Robin Miller

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“Just as humanity has extended this basic equal consideration to humans (including those who were once outside of our moral community), we must extend this basic equal consideration to animals if we are going to treat like cases alike. Animals are very clearly in possession of a subjective experience of their own lives. Anyone who lives with companion animals knows this is true. I live with two dogs and a cat, and I know that each of them has wants, moods, desires, and needs.10 They are not mere automatons, reacting machine-like to the stimuli around them as behaviorists would likely argue. Instead, they are beings that are aware of themselves, their environment, and those around them.”
― Bob Torres, Making A Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights

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“Given that animals are nothing more than mere tools for the production of capital, the only way to abolish their exploitation is to challenge their status as properties and commodities.”
― Bob Torres, Making A Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights

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“We can argue about their intelligence (which we would likely define in human-centric terms anyway), their ability to understand human language, or even the extent to which they really understand and know the world around them, but there’s no argument that can convincingly show that animals don’t feel pain, and that they have no interest in avoiding that pain. If anything, animals are more sensitive to the world around them than we are, given their heightened sensory abilities.”
― Bob Torres, Making A Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights

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“Much as we live in an economic and social order that is structured to exploit people, we live in one that is structured to exploit animals. We’re encouraged to understand both are natural and inevitable, but neither are. Both exploitations have long and contentious histories as part of the development of our modern economic order.”
― Bob Torres, Making A Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights

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“What, then, is the solution to this moral schizophrenia we have about animals? According to Francione, we only have two choices: we either continue to treat animals as we are now, by inflicting suffering even for unnecessary ends and recognizing our commitment to humane treatment as a farce, or we can recognize that animals have a morally significant interest in not being subjected to unnecessary suffering, and change how we approach conflicts of animal and human interests. To do the latter, however, requires that we apply the principle of equal consideration to animals. This, Francione argues, is stunningly simple: in its most basic terms, we need to treat like cases alike. Though animals and humans are clearly different, they are alike in the sense that they both suffer and are both sentient. For this reason, we should extend the principle of equal consideration to animals.”
― Bob Torres, Making A Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights

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