The Moral Considerability of Invasive Transgenic Animals

The term moral considerability refers to the question of whether a being or set of beings is worthy of moral consideration. Moral considerability is most readily afforded to those beings that demonstrate the clearest relationship to rational humans, though many have also argued for and against the moral considerability of species, ecosystems, and “lesser” animals. Among these arguments there are at least two positions: “environmentalist” positions that tend to emphasize the systemic relations between species, and “liberationist” positions that tend to emphasize the attributes or welfare of a particular individual organism. Already, this classic conflict provides for some challenging theoretical clashes between environmentalists and animal liberationists. The question of moral considerability is complicated, however, by recent developments in genetic engineering. Some animals, like pigs and fish, have been genetically modified by humans to grow organs that can then be transplanted into humans. If environmental arguments for the moral consideration of species are correct, then we are released from our obligations to morally consider those animals that we have genetically modified, since they are by their nature always an “invader species.” If, instead, the welfare of the animal is of penultimate importance, then there is a case for strengthening the moral considerability of GM animals over “naturally-occurring” animals, since they bear a closer relationship to humans. This would appear to be an intractable problem, a “bad marriage,” as Mark Sagoff once proposed. This paper argues that the case of invasive transgenic animals exposes weaknesses in this classic conflict, and particularly, in the framing of this conflict. To remedy this framing problem, this paper argues for a reconceptualization of the term “moral considerability,” instead urging a strong distinction between moral considerability, moral relevance, and moral significance.     

对加强和改进高校德育教育工作的刍议——基于大学生道德修养状况调查结果的几点思考

本文通过对部分大学生道德修养状况调查资料的分析,说明当前大学生的道德修养状况整体上良好,但也存在一些问题,如在部分学生中出现了个人利己主义和享乐主义倾向,对于一些道德问题的看法,存在着认识上的误区。针对这些问题,本文初步探讨了如何加强和改进高校德育教育工作,包括坚持以人为本理念,增强德育教育工作主动性;着眼学生思想特点,增强德育教育工作针对性;抓好德育方法创新,增强德育教育工作科学性。     

The Problem of the Question About Animal Ethics: Discussion with Mark Coeckelbergh and David Gunkel

In this article I discuss the thesis put forward by David Gunkel and Mark Coeckelbergh in their essay Facing Animals: A Relational, Other-Oriented Approach to Moral Standing. The authors believe that the question about the status of animals needs to be reconsidered. In their opinion, traditional attempts to justify the practice of ascribing rights to animals have been based on the search for what is common to animals and people. This popular conviction rests on the intuition according to which we tend to treat better those beings that are closer to us and resemble man in one way or the other. The attempts to ascribe a special status to animals are therefore based on the question “What properties does the animal have?”. However, the question is not well formulated because it leads to a number of ontological and epistemological problems. The question should rather be “What are the conditions under which an entity becomes a moral subject?”. Whilst fully subscribing to the suggestion, I cannot agree to the way the question is understood by both authors. I will demonstrate that the question opens up a transcendental dimension of reflections and may provide a clear justification of the need to engage in animal ethics. To do so, I will separate the easy and hard problems of animal ethics and use a different approach from the one suggested by Gunkel and Coeckelbergh to demonstrate how the need to pursue animal ethics may be justified.     

On vegetarianism,morality, and science: A counter reply

I recently took issue with Kathryn George's contention that vegetarianism cannot be a moral obligation for most human beings, even assuming that Tom Regan's stringent thesis about the equal inherent value of humans and many sentient nonhumans is correct. I argued that both Regan and George are incorrect in claiming that his view would permit moral agents to kill and eat innocent, non-threatening rights holders. An unequal rights view, by contrast, would permit such actions if a moral agent's health or life is at stake. I then argued that current nutritional research does not support Professor George's claim that some wealthy adult males (and many fewer wealthy women) are the only persons whose health does not require the consumption of nonhuman animals and their products. In her 1992 response to my critique, George did not address my moral argumentation. She concentrated her entire paper on a wholesale rejection of my discussion of nutrition. Although she now takes a somewhat more moderate position on who can safely contemplate strict vegetarianism, she still believes that most people are not in a position to follow such a diet. In my counter-reply, I argue that her rejection is based upon numerous distortions, omissions, and false charges of fallacy. She even devotes a substantial section of her paper to criticizing me for saying the opposite of what I actually wrote. As I did in my earlier paper, I cite current research, including George's own preferred source on the topic of vegetarianism, to support my view. I conclude that Professor George has still not shown that for most human beings it is dangerous to follow a diet that omits nonhuman animals and their products. Moral agents who take the rights of humansand nonhumans seriously will find vegetarianism well worth considering.     

Co-creating an alternative: the moral economy of participating in farmers’ markets

Growing dissatisfaction with the globalised food system, articulated on the behalf of both producers and consumers, has caused a variety of public debates surrounding the ethics of food production and consumption to become increasingly visible in society over the last two decades. Simultaneously, farmers’ markets (FMs) and other forms of direct marketing have experienced a noteworthy increase in participants, indicating an emerging demand for an alternative to conventional food networks, alternatives that are often perceived as providing a more just and moral relationship to food production and consumption. This study examines consumer and producer motivations for participation in FMs and opinions towards conventional and alternative agriculture in order to elucidate what (if any) values and morals are shared among producers and consumers. This study draws upon the theoretical framework of moral economy to understand whether these shared values suggest FM participants are working to co-create an alternative economy based on “moral” principles such as fairness, justice, and reciprocity. This mixed-methods study consists of consumer surveys (N?=?377) and semi-structured interviews with producers (N?=?17) from five FMs in the state of Delaware. The results suggest that producer and consumer motivations to participate in FMs, particularly a shared emphasis on social value, are indicative of a sense of moral economy. However, this moral economy is complicated by tension towards consumers and the alternative food movement more generally expressed on behalf of producers.     

浅谈生态道德观对环境科学发展的指导

针对环境科学的特点,立足于长远发展,从生态哲学角度分析了生态道德观对环境科学技术的重要价值。分析认为应用生态的观点来学习和研究环境科学,才能达到最大程度防治的目的;合理融入生态观念的环境治理技术有利于经济发展;生态道德观是环境科技工作者必备的品质和环境科学发展的动力。通过这三个方面的分析得出环境科学技术的发展必须以生态道德观为指导的结论。另外本文从纵向和横向分析了生态道德观在指导环境科学技术发展过程中存在的问题并提出了相应的措施和建议。     

基于信源特征模型的大学生德育实效性提高途径思考

增强大学生德育实效性,是当前大学德育的重要问题。运用传播学理论模型,从信源特征角度分析影响大学生德育的有关因素,进而提出提高大学生德育实效性的途径,旨在为大学生思想教育工作者提供另一种思考角度,并在此基础上指导德育教育,从而提高其实效性。     

Integrity and Cynicism: Possibilities and Constraints of Moral Communication

Paying thorough attention to cynical action and integrity could result in a less naive approach to ethics and moral communication. This article discusses the issues of integrity and cynicism on a theoretical and on a more practical level. The first part confronts Habermas’s approach of communicative action with Sloterdijk’s concept of cynical reason. In the second part, the focus will be on the constraints and possibilities of moral communication within a business context. Discussing the corporate integrity approach of Kaptein and Wempe will provide this focus. Their approach can be considered as a valuable contribution to the question of how to deal with (dilemmas of) conflicting interests, open discussion, fairness, and strategic decision-making in the context of stakeholder dialog. However, it is concluded that Kaptein and Wempe seem to overstretch the concept of corporate integrity by their inclination to make it an all-purpose remedy for corporate dilemmas.     

Value Pluralism And Coherentist Justification of Ethical Advice

Liberal societies are characterized by respect for a fundamental value pluralism; i.e., respect for individuals’ rights to live by their own conception of the good. Still, the state must make decisions that privilege some values at the cost of others. When public ethics committees give substantial ethical advice on policy related issues, it is therefore important that this advice is well justified. The use of explicit tools for ethical assessment can contribute to justifying advice. In this article, I will discuss one approach to ethical assessment, the ethical matrix method. This method is a variant of intuitionist balancing. Intuitionism is characterized by stressing the existence of several (at least two) fundamental prima facie moral principles, between which there is no given rank order. For some intuitionist approaches, coherentism has been proposed as a model of justification. This article will discuss justification of ethical advice and evaluate the appropriateness of coherentism as a justificatory approach to intuitionist tools.     

Affected Ignorance And Animal Suffering: Why Our Failure To Debate Factory Farming Puts Us At Moral Risk

It is widely recognized that our social and moral environments influence our actions and belief formations. We are never fully immune to the effects of cultural membership. What is not clear, however, is whether these influences excuse average moral agents who fail to scrutinize conventional norms. In this paper, I argue that the lack of extensive public debate about factory farming and, its corollary, extreme animal suffering, is probably due, in part, to affected ignorance. Although a complex phenomenon because of its many manifestations, affected ignorance is morally culpable because it involves a choice not to investigate whether some practice in which one participates in might be immoral. I contend further that James Montmarquet’s set of intellectual virtues can provide a positive account of what it means to act as a responsible moral agent while immersed in a meat eating culture; they also represent the moral and epistemic framework for the kind of public discourse that should be taking place.     

Supplier codes of conduct: Company authorization of subcontractors

Companies continue to build greater sustainability and transparency in their supply chains to increase their business value and to respond to greater stakeholder pressures and expectations to increase sustainability and transparency. As company supply chains have grown and expanded, which presents increased challenges for building greater transparency, it is possible that the use of subcontractors in supply chains has also increased. The amount and impact of subcontracting conducted in supply chains may be of greater concern to certain companies and/or sectors than others, and it may have an important impact on their sustainability efforts. This article assesses the extent to which supplier codes of conduct apply to the use of subcontractors and include a requirement for suppliers to obtain prior company approval or authorization before subcontractors conduct work. Based on a review of more than 50 supplier codes of conduct, the companies that are highlighted in this article for including this requirement are primarily in the apparel/footwear, food, pharmaceuticals, and/or retail sectors. The article asserts that supplier codes of conduct that include requirements for suppliers to protect and safeguard confidential business information could be strengthened to further protect the company's products, integrity, and reputation/brand and increase its competitiveness and resilience by also including a requirement of prior approval or authorization of a supplier's use of subcontractors.     

Moral Intensity and Willingness to Pay Concerning Farm Animal Welfare Issues and the Implications for Agricultural Policy

An experimental survey was undertakento explore the links between thecharacteristics of a moral issue, the degree ofmoral intensity/moral imperative associatedwith the issue (Jones, 1991), and people'sstated willingness to pay (wtp) for policy toaddress the issue. Two farm animal welfareissues were chosen for comparison and thecontingent valuation method was used to elicitpeople's wtp. The findings of the surveysuggest that increases in moral characteristicsdo appear to result in an increase in moralintensity and the degree of moral imperativeassociated with an issue. Moreover, there was apositive link between moral intensity/moralimperative associated with an issue andpeople's stated wtp for policy to address theissue. The paper discusses the relevance of thefindings of the survey in the context of thedebate concerning the relationship betweenmoral and economic values and the use of thecontingent valuation method to estimatepeople's wtp of policy options with moraldimensions.     

Does Fish Welfare Matter? On the Moral Relevance of Agency

To determine whether fish welfare matters morally, we need to know what characteristics or capacities beings need to have in order to be morally considerable, and whether fish have such characteristics. In this paper I discuss a group of theories, Kantian practical reasoning theories, in which agency (or practical rationality) is traditionally thought to be a necessary condition for moral considerability. An individual must have quite sophisticated capacities to be a (moral) agent in such theories: she must be able to act on rational principles. It seems unlikely that nonhuman animals such as fish have such capacities. I argue, however, that on the basis of certain Kantian arguments, moral agents have reason to accept duties to nonrational animals if they are agents in a much less demanding sense: if they are motivated to pursue the objects of their desires. If fish have this capacity, their welfare matters morally.     

Measuring Biotechnology Employees’ Ethical Attitudes towards a Controversial Transgenic Cattle Project: The Ethical Valence Matrix

What is the relationship between biotechnology employees’ beliefs about the moral outcomes of a controversial transgenic research project and their attitudes of acceptance towards the project? To answer this question, employees (n=466) of a New Zealand company, AgResearch Ltd., were surveyed regarding a project to create transgenic cattle containing a synthetic copy of the human myelin basic protein gene (hMBP). Although diversity existed amongst employees’ attitudes of acceptance, they were generally: in favor of the project, believed that it should be allowed to proceed to completion, and that it is acceptable to use transgenic cattle to produce medicines for humans. These three items were aggregated to form a project acceptance score. Scales were developed to measure respondents’ beliefs about the moral outcomes of the project for identified stakeholders in terms of the four principles of common morality (benefit, non-harm, justice, and autonomy). These data were statistically aggregated into an Ethical Valence Matrix for the project. The respondents’ project Ethical Valence Scores correlated significantly with their project acceptance scores (r=0.64, p<0.001), accounting for 41% of the variance in respondents’ acceptance attitudes. Of the four principles, non-harm had the strongest correlation with attitude to the project (r=0.59), followed by benefit and justice (both r=0.54), then autonomy (r=0.44). These results indicate that beliefs about the moral outcomes of a research project, in terms of the four principles approach, are strongly related to, and may be significant determinants of, attitudes to the research project. This suggests that, for employees of a biotechnology organization, ethical reasoning could be a central mechanism for the evaluation of the acceptability of a project. We propose that the Ethical Valence Matrix may be used as a tool to measure ethical attitudes towards controversial issues, providing a metric for comparison of perceived ethical consequences for multiple stakeholder groups and for the evaluation and comparison of the ethical consequences of competing alternative issues or projects. The tool could be used to measure both public and special interest groups’ ethical attitudes and results used for the development of socially responsible policy or by science organizations as a democratizing decision aid to selection amongst projects competing for scarce research funds.     

Biotechnology and naturalness in the genomics era: plotting a timetable for the biotechnology debate

Debates on the role of biotechnology in food production are beset with notorious ambiguities. This already applies to the term “biotechnology” itself. Does it refer to the use and modification of living organisms in general, or rather to a specific set of technologies developed quite recently in the form of bioengineering and genetic modification? No less ambiguous are discussions concerning the question to what extent biotechnology must be regarded as “unnatural.” In this article it will be argued that, in order to disentangle some of the ambiguities involved, we have to broaden the temporal horizon of the debate. Ideas about biotechniques and naturalness have evolved in various socio-historical contexts and their historical origins will determine to a considerable extent their actual meaning and use in contemporary deliberations. For this purpose, a comprehensive timetable is developed, beginning with the Neolithic revolution ~10,000 years ago (resulting in the emergence of agriculture and the Common Human Pattern) up to the biotech revolution as it has evolved from the 1970s onwards—sometimes referred to as a second “Genesis.” The concept of nature that emerged in the context of the “Common Human Pattern” differs considerably from traditional philosophical concepts of nature (such as coined by Aristotle), as well as from the scientific view of nature conveyed by the contemporary life sciences. A clarification of these different historical backdrops will allow us to understand and elucidate the conceptual ambiguities that are at work in contemporary debates on biotechnology and the place of human beings in nature.     

Environmentally Virtuous Agriculture: How and When External Goods and Humility Ethically Constrain (or Favour) Technology Use

This paper concerns virtue-based ethical principles that bear upon agricultural uses of technologies, such as GM crops and CRISPR crops. It does three things. First, it argues for a new type of virtue ethics approach to such cases. Typical virtue ethics principles are vague and unspecific. These are sometimes useful, but we show how to supplement them with more specific virtue ethics principles that are useful to people working in specific applied domains, where morally relevant domain-specific conditions recur. We do this while still fulfilling the need for principles and associated practical reasoning to flexibly respect variation between cases. Second, with our more detailed approach we criticize and improve upon a commonly discussed principle about ecosystemic external goods that are crucial for human flourishing. We show this principle is far more conservative than appreciated, as it would prohibit many technology uses that are uncontroversially acceptable. We then replace this principle with two more specific ones. One identifies specific conditions in which ecosystem considerations are against a technology use, the other identifies favorable conditions. Third, we uncover a humility-based principle that operates within an influential “hubris argument” against uses of several biotechnologies in agriculture. These arguments lack a substantive theory of the nature of humility. We clarify such a theory, and then use it to replace the uncovered humility-based principle with our own more specific one that shifts focus from past moral failings, to current epistemic limits when deciding whether to support new technologies.     

Households’ recycling efforts

Households’ recycling effort is often argued to be of an insignificant size. It is also frequently argued that this contribution, if significant, is not a cost to households, since it is voluntary. Thus households’ use of time and energy are frequently disregarded in cost-benefit analyses of stricter recycling targets. In this survey, based on 1162 interviews, we find that sorting at source involves significant extra use of time and energy in the households. On average, each of those asked reported that they use close to half an hour a week for cleaning, sorting and transporting recyclable waste. On average, 185 h is used per tonne of waste. Four out of ten reported that they use warm or hot water to clean the materials. When investigating the motives for sorting waste, we find that many perceive sorting as mandatory, while some in fact find it a pleasant activity in itself. Moral motives for sorting at source are also widespread. A majority would prefer that a company took over the sorting if this were possible, and on average, the respondents are willing to pay US$ 20/year for this service.     

辐射环境保护类微机程序包概述

“辐射环境保护类微机程序包”集成了３５个辐射环境影响评价程序,实现了所有这些程序向微机的移植,完成了使用频率较高的程序之间的连接,增添了原有程序的报表输出和图形化处理功能,并且,结合我国辐射环境影响评价的规范,评价了这些程序在辐射环境影响评价中的适用性。辐射环境类微机程序包由正常气载、正常液载、放射性货包运输、核事故应急、废物处置、事故放射性后果、剂量转换因子七大功能块组成,基本覆盖了辐射环境影响的所有方面     

Utilitarian killing,replacement, and rights

The ethical theory underlying much of our treatment of animals in agriculture and research is the moral agency view. It is assumed that only moral agents, or persons, are worthy of maximal moral significance, and that farm and laboratory animals are not moral agents. However, this view also excludes human non-persons from the moral community. Utilitarianism, which bids us maximize the amount of good (utility) in the world, is an alternative ethical theory. Although it has many merits, including impartiality and the extension of moral concern to all sentient beings, it also appears to have many morally unacceptable implications. In particular, it appears to sanction the killing of innocents when utility would be maximized, including cases in which we would deliberately kill and replace a being, as we typically do to animals on farms and in laboratories. I consider a number of ingenious recent attempts by utilitarians to defeat the killing and replaceability arguments, including the attempt to make a place for genuine moral rights within a utilitarian framework. I conclude that utilitarians cannot escape the killing and replaceability objections. Those who reject the restrictive moral agency view and find they cannot accept utilitarianism's unsavory implications must look to a different ethical theory to guide their treatment of humans and non-humans.     

Environmental legislation, economic growth and risk in minerals development The Bolivian case

This paper examines the General Environmental Law of Bolivia which was recently passed by its Congress. It is a multi-purpose law with two primary objectives: (i) the protection and conservation of the environment; and (ii) the promotion of sustainable development. In this law, environmental benefits are emphasized by stating general principles, not by attempting to define the means. Regulations setting forth the means are left to the writing of subsequent complementary codes. This paper shows that much of the controversy surrounding the legislation disappears when it is seen as a guideline rather than an operational part of Bolivia's industrial policy. In essence, the law addresses environmental awareness in a region that is more anxious than ever to speed economic growth.