Showing papers on "Animal rights published in 1978"

‘A Brute to the Brutes?’: Descartes' Treatment of Animals

Abstract: To be able to believe that a dog with a broken paw is not really in pain when it whimpers is a quite extraordinary achievement even for a philosopher. Yet according to the standard interpretaion, this is just what Descartes did believe. He held, we are informed, the ‘monstrous’ thesis that ‘animals are without feeling or awareness of any kind’. The Standard view has been reiterated in a recent collection on animal rights, which casts Descartes as the villain of the piece for his alleged view that animals merely behave ‘as if they feel pain when they are, say, kicked or stabbed’. The basis for this widely accepted interpretation is Descartes' famous doctrine of ‘animal machine’ (‘bete-machine’); a doctrine that one critic condemns as ‘a grim fortaste of a mechanically minded age’ which ‘brutally violates the old kindly fellowship of living things’.

Fox's Critique of Animal Liberation

Abstract: Recent and forthcoming critiques of arguments dealing with animal rights have done much to sharpen the issues involved.1 Indeed, the critics have done so much to increase our understanding that it is all the more regrettable to find one of them disputing (in his terms) an "animal liberationist's" position without taking the trouble to understand it clearly. The critic I have in mind is Michael Fox (see his article in this issue), and the animal liberationist's position, so-called, is mine.2 In fact, Fox disputes both my position as well as Peter Singer's.3 It should go without saying that it is not part of my task to assess the accuracy of Fox's interpretation of Singer or to defend Singer against Fox's criticisms if and when they do apply. My task, rather, is to gauge the accuracy of Fox's presentation of my position and the severity of his objections to it. But I shall also have something to say about Fox's own position on rights. Permit me to begin with a seemingly minor point. Toward the end of his essay Fox states the following: "There are also repeated examples, both in Singer's book . . . and in Regan's article . . . of a disturbing penchant for equating experiments on animals with Nazi death-camp experiments performed on hapless, unanesthetized human beings. The overall impression one gains from such lurid passages . . . is that in their zeal to help launch a new and popular movement for animal rights they [Singer and Regan] cast their usual caution to the breeze. Or are we, instead, merely being subjected to the self-righteousness of recent converts?" (pp. 117-18). Strong language, this speculation about self-righteousness. But this and kindred instances