Josh Milburn

According to Susan Moller Okin, Robert Nozick’s libertarianism leads to a matriarchal dystopia: mothers own their children and may dispose of them as they please. This challenge rests on the claim that Nozick does not extend rights to infants. In this paper, to respond to Okin, we examine Nozick’s account of rights possession; explore Nozick’s work beyond Anarchy, State, and Utopia; and link children’s rights and animals’ rights. We propose three possible responses to Okin, grounded in Nozick’s own words. First, Nozick could grant rights to infants, but not animals, on account of their membership in the human species. Second, Nozick could grant rights to infants, but not animals, on account of their potentiality. Third, Nozick could grant rights to both infants and animals. We suggest that the third option is the most promising.

Animal lovers normally contribute to significant harm inflicted upon nonhuman animals. This is because dogs and cats are fed animal-derived foods, which are the product of death and suffering. This chapter presents an argument suggesting that, typically, people have an obligation to feed their companions a vegan diet. The claim is then defended against three challenges—from dignity, naturalness, and freedom, respectively—that are unsuccessful. A final challenge, from health, is more problematic, and a four-pronged approach to companion veganism is defended. For dogs, people’s moral and political obligations roughly coincide: individually and collectively, people should switch their dogs to vegan diets. For cats, people’s obligations diverge: while individually they should minimize the impact of their companions’ diets, as members of society they have an obligation to come to a greater understanding of how the negative impact of cats’ diets can be fully eliminated.

Laws against hate speech protect members of certain human groups. However, they do not offer protection to nonhuman animals. Using racist hate speech as our primary example, we explore the discrepancy between the legal response to hate speech targeting human groups and what might be called anti-animal or speciesist hate speech. We explore two sets of possible defences of this legal discrepancy drawn from the philosophical literature on hate speech—non-consequentialist and harm-based—and find both wanting. We thus conclude that, absent a compelling alternative argument, there is no in-principle reason to support the censure of racist hate speech but not the censure of speciesist hate speech.

Most ethicists defending cellular agriculture draw upon consequentialism or deontology. There has been no thoroughgoing virtue-ethical defence. In this paper, I explore three sets of reasons that the virtue ethicist could draw upon to suggest that virtuous individuals would support a cultivated meat industry. First, compassion and honesty might speak in favour of cultivated meat as well as (or even instead of) vegetarianism. Second, understandingness and hospitableness might speak in favour of supporting cultivated meat for others. Third, openness and grace might speak against being a picky eater, and consequently, on balance, in favour of a diet containing cultivated meat.

Animals have been almost entirely absent from scholarly appraisals of the ethics of war. Just-war theory concerns when communities may permissibly resort to war; who may wage war; who they may harm in war; and what kinds of harm they may cause. Each question can be complicated by animals’ inclusion. After introducing just-war theory and the argument for an animal-inclusive just-war theory, this paper reviews ethical appraisals of war on animals’ behalf and wars against animals. It then turns to consider harm to and use of animals in war. It concludes by considering questions in the ethics of war beyond just-war theory as traditionally construed.

In Food, Justice, and Animals: Feeding the World Respectfully, I sketch a food system in which people have access to animal-based foods and animals’ rights are respected. I present this as an ideal theoretic vision in the liberal tradition of political philosophy. In this article, I respond to the commentaries provided in this symposium by Bardon, De Bernardi, and Gentile; Pellegrino; Bailey; Fischer; Chiang and Sebo; and Williams. I group my responses around the three themes identified by Bailey in his introduction: public reason, political constituencies, and markets.

In Just Fodder: The Ethics of Feeding Animals, I explore a range of overlooked practical questions in animal ethics and the philosophy of food, developing a new approach to animal ethics. According to the position I defend, animals have negative rights based on their possession of normatively significant interests, and we have positive obligations towards (and concerning) animals based on our normatively salient relationships with them. Gary O’Brien, Angie Pepper, Clare Palmer, and Leon Borgdorf offer a range of insightful challenges to my framework and its applications. Here, I respond to them around five themes: extensionism, agency, predation, interventionism, and environmentalism.

What we could call ‘relational non-interventionism’ holds that we have no general obligation to alleviate animal suffering, and that we do not typically have special obligations to alleviate wild animals’ suffering. Therefore, we do not generally have a duty to intervene in nature to alleviate wild animal suffering. However, there are a range of relationships that we may have with wild animals that do generate special obligations to aid – and the consequences of these obligations can be surprising. In this paper, I argue that we have special obligations to those animals we have historically welcomed or encouraged into our spaces. This includes many wild animals. One of the consequences of this is that we may sometimes possess obligations to actively prevent rewilding – or even to dewild – for the sake of welcomed animals who thrive in human-controlled spaces.

Animal lovers who feed meat to other animals are faced with a paradox: perhaps fewer animals would be harmed if they stopped feeding the ones they love. Animal diets do not raise problems merely for individuals. To address environmental crises, health threats, and harm to animals, we must change our food systems and practices. And in these systems, animals, too, are eaters. Looking beyond what humans should eat and whether to count animals as food, Just Fodder answers ethical and political questions arising from thinking about animals as eaters. Josh Milburn begins with practical dilemmas about feeding the animals closest to us, our pets or animal companions. The questions grow more complicated as he considers relationships with more distance - questions about whether and how to feed garden birds, farmland animals who would eat our crops, and wild animals. Milburn evaluates the nature and circumstances of our relationships with animals to generate a novel theory of animal rights. Looking past arguments about what we can and cannot do to other beings, Just Fodder asks what we can, should, and must do for them, laying out a fuller range of our ethical obligations to other animals.

New omnivorism is a term coined by Andy Lamey to refer to arguments that – paradoxically – our duties towards animals require us to eat some animal products. Lamey’s claim to have identified a new, distinctive position in food ethics is problematic, however, for some of his interlocutors are not new (e.g., Leslie Stephen in the nineteenth century), not distinctive (e.g., animal welfarists), and not obviously concerned with eating animals (e.g., plant neurobiologists). It is the aim of this paper to bolster Lamey’s argument that he has identified a novel, unified, and intriguing position (or set of positions) in animal ethics and the philosophy of food. We distinguish new omnivorism from four other non-vegan positions and then differentiate three versions of new omnivorism based on the kinds of animal products they propose we consume. We conclude by exploring a range of argumentative strategies that could be deployed in response to the new omnivore.

There is a surprising consensus among vegan philosophers that freeganism—eating animal-based foods going to waste—is permissible. Some ethicists even argue that vegans should be freegans. In this paper, we offer a novel challenge to freeganism drawing upon Donaldson and Kymlicka’s ‘zoopolitical’ approach, which supports ‘restricted freeganism’. On this position, it’s prima facie wrong to eat the corpses of domesticated animals, as they are members of a mixed human-animal community, ruling out many freegan practices. This exploration reveals how the ‘political turn’ in animal ethics can offer fertile lenses through which to consider ethical puzzles about eating animals.

What we could call ‘relational non-interventionism’ holds that we have no general obligation to alleviate animal suffering, and that we do not typically have special obligations to alleviate wild animals’ suffering. Therefore, we do not usually have a duty to intervene in nature to alleviate wild animal suffering. However, there are a range of relationships that we may have with wild animals that do generate special obligations to aid—and the consequences of these obligations can be surprising. In this paper, it is argued that we have special obligations to those animals we have historically welcomed or encouraged into our spaces. This includes many wild animals. One of the consequences of this is that we may sometimes possess obligations to actively prevent rewilding—or even to dewild—for the sake of welcomed animals who thrive in human-controlled spaces.

ABSTRACT What is to be done when parents disagree about whether to raise their children as vegans? Three positions have recently emerged. Marcus William Hunt has argued that parents should seek a compromise. I have argued that there should be no compromise on animal rights, but there may be room for compromise over some ‘unusual’ sources of non-vegan, but animal-rights-respecting, food. Carlo Alvaro has argued that both Hunt and I are wrong; veganism is like religion, and there should be no compromise on religion, meaning there should be no compromise on veganism. This means that even my minimal-compromise approach should be rejected. This paper critiques Alvaro’s zero-compromise veganism, demonstrating that his case against Hunt’s position is undermotivated, and his case against my position rests upon misunderstandings. If vegans wish to reject Hunt’s pro-compromise position, they should favour a rightist approach, not Alvaro’s zero-compromise approach.

War is harmful to animals, but few have considered how such harm should affect assessments of the justice of military actions. In this article, we propose a way in which concern for animals can be included within the just-war framework, with a focus on necessity and proportionality. We argue that counting animals in war will not make just-war theory excessively demanding, but it will make just-war theory more humane. By showing how animals can be included in our proportionality and necessity assessments, we provide a crucial first step towards developing an animal-inclusive account of just-war theory.

Within current political, social, and ethical debates – both in academia and society – activism and how individuals should approach issues facing nonhuman animals, have become increasingly important, ‘hot’ issues. Individuals, groups, advocacy agencies, and governments have all espoused competing ideas for how we should approach nonhuman use and exploitation. Ought we proceed through liberation? Abolition? Segregation? Integration? As nonhuman liberation, welfare, and rights’ groups increasingly interconnect and identify with other ‘social justice movements’, resolutions to these questions have become increasingly entangled with questions of what justice and our ethical commitments demand on this issue, and the topic has become increasingly significant and divisive. The book considers how this question, and contemporary issues facing nonhumans (such as experimentation, hunting, and factory farming) should be answered by drawing on both theory and practice in order to provide grounded, yet actionable, ways forward. Indicatively, the book covers topics such as: • The intersection between interspecies ethics and the ethics of war and self-defence • Nonhuman animals as political subjects and acting agents • Whether we should intervene for nonhuman animals in cases of natural disaster • Various explorations of why the nonhuman movement may not be succeeding as well as it could be • Comparisons between the nonhuman movement and other social movement • Arguments for and against intervening to help or save nonhumans, and how far we may go • What intervention could ultimately mean for nonhumans The book is therefore intended not only to provide new and interesting insight into the area and important contemporary discussions, but also to constructively aid the nonhuman movement and unite theory and practice on the crucial issues. With the nonhuman movement and its past approaches currently being questioned as a success, more nonhumans than ever being harmed and exploited, and a growing gulf between activists and scholars, this book will not only be a timely addition to the literature, but an attempt to bridge these gaps and move both theory and practice – and thus the movement and field – forward.

Suppose that animals have rights. If so, may you go down to your local farm store, buy some chicks, raise them in your backyard, and eat their eggs? You wouldn't think so. But we argue, to the contrary, that you may. Just as there are circumstances in which it's permissible to liberate a slave, even if that means paying into a corrupt system, so there are circumstances in which it's permissible to liberate chickens by buying them. Moreover, we contend that restrictions on freedom of movement can be appropriate for chickens, but not humans, because of the obvious differences between the interests of healthy, adult humans versus those of chickens who have been bred for human use. We also argue that egg consumption is permissible based on the plausible assumption that no one's rights are violated in their consumption, and so while there may sometimes be morally preferable uses for eggs, you do nothing unjust in eating them. If we're right, then the rights view doesn't imply that veganism is obligatory; rather, it implies that the constraints on how we source animal products, though highly demanding, are not so demanding that they can't be met.

Robert Nozick’s oft-quoted review of Tom Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights levels a range of challenges to Regan’s philosophy. Many commentators have focussed on Nozick’s putative defence of speciesism, but this has led to them overlooking other aspects of the critique. In this paper, I draw attention to two. First is Nozick’s criticism of Regan’s political theory, which is best understood relative to Nozick’s libertarianism. Nozick’s challenge invites the possibility of a libertarian account of animal rights – which is not as oxymoronic as it may first sound. Second is Nozick’s criticism of Regan’s axiological theory, which is best understood relative to Nozick’s own axiological inegalitarianism. While Nozick’s axiology has distasteful consequences, it should not be dismissed out-of-hand. Nozick’s challenges to Regan – and Nozick’s wider animal ethics – are rich and original, warranting attention from contemporary theorists for reasons beyond mere historical interest.