Normative Ethics: Humans vs. Animals: Agriculture, Climate Change, and Justice

This seminar explores recent work in animal ethics with a focus on questions that arise in the context of climate change and agriculture. Questions include: Are familiar views about well-being, rights, population ethics, and distributive justice equally plausible when applied to animals? How should we make tradeoffs between the interests of humans, individual animals, and species? Does responsibility for avoiding collective harms lie with individuals or groups? Can we make progress in animal ethics by using cognitive science? Can we make progress on policy debates by factoring moral uncertainty into our deliberation?