Three recent books offer alternative views of hunting: Matt Cartmill’s A View to A Death in the Morning (Cartmill, 1993), James Swan’s In Defense of Hunting (Swan 1995). and Forrest Wood’s The Delights and Dilemmas of Hunting (Wood, 1997). First, I argue that Cartmill’s claim of continuity of kind between animals and persons is both overstated and logically disconnected from the hunting/anti-hunting debate. Second, I argue that Cartmill’s claim that the suffering of sentient animals is somehow intrinsically undesirable exhibits an (...) unjustified prejudice toward middle-sized organisms. (shrink)

Masters attacks the following theses: Science is ahistorical. Scientific knowledge is value-free. The proper model of science is linear regularities. Behavior should be explained on a nature versus nurture dichotomy. The proper goal of science is the conquest of nature.