An Ape Ethic and the Question of Personhood PDF Download

Author: Gregory F. Tague
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793619719
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
Gregory F. Tague’s An Ape Ethic and the Question of Personhood argues that great apes are moral individuals because they engage in a land ethic as ecosystem engineers to generate ecologically sustainable biomes for themselves and other species. Tague shows that we need to recognize apes as eco-engineers in order to save them and their habitats, and that in so doing, we will ultimately save earth’s biosphere. The book draws on extensive empirical research from the ecology and behavior of great apes and synthesizes past and current understanding of the similarities in cognition, social behavior, and culture found in apes. Importantly, this book proposes that differences between humans and apes provide the foundation for the call to recognize forest personhood in the great apes. While all ape species are alike in terms of cognition, intelligence, and behaviors, there is a vital contrast: unlike humans, great apes are efficient ecological engineers. Therefore, simian forest sovereignty is critical to conservation efforts in controlling global warming, and apes should be granted dominion over their tropical forests. Weaving together philosophy, biology, socioecology, and elements from eco-psychology, this book provides a glimmer of hope for future acknowledgment of the inherent ethic that ape species embody in their eco-centered existence on this planet.

Author: David C. Thomasma
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401725721
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
PERSONHOOD AND HEALTH CARE This book arose as a result of a pre-conference devoted to the topic held June 28, 1999 in Paris, France. The pre-conference preceded the Annual Congress of the International Academy ofLaw and Mental Health. Other chapters were solicited after the conference in order to more completely explore the relation of personhood to health care. The pre conference was held in honor of Yves Pelicier who led so many of our French colleagues in medicine, philosophy, and ethics as Christian Herve notes in his Tribute. As health care is aimed at healing persons, it is important to realize how difficult it is to construct a theory of personhood for health care, and thus, a theory of how healing in health care comes about or ought to occur. The book is divided into four parts, Concepts of the Person, Theories of Personhood in Relation to Health Care and Bioethics, Person and Identity, and Personhood and Hs Relations. Each section explores a critical arena in constructing the relation of personhood to health care. Although no exploration ofthis nature can be exhaustive, every effort was made to present both conflicting and complementary views of personhood from within similar and different philosophical and religious traditions. PART ONE: CONCEPTS OF THE PERSON Tracing the origins of the concept of person from antiquity through present day, Jean Delemeau provides an historical sketch of the development of a wide range of meanings.

Author: Michael Charles Tobias
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030645266
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 894

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Book Description
This work is a large, powerfully illustrated interdisciplinary natural sciences volume, the first of its kind to examine the critically important nature of ecological paradox, through an abundance of lenses: the biological sciences, taxonomy, archaeology, geopolitical history, comparative ethics, literature, philosophy, the history of science, human geography, population ecology, epistemology, anthropology, demographics, and futurism. The ecological paradox suggests that the human biological–and from an insular perspective, successful–struggle to exist has come at the price of isolating H. sapiens from life-sustaining ecosystem services, and far too much of the biodiversity with which we find ourselves at crisis-level odds. It is a paradox dating back thousands of years, implicating millennia of human machinations that have been utterly ruinous to biological baselines. Those metrics are examined from numerous multidisciplinary approaches in this thoroughly original work, which aids readers, particularly natural history students, who aspire to grasp the far-reaching dimensions of the Anthropocene, as it affects every facet of human experience, past, present and future, and the rest of planetary sentience. With a Preface by Dr. Gerald Wayne Clough, former Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and President Emeritus of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Foreword by Robert Gillespie, President of the non-profit, Population Communication.

Author: John P. Gluck
Publisher: Purdue University Press
ISBN: 9781557531360
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
This volume is a collection of chapters all contributed by individuals who have presented their ideas at conferences and who take moderate stands with the use of animals in research. Specifically the chapters bear of the issues of: notions of the moral standings of animals, history of the methods of argumentation, knowledge of the animal mind, nature and value of regulatory structures, how respect for animals can be converted from theory to action in the laboratory. The chapters have been tempered by open discussion with individuals with different opinions and not audiences of true believers. It is the hope of all, that careful consideration of the positions in these chapters will leave reader with a deepened understanding--not necessarily a hardened position.

Author: Paola Cavalieri
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780199721313
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
How much do animals matter--morally? Can we keep considering them as second class beings, to be used merely for our benefit? Or, should we offer them some form of moral egalitarianism? Inserting itself into the passionate debate over animal rights, this fascinating, provocative work by renowned scholar Paola Cavalieri advances a radical proposal: that we extend basic human rights to the nonhuman animals we currently treat as "things." Cavalieri first goes back in time, tracing the roots of the debate from the 1970s, then explores not only the ethical but also the scientific viewpoints, examining the debate's precedents in mainstream Western philosophy. She considers the main proposals of reform that recently have been advanced within the framework of today's prevailing ethical perspectives. Are these proposals satisfying? Cavalieri says no, claiming that it is necessary to go beyond the traditional opposition between utilitarianism and Kantianism and focus on the question of fundamental moral protection. In the case of human beings, such protection is granted within the widely shared moral doctrine of universal human rights' theory. Cavalieri argues that if we examine closely this theory, we will discover that its very logic extends to nonhuman animals as beings who are owed basic moral and legal rights and that, as a result, human rights are not human after all.

Author: Kwame Anthony Appiah
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069125477X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
A bold vision of liberal humanism for navigating today’s complex world of growing identity politics and rising nationalism Collective identities such as race, nationality, religion, gender, and sexuality clamor for recognition and respect, sometimes at the expense of other things we value. To what extent do they constrain our freedom, and to what extent do they enable our individuality? Is diversity of value in itself? Has the rhetoric of human rights been overstretched? Kwame Anthony Appiah draws on thinkers through the ages and across the globe to explore such questions, developing an account of ethics that connects moral obligations with collective allegiances and that takes aim at clichés and received ideas about identity. This classic book takes seriously both the claims of individuality—the task of making a life—and the claims of identity, these large and often abstract social categories through which we define ourselves.

Author: Gregory F. Tague
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100060036X
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
Arguing for a vegan economy, this book explains how we can and should alter our eating habits away from meat and dairy through sociocultural evolution. Using the latest research and ideas about the cultural ecology of food, this book makes the case that through biological and, especially, cultural evolution, the human diet can gravitate away from farmed meat and dairy products. The thrust of the writing demonstrates that because humans are a cultural species, and since we are evolving more culturally than biologically, it stands to reason for health and environmental reasons that we develop a vegan economy. The book shows that for many good reasons we don’t need a diet of meat and dairy and a call is made to legislative leaders, policy makers, and educators to shift away from animal farming and inform people about the advantages of a vegan culture. The bottom line is that we have to start thinking collectively about smarter ways of growing and processing plant foods, not farming animals as food, to generate good consequences for health, the environment, and, therefore, animals. This is an attainable and worthy goal given the mental and physical plasticity of humans through cooperative cultural evolution. This book is essential reading for all interested in veganism, whether for ethical, environmental, or health reasons, and those studying the human diet from a range of disciplines, including cultural evolution, food ecology, animal ethics, food and nutrition, and evolutionary studies.

Author: Peter Singer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139496891
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
For thirty years, Peter Singer's Practical Ethics has been the classic introduction to applied ethics. For this third edition, the author has revised and updated all the chapters and added a new chapter addressing climate change, one of the most important ethical challenges of our generation. Some of the questions discussed in this book concern our daily lives. Is it ethical to buy luxuries when others do not have enough to eat? Should we buy meat from intensively reared animals? Am I doing something wrong if my carbon footprint is above the global average? Other questions confront us as concerned citizens: equality and discrimination on the grounds of race or sex; abortion, the use of embryos for research and euthanasia; political violence and terrorism; and the preservation of our planet's environment. This book's lucid style and provocative arguments make it an ideal text for university courses and for anyone willing to think about how she or he ought to live.

Author: Kristin Andrews
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429865619
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description
Since 2013, an organization called the Nonhuman Rights Project has brought before the New York State courts an unusual request—asking for habeas corpus hearings to determine whether Kiko and Tommy, two captive chimpanzees, should be considered legal persons with the fundamental right to bodily liberty. While the courts have agreed that chimpanzees share emotional, behavioural, and cognitive similarities with humans, they have denied that chimpanzees are persons on superficial and sometimes conflicting grounds. Consequently, Kiko and Tommy remain confined as legal "things" with no rights. The major moral and legal question remains unanswered: are chimpanzees mere "things", as the law currently sees them, or can they be "persons" possessing fundamental rights? In Chimpanzee Rights: The Philosophers’ Brief, a group of renowned philosophers considers these questions. Carefully and clearly, they examine the four lines of reasoning the courts have used to deny chimpanzee personhood: species, contract, community, and capacities. None of these, they argue, merits disqualifying chimpanzees from personhood. The authors conclude that when judges face the choice between seeing Kiko and Tommy as things and seeing them as persons—the only options under current law—they should conclude that Kiko and Tommy are persons who should therefore be protected from unlawful confinement "in keeping with the best philosophical standards of rational judgment and ethical standards of justice." Chimpanzee Rights: The Philosophers’ Brief—an extended version of the amicus brief submitted to the New York Court of Appeals in Kiko’s and Tommy’s cases—goes to the heart of fundamental issues concerning animal rights, personhood, and the question of human and nonhuman nature. It is essential reading for anyone interested in these issues.

Author: Hugh LaFollette
Publisher: Oxford Handbooks Online
ISBN: 9780199284238
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 796

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Book Description
This is a guide to contemporary thought on ethical issues in all areas of human activity - personal, medical, sexual, social, political, judicial, and international, from the natural world to the world of business.