Materialism and the Moral Status of Animals

The moral status of animals.

Contractualism and the Moral Status of Animals

While contractualism seems to solve some of the more pressing concerns of other moral theories, it does not conclusively address the moral status of non-human animals. Peter Carruthers claims that contractualism excludes animals from having full moral status. I argue that Carruthers’ arguments are fatally flawed due to his reliance on contradictory claims, unlikely assumptions, and flagrant vio...

Contractarianism Gone Wild: Carruthers and the Moral Status of Animals

In bis recent contribution to the literature on the moral status of animals, Peter Carruthers argues that "some version of contractualism provides us with the most acceptable framework for moral theory," and be defends two central claims about sucb a theory: that it provides "a theoretical framework that accords full moral standing to all human beings, while non-arbitrarily withholding such sta...

Sociobiology and the Moral Status of Nonhuman Animals

RD. Alexander (1987) has proposed that the ultimate grounds of ethics are evolutionary. Humans have the capacity for moral reasoning and negotiation, together with a system of appropriate emotions, such as shame and guilt when we do wrong, and a sense ofmoral wellbeing when we do right, because these abilities tended to increase our ancestors' inclusive fitness in the past. Fairly simple mathem...

efl students gender and socioeconomic status: the use of politeness strategies in the first and second languages

within the components of communicative competence, a special emphasis is put on the “rules of politeness,” specifically the politeness strategies (brown and levinson, 1978) that speakers deploy when performing the request speech act. this is because the degree of imposition that making a request places upon one’s interlocutor(s) has been seen to be influenced by several factors among which, as ...