Philosophy Bites is a site that provides podcast interviews of philosophers. Philosophy Bites is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy, which is an Institute of the University of London’s School of Advanced Study. On a lovely sunny day in July, I had the great pleasure to sit down with David Edmonds and Nigel […]
Ingrid Newkirk of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has written a PETA Alert concerning PETA’s position on “happy” exploitation. This Alert reads in part: PETA has pushed hard and will continue to push hard to reduce the sum total of suffering in the meat, dairy, and egg industries—because that makes a huge […]
Some say that there is no real difference between: A. someone who advocates that we ought to abolish animal use and that the means to achieve that end is promoting veganism as a moral baseline and rejecting “happy” exploitation and B. someone who says they hope one day to to see the end of all […]
To those who support animal welfare: It’s not, as many of you claim, a choice of helping animals “today” or “now,” or letting them suffer while we achieve a much greater number of vegans. It is a choice of whether we are going to: A. put resources into expensive campaigns that go on for years […]
There are some who claim that the ideology that supports animal exploitation is “invisible.” The basic idea is that animal exploitation is something that we are conditioned or caused to engage in because of some hidden or “invisible” ideology or psychological process that needs to be exposed. Variations of this position have been around for […]
A number of writers have claimed that we need to support other than an abolitionist approach because that approach has been marginalized politically and has been unsuccessful. For example, in their book, Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights, Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka observe: A central task for the movement is to figure out […]
(photo: Yahoo! News) This is Tracy Arnold. Her story is here. Ms. Arnold found what she claims is a man’s toenail in the sauce that she prepared. She did not know whether it came from a jar of pasta sauce or from the minced beef that she added to the sauce. She thought at first […]
Fantasy #1: The Humane Society of the United States is not promoting the “compassionate” consumption of meat. The HSUS caption with the Facebook post: “More great news for pigs! “Like” this to give props to these companies for doing the right thing. :)” So let’s support companies marketing meat and animal products that are doing […]
On January 12, 2012, I debated prominent libertarian philosopher Tibor Machan. Machan holds the R. C. Hoiles Chair of Business Ethics and Free Enterprise at the Argyros School of Business & Economics at Chapman University in Orange, California. He is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and an adjunct scholar at […]
Columbia University Press posted an article on the call in Slate.com by Professor James McWilliams for all animal advocates to support the welfare-reform efforts of The Humane Society of the United States. On the following day, the Press printed my reply to Professor McWilliams. After I read Professor McWilliams’ Slate essay, I thought it would […]