Lesley Mclean

Ethics About Animals: an Examination of Three Philosophical Approaches to the Animal Question Lesley Mclean

Let's imagine philosophers as storytellers in some fashion. What stories would they tell about animals, about the wallaby and the kangaroo? What would they say to the Martian about how one lives with animals, or because they are philosophers given to thinking seriously about moral questions, about how one ought to live with animals? In this monograph three philosophical approaches to the animal question are examined. In terms of the first, the assumption that the moral standing of animals is simply a conceptual problem to be solved is variously challenged and an alternative viewpoint promoted. In terms of the second, the generally accepted view regarding the persuasiveness of Peter Singer's "Animal Liberation" is called into question and an alternative canvassed, and in relation to the third, the idea that such things as our experiences, our literature and our poetry may do as much as if not more than rational argument to change our moral views about animals because they all 'change the way we see things' is further developed.