Animal Ethics and Philosophy

Elisa Aaltola is senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Eastern Finland. She is the author of Animal Suffering: Philosophy and Culture (Palgrave, 2012) and more than twenty refereed papers on animal philosophy.John Hadley is lecturer in philosophy at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. He has published papers on a wide range of topics in animal and environmental ethics.

Editors Aaltola and Hadley identify the motivation for this collection of essays as the fact that there is very little innovation in the field of animal ethics; much fits the description of 'moral extensionism,' or the extension of existing moral and political theories across species. The editors present works that examine the metaethical and meta-philosophical issues in animal ethics, thereby asking unaddressed questions. In the book's 12 essays, various contributors focus on the assumptions behind the critique of morally relevant relationships; offer an application of biosemiotics, or living organisms’ use of signs; and utilize Merleau-Ponty’s embodied subjects to discuss intersubjectivity with non-human animals. Authors also examine the epistemological and ethical difficulties regarding speaking for animals, argue there is a shortsightedness in basing animal ethics in rights, and consider the moral role of disgust with animal abuse. Finally, Aaltola ends with a convincing explanation for how and why humans are able to paradoxically love some animals and eat others. . . .Readers will find original additions to the animal ethics discussion. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers and faculty.

• Notes on Contributors / Introduction: Questioning the Orthodoxy, John Hadley and Elisa Aaltola/ Part I: Intrinsic Value and Moral Status: Rethinking Sentience/ 1. A Meta-level Problem for Animal Rights Theory, John Hadley / 2. Against Moral Intrinsicalism, Nicolas Delon / 3. Beyond Sentience: Biosemiotics as Foundation for Animal and Environmental Ethics, Morton Tonnesen and Jonathan Beever / 4. Animal Agency: What It Is, What It Isn't, and How It Can be Realized, Zipporah Weisberg / Part II: Epistemology: Knowing and Speaking for Nonhuman Animals / 5. Enchanted Worlds and Animal Others, Wayne Williams / 6. 'The Flesh of My Flesh': Animality, Difference, and 'Radical' Community in Merleau-Ponty's Late Philosophy, Jonathan D. Singer / 7.The Problem of Speaking for Animals, Jason Wyckoff / 8. Doing Away with Rights, Elizabeth Foreman / Part III: Moral Psychology: Emotions and Metaethics / 9. Disgust and the Collection of Bovine Foetal Blood, Robert Fischer / Hume on Animals and the Rest of Nature, Angela Coventry and Avram Hiller / 11.The Politicization of Animal Love, Tony Milligan / 12. The Sentimentalism Revival and Animal Philosophy, Elisa Aaltola / Further Reading / Index