Frances Power Cobbe led the Victorian movement against vivisection. Cobbe is often remembered for her animal welfare campaigning, but it is rarely recognized that she approached animal welfare as a moral philosopher. In this article, I examine the philosophical basis of Cobbe's antivivisectionism. I concentrate on her 1875 article “The Moral Aspects of Vivisection,” in which Cobbe first locates vivisection within the historical movement of Western civilization and the tendency for science to supersede religion and then endeavors to refute the (...) defenses of vivisection one by one. I emphasize the philosophical considerations that led Cobbe to oppose animal experimentation on a reasoned basis. (shrink)

Carl Cohen's arguments against animal rights are shown to be unsound. His strategy entails that animals have rights, that humans do not, the negations of those conclusions, and other false and inconsistent implications. His main premise seems to imply that one can fail all tests and assignments in a class and yet easily pass if one's peers are passing and that one can become a convicted criminal merely by setting foot in a prison. However, since his moral principles imply that (...) nearly all exploitive uses of animals are wrong anyway, foes of animal rights are advised to seek philosophical consolations elsewhere. I note that some other philosopher's arguments are subject to similar objections. (shrink)