A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Animal Rights and Issues

  • Book notes

    Currently reading: Denis Edwards, How God Acts. See my posts on this here, here, and here. The second half of the book, which I may or may not blog about in more detail, is less concerned directly with the question of divine action, but offers Edwards’ take on redemption, the atonement, and the salvation of Read more

  • The Sea World incident

    You may have heard the sad news of the Sea World trainer who was killed by the killer whale she was working with. Authorities were aptly referring to it as a “tragic accident,” but could these sorts of things be avoided by not keeping such creatures in captivity in the first place? Jim Henley provides Read more

  • Carnival of the animals

    Jean Kazez is hosting a philosophy “blog-carnival” (i.e., a collection of posts) focusing on philosophy and animals. Lots of interesting-looking entries (most of which, alas, I haven’t had time to dig into). Read more

  • Causal impotence and reasons for vegetarianism

    Scu at Critical Animal says: I think a lot of people spend time explaining why we shouldn’t (or should!) kill animals and/or treat them as property. But where are explanations on the justification for vegetarianism/veganism as a necessary component of opposition, besides arguments about economic boycott? If you define an economic boycott as something intended Read more

  • The return of the sanctimonious carnivore

    Via Jean Kazez, two (quite possibly bogus) trend stories about “vegetarians” jumping on the “happy” meat bandwagon: here and here. I’m with Jean in thinking that almost any step toward better treatment of animals is a good thing. If more people are buying humanely raised meat, then animals are suffering less, which is all to Read more

  • Addendum on personhood

    Just to further clarify what I think is wrong with Margaret Somerville’s “personhood” argument discussed below: she essentially wants to evacuate the notion of person of any substantive content and make it coterminous with human being. Thus, saying that a human animal is a person isn’t a factually informative statement; it becomes a tautology. Note, Read more

  • Personhood, human and animal

    Well, since we’re on the topic of the personhood of non-human entities, here’s an article by Margaret Somerville, a Canadian law professor, arguing that we shouldn’t apply the concept of “person” to non-human animals (via the First Things blog): My reasons for rejecting personhood for animals include that it would undermine the idea that humans Read more

  • Jean Kazez’s philosophy and animal ethics blog

    I just came across the solo blog of philospher Jean Kazez, whose posts at Talking Philosophy I’ve always enjoyed greatly. Prof. Kazez also has a new book on animal ethics that looks to be well worth reading. Germane to some recent discussions here, she has two posts on the vegetarianism vs. veganism debate that are Read more

  • “Speciesism”: a red herring?

    There have been some great comments on the “veganism versus vegetarianism” post below, which you should check out if you’re interested. But I thought I’d shift gears and look at some of the other arguments in Tzachi Zamir’s book. A major concern of Zamir’s is arguing that “speciesism” is a red herring in arguments over Read more

  • Vegan versus vegetarian utopia

    In his book Ethics and the Beast, Tzachi Zamir makes an interesting “speciesist” case for animal liberation. But for the purposes of this post I want to focus on his argument in favor of moral vegetarianism, and against veganism. That he makes this argument is surprising since most liberationists, I think it’s safe to say, Read more