ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces philosophy rather than a survey of cultural theory, and not engage further in discussions of whether a posthumanist ethic is likely to emerge in the near future, nor what the parameters of such an ethic would be like. It discusses both of the animal ethics theories are blind to the wider environmental status of individual animals. This time, it will not go over the details of the argument in the box, leaving readers to study its features for themselves. Philosophers and scientists in the past were often inspired by the examples of sympathy, intelligence and nobility in animals to draw comparisons between them and us. These traditional anthropocentric and meritocratic ways of thinking structure much of the thinking about matters of right and wrong. The use of animals and animal products in agriculture, the food industry, the textile industry, zoos, circuses and recreational hunting can all be defended in the same way by combining anthropocentrism and meritocracy.
