Problems with basing insect ethics on individuals’ welfare

Animal Sentience 29 (8) (2020)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

In their target article, Mikhalevich & Powell (M&P) argue that we should extend moral protection to arthropods. In this commentary, we show that there are some unforeseen obstacles to applying the sort of individualistic welfare-based ethics that M&P have in mind to certain arthropods, namely, insects. These obstacles have to do with the fact that there are often many more individuals involved in our dealings with insects than our ethical theories anticipate, and also with the fact that, in some sense, some insects count as more than an individual and, in another sense, they sometimes count as less than an individual.

Links

PhilArchive

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Vulnerable Subjects? The Case of Nonhuman Animals in Experimentation.Jane Johnson - 2013 - Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 10 (4):497-504.
Invertebrate Minds: A Challenge for Ethical Theory.Peter Carruthers - 2007 - The Journal of Ethics 11 (3):275-297.
Animal Rights and the Duty to Harm: When to be a Harm Causing Deontologist.C. E. Abbate - 2020 - Journal for Ethics and Moral Philosophy 3 (1):5-26.
Veterinarian, Heal Thy Profession!Joel Marks - 2011 - Philosophy Now 85 (85):47.
Animal Minds and Neuroimaging: Bridging the Gap between Science and Ethics?Tom Buller - 2014 - Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 23 (2):173-181.
Does Fish Welfare Matter? On the Moral Relevance of Agency.Frederike Kaldewaij - 2013 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 26 (1):63-74.

Analytics

Added to PP
2020-06-16

Downloads
376 (#48,557)

6 months
82 (#46,088)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author Profiles

Susana Monsó
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia

References found in this work

The Case for Animal Rights.Tom Regan - 2004 - Univ of California Press.
The case for animal rights.Tom Regan - 2009 - In Steven M. Cahn (ed.), Noûs. Oxford University Press. pp. 425-434.
The Case for Animal Rights.Tom Regan - 1985 - Human Studies 8 (4):389-392.
The expanding circle: ethics, evolution, and moral progress.Peter Singer - 2011 - Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Well-Being.Roger Crisp - 2017 - In Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.

View all 8 references / Add more references