Occupation: Philosopher Birth: July 6, 1946
If zoos are like arks, then rare animals are like passengers on a voyage of the damned, never to find a port that will let them dock or a land in whi….
It is easy for us to criticize the prejudices of our grandfathers, from which our fathers freed themselves. It is more difficult to distance ourselve….
So, basically, my view is I don't want to support the exploitation of animals, and within reason, I will do what I can to avoid it, but it's not like….
The capacity to reason is a special sort of capacity because it can lead us to places that we did not expect to go..
Of all the arguments against voluntary euthanasia, the most influential is the slippery slope: once we allow doctors to kill patients, we will not be….
What one generation finds ridiculous, the next accepts; and the third shudders when it looks back on what the first did..
In some parts of the world, what you are doing is already apparent.According to the World Health Organization, the warming of the planet caused an ad….
What is faith? If you believe something because you have evidence for it, or rational argument, that is not faith. So faith seems to be believing som….
Should one break in and free the animals? That is illegal, but the obligation to obey the law is not absolute. It was justifiably broken by those who….
I don't think nationalism is alone holding the field; it's in contention with a lot of different things..
Hebrew word for "charity" tzedakah, simply means "justice" and as this suggests, for Jews, giving to the poor is no optional extra but an essential p….
Today, if you have an Internet connection, you have at your fingertips an amount of information previously available only to those with access to the….
I would like us to think about it more explicitly, and not take our intuitions as the given of ethics, but rather to reflect on it, and be more open ….
If evolution is a struggle for survival, why hasn't it ruthlessly eliminated altruists, who seem to increase another's prospects of survival at the c….
I think ethics is always there; it's not always a very thoughtful or reflective ethics..
At present scientists do not look for alternatives simply because they do not care enough about the animals they are using..
Ethics seems a morass which we have to cross, but get hopelessly bogged in when we make the attempt..
The principles of ethics come from our own nature as social, reasoning beings..
We see things like reciprocity which are fairly central to our view of ethics. But if you're talking about a set of worked-out rules on what we are s….
More often there's a compromise between ethics and expediency..
Will we rise to the challenge and prove our capacity for genuine altruism by ending our ruthless exploitation of the species in our power, not becaus….