Original Source

Wild Animal Ethics: A Freedom-Based Approach

Ethics, Policy & Environment

Volume: This article is behind a paywall and therefore this information is unavailable. Issue: This article is behind a paywall and therefore this information is unavailable.

17 APR 2023

Paez, E.

No

From the source: "This work was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia under Grant [SFRH/BPD/110642/2015]; by the Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca under Grant [BP 2019 00035]; and by a Visiting Fellowship at the Centre de recherche en éthique, Université de Montréal. Early versions of this article were presented at the 2019 MANCEPT panel ‘Just Animals? The Future of the Political Turn in Animal Ethics’ and the Université de Montréal’s Centre de recherche en éthique. This paper would have been much worse without the comments I received at those events."

From the source: "No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)."
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Summary

This article is behind a paywall. It has been included in the database and summarized below solely based on the content of the abstract.

Many people expect that wild animals, on the whole, tend to live bad lives due to the amount of suffering present in nature. Some have claimed that we therefore have reason to intervene in nature and prevent animal suffering. Against this, some philosophers argue that any intervention in nature, even if successful, would be wrong because it would violate animals’ freedom. The author objects to this argument on the grounds that respecting the freedom of wild animals still gives us reason to intervene in their lives to free them of factors which might diminish their agency and enrich their choices.

On expectation, most wild animals have lives of net suffering due to naturogenic causes. Some have claimed that concern for their well-being gives us reasons to intervene in nature on their behalf. Against this, it has been said that many interventions to assist wild animals would be wrong, even if successful, because they would violate their freedom. According to the Freedom-based Approach I defend in this paper, this view is misguided. Concern for wild animal freedom does indeed gives us reasons to secure these animals against control-undermining interferences, but also to intervene in nature in order to enrich their choices.