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Conclusion

Lisa Kemmerer

in Animals and World Religions

The conclusion reiterates the intent, focus, and parameters of the book, and revisits the distinction between animal welfare and animal liberation. The conclusion offers two formal arguments based on ... More

The conclusion reiterates the intent, focus, and parameters of the book, and revisits the distinction between animal welfare and animal liberation. The conclusion offers two formal arguments based on information presented throughout the book, affirming both the religious requirement for a vegan diet and encouraging animal activism and animal liberation. After offering an explanation as to why few people are aware of the animal-friendly nature of religious traditions, the conclusion outlines five compelling reasons to change our consumption habits and adopt a plant-based diet. The book concludes by affirming the positive power of religious commitment.Less

Explanation

Lasana T. Harris

in Invisible Mind: Flexible Social Cognition and Dehumanization

The fourth chapter argues that explanation may be the function of social cognition, aiding survival and driving human evolution. It explores the psychological literature on anthropomorphism—instances ... More

The fourth chapter argues that explanation may be the function of social cognition, aiding survival and driving human evolution. It explores the psychological literature on anthropomorphism—instances where people bring non-human agents and entities to life by engaging social cognition—and describes it as a type of ‘magical’ or imaginary thinking. It then contrasts this ability with dehumanizing people, describing the brain mechanisms enabling dehumanization, and the functions of withholding social cognition to people. It then considers extending social cognition to animals as a domain where the flexible nature of social cognition is revealed. Finally, it implicates explanation as a causal factor in intractable group conflict.Less

Why I Am a Pacifist

in Activist Poetics: Anarchy in the Avon Valley

This chapter explains Kinsella's views about pacificism. He believes that pacifism extends to all living creatures: he does not eat them, does not consciously exploit them, and does not make ... More

This chapter explains Kinsella's views about pacificism. He believes that pacifism extends to all living creatures: he does not eat them, does not consciously exploit them, and does not make tangential use of them through by-products. His pacifism is synonymous with his veganism and anarchism.Less

Diving In, Opting Out

Alex V. Barnard

in Freegans: Diving into the Wealth of Food Waste in America

Chapter 2 follows the trajectories of individual freegans into the movement. It explores freegans’ gradual disillusionment with “ethical consumption,” their first exposure to waste, and the shocks to ... More

Chapter 2 follows the trajectories of individual freegans into the movement. It explores freegans’ gradual disillusionment with “ethical consumption,” their first exposure to waste, and the shocks to their consciences that led many of them to quit their jobs, leave their apartments, and become full-time activists.Less

The Animal on Your Plate: Farmers, Vegans, and Locavores

Kathy Rudy

in Loving Animals: Toward a New Animal Advocacy

This chapter explores the debate over the consumption of animals. The vast majority of our animal products come from “factory farms” or CAFOs (confined or concentrated animal feeding operations): ... More

This chapter explores the debate over the consumption of animals. The vast majority of our animal products come from “factory farms” or CAFOs (confined or concentrated animal feeding operations): these industrial operations house our food animals in automated cages, tin sheds, and feedlots where animals are packed in at astounding rates. Fortunately, there is a revolution about food happening in the United States today and it has to do with farmers’ markets. However, many strong animal rights advocates reject this movement of growing meat on pasture, insisting that veganism is the only necessary or adequate response. This chapter argues that it is not wrong to consume animals that have a happy, drug-free, and relatively long life, along with their products like eggs and milk, as long as those are harvested morally; that we can resist the heartlessness of late capitalism by renewing our commitment to good food and to our food animals; and that it’s not that we eat animals but how we treat them that makes all the difference in the world.Less

Veganism as an Aspiration

Lori Gruen and Robert C. Jones

in The Moral Complexities of Eating Meat

Given the violence, objectification, domination, commodification, and oppression inherent in industrialized food production, some conscientious consumers have adopted vegan practices. This chapter ... More

Given the violence, objectification, domination, commodification, and oppression inherent in industrialized food production, some conscientious consumers have adopted vegan practices. This chapter discusses two conceptions of veganism, lifestyle/identity veganism, VI, and veganism as a goal/aspiration, VA. It argues that due to conceptual and practical flaws with VI, conscientious consumers should adopt VA. It considers and rejects the so-called compassionate carnivore movement. It then explores arguments denying the casual efficacy of adopting any form of veganism. It concludes that VA can make a difference, and those in consumer cultures are obligated to adopt and practice it.Less

The Animal Lovers’ Paradox?: On the Ethics of “Pet Food”

Josh Milburn

in Pets and People: The Ethics of Companion Animals

Animal lovers normally contribute to significant harm inflicted upon nonhuman animals. This is because dogs and cats are fed animal-derived foods, which are the product of death and suffering. This ... More

Animal lovers normally contribute to significant harm inflicted upon nonhuman animals. This is because dogs and cats are fed animal-derived foods, which are the product of death and suffering. This chapter presents an argument suggesting that, typically, people have an obligation to feed their companions a vegan diet. The claim is then defended against three challenges—from dignity, naturalness, and freedom, respectively—that are unsuccessful. A final challenge, from health, is more problematic, and a four-pronged approach to companion veganism is defended. For dogs, people’s moral and political obligations roughly coincide: individually and collectively, people should switch their dogs to vegan diets. For cats, people’s obligations diverge: while individually they should minimize the impact of their companions’ diets, as members of society they have an obligation to come to a greater understanding of how the negative impact of cats’ diets can be fully eliminated.Less

Care, Moral Progress, and Companion Animals

Maurice Hamington

in Pets and People: The Ethics of Companion Animals

This chapter contends that our companion animal relationships foment the development of care ethics and, moreover, provide the habit and skill needed for moral progress. Responsiveness is essential ... More

This chapter contends that our companion animal relationships foment the development of care ethics and, moreover, provide the habit and skill needed for moral progress. Responsiveness is essential to caring. The lack of narrative in relationships with companion animals requires a heightened level of non-linguistic responsiveness (such as through touch) as well as an increased effort at empathetic imagination. The habits of attunement needed for interspecies care, if meaningfully engaged, point to an openness to moral progress. These relationships are not governed by abstract rules that support a static standard of normativity. However, care does not imply relativism, as it is guided by effective response. The notion of care employed draws from feminist theory but emphasizes care’s embodied and performative aspects. Allowing embodied care for animals to enter our moral imaginations, such as through informed anthropomorphism, suggests a means for moral progress with provocative implications. One such implication is ethical veganism.Less

Meat and Evil

Matthew C. Halteman

in Evil: A History

In a world where meat is often a token of comfort, health, hospitality, and abundance, one can be forgiven for raising an eyebrow at the conjunction “meat and evil.” From another perspective, the ... More

In a world where meat is often a token of comfort, health, hospitality, and abundance, one can be forgiven for raising an eyebrow at the conjunction “meat and evil.” From another perspective, the problem is obvious: meat—the flesh of slaughtered animals taken for food—is the remnant of a feeling creature who was recently alive and whose death was premature, violent, and often gratuitous. The truth is that meat has a checkered history in the west. From its origin-story in Abrahamic religion to its industrial production today, meat is well-marbled with evil and its minions: sin, violence, injustice, destruction, suffering, and death. My aim is to consider meat’s fitness for a place in the Western history of evil by reflecting on its outsized roles at the bookends of this narrative: meat’s primeval history in Genesis, and its contribution today to ethical and environmental problems of arguably apocalyptic proportions.Less