This morning I was able to use three tools of human invention that are each, by themselves, remarkable, but when considered together are nothing short of astounding. In order of use they are the electric coffee maker, the electric refrigerator and the electric microwave oven. Each of these harnesses the power of electricity to do [...]
It’s easy to want something, it’s as easy as a dream. You may want a mansion, I may want a Ferrari, she may want Prince Charming, he may want to kiss Sleeping Beauty. We can want all sorts of things and most of us do. To be free from want isn’t easy, neither for [...]
I say that claims about moral rights for other animals are dubious. What do I mean? I mean, simply, that about all the accounts I’ve read that purport to establish a case for animals’ moral rights, I have doubts. Not one of those accounts is entirely convincing. Either because an account presents little in [...]
Do I have a moral obligation not to eat meat? I believe that I have no such moral obligation. I am free to eat meat if eating meat is what I choose to do. Still, I don’t eat meat. Why do I choose not to eat meat? Because I don’t want to do what’s bad [...]
There are some who think that, just because I am critical of some silly notions held by some so-called “leaders” in the animal rights movement, I am out to destroy the animal rights movement itself. That’s silliness on top of silliness. I can’t help it that it’s just silly to think that bees “own” [...]
Veganism isn’t like Facebook. No kidding, you say, veganism is a moral imperative (as if we know what that means) while Facebook is the latest internet craze (that one day soon will fade, as crazes almost always do). But that is the point. Facebook went from a college dorm room to nearly worldwide adoption [...]
A person could choose to eat “road kill,” abandoned eggs, or the body parts of other animals found in a dumpster and still consider herself or himself a moral actor who lives vegan.
I think that there would be nothing wrong, from the standpoint of whether one would be causing any direct harm to a conscious being, with eating a dead human body. That doesn’t mean, as some people seem to think it means, that it would be good to eat dead human bodies, or that there [...]
What is the reason for veganism? If the reason for a person to be vegan is so that a person can abstain entirely from the eating and other uses of nonhuman animals then eating roadkill wouldn’t be consistent with that conception of veganism.
Just in case a person is vegan that doesn’t mean that a person has to accept every idea that many (or most) vegans do accept, especially if and when such an idea is ill conceived. For example, just because “most vegans” think that honey isn’t vegan that doesn’t mean that honey isn’t vegan. Perhaps honey [...]
