Ethical egoism contrasts with ethical altruism, which holds that moral agents have an obligation to help others. Egoism and altruism both contrast with ethical utilitarianism, which holds that a moral agent should treat one's self with no higher regard than one has for others as egoism does, by elevating self-interests and the self to a status not granted to others, but that one also should not as altruism does sacrifice one's own interests to help others' interests, so long as one's own interests (i.e. one's own desires or well-being) are substantially equivalent to the others' interests and well-being. Egoism, utilitarianism, and altruism are all forms of consequentialism, but egoism and altruism contrast with utilitarianism, in that egoism and altruism are both agent-focused forms of consequentialism (i.e. subject-focused or subjective), but utilitarianism is called agent-neutral (i.e.
Anderson argues that sentience alone is not sufficient for a right to not be eaten. I will argue that Anderson’s essay succeeds. Animal welfare, animal rights, and environmentalist advocates all have their own criterion of how they base their beliefs of treatment of nonhumans. To completely understand and agree with Anderson, you must first understand what each these three theoretical approaches mean. Animal welfare advocates believe that any nonhuman has moral considerability if they have the capacity to suffer; their interests should be given equal weight regardless of the species.
Potential Disagreement’s With DeWaal’s Thesis If the purpose of DeWaal’s argument is to show that humans are social because animals are social then he has shown so but the purpose of the argument is to show that not only are humans social creatures but to show morality in humans. He claims that we can learn this from observing animals but are animals moral creatures? Isn’t morality a system of principles and doesn’t rational reasoning have to be present to be a moral person capable understanding right and wrong behavior? How then can DeWaal make the connection between animals and humans regarding morality? Support For DeWaal’s Thesis DeWaal claims that when defining morality, the act of morality is not important.
(Midgley p. 152) In other words, Kant does not believe animals to be persons, but they are not exactly things or objects. So the question remains, where exactly do animals stand? Since it is apparent that humans do regard animals as more than mundane objects and that it is evident that animals do display certain levels of intelligence and sentience, I will argue that humans indeed have an irrevocable moral obligation to animals. First of all, let’s start with defining what a human person really is, I believe that a human person is a person if they match the following criteria. They must be a conscious being as in they must be able to experience things subjectively, secondly, they must be self-aware, and thirdly, they must display a certain degree of intelligence, (Anderson).
People are a subset of the planet. Ethics and morality do cross over but I agree that they are not synonyms. Morality is certainly a part of ethics but not all ethics is a part of morality so the two are not always interchangeable or synonyms. Ethics is a guide to doing stuff as is morality a guide to doing stuff to live socially, but you can be doing something that is ethical for the given point of view while at the same time it is unethical and immoral from a social point of view. - Torturing a dog is unethical and wrong as there is no reason to inflict that pain on the animal but it’s not immoral as that is the wrong term to use because another human is not involved.
This is in direct violation with David Hume’s stance on morality. Hume writes that it is desire rather than reason that governs human behavior and that, “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.” Kant’s conception of duty is based on the notion that all good ought to be done because they are intrinsically good. Duty for Kant is a basis of moral law. For example, one ought to preserve their own life or help feed the homeless because it is their societal duty to do so, not because they want to or that doing so makes them feel good. In fact, according to Kant, a person who hates helping others but does so anyways because they see it as their societal duty is a good moral agent.
Ethical language is subjective. Discuss (35) If ethical language is subjective, this means that it is very personal to the person following the ethic or moral belief. This is contrary to ethical language being objective whereby the morals that one holds are not a result of or influenced by personal opinions or feelings, rather a result of a moral theory that lays out a set of morals to act as guidance that one must follow. G. E. Moore, David Hume, R. M Hare, A. J. Ayer and Ludwig Wittgenstein would argue that ethical language is subjective, whereas normative ethicists such as Kant, Bentham, Mill and Aristotle would argue that ethical language is objective. ‘Naturalism’ is the term used to describe the attempt to arrive at a moral system based on observations of human life.
What is the difference between animal and reflective knowledge? How can these types of knowledge be used to evaluate Gettier cases? Animal knowledge is acquired by one’s intellectual virtue, like using our own senses to perceive our true beliefs. This is an externalist form of knowledge because in order to have it, we don’t have to be aware of the processes underlie it. On the other hand, reflective knowledge is internalist knowledge.
These laws regulate animal treatment. The article suggest that animal welfare laws should not be determined by animal rights. Animal rights is described as the way an animal should be treated but the Animal Welfare Laws are the way animals have to be treated. Shouldn't they be the same thing though? Where do you draw the line between what is right and what has to be followed by the law?
It’s concerned with the ethical character of an individual rather than the individual actions. Virtue ethics is neither teleological nor deontological as it doesn’t focus on actions or rules. It is concerned with the personality of the person (their moral character). Virtue ethics suggests that we should not focus on following guidelines about what types of things are right and wrong and what we should and should not do. Instead we should aim to become better people by developing positive character traits called virtues.