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- Title
Ethics and Animal Consciousness: How Rubber the Ethical Ruler?
- Authors
Burghardt, Gordon M.
- Abstract
The treatment of nonhuman animals has been marked by extremes of beneficence and cruelty. The ethical guidelines explicitly or informally underlying how we regard other species have been marked by inconsistency and an elastic ethics. One of the major controversies involved in nonhuman animal rights and welfare discussions involves the level of their awareness or consciousness of ill treatment. The varying ways in which this issue has been conceptualized, studied, and applied to the lives of other species throughout history are reviewed, and the difficulties of setting thresholds for differential ethical and moral concern for various taxa are discussed. A more holistic and ecological moral vision for valuing other animals is proposed.
- Subjects
ETHICS; CONSCIOUSNESS in animals; ANIMAL rights; ANIMAL welfare; ANIMALS &; history; ANIMAL cognition
- Publication
Journal of Social Issues, 2009, Vol 65, Issue 3, p499
- ISSN
0022-4537
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.1540-4560.2009.01611.x