Browsing by Author "Benatar, David"
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- ItemOpen AccessDo we have a duty to prevent predation in the wild?(2023) Ashwin, Michelle; Benatar, DavidThe animal ethics literature has focused a great deal on the harms that culpable moral agents cause animals, and our duties to prevent this. What is less clear is whether there is a duty to stop nonhuman animals from harming other creatures, considering that they lack moral agency. In this dissertation, I investigate whether we ought to prevent the harm of wild predation. Firstly, I consider two arguments against interfering with the wild. Ecological holists claim that the natural world has ultimate value. They argue against all interventions in predation which threaten to undermine the integrity of nature. Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka argue that we should refrain from interfering with predatory cycles out of respect for wild animal communities' sovereignty and a preference to remain independent from humans. I reject both views, by arguing that their reasons for thinking that we do not have a duty to intervene in predation on a large scale are flawed. Secondly, I argue that animals possess basic moral rights and that it is reasonable for them to have a right to be rescued from predation under some circumstances. If intervening is easy and it will not severely injure or kill the predator, the prey creature has a right to be rescued. Otherwise, an intervention in predation is required if and only if three practical conditions are met: 1) the intervention is possible, 2) the burden of intervening is reasonable and feasible, and 3) the intervention does not create as much or more suffering than it aims to avoid. I argue that largescale interventions cannot meet condition 3 insofar as we lack knowledge about how to interfere with predation cycles without devastating ecological consequences. The question of a moral requirement to intervene once-off will depend on whether the prey-victim had her rights violated and on the extent of our morally relevant relationship with the prey-victim. These factors determine whether the intervention meets condition 2. Therefore, the question of a duty to intervene once-off must be assessed on a case-by-case basis.
- ItemOpen AccessThe ethics of humanitarian aid in conflict situations(2013) Allen, Timothy; Benatar, DavidThe plight of people suffering from the violence and deprivation of conflict attracts a great deal of aid. Such aid is often inspired by the thought that we have some responsibility to protect or assist innocent victims of war. However, this humanitarian response is vulnerable to abuse. Combatants can manipulate the supply of aid to achieve their ends, or channel aid to provide their forces with additional food or arms, and so extend the conflict. This poses a challenge to our obligation to assist victims of conflict: if the aid hurts more than it helps, a reasonable response is to refrain from giving aid. This may not help people in need, but it avoids hurting them further. A better response would be to find another means of helping people trapped by conflict which does not risk making their positions worse. This dissertation explores a variety of means that might enable us to help victims of conflict, such as redirecting aid, intervening militarily, or enacting sanctions. One promising strategy involves removing or altering certain international rules which have a role in encouraging conflict. Altering these rules requires concerted advocacy and political will, but given sufficient attention, such an approach could shorten or reduce the severity of some conflicts, or curtail their ill effects on civilians.
- ItemOpen AccessHow bad, if at all, is death for nonhuman animals?(2022) Fuller, Jamie; Benatar, DavidThe overwhelming majority of deaths that occur on Earth are nonhuman animal deaths. This dissertation addresses the underexplored question of whether death is bad for nonhuman animals, and if so, then how bad it is. I start by asking whether death can be bad for nonhuman animals given what we commonly think makes death bad for humans. According to the Deprivation Account, death is bad if it deprives its victim of future goods. Since nonhuman animals can be deprived by death of future goods, this standard account of death's badness applies to them. Next, I ask how bad death is for nonhuman animals. I present the Life Comparative Account and the Time-Relative Interest Account as two extensions of the Deprivation Account. It follows from both accounts, that while death is usually worse for humans, some nonhuman animals are harmed more by their death. Finally, I address objections from philosophers who dispute that death can be bad for nonhuman animals at all. According to Christopher Belshaw and David Velleman something in addition to deprivation is necessary for death to be bad, and nonhuman animals lack the capacity to satisfy this additional condition. Christopher Belshaw claims that the additional condition is a categorical desire at the time of death and David Velleman argues that it is an autobiographical sense of self. I reject both philosopher's arguments. In so doing, I defend the common view that death is bad if it deprives its victim of future goods, combined with the Time Relative Interest Account, which measures this deprivation from the perspective of the victim at death. I conclude by highlighting the normative implications of my findings that death can be (very) bad for nonhuman animals, as well as by pointing out how my question can be taken further.
- ItemOpen AccessHuman-animal relationships(2013) Du Toit, Jessica Anne; Benatar, DavidThe overwhelming majority of philosophical discussions about the relationships between humans and animals concern the human use and treatment of animals in contexts such as those of food production, scientific experimentation, and pet-keeping. By contrast, the kinds of affective bonds that do - or might conceivably - occur between humans and animals, have received very little philosophical attention. In this dissertation, my main, but not exclusive, concern is with the latter issue. More specifically, I am primarily concerned with the question of whether human-animal relationships can be meaningful. Because pet animals are the clearest candidates for meaningful relationships with us, they will be the focus of my discussion. I argue that at least some human-pet relationships can be meaningful, even if they are not among the most meaningful relationships in our lives. Thereafter, I shall turn to one question about the treatment and use of animals on which the earlier question bears, namely the question of whether the practice of having pets is permissible.
- ItemOpen AccessIndiscretion and other threats to confidentiality(2010) Benatar, DavidConfidentiality is a central principle of medical ethics. The most common breaches of this principle are not the rare cases in which the principle is overridden by other considerations. Instead, confidentiality is most often breached when it clearly should be respected. In this paper I outline these threats to confidentiality, the most frequent and disturbing of which is indiscretion in its many forms.
- ItemOpen AccessJust admissions: South African universities and the question of racial preference(2010) Benatar, DavidSouth African universities and other institutions of higher education currently give preference to student applicants from designated ‘races’. This paper argues that such a policy is morally indefensible. Although the imperative to redress injustice is endorsed, this, it is argued, does not entail that applicants may be favoured on the basis of their (purported) ‘race’. Nor can the pursuit of diversity be used to defend racial preference. Next, it is argued that any policy on racial preference must have both a racial taxonomy and a method of assigning individuals to different taxonomic categories. It is argued that both competing methods of categorizing individuals – one subjective and the other objective – are unacceptable. Finally, the paper highlights a number of fallacious responses to criticisms of racial preference.
- ItemOpen AccessA justification for rights(1992) Benatar, David; Meyerson, DeniseThis thesis provides an argument in favour of there being natural rights. Such rights are rights which creatures necessarily have in virtue of their nature alone. These are to be distinguished from non-natural rights which may or may not be acquired. It is argued that natural rights possess three features: (1) they have correlative duties; (2) they have great strength; and (3) they are exclusively negative. It is argued further that that the strength of some natural rights must be absolute. One chapter is devoted to arguing against the justifications for rights advanced by Immanuel Kant, Alan Gewirth and John Rawls. Another chapter shows that the problem with utilitarianism is that it cannot satisfactorily accommodate rights. This thesis claims that morality must be connected to well-being and that well-being should be understood objectively rather than subjectively. Further, it advances the view that since individuals, rather than societies or temporal stages of individuals, are the morally significant units of existence, morality should be connected to the well-being of individuals. It is then argued that a moral tool possessing the features which absolute natural rights possess is essential to moor morality to individual well-being. Given the great strength of absolute rights, they must protect only the most important objective interests an individual subject has and they must protect against only the most severe violations of these interests. Various scales of harm to the individual are envisaged, including scales of pain, injury and restriction of liberty. The view is advanced that absolute rights come into existence at a particular threshold on these scales, absolutely protecting the individual from having to make a sacrifice of that degree or greater. Although absolute natural rights have this important function they I are not seen as being the only principles on the moral landscape or even the only nonderivative ones. A few chapters are devoted to applying the theory to a number of questions, including what absolute rights there are and what creatures have rights. The thesis also answers a number of common criticisms of natural rights.
- ItemOpen AccessLiving in the Shadow of Death A Philosophical Study of the Evil of Annihilation(2019) Rebello, Travis; Benatar, DavidHow should we respond to the fact that we are going to die? This dissertation investigates some of the implications for answering this question which arise from a detailed study of the relationship between death and well-being. I defend the popular view that death is an evil of privation; that death is bad for the one who dies in virtue of precluding her from having more of a good life. Given this view, I argue, there is not any worthwhile means of securing invulnerability to the evil of death; the only way to make death less bad is to ensure one would not be better off continuing to live—but that is not something worth doing. In response to Epicurus’ argument that death cannot be bad for the one who dies because there is no time at which it could be so, I argue that the normative implications of the Epicurean view are unacceptable and that death is plausibly either a posthumous evil or a timeless evil. It is a further question which attitudes concerning death are rational. Indeed, I attempt to show that a complete account of which attitudes concerning death are all-things-considered rational is likely to be complex and potentially unsystematic. By contrast, an account of which attitudes concerning death are rational in the sense of being fitting or appropriate is relatively simple. Further reflection upon such an account, however, reveals that if death is to merit the terrified response it often elicits, then the view that death is an evil of privation should be supplemented with the view that annihilation itself is an evil. Finally, I address the question of whether it would be better to be immortal. Many philosophers follow Bernard Williams’ lead in arguing that we face a dilemma with respect to the desirability of immortality; that an immortal life would either fail to be attractive or fail to involve a preservation of one’s personal identity. In response, I argue that there are choiceworthy ways of being immortal which would not threaten the continuity of our identities.
- ItemOpen AccessReplacing punishment: the ethics of alternatives to legal punishment(2013) Gallagher, Scott; Benatar, DavidThe purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the morality of putative alternatives to punishment. I will explore what makes them non-punitive, define them, and analyze whether they can be justified. The structure of the dissertation is as follows. The first chapter investigates the concept of punishment. I will defend a definition of punishment: authorized, retributive, intended harm. Then I will proceed to explain the need to justify punishment, and give an overview of how it is at least plausible to believe that no justification has yet succeeded. I will end the chapter with a brief discussion of the requirements of a criminal justice system. The second chapter is about money. I will scrutinize whether the theory of 'pure restitution' may completely replace punishment. I will argue that it cannot, and furthermore I will caution against the widespread use of mandatory monetary restitution. I will also provide a positive argument for the state's duty to provide compensation to victims of violent crime. The third chapter brings in the true heavyweights for non-punitive interventions: offender rehabilitation and offender incapacitation. After defining them, explaining why they are non-punitive, and defending justifications for them, I will conclude that they provide the most substantive opportunities for the state to shift its criminal justice burden s away from punishment. In the fourth chapter I will explore rituals: restorative justice conferences, trial and therapeutic jurisprudence, re-entry ceremonies and apologies. My argument for a minimally punitive regime will come together in the last chapter. In doing so I will explain why a state must rely on punishment to a small but crucial extent, and that punishment can be minimized drastically in comparison to today's practices. I will also address concerns regarding security and deterrence.