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Debate in animal ethics needs reenergising. To date, philosophers have focused on a relatively limited number of specific themes whilst leaving metaphilosophical issues that require urgent attention largely unexamined. This timely collection of essays brings together new theory and critical perspectives on key topics in animal ethics, foregrounding questions relating to moral status, moral epistemology and moral psychology.
Is an individualistic approach based upon capacities the best way to ground the moral status of non-human animals or should philosophers pursue relational perspectives? What does it mean to "know" animals and "speak" for them? What is the role of emotions such as disgust, empathy, and love, in animal ethics and how does emotion inform the rationalism inherent in analytic animal ethics theory? The collection aims to broaden the scope of animal ethics, rendering it more inclusive of important contemporary philosophical themes and pushing the discipline in new directions.
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Questioning the Orthodoxy, John Hadley and Elisa Aaltola/
Part I: Intrinsic Value and Moral Status: Rethinking Sentience
1. A Meta-level Problem for Animal Rights Theory, John Hadley
2. Against Moral Intrinsicalism, Nicolas Delon
3. Beyond Sentience: Biosemiotics as Foundation for Animal and Environmental Ethics, Morton Tonnesen and Jonathan Beever
4. Animal Agency: What It Is, What It Isn't, and How It Can be Realized, Zipporah Weisberg
Part II: Epistemology: Knowing and Speaking for Nonhuman Animals
5. Enchanted Worlds and Animal Others, Wayne Williams
6. 'The Flesh of My Flesh': Animality, Difference, and 'Radical' Community in Merleau-Ponty's Late Philosophy, Jonathan D. Singer
7. The Problem of Speaking for Animals, Jason Wyckoff
8. Doing Away with Rights, Elizabeth Foreman
9. Disgust and the Collection of Bovine Foetal Blood, Robert Fischer
10. Hume on Animals and the Rest of Nature, Angela Coventry and Avram Hiller
11. The Politicization of Animal Love, Tony Milligan
12. The Sentimentalism Revival and Animal Philosophy, Elisa Aaltola
Further Reading
Index
Elisa Aaltola is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Eastern Finland. She is the author of Animal Suffering: Philosophy and Culture (Palgrave, 2012) and more than twenty refereed papers on animal philosophy.
John Hadley is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. He has published papers on a wide range of topics in animal and environmental ethics.
"This is a very original book which examines new paths for studies in nonhuman animals and moral philosophy. Addressing issues concerning animal ethics in metaethics, metaphilosophy, epistemology and moral psychology, it offers a previously unexplored approach."
– Oscar Horta, University of Santiago de Compostela
"Aaltola and Hadley have rounded up some of their most gifted contemporaries to push the boundaries and rejuvenate some of the old debates. An exciting read for all those who care about ethics and animals."
– Dale Jamieson, Professor of Environmental Studies and Philosophy, New York University
"The essays that constitute Animal Ethics and Philosophy: Questioning the Orthodoxy accomplish at least two things: first, they provide a long-overdue critical reconceptualization and sharp meta-analysis of assumptions foundational to contemporary animal ethics; second and most importantly, they construct fresh, original, innovative paradigms for future research in animal ethics."
– Robert C. Jones, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, California State University
