Perpetual Strangers: Animals and the Cosmopolitan Right

Perpetual Strangers: animals and the cosmopolitan right

Traditional theories of animal rights are based upon the argument that species membership is a morally arbitrary feature in ethical reasoning. Rather than base moral standing upon common humanity, animal rights theorists have claimed that all sentient creatures, or creatures above a certain level of sentience, belong to the same ethical community, and thus are rights bearers. In this way, anima...

Kant's Perpetual Peace and World Government

Partners and strangers revisited

This study replicates Andreoni's (Journal of Public Economics, 1988, 37, 291-304) public goods experiments. The results are not consistent with simple learning, but are compatible with strategies, unlike Andreoni's original experiment. An investigation of the variance of contributions provides an organizing explanation of previous results.

Animals have a right to life.

State and church must be separated; therefore the legal and the judicial system may not be based on religious dogmas but instead must be grounded on empirical-rational ethics, which are amenable to consensus. To achieve this, consciousness must be described in scientific terms and the anthropocentric view of animals as fundamentally different to humans must be criticised on a factual basis. It ...

‘Belonging’ in the cosmopolitan imaginary

In the 1990s, much discourse both in and about global civil society was beset by a false opposition. On the one side was the utopia of cosmopolitan liberalism. On the other was the specter of reactionary nationalism or fundamentalism. And, of course, in a variety of settings, some national and some diasporically transnational, the value loading was reversed: fundamentalist or national utopia, t...