ABSTRACT

Though we’ve always known that the wild is a nasty place where predators lethally attack prey, only recently have most animal ethicists come to realize that most wild animals fail to flourish. In fact, what we know about wild animal reproduction suggests that the majority of sentient beings born into the world may not even live lives worth living. It’s not unreasonable for one to initially respond to the above with a sense of depressed resignation, but a growing number ethicists believe that we both can and should intervene. The purpose of this special issue is to further develop the interventionist literature by bringing togeher authors who agree that we owe significant postive duties to wild animals, but who use different theoretical frameworks, or who disagree about the details, e.g., about the reasons that ground our positive obligations to wild animals, about how those positive obligations should be classififed, about the content of our positive obligations, about the means we should use to fulfill our positive obligations, etc.

摘要

尽管我们一直都知道野外是捕食者致命攻击猎物的肮脏地方，但直到最近大多数动物伦理学家才意识到大多数野生动物都无法繁衍生息。事实上，我们对野生动物繁殖的了解表明，大多数出生在这个世界上的有情众生甚至可能没有过上值得一过的生活。最初以沮丧的顺从感回应上述问题并非没有道理，但越来越多的伦理学家认为我们都可以而且应该进行干预。本期特刊的目的是通过汇集同意我们对野生动物负有重大积极责任但使用不同理论框架或不同意细节的作者来进一步发展干预主义文献，例如，