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Guest lecture: "The concept of death and the ethics of killing animals"

Ort: Online

Veranstaltungsbeginn: 09.07.2020 - 14:00 Uhr

Veranstaltungsende: 09.07.2020 - 15:00 Uhr

Veranstaltungskategorie: Gastvortrag

In ethical discussions on the topic of killing animals, it is common to come across the argument that, since animals don’t have a concept of death, killing them does not harm them, so long as we do it in a quick and painless manner. While not all ethicists find this argument convincing, none has questioned the overarching premise: that animals lack a concept of death. In this talk, I argue that it is unwarranted to treat this as an unquestionable assumption. I develop an account of what it means to understand death in minimal terms and argue that any discussion on animals’ perception of death must take this minimal account as a starting point. At the same time, the minimal concept of death lacks some of the characteristics that ethicists traditionally link to the harms of death. This, however, does not necessarily mean that animals with a minimal concept of death are not harmed by death, but it might mean that they are harmed in a different way than what ethicists have in mind. I sketch potential implications of this for our end-of-life management practices with animals.
 

Dr. Susana Monsó

Messerli Research Institute Vienna

 

Susana's talk and the subsequent discussion will be online. You can access them via the following link:
https://bokuvienna.zoom.us/j/95233097684 

Meeting-ID: 952 3309 7684

Please spread the word since we will have unlimited space due to the online format.