A collage of images, featuring most prominently a person holding a sign reading "no justice no peace"

Tagged: animals

Animals / Economics / General / Social justice / Work

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From the Vault: The Journal of Applied Philosophy

While Justice Everywhere takes a short break over the summer, we recall some of the highlights from our 2023-24 season. 

The cover page of a recent edition of Journal of Applied Philosophy. (c) Wiley 2024

Here are a few highlights from this year’s posts published in collaboration with the Journal of Applied Philosophy:

Stay tuned for even more on this topic in our 2024-25 season!

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Justice Everywhere will return in full swing in September with fresh weekly posts by our cooperative of regular authors (published on Mondays), in addition to our Journal of Applied Philosophy series and other special series (published on Thursdays). If you would like to contribute a guest post on a topical justice-based issue (broadly construed), please feel free to get in touch with us at justice.everywhere.blog@gmail.com.

Animals / Duties / General / Moral values

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The Ethics of Keeping Pets: Why Love is Not Enough

photo of man hugging tan dogPhoto by Eric Ward on Unsplash

I have been thinking about the ethics of keeping sentient animals as pets. As someone who has lived with dogs, cats, rats, mice, gerbils, rabbits, lizards, guinea pigs, and chickens, I have experienced first-hand the joy and companionship that such creatures can bring to our lives and the love that we can have for them. Yet, as a philosopher interested in animal ethics, I am aware of the many moral problems associated with our practice of keeping animals as pets. These problems have led me to reconsider human-animal companionship, and I have come to think that no matter how much we might love the animals we bring into our homes, we cannot justify doing so. (more…)

Animals / Duties / Moral values

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Why it’s Wrong to Spy on Animals

Humans like watching nonhuman animals. We watch them in parks, in zoos, on farms, in sanctuaries, in pet shops, in our gardens, on the streets, in our homes, on tv, and so on. Lately, we have developed increasingly innovative and ingenious ways of watching animals: ways of accessing their intimate lives without them knowing. Take, as an example, the BBC documentary “Spy in the Wild” in which “animatronic spy creatures infiltrate the animal world to explore their complex emotions”. (If you haven’t seen it, here’s a clip.) Or consider the proliferation of wildlife cams, zoo cams, and pet cams that are placed discretely in animals’ homes and give us unlimited access to their daily lives. Last year, a wildlife fan installed a camera within a birdbox to watch a family of blue tits and the footage was viewed 41 million times within a month of being uploaded. In 2017, 1.2 million people tuned in to watch April the giraffe give birth at Animal Adventure Park. (more…)

Animals / Distribution / Duties / Governance / Rights

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What Do We Owe to Pandemic Puppies?

For many, having an animal companion during the pandemic has been a blessing. Someone to keep you company, someone to play with, someone who brings you joy and gives you a reason to get out of bed. Indeed, in the UK, the Pet Food Manufacturers’ Association (PFMA) reported that 3.2 million households in the UK have acquired an animal companion since the start of the pandemic. This brings the total number of animal companions in the UK up to 34 million, including 12 million cats and 12 million dogs, and equates to 17 million households being responsible for an animal’s welfare. (more…)