The theories of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker arise from an existential and psychological analysis of the death terror/anxiety deep in the unconscious of every human. Becker details how this anxiety governs the ideologies and behaviors of our species—something now confirmed by thousands of experiments performed by psychologists engaged in contemporary terror management theory (TMT). Humans manage their anxiety through what Becker terms “hero systems”—concepts, beliefs, and myths we create to give us a sense of significance and meaning during, (...) and even beyond our mortal lives. Today, many dominant economic, technological, and religious hero systems seek to confirm our significance by denying that we are—like all other species—animals who must exist in a decaying, mortal body. Becker shows how this attempt to deny our “creatureliness” (basic biological nature) causes humans to stand against the natural world we are embedded in, leading to an assault on the planet and nonhuman animals. As a result, Becker believed pacifism was the only hero system capable of keeping humankind from destroying itself and the earth. Pacifism is the precursor to the more encompassing ethical concept of “reverence for life,” advocated by Dr. Albert Schweitzer. By respecting the will-to-live in all sentient beings, reverence for life transcends concern for humans alone and extends moral and physical safeguards to life as such. Confronting the fact that humans are increasingly alienated from their commodified world and their own being, reverence for life stands as a vital solution to many of our modern problems. And following contemporary TMT research, reverencing life can also expand one’s self-esteem, which research shows lowers death anxiety, reduces aggression, and offers authentic meaning to life itself. (shrink)

One of Kant’s famous questions about being human asks, “What may I hope?” This question places individual life within an encompassing horizon of human history and speculates on the possibility of perspectives beyond death. In our time mortality is generally repressed, though the development of personal consciousness is closely linked to realization of one’s finitude. This raises especially urgent questions for children, and they are left to deal with them alone. From the time awareness begins, knowledge that (...) death can occur at any moment is one of the a priori determinants of being alive; that is, life is structured in advance by its future pastness. . According to Max Scheler, death reveals itself as a necessary and manifest constituent of all possible inner experiences in the life process. The cultural and individual interpretations of death’s meaning and consequences derived from this insight opened up an ample space for imagined possibilities of “continued existence,” which affected approaches to life. In our research project “Inochi – The Concept of Life after Death in Children’s Construction of the World. A German-Japanese Comparison,” carried out with German and Japanese research support, we examine concepts developed within the community of inquiry concerning “the individual’s afterlife” as soul, angel, animal, star, etc. In this we want to examine whether a globalized media environment leads to a cultural convergence in children’s ideas, and whether there are differences between views of girls and boys. Relevance of ideas about death is seen in the example of Japanese children who, believing in reincarnation chose “killing oneself” with relative frequency as a problem-solving strategy. Our contribution will present children’s imaginings using the drawings they created within this framework, since these can be interpreted as expressions of “narrative philosophizing,” especially for the Japanese children. Here we follow Mark Johnson who says” Human beings are imaginative synthesizing animals” . These imaginations make up a large part of our understanding, not just our beliefs, but rather our socially constructed way of being in and inhabiting a world. (shrink)

From a largely Western phenomenon, the “animal turn” has, in recent years, gone global. Animals and Human Society in Asia: Historical, Cultural and Ethical Perspectives is just such a timely product that testifies to this trend.But why Asia? The editors, in their very helpful overview essay, have from the outset justified the volume's focus on Asia and ensured that this is not simply a matter of lacuna filling. The reasons they set out include: the fact that Asia is (...) the cradle of early human settlement and animal domestication; Asia encompasses an extreme diversity of closely connected ecosystems and human cultures; Asia is the place where the world's major religions originated; and, as in other parts of the world, Asia's use of animals for food and other utilitarian purposes constitutes a prominent feature of its culture. All of these factors, they argue, made Asia a unique lab for the exploration of major developments in human civilization and the complexities of human-animal interactions.Based on these premises, the book is divided into four parts, each concentrating on areas that the editors consider to have paramount significance in world history: Part I, “Hunting and Domestication”; Part II “Animals as Food”; Part III “Animals at War”; and Part IV “Animals in Culture and Religion.” As many good works on animal studies do, the volume adopts a truly cross-disciplinary approach, uniting scholars from disciplines as diverse as archaeology, history, anthropology, art, religion, literature, and cultural studies. It too takes an interregional approach and covers a vast geographical area, stretching from the western edge of Asia in the Levant to Central Asia, where once roamed the horses of the nomadic pastoral tribes, to the other end of Asia, including India, China, and Japan. Temporally impressive as well, the work takes us from the deep history of the Paleolithic period up to the contemporary world, exploring the diverse roles that a wide range of animals—horses, donkeys, camels, elephants, tigers, and so forth—have played in Asia's rich and unique past and present.Strong in archaeology, Part I, “Hunting and Domestication,” responds to the much-called for “deep” or “coevolutionary” history of human-animal relations in recent years. The three chapters discuss, respectively, the roles that proboscideans have played in the diet and culture of early societies in Paleolithic China and beyond; the ways in which animals of all sizes have been increasingly integrated into the diet, daily uses, trade, and warfare in Holocene Negev; and the diversifying roles played by donkeys in the early Bronze Age in Southern Levant as a food source, a means of transport and in ritual sacrifices. Together, they demonstrate, with reference to telling archaeological evidence how the early societies in this region have been highly dependent upon the increasingly sophisticated interactions with and uses of mega-herbivores in the protracted and by no means clear-cut transition from hunting and herding towards the agricultural way of life, affirming the co-existing and co-constituting relations between humans and other animals in the deep past of Asia.The chapters in the section on “Animals at War” equally reveal the crucial roles that animals have played in the military sphere, as either a practical war technology or a show of military power. “Elephants in Mongol History” revisits the thesis of elephant-mounted troops in South and Southeast Asia as a barrier to Mongol expansion. Through its lively account of the pivotal battles in Mongolian history, especially that against India and China, it illustrates with great success the complex interactions between animals (especially elephants, horses, and humans), technology, and the geographical environment, which jointly exercised their influence on the outcome of warfare and degree of success of political rule. Turning away from the dynamic of warfare, the following two chapters explore the biopolitical question of the management of the horse as a bio-resource in the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria (1250–1517) and early Ming Dynasty China, respectively. The first one places its focus on the breeding, procurement, and feeding of the horse subjects in question, while the latter concentrates on the human organization of various resources for the upkeep of government horses—a conventional area of study called “horse administration” in the institutional history of the government in China.The last section, “Animals in Culture and Religion,” examines the changing images of apex predators, such as lions and tigers, in Buddhist perceptions from South Asia to East Asia; the cult of the Horse King in late Imperial China; and the significance of animal signs in Mongolian historiography. They represent an established approach in animal studies that seeks to understand different aspects of human culture through symbolic or metaphorical animals. Instead of treating the animals discussed as mere abstractions, which has been a frequent criticism of works that adopt this approach, the relations between the symbolic animals and their prototype in the natural world were attentively explored. The essay on the cult of the Horse King, for example, closely links the wax and wane of the cult since late imperial China with the changing use and subsequent disuse of the actual horses in agriculture, transportation, commerce, and quotidian life. Yet, classic as these essays on symbolic animals are, one does feel slightly unsatiated when coming to the end of this section, which also marks the end of this volume. Having been reminded early in the introductory essay that Asia was “a major site for the emergence of moral teachings and ethical guidance on the treatment of animals” and how this legacy “still affects the lives of billions of humans to this very day,” one feels naturally rather let down that no article in this volume directly addresses this vital ethical dimension, especially since it belongs to a series on “animal ethics.”Indeed, regarding the task of placing either the nonhuman animals or the ethical relations between humans and other animals center stage, the essays in this volume achieve only varying levels of success. Some authors exhibit a more acute awareness of what “animal studies” or “animal ethics” might entail epistemically and methodically and experiment by paying closer attention to the species-specific characteristics, experience, and agency of nonhuman animals in order to cast off the deified anthropocentrism previously ruled in humanist scholarship. However, others have made no such attempt. For example, in Part II of “Animals as Food,” an essay on the production and consumption of milk in contemporary China, albeit alert to the issue of health hazards to consumers, omits any consideration of the subject from the dairy cows’ perspective under the modern intensive farming system. Moreover, otherwise superb research on the tuna-fishing industry in Japan, with its insightful discussion of the nexus between knowledge economies and imperial politics, too passes over any discussion of the fate of the tuna, whether collectively as a group of living organisms containing 15 species or individually as animals with an embodied experience. One does ponder whether these essays would fit better in a volume on the cultural history of food or on the entwining history of knowledge production, economics, and politics, which conventionally position human interests at the center of research.Taken as a whole, this is an impressive volume that directs our attention to the hitherto understudied world of Asia in animal studies. The long durée, with its interdisciplinary and interregional approach, also most powerfully presents a past in Asia that could not have been the same without the participation of animals at every level, from everyday life to the shaping of cultural values, the construction of belief systems, the building of a national identity, and even the rise and fall of regimes. Scholars and students interested in expanding the frontier of our understanding of the world with a more inclusive “we” should find a wealth of interesting subjects on which to build further research. Finally, the volume also presents a fitting occasion for all scholars committed to animal studies to consider the grave challenge confronting the field that arose alongside its growing respectability and rapid expansion: Should it be oriented toward the destabilization of our previously anthropocentric conception of the world? Or should no such perimeter be imposed, as in this volume? The overall breadth and limitations of this volume leave one pondering this issue. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 341 if you started asking them questions about possible worlds. But Bradley's contribution is to have given us a painstaking and thorough reading of some extremely tightly wound and important aspects of the Tractatus, to have brought that text into direct contaot with con· temporary issues, and to have made progress toward showing that how· ever remarkable we thought the Tractatus was, it is still more remarkable (...) than that. JOHN CHURCHILL Hendrix College Conway, Arkansas The Human Person: Animal and Spirit. By DAVID BRAINE. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992. Pp. xxv + 555. $32.95 (cloth). Any study in philosophical anthropology that rejects both mate· rialism and dualism, and seeks to set forth a " holistic " alternative, may be met in many quarters with some skepticism today-especially if that alternative seeks to accommodate itself to religious teaching regarding the soul's continued existence after death. For, it will be asked, on the one hand, how can it deny that the esse of the human being ceases at death (538) without affirming some sort of dualism? On the other hand, unless it is some sort of soft-headed New Age philosophy (which this most certainly is not), how can it sustain its claim to "holism" while rejecting the monolithic materialism of those whom Walker Percy once described as our "brain engineers, neuropharmacologists, and chemists of the synapses "? The challenge is " how to produce an account which allows the human person to continue exist· ing after death, and even to have body restored to it, while remaining completely faithful to the insight that it belongs to human nature to be bodily," and, at the same time, to " avoid reerecting the soul into a complete substance" (xix). The peculiar obstacle faced by such a project is the pervasive proclivity towards reductionism in modern accounts of human nature stemming from the impress of both materialism and dualism. Both analyze the human person into an aggregate of parts in certain relations, the behavior of the whole being ·the result of the interactions of these parts. " In all this the materialist has exactly the same picture as the dualist. Indeed, unless the mental can first be represented as inner, logically independent of anything in the ' outer man ' and the ' world,' there is no way in which it can be identified with a brain-process or 342 BOOK REVIEWS state" (3). So whether one thinks of the mind as an independent en· tity (as in dualism), or not (as in materialism), the body is left to be accounted for by the brain engineers and their aggregates of physi· ological, anatomical, neurological, and chemical causes. And since materialism involves no complicating questions about causal interaction between the physical and the mental (as in dualism), it is usually preferred on grounds of its simplicity-all causation being subsumed under the physical. In this ambitious tome, David Braine, a philosopher at the University of Aberdeen, offers a thoroughgoing analysis and critique of such views, whereby he undertakes to overturn these ways of viewing human nature and to offer a holistic alternative. He sets forth a framework for understanding things like perceiving, doing, and speaking as irreducibly the acts of the psychosomatically integrated beings to which we normally attribute them-an understanding that conforms to the ordinary experience of such acts in ourselves and in others. He seeks to expose how materialist arguments repeat the mistakes of the dualists by reducing human beings (and other animals) to their aggregate parts, segmented sequences, and their interrelations. He takes issue with the arguments of recent analytical philosophers (such as Davidson and Dummett) in detail, and sets forth a holistic alternative-both with re· spect to the human person as " animal" and as " spirit." As to the human as "animal," Braine notes, accordingly, that "it is the bodily animal being as such, not just its mind, which is an ' I ', a ' he or she ', a focalized subject in relation to the world. The primary reason why human behaviour cannot be simulated by a computer does not lie in things special to human beings, but in the fact that this fo. calized psychophysical structure which they share with the... (shrink)

It is suggested that the best way to interpret animalism is as an identity thesis saying that each of us is identical to an animal. Since there are disagreements about the nature of animal persistence, this means that animalism itself not does not explicitly propose criteria of identity for persons. It implies the negative claim that features that have nothing to do with animal persistence have nothing to do with our persistence. Thinking of it as an identity (...) thesis also makes sense of the nature of the arguments surrounding the thesis. Central to such arguments are claims about the persistence of animals and persons in certain imagined scenarios. To adjudicate such arguments, we need a secure grip on some claims about animal persistence. Often these are generated by a theory of animal persistence. In the second part of the paper, it is argued that the attempt to build such theories on the assumption that life is essential for animal existence is implausible. In the way we speak, we seem not to recognise death as the ceasing to exist of an animal. No better way to think of animals is proposed in this paper. (shrink)

One of the issues with introducing animal rights law is whether the problem is quantitative or qualitative, whether it can be achieved by working within existing legal paradigms or whether it requires a new set of paradigms. The answer is fundamental: a quantitative problem can be solved by applying more of the same solutions, while a qualitative problem requires completely different solutions. The qualitative camp can be represented by, say, Professor Gary Francione, demanding not only rights for animals but (...) that they have personhood and are no longer considered “property.” The quantitative approach can be finely represented by Professor David Favre, who has argued for many years that we can make progress by developing existing legal principles to give some rights to some animals, and he does so eloquently in his new book. He is clear in his view that progress is, and can continue to be, made with a series of steps, as he puts it, “climbing the slippery slope toward personhood” (p. viii).His case is supported by looking backward—progress made in establishing the rules governing humans in their relationships with animals—as well as forward to developments that will support continuing improvement in the lives of animals, not least the potential for technology (for example, through cell- and plant-based meat). At the same time, he also rightly rejects the concepts of animal welfare and animal rights being at odds, let alone either of them being a panacea for better lives for animals.One aspect of animal law that Favre believes does need to change is that of property status. As he says, the status of animals as personal property is “critical to the future of animal law” (p. 25). In general, the solutions have been largely binary—that animals simply cannot be property for them to have meaningful rights or that animals can be property and still have rights. The former makes intuitive good sense (and is consistent with the objectives of the human abolitionist movements) but would have enormous effects on economic activity throughout the world. The latter is appealing because it does not change the current paradigm, so can be developed more easily.Favre's premise is that we are moving toward rights for animals, so we need to find a way of integrating animals into the current legal system rather than having to destroy and reconstruct the legal system. His ingenious solution is to propose a fourth category of property, alongside real, personal, and intellectual property: “living property.”Within this category, he envisages using the common law concept of the trust to provide equitable “self-ownership,” where an animal has equitable “ownership” while a human retains legal “ownership.” He then connects this concept to adaptations in other aspects of law that start to recognize the selfhood of animals, creating a platform onto which broader and deeper rights for animals can develop, such as the status of “animalhood” (p. 72) and the corresponding legal right of consideration before decisions are made by the state affecting an animal's fundamental interests (such as continuing to be alive). By putting animals in a separate class—rather than uncomfortably leaving them in personal property—he creates a possible route for animal rights that seems less paradigm-busting than removing them from being property altogether.Drawing on evidence from criminal law, tort law, equity (trusts), property law, and family law, he shows how in many places—with a focus on states in the United States—existing laws are being adapted (“green shoots” p. 81) to recognize that animals are more than personal property, in ways that cannot be explained simply through the growth of regulations. For example, family law is starting to recognize that in the division of matrimonial assets, companion animals cannot be treated simply like any other personal property such as a table or a car based on who paid for them. Because animals are “living property,” the courts should take account of other aspects, such as who cared for the animals and who looked after them. Similarly, the concept of extending trust law so that an animal can be the beneficiary of a trust—in the same way as a human can be but inanimate personal property cannot—shows that the law can understand that companion animals can play a large emotional role in our lives (as well as we in theirs), such that we want to ensure proper care for them after we die.The book raises important issues. First, it is intentionally about domestic animals, with their close links with humans, so the potential for laws to engage is much easier than with, say, farmed animals. The danger with solutions that focus on domestic or charismatic animals (e.g., dogs, chimpanzees, elephants) is that the arguments may be pertinent essentially only to those species and therefore hard to apply to animals of less charismatic species, say in a factory farm (but who are present in much greater numbers and generally badly treated in comparison). He “leaves for another day” (p. 32) the discussion about other animals. Hopefully that day will come, as it would be interesting to see how Favre could extend his concept to animals for whom the public has less affection and less appreciation of their capacities (and for whom the prospect of death is much more real and imminent).Secondly, public support for these ideas about living property may simply not be present. If there is not a sufficient groundswell of support for changing the status of animals, then whether one proposes changing it to not-property or “self-owned” property doesn't matter (if someone doesn't like needles, it doesn't matter whether the needle you propose to use is big or small). This may be too pessimistic, of course (people can be helped to overcome a fear of needles, and one way to start is with small needles). Perhaps the law should start with small changes to recognize at least a few animals—their sentience, their capacities for pleasure and pain, their emotions and preferences, their potential for autonomy—and build public support from there.There is also the underlying and more radical point about whether these ideas—the trust for a beloved companion set up by the human, the divorce settlement that doesn't just give the companion to the party who paid for them—are actually bringing about changes for animals as such or are simply adapting laws to help humans, recognizing human needs, and do not actually change the status of animals. The ends are still humans, and the means are still animals.This is not intended to paint a bleak picture: The more bluntand uncompromising part of the animal rights movement that has been focused on the qualitative problem has hardly been successful at getting animal rights laws passed anywhere in the world, so everything that moves us closer to a better, richer, more thoughtful view of animals will help. Favre's approach has ingenuity, shows good sense, and has the potential to bring about real animal rights. The themes and cases in this book that show how courts and legislatures are becoming more aware of the sentience of at least some animals, as well as proposing a middle path in the debate about animals as property, are important in the journey toward recognition of animal rights. Even more important, they may actually work. (shrink)

The article deals with the philosophical problem field of modern neuroethics. The general idea of the state of modern neuroethics is given and it is shown that research in this area encompasses both fundamental problems that classically belonged to the field of philosophy research (for example, such as the problem of psychophysical dualism, the physical bases of consciousness, freedom of will and its interrelation with brain activity) and problems with applied orientation, explicating the ethical-social and legal dimension of innovation development (...) in the field of neuroscience and actualizing the analysis of their social risks. It is shown that the development of neuro-ethics in the modern world became possible thanks to a special way of functioning of modern science, which was called the technology of science and to the development of the phenomenon of technological development ethification, which in practical terms was expressed in the study of the problem of the correspondence of the results of innovative scientific and technical projects to the interests of various social groups, their expectations and values, and also helped to determine the status of new technologies in relation to social reality. The article gives an idea of the existing normative field necessary for the development of neuro-ethics. On the basis of using the resource of discourse analysis of R. Harre, who singled out personal grammar (P-grammar), organism grammar (O-grammars) and molecular grammar (M-grammar), a philosophical analysis of such a problem of modern neuroethics as brain death was carried out. Also was given a structural description of new biotechnogenic identities of human being. The conclusion is drawn that the concept of brain death is an example of the conventional nature of scientific truth, the formation of which is influenced by various socio-cultural and economic factors. In the context of the development of neuroscience and the emergence of new methods of brain regeneration, it can be rethought. (shrink)

Sacred Rituals and Humane Death critically analyzes the civilizing nature of the underlying fundamental concept of "humaneness" in contemporary discourses around modern meat and animal ethics. As religious methods of animal slaughter, such as the halal method in Islam, as well as the practice of religious animal sacrifice, are sometimes categorized as barbaric in recent debates, the civilizing narrative of progress leads supposedly to more humane adaptation of methods and practices of animal curation and slaughter. (...) This volume argues that the shift toward modern meat does not constitute a shift toward less pain and suffering as purported by supporters of contemporary methods, particularly mass agriculture. Rather, it is a shift in what is considered as acceptable versus unacceptable pain and suffering. In this work, the author analyzes the concealment and distancing that characterize modern meat production, uncovering the "acceptable" pain and suffering involved in these procedures heralded as "progress" and advocating for a retrieval of earlier, tradition-bound practices rooted in religious, cultural, and ethical respect of animals and their important and sacred roles in sacrifice. (shrink)

Animal welfare has been conceptualized in such a way that the use of animals in science and for food seems justified. I argue that those who have done this have appropriated the concept of animal welfare, claiming to give a scientific account that is more objective than the sentimental account given by animal liberationists. This strategy seems to play a major role in supporting merely limited reform in the use of animals and seems to support the assumption (...) that there are conditions under which animals may be raised and slaughtered for food that are ethically acceptable. Reformists do not need to make this assumption, but they tend to conceptualize animal welfare is such a way that death does not count as harmful to the interests of animals, nor prolonged life a benefit. In addition to this prudential value assumption, some members of this community have developed strategies for defending suitably reformed farming practices as ethical even granting that death and some other forms of constraints are harms. One such strategy is the fiction of a domestic contract. However, if one accepts the conceptualization of human welfare give by L. W. Sumner, and applies it to animals in the way that I think is justified, an accurate conceptualization of animal welfare has different implications for which uses of animals should be regarded as ethically acceptable. In this paper I give an historical and philosophical account of animal welfare conceptulization and use this account to argue that animal breeders, as custodians of the animals they breed, have the ethical responsibility to help their animal wards achieve as much autonomy as possible in choosing the form of life made available to them and to provide that life. Attempts to avoid these implications by alluding to a contract model of the relationship between custodians and their wards fail to relieve custodians of their ethical responsibilities of care. (shrink)

Humane farming, that is, a husbandry system where animals do not suffer, either during their lives, or at the time of their killing, has been advertised as an ethical alternative to the horrors of factory farming. Although it could be argued that such a system does not currently exist, we ought to determine whether this is a morally desirable end to strive for. My objective is to assess one of the utilitarian arguments used in the debate about humane farming. In (...) particular, I am interested in whether we have risk-related reasons to argue against the implementation of this practice. I will argue, against de Lazari-Radek and Singer, that considerations of moral risk should lead us to reject the practice of humane farming. In doing so, I will engage with arguments dealing with both the badness of animal death and the value of coming into existence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A New Look at Animal-to-Human Organ TransplantationCharles R. McCarthy (bio)The acute shortage of organs available for transplantation into human beings combined with a new scientific understanding of the immune systems of both humans and animals make it probable that animal-to-human solid organ transplants (xenografts) may soon be attempted at a frequency rate unknown in the past. 1 Optimism about successful animal-to-human organ (...) transplantation is greater than at any previous time. The creation of a reliable supply of animal organs appears to be technically feasible. At least five major transplant centers in the United States are currently considering plans to pursue xenotransplantation. Although, at the time of this writing, no federal guidelines prohibit animal-to-human organ transplantation, the institutions considering such programs are awaiting deliberations on the subject by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).The demand for organs suitable for transplantation into human beings greatly exceeds the supply. According to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS 1996a), approximately 44,000 patients in the United states awaited organ transplantation at the end of 1995. In 1994, more than 3,000 patients died while on the transplant waiting list, and the demand for transplantable organs increases annually (UNOS 1996b). The figures do not include the hundreds or perhaps thousands of patients who could profit from a transplant, but who do not meet the requirements of the UNOS waiting list. Even if efforts to persuade persons to donate organs are redoubled, and even if the consent to donate organs should become a legal presumption, there is little prospect of developing a sufficient supply of transplantable human organs to meet the growing demand.As technical and biological barriers to successful animal-to-human xenografts are lowered, the prospect of raising dedicated colonies of animals, genetically altered to reduce the chances that human hosts will reject organs derived from them, is being seriously discussed. 2 Such colonies do not exist at the present time. [End Page 183] However, if new techniques for animal-to-human transplantation prove successful, it is likely that animal colonies will be established to provide a ready and predictable supply of organs for transplantation to humans. Some believe that commercial investment in colonies of purpose-bred animals to serve as a source of transplantable organs is close at hand (Leventhal 1994).New drugs and new combinations of existing drugs have improved the chances of successful medical outcomes for patients who receive solid organ transplants. It is now recognized that serial application of immunosuppressive drugs can reduce the likelihood of both short- and long-term organ rejection (Makowka 1994). Improved understanding of both human and animal immune systems, insights into histocompatibility, new agents to control graft-versus-host disease, animal breeding programs for the production of transgenic animals, and improved surgical techniques have opened, as never before, the possibility of successful transfer of organs from animals to humans. Some rate the chances of good patient outcomes (usually measured in terms of time of patient survival) as high, others make more conservative predictions, but virtually all experts believe that the chances for successful human patient outcomes resulting from xenotransplantation are improved. Because many patients face immanent death unless their organs can be replaced, there can be little doubt that many humans will readily consent to xenotransplantation.History Suggests CautionDespite the advances in immunosuppression, the frequency of failure in past animal-to-human xenograft attempts should temper the optimism of the transplant community. To date, all efforts to prolong human life by implanting solid organs from animals into human recipients have failed. The first attempts at animal-to-human xenotransplantation early in the twentieth century resulted in the early death of all recipients (Neuhof 1923). More sophisticated efforts at xenotransplantation occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a period when anti-rejection drugs began to make allografts more feasible. Although one human recipient of a xenograft survived for nine months (with poor quality of life), most patients died within a matter of minutes, hours, or a few days following the transplantation of organs from chimpanzees or baboons (Starzl... (shrink)

This paper asks what influences farmers’ adherence to national and international zoonotic disease intervention efforts and argues that development and promotion of biosecurity interventions must take into account the economic and social context informing how livestock sectors operate and how those who work in them are making a living. Specifically, we explore how poultry farms in Viet Nam are managed amidst global efforts to combat disease and national ambitions to sustain growth. The growth of Viet Nam’s livestock sector has been (...) accompanied by a range of disease outbreaks that have caused the deaths of animals and humans, threatened businesses, and led to the introduction and ongoing revisions to biosecurity efforts. Despite a strict national (and international) agenda focusing on disease control through biosecurity strategies, on farms disease management is implemented in various ways and to varying degrees. Based on fieldwork in three provinces of Northern Viet Nam and in-depth interviews with actors working on farms and across the commercial poultry sector, we reflect on social, financial and political factors shaping the country’s biosecurity narratives and discuss key practices farming households engage in that influence their disease management efforts. Our findings reveal that strict adherence to biosecurity guidelines is often practically unfeasible for commercial poultry farming households to implement where zoonotic diseases are not a concern related to bird and human health so much as a potential risk to a household’s living, that exists among a range of diverse opportunities and uncertainties shaping farming operations in Viet Nam’s changing livestock sector. (shrink)

OSCAR HORTA | : This paper examines the extent of the opposition between environmentalists and those concerned with wild-animal suffering and considers whether there are any points they may agree on. The paper starts by presenting the reasons to conclude that suffering and premature death prevail over positive well-being in nature. It then explains several ways to intervene in order to aid animals and prevent the harms they suffer, and claims that we should support them. In particular, the (...) paper argues in favour of carrying out more research to learn the best ways to intervene without causing more harm to other animals and to intervene first in areas significantly transformed by human action. It then examines what positions environmentalist views can have towards intervention in nature for the sake of animals. It claims that, while ecocentric and naturocentric views will strongly oppose intervention in certain circumstances, they should not do so in other cases in which the values they promote are not at stake or might be outweighed. The paper then argues that, contrary to what it might seem at first, biocentric views should strongly support intervention. It then discusses whether there may be certain practical issues about which those concerned with wild animal suffering and environmentalists may support the same approach, such as opposition to the greening of desert ecosystems. Finally, it claims that raising awareness about wild animal suffering seems to be the most urgent task now for those concerned about it. | : Le présent article examine l’étendue de l’opposition entre les environnementalistes et ceux qui se préoccupent de la souffrance des animaux sauvages, afin de déterminer s’il existe des points sur lesquels ils peuvent être en accord. L’article débute en présentant les raisons permettant de conclure que la souffrance et la mort prématurée l’emportent sur le bien-être positif dans la nature. Ensuite, il explique plusieurs façons d’intervenir afin d’aider les animaux et de prévenir les maux dont ils souffrent et plaide pour la mise en oeuvre de celles-ci. Plus précisément, l’article préconise un plus grand nombre de recherches afin de déterminer les meilleures façons d’intervenir sans causer davantage de maux à d’autres animaux ainsi que pour prioriser des interventions en des endroits que l’action humaine a significativement transformés. L’article examine par la suite les positions que les conceptions environnementalistes peuvent adopter quant aux interventions dans la nature pour le bien des animaux. L’article propose que, bien que des visions écocentriques et naturocentriques s’opposent vivement à l’intervention dans certaines circonstances, elles ne devraient cependant pas s’y opposer dans les cas où les valeurs qu’elles promeuvent n’entrent pas en jeu ou peuvent avoir moins de poids que d’autres facteurs. L’article soutient ensuite que, contrairement à ce que l’on pourrait penser à première vue, les théories biocentristes devraient fortement appuyer l’intervention. Il pose la question à savoir si certains problèmes pratiques peuvent faire l’objet d’une approche commune parmi les environnementalistes et ceux qui se soucient de la souffrance des animaux sauvages, par exemple s’opposer à l’écologisation des déserts. Enfin, l’article propose que la tâche la plus pressante pour ceux qui se préoccupent de la souffrance des animaux sauvages consiste à accroître la sensibilisation à ce problème. (shrink)

Anthropogenic climate change is causing temperature rise in temperate zones resulting in climate conditions more similar to subtropical zones. As a result, rising temperatures increase the range of disease-carrying insects to new areas outside of subtropical zones, and increased precipitation causes flooding that is more hospitable for vector breeding. State governments, the federal government, and governmental agencies, like the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of USDA and the National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System of the U.S. Centers for Disease (...) Control and Prevention, lack a coordinated plan for vector-borne disease accompanying climate change. APHIS focuses its surveillance primarily on the effect of illness on agricultural production, while NNDSS focuses on the emergence of pathogens affecting human health. This article provides an analysis of the current framework of surveillance of, and response to, vector-borne infectious diseases, the impacts of climate change on the spread of vector-borne infectious diseases, and recommends changes to federal law to address these threats. (shrink)

Belief in destiny is one of the principles of faith. Although the belief in fate is not explicitly mentioned in the Qur’an, there are many verses that indicate this belief. There are many hadiths about fate that have reached us from the Prophet. Although there are schools that deny destiny, Ahl al-Sunnah schools Ash‘aris and Maturidis accept the existence of belief in destiny. The definitions of destiny of these schools are expressed with words that can be used interchangeably. However, (...) fate should not be evaluated in a single category. It also has varieties. If destiny is perceived as only one kind of Forced destiny, it is inevitable to cause misunderstandings. Forced fate; it is destiny that does not give freedom to beings; It happens with the knowledge, will, power and creation of Allah. Some destinies of inanimate substances, plants, animals and humans are of this type. Jabr and responsibility are incompatible. Although some actions take place in their own bodies, people are not responsible for their forced destiny. Man is a freely created being within certain limits. The ability of intellect, will, power, and carrying out actions has been granted to them. By using them, a person performs his acts of will, and as a result, he becomes responsible for his actions. Having free will and freedom distinguishes humans from other living things. Where there is no human freedom, there is no responsibility. Human life is not uniform, it is in a state of constant change and transformation. In addition to these two types of fate, there is also a type of fate that turns into willful fate, although it was forced in the beginning. In addition to this, there are some actions that start with the will of man and later turn into forced fate. There are also types of disability that we have examined in connection with the belief in destiny and its types. Allah has sent humans to the world to be tested. Illness and disability are also part of the test. Diseases; they may be due to genetic, environmental factors, and food-related. Congenital diseases and disabilities can sometimes cause the world test to be difficult. The biological rules set by Allah are also valid for humans. Genetic hereditary diseases and disabilities occur when the genes carried by the parents are passed on to the child. While some genes are recessive, some genes are dominant. Genes that cause hereditary diseases and disabilities show an uneven distribution depending on their geographical habitats, sharing the same environment in the historical process, and the extent of intermingling of their lineages through marriages. While recessive genes can be passed on from generation to generation, dominant genes that cause death generally do not have the opportunity to pass on to the next generation. In today’s context, the diagnosis of genetic diseases and disabilities is attainable, enabling the implementation of necessary precautions accordingly; furthermore, partial or even complete treatment opportunities can be available depending on the circumstances. In this respect, all of the congenital diseases and disabilities due to genes are a forced fate that is not in the hands of man. As for those diseases and disabilities for which treatment opportunities exist, they fall under the category of fate that transitions from forced fate to willful destiny. Some genetic diseases and disabilities of people may appear in later ages. However, non-genetic diseases and disabilities are also facts of life. Every individual can become ill and experience disability during certain periods of their life. Diseases and disabilities can occur with a number of factors that do not depend on an individual's will, actions, or behaviors. Such diseases are also within the scope of forced fate. A person can also be disabled due to one’s own mistakes and negligence. However, it is a behavior befitting a Muslim to be treated in cases of all kinds of diseases and disabilities. The treatment of diseases for which there is a cure is a willed destiny. Diseases and obstacles that cannot be cured are forced fate. (shrink)

One aim of this dissertation is to remove ambiguities that have impeded a clear discussion and adequate evaluation of animalism. To that end I develop a taxonomy of different varieties of animalism and argue that there are substantive differences between them. In earlier debates about animalism, the previously elided distinctions that my taxonomy makes clear create unnecessary confusion and disagreement. My taxonomy resolves some of that confusion and provides the parties to the debate with a conceptual framework for importantly distinct (...) accounts of personal identity. I also evaluate animalist arguments in light of the distinctions my taxonomy tracks. Specifically I identify which arguments support which varieties of animalism. The most popular varieties, I argue, are critically under-supported. All rely on a tacit presupposition that ‘animal’ is a natural kind term or a substance sortal, a supposition that animalists are under some pressure to reject. Thus, my evaluation prompts a refocusing of the standard defenses of animalism to prioritize defending the tacit presupposition. Finally, I defend a hylomorphic variety of animalism from two objections: first, from the objection that if animalism is true, then human persons cannot survive death, or at least they cannot exist in an intermediate, disembodied state between their deaths and resurrections. I do this by arguing that given hylomorphism, animals can become immaterial, and that this is less an affront to intuition and mereology than it might seem. Second, I defend a hylomorphic variety of animalism from the objection that if it is true, we are not the primary thinkers of our thoughts. The criticism is that if hylomorphism can solve certain puzzles, the resolving of which is one of the main points in hylomorphism’s favor, the view implies that our contingent mental properties primarily characterize something other than us. I argue that this criticism turns on a misunderstanding of how the hylomorphism at stake solves the relevant puzzles and that it can do so without major modification. (shrink)

This paper discusses the evolutionary origin and adaptive functions of emotions, in line with contemporary evolutionary psychology. Drawing upon Charles Darwin’s study of emotional expressions, it is argued that there is an evolutionary continuity among animals in emotional capacities, and that the differences between humans and animals are differences in degree and not in kind. The focus is on basic or primary emotions (joy, fear, sadness, anger), as it has been consistently shown that they are universal and shared among many (...) different species. Basis for this view is the neuroscientific research on brain mechanisms underlying the emotions, especially subcortical brain regions that are proven to be the evolutionary old loci of emotions, homologous across many species. These neuroscientific data provide convincing empirical evidence for the existence of emotional experiences in animals and the evolutionary continuity among species. (shrink)

Our relationships with animals are wide-ranging. When people tell me that they love animals and then harm or kill them I tell them I'm glad they don't love me. Many individuals, including scientists, ignore their responsibility when they interact with animals and fail to recognize that doing something in the name of science, which usually means in the name of humans, is not an adequate reason for intentionally causing suffering, pain, or death. "Good welfare" usually is not "good enough". (...) Existing regulations allow animals to be treated in regrettable ways that demean us as a species. Compassion is the key for bettering both animal and human lives. A good way to make the world a more compassionate place for animals is to increase our compassion footprint. We could begin by deciding that we will not intrude on animals' lives unless our actions are in the best interests of the animals irrespective of our desires. It is simple to make more compassionate choices about what we eat and wear and how we educate students, conduct research, and entertain ourselves at the expense of animals. The time to make these changes is long overdue. (shrink)

One way to defend humane animal agriculture is to insist that the deaths of animals aren’t bad for them. Christopher Belshaw has argued for this position in the most detail, maintaining that death is only bad when it frustrates categorical desires, which he thinks animals lack. We are prepared to grant his account of the badness of death, but we are skeptical of the claim that animals don’t have categorical desires. We contend that Belshaw’s argument against the (...) badness of animal death relies on overly simplistic thought experiments and isn’t sufficiently careful in how it attributes mental states to animals. We present some cases of animal behavior from recent work on animal cognition that are most plausibly understood as spurred by categorical desires and we show how an independently plausible account of mental content—Ruth Millikan’s teleosemantics—supports our attribution of categorical desires in those cases. We end by arguing that even if you’re wary of our reliance on teleosemantics, you should still accept it due to considerations about moral risk. (shrink)

Well-Being and Death addresses philosophical questions about death and the good life: what makes a life go well? Is death bad for the one who dies? How is this possible if we go out of existence when we die? Is it worse to die as an infant or as a young adult? Is it bad for animals and fetuses to die? Can the dead be harmed? Is there any way to make death less bad for (...) us? Ben Bradley defends the following views: pleasure, rather than achievement or the satisfaction of desire, is what makes life go well; death is generally bad for its victim, in virtue of depriving the victim of more of a good life; death is bad for its victim at times after death, in particular at all those times at which the victim would have been living well; death is worse the earlier it occurs, and hence it is worse to die as an infant than as an adult; death is usually bad for animals and fetuses, in just the same way it is bad for adult humans; things that happen after someone has died cannot harm that person; the only sensible way to make death less bad is to live so long that no more good life is possible. (shrink)

The role of behaviour in biological evolution is examined within the context of Darwinism. All Darwinian models are based on the distinction of two mechanisms: one that permits faithful transmission of a feature from one generation to another, and another that differentially regulates the degree of this transmission. Behaviour plays a minimal role as an agent of transmission in the greater part of the animal kingdom; by contrast, the forms it may assume strongly influence the mechanisms of selection regulating (...) the different rates of transmission. We consider the decisive feature of the human species to be the existence of a phenotypical system of cultural coding characterized by precision and reliability which are the distinctive features of genetic coding in animals. We examine the consequences for the application of the Darwinian model to human history. (shrink)

Extent health humanities readings of Gabriel García Márquez’s _Love in the Time of Cholera_ have focused on the doctor-patient relationship, the physician-scientist as a model for aspiring practitioners, and how individuals relate to the novel’s health themes of death, disease, and disability. However, such medicine-focused readings neglect the population-level public health concerns of the novel as they relate to contagion, community, and quarantine. This paper contributes to the growing field of public health humanities by using a close reading method (...) to explore how the competing endemic and epidemic public health issues shape the plot and metaphors of the novel. (shrink)

“What is the nature of the beings that we are?” is perhaps the most difficult question. The difficulty lies in our being a natural animal in a normative environment. In harmony with John McDowell’s conception of a naturalism of second nature, this paper claims that we should not rest satisfied with the predominant scientific picture in which the seeming rift between our animality and our rationality is to be resolved by detailed studies of empirically knowable facts about our (...) class='Hi'>animal modes of existence. Instead, appreciating the sui generis character of a distinctive mode of human engagement with the world is a necessary clearing of the ground and an essential first step toward addressing meticulously the above difficult question on human nature. The paper suggests that the human sciences in general and education studies in particular should start off not with disclosed first-natural facts but with a sensitivity to second-natural backgrounds that set the stage for the first-natural facts. (shrink)

In the whole universe, from the lowest beings to the highest ones, love permeates through the entire world of existence. Love is one of the hallmarks and perfections of existence in animals. This survey was done to illuminate and explain Mullah Sadra’s ontological viewpoint on the entity of sentiments and the inborn and innate love in the existence of non-human animals. The analytic and descriptive method was used to conduct this study and research. An animal (...) is one of the creatures in the essence of the existence that possesses its own perfect attributes. Animals have souls, the effects of which are life, perception, free choice, and emotions. Animals have an order for their existence, and they are attributed with perfection to the extent of their intensity and weakness. That is to say, all animals are not at the same level. Their perfection is also the same as their existence is. There is life, perception, and love in animals, but it depends on their proportion of existence. All animals are in love, but every animal having the highest share of its rank enjoys more love. Mullah Sadra’s ontological principles in proving the existence and flow of love in animals are that the existence is ‘original,’ ‘non-composite,’ ‘equivocal,’ and ‘coextensive’ with life, conception and love, and ‘God, the Almighty, is the true Beloved of all beings including animals’ souls.’ Evolutionarily, animals can only move to the point where humanity of human beings begins. (shrink)

Homo sapiens is a mammal of the order Primates. What most distinguishes primates from other mammals is their ability to cerebrate. Cerebration developed fastest among the Anthropoidea primates , and subsequently the hominids . The increase in brain mass only by Homo sapiens—and only over the past 10,000 years—possess superior Darwinian fitness: for the preceding 30 million years primates had played a rather marginal role in the world’s biological system.Homo sapiens’ success as the creator of developed civilization was possible only (...) thanks to his special adaptation capabilities, shaped by natural selection at the dawn of his existence.Primates first appeared in the Oligocene about 30 million years ago, and the first two-legged anthropoid, Australopithecus, about 6.5–5.7 million years ago. The transition from Australopithecus to the species we call Homo was in many ways an evolutionary milestone. Australopithecus was exclusively herbivorous and formed neither organized communities nor settlements. His successor, Homo erectus, on the other hand, possessed heretofore unknown skills like hunting and gathering, which considerably influenced both his lifestyle and his diet—he increasingly ate meat from cadavers or animals he had killed himself. Fossil remains of Homo erectus dating back two million years have been unearthed throughout Africa, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Middle East, and Europe.Homo sapiens derives from the rather small Homo erectus population in East Africa and has been the earth’s only hominid for a relatively short time about 10,000 years ago before he still shared his world with Neanderthal man and the diminutive Homo floresiensis.Despite racial differences there is surprisingly little variation in the human genome. We are all 99 percent genetically alike, moreover genome variations do not correlate to skin color.Homo sapiens’ hunter-gatherer lifestyle led him to seek solutions which today find application only in human communities. In time his biological capabilities were enriched by the skill of speech, this in turn helping to develop creativity, self-awareness, a sense of dignity, and group, ethnic and national loyalty, eventually leading to the emergence of religion as a path to life’s fundamental truths and an antidote to the everpresent fear of death.The Neolithic Revolution began about 10,000 years ago. Several thousand years later the evolution of farming and breeding led to the emergence of the first civilizations. The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture changed radically not only economic and social structures but, as speech developed, helped form civilizations and cultures.Over the past 2000 years humanity has changed the global environment but has itself remained unchanged in heritability. The awareness that despite all racial, ethnic, cultural, or linguistic differences we belong to an exceptionally homogeneous species, can be an inspiration for humanity to strive towards a universal civilization in which all these differences could be contained. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to examine exceptionalisms in ethics in general and in the fields of animal and technology ethics in particular. Design/methodology/approach This paper reviews five sample works in animal/technology ethics it considers representative for particularly popular forms of “exceptionalism”. Findings The shared feature of the exceptionalisms exhibited by the chosen samples appears to be born out of the cultural and biological history, which provides powerful intuitions regarding the on “specialness”. Research limitations/implications As this paper is mostly (...) a critique of existing approaches, it contains only a limited amount of counter-proposed alternative approaches. Practical implications This is a discussion worth having because arguments based on exceptionalism have more chance of resulting in significantly altered theoretical conclusions and practical suggestions for normative guidance than non-exceptionalist perspectives. Social implications The approaches critiqued in this paper have a significant effect on the way the authors approach animals, machines/technologies and each other. Originality/value The paper identifies intuitive notions of exceptionalism and argues in favour of a reformist, ethical expansionist stance, which views humanity as residing on the same plane of ethical significance as any other entity regardless of its material composition. (shrink)

In recent decades, there has been a proliferation of alternative food networks which promote an agenda of reconnection, allegedly linking consumers and producers to the socio-ecological origins of food. Rarely, however, does the AFN literature address “origins” of food in terms of animals, as in the case of meat. This article takes a relational approach to the reconnection agenda between humans and animals by discussing how the phenomenon of animal welfare and “happy” meat are enacted by producers and consumers (...) in mundane, embodied, and nuanced ways. Utilizing hybrid conceptualizations of human–animal relations through “natureculture” and “being alongside”, we demonstrate that consumers and producers of AFNs perform natureculture entanglements daily, often considering humans and animals as part of one another and the ecological system. Nonetheless, we also point to how participants in AFNs set boundaries to distance themselves from moments of animal life and death, explaining away uncomfortable affective naturecultures through commodification logics. Drawing on qualitative data from consumers and producers of food networks in Austria, we introduce the concept of “human–animal magnetism” to illustrate that the draw for humans to care about other animal lives exists within a spectrum of attraction and disassociation, engendered through specific human–animal interactions. Ultimately, we offer a cautiously hopeful version of alterity in AFNs of meat in which more caring human–animal relations are possible. (shrink)

The realist belief in the primacy of the world and its underlying structure answers the question ‘why is there something rather than nothing.’ The world, and all things contained in it exists because of God’s creative act. Personal death in Christian philosophy continues the gift of human existence by shifting that temporal existence into eternal life. The death and resurrection of Christ lays the foundation for the possibility of eternal life, while the will of God (...) provides an answer to the why of human existence. The aim of this paper is to examine the effects of the death and resurrection of Christ on the metaphysical strings of human existence. The phenomenon of human death takes place on the arms of consciousness and being’s unconcealment. The subjective correlate of human death is the irreversible loss of consciousness, while the objective correlate of human death presents as the infolding of the gift of existence, namely, of being’s unconcealment from consciousness. These correlates function as a dynamic unit to explain human death and resurrection. The attempt to justify a belief in the existence of life after death from the point of view of consciousness alone is dualistic and leads to several absurdities and confusions about the nature of the afterlife state. The explanation of the resurrection of Christ as a continuation of the dialogue between being and consciousness begun on earth avoids those absurdities while maintaining personal identity. (shrink)

Globalization and Human Subjectivity argues that Hegelian subjectivity could serve as a philosophical basis for a new conception of human subjectivity for the age of globalization. Why, then, does globalization demand a new conception of human subjectivity at all? What constitutes the Hegelian subjectivity such that it is not only relevant and but also necessary to the contemporary, postmodern context of globalization? This book largely addresses these two questions. Capitalist globalization, the context in which we find ourselves (...) today, strategically leads to the “death of the subject,” in the sense that it reduces human beings merely to consumers who, without critical subjectivity, simply succumb to the imperialism of a globalizing market. In this context, we are impelled to envision a new conception of human subjectivity for the age of globalization. This book explores Hegel’s view on human subjectivity as spiritual subjectivity, particularly presented in his Phenomenology of Spirit, which could function as a new anthropological vision about what it means to be authentically human in a globalizing world, that is, a sort of cosmopolitan citizen who is constantly universalizing oneself through self-transcending, self-determined ethico-political actions in solidarity with others to create a global community of co-existence and co-prosperity for all. (shrink)

Emergency contraceptives may sometimes prevent implantation, thereby causing the death of the embryo. According to some positions contrary to abortion, because the embryo is a human animal, there are usually decisive moral reasons not to use them. In this article, I will show that objecting to the use of emergency contraceptives on those grounds is unjustified. If organisms are real existents, then according to the most plausible conception of what is required for a group of cells to (...) compose one, the embryo cannot qualify as a single organism. On the other hand, if organisms are virtual objects, then whether or not the embryo qualifies as one is morally irrelevant. I conclude that even if those positions are right about the morality of abortion, they are not entitled to oppose the use of emergency contraceptives. (shrink)

Until recently emotion and emotional processing have been largely neglected by experimental psychology and neuroscience more generally. This paper reviews the substantial psychological and neuroscientific evidence that each emotion is localized in specific neural structures, and thus that it is not necessary to invoke souls or spirits to explain emotions or emotional processing often held to be distinctive of a soul. In addition, the paper aims to demonstrate the adaptive and biological value of emotion for humans and other animals. It (...) closes by focusing on recent research on neural processing of emotions and emotional words. -/- 1. Introduction -- 2. What are Emotions and How Many Emotions Exist? -- 3. Emotions and the Body -- 4. The Neural Substrates of Emotions and How We Know Them -- 5. Fear, Sadness, and the Amygdala -- 6. Pleasure, Happiness, and the Orbitofrontal Cortex -- 7. Conclusion. (shrink)

1- The first period of human life in prehistoric times was known as the period of food gathering economy, as it depended on gathering wild plants and hunting animals, and made simple tools and machines from stones and animal bones that were used in hunting, and used tree leaves and animal skins to make clothes. As for the second period, the Neolithic era, it was known as the period of food production economy when he learned agriculture and (...) domesticated animals. Agriculture was initially described as meeting the need and was cultivated in small areas and in one season. 2- When he learned the life of stability and lived in permanent villages, the oldest of which is the village of Jarmo, many tools were found made of flint, stone vessels, spoons and pottery. In addition, the village contained permanent houses and clay ovens for making bread, fireplaces, basins, stoves and clay dolls. 3- Domesticating animals, especially goats, sheep and pigs, benefiting from their meat, cheese, skins and fat to make oils, and domesticating dogs. 4- The most important crops that he cultivated were wheat and barley, and later in other areas he cultivated lentils, flax and legumes. 5- In the Stone Age, he learned fertilization and artificial irrigation. He cultivated large areas and had a surplus in production, which prompted him to make large-sized stores to store the surplus, noting that the stores had existed since the era of Hassouna, but they were small. He also learned trade and the barter system and the discovery of metals. Specialization in work and division of labor appeared, and other crafts and professions appeared. The pottery wheel, spinning and weaving discs, and seals were invented. 6- Wool and hair of sheep and goats and some plants such as flax were used to make clothes using spinning discs. 7- Many pottery vessels of different sizes and shapes were found, and they contained drawings, decorations, engravings, and colors of great precision, some of which were made by hand and others with a pottery wheel. Tools and machines were made of copper. 8- Moving to the south and the emergence of large cities, carrying out irrigation projects, and the emergence of the first systems of government. 9- A change and development occurred in the human mind, benefiting from the natural environment and the wealth it contains that could serve him as a result of the development of social, cultural and economic life. 10- Plant cultivation and domestication were coupled with animal husbandry and domestication, as both complement each other in terms of benefit. Because of them, other crafts and professions emerged, including the manufacture of tools and machines, pottery and weaving. Trade also flourished as a result of an increase in the surplus and the increase in labor. 11- Learning how to extract oils and methods of obtaining them from plants and animals which was of great importance because it had multiple uses, especially in cooking, and the demand for it increased in trade. 12- Plant and animal wealth played an important role in its prosperity and economic recovery, as it represented the backbone of the economy of Mesopotamia. 13- Our information about animals and plants came from cuneiform texts and seals that show scenes of hunting animals, scenes of grazing sheep, scenes of ears of wheat and plants, and from murals on the walls of palaces, scenes of barns designated for raising animals, scenes of relief and three-dimensional sculptures that show domesticated domesticated animals, and scenes of hunting predatory animals. (shrink)

What constitutes legitimate killing? How do our concerns over animal death fit with respect to our broader beliefs about the conservation or destruction of the ‘natural’ world? What does this mean for how we think about our own existence? This ethnography concerns itself with such questions as they have played out in a series of entangled conflicts with, and over, the non-human world; specifically, historically rooted tensions over the inception of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area (...) in Queensland Australia and contemporary arguments over the ‘hunting’ and ‘management’ of feral pigs ( Sus scrofa), an ‘exotic’ pest species. Similarities evident in the politics of natural heritage and animal death illuminate two distinct contemporary strategies for confronting existential struggles over life, death and destruction. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for the modest claim that people's apparent indifference to animal pain may not be predicated upon speciesism. I defend that claim by developing an analogy between current attitudes toward at least some non‐human animal pain — that which pigs endure while having their tails ‘docked’— and our culture's indifference to the pain that male human infants experience while being circumcised. And I conclude that to convince more of their philosophical and social (...) critics, ‘animal liberationists’ need to spend more time analyzing the pain that non‐human animals experience and defending its moral significance, rather than assuming that such pain is significant and then simply arguing that unnecessary forms of it exist. (shrink)

Psychological accounts of personal identity claim that the human person is not identical to the human animal. Advocates of such accounts maintain that the definition and criterion of death for a human person should differ from the definition and criterion of death for a human animal. My contention is instead that psychological accounts of personal identity should have human persons dying deaths that are defined biologically, just like the deaths of (...) class='Hi'>human animals. Moreover, if brain death is the correct criterion for the death of a human animal, then it is also the correct criterion for the death of a human person. What the nonidentity of persons and animals requires is only that they have distinct criteria for ceasing to exist. (shrink)

Because the fauna of the world possess a blood-driven vitality so comparable to that of people, they serve as an unwitting resource in the anthropocentric quest to ward off the ravages of death and decay, to create a cornucopia of human life amid the caprices of the cosmos. Fueled by the human fear of the grave, the “Gilgamesh complex” is the ensemble of beliefs and desires underlying a spectrum of zoocidal practices ranging from religious immolation to scientific (...) experimentation. The name of the complex draws its textual inspiration from the Babylonian epic of the warrior-king Gilgamesh, who lays waste to beasts of forest and field in his quest for immortality. From a psychological perspective, the epic of Gilgamesh pierces the veil of submerged desires and muddled behaviors that most people in modern society are loath to recognize. The Gilgamesh complex is also among the most culturally and historically encompassing of psychological complexes, penetrating to the barest of human existential concerns—the preoccupation with death. (shrink)

I investigate Thomas Aquinas's metaphysical account of human death, which is defined in terms of a rational soul separating from its material body. The question at hand concerns what criterion best determines when this separation occurs. Aquinas argues that a body has a rational soul only insofar as it is properly organised to support the soul's vegetative, sensitive, and rational capacities. According to the ‘higher‐brain’ concept of death, when a body can no longer provide the biological foundation (...) necessary for the operation of conscious rational thought and volition, a substantial change occurs in which the rational soul departs and the body left behind is a ‘humanoid animal’ or a mere ‘vegetable.’I argue that the separation of soul and body does not occur until the body ceases to function as a unified, integrated organism. A rational soul is not only the seat of a human being's rational capacities; it is also the principle of the body's sensitive and vegetative capacities. Since Aquinas defines a human being as a composite of soul and body, and not with merely the exercise of rational capacities, the determination of death requires incontrovertible evidence that the body has ceased all the operations that correspond to the soul's proper capacities. The evidence of this is the body's loss of its integrative organic unity and the criterion for determining when this loss occurs is the irreversible cessation of whole‐brain functioning. (shrink)

This guide accompanies the following article(s): ‘Full Disclosure of the “Raw Data” of Research on Humans: Citizens’ Rights, Product Manufacturer’s Obligations and the Quality of the Scientific Database.’Philosophy Compass 6/2 (2011): 90–99. doi: 10.1111/j.1747‐9991.2010.00376.x Author’s Introduction Securing consent (and informed consent) from patients and research study participants is a key concern in patient care and research on humans. Yet, the legal doctrines of consent and informed consent differ in their applications. In patient care, the judicial doctrines of consent and informed (...) consent are disclosure doctrines based on the obligation of physicians to inform their patients of the following types of information: the nature of the procedure the physician is recommending in the patent’s care (P), the alternatives to the physician‐recommendation (A), and the risks of procedure and its alternatives (R). In addition, the physician must provide truthful answers to the patient’s questions (Q) to the best of the physician’s abilities. In research on humans, the onus of disclosure by study sponsors and principal investigators is much greater than in patient care precisely because the purpose of research is not patient care. The purpose of research is the identification and development of new generalizable knowledge. Thus, participation in a research study or trial may not benefit the study volunteer at all. In addition, the participant may carry a heavy risk burden in relationship to any testing of a newly designed drug or device as part of their experiences in the research study. Presently, despite the risks borne by the research study participant, the raw data collected from volunteers in research trials are treated by courts as if they were the private property of the study sponsor rather than generally owed to the public as would be expected by an effort like research participation aimed at contributing to the development of generalizable knowledge. This paper reviews the obligations that study sponsors owe to their study participants based on the very definition of research as a systematic activity whose purpose is to develop generalizable knowledge to help all humans. Author Recommends Court cases Canterbury v. Spence, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit 464 F.2d 772 (1972). (Federal appellate decision heard in the District of Columbia, USA) Reibl v. Hughes, 2 S.C.R. 880 (1980). (Supreme Court of Canada) Rogers v. Whitaker, 175 C.L. R. 479 (1992). (High Court of Australia) Sidaway v. Board of Governors of the Bethlem Royal Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital and Others. 1 A.C. 871 (1985) (House of Lords) Canterbury v. Spence is the landmark Federal informed consent case in the United States heard in the District of Columbia. In this case, Judge Spottswood Robinson articulated the reasonable person standard of informed consent. This standard was subsequently adopted by the Supreme Court of Canada (Reibl v. Hughes, 2 S.C.R. 880 (1980)) and the High Court of Australia (Rogers v. Whitaker, 175 C.L. R. 479 (1992)). The House of Lords rejected the reasonable person standard in England in Sidaway v. Board of Governors of the Bethlem Royal Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital and Others. 1 A.C. 871 (1985). Book Mazur, Dennis J. The Science and Ethics of Research on Humans. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. This book is a detailed guide for the review of scientific and ethical aspects of research on humans contained in the research study protocols and research informed consent forms which need to be submitted by study sponsors and principal investigators to institutional review boards (IRBs) for IRB review before a research study can receive approval to be conducted within a human study population in those institutions over which the IRB has authority. It also presents basic definitions in the area of research on humans and basic approaches to help conduct a deep review of the underlying scientific and ethical issues that are present within a research study protocol and its accompanying research informed consent form. Report National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. The Belmont Report: Ethical Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research. Washington, DC: DHEW Publications, 1978 (78‐0012). This U.S. National Commission in the Belmont Report argued for the necessity of a reasonable volunteer standard in research on humans in the United States. Arguing that the professional standard and the reasonable person standard of consent and informed consent were insufficient to base a disclosure standard in research on humans, this National Commission developed the reasonable volunteer standard where a study participant is to be approached in research informed consent with that information that a reasonable volunteer would want to know. Online Materials Belmont Report: Syllabus Topics for Lecture and Discussion Week I: Introduction and Overview Readings: Rogers v. Whitaker, 175 C.L.R. 479 (1992). (High Court of Australia) Sidaway v. Board of Governors of the Bethlem Royal Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital and Others. 1 A.C. 871 (1985) (House of Lords) Week II: The Different Standards of Consent and Informed Consent Readings: Canterbury v. Spence, 464 F.2d 772 (1972). (Federal appellate opinion heard in the District of Columbia) Sidaway v. Board of Governors of the Bethlem Royal Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital and Others. 1 A.C. 871 (1985) (House of Lords) Week III: Definition of Research Reading: Mazur, Dennis J. The Science and Ethics of Research on Humans. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. (Especially Chapters 2 and 3) Week IV: How to Review a Research Study Protocol and Research Informed Consent Form Reading: Mazur, Dennis J. The Science and Ethics of Research on Humans. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. (Especially Chapters 4–6, 10, and 12–14) Week V: Obligations in Research of Humans Versus Patient Care Reading: National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. The Belmont Report: Ethical Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research. Washington, DC: DHEW Publications, 1978 (78‐0012). Focus Questions • How do the judicial doctrines of consent in England and Australia compare to the judicial doctrines of informed consent in the United States and Canada? • How does a professional standard of disclosure differ from a reasonable person standard of disclosure? • What is the definition of research? • How is a research study (study proposal and research informed consent form) reviewed from scientific and ethical bases for considerations of approval by an IRB? • How do the obligations of a study sponsor, a principal investigator, and a research team conducting a research trial on human study participants differ from the obligations of a physician caring for a patient? • Should all raw data of research derived from humans be made available to the public for use in developing generalizable knowledge to help others, or should raw data be considered the private property of the study sponsors (for example, prescription drug manufacturers), who fund the research trials? Seminar/project Idea Draw a timeline of the development of the basic concepts of consent and informed consent in patient care and in patient research. On this timeline, first place the dates of the key court cases in England, the United States, Canada, and Australia on consent and informed consent. Then place the date of the development of the Belmont Report. Why do differences exist between these four countries in terms of the legal requirements of informedness of a patient (in medical care) and a study participant (in medical research)? What roles if any do the concepts of self‐determination and self‐decision have in consent and informed consent in patient care and in informed consent in research on humans among the four countries of interest? What are the realities of research on human participants that require a new standard of informed consent, the reasonable volunteer standard, to be developed beyond the two standards in patient care, the professional standard, and the reasonable person standard? Counterpoint Arguments The following are counterpoint arguments that need to be appreciated to more fully understand the concepts that impact the thesis that ‘raw data’ should be open to the public to allow the opportunity of checking of the results of its associated scientific paper and for further analysis. De‐Identified (Anonymized) Raw Data A current approach to identifying (anonymizinig) raw data is based on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 (P.L.104‐191). HIPAA was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1996 to keep a person’s medical information private. In a research study, a person’s private medical information can become research data. HIPAA’s Privacy Rule allows a covered entity to de‐identify data by removing all 18 elements that could be used to identify the individual or the individual’s relatives, employers, or household members; these elements are enumerated in the Privacy Rule. The covered entity must also have no actual knowledge that the remaining information could be used alone or in combination with other information to identify the individual who is the subject of the information. Under this method, the identifiers that must be removed are the following: 1 Names. 2 All geographic subdivisions smaller than a state, including street address, city, county, precinct, ZIP Code, and their equivalent geographical codes, except for the initial three digits of a ZIP Code if, according to the current publicly available data from the Bureau of the Census: 2a. The geographic unit formed by combining all ZIP Codes with the same three initial digits contains more than 20,000 people. 2b. The initial three digits of a ZIP Code for all such geographic units containing 20,000 or fewer people are changed to 000. 3 All elements of dates (except year) for dates directly related to an individual, including birth date, admission date, discharge date, and date of death, and all ages over 89 and all elements of dates (including year) indicative of such age, except that such ages and elements may be aggregated into a single category of age 90 or older. 4 Telephone numbers. 5 Facsimile numbers. 6 Electronic mail addresses. 7 Social security numbers. 8 Medical record numbers. 9 Health plan beneficiary numbers. 10 Account numbers. 11 Certificate/license numbers. 12 Vehicle identifiers and serial numbers, including license plate numbers. 13 Device identifiers and serial numbers. 14 Web universal resource locators (URLs). 15 Internet protocol (IP) address numbers. 16 Biometric identifiers, including fingerprints and voiceprints. 17 Full‐face photographic images and any comparable images. 18 Any other unique identifying number, characteristic, or code, unless otherwise permitted by the Privacy Rule for re‐identification. Even though ‘raw data’ can be de‐identified (anonymized) so that there is no way to trace back the data to the study participant from which it was drawn, there are still questions whether the ‘de‐identified raw data’ can be given to other researchers or made public without the original study participant’s approval. It may be the case that this approval could be done at the start of any research study where the individual considering study participation would be counseled on what the process of de‐identification consists of and would be asked whether the participant would allow use of the data by other researchers or made available to the public in a de‐identified state. However, there may be questions of the study participants as to whether the data are truly de‐identified and untraceable back to the study participant since the participant would not be able to see the process actually being carried out in detail in all relevant circumstances. Using Raw Data in Context Simply being in possession of raw data is never enough to build on that data from a research perspective. Researchers need to understand the context of the scientific research study in which the data were collected. This research context includes (but is not limited to): (i) the scientific hypothesis of the research study, (ii) the inclusion and exclusion criteria selected by the research designers of the study to determine which study participants were included and which were excluded from the study, (iii) the methods used to collect the data and possibilities of errors in the data collection processes, and (iv) answers to questions regarding whether any data were excluded from the study data and why these data were excluded. Ownership Rights Over Data There are ownership rights over data. Ownership rights include court decision making related to the question which parties are to be considered as the owners of the data. Possible owners here include (but are not limited to) (i) the study sponsor whose only role was to fund that study, (ii) the principal investigator(s) who developed the scientific hypothesis, and (iii) individual study participants through special contracts made by individual participants who negotiate such contracts with study sponsors and principal investigators to share in the ownership of data. Examples of such data are participant sources of unique gene lines or unique cell lines to be used in future research. Objections to Data Sharing Finally, individual researchers may simply object to sharing data. A researcher’s arguments here may be simply stating that he or she has a right to fully analyze the data since the collection of the data was the researchers’ idea in the first place. These researchers may argue that they have the right to mine the data as fully as they can before deciding to make the data open to the public for others to analyze. Works Cited 1 Kaiser, J. ‘Making Clinical Data Widely Available.’Science 322.5899 (10 Oct. 2008): 217–8. 2 de Lusignan, S., J.F. Metsemakers, P. Houwink, V. Gunnarsdottir, and J. van der Lei. ‘Routinely Collected General Practice Data: Goldmines for Research? A Report of the European Federation for Medical Informatics Primary Care Informatics Working Group (EFMI PCIWG) from MIE2006, Maastricht, The Netherlands.’Informatics in Primary Care 14.3 (2006): 203–9. 3 Sim, I. ‘Human Studies Database Project’, CTSA Data Repositories Symposium (17 Oct. 2008). 23 Nov. 2010. 4 Sim, I., C.G. Chute, H. Lehmann, R. Nagarajan, M. Nahm, and R.H. Scheuermann. ‘Keeping Raw Data in Context.’Science 323.5915 (6 Feb. 2009): 713. 5 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, HIPAA Privacy Rule, Information for Researchers. 13 Nov. 2010. 6 Wilczynski, N.L., R.B. Haynes, and Hedges Team. ‘EMBASE Search Strategies for Identifying Methodologically Sound Diagnostic Studies for Use by Clinicians and Researchers.’BMC Medicine 29.3 (March 2005): 7. (shrink)

It is known that modern philosophy understands death as a denial of the reality of life and, on the contrary, the establishment of non-being. Death fixes the existence of specific manifestations of life on Earth. For a long time, the explanation of the phenomenon of human death was dominated by a religious point of view, which presented death not as an end but as a prerequisite for the further transformation of life. In the future, (...) we present the very Christian-theological vision of the problem. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to show that agency-based accounts of moral status are more plausible than many have previously thought. I do this by developing a novel account of moral status that takes agency, understood as the capacity for intentional action, to be the necessary and sufficient condition for the possession of moral status. This account also suggests that the capacities required for sentience entail the possession of agency, and the capacities required for agency, entail the possession of sentience. (...) Thus on this account sentient beings possess agency and agents possess sentience. If this is correct, it will show that an Agency Account of moral status can offer a plausible defence of the moral status of all sentient beings, something that previous Agency Accounts have not succeeded in doing. What is more, this account could establish that all sentient animals are not just moral status holders per se, but that they are owed pro tanto obligations regarding continued existence and liberty, similar in kind, though not always in strength, to those owed to humans. (shrink)

Taking the animal and the machine as two ontological others of the human, this paper looks into how they “are added to” and “replace” the humanist others based on race, gender, class, etc. in contemporary cinema. This “supplement” urges us to reframe identity politics and cultural studies in a larger “polis” emerging between and encompassing both the human world, which becomes ever more globally homogenized, and its radical environment, natural or technological. The topic is a global cinematic (...) phenomenon that even local films directly embody. The animal is captured on the boundaries between “the symbolic” and “the real,” between “the actual” and “the virtual” in the artistic works of Werner Herzog, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Peter Greenaway. The machine convolutes the issues of informatics, embodiment, and cyborgism, often through SF fantasy that pervades Hollywood blockbusters and Japanimation. The rare amalgam of animal–machine receives further attention in David Cronenberg's films, and becoming-animal/-machine in Avatar empowers the human in the posthuman sense of biopower that transforms the body and registers it on a larger network. From this perspective, discourses on the animal (zooesis) and technology (technesis) work together to bring a new political potential. Animality and technology no longer form a naïve dichotomy of nature vs. civilization but combine in ways of making more visible the new condition of life. It unfolds in a cinematic “zone,” an ephemeral “clearing” for “bare life” within the globalized world. This zone exists in the exceptional state of temporary potential to de-/repoliticize any humanistic politics. (shrink)

Dorion Sagan observes that pioneering ethologist Jakob von Uexküll tends to be read in contrasting ways, as a “humble naturalist” pre-empting current research in biosemiotics, animal perception and agency; and as a “biologist-shaman,” gesturing to a transcendental realm where the life-worlds of animals interconnect in a vast symphony of nature. In both cases the tools of the laboratory are thought to generate complete pictures of the invertebrates that Uexküll studies, in unity with their environments. As Giorgio Agamben points out, (...) these experiments form part of an abstract mechanism that produces the human, by isolating instinctual life as an object for study and management from social and ethical modes of existence. What these readings neglect to consider is that Uexküll imagines his experiments through a Picture Book frame. We argue that for Uexküll there is always something fabulous and child-like about the enterprise of reconstructing the subjective environments of the small animals he works with. Drawing on Bernard Stiegler, we propose the Picture Book as a particular technics, or tertiary memory, that cultivates modes of attention that are associated with childhood and are open to the emergence of partial objects and relations. Considered through the Picture Book frame, the Umwelten of insects and other small animals are no longer fixed but are drawn and redrawn in partial expressive ways, through the uncanny picturing – or what Brian Massumi would call “semblances” – of different configurations of animal, technology, human relations. By considering the Picture Book as a technic for ecological thought and imagination, our paper will explore how the small creatures that Uexküll describes might enable the emergence of new ethical sensibilities and relations. (shrink)

By “essentially embodied Kantian selves,” I mean necessarily and completely embodied rational conscious, self-conscious, sensible (i.e., sense-perceiving, imagining, and emoting), volitional or willing, discursive (i.e., conceptualizing, judging, and inferring) animals, or persons, innately possessing dignity, and fully capable not only of free agency, but also of a priori knowledge of analytic and synthetic a priori truths alike, with egocentric centering in manifestly real orientable space and time. The basic theory of essentially embodied Kantian selves was spelled out by Kant over (...) the course of slightly less than two decades, between 1768 and 1787, but above all, it flows from an empirical realist and metaphysical reading of the “Refutation of Idealism” that Kant inserted into the Postulates of Empirical Thought section in the 1787 edition of the first Critique. In my opinion, all rational but also “human, all-too-human” creatures like us are, synthetic a priori necessarily, essentially embodied Kantian selves. Let’s call that the essentially embodied Kantian selves thesis, or for short, EEKST. If EEKST is true, then it’s synthetic a priori impossible for the selves of creatures like us to exist independently of our own living organismic animal bodies or beyond the deaths of those bodies, whether temporarily or permanently, by any means whatsoever. Indeed, the very ideas of disembodied selves, their survival after death, and of human immortality, while minimally logically consistent, are in fact conceptually empty and incoherent, even over and above the synthetic a priori impossibility of such things, since the term “myself” indexically picks out an essentially embodied Kantian self, all of whose core features require grounding in a particular living organismic animal body. According to the recent and contemporary movement of transhumanism, the selves of creatures like us can not only exist independently of our bodies, as functional systems of representational content that are inherently able to be implemented or realized in digital-mechanical technology and uploadable to servers, but also to survive accidental or natural human death in server-limbo, then be downloaded into technologically enhanced partially mechanical humanoid bodies or even into wholly artificially-created completely mechanical non-humanoid bodies, survive in these new implementations or realizations for an indefinitely long time, repeat that process, and possibly even become immortal. Transhumanism is in fact metaphysically equivalent to Swedenborgianism, which Kant so effectively criticizes and wittily derides in his 1766 book, Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics. Moreover, and more importantly, if EEKST is true, then, just like Swedenborgianism, transhumanism is not only conceptually empty and incoherent, but also synthetic a priori impossible. And what’s more, it’s also existentially and morally reprehensible. In short, then, the belief in transhuman selves is nothing but a reprehensible noumenal fantasy or Hirngespinst. (shrink)

Love and Death move through this world of ours like things apart-underrunning it truly, and everywhere present, yet seeming to belong to some other mode of existence. When Death comes, breaking into the circle of our friends, words fail us, our mental machinery ceases to operate, all our little stores of wit and wisdom, our maxims, our mottoes, accumulated from daily experience, evaporate and are of no avail. These things do not seem to touch or illuminate in (...) any effective way the strange vast Presence whose wings darken the world for us. And with Love, though in an opposite sense, it is the same. Words are of no use, all our philosophy fails-whether to account for the pain, or to fortify against the glamour, or to describe the glory of the experience.These figures, Love and Death, move through the world, like closest friends indeed, never far separate, and together dominating it in a kind of triumphant superiority; and yet like bitterest enemies, dogging each other's footsteps, undoing each other's work, fighting for the bodies and souls of mankind.Is it possible that at length and after ages we may attain to liberate ourselves from their overlordship-to dominate them and make them our ministers and attendants? Can we wrest them from their seeming tyranny over the human race, and from their hostility to each other? Can we persuade them to lay aside their disguise and appear to us for what they no doubt are-even the angels and messengers of a new order of existence? (shrink)

Using survey data from a sample of residents of Clark County, Ohio, the author explores the relationship between support for animal rights and opinions on eleven social issues pertaining to gun control, acceptance of violence, and rights for minority groups. Findings show that support for animal rights is significantly related to seven of the eleven variables, suggesting the existence of an important link between one's disposition toward human and nonhuman animals.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Specter of Speciesism: Buddhist and Christian Views of AnimalsChristopher Key ChappleThe Specter of Speciesism: Buddhist and Christian Views of Animals. By Paul Waldau. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. xv + 303 pp.At the Parliament of World Religions held in Cape Town in 1999, Dada Vaswani, a leading spiritual voice within India, proclaimed that the nineteenth century brought the liberation of slaves, that the twentieth (...) century brought the liberation of women, and that the twenty-first century will bring the liberation of animals. For Paul Waldau, a key piece in this transformation will result from the insights of ethology, the specialized branch of biology that offers new information regarding the consciousness of animals. Scientific research has revealed that animals occupy a complex world, replete with desires and emotions. Based on this scientific research, Waldau asserts that a new morality will arise that acknowledges the inherent moral standing of animals, and will overturn the long-held view that animals serve only one purpose: to serve humanity. Otherwise, he asserts, humans will remain enmeshed in the tyranny of speciesism.In this meticulous study, Paul Waldau assesses the origins of the term "speciesism," coined by Ryder in 1970. He explores the link between speciesism and slavery, colonization, and the oppression of women and children. Just as ethical discourse has been altered through history regarding these issues, Waldau suggests that as more information becomes available, human attitudes regarding animals will evolve. However, due to entrenched religious views, this change will be gradual. This book consists of a sustained argument for expanding our categories of worth beyond purely anthropocentric values. Waldau suggests that although humans hold a power advantage over animals, "[d]ifferences in abilities, and even hierarchy, to the extent they exist, do not automatically imply the propriety of dominance, let alone tyranny" (p.39).To develop his argument, Waldau writes about three higher-order mammals that merit consideration: the great apes, elephants, and cetaceans (whales and dolphins). Each of these groups of animals display complex abilities and have, in proportion to the size of their bodies, large brains. Genetically, chimpanzees and humans share 98.4% identical DNA. Chimpanzees can develop high language functioning and use [End Page 293] tools, subverting the assumptions that these two capabilities are uniquely human. In regard to elephants, Waldau writes that "[b]oth Aristotle and Pliny designated elephants as the animals closest to humans in intelligence" (p. 79). He particularly notes their highly developed matriarchal social structure and their ability to communicate over long distances. Similarly, Waldau summarizes recent research on cetaceans' ability to protect one another through echolocation and a highly intricate communication system based on touch and soundings. Because of this scientific resarch, Waldau asserts that Descartes was wrong to proclaim that "dumb animals do not think" (p. 89).Waldau's underlying argument asks that humans not "lump" all animals together under one umbrella category, but assess each group of animals according to its own gifts. He asks that we not regard humans as utterly unique (and hence better), but pay attention to current scientific research and ethical insights that value animals for their inherent worth. Though Waldau does not attempt to establish a new hierarchy of more-valued creatures, he does argue persuasively that great apes, elephants, and the cetaceans deserve greater respect, and that we need to re-examine and hopefully deconstruct the inherited cultural understanding of all animals as simply "other."This brings us to the primary focus of the book: an investigation of the place of animals in Buddhist and Christian traditions. In Buddhism, animals suffer their fate because of negative karma, and, at best, can hope to be reborn as a human being capable of receiving the Buddha's teachings. Waldau cites various texts, from the Jataka tales to the Mahayana sutras, that accord conscience and agency to specific animals. He claims, however, that Buddhist cultures have generally not gone out of their way to cultivate a culture of animal benevolence, citing the example of elephant trainers in Southeast Asia. Some mention of the Buddhist practice of purchasing and releasing animals, widely practiced in East Asia, would have been helpful. Unlike some authors, Waldau... (shrink)

This paper reflects on the question, “Is there a sound justification for the existential view that humans have a higher moral status than other animals?” It argues that the existential view that humans have a higher moral status than animals is founded on a weak and inconclusive foundation. While acknowledging various arguments raised for a common foundation between human and non-human animals, the paper attempts to establish a common ground for moral considerability of human and non-human (...) animals. The first common foundation is based on the existential notion of being in the world, which is common for both human and non-human animals. The second idea is based on the common desire to actualize different needs. The paper demonstrates these common foundations by referring to Heidegger and Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. (shrink)

Inspiration from Bauman’s analyses of„ liquid modernity” can be drawn to trace the transformations that love and hatred, as methods of solving the fundamental contradictions of human existence – stemming from the opposition between nature and culture, body and soul, death and immortality – undergo in these conditions. Those contradictions are manifested and reproduced in the relations between the subject and the other, relations of dividing and uniting, seeking transcendence. Analyzing these relations allows one to uncover the (...) essence of death, love, and hate between individuals and between communities of all sizes, including nations. Recognizing the essence of love and a subject‐object relationship, in which the truth of its subject and of onself is sought, a mutual surrender that transcendents the difference between egoism and altruism, and building a feeling of unity and dignity in a confrontation with inescapability of death – allows for the protection of those values against the destructive blows of hate. (shrink)

This paper reviews moral and cultural assessments which led to the definition of brain death and calls for a similar normative consensus regarding the moral recognition and legal protection of embryonal life related to criteria of brain life. This paper differentiates between cortical brain life I, i.e., the first existence of post-mitotic stationary neurons forming the early cortical plate (54th day post conception), and cortical brain life II, i.e., the beginning of cortical neuro-neuronal synapses (after the 70th day (...) p.c.). The latter are preconditional for establishing the communicative network within the cortex and with subcortical structures. The paper conservatively calls for a tentative moral consensus that could recognize brain life I, i.e., the 54th day p.c., as a stage prior to which embryo research generally would be acceptable in accordance with principles similar to those which led to the acceptance of brain death. Other developmental stages such as fertilization, nidation, viability, as well as the ‘potentiality’ principle are less significant for the moral recognition of early human life. Keywords: brain death, brain life, embryo research, embryonal tissue CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)