Ed.D., Antioch University, 2024, Education

Farmed animal sanctuaries provide lifelong care to formerly farmed animals. Many strive to educate their community about farmed animals and promote more compassionate lifestyles, such as veganism. Important to this is cultivating empathy and concern for the well-being of individual farmed animals. Essential to well-being is agency, which is the capacity of a living being to engage with their environments and to make choices for themselves. Farmed animals outside of sanctuaries have had their agency systematically suppressed and denied. Sanctuary educators can bring awareness to this and inspire alternative, agency-centered relationships with not only farmed animals but all living beings. To aid in this endeavor, this practice-based dissertation included the development of a resource guide for sanctuary staff and volunteers about recognizing, supporting, and teaching about the agency of farmed animals in sanctuary education. Following Stephen Brookfield's (2021) Materials Development Dissertation outline, this paper describes the inspirations for creating these materials and the development process in detail. This process included inviting scholars and practitioners to review the materials and offer feedback, which is shared in this paper. This paper also reports on how the materials will be disseminated to have the most impact on the field. There is also discussion on the broader implications of this work in countering oppression and facilitating more equitable and compassionate ways of coexisting with all beings. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA (https://aura.antioch.edu) and OhioLINK ETD Center (https://etd.ohiolink.edu).

Committee: Stephen Brookfield Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Dana McPhall J.D. (Committee Member); Sarah Bexell Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Adult Education; Animal Sciences; Animals; Communication; Education; Environmental Education

Bachelor of Arts, Miami University, 2009, College of Arts and Sciences - Philosophy

The vast majority of moral theorists either assumes or accepts that moral status is an all or nothing concept. One either has full moral status, or one has no moral status. The problem with having an all or nothing approach to moral status becomes apparent when one wants to open the moral community to non-humans. Although many people might agree that animals deserve moral consideration, a significant majority of even those sympathetic to animals' suffering still resist putting animals and human beings on an equal moral footing. The “dog on the lifeboat” thought experiment lays bare this pro-human moral intuition. In this essay, I explore the ways in which Tom Regan, Peter Singer, R.G. Frey, and Ruth Cigman attempt to make sense of this pro-human moral intuition without denying the need for some moral consideration for animals. All of them justify the moral intuition that we must protect the life of a human over the life of an animal if forced into such a situation. They do this by arguing, in some way or another, that death is, generally speaking, more harmful for human beings. I reject this approach to justifying the pro-human moral intuition because I favor a view of the harmfulness of death where it makes little sense to make comparative judgments of death's harmfulness across species lines. In contrast, I argue that the all or nothing concept of moral status needs to be revised. I argue that moral status should adopt a sliding- scale model based on the distinction between moral agents and moral patients. This approach does not deny moral status of some degree to many animals, and the implications of this approach are not as wide reaching as to justify much of the current ways humans treat animal beings. This project is important because it takes on the task of making coherent a strong animal rights position that still holds on to a limited pro-human view. Many people might initially view these two views as contradictory or in tension. I am arguing that one does (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Asher Seidel PhD (Advisor); Gaile Pohlhaus PhD (Committee Member); Bryan Bannon PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Animals; Philosophy