Permissible Use and Interdependence: Against Principled Veganism

Are animals not ours to use? According to proponents of veganism such as Gary Francione, any and all use of animals by humans is exploitative and wrong. It is wrong because animals have intrinsic worth and humans' use of animals fails to respect that worth. Contra Francione, I argue that that there are conditions under which it may be morally appropriate to collect, consume, sell, or otherwise use animal products. Francione is mistaken in his belief that assigning intrinsic worth to a being is impossible if said being is also conceived as a resource. Using and (non‐instrumental) valuing are not mutually exclusive; if they were, many if not most human relationships would be deemed morally unacceptable. Through a series of thought experiments involving intra‐human relationships, I suggest that moral condemnation of relationships within which a less dependent party regularly takes from a more dependent party is indefensible. In fact, relationships of use between asymmetrically dependent parties are essential to the functioning of cooperative society, and are therefore desirable. My aims with this article are to convince readers of the need to reject principled veganism, and to garner support for new philosophical accounts of morally appropriate human‐nonhuman animal relationships.     

Effects of a multicomponent intervention on motivation and sun protection behaviors among midwestern beachgoers.

Skin cancer is the most prevalent of all cancers in the United States. Although avoiding sun exposure and using sun protection reduces skin cancer risk, rates of such behaviors are moderate at best. The present study examined the impact of a multicomponent intervention that aimed to increase the saliency of skin cancer risk while promoting the use of sun protection. Midwestern beachgoers (n = 100) participated in an intervention or questionnaire-only control group. Sun protection, stage of change, and sun exposure were measured at baseline and 2-month follow-up. The intervention group significantly improved in sun protection use and stage of change, but not sun exposure, compared with the control group. Personalizing the risks of unprotected sun exposure combined with providing education about sun protection facilitated healthy changes in behavior and motivation.     

Notes on the biology of syntactic processing

Recent developments in psycholinguistics, neurology, and brain imaging technology may have made it possible to integrate linguistic, psychological, and neurological approaches to the study of syntactic processing. In an integrated approach, observations of the brain itself, or observations that are linked to it, enrich the database on which processing theory is built and by which it is constrained.     

To Absent Friends: Classical Spiritualist Mediumship and New Age Channelling Compared and Contrasted

The paper compares Western Spiritualism in the period from the mid-nineteenth century to the Second World War and contemporary New Age channelling. It focuses on one important difference between the two: the presence of physical manifestations of the purportedly supernatural in the former and the absence of such manifestations in the latter. The claim by Spiritualists that they could tangibly manifest the supernatural precipitated conflict with secularising professions and individuals and led to numerous public exposures of mediums. New Age channels continue to be surrounded by opponents. By eschewing physical manifestations and relying solely on verbal communications, channels help to secure themselves from technologically-assisted and media-focused debunkers. Moreover, within the private sphere to which secularisation has confined channelling, the resulting subjectivism is consonant with normative practices within commodity culture and may even increase attractiveness of channelling to certain post-materialist consumers. Consumer culture further assists channelling by supporting the mass dissemination of the cultic milieu.