Dawkins why animals matter

We're still open for business - read our EU and Covid statements. Prothero Michael J. Benton Richard Fortey View All. British Wildlife. Weiter zu British Wildlife. Conservation Land Management. Weiter zu Conservation Land Management. Publisher: Oxford University Press. Click to have a closer look. About this book Contents Customer reviews Biography Related titles. Images Additional images. About this book In a world increasingly concerned with climate change, food security, and other human issues, the welfare of non-human animals is in danger of being overlooked and side-lined.

Contents Preface 1: Animal welfare, food security and climate change 2: Seduced by words 3: The trouble with anthropomorphism 4: Why consciousness is harder than you think 5: Consciousness unexplained 6: Emotional turmoil 7: Animal welfare without consciousness 8: The two pillars of animal welfare 9: What animals want Animal welfare for a small planet Notes and references Customer Reviews Review this book.

By: Marian Stamp-Dawkins Author. Current promotions. Bestsellers in General Biology. Marian Stamp Dawkins seeks to do this by offering a more complete understanding of how animals help us. Below, you can listen to Marian Stamp Dawkins talk about the topics raised in her book Why Animals Matter: Animal consciousness, animal welfare, and human well-being.

She was awarded the Association for the Study of Animal Behavior medal for contributions to animal behavior. View more about this book on the. Podcast: Play in new window Download. Subscribe: RSS. Which is puzzling because a good portion of the book is devoted to these questions without answers and, in my mind, don't contribute much to the case for or against improved animal welfare conditions in terms of practical measures or compelling arguments to be presented to those who are most responsible for animal mistreatment do the CEOs of factory farm operations, or even average Americans looking for the cheapest prices on chicken wings care whether animal consciousness is something science can prove or not?

What I found more interesting and compelling were Dawkins' arguments connecting animal and human welfare, especially directly connecting human and animal health and well-being. I think this could have some value in convincing even those who are aware of conditions in factory farms, but don't care because they don't see the connection between those animals and their own lives, that the way we treat animals matters because humans and animals are not separate.

For me, the strongest part of the book is the final chapter "Animal Welfare for a Small Planet". Here, Dawkins acknowledges the difficulties with putting forward a sound, scientific case for animal welfare, but insists that the effort is necessary, despite the challenges: "International and government reports on the future of the world do not give animal welfare a priority. Perhaps the title of Bernie Rollin's book, The Unheeded Cry, should be taken not just as a call for action but as a description of the current situation.

If the cry hasn't been heeded, then that is a sign that new arguments are needed Animal welfare needs more science, not less. It also needs to be seen not as an isolated fringe interest, based on vague ideas of what might be good for animals, but as linked to a much wider range of concerns that everyone can see as affecting their own future. The earth is turning out to be a much smaller planet than it once seemed, but we humans are not its only inhabitants.

We need to rethink our view of the millions of non-human animals that also live here, not just in regard to what they are in themselves, but also in how our own futures are inseparably bound up with theirs" Why would you care about an animal? Why not harm it? Because it has feelings? Because it is conscious, like us? How do you know this? How can you even know that any person besides yourself is conscious? You have no way of knowing it.

Science itself is clueless about this question, and will remain so according to many. This is the "hard problem" of consciousness in philosophy of mind, and Dawkins puts it into use to free animal welfare from endless discussions about consciousness.