Aquí tenéis el índice y una breve presentación del número especial de la revista Télos dedicado a “la ética y los animales”. Sacarlo costó algo de trabajo, pero finalmente el resultado fue, a mi entender, completo e interesante, incluyendo varios textos que cubren en conjunto distintas problemáticas relacionadas con esta cuestión. Espero que contribuya al desarrollo de los estudios en la ética animal.
El número incluye un total de seis artículos y una recensión, más la presentación, en la que se examina esta cuestión desde diferentes perspectivas. Los dos primeros artículos tratan la cuestión de quién debe ser moralmente considerado (el primero desde un punto de vista teórico y el segundo mediante un enfoque más empírico). El siguiente trabajo nos presenta una panorámica de los problemas de la llamada ética animal mediante un estudio de la que ha sido la bibliografía publicada en este campo a lo largo de las últimas décadas. Y el artículo que sigue estudia esta cuestión desde el punto de vista de la historia de la filosofía. Finalmente, los últimos dos trabajos estudian algunas de las consecuencias que se pueden derivar de ello, en particular en relación al conflicto existente entre las posiciones a favor de la consideración de los animales y las de corte ecologista.
De esta forma, los textos recogidos aquí nos proporcionan, en conjunto, un cuadro muy amplio de las distintas temáticas tratadas en el campo que ya ha sido denominado como “ética animal”.
A continuación os reproduzco el índice y una parte de la presentación del número, en la que se explica qué cuestiones trata cada uno de los artículos.
LA ÉTICA Y LOS ANIMALES
Número especial de Télos, vol. 17 (correspondiente a 2010)
1. “La ética y los animales: presentación”
Oscar Horta
Artículos
2. “Three Standard Arguments against the Individual Value of Non-Human Animals (“Tres argumentos estándar contra el valor individual de los animales no-humanos”)
Elisa Aaltola
3. “The Moral Consideration of Nonhuman Animals: How Can We Identify Which Beings Are Conscious?” (“La consideración moral de los animales no-humanos. ¿Cómo identificar qué seres son conscientes?”)
Walter Sánchez Suárez
4. “La consideración moral de los animales no humanos en los últimos cuarenta años: una bibliografía anotada”
Daniel Dorado
5. “Aristóteles y la consideración moral de los animales”
Luís G. Soto
6. “Debunking the Idyllic View of Natural Processes: Population Dynamics and Suffering in the Wild” (“Refutando la vision idílica de los procesos naturales: la dinámica de poblaciones y el sufrimiento en la naturaleza”) (En breve espero colgar este texto en este blog).
Oscar Horta
Traducciones e inéditos
7. “La depredación”
Steve F. Sapontzis
Recensiones
8. Ethics and the Beast, de Tzachi Zamir, Princeton University Press, 2007.
Cátia Faria
Leer más…
Different strategies to defend nonhuman animals: a draft
I’m currently working on a paper regarding the different strategies that those who oppose the use of nonhuman animals may follow. This is a very tentative draft of an outline of it. Please note it’s work in progress, so it may have mistakes I haven’t noticed. I’ll keep it posted here until the paper is sent to be published. Any comments will be greatly appreciated, as they will help to improve the final paper!
So feel free to post your criticisms of the paper, or your ideas regarding it here, or e-mail them to me at OHorta (a) dilemata . net
Outline: Strategies to Defend Nonhuman Animals. A Map to the Arguments for and against Them
Disvalue in nature and intervention
Some time ago I wrote a paper in which I presented the following thought experiment:
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Suppose there is a rabbit and a fox that is about to capture and eat her. We are witnessing this, and we have two rations of vegan food. We consider what to do. Among the different ways in which we could act there are the following three ones:
(1) We eat one of the rations of vegan food and see how the fox catches and eats the rabbit.
(2) We give the fox one ration of our vegan food and we kill and eat the rabbit ourselves.
(3) We give the fox one ration of our vegan food, we eat the other one and the rabbit runs free to live her life.
The paper discusses what should we do in a situation such as this. It concludes that we should be concerned with all the harms that nonhuman animals suffer, including those which aren’t caused by humans, but for what can be called “natural reasons”. You can see the paper here:
Disvalue in Nature and Intervention
The paper has been published in the Brazilian journal on animal ethics Pensata Animal (which includes texts both in Portuguese and English), the published version of the paper can be read here (although this published version has some mistakes which you won’t find in the version of the paper I linked above). This journal has included an interesting section (in Portuguese and English) in which different articles deal with the problem of wild animal suffering, predation and intervention in nature for the sake of nonhuman animals.
La argumentación de Singer en Liberación animal
Este es un artículo publicado recientemente en Diánoia: Revista de Filosofía, que edita la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México:
La argumentación de Singer en Liberación animal
Este texto examina los presupuestos en los que descansa este libro de Singer. Se afirma a menudo que este es un trabajo de tipo utilitarista. Por otra parte, lo que Singer intenta hacer en él es defender la consideración moral de los animales no humanos, y criticar toda una serie de formas en las que estos son explotados, desde un punto de vista amplio, no comprometido con ninguna teoría ética (a diferencia de lo que hace, por ejemplo, en Ética práctica). Procede así para que su planteamiento que pueda ser aceptado por el mayor número posible de lectores y lectoras. Singer hace esto centrando su argumento en dos ideas: hemos de evitar causar sufrimiento y hemos de considerar todos los intereses de los distintos individuos de forma igualitaria.
¿Cómo hay que interpretar, pues, la posición que se asume en Liberación animal? En realidad, en este libro Singer asume tal posición de mínimos y evita el utilitarismo de manera general; pero cuando se enfrenta a ciertos problemas (fundamentalmente, la suma de intereses), presenta soluciones basadas en su concepción utilitarista. En el caso del interés en vivir sucede algo semejante. Pero la solución que presenta Singer acerca de este, que establece diferencias entre distintos animales, no depende de la asunción de un punto de vista utilitarista. De lo que depende es de la concepción concreta que él asume de en qué consiste el daño de la muerte (que, como se argumenta en este artículo, resulta muy cuestionable).
Igualitarismo, igualación a la baja, antropocentrismo y valor de la vida
En entradas anteriores de este blog se ha hablado de lo que defiende el igualitarismo y del modo en el que conforme a este hay que considerar a los animales (podéis ver “El igualitarismo y los animales no humanos I” y “II” -tengo pendiente desde hace ya tiempo completarla con la “III”-) .
Quienes queráis leer sobre esto más en detalle, podéis ver un artículo que salió en la Revista de Filosofía (que publica la Universidad Complutense de Madrid). En este, se explica qué es el igualitarismo, se defiende este frente a algunas críticas algo técnicas que se le hacen y se explica en qué sentido es relevante en lo que toca a la consideración del interés en vivir y de la cuestión de la discriminación de los animales no humanos. Podéis leerlo y descargarlo aquí:
Igualitarismo, igualación a la baja, antropocentrismo y valor de la vida
The idea of moral personhood under fire
Next week, on November the 10th and the 11th, there will be a philosophy conference at the FLUP, the Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto (Portugal). You can check the complete program of the conference here. The conference is organized by the Mind Language and Action Group.
I will be speaking at this conference. You can find below an abstract of the talk I will be giving. It’s a long abstract, which presents the main arguments why I think we should get rid of the concept of moral personhood, in particular given the way it’s currently understood.
The idea of moral personhood under fire
The concept of moral personhood plays a central role in a number of ethical theories. It is used to distinguish those entities that have certain capacities that are morally relevant. In these theories, moral persons always have moral status. According to some views, only persons are morally considerable. According to others, they deserve some special consideration other entities are not worthy of.
The capacities that render an entity a moral person are usually believed to be the same ones that make it a person in a metaphysical sense. But these are not the only two meanings of the word ‘person’. The term is also used in the legal realm to refer to those entities that have the capacity to sue. As we all know, it is also used in common language to refer to those beings that belong to the human species.
It is commonly assumed that persons in the metaphysical, legal, moral and common sense meanings coincide, that is, that they are the same entities. The picture that results from this is one in which humans (and only humans) are entities of a certain kind, the kind of beings that are morally considerable or deserve special moral consideration.
This entire picture is untenable.
First, the domain that the term ‘person’ has in common language and in the moral, legal and the metaphysical realms differ significantly. There are legal persons who are not metaphysical ones or moral ones, there are legal, metaphysical and moral persons who are not human beings, and there are humans who are not moral or metaphysical persons.
Second, the division between animals and persons, which is often made in theories of personal identity, is confusing, since it may lead us to think nonhuman animals are not persons. According to this view, animals are somatic entities while persons are psychological ones. But we have every reason to believe that nonhuman animals who have mental states are metaphysical persons.
Third, the capacities that are relevant when deciding who deserves moral consideration are possessed not only by human beings, but also by other conscious animals.
Fourth, the whole idea of moral status should be rejected. If the concept of moral status were simply a synonym of “moral consideration”, it would be a superfluous one. However, it is commonly used in a different way, to claim that those individuals who have certain capacities that grant personhood are to be morally considered in a privileged way. Against this view, what we should take into account is simply the weight of the morally relevant interests different individuals have. This renders the idea of moral personhood either superfluous or unjustified.
Entrevista en la revista Plataforma Monterrey
Hace unos pocos meses, en la revista mexicana Plataforma Monterrey publicaron una entrevista conmigo que podéis ver en este enlace.
Para redactar este texto, me pasaron un cuestionario (con preguntas no muy comunes), que os reproduzco a continuación por si os resultase de interés. Leer más…
Podcast at Animal Rights Zone
Some days ago I was invited by Animal Rights Zone to be a guest at one of their discussion sessions. In it, we discussed a bunch of topics, from animal ethics and the situation of the antispeciesist movement in Spain to the strategies of vegan education and helping animals suffering in nature.
I’m very thankful for this opportunity to the ARZone team, who had already given me before another opportunity to discuss my view in a Live Chat Session (also transcribed here) six months ago.
I hope you find the podcast interesting. You can listen to it here:
Animal Rights Zone Podcast on Anti-Speciesism
“Juez Naturaleza”: un texto interesante
Quiero recomendaros echar un vistazo al blog Pensamiento vegano, que lleva Daniel Dorado, quien es bien conocido por su trabajo como abogado de animales. Este blog tiene toda una serie de textos y traducciones que me parecen muy interesantes. Uno de ellos es una traducción de un texto original de la autora Sister Y, del blog The View from Hell. Creo, al igual que Daniel Dorado, que este texto trata temas de interés para el debate (aun cuando lo haga con un tono a veces demasiado sarcástico y con una perspectiva con la que no tengo que coincidir necesariamente). Os lo enlazo aquí por si también lo encontraseis de interés:
Sin duda, el texto toca temas controvertidos, no obstante, nos enfrenta a cuestiones a las que no deberíamos dar la espalda.
Entrevista para Mexican Vegan
Mexican Vegan es un blog genial con mucho material de interés para quienes se encuentren en México, pero también para quienes vivan en otros lugares. Recientemente me han hecho una entrevista en la que dialogamos acerca de distintos temas de ética animal, así como de cuestiones relacionadas con las estrategias del movimiento antiespecista. La podéis leer en este enlace:
Clarifications on “What Is Speciesism?”
In a recent post in Animal Rights Zone, Paul Hansen has presented several objections to the account of speciesism I present in my paper “What Is Speciesism?” (which can be found in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 23 (3), 243-266 and can be read and downloaded here). [*]
I am honored by the attention that Hansen has given to my paper, and want to thank him for his challenging criticisms, which provides me with the opportunity of further clarifying the views expressed in the paper. I am also very thankful to Animal Rights Zone for providing a forum in which these issues can be discussed.
Hansen’s interesting objections cover several issues, which I will examine and respond to in turn. First, I will examine those objections that are related to my examination of different moral positions. Second, I will examine the objections that have to do with definitions of the concepts I use.
You can also download these clarifications as a pdf file here.
Ataque contra el movimiento en defensa de los animales: información de los hechos y de cómo apoyar
Recientemente han tenido lugar unos hechos gravísimos, sin precedente en el territorio español. El movimiento que lucha contra la explotación de los animales ha sido objeto de un ataque promovido por el sector peletero y otros afines. Leer más…
Gira de conferencias sobre el especismo en México
A lo largo del mes de junio he estado dando una serie de conferencias y talleres para activistas en distintas ciudades de México acerca del especismo. Leer más…
Como en años anteriores, el 20 y el 21 de mayo se celebrará en la Universidade do Minho (Braga, Portugal) el Meeting on Ethics and Political Philosophy / Encontro de Ética e Filosofia Política. En esta edición, habrá distintas intervenciones acerca de temas de ética animal. Leer más…
Good news for those interested in doing research in animal ethics. The print editions of the journal Between the Species, which appeared between 1985 and 1996, are now available online, hosted by California Polytechnic State University (and thanks to the work of the journal’s current editor, Joe Lynch). You can download them from here: Between the Species
Moreover, they have also uploaded the issues of the journal which anteceded Between the Species, that is, Ethics and Animals, published between 1980 and 1984. As far as I know, that was the first journal ever published on ethics and animals (so the journal’s name is certainly germane). You can download them from here: Ethics and Animals
En la XVII Semana de Ética y Filosofía Política, uno de los congresos más importante en este campo en el estado español, habrá, este año, una mesa dedicada a la ética animal. Podéis bajaros aquí su programa. Leer más…
In a previous post, I presented an article by ethicist Jeff McMahan on the issue of natural harms and predation. In it, McMahan argued that the fact that nonhuman animals suffer and die in nature is a very important issue that deserves our attention. I agree.
Most people’s attitude towards natural evils, and in particular predation, is a rather simplistic one. In fact, most people tend to see these evils as something good. In this post, I want to present an example of this attitude. It’s something we can see very clearly in this loathsome video:
This ghastly attitude of celebration of predation and other natural processes which means death and suffering for animals is at odds with the moral consideration of their interests.
There is a widespread view of nature as a pristine idyllic place in which animals live in paradisiacal conditions. This, unfortunately, is wrong. The scene this video shows is everyday life in nature.
We should definitely go beyond the disgusting attitude of celebration of animal suffering and death in nature displayed in this video. In order to do that, we should start by acknowledging that animals suffer terribly and die in many different ways in nature. There is no reason to keep this fact hidden. It is something we should be able to consider. Insofar as we are concerned with the interests of sentient beings, we should not dismiss this issue.
In fact, we should be able to change our view of natural processes and our attitude toward it. I really think that this is an issue we should think about.
Interview for Fuente Vegana translated into German
As I’ve previously written in this blog, Fuente Vegana, which is a great site about veganism and antispeciesism in Spanish, has published an interview with me in their blog. Fuente Vegana has also translated this interview into German. You can read it here:
Interview for Fuente Vegana (German)
You can also read the original interview in Spanish here, and in English here.
El dia 3 de junio estaré dando una conferencia en la Cátedra CUMEX en la Universidad de Guadalajara, Jalisco, por invitación de dicha universidad. Con posterioridad, permaneceré en México hasta el dia 9 de julio. Durante ese tiempo estaré dando conferencias, talleres y seminarios acerca de la cuestión del especismo y la ética animal en distintas ciudades de este país.
Mi objetivo es aprovechar todo lo posible esas cinco semanas para llevar a cabo el máximo número de eventos en el máximo número de ciudades. Para ello ya estoy organizando el recorrido, junto con distintas personas de México. Por lo de ahora, además de en Guadalajara ya se ha comentado la posibilidad de que se organicen actos en Aguascalientes, Monterrey y Ciudad de México. Y sin duda habrá tiempo para hacer otros eventos en lugares diferentes. De forma que quienes tengáis interés en organizar alguna conferencia o seminario en México podéis contactar conmigo escribiendo a OHorta (a) dilemata.net.
Live Chat at Animal Rights Zone
On March 19th I was honored by Animal Rights Zone to be a guest at one of their great Live Chat sessions. We had a terrific time discussing many interesting issues, including speciesism, egalitarianism, the strategies of the antispeciesist movement, the question of whether we should help animals living in the wild, the problem of what are the conditions for being sentient, and many other topics.
You can read the transcript of the chat in the ARZone transcripts site or at the main ARZone site. In order to have access to ARZone main site you need to sign up. I’d like to encourage you to do so. If you’re concerned with animal rights and speciesism and are interested in debating with other people who are also concerned with this, ARZone is an excellent place to do it!
I’d like to thank the amazing team that runs ARZone for this opportunity to discuss so many important issues. I also want to thank all those who (for more than five hours!) attended the chat.
It was a most interesting and pleasing chat session. Thanks so much for your challenging questions!
