June 2023
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20 Reads
The AMA Journal of Ethic
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June 2023
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20 Reads
The AMA Journal of Ethic
April 2022
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17 Reads
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1 Citation
Carceral logics permeate our thinking about humans and nonhumans. We imagine that greater punishment will reduce crime and make society safer. We hope that more convictions and policing for animal crimes will keep animals safe and elevate their social status. The dominant approach to human-animal relations is governed by an unjust imbalance of power that subordinates or ignores the interest nonhumans have in freedom. In this volume Lori Gruen and Justin Marceau invite experts to provide insights into the complicated intersection of issues that arise in thinking about animal law, violence, mass incarceration, and social change. Advocates for enhancing the legal status of animals could learn a great deal from the history and successes (and failures) of other social movements. Likewise, social change lawyers, as well as animal advocates, might learn lessons from each other about the interconnections of oppression as they work to achieve liberation for all. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
December 2021
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16 Reads
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4 Citations
October 2021
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17 Reads
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4 Citations
October 2021
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14 Reads
July 2021
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14 Reads
The New Scientist
What would happen to dogs in a world without people, wonder bioethicist Jessica Pierce and behavioural ecologist Marc Bekoff
June 2021
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3,610 Reads
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121 Citations
There has been much recent interest in the concept of rewilding as a tool for nature conservation, but also confusion over the idea, which has limited its utility. We developed a unifying definition and 10 guiding principles for rewilding through a survey of 59 rewilding experts, a summary of key organizations’ rewilding visions, and workshops involving over 100 participants from around the world. The guiding principles convey that rewilding exits on a continuum of scale, connectivity, and level of human influence and aims to restore ecosystem structure and functions to achieve a self‐sustaining autonomous nature. These principles clarify the concept of rewilding and improve its effectiveness as a tool to achieve global conservation targets, including those of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and post‐2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. Finally, we suggest differences in rewilding perspectives lie largely in the extent to which it is seen as achievable and in specific interventions. An understanding of the context of rewilding projects is the key to success, and careful site‐specific interpretations will help achieve the aims of rewilding.
March 2021
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399 Reads
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40 Citations
Recent debates around the meaning and implications of compassionate conservation suggest that some conservationists consider emotion a false and misleading basis for moral judgment and decision making. We trace these beliefs to a long‐standing, gendered sociocultural convention and argue that the disparagement of emotion as a source of moral understanding is both empirically and morally problematic. According to the current scientific and philosophical understanding, reason and emotion are better understood as partners, rather than opposites. Nonetheless, the two have historically been seen as separate, with reason elevated in association with masculinity and emotion (especially nurturing emotion) dismissed or delegitimated in association with femininity. These associations can be situated in a broader, dualistic, and hierarchical logic used to maintain power for a dominant male (White, able‐bodied, upper class, heterosexual) human class. We argue that emotion should be affirmed by conservationists for the novel and essential insights it contributes to conservation ethics. We consider the specific example of compassion and characterize it as an emotional experience of interdependence and shared vulnerability. This experience highlights conservationists’ responsibilities to individual beings, enhancing established and widely accepted beliefs that conservationists have a duty to protect populations, species, and ecosystems (or biodiversity). We argue compassion, thus understood, should be embraced as a core virtue of conservation.
May 2020
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1,204 Reads
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76 Citations
Compassionate conservation is based on the ethical position that actions taken to protect biodiversity should be guided by compassion for all sentient beings. Critics argue that there are 3 core reasons harming animals is acceptable in conservation programs: the primary purpose of conservation is biodiversity protection; conservation is already compassionate to animals; and conservation should prioritize compassion to humans. We used argument analysis to clarify the values and logics underlying the debate around compassionate conservation. We found that objections to compassionate conservation are expressions of human exceptionalism, the view that humans are of a categorically separate and higher moral status than all other species. In contrast, compassionate conservationists believe that conservation should expand its moral community by recognizing all sentient beings as persons. Personhood, in an ethical sense, implies the individual is owed respect and should not be treated merely as a means to other ends. On scientific and ethical grounds, there are good reasons to extend personhood to sentient animals, particularly in conservation. The moral exclusion or subordination of members of other species legitimates the ongoing manipulation and exploitation of the living worlds, the very reason conservation was needed in the first place. Embracing compassion can help dismantle human exceptionalism, recognize nonhuman personhood, and navigate a more expansive moral space.
August 2018
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351 Reads
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18 Citations
Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science
Discussions on the welfare of nonhuman animals in zoos tend to focus on incremental improvements without addressing the underlying problem of captivity. But alterations to the conditions of zoo captivity are irrelevant for animals. Real zoo reform will involve working to completely change the landscape. We offer six necessary reforms to bring zoos into a more ethical future: (1) Shut down bad zoos, now; (2) stop exhibiting animals who cannot and never will do well in captivity; (3) stop killing healthy animals; (4) stop captive breeding; (5) stop moving animals around from one zoo to another; and (6) use the science of animal cognition and emotion on behalf on animals.
... Les négociations peuvent pourtant se rompre, lorsqu'un animal refuse de suivre les règles, ou lorsqu'un homme décide d'abandonner l'entraînement parce qu'il n'arrive pas à s'accorder avec l'animal. Un mouvement agressif de l'animal peut ainsi briser « l'humeur de jeu » (Bekoff et Allen 2002). Lorsqu'ils pratiquent un training ludique, les soigneurs cherchent donc à anticiper les réactions en étant attentifs aux signaux métacommunicationnels (Bateson 1977 : 248). ...
June 2002
... Further, the notion of free-ranging animals frequently links to forsakenness, disregard, and inadequate attention. However, this presumption is only valid in some cases since numerous dogs thrive when granted the sovereignty to roam free (Adda 2024a; Pierce & Bekoff 2021). The liberty to explore and traverse their environment, to bond with other conspecifics, to choose the humans with whom to interact, to discern what is dangerous or not, and to decide what to eat and where to sleep are crucial components of dogs' existence. ...
December 2021
... Cats are rather different, in that many of those kept as companions are allowed to roam free, and many people living with cats see outdoor access as key to cat wellbeing. Dogs in a country such as the UK are no longer able to free-roam and, however well treated and much loved, are essentially, 'captive' animals [47] (pp. [26][27][28]. ...
October 2021
... Rewilding is an approach to conservation and restoration that focuses on ecological functions and processes, rather than on species composition or habitat structure. Rewilding is usually put into practice by using (re)introduced key species as "natural restoration tools" while maintaining relatively low land use intensity and adaptive management where necessary (Carver et al., 2021). It has been argued that rewilding projects should be both socially and ecologically context-specific (Root-Bernstein et al., 2017a). ...
June 2021
... El juego social en animales es un fenómeno particularmente interesante para el análisis filosófico y consideramos que representa un desafío para la tesis de la excepcionalidad. Por un lado, porque implica habilidades cognitivas sofisticadas como la cooperación, la comunicación y el aprendizaje (Allen y Bekoff, 1997;Bekoff, 2001;Bekoff y Allen, 1998). Por otro lado, porque creemos que el juego presenta una estructura social y normativa que habilita un análisis desde la noción de práctica (practice), cuya aplicación estuvo tradicionalmente reservada para la descripción de las dinámicas sociales humanas. ...
January 2011
... In collapsing the 'is-ought' dichotomy, a dualism that defines the tensions between descriptive and normative uses of values in social values discourse, our understanding of what valuing is radically shifts. Paying attention to such needs and desires, or crucially, the states of being and becoming, means acknowledging different methods of knowing and valuing; for example, through embodiment and through emotions (Bechara and Damasio 2005;Raymond et al. 2018;Batavia et al. 2021;Staddon et al. 2023) or paying attention to the material through sensory experience (Abram 1997;Dunkley 2023). Escobar (2019) draws upon the Colombian notion of 'sentipensar' which roughly translates as 'to think-feel' as a way to describe this different way of making decisions which 'implies the art of living based on thinking with both heart and mind' (Escobar 2019, p. 14). ...
March 2021
... While animal welfare science has made important advances in improving the treatment of animals, there are critiques that it does not necessarily view animals as beings with intrinsic value [4]. For instance, animal rights theorist Gary Francione criticizes animal welfare as an inadequate approach to dealing with the fundamental issues of the animal agriculture industry [5]. ...
January 2016
Animal Sentience
... Embracing compassion, however, can challenge this mindset by acknowledging nonhuman animals as individuals with a unique, subjective inner experience and inherent intrinsic value. Compassion encourages us to see others, whether human or animal, as individuals whose well-being deserves our concern and respect (Wallach et al., 2020). This aligns with the Golden Rule, a principle of reciprocity found in many cultures and traditions: "treat others as you wish to be treated" (Gensler, 2013;Kng & Kuschel, 1993). ...
May 2020
... It is unclear yet how zoo improvements will affect health and well-being long-term, as certain problems persist (e.g., stereotypies, lack of natural foraging opportunities, social group size and composition, male elephant housing, infectious diseases, foot pathologies, and obesity). As noted by Pierce & Bekoff (2018), discussions of animal welfare in zoos tend to focus on incremental improvements without addressing the underlying problems that captivity presents; they consequently call for completely changing the captive landscape. ...
August 2018
Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science
... Finally, cancerous growths are not sentient beings, but many organisms defined as introduced certainly are. Invasion biology has given rise to mass killing programs of sentient beings with methods ranging from aerial gunning and poison baiting to toxinspraying robots and bioweapons (Wallach et al. 2018 ). There is no moral weight to what is done to cancer to save the organism, but there is a moral weight to mass killing in the name of an ideology. ...
April 2018