Many think doing animal ethics demands we see moral humanism as a speciesist prejudice of the kind found with sexism and racism. The only serious case for this rests on the Argument from Marginal Cases. We find that argument to the point, but show that properly understood it supports humanism. Understanding why it does this lets us see how we ought to go on in animal ethics.

In the previous paper I resituated Peter Singer's Animal Liberation within the larger context of the historical development of the animal activist movement. This paper directly follows on from the previous one, but here I take a closer at the book itself, focusing on 'Tools for Research', the second chapter in which Singer discusses animal experimentation particularly. My aim is to draw attention to the tactics adopted by Singer, which given the historical development of the movement, as detailed previously, are (...) indeed activist, and offer some account of why they are morally persuasive. (shrink)

In this paper and the next I discuss Peter Singer’s approach to answering the question of how one ought to live with nonhuman animals. In the first paper I situate Singer’s work within the larger historical context of moral concern for animals, looking at previous public consensus on the issue, its breakdown and its re-emergence with Singer in the 1970s. In the second paper, I take a closer look at Singer’s highly influential book, Animal Liberation , and argue that as (...) activist literature, his chapter on animal experimentation for example can be seen as morally persuasive in ways other than simply as an example of of speciesism. How I do this is to place Singer’s work side by side that of 19th century activist Francis Power Cobbe’s, in particular her pamphlet Light in Dark Places , and examine their work against the criticisms from scientists defending the practice of animal experimentation. (shrink)