One of the barriers between ordinarily compassionate animal researchers and pro-animal ethicists is that the ethicists are usually seen as asking for far too much. They are perceived as demanding the complete abandonment of careers. In consequence, the ethicist is often ignored. Ethicists rarely give clear-cut rules to animal researchers as to how they can continue in animal research while at the same time adopting an increasingly moral approach. The purpose of this paper is to provide some rules to help (...) the animals by aiding conscientious researchers who are not in a position to give up their careers entirely. These are ethical rules and not, therefore, in quite the same category as Russell and Burch's or the proposal that experimenters should seek proper training and retraining in animal care, and in the skills of euthanasia, anaesthesia, and analgesia. Nor are ethical rules quite the same as the requirement that all experimenters should acquaint themselves with the latest techniques for improving the animals' quality of life or the need to keep themselves up to date in alternative research techniques that do not use animals. All these steps are of great importance and should be taken in addition to the ethical rules I propose. (shrink)

In a previous essay, Richard Ryder argued against Utilitarianism's aggregation of pains across individuals. He continues this argument and rebuts several criticisms of his moral theory of painism. Painism not only rejects the aggregation of pains across individuals, it also questions the trade-off of pains against pleasures.

Richard Ryder recounts the birth of the term.

Richard Ryder, one of the founding fathers of the modern animal rights movement, here explains his latest thinking about morality.

Richard Ryder created the term speciesism in early 1970 and shared the idea with Peter Singer, who popularised it in his classic work _Animal Liberation_. A key figure in the modern animal rights revival Ryder appeared on the first-ever televised discussion of animal rights in December 1970. He further promoted the ideas around speciesism in recorded discussions with Bridget Brophy, for the Open University, and in his contribution to the seminal philosophical work _Animals Men and Morals_ edited (...) by the Oxford philosophers Stanley and Roslind Godlovitch and John Harris in 1971. From 1969 Ryder organised protests against animal experiments and bloodsports. He continued to promote his ideas about speciesism in leaflets and broadcasts, culminating in the publication of his _Victims of Science_ in 1975 - a book that provoked debates in Parliament and on television and was described by _The Spectator_ at the time as "a morally and historically important book". Dr Ryder was elected to the RSPCA Council in 1971, first becoming Chairman in 1977. In 1980 he was founding Chairman of the Liberal Democrat Animal Protection Group, and later ran for Parliament, was Director of the Political Animal Lobby and then Mellon Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Tulane University. Ryder coined the term painism to describe his wider moral theory in 1990. He has several times broadcast on the BBC's Moral Maze. (shrink)

Clinical psychologist Richard Ryder approaches three iconic celebrities -- Horatio Nelson, Adolph Hitler, and Diana Princess of Wales -- as though they were his patients and presents a short psycho-biography of each. Beneath their obvious differences he finds striking similarities in their backgrounds and early experience, especially being deprived of their mothers' love. In a short Epilogue the author asks what lessons might be learned for the future from these three famous figures of the past.

The British Government has finally banned fox hunting. Richard Ryder explains why he believes it was the right decision.

In the second of our two articles focusing on the war in Iraq, Richard Ryder looks at a range of possible justifications, and finds them all wanting.

Machiavelli almost succeeded in removing morality from European politics and, indeed, since his day it has sometimes been assumed that morality and politics are separate. Ryder argues that the time has come for public policies to be seen to be based upon moral objectives. Politicians should be expected routinely to justify their policies with open moral argument. In Part I, Ryder sketches an overview of contemporary political philosophy as it relates to the moral basis for politics, and Part (...) 2 suggests a way of putting morality back into politics, along with a clearer emphasis upon scientific evidence. (shrink)

This book is the fourth volume of selected papers from the Central European Pragmatist Forum (CEPF). It deals with the general question of self and society, and the papers are organized into sections on Self and History, Self and Society, Self and Politics, Self and Neopragmatism, and an Interview with Richard Rorty. The authors are among the leading specialists in American philosophy from universities across the US and in Central and Eastern Europe.

This book is the fifth volume of selected papers from the Central European Pragmatist Forum (CEPF). The CEPF was founded in 2000 to provide an opportunity for American and European specialists in American philosophy to share their work with one another and to develop an understanding of the contemporary applications of the American philosophical traditions. The current volume deals with the general questions of identity and social transformation. Papers are organized into sections on the Transformation of Pragmatism, Metatheoretical conditions for (...) Identity Transformation, the Fluidity of Identity, Transforming Self, Transforming Society, Art and Transformation, Richard Rorty on the Transformation of Society and Self, and Pragmatism and Central Europe. The authors are among the leading specialists in American philosophy from universities across the US and in Central and Eastern Europe. In their papers the authors address a range of topics, including comparative analyses of American philosophical figures with prominent representatives of other philosophical traditions, contemporary issues in ethics, aesthetics and social philosophy, unresolved problems in American philosophy, and issues of contemporary policy. All papers deal in one way or another with the general theme of identity and transformation, individual and social. (shrink)

As a member of the British Oxford Group, psychologist Richard Ryder marked the beginning of the modern animal rights and animal welfare movement in the seventies. By introducing the concept “speciesism.” Ryder contributed importantly to the expansion of this movement. Surprisingly little attention has been paid to Ryder’s moral theory, “painism”, that aims to resolve the conflict between the two predominant rival theories in animal ethics, the deontological of Tom Regan and the utilitarian of Peter Singer. (...) First, this paper examines the kernel and historical sources of Ryder’s painist theory, linking it to the work of John Rawls and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Second, it examines Ryder’s critique of utilitarianism. It is argued that his critique of Singer’s use of the word “sentience” is unconvincing and that his critique of utilitarian aggregation as not taking a full account of the metaphysical separateness of persons, has already been countered and dealt with. Finally this paper looks at some of the counterintuitive implications of Ryder’s theory and argues that utilitarianism might have more resources for dealing with its own alleged counterintuitive implications than Ryder acknowledges. (shrink)

Logic has pride of place in mathematics and its 20th century offshoot, computer science. Modern symbolic logic was developed, in part, as a way to provide a formal framework for mathematics: Frege, Peano, Whitehead and Russell, as well as Hilbert developed systems of logic to formalize mathematics. These systems were meant to serve either as themselves foundational, or at least as formal analogs of mathematical reasoning amenable to mathematical study, e.g., in Hilbert’s consistency program. Similar efforts continue, but have been (...) expanded by the development of sophisticated methods to study the properties of such systems using proof and model theory. In parallel with this evolution of logical formalisms as tools for articulating mathematical theories (broadly speaking), much progress has been made in the quest for a mechanization of logical inference and the investigation of its theoretical limits, culminating recently in the development of new foundational frameworks for mathematics with sophisticated computer-assisted proof systems. In addition, logical formalisms developed by logicians in mathematical and philosophical contexts have proved immensely useful in describing theories and systems of interest to computer scientists, and to some degree, vice versa. Three examples of the influence of logic in computer science are automated reasoning, computer verification, and type systems for programming languages. (shrink)

This study reconstructs the relationship between philosophy and politics in the way in which Heidegger's failure as a politician influenced the redevelopment of philosophy in the 1930s. The author also explains how Heidegger's failure influenced the content and direction of his later work.

Hilbert’s program was an ambitious and wide-ranging project in the philosophy and foundations of mathematics. In order to “dispose of the foundational questions in mathematics once and for all,” Hilbert proposed a two-pronged approach in 1921: first, classical mathematics should be formalized in axiomatic systems; second, using only restricted, “finitary” means, one should give proofs of the consistency of these axiomatic systems. Although Gödel’s incompleteness theorems show that the program as originally conceived cannot be carried out, it had many partial (...) successes, and generated important advances in logical theory and metatheory, both at the time and since. The article discusses the historical background and development of Hilbert’s program, its philosophical underpinnings and consequences, and its subsequent development and influences since the 1930s. (shrink)

The proof theory of many-valued systems has not been investigated to an extent comparable to the work done on axiomatizatbility of many-valued logics. Proof theory requires appropriate formalisms, such as sequent calculus, natural deduction, and tableaux for classical (and intuitionistic) logic. One particular method for systematically obtaining calculi for all finite-valued logics was invented independently by several researchers, with slight variations in design and presentation. The main aim of this report is to develop the proof theory of finite-valued first order (...) logics in a general way, and to present some of the more important results in this area. In Systems covered are the resolution calculus, sequent calculus, tableaux, and natural deduction. This report is actually a template, from which all results can be specialized to particular logics. (shrink)

Methods available for the axiomatization of arbitrary finite-valued logics can be applied to obtain sound and complete intelim rules for all truth-functional connectives of classical logic including the Sheffer stroke and Peirce’s arrow. The restriction to a single conclusion in standard systems of natural deduction requires the introduction of additional rules to make the resulting systems complete; these rules are nevertheless still simple and correspond straightforwardly to the classical absurdity rule. Omitting these rules results in systems for intuitionistic versions of (...) the connectives in question. (shrink)

Studies the politics of Heidegger in terms of "thrownness" or "existential contingency". Attempts to think through Heidegger's philosophy in a manner that parallels his own dialogue with other key western thinkers.

Having visited Ireland regularly during the 1930s, Ludwig Wittgenstein resigned his Cambridge philosophy professorship in 1947 and moved there, living in a fishing village on the Atlantic coast and hotels in Dublin and the Wicklow Mountains. Although Wittgenstein spent some time out of the country, Ireland was effectively his base for three very productive years during which he worked on what would become one of his key books, the posthumously published Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein in Ireland represents the first sustained account (...) of Wittgenstein's time in Ireland, placing it in its historical context. Wall pays a good deal of attention to the representation of the Irish landscape in which the Austrian philosopher found himself able to work; a large part of his writings were produced in the bleak landscapes of Ireland and Norway. (shrink)

Textbook on Gödel’s incompleteness theorems and computability theory, based on the Open Logic Project. Covers recursive function theory, arithmetization of syntax, the first and second incompleteness theorem, models of arithmetic, second-order logic, and the lambda calculus.

Despite their differences in origin, the three influential schools of twentieth-century continental cultural criticism--the Frankfurt School, existentialism, and poststructuralism--have long been treated as an ensemble and with critical hesitancy. Examining these schools as responses to the apparent collapse of Western civilization in the twentieth-century and as formidable intellectual challenges to the cultural legacies of the Enlightenment, this book provides a productive base for criticism and broadens our understanding of their histories and reception.

This book is the complete story of the creation of the universe, as it was understood by the ancient Egyptians. It is a collection of harmonic and radical 'Black Thoughts' and the pursuit of equality for all of this planet's inhabitants"--P. vii.

Drawing on case studies from around the world - including Iran, Guatemala, USA and Mexico - this collection documents how transnational human rights discourses and legal institutions are materialised, imposed, resisted and transformed in a variety of contexts.

In this book, Della Rocca traces out the conceptual links between key concepts and principles of Spinoza's system bearing on representation and the mind-body problem. In the course of doing so, he presents and defends a number of new, interesting theses about Spinoza's thought on these matters. The arguments are presented with impressive clarity and in great detail. All in all, the book is a significant contribution to the literature on Spinoza's metaphysics and epistemology, and should be read by anyone (...) with a serious interest in its historical subject or in the two perennial philosophical problems on which it focuses. (shrink)