Weighing animal welfare : comparing well-being across species / edited by Bob Fischer.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Fischer, Bob (Robert William), editor.

Series:

Oxford scholarship online.

Oxford scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Animal welfare.

Decision making.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (288 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2024]

Summary:

When, if ever, is it better to spend money to improve pig welfare over chicken welfare? Which species of fish is worse off in commercial aquaculture operations? When, if ever, would humans benefit less from a policy than animals stand to lose? The answers to these questions involve making interspecies welfare comparisons-assessments of how well or poorly the members of one species are faring compared to the members of another species. It's important to answer these questions, as governments, NGOs, and private actors regularly make decisions that assume particular views about them. This volume addresses this crucial gap in the literature: it proposes a methodology for making such comparisons, it puts that methodology into practice, and then reports some tentative, proof-of-concept results.

Contents:

Cover

Half Title

Title Page

Copyright Page

Contents

Preface

List of Contributors

1 Introduction

1. The Problem

2. Clarifying the Problem

3. Applications

4. Some Assumptions

5. Why Some of the Assumptions Matter Less than Someone Might Think

6. The Plan for the Book

References

2 Defining Welfare Ranges

1. Introduction

2. What Welfare Ranges Are Not

3. The Modal Force of "Can"

4. Conclusion

3 Are All Welfare Ranges the Same?

2. Višak's Arguments for EQU and Why They Fail

3. What's Wrong with Relativized Views?

4. Višak's Evolutionary Argument for Bounded Hedonism and EQU

5. Conclusion

4 The (Un)Reliability of Intuitions

2. What Affects the Evidential Value of Intuitions?

3. Existing Survey Data and Intuition Pumps

5 Using Neuron Counts to Estimate Welfare Ranges

2. Which Measures Best Track the General Idea behind Neuron Counts?

3. Critically Evaluating Arguments for Neuron Counts as Proxies

4. A General Argument against Thinking Neuron Counts Are Proxies for Welfare Ranges

5. When Might Neuron Counts Be Useful?

6. Alternative Frameworks

7. Summary and Conclusions

6 Differences in the Intensity of Valenced Experience across Species

2. Measuring the Intensity of Valenced Experience

3. Cognitive Sophistication and Affective Complexity

4. The Evolutionary Role of Valenced Experience

7 A Methodology for Estimating Differences in Welfare Ranges

2. Proposed Methodology

3. Complications

8 Some Tentative Welfare Range Estimates

2. Proxies

3. Literature Review

4. Aggregation.

5. The Details

6. Results

7. Comments on Key Model Choices and Uncertainties

8. Conclusion

9 Objections, Recommendations, and Conclusions

2. Questions and Objections

3. Improving our Methodology

Index.

Notes:

Includes index.

Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on October 17, 2024).

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780197745793

0197745792

9780197745779

0197745776

OCLC:

1461742911