Peter Singer's Review of Animals, Men and Morals (Animal Liberation)

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the key concepts, philosophers, experiments, historical facts, and ethical arguments in Peter Singer's 1973 review essay 'Animal Liberation'.

Liberation Movement

A movement that demands an expansion of our moral horizons, so that practices previously regarded as natural and inevitable are recognized as intolerable.

Animals, Men and Morals

A book serving as a manifesto for an Animal Liberation movement; edited by Stanley Godlovitch, Roslind Godlovitch, and John Harris, and published by Taplinger ($240\,\text{pp.}$, $\$6.50$).

Leonard Nelson

An unjustly neglected German philosopher with an English name who died in $1927$, whose extract on animal ethics is included in Animals, Men and Morals.

Muriel the Lady Dowding

The widow of Dowding of Battle of Britain fame and the founder of "Beauty without Cruelty," a movement that campaigns against using animals for furs and cosmetics.

Patrick Corbett

Professor of Philosophy at Sussex University who captured the spirit of Animals, Men and Morals with the call to extend liberty, equality, and fraternity over the lives of animals.

Moral Equality

An ethical principle distinct from factual equality, establishing that the demand for equal consideration of interests does not depend on factual characteristics such as IQ, intelligence, or abilities.

Jeremy Bentham's Formula of Equality

The principle that "Each to count for one and none for more than one," dictating that the interests of every being with interests are to be taken into account and treated equally with the like interests of any other being.

Bentham's Criterion for Moral Consideration

The moral standard that the fundamental boundary for consideration is sentience, summarized by the question: "The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"

Pain (as a Mental Event)

A state of consciousness that can never be directly observed in others and must be inferred through external indications such as behavioral signs and biological or neurological similarities.

Speciesism

A term used by Richard Ryder to describe the belief that humans are entitled to treat members of other species in a way in which it would be wrong to treat members of their own species, drawing a direct parallel to racism.

Richard Ryder

A clinical psychologist and former animal experimenter who contributed an essay on animal experimentation to Animals, Men and Morals and introduced the term "speciesism."

LD50

A standard toxicity test for foodstuffs designed to establish the dosage level at which $50\%$ of test animals will die, frequently causing severe illness or death by sheer concentration.

Ruth Harrison

A professional animal welfare campaigner whose $1964$ book Animal Machines sparked a British campaign for controls on intensive farming, and author of the essay "On Factory Farming."

Factory Farming

Modern intensive agricultural production that applies business methods to maximize the ratio of output (meat, eggs, milk) to input (fodder, labor costs) through severe confinement and control.

Veal Stall Confinement

The practice of housing calves in stalls measuring $5\,\text{feet by } 2\,\text{feet}$ on an all-liquid diet deficient in iron, leaving them unable to turn around for at least a month prior to slaughter at about four months of age.

Battery Cages

Housing units under British practice with a floor area of $20\,\text{inches by } 18\,\text{inches}$ holding four or five laying hens on sloping wire floors for $1\,\text{year}$ to $18\,\text{months}$ under artificial conditions.

Roslind Godlovitch's Reductio Argument

The philosophical argument that holding both "animal suffering is to be avoided" and "there is nothing wrong with killing animals" leads to the absurd conclusion that all animal life ought to be exterminated.

Stanley Godlovitch's Classification Hypothesis

The Marxist-derived suggestion that human conceptual thought was originally determined by satisfying basic needs, leading man to first divide the environment into "Edibles and Inedibles."