Occupation: Philosopher Birth: July 6, 1946
Knowing that we can control our own behaviour makes it more likely that we will..
Were we incapable of empathy – of putting ourselves in the position of others and seeing that their suffering is like our own – then ethical reasonin….
It is an indication of the extent to which people are now isolated from the animals they eat that children brought up on storybooks that lead them to….
Animal factories are one more sign of the extent to which our technological capacities have advanced faster than our ethics..
Take for example providing a guide dog for a blind person. That's a good thing to do, right? All right. It is a good thing to do. But you have to thi….
Of course, infanticide needs to be strictly legally controlled and rare - but it should not be ruled out, any more than abortion..
Science does not stand still, and neither does philosophy, although the latter has a tendency to walk in circles..
All the particular moral judgments we intuitively make are likely to derive from discarded religious systems, from warped views of sex and bodily fun….
It is now generally accepted that the roots of our ethics lie in patterns of behavior that evolved among our pre-human ancestors, the social mammals ….
Each of us spends money on things that we do not really need. You could take the money you're spending on those unnecessary things and give it to thi….
I am not saying that factory farming is the same as the Holocaust or the slave trade, but it's clear that there is an immense amount of suffering in ….
According to the Dominant Western tradition, the natural world exists for the benefit of human beings..
Had Rumsfeld said at any time 'get me a report on what's going on', he could have had it. You're right, it depends on choices that we make, which par….
It would be nonsense to say that it was not in the interests of a stone to be kicked along the road...A stone has no interests because it cannot suff….
According to classical utilitarianism, the only intrinsic good is happiness; the only intrinsic bad is pain. That implies no intrinsic value in prese….
Becoming a vegan is a sure way of completely avoiding participation in the abuse of farmed animals. Vegans are a living demonstration of the fact tha….
There are a lot of weapons that we've developed which we've pulled back from - biological weapons, chemical weapons, etc. This may be the case with a….
To give preference to the life of a being simply because that being is a member of our species would put us in the same position as racists who give ….
I'd much rather be part of a society which greatly honors and respects people who are altruists and who are effective in their altruism, than one tha….
Even people who are aware that the traditional family farm has been taken over by big business interests, and that some questionable experiments go o….
...chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans are thinking, self-aware beings, capable of planning ahead, who form lasting social bonds with othe….