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A Moral Defense of Trophy Hunting
Abstract
This paper defends the morality of hunting for sport, also known as recreational or trophy hunting. Using an argument from analogy, I argue that there is no morally relevant difference between trophy hunting and another activity that most of us regard as uncontroversial. Since the latter is morally permissible, so is trophy hunting. Several disanalogies are examined and found irrelevant.
... Hunting is the practice of pursuing any living thing, usually wild animals, by humans for food, recreation, or trade (Hsiao 2020). This is an ancient activity, dating back thousands of years where hunting methods included the use of spears, large rocks, or running the animal over a cliff (Puertas et al. 2004;Gandiwa et al. 2014a). ...
... Trophy hunting, if based on scientifically designed and managed programs, can provide various socioeconomic and ecological benefits at the local, national, regional and global levels. However, trophy hunting has emerged as a debatable and contested issue in the world due to its profound sociopolitical and ecological consequences (Hsiao 2020). ...
... It follows that when poorly managed, trophy hunting can cause negative ecological impacts for the target species including population declines in the event of excessive off-take, threatening conservation efforts and even influencing the behavior of non-target species (Hsiao 2020). In sub-Saharan Africa there has been a noted decline of trophy quality of the hunted big game, resulting in some countries like Kenya banning trophy hunting from 1977 to date (Caro and Andimile 2009). ...
... Hunting is the practice of pursuing any living thing, usually wild animals, by humans for food, recreation, or trade (Hsiao 2020). This is an ancient activity, dating back thousands of years where hunting methods included the use of spears, large rocks, or running the animal over a cliff (Puertas et al. 2004;Gandiwa et al. 2014a). ...
... Trophy hunting, if based on scientifically designed and managed programs, can provide various socioeconomic and ecological benefits at the local, national, regional and global levels. However, trophy hunting has emerged as a debatable and contested issue in the world due to its profound sociopolitical and ecological consequences (Hsiao 2020). ...
... It follows that when poorly managed, trophy hunting can cause negative ecological impacts for the target species including population declines in the event of excessive off-take, threatening conservation efforts and even influencing the behavior of non-target species (Hsiao 2020). In sub-Saharan Africa there has been a noted decline of trophy quality of the hunted big game, resulting in some countries like Kenya banning trophy hunting from 1977 to date (Caro and Andimile 2009). ...
This study was based on a temporal analysis of trophy quality trends and hunting effort in Chewore South Safari Area (CSSA), Zimbabwe, for the period 2009-2012. We selected four of the big five species, namely; buffalo (Syncerus caffer), elephant (Loxodonta africana), the leopard (Panthera pardus) and lion (Panthera leo) for analysis. Existing database of 188 trophies from 2009 to 2011 was reviewed and recorded using the Safari Club International (SCI) scoring system. Further, 50 trophies for 2012 were measured and recorded based on the SCI scoring system. Local ecological knowledge on trophy quality and hunting effort in CSSA was obtained through semi-structured questionnaires from 22 conveniently selected professional hunters in 2012. The results indicated no significant change in trophy quality trends of buffalo, leopard and lion (p > 0.05) over the study period. In contrast, there was a significant decline in elephant trophy quality trend over the same period (p < 0.05). The results showed no significant change in hunting effort over the study period for all the four study species (p > 0.05). Furthermore, seventy-two percent (72%, n = 13) of the professional hunters confirmed that elephant population was declining in CSSA and this was likely due to poaching. Professional hunters perceived trophy hunting as a source of financial capital generation for wildlife conservation (61%, n = 11), as well as positively contributing to the local economy (56%, n = 10). It was concluded that hunting has limited negative impact on species trophy quality trends when a sustainable hunting system is consistently followed in CSSA. CSSA management need to continuously monitor trophy hunting, animal populations and employ adaptive management approach to quota setting and species conservation.
... There are four suggestive wideranging concerns in moral deficiency associated events: Foremost is the ecological destruction, such as wastage of energy and water, non-environmental friendly goods and food wastage (Deumling, Poskanzer, & Meier, 2019;Ma, Bo, Li, Fang, & Cheng, 2019;van Geffen, van Herpen, Sijtsema, & van Trijp, 2020). Next is wildlife harmful ingestion, as intake of vanishing animals and hunting for leisure activities like sports (Hsiao, 2020). Another is physical and psychologically vicious, such as liquor and drug abuse and religious wrongdoing (Adhikari Baral & KC, 2019;Nobakht & Yngvar Dale, 2018;Waters, 2022). ...
The objectives of the study were to investigate the perceived effect of moral deficiency on antisocial and prosocial behaviors of emerging adults. Along with the demographic sheet (comprising of 3 items: age, gender, and education), three scales: moral deficiency scale (consisting of 15 items), anti-social scale (consisting of 20 items), and prosocial behavior scale (consisting of 16 items) were adopted to develop the research instrument (questionnaire) to collect the required data. Reliability of the items was assessed by Cronbach’s Alpha. The reliability of the moral deficiency scale, anti-social scale, and prosocial scale were respectively, 0.9, 0.91, and 0.9. Targeted population for this research was consisted of 240 emerging adults enrolled in different educational institutes. Data were collected through applying multistage sampling technique. Descriptive analysis and tests of correlation, regression and t test was applied. Results highlighted that moral deficiency had negative weak impact on prosocial behavior. However, correlation coefficient between moral deficiency and anti-social behavior depicts showed strong positive relationship in emerging adults. There was not any noteworthy difference in moral deficiency between male and female. On the other hand, female adults possessed more prosocial behavior than male adults, while, male had more anti-social behaviors than female.
... The morality question is, however, usually an add-on to the main conservation subject and not front and centre. Macdonald et al. 2016b;Nelson et al. 2016;Batavia et al. 2018;Hsiao 2018;Batavia et al. 2020; Ghasemi 2020 and Morris 2020. We will be referring to some of these authors in this chapter. ...
The most basic moral dilemma in sport hunting is the dispute between deontologists, arguing that animals have inalienable rights to life, and consequentialists, arguing that hunting can lead to less total suffering and the conservation of species and habitats. This dilemma has already been presented in the historical chapter, mainly in Chapters 2.9 and 2.10.What we will attempt to demonstrate in Chapter 8 is that deontology vs. consequentialism is not the only important conflict between paradigms of normative ethics in the trophy hunting discourse. What seems to be unique about the conflict over trophy hunting compared to the conflict over sport hunting is that there is less emphasis on the death of animals per se and more emphasis on the persons who cause said deaths. The emphasis is on the character, motivations, behaviour, and attributes of the hunter.Our claim, following from this observation, is that in order to understand the moral conflicts underlying the trophy hunting discourse, it is no longer enough to understand the obvious incompatibilities between deontology and consequentialism. We must also be open to the possibility of incompatibilities between virtue ethics (i.e. the character of hunters) and consequentialism.To illustrate this, we present in Chapter 8.1 and 8.2 our observations from Twitter, where comments to trophy photos were categorized as pertaining to either the character of hunters or animals/the death of animals. A far greater number of comments about the character of hunters were found, supporting the notion that virtue ethics play an important role in antihunting sentiments.
... The morality question is, however, usually an add-on to the main conservation subject and not front and centre. Macdonald et al. 2016b;Nelson et al. 2016;Batavia et al. 2018;Hsiao 2018;Batavia et al. 2020; Ghasemi 2020 and Morris 2020. We will be referring to some of these authors in this chapter. ...
“Sport Hunting” is highly contentious and confusing, because it can have two meanings. One meaning of sport hunting is to hunt in a sporting way and give the animal a sporting chance. This is equivalent to the ideal of fair chase. The other meaning is to hunt for sport. It portrays hunting as competition and fun.In Chapter 6, we summarize the history of these terms – also discussed in Chapter 2 already – and discuss the meaning of sport hunting. We then discuss how fair chase is sought achieved by decreasing the power gap between hunter and prey through technological handicaps (like using a bow instead of a rifle – Chapter 6.1) and behavioural handicaps (like not shooting a deer on ice or in water or deep snow – Chapter 6.2).We then cover in Chapter 6.3 what we suggest could be an inverse relationship between fair chase and animal welfare. Bowhunting is one such example where, by making the hunt more difficult and therefore “fair,” evidence suggests that wounding rates and thereby animal suffering may increase.Finally, canned hunting is the practice of hunting animals that are fenced in, thus limiting their chance of escape. We discuss the very controversial issue of canned hunting in Chapter 6.4, as it is generally held up as an example of the opposite of fair chase. Plenty of hunting ranches in America, notably Texas, offer canned hunting, and captive-bred lions in South Africa for lion-petting tourism and canned hunting has until now been a big industry but seems to be shutting down. We cover all of this in 6.4.
... The morality question is, however, usually an add-on to the main conservation subject and not front and centre. Macdonald et al. 2016b;Nelson et al. 2016;Batavia et al. 2018;Hsiao 2018;Batavia et al. 2020; Ghasemi 2020 and Morris 2020. We will be referring to some of these authors in this chapter. ...
This chapter investigates conservation claims and issues as they pertain to hunting. After a description of the major regulations governing trophy hunting imports and exports (5.1 Trophy Hunting Regulations), this chapter examines the conservation situation in two geographically different sections.The first section (5.2 Hunting and Conservation in Africa) concerns the stereotypical perception of trophy hunting. The trophy hunting situation and conservation issues are completely different in Africa than in Europe and USA and the problems are more diverse and complex. African hunting is more controversial because the species involved (lions, elephants, giraffes, etc.) are iconic, highly anthropomorphized, and sometimes endangered. Both species extinction and species overpopulation are issues in Africa. Corruption, poverty, poaching, and the West imposing their wildlife ideals on Africa are also important factors that we cover here.The second section (5.3 Hunting and Conservation in Eurasia and the Americas) concerns trophy hunting mostly in Europe and USA, where they have few natural predators of deer, so hunting is broadly considered the most feasible way of keeping deer populations from outgrowing carrying capacities of habitats. There are issues, however, with keeping populations down, because hunters favour bucks (because of trophy-fixations and ingrained fair chase ideals), and shooting bucks does little to keep populations in check. Also, shooting the wrong bucks or shooting them too early leads to genetic problems in the populations. These are the primary conservation issues that we discuss in a European- and US context.Other conservation-related matters discussed in this chapter are hunting and genetics, management alternatives to hunting, photography, and poaching.
... The morality question is, however, usually an add-on to the main conservation subject and not front and centre. Macdonald et al. 2016b;Nelson et al. 2016;Batavia et al. 2018;Hsiao 2018;Batavia et al. 2020; Ghasemi 2020 and Morris 2020. We will be referring to some of these authors in this chapter. ...
In this final chapter, we present the challenges that recent years and especially 2020–21 have presented in the context of trophy hunting.In Chapter 9.1, we cover Covid-19 and how it has affected hunting and conservation differently in Africa, Europe, and the US. African countries and communities have suffered greatly economically from a lack of tourism, which has led to increased poaching and habitat loss; British venison could not be offhanded as it is largely supplied to restaurants, which have been closed because of Covid; and rural hunting and self-sufficiency mentality has increased in the US.In Chapter 9.2, we deal with the increasingly prominent issues of misinformation and disinformation in science communication and communication about trophy hunting especially, and with how social media amplifies misinformation. We describe a couple of the major trophy hunting disinformation campaigns on both sides of the fence and note how both celebrities and certain celebrity scientists seem to use anti trophy hunting campaigning as a popularity booster.
... The morality question is, however, usually an add-on to the main conservation subject and not front and centre. Macdonald et al. 2016b;Nelson et al. 2016;Batavia et al. 2018;Hsiao 2018;Batavia et al. 2020; Ghasemi 2020 and Morris 2020. We will be referring to some of these authors in this chapter. ...
... The morality question is, however, usually an add-on to the main conservation subject and not front and centre. Macdonald et al. 2016b;Nelson et al. 2016;Batavia et al. 2018;Hsiao 2018;Batavia et al. 2020; Ghasemi 2020 and Morris 2020. We will be referring to some of these authors in this chapter. ...
We have three goals in Chapter 4.The first goal is to describe who hunters are (and to a lesser extent antihunters). Demographical information about hunters is much better for USA than for Europe, and trophy hunting is ten times the scale in USA as in the rest of the world combined, so we focus on a portrayal of American hunters. We use mainly the United States Fish and Wildlife Service statistics and the Virginia based Responsive Management survey research firm combined with demographical information about members of the Boone and Crockett Club and Safari Club International. Education, income, gender, ages, race, hunting efforts, and prey species of American hunters is laid out in Chapter 4.1, and we discuss common backgrounds of antihunters in Chapter 4.4.Our second goal (in Chapter 4.2 Hunting, Privilege, and Social Schisms) is to present and defend the hypothesis that hunter-antihunter conflicts are not just about hunting, but about many other social and sociocultural differences and conflicts. The trophy hunter stereotype (based on the demographics described in Chapter 4.1) is a male, white, conservative, protestant, wealthy, pro-gun, business owner. The antihunter (Chapter 4.4) is typically a female, non-white, liberal, anti-gun student. Hunting is just one representation of a mutual dislike that stems from many underlying societal tensions.Our third goal (in Chapters 4.3 and 4.5) is to explore why hunters hunt. We take our departure in the works of Stephen R. Kellert, and supplement with scholars like Jan E. Dizard, Simon Bronner, and Allen Morris Jones to discuss the three different archetypes of hunters (the nature hunter, the meat hunter, and the sport hunter), their reasons for hunting, and what hunting means to them. In Chapter 4.5, we discuss hunting motivations outside or not fully covered by Kellert’s framework and motivations that pertain specifically to trophies.
... The morality question is, however, usually an add-on to the main conservation subject and not front and centre. Macdonald et al. 2016b;Nelson et al. 2016;Batavia et al. 2018;Hsiao 2018;Batavia et al. 2020; Ghasemi 2020 and Morris 2020. We will be referring to some of these authors in this chapter. ...
Anthropomorphism – assigning human characteristics to nonhuman entities – plays an important role in trophy hunting, because the animals that are hunted for trophies are generally some of the most anthropomorphised animals with prominent and often highly anthropomorphized representation in movies. Deer are Bambis, lions are Simbas, elephants are Dumbos, etc. We argue that anthropomorphism is an important reason that trophy hunting is so disdained.We introduce this subject in 7.1 by way of an examination of a giraffe called Marius, who was killed in Copenhagen Zoo in 2014. We use Marius to introduce a discussion of what makes some animals anthropomorphised and loved while others are hated. The various features of animals that research has shown elicit human empathy are covered and the strategies of zoos in using those features for their benefit are explored. We also consider what makes some stories about animals more likely to go viral than others, such as animal names.We discuss what this all means and how it matters in a trophy hunting context in 7.2 and demonstrate that trophy hunted animals have many of the relevant features.
... The morality question is, however, usually an add-on to the main conservation subject and not front and centre. Macdonald et al. 2016b;Nelson et al. 2016;Batavia et al. 2018;Hsiao 2018;Batavia et al. 2020; Ghasemi 2020 and Morris 2020. We will be referring to some of these authors in this chapter. ...
The purposes of our second chapter are to provide a summary of hunting’s historical role and show how attitudes toward hunting have evolved. Our goal with this book is to foster a comprehensive understanding of trophy hunting, but to understand any hunting today, we must understand its history.
Hunting’s association with privilege today stems from Medieval Europe, where hunting was the prerogative of nobility.
The perception of hunting as courageous challenge and test of manhood comes from Antiquity in Greece and China.
Conservation arguments in favour of hunting rely on the conservation experiences of late nineteenth century American sport hunters like Theodore Roosevelt and their confrontation with market hunters.
Animal rights arguments against hunting today are mostly identical to those of Henry Stephens Salt in 1892.
The impression of hunters as indiscriminate exterminators of wildlife comes from market hunters’ decimation of bison- and passenger pigeon populations in colonial America and Great White Hunter stereotypes and their autobiographies from colonial Africa.
Etc.
This chapter also serves as a chronological literature review of hunting-as-conservation and antihunting arguments. We do not dwell on general explanations of e.g. animal rights, transcendentalism, or ecofeminist theory, as this is covered in other literature. We examine specifically the attitudes of these positions to hunting.
... The morality question is, however, usually an add-on to the main conservation subject and not front and centre. Macdonald et al. 2016b;Nelson et al. 2016;Batavia et al. 2018;Hsiao 2018;Batavia et al. 2020; Ghasemi 2020 and Morris 2020. We will be referring to some of these authors in this chapter. ...
The third chapter is about the namesake of trophy hunters: The trophy. We have roughly four goals in this chapter:We start this chapter by explaining how we define a Hunting Trophy in this book. Next, we provide a thorough technical description of hunting trophies in two categories. First category (3.1 Taxidermy) is taxidermy. We summarize the history of taxidermy, dating back to the use of animal skins in the Palaeolithic, the much later embalming practices of Ancient Egypt, and its modern professional history. We detail how a mounted trophy is made, how the techniques have evolved, and what the attitudes toward taxidermy are and have been over time. In the second category (3.2 Skulls, Antlers, Skins, and Other Trophies) we describe everything that can be considered a hunting trophy but isn’t taxidermy. Most famous of these is the half-skull mount (euromount). We also make note of various related subjects, such as the freeze drying of dead pets, Gunther von Hagen’s plastination, mock trophies, etc.Second goal (in 3.3 Trophies and Record Books) is to make clear the connection between hunting trophies, trophy scoring, and trophy record keeping. We explain the history of trophy evaluation methodology and scoring methods/award systems and histories of six hunting organisations that are responsible for six established scoring methods for hunting trophies in chapters 3.3.1 to 3.3.6. In Chapter 3.4 we discuss the consequences of trophy scoring for hunting ethics.Our third goal is to discuss the meanings of trophies (3.5 The Meanings of Hunting Trophies). The two sides to this discussion are what trophies symbolize and mean to hunters and to nonhunters/antihunters.Last goal (in 3.6) is to provide an analysis of trophy photos. Trophy photos are important because they are all the public sees from trophy hunting, so they come to represent the activity in general, and the hunters in them come to shape the trophy hunter stereotype.
This essay surveys the literature on digital games and ethics to address the ways in which ethics are mediated in video games. It then considers the limited scholarship engaging the intersections of digital games and nonhuman animals. The essay uses this literature to perform a textual analysis of theHunter: Call of the Wild as a case study contributing to broader discussions of the mediation of nonhuman animals in digital games. The paper specifically focuses on the game’s mediation of an ethics of hunting. The game’s missions mediate hunting anthropocentrically, while its rules represent a hunting style that is in accordance with the hunting community’s self-proclaimed care for nonhuman animals. The essay thereby makes a contribution to the meager research on the relationship between human and nonhuman animals in digital games.
The African buffalo has interacted with human societies for millennia across its vast African range. It is part of the bestiary of the few African imaginaries and mythologies that have managed to reach us. These representations of the species in African cultures seem to have percolated more recently into the imaginaries of European cultures, especially from the angle of hunting and photographic safaris. The buffalo is also at the centre of services and disservices to different actors, providing uses but also generating conflicts in African landscapes, the species being central in so-called Human–Wildlife Conflicts. For animal health services, the buffalo represents in some instances a public enemy, influencing meat trade policies, land uses and boundaries in many parts of the continent. The African buffalo is therefore an emblem of the coexistence between humans and nature in Africa.
Trophy hunting is one of the most contentious issues in recent biodiversity conservation discourse, eliciting opposition and support for the practice. Ethical concerns are often at the heart of the debate.
To investigate moral views about trophy hunting, we conducted an online survey of randomly selected scholars worldwide who had published on biodiversity conservation ( n = 2315).
Scholars expressed divergent views on the moral acceptability of trophy hunting as a conservation practice. Moral convictions were significantly related to the perspectives of scholars.
The most important factor in predicting the moral views of the respondents was the consequences of trophy hunting for local human communities.
The results also indicated that utilitarian (versus deontological) decision‐making in conservation, ecological consequences of trophy hunting and animal welfare issues contribute to the divergent views.
The findings emphasize the need for interdisciplinary work on ethical issues concerning animal rights and welfare in conservation, as well as providing robust and comprehensive evidence on the consequences of trophy hunting for local communities.
We caution that polarization among conservation scholars may negatively affect conservation efforts. Based on the literature and our findings, we provide some recommendations to narrow the gap and consider different management options.
Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
Sport provides an arena for human flourishing. For some, this pursuit of a meaningful life through sport involves the use of non-human animals, not least of all through sport hunting. This paper will take seriously that sport – including sport hunting – can provide a meaningful arena for human flourishing. Additionally, it will accept for present purposes that animals are of less moral value than humans. This paper will show that, even accepting these premises, much use of animals for sport – including sport hunting – is unacceptable. Nonetheless it will show that there can be acceptable ways of using animals as part of a human’s meaningful life pursuits through sport, albeit in a more limited fashion than many sportspersons currently accept.
The widespread activity of recreational hunting is proposed as a means of conserving nature and supporting livelihoods. However, recreational hunting-especially trophy hunting-has come under increasing scrutiny based on ethical concerns and the arguments that it can threaten species and fail to contribute meaningfully to local livelihoods. We provide an overview of the peer-reviewed literature on recreational hunting of terrestrial birds and mammals between 1953 and 2020 (>1,000 papers). The most-studied species are large mammals from North America, Europe, and Africa. While there is extensive research on spe-cies' ecology to inform sustainable hunting practices, there is comparably little research on the role of local perceptions and institutions in determining socioeconomic and conservation outcomes. Evidence is lacking to answer the pressing questions of where and how hunting contributes to just and sustainable conservation efforts. We outline an agenda to build this evidence base through research that recognizes diverse social-ecological contexts.
This book critically examines how Walt Disney Animation Studios has depicted – and sometimes failed to depict – different forms of harming and objectifying non-human animals in their films. Each chapter addresses a different form of animal harm and objectification through the theories of speciesism, romanticism, and the ‘collapse of compassion’ effect, from farming, hunting and fishing, to clothing, work, and entertainment. Stanton lucidly presents the dichotomy between depictions of higher order, anthropomorphised and neotonised animal characters and that of lower-order species, showing furthermore how these depictions are closely linked to changing social attitudes about acceptable forms of animal harm.
An engaging and novel contribution to the field of Critical Animal Studies, this book explores the use of animals not only in Disney’s best known animated films such as 101 Dalmatians, but also lesser known features including Home on the Range and Fun and Fancy Free. A quantitative appendix supplying data on how often each animal species appears and the amount of times animal harm or objectification is depicted in over fifty films provides an invaluable resource and addition to scholars working in both Disney and animal studies.
This chapter examines depictions of animal food farming, encompassing meat production, dairy farming, farmhouses, farmers, and the various species that usually live on farms in WDAS films. Part I explores the history of animal farming, and the common tropes evident in notable cultural representations of it. Part II documents how often animal farming has been depicted in WDAS films. Part III analyses key depictions of farming within WDAS films. Finally, Part IV examines Home on the Range (2004), a WDAS film set on a dairy farm that reinforces many misconceptions about the farming industry. This chapter concludes by arguing that WDAS’s image of animal farming has been consistently saccharine even though life has become far worse for farm animals since WDAS has been producing films.
This chapter focuses on WDAS’s depictions of hunting and fishing. Part I of this chapter explores the history and current discussions surrounding these two practices. Then, Part II documents the frequency with which these practices have been depicted in WDAS films. Next, Part III explores how WDAS has portrayed hunting and fishing, paying particular attention to how hunted and fished animals have been depicted, as well as the portrayal of humans who participate in these practices. Finally, Part IV concentrates on how hunting and fishing were portrayed in 2003’s Brother Bear. This chapter concludes by arguing that the manner in which WDAS has depicted hunting and fishing reflects common speciesist attitudes. Additionally, WDAS has helped to sustain these speciesist attitudes with their own texts.
This is a critique of Timothy Hsiao’s ‘A Moral Defense of Trophy Hunting.’ I argue that Hsiao’s arguments on pain, consciousness, behavior, cruelty, and necessity all fail. More importantly, I argue against his broader conclusion that non-human animals ‘do not have any inherent moral significance.’ My conclusion is that Hsiao’s moral defense of trophy hunting fails.
Critics of industrial animal agriculture (also known as “factory” farming) have argued that its practices are cruel, inhumane, or otherwise degrading to animals. These arguments sometimes form the basis of a larger case for the complete abolition of animal agriculture, while others argue for more modest welfare-based reforms that allow for certain types of industrial farming. This paper defends industrial farming against the charge of cruelty. As upsetting as certain practices may seem, I argue that they need not be construed as cruel or inhumane. Any link between industrial farming and cruelty or inhumanity is contingent on certain cultural, behavioral, and psychological facts that are person-dependent. For many people working in animal agriculture, these facts do not obtain. To be sure, industrial animal agriculture has real moral hazards that must be carefully avoided, but all that this shows is that working with animals is not for everyone.
Can one be cruel to an inanimate object? In the following I argue that one can in fact be cruel to an inanimate object, defining cruelty as taking pleasure in intentionally causing suffering to another person, animal or (in this case) inanimate object, whether such suffering be genuine, mistakenly believed, or sincerely hoped for. I label the conception of cruelty in question 'agent-subjective, possible mistake of fact', and touch upon some implications of this.
Defending Life is the most comprehensive defense of the prolife position on abortion ever published. It is sophisticated, but still accessible to the ordinary citizen. Without high-pitched rhetoric or appeals to religion, the author offers a careful and respectful case for why the prolife view of human life is correct. He responds to the strongest prochoice arguments found in law, science, philosophy, politics, and the media. He explains and critiques Roe v. Wade, and he explains why virtually all the popular prochoice arguments fail. There is simply nothing like this book.
Profoundly important ethical and political controversies turn on the question of whether biological life is an essential aspect of a human person, or only an extrinsic instrument. Lee and George argue that human beings are physical, animal organisms - albeit essentially rational and free - and examine the implications of this understanding of human beings for some of the most controversial issues in contemporary ethics and politics. The authors argue that human beings are animal organisms and that their personal identity across time consists in the persistence of the animal organisms they are; they also argue that human beings are essentially rational and free and that there is a radical difference between human beings and other animals; criticize hedonism and hedonistic drug-taking; present detailed defenses of the prolife positions on abortion and euthanasia; and defend the traditional moral position on marriage and sexual acts.
Some arguments for moral vegetarianism proceed by appealing to widely held beliefs about the immorality of causing unjustified pain. Combined with the claim that meat is not needed for our nourishment and that killing animals for this reason causes them unjustified pain, they yield the conclusion that eating meat is immoral. However, what counts as a good enough reason for causing pain will depend largely on what we think about the moral status of animals. Implicit in these arguments is the claim that sentience is sufficient for having moral status. These arguments, however, fail to specify the conceptual connection between the two. I argue in this paper that sentience is not sufficient for moral status. Thus, although animals experience pain as it is physically bad, their experience of it is not in itself morally bad. They are harmed in feeling pain, but this harm is not of a moral kind. This distinction parallels the more familiar distinction between moral and non-moral goods. When considered, this significantly mitigates the force of sentience-based arguments for moral vegetarianism. Since animals lack moral status, it is not wrong to eat meat, even if this is not essential to nutrition.
What is the basis for being a subject of rights? And what beings possess that moral-status conferring property? In particular,
are all human beings subjects of basic rights? I argue that the basis for being a subject of rights is a substantial nature—as
opposed to an accidental attribute or set of accidental attributes—specifically, rational nature, that is, a nature oriented
to conceptual thought and deliberate choice. I answer the objection that some beings are human beings and yet lack a rational
nature, such as brain-dead bodies and radically cognitively impaired human beings.
Many debates about the moral status of things—for example, debates about the natural rights of human fetuses or nonhuman animals—eventually migrate towards a discussion of the capacities of the things in question—for example, their capacities to feel pain, think, or love. Yet the move towards capacities is often controversial: if a human’s capacities are the basis of its moral status, how could a human having lesser capacities than you and I have the same "serious" moral status as you and I? This book answers this question by arguing that if something is human, it has a set of typical human capacities; that if something has a set of typical human capacities, it has serious moral status; and thus all human beings have the same sort of serious moral status as you and I. Beginning from what our common intuitions tell us about situations involving "temporary incapacitation"—where a human organism has, then loses, then regains a certain capacity—this book argues for substantive conclusions regarding human fetuses and embryos, humans in a permanent vegetative state, humans suffering from brain diseases, and humans born with genetic disorders. Since these conclusions must have some impact on our ongoing moral and political debates about the proper treatment of such humans, this book will be useful to professionals and students in philosophy, bioethics, law, medicine, and public policy.
There is a lack of consensus among some conservation NGOs and African governments concerning the acceptability and effectiveness of trophy hunting as a conservation tool. This lack of consensus is due partly to a lack of reliable information on the economic significance and ecological impact of the industry. We provide a review of the scale of the trophy hunting industry, and assess both positive and negative issues relating to hunting and conservation in Africa. Trophy hunting occurs in 23 countries in Africa, with the largest industries occurring in southern Africa and Tanzania, where the industry is expanding. The trophy hunting industry has remained static or is shrinking in Central and West Africa. A minimum of 1,394,000 km2 is used for trophy hunting in sub-Saharan Africa, which exceeds the area encompassed by national parks. Trophy hunting is thus of major importance to conservation in Africa by creating economic incentives for conservation over vast areas, including areas which may be unsuitable for alternative wildlife-based land uses such as photographic ecotourism. However, there are a number of problems associated with the industry which limit conservation benefits. Several of these problems are common to multiple countries, suggesting that if solutions were developed, conservation benefits would accrue over large areas.
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