Talk:Animal Liberation (book)

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Is Animal Liberation the same as Animal Rights?[edit]

The edit of [1] states that:

Animal liberation is ... also known as the animal rights movement, although many activists who call themselves liberationists do not subscribe to the idea that animals have moral rights that should be protected.

Since there are animal liberationists who do not subscribe to the tenets of animal rights, it appears incorrect to refer to the two movements as the same.

Changing text to not identify animal liberation with animal rights.

I was about to move this article to Animal Liberation (book) and remove the text about the movement. We already have a page called Animal liberation that's a redirect to Animal rights. It's not ideal, but is there enough published material to write intelligently about the difference between animal liberation and animal rights? Also, please see Wikipedia:Sign your posts on talk pages. Cheers, SlimVirgin (talk) 21:05, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Removed sentence[edit]

I removed the following sentence:

'Since publishing Animal Liberation and writing about the cruelty in animal testing, he said in 2006 "It is clear at least some animal research does have benefits."' [2]

Although not stating so explicitly, the sentence implies that Singer has changed his stand on animal research. In fact, the utilitarian arguments in Animal Liberation were never strictly abolitionist. Singer has repeatedly clarified that the remarks made on the BBC documentary are not be taken as a revision of the views expressed in his book, including the view that any experiment that's ethically defensible when performed on animals is likewise defensible when performed on human beings at the same mental level. [3] [4]

Willi5willi5 (talk) 04:55, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Posner quote[edit]

The problem is that Posner's quote leaves readers with a very misleading impression of chimpanzee intelligence. Frankly, he chose his example poorly. It would have made a lot more sense if he had said a generic "animal" here, instead of specifically a chimpanzee, because a chimpanzee has way more than 1% of the intelligence of a human (e.g., a number of chimpanzees have learned to use human sign language). So a solution might be to trim or paraphrase his quote. I would like to hear from others about this, but for now, I have simply noted that Singer replied to and rejected this claim. Perhaps that will be sufficient.

Also, this whole "Reception" section is pretty problematic, as it does not convey an adequate range of the responses to the book. I added the Newkirk quote to provide some positive balance, but much more could be done to indicate how reviewers and others have responded to this very influential book. Wilbur777 (talk) 14:08, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright[edit]

One of the references isn't a reference, it's a comment: "This follows his fellow utilitarian John Stuart Mill, whose defense of the rights of the individual in On Liberty (1859) is introduced with the qualification, "It is proper to state that I forego any advantage which could be derived to my argument from the idea of abstract right as a thing independent of utility".[improper synthesis?]"

"Improper synthesis" came from someone else, not me.

If the person who wrote this article (or anyone else) wants to weave this comment into the text that's fine. But it shouldn't be in the References section. It implies that the Wikipedia article is a previously-written or published paper that might have been illegally imported here in violation of the author's copyright. This is the kind of reference commonly used for a scholarly book or journal article where the name of the author is clearly indicated. It's not appropriate for an anonymous encyclopedia entry.

Otherwise it's an exemplary article, beautifully written and footnoted. Rissa, Guild of Copy Editors (talk) 03:22, 26 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, a note and not a reference. Very belatedly, I've just seen your post here and created a 'Notes' section and moved it there now. JezGrove (talk) 23:38, 19 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]