Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Case for Animal Rights is a 1983 book by the American philosopher Tom Regan, in which the author argues that at least some kinds of non-human animals have moral rights because they are the "subjects-of-a-life", and that these rights adhere to them whether or not they are recognized. [1]
Animal ethics is a branch of ethics which examines human-animal relationships, the moral consideration of animals and how nonhuman animals ought to be treated. The subject matter includes animal rights, animal welfare, animal law, speciesism, animal cognition, wildlife conservation, wild animal suffering, [1] the moral status of nonhuman animals, the concept of nonhuman personhood, human ...
The argument from marginal cases (also known as the argument from species overlap) [1] is a philosophical argument within animal rights theory regarding the moral status of non-human animals. Its proponents hold that if human infants, senile people, the comatose, and cognitively disabled people have direct moral status, non-human animals must ...
In parallel to the debate about moral rights, law schools in North America now often teach animal law, [7] and several legal scholars, such as Steven M. Wise and Gary L. Francione, support the extension of basic legal rights and personhood to non-human animals. The animals most often considered in arguments for personhood are hominids.
The Lives of Animals appears again in Coetzee's novel Elizabeth Costello (2003). [5] Coetzee's novella discusses the foundations of morality, the need of human beings to imitate one another, to want what others want, leading to violence and a parallel need to scapegoat non-humans.
Embracing evolutionary theories, secularists highlighted the common origins and similarities between humans and animals, arguing that morality should extend to animals as they too experience pain and pleasure. They rejected the Christian theological gap between humans and animals, promoting scientific theories to support animal rights and welfare.
Many proponents of animal rights hold that if animals and humans are of the same nature, then rights cannot be distinct to humans. Charles Darwin, in fact, considered "sympathy" to be one of the most important moral virtues — and that it was, indeed, a product of natural selection and a trait beneficial to social animals (including humans ...
The animal rights movement, sometimes called the animal liberation, animal personhood, or animal advocacy movement, is a social movement that advocates an end to the rigid moral and legal distinction drawn between human and non-human animals, an end to the status of animals as property, and an end to their use in the research, food, clothing, and entertainment industries.