“The question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?” 
– Jeremy Bentham (1789)

Should we care about non-human animals? We'll show how it can be important to care impartially, rather than ignoring weird topics or unusual beneficiaries. We'll also give you some ideas for how we could improve the lives of animals that suffer in factory farms.

Key concepts from this session include:

• Impartiality: helping those that need it the most, only discounting people according to location, time, and species if those factors are in fact morally relevant.
• The importance (and difficulty) of considering unusual ideas: Society’s consensus has been wrong about many things over history (e.g. the sun circling the Earth, the morality of slavery). In order to avoid making similar mistakes, we need to be open to considering unusual ideas and moral positions, while still thinking critically about the issues and acting cooperatively with others.

Required Materials