Animals and the moral community : mental life, moral status, and kinship / Gary Steiner.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Steiner, Gary, 1956-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Consciousness in animals.

Animal psychology.

Animal welfare--Moral and ethical aspects.

Animal welfare.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (229 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, c2008.

Language Note:

English

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Summary:

Gary Steiner argues that ethologists and philosophers in the analytic and continental traditions have largely failed to advance an adequate explanation of animal behavior. Critically engaging the positions of Marc Hauser, Daniel Dennett, Donald Davidson, John Searle, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer, among others, Steiner shows how the Western philosophical tradition has forced animals into human experiential categories in order to make sense of their cognitive abilities and moral status and how desperately we need a new approach to animal rights. Steiner rejects the traditional assumption that a lack of formal rationality confers an inferior moral status on animals vis-à-vis human beings. Instead, he offers an associationist view of animal cognition in which animals grasp and adapt to their environments without employing concepts or intentionality. Steiner challenges the standard assumption of liberal individualism according to which humans have no obligations of justice toward animals. Instead, he advocates a "cosmic holism" that attributes a moral status to animals equivalent to that of people. Arguing for a relationship of justice between humans and nature, Steiner emphasizes our kinship with animals and the fundamental moral obligations entailed by this kinship.

Contents:

Arguments against rationality in animals

Arguments for rationality in animals

An associationist model of animal cognition

Liberal individualism and the problem of animal rights

The ideal of cosmic holism

"Cosmo-politics" : grounding liberal individualism in cosmic holism.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [191]-201) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

9780231512602

0231512600

OCLC:

818855908