Progress and Absurdity in Animal Ethics

Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 32 (3):391-400 (2019)
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Abstract

The development of animal ethics has been characterized by both progress and absurdity. More activity in animal welfare has occurred in the past 50 years than in the previous 500, with large numbers of legislative actions supplanting the lone anti-cruelty laws. Nonetheless, there remains a tendency to confuse animal ethics with human ethics. I found this to be the case when my colleagues and I were drafting federal law requiring control of pain in invasive research. The history of animal ethics vacillates between Descartes’ denial of thought and feeling in animals and British empiricism, including the great skeptic David Hume, who affirmed in no uncertain terms the existence of animal mind. This approach was continued in British empiricism, culminating in the work of Charles Darwin. But despite Darwinian domination of biology and psychology, psychology was captured by denial of mind and consciousness by JB Watson, father of behaviorism. Denial of thought and feeling in animals continued in 20th century science and medicine while society in general became ever more firm in asserting their existence.

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Author's Profile

Bernard Rollin
Last affiliation: Colorado State University

Citations of this work

The Case for Welfare Biology.Asher A. Soryl, Mike R. King, Andrew J. Moore & Philip J. Seddon - 2021 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 34 (2):1-25.

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References found in this work

The descent of man and selection in relation to sex (excerpt).C. Darwin - 2014 - In Francisco José Ayala & John C. Avise (eds.), Essential readings in evolutionary biology. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

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