Zoocentrism (Environmental Ethics)

This is the second part of my short series of environmental ethics, we look at the animal-centered view, also called Zoocentrism, according to which the environment matters, because it has effects both on humans and other sentient beings (namely, "animals"), and there's no reason to exclude non-humans from moral considerations.

📚 Some literature:
Immanuel, Kant (1775~80). Of Duties towards Animals and Spirit
Singer, Peter (1975). Animal Liberation.
Regan, Tom (1983). The Case for Animal Rights.
Korsgaard, C. M. (2018). Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals.

⏰ Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
1:05 Do Animals Matter?
2:18 Kant on Animal Cruelty
3:41 Descartes and Anthropomorphism
4:38 Do Animals have Minds?
6:22 Utilitarianism and Animal Suffering
8:45 Animal Rights
10:13 Summary and Outro

[jonathanboram]

This is not directly about the ethics surrounding animal treatment, but I think we have yet to see a truly great work on the philosophy of animals. De Anima is interesting, but doesn't match our understanding of animals today, Descartes was a step backwards from there. Singer made a good move in the right direction, but his utilitarian position is in its own way anthropocentric. It's not taking animals truly on their own terms, just changing how we humans regulate our relationships with them. I think philosophers are still struggling to accept the insights of Darwin more than a century down the line. It will take some serious reorienting, maybe including our concept of nature, to get to a place where such a book can be written.

[Rakudajin]

This zoocentric view is very anthropocentric - it pretty much openly presumes judgements of what's good for animals based on what we think is good for them. Based on our ideas of suffering, consciousness, etc.. This is not the only zoocentrism possible. Take "entangled empathy" book as a somewhat successful attempt to breach it.

[lemurlover]

I agree with the animal rights lawyers at Harvard who say that animals need their own set of legal rights protecting them where they are not seen as property of humans anymore which would give them more rights and freedoms than they currently have. Like John Rawls, but for animals. But based on their cognition, so they may not do things like vote (unless they are smart enough to vote and use our language to tell us what they want, as I suppose apes and parrots and whales and elephants and octopuses might be able to do one day or we could extrapolate from what they say they desire for themselves we can apply to others of their species to give them rights and protections).

[White-Zero]

i like this series. @Bebeflapula, what is your view? are you vegan?

[sophie]

Thank you, this helped with my Zoology essay

[saimbhat]

1) Moral intuitions is a very bad argument and very western argument. Many cultures in africa and asia do things that people in west will consider unacceptable. Moral intuitions are cultural inheritance. Different people have different limits of acceptable cruelty and thus considering popular morality of contemporary era west as "human nature" does not hold water.
2) Animals do have some level/type of conciousnessness but eating animals for food is not unscientific in anyway.
3) Keeping animals for pet is the most immoral thing a human can do. It is similar to getting an infant and keeping him away from the learning any language, injecting him with nutrients instead of giving him food. Keeping him in weird places like tubes, boxes and cages. Training him to jump, laugh, dance, run and lick as reactions to some inputs. Though the pet human might be very happy, not seeming to have stress BUT just because he was denied his right to live a life of full human potential, most people will think that the practice is bad.
Well then what about dogs, cats, birds, snakes etc whom we deny their right to live a life of full dog, cat, bird, snake etc potential

[guidemeChrist]

Hahhahahahahaaha ethics outside human contractual behavior hahahhaahhahaha that shit's dumb