Tag: animal rights

Animal Ethics, Philosophy

Irresponsible scholarship

If the ultimate test of our humanity is how we treat nonhuman animals, then we are failing spectacularly. Earth is home to vastly more farm animals than wild mammals and birds, and almost all of them live in factory farms – where conditions vary from horrible to horrific – and die violently. The sheer numbers make our treatment of animals one of the most pressing moral issues of our time. You do not need to be an animal rights advocate to recognize this truth. If you believe that animals have any moral standing at all, that unlike stones they matter, at least a little bit, then the monstrous amount of gratuitous suffering we routinely inflict on animals should offend your moral sense. A Gallup poll found that a majority of Americans in fact are either somewhat or very concerned about the way in which the animals we raise for food are treated, and extend that concern to the animals used in entertainment and research as well.

Continue reading “Irresponsible scholarship” →
Animal Ethics, Philosophy

Montreal Declaration on Animal Exploitation

The Montreal Declaration on Animal Exploitation is a public condemnation of animal exploitation. As of now, more than 500 researchers in moral and political philosophy from across the globe and various philosophical traditions have signed the Declaration. I am one of them. In philosophy, such agreement is rare. Its part of a growing consensus that common human practices that involve treating non-human animals as mere commodities are fundamentally unjust and morally indefensible.

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Animal Ethics, Bangladesh, Society

Veganizing Bangladesh

I just got back from a trip to what the British newspaper The Telegraph once called “the world’s most vegetarian country.” The country is Bangladesh, where – according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) – the average person consumes only about four kilograms of meat annually. For comparison, in the United States, the per-capita meat consumption is 120 kilograms.

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Animal Ethics, Bangladesh, Philosophy, Society

প্রাণিমুক্তি: প্রাণিমুক্তি আন্দোলনের বিজ্ঞানসম্মত প্রামাণিক ধ্রুপদী গ্রন্থ

Peter Singer‘s Animal Liberation, a modern classic in the field of ethics, is now available in Bangla! It is one of the most important books that you will ever read. It might change your life. It did change mine.

প্রাণিমুক্তি

প্রাণিমুক্তি আন্দোলনের বিজ্ঞানসম্মত প্রামাণিক ধ্রুপদী গ্রন্থ

Pranimukti

Pranimukti Andoloner Bijjansammta Dhrupadi Grantha

Continue reading “প্রাণিমুক্তি: প্রাণিমুক্তি আন্দোলনের বিজ্ঞানসম্মত প্রামাণিক ধ্রুপদী গ্রন্থ” →
Animal Ethics, Human Rights, Philosophy, Society

Ethics of Change: Winners’ Essays

On December 7 and 8, 2021, the Ethics of Change International Student Conference was held at the Centre de Recherche en Éthique. On this occasion, nine young researchers, selected after a competition in which over 200 proposals were received, presented their work.

The two best of these excellent presentations have been summarized and are available on the website of the CRÉ, and here:

Congratulations to these excellent researchers!

And enjoy reading their papers.

Animal Ethics, Human Rights, LGBT rights, Philosophy, Society

Ethics of Change International Student Conference

The way we live, and the norms, beliefs, and attitudes that shape our behavior are constantly changing. Much of that change is driven by people who refuse to accept the status quo and rise to ask critical questions about what is right and wrong in how governments, communities, and individuals treat others, including members of sexual, racial, religious, and other minorities, dissidents, people with disabilities, women, nonhuman animals, and the natural environment.

The Centre de Recherche en Éthique (CRÉ) in Montréal, Canada, will unite students from across the globe to come together to explore the ethical considerations around social and political activism, and strategies to achieve local and global change. The conference aims to allow students to exchange ideas across borders and make sustainable connections with each other as well as with the CRÉ.

The conference will be conducted online via Zoom on Tuesday and Wednesday, 7 and 8 December 2021.

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Animal Ethics, Society

What we can learn from almost murdering Joe the pigeon

As Joe the politician prepares to be inaugurated as the next President of the United States, another Joe has also been making international headlines. Joe the pigeon was found in a backyard in the Australian city of Melbourne last December. He was carrying a leg band that seemed to suggest that he had been in the US state of Oregon two months earlier, raising questions about how he made it across the Pacific – no small feat!

The story made it onto local news and Australian authorities took notice. They declared Joe a “biosecurity risk” and decided that he must be killed in order to protect local birds from possible infection. A spokesperson for the Australian government did not actually use the word “killed,” but instead said that Joe must be “destroyed,” as if Joe was a car, a stone, or some other inanimate object.

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Animal Ethics, Human Rights, Philosophy

An evolutionary argument against exclusively human dignity

Traditional morality assumes that there is something morally special about being human. The fact that someone is a human being, rather than, say, a dog or a cow, makes a big difference in how he or she may be treated. Humans have full and equal moral worth or dignity and thus may not be killed, even if doing so would promote the greater good, whereas non-human animals have a lesser moral status and can be sacrificed for even the most trivial human pleasures.

This moral worldview fits well with the Aristotelian idea of a hierarchy of being, according to which each species is a static group of organisms with a distinct essence. The philosophical line that morally distinguishes humans from other animals corresponds to the empirical line that Aristotle thought distinguishes the human species from other animal species. Since the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species in 1859, however, we know that there is no such line on the empirical side of things. We now understand that all life is interrelated, and that biological characteristics come in degrees and continually evolve as a result of natural selection. As the principle of evolutionary continuity informs us, any differences between species are differences in degree, and not in kind. The real picture looks something like this:

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Animal Ethics, Bangladesh, Philosophy

Jagannath University students discuss the philosophy of animal rights

On Tuesday, December 3, 2019, the Department of Philosophy at Jagannath University in Dhaka, Bangladesh hosted a day-long workshop on the life and philosophy of American philosopher Tom Regan. The workshop was conducted by Wilson John Simon, a researcher at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, and me. We were invited by the Chairperson of the Department of Philosophy, Professor Siddhartha Shankar Joarder, who also moderated part of the discussion. Continue reading “Jagannath University students discuss the philosophy of animal rights” →

Animal Ethics, Bangladesh, Philosophy

Bangla translation of Tom Regan’s The Philosophy of Animal Rights published

Tom Regan: The Philosophy of Animal Rights
Tom Regan: The Philosophy of Animal Rights
Tom Regan: The Philosophy of Animal Rights

Dyu Publication, a Dhaka-based press, published a Bangla translation of Tom Regan‘s The Philosophy of Animal Rights (ISBN: 978-984-93197-6-4; English original available here), which offers an accessible and compelling introduction to the philosophy of animal rights. This is the first time any of Regan’s work has been translated into Bangla. Continue reading “Bangla translation of Tom Regan’s The Philosophy of Animal Rights published” →

Animal Ethics, Philosophy, Religion, Society

Africa and her animals (Pretoria: Unisa Press, 2018)

Africa and her animals
Philosophical and Practical Perspectives

Edited by Rainer Ebert & Anteneh Roba, and published by the University of South Africa (UNISA) Press

With a foreword by J. M. Coetzee,
the 2003 Nobel Laureate in Literature

ISBN 978-1-86888-900-6
xxi + 358 pages

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Animal Ethics, Philosophy

Philosopher-activist Tom Regan, preeminent advocate of animal rights, dead at 78

tom-regan-utah-valley-university-1-april-2010-4

Horrified by the tragic loss of innocent human life in the then-ongoing Vietnam War, a young philosopher by the name of Tom Regan went to the university library and buried himself in books on war, violence, and human rights, determined to prove that the American involvement in the war was morally wrong. One day, he picked up Mohandas K. Gandhi’s autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Reading it with great care and interest, he must have come across the following lines:

“To my mind the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body. I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man.” Continue reading “Philosopher-activist Tom Regan, preeminent advocate of animal rights, dead at 78” →

Animal Ethics, Bangladesh, Philosophy

Second Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics Special Issue on Animal Ethics published

BBSThe way we think about and treat non-human animals is deeply confused, and scholars are in a unique position to provide some clarity. The Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics hence decided to dedicate two special issues to the relationship between human beings and other animals, and asked me to be the guest editor.

Less than two weeks after the first issue was published, the second special issues has now been published as well, and is available here. My editorial, which includes brief summaries of the articles, is available here, and this is the table of contents:

  • Editorial
  • Bob Fischer (Texas State University, U.S.A.):
    Wild Fish and Expected Utility
  • Akande Michael Aina (Lagos State University, Nigeria) & Ofuasia Emmanuel (Olabisi Onabanjo University, Nigeria):
    The Chicken Fallacy and the Ethics of Cruelty to Non-Human Animals
  • Iván Ortega Rodríguez (Universidad Pontificia Comillas, Spain):
    Animal Citizenship, Phenomenology, and Ontology: Some reflections on Donaldson’s & Kymlicka’s Zoopolis
  • Rhyddhi Chakraborty (American University of Sovereign Nations, U.S.A.):
    Animal Ethics and India: Understanding the Connection through the Capabilities Approach
  • Robin Attfield (Cardiff University, U.K.) & Rebekah Humphreys (Trinity St. David’s University, U.K.):
    Justice and Non-Human Animals – Part 2

Continue reading “Second Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics Special Issue on Animal Ethics published” →

Animal Ethics, Bangladesh, Philosophy

First Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics Special Issue on Animal Ethics published

BBSLast August, I accepted an invitation to edit a special issue of the Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics, devoted to animal ethics. The interest was so great that one issue became two, the first of which has just been published.

The first special issue is available here, my editorial, which includes brief summaries of the articles, is available here, and this is the table of contents:

  • Editorial
  • Robin Attfield (Cardiff University, U.K.) & Rebekah Humphreys (Trinity St. David’s University, U.K.):
    Justice and Non-Human Animals – Part 1
  • Eric X. Qi (Rice University, U.S.A.):
    Special Relations, Special Obligations, and Speciesism
  • Yamikani Ndasauka & Grivas M. Kayange (University of Malawi, Malawi):
    Existence and Needs: A case for the equal moral considerability of non-human animals
  • Sreetama Chakraborty (Belda College, India):
    Animal Ethics: Beyond Neutrality, Universality, and Consistency
  • Gabriel Vidal Quiñones (Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Chile):
    Singerian Vegetarianism and the Limits of Utilitarianism: A path towards a Meaning Ethics

Continue reading “First Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics Special Issue on Animal Ethics published” →

Animal Ethics, Philosophy

Professor Tom Regan: An Introduction to Animal Rights

This presentation by Professor Tom Regan (North Carolina State University, USA) was recorded at the University of Heidelberg in Germany on May 24, 2006. It is a great resource for the classroom and anybody with an interest in animal ethics.

Abstract. Philosopher Tom Regan begins by contrasting the fact that many people make a firm distinction between the animals they live with (cats and dogs, for example) and other animals. He explains how it is that Animal Rights Advocates (ARAs) extend the same sense of compassion and respect that they feel for companion animals, on the one hand, to the other animals who routinely are turned into food, clothing, and the like, on the other. Not all ARAs, he explains, arrive at this destination in the same way. In particular, some need to be convinced; some need a logical argument. Professor Regan accepts this challenge and invites others to consider the main factual and moral questions whose answers inform the conviction that animals have rights.

Animal Ethics, Philosophy

Animal Rights: Objections, Myths, and Misconceptions

animal-rights-objections

Each one of us encounters animals every day, if only as a piece of meat on a plate, and yet most of us hardly spare a thought for them. Shafayat Nazam Rasul must hence be commended for his Tuesday op-ed, in which he drew our attention to the complicated relationship between humans and other animals, and started a conversation that I think is very important. In the course of doing so, he mentioned a number of common objections to the idea that non-human animals are our moral equals and have rights. It is unfortunate, however, that these objections remained unanswered, as readers might have gotten the impression that animal rights advocates “spew an extreme,” as the author rather uncharitably stated, and do not have good arguments. By responding to some of the objections, I want to show that the philosophy of animal rights is in fact a well-thought-out moral theory worthy of our serious attention. Continue reading “Animal Rights: Objections, Myths, and Misconceptions” →

Animal Ethics, Bangladesh, Philosophy, Society

নিরামিষ খাবার নিয়ে দু’টি কথা

আপনি কয়জন বাঙালীকে চেনেন যে শর্ষে ইলিশ ভালবাসে না? কাচ্চি বিরিয়ানি অথবা গরুর রেজালা ছাড়া কোন বাংলাদেশী বিয়ে কল্পনা করতে পারেন? অনুমান করতে পারি আপনার উত্তর হবে খুব বেশি না অথবা একেবারেই না। যদিও বাংলাদেশ সম্পর্কে আমার জ্ঞান সীমিত, আমি এটুকু জানি, বাঙালী মাংস ভালবাসে, মুসলমানেরা হিন্দুদের থেকে বেশি, আর সব বাঙালী মাছ ভালবাসে। সেজন্য মনে হতে পারে বাংলাদেশে প্রাণীদের অধিকার নিয়ে কথা বলা বাতুলতা। কিন্তু আমার অভিজ্ঞতা সম্পূর্ণ বিপরীত। Continue reading “নিরামিষ খাবার নিয়ে দু’টি কথা” →

Animal Ethics, Bangladesh, Philosophy, Society

Eating animals

How many Bengalis do you know who do not like shorshe ilish? Can you imagine a Bengali wedding without kacchi biryani, or beef rezala? If I had to guess, I would say that your answers are “not many,” and “hardly.” Even though my knowledge of Bengal is rather limited, I think this I know: Bengalis love meat, Muslims probably a bit more so than Hindus, and virtually every Bengali loves fish. One might think that makes lecturing about animal rights in Bangladesh a quixotic exercise. I found that the opposite is the case. Continue reading “Eating animals” →

Animal Ethics, Bangladesh

দাস ব্যবসার নিকৃষ্টতম স্থান কাঁটাবন

সমাজের সম্মুখ দুয়ারের আড়ালে কত রকম দাসত্বই না লুকিয়ে রয়েছে। তৈরি পোশাক আর চামড়া কারখানা থেকে শুরু করে, এমনকি আমাদের ঘরের দরজার আড়ালেও দাসত্ব বিদ্যমান। আমরা সবাই জানি, প্রতিনিয়ত কী ঘটে চলেছে এইসব দরজার পেছনে। Continue reading “দাস ব্যবসার নিকৃষ্টতম স্থান কাঁটাবন” →