter offers specific suggestions on how to minimize this harm, which need to be more widely utilized. These include alternatives to the use of animals (particularly the 3Rs), refining current animal legislation, rigorous application of both pain scales and the use of drugs, improved animal husbandry conditions, and humane euthanasia, when it is necessary.Less

Nature of the Problem

Donna Yarri

in The Ethics of Animal Experimentation: A Critical Analysis and Constructive Christian Proposal

This chapter examines the factual situation with regard to animal experimentation. It includes information on the important definitions, as well as the prevalence of the practice, the type and number ... More

This chapter examines the factual situation with regard to animal experimentation. It includes information on the important definitions, as well as the prevalence of the practice, the type and number of animals used, the different types of research typically performed on animals, and animal legislation in place to protect them. The Animal Welfare Act is presented, along with its various amendments throughout the years.Less

Animal Rights and the Values of Nonhuman Life

Elizabeth Anderson

in Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions

This chapter examines some of the tensions among animal welfare, animal rights, and environmental protection ethics. It explains that while animal rights advocates object to animal experimentation, ... More

This chapter examines some of the tensions among animal welfare, animal rights, and environmental protection ethics. It explains that while animal rights advocates object to animal experimentation, this practice is acceptable to those who believe in animal welfare. The chapter shows that those who believe in environmental ethics might support the hunting of deer and rabbits when this is necessary to protect ecological well-being. It proposes an alternative approach to understanding the evaluative claims of the three perspectives, called rational attitude theory of value.Less

We’re All Animals: A Feminist Treatment of the Moral Limits of Nonhuman Animal Research

Christina M. Bellon

in The Ethics of Animal Research: Exploring the Controversy

This chapter assesses the issue of nonhuman animal research. It offers a provocative and challenging conclusion to the discussion of moral progress and to the volume as a whole. It determines some ... More

This chapter assesses the issue of nonhuman animal research. It offers a provocative and challenging conclusion to the discussion of moral progress and to the volume as a whole. It determines some methodological considerations of an adequate non-ideal account of animal experimentation. It presents a vision of what morally permissible animal experimentation requires, why it is in the interest of researchers as well as their animal subjects to transform the practice accordingly, and how can it bring it about. It also addresses two features of considerable moral importance: dependence and vulnerability. This chapter shows that the status quo of animal experimentation is morally unacceptable.Less

Rational Engagement, Emotional Response, and the Prospects for Moral Progress in Animal Use “Debates”

Nathan Nobis

in The Ethics of Animal Research: Exploring the Controversy

This chapter reveals that moral progress does not need any “new” philosophy or ethical theorizing. It determines three basic logical skills for rationally evaluating moral arguments. It reviews a ... More

This chapter reveals that moral progress does not need any “new” philosophy or ethical theorizing. It determines three basic logical skills for rationally evaluating moral arguments. It reviews a cumulative, pluralistic case against animal research that draws on every major moral perspective that plausibly explains the moral relations among human beings. It also reports the moral issues regarding the treatment of animals, specifically in experimentation, research, product testing, and education. This chapter suggests that there is no moral justification for harmful animal experimentation. It provides some “logical-skill”-based recommendations for making moral progress, and acknowledges financial, social, and gustatory barriers to fair, impartial critical thinking about animal use.Less

Virtue, Vice, and Vivisection

Garret Merriam

in The Ethics of Animal Research: Exploring the Controversy

This chapter argues that since it has neither the maximization component of utilitarianism, nor the deontological constraints of rights theory, virtue ethics can restrict animal experimentation to a ... More

This chapter argues that since it has neither the maximization component of utilitarianism, nor the deontological constraints of rights theory, virtue ethics can restrict animal experimentation to a narrow set of justified cases, while not prohibiting it outright. It contends that virtue theory can capture the general appeal of both utilitarianism and rights theory while avoiding the major problems of each. It also addresses six relevant elements in morally evaluating animal research programs. In light of these six conditions, this chapter suggests that very few cases of animal experimentation will be clearly justified.Less

Victims

Morrison Adrian R.

in An Odyssey with Animals: A Veterinarian's Reflections on the Animal Rights & Welfare Debate

This chapter describes the author's personal experiences in several cases of animal rights extremism involving other scientists. It specifically explores several clashes between animal rights ... More

This chapter describes the author's personal experiences in several cases of animal rights extremism involving other scientists. It specifically explores several clashes between animal rights activists and biomedical scientists. It then illustrates that the dangers to individual scientists and other animal users not only persist but are on the rise. It shows that attacks on scientists often have little to do with enhancing laboratory conditions, but are meant instead to impede animal experimentation by exploiting situations where experiments and their value could be easily presented in a poor light, and even resorting to gross misrepresentation of the laboratory. The author highlights a better way: support research that will eliminate or at least reduce the need for animals in the search for ways to advance medicine.Less

Sympathy as Callousness? Physiology and Vivisection

Rob Boddice

in The Science of Sympathy: Morality, Evolution, and Victorian Civilization

There has been much confusion about Darwin’s connection to the field of physiology, with regard to his support for vivisection. The chapter connects the intellectual position of Darwin with regard to ... More

There has been much confusion about Darwin’s connection to the field of physiology, with regard to his support for vivisection. The chapter connects the intellectual position of Darwin with regard to sympathy to the laboratory practice of animal experimentation, and lays out the moral argument of scientists that vivisection involved a necessary temporary callousness in the operating room for the sake of a greater good. This callousness, the possibility of which was greatly enhanced by the use of anesthetics, was ascribed to the highly evolved man of science, uniquely disposed to turn off immediate aesthetic and sentimental responses to the causation of pain or to the sight of blood, based on his ability to abstract or rationalise sympathy and project it to suffering humanity.Less

Animal Rights as Ideal and Nonideal Theory

Robert Garner

in A Theory of Justice for Animals: Animal Rights in a Nonideal World

In this chapter, ideal and nonideal theories of justice for animals are described and defended. According to the enhanced sentience position, animals have a right not to have suffering inflicted upon ... More

In this chapter, ideal and nonideal theories of justice for animals are described and defended. According to the enhanced sentience position, animals have a right not to have suffering inflicted upon them but not a right to life since most humans have a greater interest in life. This position would be very restrictive in what it is permissible morally to do to animals. For this reason, a nonideal theory, described as the sentience position, is identified. This position does prohibit morally the infliction of suffering on animals for human benefits, but at the same time accepts that humans can still, under certain circumstances, use them. From a nonideal perspective, the sentience position reflects the urgent need to eliminate animal suffering at the hands of humans. In addition, it is argued that it is more politically realistic than at first sight it might appear.Less

Transgenic Animals and Wild Nature: A Landscape of Moral Ecology

Strachan Donnelley

Ceara Donnelley and Bruce Jennings (eds)

in Frog Pond Philosophy: Essays on the Relationship Between Humans and Nature

This discussion of the ethical debates formed in the early years of the genetic engineering of animals continues the theme of ontological and value pluralism. Dogmatic support for animal modification ... More

This discussion of the ethical debates formed in the early years of the genetic engineering of animals continues the theme of ontological and value pluralism. Dogmatic support for animal modification and dogmatic prohibition of it are both rejected. The main perspective that emerges is how to combine the instrumental use of science and technology with an understanding of human limits and responsibilities for the preservation of the complex and plural sources of value in evolutionary nature and the intrinsic value of the species interdependency within which even human beings live.Less

Humans and the Natural World

Deborah Boyle

in The Well-Ordered Universe: The Philosophy of Margaret Cavendish

This chapter examines Cavendish’s views about the relationships between humans and the natural environment, arguing that Cavendish thought it appropriate and natural for humans to use animals and ... More

This chapter examines Cavendish’s views about the relationships between humans and the natural environment, arguing that Cavendish thought it appropriate and natural for humans to use animals and other natural resources in certain ways and that following these norms of behavior results in an orderly relationship between humans and the rest of nature. The chapter begins with a discussion of Cavendish’s egalitarian claim that non-human animals (and indeed all parts of Nature) are perceptive and knowing, just as humans are, and examines her claims about how non-human animals differ from humans. Cavendish’s attitudes toward vegetarianism, animal experimentation, and hunting are examined. The chapter ends with an account of Cavendish’s beliefs regarding the use of other natural resources such as trees and minerals, particularly as used by alchemists.Less

Arrival and Formation

Robert Garner and Yewande Okuleye

in The Oxford Group and the Emergence of Animal Rights: An Intellectual History

This chapter serves three main functions. First, it identifies the ten core members of the Oxford Group, and documents their backgrounds and the circumstances of their arrival in the city of Oxford. ... More

This chapter serves three main functions. First, it identifies the ten core members of the Oxford Group, and documents their backgrounds and the circumstances of their arrival in the city of Oxford. The Oxford Group consisted of three married couples: Roslind and Stanley Godlovitch, Peter and Renata Singer, and Richard and Mary Keshen. Next were the three singletons who shared a house in Oxford: John Harris, David Wood, and Michael Peters. Finally, and slightly more at the periphery—partly because of his age and partly because he was not an Oxford student (or married to one)—there was Richard Ryder. Second, it describes the formation of the Oxford Group and the key role played by the gatekeepers. Here, a dynamic role was played by the Godlovitches and by Brigid Brophy who did most to bring the group together Finally, the role of what Farrell describes as the “magnet place,” in our case Oxford—and the university in particular—is dissected. The importance of access to a major seat of learning that had a unparalled reputation in the field of philosophy and which was at the forefront of the development of a new field of applied ethics is documented.Less

Explanation and Understanding in Animal Narratives

David Herman

in Narratology beyond the Human: Storytelling and Animal Life

With chapter 6 having described the way norms for mental-state ascriptions operate in a top-down manner in discourse domains, chapter 7 explores how individual narratives can in turn have a bottom-up ... More

With chapter 6 having described the way norms for mental-state ascriptions operate in a top-down manner in discourse domains, chapter 7 explores how individual narratives can in turn have a bottom-up impact on the ascriptive norms circulating within particular domains. To this end, the chapter discusses how Thalia Field’s 2010 experimental narrative Bird Lovers, Backyard employs a strategic oscillation between two nomenclatures that can be used to profile nonhuman as well as human behaviors: (1) the register of action, which characterizes behavior in terms of motivations, goals, and projects; and (2) the register of events, which characterizes behavior in terms of caused movements that have duration in time and direction in space. In braiding together these two registers, Field’s text suggests not only how discourse practices can be repatterned, but also how such repatterning enables broader paradigm shifts—in this case shifts in ways of understanding cross-species encounters and entanglements.Less

Who Else Is Conscious?

Alan J. McComas

in Sherrington's Loom: An Introduction to the Science of Consciousness

This chapter studies the behaviors of various animal species, as well as animal consciousness. It argues for the significance of such studies, for these indicate that they, the animals, share the ... More

This chapter studies the behaviors of various animal species, as well as animal consciousness. It argues for the significance of such studies, for these indicate that they, the animals, share the property of consciousness with human beings. The chapter contends that animals are perfectly capable of language (and thus of thought), both vocal and signed. It is up to the humans then to undertake the challenge of deciphering these. To illustrate these points, the chapter looks at research done on various species of animals, from cats and dogs to dolphins and even insects. In so doing, this chapter it draws awareness to the fact that brains do not have to be built like that of humans to possess consciousness.Less