Aquatic animals, cognitive ethology, and ethics: questions about sentience and other troubling issues that lurk in turbid water by Marc Bekoff

Read the essay

About the author

Introduction to animal welfare ethics - a slide presentation

Read the presenter notes, not just the slide text.

WSPA Slide Presentation on Animal Ethics

"Carl Cohen's 'Kind' Argument For Animal Rights and Against Human Rights" by Nathan Nobis

 http://www.morehouse.edu/facstaff/nnobis//papers/cohen-kind.html

Mark Rowlands' Website , Wikipedia Page, and Blog

Dr. Mark Rowlands makes an argument for animal rights from within a John Rawls inspired contractarian  framework.

http://www.markrowlandsauthor.com/index.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rowlands

http://rowlands.philospot.com/

Animal Rights Philosophical Encyclopeida

The greatest threat to people is ignorance.
The greatest threat to animals is ignorant people.

 

 http://www.zoosavvy.com/index.html

"What is this encyclopedia about?
This encyclopedia is an introduction to the scope of animal rights. Entries consist of core ideas of moral theories and principles, animal-human problems, ideas and background reading to assimilate quickly and easily. Relevant cross-references are in red. You can read topics in greater detail by looking them up on the Web.

However, do not expect quick and unequivocal answers to problematic questions about animal rights. As Mark Bekoff says:

"For many questions about how animals should be treated by humans there are no 'right' or 'wrong' answers. However, there are better and worse answers."

Animal Passions and Beastly Virtues. 2006:227.

The Philosophy of Animal Rights by Tom Regan

The other animals humans eat, use in science, hunt, trap, and exploit in a variety of ways, have a life of their own that is of importance to them apart from their utility to us. They are not only in the world, they are aware of it. What happens to them matters to them. Each has a life that fares better or worse for the one whose life it is.