Moral Status Of Non-human Animals Research Articles

Xenotransplantation - current social, ethical, religious, and legal aspects

Introduction: Xenotransplantology, the field of transplantation involving organs or tissues between different species, holds great promise for addressing the global organ shortage crisis. However, the development of new technologies without proper legislative preparation raises significant moral and ethical considerations. This paper provides an overview of the current state of xenotransplantology, highlighting its revolutionary potential alongside the moral dilemmas it entails. Aim of the study: The aim of this study is to assess current social, ethical, religious, and legal trends regarding the issue of xenotransplantation. Materials and methods: To obtain up-to-date information concerning trends in xenotransplantation, a review of the PubMed and Google Scholar databases, along with the latest legislative reports in both Europe and Poland, was performed. Conclusions: Firstly, the authors briefly report on the current situation concerning transplantology and the widely spread organ donor crisis. Next, the issue of species boundaries and the moral status of non-human animals is addressed. The assessment of ethical implications of utilizing animals as organ donors is examined, along with the legal acts regulating this issue. Moreover, the authors attempt to evaluate the cultural and religious differences related to this concern. Furthermore, this study discusses the allocation and distribution of xenotransplants, considering issues of justice, fairness, and access to this innovative medical technology. Lastly, the paper delves into the risks and uncertainties associated with xenotransplantation, including the possibility of cross-species disease transmission and intensified course of organ rejection disease.

Virtue Ethics and Animal Moral Status

A person of good character treats other sentient beings with care and compassion. Yet virtue ethics apparently has trouble accounting for the moral status of nonhuman animals because of its focus on excellent character traits, rather than the moral “patient,” and because of its non-codifiability, at least in some forms. The task of this article is to answer the question: How can virtue ethics account for the moral value of nonhuman animals in the context of biomedical research? I argue that it can do so through attention to animal good lives, human-animal bonds, and the virtues themselves. The virtue ethics resources I draw on to support nonhuman animal value are not the same as those typically brought to bear in moral status discussions, but I suggest that moral status as usually conceived has its own problems as a tool for use in practical contexts like animal research.

Ethology of the Freed Animal. Concept, Paradigm and Implementations to the Moral Status of Non-Human Animals

The essay focuses on the methodological and theoretical premises of an emerging research area with both ethological and (bio)ethical implications: the ethology of the freed animal (EFA). Unlike existing ethological fields, EFA does not focus on the observation of nonhuman (NH) animals in a natural condition of freedom, nor on situations of captivity. Rather, EFA consists of a comparative study of NH animals that are removed from a condition of captivity, from the status of “living tool” of human beings and from any form of exploitation – instead relocated in an environment fairly appropriate to their speciesspecific and individual characteristics. Ideal places for this study are animal sanctuaries and parks/reserves where a previously captive NH animal can be reintroduced in their natural habitat or, when this proves impossible, in a contest appropriate to their characteristics and needs. Even though EFA exists already, as a de facto practice of the personnel running sanctuaries and parks, the field still lacks a recognizable scholarly paradigm, and is not yet acknowledged at institutional/academic level, nor were its moral implications thoroughly discussed. Consequently, one important aim for such a field is the establishment of an active interaction between the two parties involved (researchers and sanctuaries/parks operators).

Kant and Animals ed. by John J. Callanan and Lucy Allais

Reviewed by: Kant and Animals ed. by John J. Callanan and Lucy Allais Gary Steiner John J. Callanan and Lucy Allais, editors. Kant and Animals. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. xii + 258. Cloth, $80.00. A well-known Kant scholar once said to me, "You know, I love to study Kant because I think he's right about everything!" While it may be unlikely that that or any other Kant scholar really believes that Kant was "right about everything," the statement reminds us that, roughly speaking, there are two kinds of philosopher: those who are fully invested in vindicating as much of Kant's thought as humanly possible, and those who are concerned that Kant's thought is in many respects the culmination of a historical line of thought that is based on some deeply troubling premises. The authors of this volume seek to span this divide but ultimately fall heavily into the former camp. This, however, does not keep this volume from being unusually informative and thought provoking. Perhaps the highest praise I can offer of it is that while I disagree with almost all of the major conclusions presented by the contributors, I nonetheless learned a great deal and gained inspiration for my own continuing work on Kant's views about nonhuman animals from reading this volume. Attention to language can prove to be highly revealing. Arthur Ripstein and Sergio Tenenbaum present a defense of Kant's indirect duties view in which there are numerous [End Page 517] references to "the brutes" (e.g. 150, 152). One might be inclined to accept these as a benign, conventional way of referring to nonhuman animals, or one might not even take notice of such references given their ubiquity in our historical discourse about nonhuman animals. Similarly, the contributors follow the convention of distinguishing "human beings" from "animals," with the obligatory footnote indicating that, yes, human beings are animals as well, but that the human-animal shorthand is simply intended to serve the interest of linguistic economy. Near the beginning of her essay on moral responsibility for nonhuman animals, Helga Varden invokes "the obvious, assumed presumption … that humans are a kind of animal" as the rationale for the prevailing shorthand (157n1). I myself used to do this when writing about the moral status of nonhuman animals, but decided to stop doing so when I realized that this abbreviated nomenclature simply reinforces the sense that we humans are not "really" animals after all, even though we insist that we indeed are. References such as "brute" and "human versus animal" prove to be highly instructive symptoms of a global set of presuppositions about the categorical superiority of human beings over nonhuman animals that have persisted in the Western philosophical tradition since Greek antiquity. This global set of presuppositions is one embraced not only by many of the contributors to this volume, but more importantly by Kant himself. The detailed display of this set of presuppositions puts readers of this volume in a position to take their own critical stand on them as well as on the specific commitments to which they lead Kant. In her essay on moral responsibility for animals, Varden acknowledges that moral duties are "anthropocentric in a certain sense" (160), but she maintains that the specific sense of anthropocentrism is eminently defensible inasmuch as nonhuman animals lack the rationally informed freedom requisite for being a member of the moral community (164). To the extent that nonhuman animals lack this capacity, Varden suggests, "moral duties are always directed at moral agents" (165). In this connection, Varden acknowledges Peter Singer's and Tom Regan's "anti-speciesist" efforts to challenge Kant's views, but she rejects these efforts on the grounds that the "supplied intuitions" are misguided (166). Varden devotes only a single sentence to a specific consideration of Singer's and Regan's views, so it does not become as clear as it might what these supplied intuitions are supposed to be. Here this reader wishes the author had gone a bit deeper than Regan's "subject-of-alife" criterion to address explicitly his powerful concept of the moral patient—a notion that squarely challenges the account of the...

The moral status of animals: Degrees of moral status and the interest-based approach

This paper addresses the issue of the moral status of non-human animals, or the question whether sentient animals are morally considerable. The arguments for and against the moral status of animals are discussed, above all the argument from marginal cases. It is argued that sentient animals have moral status based on their having interests in their experiential well-being, but that there are degrees of moral status. Two interest-based approaches are presented and discussed: DeGrazia?s view that sentient animals have interests in continuing to live, and that their interests should be granted moral weight; and McMahan?s TRIA which similarly postulates that animals have interests and that in a given situation we should compare the human and animal interests at stake. Finally, the paper concludes that the anthropocentric approach to animal ethics should be abandoned in favour of the biocentric ethics.

Human Dignity: Final, Inherent, Absolute?

In the traditional understanding, human dignity is often portrayed as a «final», «inherent», and «absolute» value. If human dignity as the core of the status of a human being did indeed have thos characteristics, this would yield a severe limitation for obligations that stem from the moral status of non-human animals, plants, eco systems and other entities discussed in environmental ethics; for obligations that arise from human dignity standardly take priority over the duties toward entities with non-human moral status. Yet, many theorists of human dignity nowadays have given up the traditional picture in favour of a more «contingent» understanding of human dignity that abandons one or more of its traditional characteristics.In this paper, I argue that to the contrary, we have good reasons to think that the three characteristics of human dignity just mentioned can indeed be attributed to a value that deserves the name «human dignity». In a first part, I argue for a specific understanding of the three value characteristics under consideration. After these preliminaries, I show in a second part that given such an understanding, we have ample evidence that we can indeed say that human dignity is an inherent, absolute and final value; and also that these three characteristics are properties of a single value.

Animals in Moral Limbo: How Literary Pigs May Help Lab-Generated Ones.

Simple SummaryUnlike dogs and horses, who maintain “companion animal” moral status and protections from societal harms, pigs are increasingly being used in medical experimentation for human use, in spite of scientific validation of advanced porcine cognitive and social-emotional abilities (on a par with, if not greater than, other protected mammals). While animal ethicists apply philosophical paradigms in risk-benefit deliberations, this article challenges assumptions about societal/cultural norms of pig commodification and experimentation through application of a literary lens—specifically, how children’s coming-of-age stories have demonstrated increased pig moral status vis-à-vis human–nonhuman animal relationships and understandings. Human society must revisit pronouncements of “having no other choice” when it comes to increased promotion and continued acceptance, of medical experimentation, and industrial commodification of pigs. Xenotransplantation trials are especially morally fraught due to the purposeful generation of human–nonhuman chimeras in efforts to produce human organs for transplantation. When considering that artistic and literary artifacts reflect the cultural views and mores of a particular time period, there is a significant misalignment between stories depicting increased moral status of pigs (e.g., vis-à-vis human-porcine relationships) and ongoing practices of pig consumption, commodification, and medical experimentation. In fact, there has been increased industrial farm meat production and biotechnological experimentation. Xenotransplantation trials, for example, are being heralded “the answer” to organ shortages needed for human transplantation, while significant ethical concerns persist. In this paper, I posit that literary reflections add a valuable dimension to animal ethics deliberations, providing a meta-narrative against which to assess normative practices. Beginning with synopses of three books: E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web (1952), Robert Newton Peck’s A Day No Pigs Would Die (1972), and Paul Griffin’s Saving Marty (2017), I illustrate a shifting moral status view of human–pig relationships. Next, I discuss personhood attributions through biological, philosophical, and legal frameworks; review benefits and risks of xenotransplantation; reflect on the moral status of non-human animals; and offer concluding thoughts.

Making Veterinary Ethics More Ethical

Abstract Andrew and Clair Linzey’s Animal Ethics for Veterinarians collects numerous recent articles in the Journal of Animal Ethics. It offers readers a diverse set of chapters covering key issues relating to veterinary ethics: animal agriculture, animal research, veterinary oaths, complementary and alternative medicine, animal cruelty, and more. This review article discusses the book’s themes within the larger context of veterinary medicine and veterinary ethics. Compared to existing works in veterinary ethics, the book is less focused on clinical and professional issues and more focused on the ways in which veterinary medicine intersects with fundamental topics in animal ethics. Its contributors challenge veterinarians to rethink traditional stances on the moral status of nonhuman animals and the ethical defensibility of numerous practices with which veterinarians are commonly involved. As the profession has historically been conservative on animal welfare issues, the book is a welcome addition to the literature.

Betraying Animals

This paper presents a new way of thinking about the relationship between humans and the nonhuman animals in their care. Most ethical analysis of the treatment of nonhuman animals has focussed on questions of moral status, justice, and the wrongness of harming them. This paper does something different, it examines the role played by trust in interspecies relationships. In both agriculture and laboratory settings, humans deliberately foster trusting relationships with nonhuman animals. An intrinsic feature of the trusting relationship in these settings is that it is created in order to be exploited and betrayed. However, little consideration has been given to asking what a deliberate betrayal of another species says about the character of those who carry out the betrayals. This paper argues that regardless of the moral status of nonhuman animals, a willingness to foster trust in order to exploit the vulnerability of a nonhuman suggests a serious character flaw. Our failure thus far to apprehend systematic forms of betrayal indicates a moral blind-spot when it comes to other species.

Editorial Vol.8(1)

Editorial Vol.8(1)

Editorial Vol.7(3)

Philosophers and ethicists have long neglected moral questions that arise from our interaction with non-human animals. Most assumed that human beings have a higher moral status than other animals, and that it is therefore morally permissible to use non-human animals as a source of food, clothing, and entertainment, and for scientific purposes. In recent decades, however, that assumption has been challenged, and the moral status of non-human animals is now the subject of a lively and controversial academic debate.Advances in sciences, particularly the advent of evolutionary theory, made us realize that human beings and other animals are more similar than different, and force us to rethink our place in nature. We are no longer justified in thinking of ourselves as the crown of creation. We now understand that we are just one species among others, and we must ask ourselves anew – with an open and critical mind and without bias – which values and principles should guide our interaction with non-human animals, and how we should weigh our interests against those of other animals.Recognizing this important trend in moral thinking, the Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics invited me to edit a special issue on animal ethics. The interest was so great that one issue became two, of which this is the first. I am grateful to Professor Shamima Parvin Lasker and Ms. Tahera Ahmed for giving me the opportunity to serve as a guest editor, and for their assistance during the editing process. I also thank our contributors for choosing this journal to publish their excellent work, and the reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions.This, the first special issue on animal ethics contains the following five articles:Robin Attfield and Rebekah Humphreys (“Justice and Non-Human Animals”) challenge the widely held belief that non-human animals are not included within the scope of the principles of justice, and suggest that the interests of non-human animals sometimes take precedence over the interests of human beings. The implications of their argument for our interaction with other animals are profound: E.g., it is a matter of justice and fairness to prevent avoidable and unnecessary animal suffering, rather than a mere matter of compassion.Eric X. Qi (“Special Relations, Special Obligations, and Speciesism”) develops an account of the moral significance of special relations, and uses it to argue for a modest form of speciesism that steers a middle ground between anti-speciesism and crude speciesism. Unlike anti-speciesists, he maintains that species co-membership grounds special moral obligations among the members of the same species. In contrast to crude speciesists, however, he holds that our special obligations to fellow human beings do not warrant that we always attach more weight to their interests than to the comparable interests of non-human animals.Yamikani Ndasaukaand Grivas M. Kayange (“Existence and Needs: A case for the equal moral considerability of non-human animals”) argue that the existentialist view that human beings have a higher moral status than other animals rests on a weak foundation. They consider a number of arguments that have been made in support of this view and conclude that none of them holds up to critical scrutiny. They then suggest that human beings and other animals in fact deserve equal moral consideration, and – drawing from Martin Heidegger and Abraham Maslow – ground that claim in two important commonalities between them.Sreetama Chakraborty (“Animal Ethics: Beyond Neutrality, Universality, and Consistency”) explains how the postmodern approach to animal ethics departs from the traditional approach, particularly its emphasis on the principles of neutrality, universality, and consistency, and draws attention to the pernicious hierarchy of domination that separates human beings from other animals. Building on the insights of postmodernism, she takes first steps towards a new, non-anthropocentric paradigm, in the hope to achieve a sustainable balance between human interests and the interests of non-human animals.Gabriel Vidal Quiñones (“Singerian Vegetarianism and the Limits of Utilitarianism: A path towards a Meaning Ethics”) takes a critical look at Peter Singer’s utilitarian argument for vegetarianism, and argues that the conceptual resources of utilitarianism only allow for an incomplete moral understanding of our relationship with other animals. What is lacking, he suggests, is an ethical vision. He argues that, without an ethical vision, human action threatens to degenerate into mere automatism without meaning. He proposes a “meaning ethics” that he thinks is better equipped to help us decide how we ought to treat other animals.I hope you, dear reader, will enjoy reading through this remarkable collection of articles as much as I enjoyed putting it together. Maybe you will even be inspired to do some thinking of your own about issues of animal ethics and put your thoughts down on paper. If so, I sincerely hope that you will choose the Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics to publish your article.Warm regards and best wishes for the new year,

Beasts in the Jungle: Henry James, William James, and the Animal Turn

Beasts in the Jungle:Henry James, William James, and the Animal Turn Daniel Hannah (bio) The "animal question"—the question of how to read and respond to the ontological, epistemological, and moral status of nonhuman animals—has become, as Sherryl Vint notes, the "pressing political question of our times."1 Recent work by Michael Lundblad and Benjamin Bateman has sought to apply an "animal turn" of the screw to the writing of Henry James, finally asking us to take seriously the beastly quality of James's "The Beast in the Jungle" (1903). This article seeks to situate such recent work in a broader account of James's investment in animality, one that can be traced through a range of his fiction and nonfiction writings, especially his major novels The Portrait of a Lady (1881) and The Golden Bowl (1904); in each instance, my argument traces suggestive correspondences between Henry James's animal imaginings and William James's theorizations of the encounter between human consciousness and nonhuman instinct, theorizations that engaged with contemporaneous philosophical and political debates about the status, the instrumental value, and the suffering of nonhuman animals. Where Joshua Schuster finds only "limited formalizations of the animal" in modernist literature, formalizations that tend to displace "[a]ctual animals" with "a certain kind of reductive caricature of modernist 'animality,'" James's fiction suggests an alternative path for the emergence of modernist prose as his writing self-consciously recoils from the risks of rhetorically emptying out the animal as a figure for human modernity.2 My argument begins, however, by querying some of the critical assumptions that have led to the recent focus on the tale of John Marcher and his beastly destiny; [End Page 371] we should pause before claiming James as, in Bateman's words, "queerly environmentalist."3 While James's writing is alert to the danger of objectification inherent in a language of animality, it also insistently troubles the kinds of ethical detachment that, at times, guides analytic approaches to thinking about the animal. James's fiction often turns on its ambiguous treatment of the imaginative overlap between a distancing that would recognize the ethical obligations posed by the animal in all its otherness and a detachment that allows for that animal other's violent erasure.4 While my primary focus in this article is on the narrative processes by which James worked through the "animal question" in fiction, it is worthwhile to note the peculiar flavor of the narratives that gathered around his relationships with animals during his lifetime. James's acquaintances were prone to make connections between the Master's late manner and his attentions, and inattention, to companion species. Ford Madox Hueffer (later Ford) tells a delightful tale of a walk with James, John Galsworthy, and James's dachshund, Max in which the Master halts, "plant[s] his stick firmly in the ground," in "order to round off an immense sentence," only to discover at the sentence's end that Max had "passed between [their] six legs again and again, threading his leash behind him"—Heuffer declares "we must have resembled the Laocoon, but when Maximillian had finished the resemblance must have been overwhelming."5 Bay Emmett noted both her cousin Henry's propensity "to express his thoughts, unanswered" and his delightfully silly worship of his dog, "little Peter": "Cousin Henry seizes him & brushes him hard & then hugs & kisses him, talking to him all the time in a way that is so silly that I have to die laughing."6 Violet Hunt tells the story of James's animated talk while holding her niece's Persian kitten: "He quite forgot the poor beast, which was too polite and too squeezed between the upper and the nether millstone of the great man's hands to remind him of its existence, and I dared not rescue it until the sentence on which Mr James was engaged was brought to a close—inside of half an hour" (Nowell-Smith, The Legend of the Master, 123). Where Hunt feared James's forgetting of the very beast before him, E. S. Nadal recalls a scene in which James invoked his "dachshund bitch" as an active participant in their risqué conversation...

TOWARD A WEAK ANTHROPOCENTRISM

AbstractIn his work on the moral status of nonhuman animals, David Clough rejects the theory of anthropocentrism while accepting its practical importance. He thus leaves theology in a dilemma: reflection on animals should not support the very concept that practical approaches to animals require. An alternative is a “weak anthropocentrism” along the line of Gianni Vattimo's “weak ontology.” A weak anthropocentrism is better suited to a Neoplatonic theory of participation, not the traditional framework of creation out of nothing, and it also can give new meaning to the idea of imago Dei and a Christocentric affirmation of nonhuman value.

Animal Minds and Neuroimaging

As Colin Allen has argued, discussions between science and ethics about the mentality and moral status of nonhuman animals often stall on account of the fact that the properties that ethics presents as evidence of animal mentality and moral status, namely consciousness and sentience, are not observable "scientifically respectable" properties. In order to further discussion between science and ethics, it seems, therefore, that we need to identify properties that would satisfy both domains. In this article I examine the mentality and moral status of nonhuman animals from the perspective of neuroethics. By adopting this perspective, we can see how advances in neuroimaging regarding (1) research into the neurobiology of pain, (2) "brain reading," and (3) the minimally conscious state may enable us to identify properties that help bridge the gap between science and ethics, and hence help further the debate about the mentality and moral status of nonhuman animals.

The machine question: critical perspectives on AI, robots, and ethics

One of the enduring concerns of moral philosophy is deciding who or what is deserving of ethical consideration. Much recent attention has been devoted to the animal question--consideration of the moral status of nonhuman animals. In this book, David Gunkel takes up the question: whether and to what extent intelligent and autonomous machines of our own making can be considered to have legitimate moral responsibilities and any legitimate claim to moral consideration. The machine question poses a fundamental challenge to moral thinking, questioning the traditional philosophical conceptualization of technology as a tool or instrument to be used by human agents. Gunkel begins by addressing the question of machine moral agency: whether a machine might be considered a legitimate moral agent that could be held responsible for decisions and actions. He then approaches the machine question from the other side, considering whether a machine might be a moral patient due legitimate moral consideration. Finally, Gunkel considers some recent innovations in moral philosophy and critical theory that complicate the machine question, deconstructing the binary agent--patient opposition itself. Technological advances may prompt us to wonder if the science fiction of computers and robots whose actions affect their human companions (think of HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey) could become science fact. Gunkel's argument promises to influence future considerations of ethics, ourselves, and the other entities who inhabit this world.

Animal ethics and the work of the International Whaling Commission

Animal ethics is concerned with an examination of the beliefs that are held about the moral status of non-human animals. It is concerned, therefore, not with describing how animals are treated but with how they ought to be treated. This paper focuses upon two particular ethical approaches chosen because they enable us to understand more clearly the debate about the moral status of animals in general, and whales in particular, as well as offering a way of maximising consensus in the debate. The first, which describes the dominant discourse within the International Whaling Commission (IWC), is based on the argument that our duties to non-human animals are indirect, such that their protection is dependent upon the degree to which it is in our interests to do so. This is the logic behind the discourse of anthropocentric conservation. The second approach is the ethic of animal welfare. Unlike anthropocentric conservationism, the animal welfare ethic is not based upon denying, or ignoring, the moral standing of non-human animals, and is consistent with the widespread acceptance, in theory and practice, that we do have direct duties to animals, that they do have moral standing.

Science, sentience, and animal welfare

I sketch briefly some of the more influential theories concerned with the moral status of nonhuman animals, highlighting their biological/physiological aspects. I then survey the most prominent empirical research on the physiological and cognitive capacities of nonhuman animals, focusing primarily on sentience, but looking also at a few other morally relevant capacities such as self-awareness, memory, and mindreading. Lastly, I discuss two examples of current animal welfare policy, namely, animals used in industrialized food production and in scientific research. I argue that even the most progressive current welfare policies lag behind, are ignorant of, or arbitrarily disregard the science on sentience and cognition.

Neuroscience and the Problem of Other Animal Minds

ABSTRACTA recent argument in the neuroethics literature has suggested that brain-mental-state identities (one popular expression of what is commonly known as neuroreductionism) promise to settle epistemological uncertainties about nonhuman animal minds. What's more, these brain-mental-state identities offer the further promise of dismantling the deadlock over the moral status of nonhuman animals, to positive affect in such areas as agriculture and laboratory animal science. I will argue that neuroscientific claims assuming brain-mental-state identities do not so much resolve the problem of other animal minds as mark its resolution. In the meantime, we must rely on the tools available to us, including those provided by such behavioral sciences as cognitive ethology, comparative psychology, and ethology as well as the neurosciences. Focusing on captive animal research, I will also argue that humane experimentalists do not doubt that many of their research subjects have minds (in some substantive sense of that term). In that light, to suggest that the resolution of the problem of other animal minds would change the scientific use of animals misses the point at issue. Instead, what is required is a 'sea change' in the perceived grounds for human moral obligations to nonhumans. It is difficult to see how brain-mental-state identities could be the deciding factor in this continuing issue in applied ethics.1. IntroductionThe epistemological problem of other animal minds is a subspecies of the problem of other minds familiar to any undergraduate philosophy student (or science fiction aficionado). Given that I only seem to have direct access to my own mental states (e.g., my beliefs, desires, emotions, feelings), how do I know that others, including other nonhuman animals (hereafter animals), have minds1 or minds relevantly different than, or similar to, my own? The epistemic uncertainty implied by these questions remains even after granting minds to fellow humans. The practical implications of this problem seem clear. Animal welfare efforts in conservation biology, agriculture, scientific research, and the pet industry (and this list is not exhaustive) are predicated on understanding the needs of the relevant animals qua subjects who can fare well or badly (Dawkins 2005; Grandin 2010; McMillan 2005; Orlans 2002; Sherwin 2006; Sherwin et al. 2003). To fare well or badly as subjects presumes subjectivity and this brings us to questions (much like those above) about their minds (e.g., Dawkins 2005; 2008).A recent argument in the neuroethics literature (Farah 2008) receiving increasing notice (Allen 2010; Buchman and Reiner 2009; Fins et al. 2008; Wu 2008) (hereafter the Cognitive Neuroscience or CN Argument) has suggested that an assumed metaphysical materialism, common in the contemporary cognitive neurosciences and elsewhere, implies that neuroscientific evidence provides (note the present tense) a different kind of evidence that is in principle more informative than what traditionally grounds ascriptions of mental states to others. This evidence, which assumes certain brain-mental-state identities, can settle epistemological uncertainties about animal minds once and for all. Such a monumental event, it is argued, would dismantle the deadlock over the moral status of animals and so morally advance their treatment in such areas as captive research (e.g., the laboratory) and agriculture (Farah 2008).In what follows I will contend that neither of these claims is particularly persuasive, though not because of a skepticism of animal minds. The apparent strength of the CN Argument arises from both the assumption that certain brain states are identical to certain mental states and that evidence of such brain states provides direct evidence of minds, in contrast to the kind of indirect (largely behavioral) evidence traditionally used to justify ascriptions of mental states. I will argue that the attraction of this claim for proponents of the CN Argument is grounded in a confusion of epistemic and metaphysical considerations relating behavior, brain states, and mental states. …

Contractualism and the Moral Status of Animals

While contractualism seems to solve some of the more pressing concerns of other moral theories, it does not conclusively address the moral status of non-human animals. Peter Carruthers claims that contractualism excludes animals from having full moral status. I argue that Carruthers’ arguments are fatally flawed due to his reliance on contradictory claims, unlikely assumptions, and flagrant violations of the contractualist method. However, Carruthers also claims that we can treat animals wrongly and that it deserves moral criticism. This claim is based in indirect moral significance. However, this position makes it impossible for Carruthers to avoid endorsing two extremely counter-intuitive claims. The work of C. Tucker and C. MacDonald allows us to demonstrate that contractualism does give animals full moral standing. They ground the criteria for a contracting agent in three characteristics that animals possess. A look at some possible objections reveals nothing devastating to their proposal.

Abuse of nonhuman animals rights in the context of Zimbabwes Agrarian reforms (2000 - 2006): An ethical perspective

The paper explores the history of the relationship between human and nonhuman animals in Zimbabwe and how her chaotic agrarian reforms that started in the year 2000 have impacted on the rights of nonhuman animals. It also attempts to make some comparisons between the moral status of nonhuman animals in Western tradition and traditional Zimbabwean societies. Finally, the paper explores the impact of Zimbabwe’s agrarian reforms on nonhuman animals’ rights to unhindered access to land for habitation and a life free of human induced suffering. Key words: Human, nonhuman, rights, land, reform, moral, Zimbabwe, Western, traditional, indigenous.