A committee of the Spanish government, concerned with environmental issues, has recommended that Spain “give” rights to these animals. The committee is being guided in its thinking about this issue by philosophers Peter Singer (USA) and Paola Cavalieri (Italy) who are directors of the Great Ape Project. (more…)
My discipline, philosophy, is often lambasted for being too abstract, for not dealing with concrete matters, for not being practical. Socrates took a lot of flack for devoting much of his time to searching for fundamental principles and definitions of prominent ideas, such as justice, truth, and virtue. I’d be very rich if I had a buck for each time someone has told me over the decades that philosophy is useless. (more…)