What affects us affects cats
I’m delving into an impossibly tricky area of amateur philosophy: do animal advocates have to hate kitten exploitation videos? There are so many ‘funny cat videos’ featuring oh so cute kittens on social media that they’ve become a way of modern life. PETA would call them animal abuse. No doubt about it. And I …
The reason why I think the word “speciesism” needs to be discussed is because I’ve seen different definitions of it and one of those definitions I believe is misguided and it is the one which Google finds and places at the top of their search results (on December 7, 2022-things change!) PETA’s definition This …
The words in the title are from Peter Singer who wrote the acclaimed book, Animal Liberation, published in 1975. In the book he argued that humankind had a tendency toward speciesism meaning that humans attach far greater importance to themselves than they do to other species of animal. Singer asked that people should ‘expand …
Desiree Carlos, an author and an animal advocate living and working in the Philippines, has written an interesting and useful article for the Manila Standard website. It’s about karma, dogs and cats. In the Philippines there appears to be quite a high number of stray cats and dogs. And Desiree was taught by her …
I have said that domestic cats don’t appreciate beauty. The discussion is philosophical. Philosophical discussions don’t result in hard conclusions. I can’t provide a guaranteed answer as to whether domestic cats appreciate beauty or not. I also can’t provide a definitive answer as to why humans appreciate beauty. That, too, is a philosophical question. …
Before the first laws protecting animals against human abuse were enacted there was an enlightenment about the potential of animals to suffer. The English philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, said, in response to Kant: “The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? The grammar is verbatim. It was written …
I’m going to have to put my own spin on it but I’m referring to an article in The Times newspaper by the philosopher John Gray who is, I guess, promoting his new book Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life published next Thursday by Penguin at a price of £20 (£16 on …
Mindy, a cat rescuer, does work that has greater social value than that of a banker or corporate lawyer because it brings greater well-being to sentient beings.
