Philosophy Carnivals are compilations of blog posts. This one focuses on animals and philosophy. Plus, there's a section at the end on "everything else." Find out how to host a future carnival here and contact Richard Chappell if you're interested (r.chappell@gmail.com).
For your listening pleasure, The Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saens:
ANIMALS AND ETHICS
Richard writes an interesting post about Species and Cognitive Enhancement at Philosophy, et cetera.
Check out this post at Inhumanities for a continental perspective on the distinction between animal welfare and animal rights.
Ashok presents Briefly Noted: Xenophon, "Art of Horsemanship" posted at Rethink.
As for little tiny creatures, T presents Catenin Seahorse at Secret Lives of Proteins.
Ifat Glassman gets ultimate with What is ethics and why do we need it? posted at Psychology of Selfishness.
ANIMAL MINDS, ETHICS, GOD
Shriver made the same argument in a New York Times editorial last week; see criticism by Stephanie Ernst here. He defends himself in the comments.
I wrote about Shriver's proposal last fall--here and here. Some find it objectionable that Shriver wants animal advocates to be involved in reforming (as well as ending) factory farming. I defend "conscientious participation" in this post about lab vet Larry Carbone.
Is animal pain an impediment to theism? Alexander Pruss says no at Prosblogion. (And follows up with this.)
Outside philosophyville: here's a post about theism and animal pain from evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, who isn't impressed with the apologetics of journalist Andrew Sullivan.
If you don't understand consciousness, you can't understand any minds, whether "ours" or "theirs." Richard Brown presents Welcome and Opening Remarks « Consciousness Online posted at Consciousness Online.
Avery Archer discusses Rational Transitions and Hurley’s Monkey posted at The Space of Reasons.
GREEN AND GREENER
Thom Brooks discusses endangered species in It's (almost) the end of the world as we know it at The Brooks Blog.
REFRESHMENTS
Mylan Engel promotes switching to a vegan diet as a New Year's Resolution at Animal Ethics.Outside philosophyville, there's this about gradual dietary change from novelist Jonathan Safran Foer.
EVERYTHING ELSE
Martin presents Does Mathematics Need New Directions? posted at Enigmania, with honorable animal-mention at the end!Aaron Kenna presents Science, Induction, and the Positive Relevance View of Evidence and Andrew Brenner presents The Truth About Socrates both at Florida Student Philosophy Blog.
noah greenstein presents Genetic Drift and the Uncertainty Principle posted at Blog of Noah Greenstein.
cs presents The Sexual Contract posted at Cold SnapDragon.
Bryan presents Special Relativity and the Bell Theorems posted at Soul PhysicsKevin lande presents Crane on the Intentionality of Emotions posted at Philosophengang - The Philosopher's Walk.
Wesley presents Theories of Pretense posted at Go Grue!.
Madeleine Flannagan presents Property Rights: Blackstone, Locke and the Legislative Scheme Part I posted at MandM
Jonathan Phillips presents Kant and Experimental Philosophy posted at Yeah, OK, But Still.
Thank you so much for including my post! I think you did a really good job with the carnival, this is a treat to look at and there's lots to read.
ReplyDeleteAlright, time for me to go promote the carnival.
I don't understand this comment from Shriver:
ReplyDelete"But even if we do genetically engineer animals who don’t suffer, there’ no reason to stop advocating for the elimination of factory farms altogether.”
If we could actually get to a state where we create animals that don't suffer (I'm in the dark about how we would know we had succeeded) why would we care about altering factory farm practices for reasons having to do with animal suffering? It just doesn't make sense. What is the difference between:
A) Meat grown in a vat.
B) Meat grown on an animal that doesn't suffer.
Obviously B) is the ideal extreme of the knockout proposal, by Shriver's description there is still a "type" or "kind" of pain going on. But if it gets to the point where it is no longer something that should concern us as suffering i.e. it's like a "zombie" or robot response, then surely all the abolitionist nightmares about managing animal pain into a non-factor would surely come to fruition, because by hypothesis that pain would have been eliminated or largely mitigated.
It seems clear to me that knockout meat is Brave New World for animals. Now that doesn't mean that it is eo ipso bad. But I think the logic carries through to humans (or Alphas, Betas, Deltas…) as well.
Faust, I think that's a good question for him. Maybe he will drop by and respond.
ReplyDeleteMaybe he would say environmental (etc) problems would remain, so factory farms should still be eliminated. But yes--I wonder if he would think that a problem for animals would remain, if all suffering were eliminated.
P.S. Ayn Rand? Yuck.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the recognition, Jean. One correction to this:
ReplyDelete"Rico Vitz at the Florida Student Blog writes about "Science, Induction, and the Positive Relevance View of Induction and The Truth About Socrates both at Florida Student Philosophy Blog."
I'm merely the blog's faculty advisor. The authors of the posts are, respectively, Aaron Kenna and Andrew Brenner.
All the best,
Rico
Some readers might find the bibliography I assembled a couple of years ago for "animal ethics, rights and law" helpful. It is available here for download as a Word doc.: http://ratiojuris.blogspot.com/2008/06/animal-ethics-rights-law-bibliography.html
ReplyDeleteThank you. That's awesome.
ReplyDelete