David DeGrazia

David (Associate Professor of Philosophy at George Washington University DeGrazia, Washington DC)

By presenting models for understanding animals' moral status and rights, and examining their mental lives and welfare, the author explores the implications for how we should treat animals in connection with our diet, zoos, and research.

Animal Rights: A Very Short Introduction

genetics, reproduction, and quality of life

Creation ethics

Lester H. Hunt

Americans have a deeply ambivalent relationship to guns. The United States leads all nations in rates of private gun ownership, yet stories of gun tragedies frequent the news, spurring calls for tighter gun regulations. The debate tends to be acrimonious and is frequently misinformed and illogical. The central question is the extent to which federal or state governments should regulate gun ownership and use in the interest of public safety. In this volume, David DeGrazia and Lester Hunt examine this policy question primarily from the standpoint of ethics: What would morally defensible gun policy in the United States look like? Hunt's contribution argues that the U.S. Constitution is right to frame the right to possess a firearm as a fundamental human right. The right to arms is in this way like the right to free speech. More precisely, it is like the right to own and possess a cell phone or an internet connection. A government that banned such weapons would be violating the right of citizens to protect themselves. This is a function that governments do not perform: warding off attacks is not the same thing as punishing perpetrators after an attack has happened. Self-protection is a function that citizens must carry out themselves, either by taking passive steps (such as better locks on one's doors) or active ones (such as acquiring a gun and learning to use it safely and effectively). DeGrazia's contribution features a discussion of the Supreme Court cases asserting a constitutional right to bear arms, an analysis of moral rights, and a critique of the strongest arguments for a moral right to private gun ownership. He follows with both a consequentialist case and a rights-based case for moderately extensive gun control, before discussing gun politics and advancing policy suggestions. In debating this important topic, the authors elevate the quality of discussion from the levels that usually prevail in the public arena. DeGrazia and Hunt work in the discipline of academic philosophy, which prizes intellectual honesty, respect for opposing views, command of relevant facts, and rigorous reasoning. They bring the advantages of philosophical analysis to this highly-charged issue in the service of illuminating the strongest possible cases for and against (relatively extensive) gun regulations and whatever common ground may exist between these positions.

How Much Regulation Do We Need?

Debating Gun Control

Tom L. Beauchamp

This volume is the first to present a framework of general principles for animal research ethics together with an analysis of the principles' meaning and moral requirements. This new framework of six moral principles constitutes a more suitable set of moral guidelines than any currently available, including the influential framework presented in the Principles of Humane Experimental Technique published in 1959 by zoologist and psychologist William M. S. Russell and microbiologist Rex L. Burch. While other accounts have presented specific directives to guide the use of animals in research, Tom L. Beauchamp and David DeGrazia here offer a set of general moral principles that are adequate to the task of evaluating biomedical and behavioral research involving animals today. Their comprehensive framework addresses ethical requirements pertaining to societal benefit-a critical consideration in justifying the harming of animals in research-and features a thorough program of animal welfare protection. In doing so, their principles bridge the gap between the concerns of the research community and the animal-protection community. The book is distinctive in featuring commentaries on the framework of principles by eminent figures in animal research ethics from an array of relevant disciplines: veterinary medicine, biomedical research, biology, zoology, comparative psychology, primatology, law, and bioethics. The seven commentators-Larry Carbone, Frans de Waal, Rebecca Dresser, Joseph Garner, Brian Hare, Margaret Landi, and Julian Savulescu-scrutinize Beauchamp and DeGrazia's principles in terms of both their theoretical cogency and practical implications, evaluating their relevance to the medical and scientific professions. The range of ethical issues encompassed in Principles of Animal Research Ethics will be useful to professionals in the biomedical and behavioral sciences and will also appeal to individuals and scholars interested in bioethics, animal ethics, and applied ethics generally.

Principles of Animal Research Ethics

Professor of Philosophy David DeGrazia

This book distinguishes itself from much of the polemical literature on these issues by offering the most judicious and well-balanced account yet available of animals' moral standing, and related questions concerning their minds and welfare. Transcending jejune debates focused on utilitarianism versus rights, the book offers a fresh methodological approach with specific and constructive conclusions about our treatment of animals. David DeGrazia provides the most thorough discussion yet of whether equal consideration should be extended to animals' interests, and examines the issues of animal minds and animal well-being with an unparalleled combination of philosophical rigor and empirical documentation. His book is an important contribution to the field of animal ethics and will be read with special interest by all philosophers teaching such courses, as well as biologists, those professionally involved with animals, and general readers concerned about animal welfare.

Mental Life and Moral Status

Taking Animals Seriously

The ethics of creating -- or declining to create -- human beings has been addressed in several contexts: debates over abortion and embryo research; literature on "self-creation"; and discussions of procreative rights and responsibilities, genetic engineering, and future generations. Here, for the first time, is a sustained, scholarly analysis of all of these issues -- a discussion combining breadth of topics with philosophical depth, imagination with current scientific understanding, argumentative rigor with accessibility. The overarching aim of Creation Ethics is to illuminate a broad array of issues connected with reproduction and genetics, through the lens of moral philosophy. With novel frameworks for understanding prenatal moral status and human identity, and exceptional fairness to those holding different views, David DeGrazia sheds new light on the ethics of abortion and embryo research, genetic enhancement and prenatal genetic interventions, procreation and parenting, and decisions that affect the quality of life of future generations. Along the way, he helpfully introduces personal identity theory and value theory as well as such complex topics as moral status, wrongful life, and the "nonidentity problem." The results include a subjective account of human well-being, a standard for responsible procreation and parenting, and a theoretical bridge between consequentialist and nonconsequentialist ethical theories. The upshot is a synoptic, mostly liberal vision of the ethics of creating human beings.

David DeGrazia

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