Animal Ethics
Convener: Joel Marks, Professor Emeritus, Philosophy, University of New Haven
Advisory Group:
Carol Pollard, Associate Director, Bioethics Center
David H. Smith, Director, Bioethics Center
Wendell Wallach, Chair, Technology & Ethics Study Group
This invited group of scholars was formed in response to two phenomena: the moral imperative to reassess the human treatment of other animals, and the theoretical challenge to give nonhuman animals their due in ethics. While many people have passionate opinions about animal ethics, they can be diametrically opposed: from seeing nonhuman animals as strictly subservient to human purposes, to conceptualizing them as full rights-bearing members of the moral community. Our group is dedicated to addressing the gamut of questions from all points of view. We meet monthly with special presenters, who are drawn from the same broad interdisciplinary spectrum as the group members themselves. In order to assure a research focus, participation in the group is limited to invitation by the Center director. Inquiries from faculty and graduate student scholars may be sent to bioethics.center@yale.edu.
Below is our tentative list of speakers and their topics for the academic year 2009-2010:
September 24:
Philip Wilson, World Society for the Protection of Animals
Securing the Protection of Animals in the Developing World: Special problems
October 22: Dr. Hope Ferdowsian,
Director of Research Policy, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
Belmont 2: Finding universal principles for the protection of human and animal research subjects
December 3: Gary Steiner, John Howard Harris Professor and Chair of Philosophy, Bucknell University
The Ideal of a Nonanthropocentric Cosmopolitanism
January 28
TBA
February 25
TBA
March 25
TBA
April 22
TBA
Speakers and topics from previous years:
