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Philosophy Ought To Question The Basic Assumptions Of The Age. Thinking Through, Critically And Carefully, What Most Of Us Take For Granted Is, I Believe, The Chief Task Of Philosophy, And The Task That Makes Philosophy A Worthwhile Activity.

-Peter Singer

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Philosophy Ought To Question

Peter Singer

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Philosophy Ought To Question The Basic Assumptions Of The Age. Thinking Through, Critically And Carefully, What Most Of Us Take For Granted Is, I Believe, The Chief Task Of Philosophy, And The Task That Makes Philosophy A Worthwhile Activity.

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Human Beings Are Social Animals. We Were Social Before We Were Human.

What Is There About The Notion Of A Person, At Law, That Makes Every Living Member Of The Species Homo Sapiens A Person, Irrespective Of Their Mental Capacities, But Excludes Every Nonhuman Animal - Again, Irrespective Of Their Mental Capacities?

Killing A Defective Infant Is Not Morally Equivalent To Killing A Person. Sometimes It Is Not Wrong At All.

There Could Conceivably Be Circumstances In Which An Experiment On An Animal Stands To Reduce Suffering So Much That It Would Be Permissible To Carry It Out Even If It Involved Harm To The Animal... [even If] The Animal Were A Human Being.

Sci-fi Is Often A Metaphor. I Think It's More The Themes And Questions That Science Fiction Raises Rather Than The Exact Predictions That Should Guide Us.

At The Descriptive Level, Certainly, You Would Expect Different Cultures To Develop Different Sorts Of Ethics And Obviously They Have; That Doesn't Mean That You Can't Think Of Overarching Ethical Principles You Would Want People To Follow In All Kinds Of Places.

Ethical Principles

Probability Is The Guide Of Life, And Of Death, Too.

Business Ethics Has Always Had Problems That Are Distinct From Those Of Other Professions, Such As Medicine, Law, Engineering, Dentistry, Or Nursing.

Whereas The Property-owning Middle Class Could Win Freedom For Themselves On The Basis Of Rights To Property--thus Excluding Others From The Freedom They Gain--the Property-less Working Class Possess Nothing But Their Title As Human Beings. Thus They Can Liberate Themselves Only By Liberating All Humanity.

Since Ancient Times, Philosophers Have Maintained That To Strive Too Hard For One's Own Happiness Is Self-defeating.

If We Can Put A Man On The Moon And Sequence The Human Genome, We Should Be Able To Devise Something Close To A Universal Digital Public Library.

We See Things Like Reciprocity Which Are Fairly Central To Our View Of Ethics. But If You're Talking About A Set Of Worked-out Rules On What We Are Supposed To Do Then, Yes, It Is A Human Product.

I Know Of A Number Of People Who Are Successfully Earning To Give. That Isn't For Everyone But For Those With The Ability To Earn A Lot Of Money And The Character To Resist The Temptation To Spend It On Themselves, It Can Be A Great Way To Do Good.

It Is Now Generally Accepted That The Roots Of Our Ethics Lie In Patterns Of Behavior That Evolved Among Our Pre-human Ancestors, The Social Mammals And That We Retain Within Our Biological Nature Elements Of These Evolved Responses. We Have Learned Considerably More About This Responses, And We Are Beginning To To Understand How They Interact With Our Capacity To Reason.

Pain And Suffering Are In Themselves Bad And Should Be Prevented Or Minimized, Irrespective Of The Race, Sex, Or Species Of The Being That Suffers. How Bad A Pain Is Depends On How Intense It Is And How Long It Lasts, But Pain Of The Same Intensity And Duration Are Equally Bad, Whether Felt By Humans Or Animals.

Why...is The Hunter Who Shoots A Deer For Venison Subject To More Criticism Than The Person Who Buys A Ham At The Supermarket? Overall, It Is Probably The Intensively Reared Pig Who Has Suffered More.

I Think Ethics Is Always There; It's Not Always A Very Thoughtful Or Reflective Ethics.

So Far As This Argument Is Concerned Nonhuman Animals And Infants And Retarded Humans Are In The Same Category; And If We Use This Argument To Justify Experiments On Nonhuman Animals We Have To Ask Ourselves Whether We Are Also Prepared To Allow Experiments On Human Infants And Retarded Adults; And If We Make A Distinction Between Animals And These Humans, On What Basis Can We Do It, Other Than A Bare-faced - And Morally Indefensible - Preference For Members Of Our Own Species?

When The Death Of A Disabled Infant Will Lead To The Birth Of Another Infant With Better Prospects Of A Happy Life, The Total Amount Of Happiness Will Be Greater If The Disabled Infant Is Killed. The Loss Of Happy Life For The First Infant Is Outweighed By The Gain Of Happier Life For The Second. Therefore, If Killing The Hemophiliac Infant Has No Adverse Effect On Others, It Would, According To The Total View, Be Right To Kill Him.

Adverse Effects

The Newspapers Do Little Better. Their Coverage Of Nonhuman Animals Is Dominated By "human Interest" Events Like The Birth Of A Baby Gorilla At The Zoo, Or By Threats To Endangered Species; But Developments In Farming Techniques That Deprive Millions Of Animals Of Freedom Of Movement Go Unreported.

...chimpanzees, Bonobos, Gorillas, And Orangutans Are Thinking, Self-aware Beings, Capable Of Planning Ahead, Who Form Lasting Social Bonds With Others And Have A Rich Social And Emotional Life. The Great Apes Are Therefore An Ideal Case For Showing The Arbitrariness Of The Species Boundary. If We Think That All Human Beings, Irrespective Of Age Or Mental Capacity, Have Some Basic Rights, How Can We Deny That The Great Apes, Who Surpass Some Humans In Their Capacities, Also Have These Rights?

The Traditional View Of The Sanctity Of Human Life Will Collapse Under Pressure From Scientific, Technological And Demographic Developments.

To Turn The Other Cheek Is To Teach Would-be Cheats That Cheating Pays.

The Idea That We Can Actually Have An Impact On Places More Or Less Instantly, Too, By Responding In Some Way Or Not Responding, I Think, Also Makes It True.

We Need To Learn How To Capture And Kill Wild Fish Humanely - Or, If That Is Not Possible, To Find Less Cruel And More Sustainable Alternatives To Eating Them.

Once We Ask Why It Should Be That All Human Beings - Including Infants, The Intellectually Disabled, Criminal Psychopaths, Hitler, Stalin, And The Rest - Have Some Kind Of Dignity Or Worth That No Elephant, Pig, Or Chimpanzee Can Ever Achieve, We See That This Question Is As Difficult To Answer As Our Original Request For Some Relevant Fact That Justifies The Inequality Of Humans And Other Animals.

We Have A New Generation Of Very Rich People Who Want To Do More With Their Money Than Buy A Lot Of Expensive Toys. They Want To Live Meaningful Lives.

The Statement "i Am In Pain" May Be One Piece Of Evidence For The Conclusion That The Speaker Is In Pain, But It Is Not The Only Possible Evidence, And Since People Sometimes Tell Lies, Not Even The Best Possible Evidence. Even If There Were Stronger Grounds For Refusing To Attribute Pain To Those Who Do Not Have Language, The Consequences Of This Refusal Might Lead Us To Reject The Conclusion. Human Infants And Young Children Are Unable To Use Language. Are We To Deny That A Year-old Child Can Suffer?

My Major Concern About Leaving Enhancement To The Marketplace Is That Then The Rich Will Be Able To Buy Themselves Genetically Superior Children And The Poor Will Not - Sharpening The Class Divisions We Have Now. That Problem Could Be Overcome If, Genetic Enhancement Were Available To All, Subsidized By The State - And That Would, Over Time, Have Benefits For Society As Well.

There Is An Obvious Evolutionary Explanation For The Scarcity Of Altruistic Saints: Without A Strong Predilection For Their Own Interests, Our Ancestors Would Have Been Unlikely To Survive, Reproduce, And Give Their Own Offspring A Chance Of Doing The Same. Now Conditions Have Changed And For Most Of Us, Surviving And Reproducing Isn't Such A Struggle But We Still Carry The Genes Of Our Ancestors And They Influence - Not Determine, But Influence - Our Behavior.

We Should Aim For Our Children To Be Good People, And To Live Ethical Lives That Manifest Concern For Others As Well As For Themselves.

Concern For Others

If A Being Suffers There Can Be No Moral Justification For Refusing To Take That Suffering Into Consideration. No Matter What The Nature Of The Being, The Principle Of Equality Requires That Its Suffering Be Counted Equally With The Like Suffering - Insofar As Rough Comparisons Can Be Made - Of Any Other Being. So The Limit Of Sentience Is The Only Defensible Boundary Of Concern For The Interests Of Others. To Mark This Boundary By Some Other Characteristic Like Intelligence Or Rationality Would Be To Mark It In An Arbitrary Manner. Why Not Choose Some Other Characteristic, Like Skin Color?

Herbert Spencer Is Little Read Now. Philosophers Do Not Regard Him As A Major Thinker. Social Darwinism Has Long Been In Disrepute.

We Are, Quite Literally, Gambling With The Future Of Our Planet- For The Sake Of Hamburgers

The Principles Of Ethics Come From Our Own Nature As Social, Reasoning Beings.

According To The Dominant Western Tradition, The Natural World Exists For The Benefit Of Human Beings.

Should One Break In And Free The Animals? That Is Illegal, But The Obligation To Obey The Law Is Not Absolute. It Was Justifiably Broken By Those Who Helped Runaway Slaves In The American South, To Mention Only One Possible Parallel.

I Don't Understand The Notion That Modern Farming Is Anything Do To With Nature. It's A Pretty Gross Interference With Nature. I Think It Ought To Be Governed By The Standards Of How It Affects The Individual Animals, Just As We'd Want To Deal With Institutions That Deal With Humans By How They Affect Individual Humans.

Do Business Managers Have A Commitment To Anything More Than The Success Of Their Company And To Making Money? It Would Be Hard To Say That They Do. Indeed, Many Business Leaders Deny That There Is Any Conflict Between Self-interest And The Interests Of All.

In Appropriate Circumstances We Are Justified In Using Humans To Achieve Goals (or The Goal Of Assisting Animals).

Lay Off With The 'you Reason, So You Don't Feel' Stuff, Please. I Feel, But I Also Think About What I Feel. When People Say We Should Only Feel I Am Reminded Of Göring, Who Said 'i Think With My Blood.' See Where It Led Him.

Human Decision-making Is Complex. On Our Own, Our Tendency To Yield To Short-term Temptations, And Even To Addictions, May Be Too Strong For Our Rational, Long-term Planning.

Unfortunately For Ethical Egoism, The Claim That We Will All Be Better Off If Every One Of Us Does What Is In His Or Her Own Interest Is Incorrect. This Is Shown By What Are Known As "prisoner's Dilemma" Situations, Which Are Playing An Increasingly Important Role In Discussions Of Ethical Theory... At Least On The Collective Level, Therefore, Egoism Is Self-defeating - A Conclusion Well Brought Out By Parfit In His Aforementioned Reasons And Persons.

According To Classical Utilitarianism, The Only Intrinsic Good Is Happiness; The Only Intrinsic Bad Is Pain. That Implies No Intrinsic Value In Preserving Nature, That Preserving An Endangered Plant Is Valuable Only If It Benefits Humans Or Other Animals. Intuitively, That Seems Wrong But Perhaps I Shouldn't Trust My Intuition Here.

We Are Not Especially 'interested In' Animals. Neither Of Us Had Ever Been Inordinately Fond Of Dogs, Cats, Or Horses In The Way That Many People Are. We Didn't 'love' Animals.

Every Profession Will Have Its Rogues, Of Course, No Matter What Oaths Are Sworn, But Many Health Care Professionals Have A Real Commitment To Serving The Best Interests Of Their Clients.

There Can Be No Brotherhood When Some Nations Indulge In Previously Unheard Of Luxuries, While Others Struggle To Stave Off Famine.

My Fear Is That That's What's Going To Happen With Robotics And The Military. Importantly, This Discussion Has To Involve Not Just The Scientists, But Also The Political Scientists. It's Got To Be A Multidisciplinary Discussion. You Can't Have It Be Another Repeat Of What Happened With The People Working On The Atomic Bomb.

It May Be Thought Justifiable To Require Tests On Animals Of Potentially Life-saving Drugs, But The Same Kinds Of Tests Are Used For Products Like Cosmetics, Food Coloring, And Floor Polishes. Should Thousands Of Animals Suffer So That A New Kind Of Lipstick Or Floor Wax Can Be Put On The Market? Don't We Already Have An Excess Of Most Of These Products? Who Benefits From Their Introduction, Except The Companies That Hope To Profit From Them?

Can We Really Believe That We Are Living A Good Life, An Ethically Decent Life If We Don't Do Anything Serious To Help Reduce Poverty Around The World And Help Save The Lives Of Children Or Adults Who Are Likely To Die If We Don't Increase The Amount Of Aid We Are Giving.

If We Are Prepared To Take The Life Of Another Being Merely In Order To Satisfy Our Taste For A Particular Type Of Food, Then That Being Is No More Than A Means To Our End.

Effective Altruism Is The Form Of Altruism In Which We Bring Our Rational Capacities To Bear In Order To Do The Most Good That We Can.

Were We Incapable Of Empathy – Of Putting Ourselves In The Position Of Others And Seeing That Their Suffering Is Like Our Own – Then Ethical Reasoning Would Lead Nowhere. If Emotion Without Reason Is Blind, Then Reason Without Emotion Is Impotent.

Capitalism Is Very Far From A Perfect System, But So Far We Have Yet To Find Anything That Clearly Does A Better Job Of Meeting Human Needs Than A Regulated Capitalist Economy Coupled With A Welfare And Health Care System That Meets The Basic Needs Of Those Who Do Not Thrive In The Capitalist Economy. If We Ever Do Find A Better System, I'll Be Happy To Call Myself An Anti-capitalist.

Capitalist Economy

There Is No Humane Slaughter Requirement For Wild Fish Caught And Killed At Sea, Nor, In Most Places, For Farmed Fish.

In Some Parts Of The World, What You Are Doing Is Already Apparent.according To The World Health Organization, The Warming Of The Planet Caused An Additional 140,000 Deaths In 2004, As Compared With The Number Of Deaths There Would Have Been Had Average Global Temperatures Remained As They Were During The Period 1961 To 1990. This Means That Climate Change Is Already Causing, Every Week, As Many Deaths As Occured In The Terrorist Attacks On September 11, 2001.

Evolution Has No Moral Direction. An Evolutionary Understanding Of Human Nature Can Explain The Differing Intuitions We Have When We Are Faced With An Individual Rather Than With A Mass Of People, Or With People Close To Us Rather Than With Those Far Away, But It Does Not Justify Those Feelings.

If Governments Did Not Mislead Their Citizens So Often, There Would Be Less Need For Secrecy, And If Leaders Knew They Could Not Rely On Keeping The Public In The Dark About What They Are Doing, They Would Have A Powerful Incentive To Behave Better.

Ethics Seems A Morass Which We Have To Cross, But Get Hopelessly Bogged In When We Make The Attempt.

People Tend To Care About Dogs Because They Generally Have More Experience With Dogs As Companions; But Other Animals Are As Capable Of Suffering As Dogs Are. Few People Feel Sympathy For Rats. Yet Rats Are Intelligent Animals, And There Can Be No Doubt That Rats Are Capable Of Suffering And Do Suffer From Countless Painful Experiments Performed On Them. If The Army Were To Stop Experiments On Dogs And Switch To Rats Instead, We Should Not Be Any Less Concerned.

The Only Justifiable Stopping Place For For The Expansion Of Altruism Is The Point At Which All Whose Welfare Can Be Affected By Our Actions Are Included Within The Circle Of Altruism. This Means That All Beings With The Capacity To Feel Pleasure Or Pain Should Be Included; We Can Improve Their Welfare By Increasing Their Pleasures And Diminishing Their Pains.

Racists Violate The Principle Of Equality By Giving Greater Weight To The Interests Of Members Of Their Own Race When There Is A Clash Between Their Interests And The Interests Of Those Of Another Race. Sexists Violate The Principle Of Equality By Favoring The Interests Of Their Own Sex. Similarly, Speciesists Allow The Interests Of Their Own Species To Override The Greater Interests Of Members Of Other Species. The Pattern Is Identical In Each Case.

The Most Callous, Stupid Things Were Done Just Because Regulations Required Them...it Was Not Until 1983, For Example, That U.s. Federal Agencies Stated That Substances Known To Be Caustic Irritants Such As Lye, Ammonia, And Oven Cleaners, Did Not Need To Be Tested On The Eyes Of Conscious Rabbits.

Philosophy Is Not Politics, And We Do Our Best, Within Our All-too-human Limitations, To Seek The Truth, Not To Score Points Against Opponents. There Is Little Satisfaction In Gaining An Easy Triumph Over A Weak Opponent While Ignoring Better Arguments Against Your Views.

There Is A Growing Movement Called Effective Altruism. It's Important Because It Combines Both The Heart And The Head.

There Are Some Circumstances, For Example, Where The Newborn Baby Is Severely Disabled And Where The Parents Think That It's Better That Child Should Not Live, When Killing The Newborn Baby Is Not At All Wrong ... Not Like Killing The Chimpanzee Would Be.

Even People Who Are Aware That The Traditional Family Farm Has Been Taken Over By Big Business Interests, And That Some Questionable Experiments Go On In Laboratories, Cling To A Vague Belief That Conditions Cannot Be Too Bad, Or Else The Government Or The Animal Welfare Societies Would Have Done Something About It.

As We Realize That More And More Things Have Global Impact, I Think We're Going To Get People Increasingly Wanting To Get Away From A Purely National Interest.

I'm Not Overly Alarmist About It, But I Do Think There Are Some Worrying Signs, Like The Growing Accumulation Of Wealth By A Very Small Proportion Of The Population, Plus Elections In The Us Are Much More Dominated By Money Than Anywhere Else Calling Itself A Democracy.

Suppose I Grant That Pigs And Dogs Are Self-aware To Some Degree, And Do Have Thoughts About Things In The Future. That Would Provide Some Reason For Thinking It Intrinsically Wrong To Kill Them - Not Absolutely Wrong, But Perhaps Quite A Serious Wrong. Still, There Are Other Animals - Chickens Maybe, Or Fish - Who Can Feel Pain But Don't Have Any Self-awareness Or Capacity For Thinking About The Future. For Those Animals, You Haven't Given Me Any Reason Why Painless Killing Would Be Wrong, If Other Animals Take Their Place And Lead An Equally Good Life.

We Ought To Consider The Interests Of Animals Because They Have Interests And It Is Unjustifiable To Exclude Them From The Sphere Of Moral Concern; To Make This Consideration Depend On Beneficial Consequences For Human Beings Is To Accept The Implication That The Interests Of Animals Do Not Warrant Consideration For Their Own Sakes.

My Aim Is To Advocate That We Make This Mental Switch In Respect Of Our Attitudes And Practices Towards A Very Large Group Of Beings: Members Of Species Other Than Our Own - Or, As We Popularly Though Misleadingly Call Them, Animals. In Other Words, I Am Urging That We Extend To Other Species The Basic Principle Of Equality That Most Of Us Recognize Should Be Extended To All Members Of Our Own Species.

Beginning To Reason Is Like Stepping Onto An Escalator That Leads Upward And Out Of Sight. Once We Take The First Step, The Distance To Be Traveled Is Independent Of Our Will And We Cannot Know In Advance Where We Shall End.

...the Nervous Systems Of Other Animals Were Not Artificially Constructed - As A Robot Might Be Artificially Constructed - To Mimic The Pain Behavior Of Humans. A Capacity To Feel Pain Obviously Enhances A Species' Prospects Of Survival...it Is Surely Unreasonable To Suppose That Nervous Systems That Are Virtually Identical Physiologically, Have A Common Origin And A Common Evolutionary Function, And Result In Similar Forms Of Behavior In Similar Circumstances Should Actually Operate In An Entirely Different Manner On The Level Of Subjective Feelings.

If You Earn A Lot Of Money, You Can Give Away A Lot Of Money.

The Capacity To Reason Is A Special Sort Of Capacity Because It Can Lead Us To Places That We Did Not Expect To Go.

At Present Scientists Do Not Look For Alternatives Simply Because They Do Not Care Enough About The Animals They Are Using.

Animal Factories Are One More Sign Of The Extent To Which Our Technological Capacities Have Advanced Faster Than Our Ethics.

There Are A Lot Of Weapons That We've Developed Which We've Pulled Back From - Biological Weapons, Chemical Weapons, Etc. This May Be The Case With Armed Autonomous Robotics, Where We Ultimately Pull Back From Them.

Putting The Ar Movement Directly In Opposition To The Environmental Movement, Which Should Be Our Natural Allies In Fighting Human Arrogance And Domination Of The Planet.

I'm A Utilitarian, So I Don't See The Rule Against Lying As Absolute; It's Always Subject To Some Overriding Utility Which May Prevent Its Exercise.

Ethics Is Inescapable.

Ancient Recipients Of Instant News Probably Couldn't Do Very Much About It, For Instance. Xerxes Would Still Need Three Months To Get His Army Together, And He Might Not Get Home For Years.

Nineteen Thousand Children [are] Dying Every Day. Does It Really Matter That We're Not Walking Past Them In The Street? Does It Really Matter That They're Far Away? I Don't Think It Does Make A Morally Relevant Difference.

By Ceasing To Rear And Kill Animals For Food, We Can Make So Much Extra Food Available For Humans That, Properly Distributed, It Would Eliminate Starvation And Malnutrition From This Planet. Animal Liberation Is Human Liberation Too.

No Consideration At All Is Given To The Interests Of The "pests" - The Very Word "pest" Seems To Exclude Any Concern For The Animals Themselves. But The Classification "pest" Is Our Own, And A Rabbit That Is A Pest Is As Capable Of Suffering, And As Deserving Of Consideration, As A White Rabbit Who Is A Beloved Companion Animal.

All The Particular Moral Judgments We Intuitively Make Are Likely To Derive From Discarded Religious Systems, From Warped Views Of Sex And Bodily Functions, Or From Customs Necessary For The Survival Of The Group In Social And Economic Circumstances That Now Lie In The Distant Past.

Well The Real Concept Of Basic Needs If You Cut It Right Down Are Simply The Physical Needs That Are Unavoidable For All Of Us. So To Have Enough Calories To Keep Our Bodies Going. Have Shelter From Extreme Elements. To Have Water That Is Safe To Drink, So I Think That's The Core Of It.

Cheats Prosper Until There Are Enough Who Bear Grudges Against Them To Make Sure They Do Not Prosper.

It Is Easy For Us To Criticize The Prejudices Of Our Grandfathers, From Which Our Fathers Freed Themselves. It Is More Difficult To Distance Ourselves From Our Own Views, So That We Can Dispassionately Search For Prejudices Among The Beliefs And Values We Hold

We May Feel The Pain Of Falling Back From A Level Of Affluence To Which We Have Grown Accustomed, But Most People In Developed Countries Are Still, By Historical Standards, Extraordinarily Well Off.

More Often There's A Compromise Between Ethics And Expediency.

It Is A Mistake To Assume That The Law Should Always Enforce Morality.

Of Those Who Die From Avoidable, Poverty-related Causes, Nearly 10 Million, According To Unicef, Are Children Under Five. They Die From Diseases Such As Measles, Diarrhoea, And Malaria That Are Easy And Inexpensive To Treat Or Prevent.

I Don't Think Nationalism Is Alone Holding The Field; It's In Contention With A Lot Of Different Things.

Every Day We Act In Ways That Reflect Our Ethical Judgements.

Christianity Is Our Foe. If Animal Rights Is To Succeed, We Must Destroy The Judeo-christian Religious Tradition.

As For Cages Themselves, An Ordinary Citizen Who Kept Dogs In Similar Conditions For Their Entire Lives Would Risk Prosecution For Cruelty. A Pig Producer Who Keeps An Animal Of Comparable Intelligence In This Manner, However, Is More Likely To Be Rewarded With A Tax Concession Or, In Some Countries, A Direct Government Subsidy.

The Animal Liberation Movement Is Saying That Where Animals And Humans Have Similar Interests - We Might Take The Interest In Avoiding Physical Pain As An Example, For It Is An Interest That Humans Clearly Share With Other Animals - Those Interests Are To Be Counted Equally, With No Automatic Discount Just Because One Of The Beings Is Not Human.

For Most Humans, Especially For Those In Modern Urban And Suburban Communities, The Most Direct Form Of Contact With Nonhuman Animals Is At Meal Time: We Eat Them.... The Use And Abuse Of Animals Raised For Food Far Exceeds, In Sheer Numbers Of Animals Affected, Any Other Kind Of Mistreatment.

Marx Saw That Capitalism Is A Wasteful, Irrational System, A System Which Controls Us When We Should Be Controlling It. That Insight Is Still Valid; But We Can Now See That The Construction Of A Free And Equal Society Is A More Difficult Task Than Marx Realized.

Charitable Giving Is A Huge Sector In The United States. It Amounts To $350 Billion A Year. And Yet, I Can't Help Feeling That A Lot Of That Is Wasted Because People Have Not Been Thinking About How To Do It As Effectively As Possible.

There Are Many Cases In Which Gifted Children Have Done Great Things Without Special School Programs. There Are Also Gifted Kids Who Have Been To Special Schools And Achieved Nothing That Has Benefited The World As A Whole. Without Solid Evidence, I Have No Confidence That Funding School Programs For The Intellectually Gifted Would Do More Good Than The Most Cost-effective Programs To Help People In Extreme Poverty.

Sometimes Animals May Suffer More Because Of Their More Limited Understanding. If, For Instance, We Are Taking Prisoners In Wartime We Can Explain To Them That Although They Must Submit To Capture, Search, And Confinement, They Will Not Otherwise Be Harmed And Will Be Set Free At The Conclusion Of Hostilities. If We Capture Wild Animals, However, We Cannot Explain That We Are Not Threatening Their Lives. A Wild Animal Cannot Distinguish An Attempt To Overpower And Confine From An Attempt To Kill; The One Causes As Much Terror As The Other.

Hebrew Word For "charity" Tzedakah, Simply Means "justice" And As This Suggests, For Jews, Giving To The Poor Is No Optional Extra But An Essential Part Of Living A Just Life.

We Need To Recognise That What Really Matters Isn't Buying More And More Consumer Goods, But Family, Friends, And Knowing That We Are Doing Something Worthwhile With Our Lives. Helping To Reduce The Appalling Consequences Of World Poverty Should Be Part Of That Reassessment.

...the Proposed Air Force And Army Experiments Were Designed So That Many Animals Would Suffer And Die Without Any Certainty That This Suffering And Death Would Save A Single Human Life Or Benefit Humans In Any Way At All; But The Same Can Be Said Of Millions Of Their Experiments Performed Each Year In The United States Alone.

To Give Preference To The Life Of A Being Simply Because That Being Is A Member Of Our Species Would Put Us In The Same Position As Racists Who Give Preference To Those Who Are Members Of Their Race.

All The Arguments To Prove Man's Superiority Cannot Shatter This Hard Fact: In Suffering, The Animals Are Our Equals.

Science Does Not Stand Still, And Neither Does Philosophy, Although The Latter Has A Tendency To Walk In Circles.

Whatever The Reason, For Most Of The Present Century, The Literature And Publicity Of The Old Established [animal Welfare] Groups Made A Significant Contribution To The Prevailing Attitude That Dogs And Cats And Wild Animals Need Protection, But Other Animals Do Not. Thus People Came To Think Of "animal Welfare" As Something For Kindly Ladies Who Are Dotty About Cats, And Not As A Cause Founded On Basic Principles Of Justice And Morality.

Of Course, Infanticide Needs To Be Strictly Legally Controlled And Rare - But It Should Not Be Ruled Out, Any More Than Abortion.

Extreme Poverty Is Not Only A Condition Of Unsatisfied Material Needs. It Is Often Accompanied By A Degrading State Of Powerlessness.

In A Situation Where Many National Leaders Do The Same Thing And Look Out For National Interests, And With An Issue Like Global Warming, You're Likely To Get No Solution, So I Think You Have To Have Some Kind Of Ethical Trump On Some Of Those Issues.

Had Rumsfeld Said At Any Time 'get Me A Report On What's Going On', He Could Have Had It. You're Right, It Depends On Choices That We Make, Which Parts Of The World We Want To Be In Immediate Contact With.

Even In The Era Of Aids, Sex Raises No Unique Moral Issues At All. Decisions About Sex May Involve Considerations About Honesty, Concern For Others, Prudence, And So On, But There Is Nothing Special About Sex In This Respect, For The Same Could Be Said Of Decisions About Driving A Car. (in Fact, The Moral Issues Raised By Driving A Car, Both From An Environmental And From A Safety Point Of View, Are Much More Serious Than Those Raised By Sex.)

I Am Not Saying That Factory Farming Is The Same As The Holocaust Or The Slave Trade, But It's Clear That There Is An Immense Amount Of Suffering In It, And Just As We Think That The Nazis Were Wrong To Ignore The Suffering Of Their Victims, So We Are Wrong To Ignore The Sufferings Of Our Victims.

One Thing Is Certain: You Will Find Plenty Of Worthwhile Things To Do. You Will Not Be Bored, Or Lack Fulfillment In Your Life. Most Important Of All, You Will Know That You Have Not Lived And Died For Nothing, Because You Will Have Become Part Of The Great Tradition Of Those Who Have Responded To The Amount Of Pain And Suffering In The Universe By Trying To Make The World A Better Place.

Worthwhile Things

The Hope Of Internet Anarchists Was That Repressive Governments Would Have Only Two Options: Accept The Internet With Its Limitless Possibilities Of Spreading Information, Or Restrict Internet Access To The Ruling Elite And Turn Your Back On The 21st Century, As North Korea Has Done.

Internet Access

Becoming A Vegan Is A Sure Way Of Completely Avoiding Participation In The Abuse Of Farmed Animals. Vegans Are A Living Demonstration Of The Fact That We Do Not Need To Exploit Animals For Food.

That's A Central Part Of Philosophy, Of Ethics. What Do I Owe To Strangers? What Do I Owe To My Family? What Is It To Live A Good Life? Those Are Questions Which We Face As Individuals.

But I Think The Majority Of Cows, And Even More So Chickens And Pigs, Are Leading Pretty Miserable Lives.

Interest In Business Ethics Courses Has Surged, And Student Activities At Leading Business Schools Are More Focused Than Ever Before On Making Business Serve Long-term Social Values.

When You Look At Food As An Ethical Issue In The Christian Tradition, You Don't Find Very Much About It. You Don't Find, As You Do In The Jewish Or Islamic Or Hindu Traditions, A Lot Of Restrictions Saying You Can Eat This But You Can't Eat That. But What You Do Find Is The Idea That Gluttony Is A Sin And That It's Something That We Ought To Be Ashamed Of.

The Prescription Of The Equality Of Human Beings Is Not A Description Of An Alleged Actual Equality Among Humans: It Is A Prescription Of How We Should Treat Human Beings.

If We Ever Do Find A Better System, I'll Be Happy To Call Myself An Anti-capitalist.

If You Go Back In Time You'll Find Tribes That Were Essentially Only Concerned With Their Own Tribal Members. If You Were A Member Of Another Tribe, You Could Be Killed With Impunity.

Go Back In Time

I Suppose What's Happened Recently Has Confirmed Suspicions I Voiced In The Book, And I Think Made Clearer Some Of Those Things That I Point Out. For Instance I Have A Section Of The Book Where I Talk About The Possibility Of Torture.

In The Sense That You're Not At The Centre Of Power, Like A President Or Prime Minister Of A Major Power, Everyone Is Marginalised; My Position Doesn't Isn't Unique In That Respect. I Think There Are Different Sorts Of Relevance In Different Contexts.

I Do Not Believe That It Could Never Be Justifiable To Experiment On A Brain-damaged Human.

Pain Is Pain, And The Importance Of Preventing Unnecessary Pain And Suffering Does Not Diminish Because The Being That Suffers Is Not A Member Of Our Own Species.

If We're Going To Live An Ethical Life, It's Not Enough Just To Follow The Thou-shalt-nots. … If We Have Enough, We Have To Share Some Of That With People Who Have So Little.

When Children See Animals In A Circus, They Learn That Animals Exist For Our Amusement. Quite Apart From The Cruelty Involved In Training And Confining These Animals, The Whole Idea That We Should Enjoy The Humiliating Spectacle Of An Elephant Or Lion Made To Perform Circus Tricks Shows A Lack Of Respect For The Animals As Individuals.

To Protest About Bullfighting In Spain, The Eating Of Dogs In South Korea, Or The Slaughter Of Baby Seals In Canada, While Continuing To Eat Eggs From Hens Who Have Spent Their Lives Crammed Into Cages, Or Veal From Calves Who Have Been Deprived Of Their Mothers, Their Proper Diet, And The Freedom To Lie Down With Their Legs Extended, Is Like Denouncing Apertheid In South Africa While Asking Your Neighbors Not To Sell Their Houses To Blacks.

If You're Buying Animal Products And Can Go To The Farm And Actually See How The Animals Are Looked After, Yes, That's An Important Point. That's Definitely The Best Way Of Assuring Yourself That The Animals Are Being Well Treated.

It Is An Indication Of The Extent To Which People Are Now Isolated From The Animals They Eat That Children Brought Up On Storybooks That Lead Them To Think Of A Farm As A Place Where Animals Wander Around Freely In Idyllic Conditions Might Be Able To Live Out Their Entire Lives Without Ever Being Forced To Revise This Rosy Image.

Somebody Who Eats Twice As Much Factory-farmed Products As He Or She Needs To Is Clearly Doing Twice As Much Damage To The Planet. From A Utilitarian Point Of View, That's Twice As Bad.

I Don't Understand The Notion That Modern Farming Is Anything Do To With Nature. It's A Pretty Gross Interference With Nature.

If Possessing A Higher Degree Of Intelligence Does Not Entitle One Human To Use Another For His Or Her Own Ends, How Can It Entitle Humans To Exploit Non-humans?

Scholars Have Long Dreamed Of A Universal Library Containing Everything That Has Ever Been Written.

In The Past 20 Years Alone, It Adds Up To More Death Than Were Caused By All The Civil And International Wars Adn Government Repression Of The Entire Twentieth Century, The Century Of Hitler And Stalin. How Much Would We Give To Prevent Those Horrors? Yet How Little Are We Doing To Prevent Today's Even Larger Toll And All The Misery That It Involves? I Believe That If You Read This Book To The End, And Look Honestly And Carefully At Our Situation, Assessing Both The Facts And The Ethical Arguments, You Will Agree That We Must Act.

I Believe That In This New World That We Live In, We Often Have A Responsibility, You Know, To Actually Go Beyond The Thou Shalt Nots - That Is, The Not Harming Others - And Say We Can Help Others And We Should Be Helping Others.

I Believe That Nationalism Is A Very Strong Force, But There Are Other Forces Operating; There Are Tendencies Pushing Towards A Larger Picture, Especially In Europe, I Think; But I Still Think Nationalism Is Real.

Remember That Not Everyone Is As Strong As You Are. Be Mindful Of Human Weakness, And Of The Fact That It May Be More Important, In The Long Run, To Get Many People Taking Steps In The Right Direction Than To Have Fewer Achieving The Ideal.

In My World Of The People Who Study War And Defense Issues, We Simply Did Not Talk About Robotics. We Do Not Talk About It Because It's Seen As Mere Science Fiction. It's Cold, Hard, Metallic Reality.

If Animals Are No Longer Quite Outside The Moral Sphere, They Are Still In A Special Section Near The Outer Rim. Their Interests Are Allowed To Count Only When They Do Not Clash With Human Interests. If There Is A Clash - Even A Clash Between A Lifetime Of Suffering For A Nonhuman Animal And The Gastronomic Preference Of A Human Being - The Interests Of The Nonhuman Are Disregarded. The Moral Attitudes Of The Past Are Too Deeply Embedded In Our Thought And Our Practices To Be Upset By A Mere Change In Our Knowledge Of Ourselves And Of Other Animals.

Knowing That We Can Control Our Own Behaviour Makes It More Likely That We Will.

Becoming A Vegetarian Is Not Merely A Symbolic Gesture. Nor Is It An Attempt To Isolate Oneself From The Ugly Realities Of The World, To Keep Oneself Pure And So Without Responsibility For The Cruelty And Carnage All Around. Becoming A Vegetarian Is A Highly Practical And Effective Step One Can Take Toward Ending Both The Killing Of Nonhuman Animals And The Infliction Of Suffering On Them.

I Honestly Don't Know, But If America Continues To Refuse To Reduce Its Greenhouse Gas Emissions, I See A Bleak Future Not Only For American Society, But For The World As A Whole. This Is A Global Problem That Is Not Going Away, And The United States Is An Obstacle To Solving It.

Forests And Meat Animals Compete For The Same Land. The Prodigious Appetite Of The Affluent Nations For Meat Means That Agribusiness Can Pay More Than Those Who Want To Preserve Or Restore The Forest. We Are, Quite Literally, Gambling With The Future Of Our Planet – For The Sake Of Hamburgers

I Don't Think There's Anything In The Compromise That Means That There's A Clash Of Ethics.

People May Hope That The Meat They Buy Came From An Animal Who Died Without Pain, But They Do Not Really Want To Know About It. Yet Those Who, By Their Purchases, Require Animals To Be Killed Do Not Deserve To Be Shielded From This Or Any Other Aspect Of The Production Of The Meat They Buy.

If Penicillin Had Been Judged By Its Toxicity To Guinea Pigs, It Might Never Have Been Used By Man.

We Certainly Would Resolve The Problems Of The Charities That Are Working In Areas Where They Can Do The Most Good. So If You Consider That The U.s. Foreign Aid Budget Is 30 Billion, Yes, We Could Make A Major Contribution To Reducing Global Poverty, Start To Deal Much Better With Some Of The Other Big Environmental Problems That The World Faces. So I Think We Could Solve A Lot Of Problems.

So Why Don't We Make Ourselves The Last Generation On Earth? If We Would All Agree To Have Ourselves Sterilized Then No Sacrifices Would Be Required - We Could Party Our Way Into Extinction!

After 9/11, The American Red Cross Received More Than Half A Billion Dollars In Donations To Help The Victims Of The Terrorist Attacks. The Families Of The Victims Were Already Well-provided For By Various Government Funds, So Red Cross Simply Drew A Line Across Lower Manhattan And Offered Everyone There Financial Assistance, Whether They Needed It Or Not.

I Don't Think There's Much Point In Bemoaning The State Of The World Unless There's Some Way You Can Think Of To Improve It. Otherwise, Don't Bother Writing A Book; Go And Find A Tropical Island And Lie In The Sun.

Will We Rise To The Challenge And Prove Our Capacity For Genuine Altruism By Ending Our Ruthless Exploitation Of The Species In Our Power, Not Because We Are Forced To Do So By Rebels Or Terrorists, But Because We Recognize That Our Position Is Morally Indefensible?

Torturing A Human Being Is Almost Always Wrong, But It Is Not Absolutely Wrong.

Surely There Will Be Some Nonhuman Animals Whose Lives, By Any Standards, Are More Valuable Than The Lives Of Some Humans.

Typically, Defenders Of Experiments On Animals Do Not Deny That Animals Suffer. They Cannot Deny The Animals' Suffering, Because They Need To Stress The Similarities Between Humans And Other Animals In Order To Claim That Their Experiments May Have Some Relevance For Human Purposes. The Experimenter Who Forces Rats To Choose Between Starvation And Electric Shock To See If They Develop Ulcers (which They Do) Does So Because The Rat Has A Nervous System Very Similar To A Human Being's, And Presumably Feels An Electric Shock In A Similar Way.

I Would Like Us To Think About It More Explicitly, And Not Take Our Intuitions As The Given Of Ethics, But Rather To Reflect On It, And Be More Open About The Fact That Something Is An Ethical Issues And Think What We Ought To Do About It.

The New Freedom Of Expression Brought By The Internet Goes Far Beyond Politics. People Relate To Each Other In New Ways, Posing Questions About How We Should Respond To People When All That We Know About Them Is What We Have Learned Through A Medium That Permits All Kinds Of Anonymity And Deception.

Looking Back On My Career, I Think I've Been Extremely Fortunate To Be In The Right Place At The Right Time In Order To Have The Influence That I Did.

If Zoos Are Like Arks, Then Rare Animals Are Like Passengers On A Voyage Of The Damned, Never To Find A Port That Will Let Them Dock Or A Land In Which They Can Live In Peace. The Real Solution, Of Course, Is To Preserve The Wild Nature That Created These Animals And Has The Power To Sustain Them. But If It Is Really True That We Are Inevitably Moving Towards A World In Which Mountain Gorillas Can Survive Only In Zoos, Then We Must Ask Whether It Is Really Better For Them To Live In Artificial Environments Of Our Design Than Not To Be Born At All.

What One Generation Finds Ridiculous, The Next Accepts; And The Third Shudders When It Looks Back On What The First Did.

My Work Is Based On The Assumption That Clarity And Consistency In Our Moral Thinking Is Likely, In The Long Run, To Lead Us To Hold Better Views On Ethical Issues.

Dolphins Are Social Mammals, Capable Of Enjoying Their Lives. They Form Close Bonds With Other Members Of Their Group.

Animal Intelligence

With The Eventual Acceptance Of Darwin's Theory We Reach A Modern Understanding Of Nature, One Which Has Since Then Changed In Detail Rather Than In Fundamentals. Only Those Who Prefer Religious Faith To Beliefs Based On Reasoning And Evidence Can Still Maintain That The Human Species Is The Special Darling Of The Entire Universe, Or That Other Animals Were Created To Provide Us With Food, Or That We Have Divine Authority Over Them, And Divine Permission To Kill Them.

Those Who Purchase Meat, Fur, And Leather Have No Right To Be Shielded From The Sights And Sounds Of The Slaughterhouses From Which These Products Were Produced.

We Should Give The Same Respect To The Lives Of Animals As We Do To The Lives Of Humans.

Habits Of Thought Lead Us To Brush Aside Descriptions Of Cruelty To Animals As Emotional, For "animal-lovers Only"; Or If Not That, Then Anyway The Problem Is So Trivial In Comparison To The Problems Of Human Beings That No Sensible Person Could Give It Time And Attention. This Too Is A Prejudice - For How Can One Know That A Problem Is Trivial Until One Has Taken The Time To Examine Its Extent?

If It Is In Our Power To Prevent Something Bad From Happening, Without Thereby Sacrificing Anything Of Comparable Moral Importance, We Ought, Morally, To Do It.

The Belief That The Animals Exist Because God Created Them - And That He Created Them So We Can Better Meet Our Needs - Is Contrary To Our Scientific Understanding Of Evolution And, Of Course, To The Fossil Record, Which Shows The Existence Of Non-human Primates And Other Animals Millions Of Years Before There Were Any Human Beings At All.

Egoism... Is Not Eliminated By Economic Reorganization Or By Material Abundance. When Basic Needs Are Satisfied, New 'needs' Emerge. In Our Society, People Want No Simply Clothes, But Fashionable Clothes; Not Shelter, But A House To Display Their Wealth And Taste.

The Goal Of Maximizing The Welfare Of All May Be Better Achieved By An Ethic That Accepts Our Inclinations And Harnesses Them So That, Taken As A Whole, The System Works To Everyone's Advantage.

So, Basically, My View Is I Don't Want To Support The Exploitation Of Animals, And Within Reason, I Will Do What I Can To Avoid It, But It's Not Like It's A Religion For Me. It's Not Like I Consider I'm Polluted If Somehow Some Bit Of Milk Or Cheese Or Something Passes My Lips.

The Internet, Like The Steam Engine, Is A Technological Breakthrough That Changed The World.

What Is Faith? If You Believe Something Because You Have Evidence For It, Or Rational Argument, That Is Not Faith. So Faith Seems To Be Believing Something Despite The Absence Of Evidence Or Rational Argument For It.

Sometimes We Know The Best Thing To Do, But Fail To Do It. New Year's Resolutions Are Often Like That. We Make Resolutions Because We Know It Would Be Better For Us To Lose Weight, Or Get Fit, Or Spend More Time With Our Children. The Problem Is That A Resolution Is Generally Easier To Break Than It Is To Keep.

Without In Any Way Minimising The Economic And Psychological Blow That People Experience When They Lose Their Jobs, The Unemployed In Affluent Countries Still Have A Safety Net, In The Form Of Social Security Payments, And Usually Free Healthcare And Free Education For Their Children. They Also Have Sanitation And Safe Drinking Water.

The Problem Is Not With The Athletes, But With Us. No Matter How Blatant The Drug Use May Be, We Don't Stop Watching The Tour De France. Maybe We Should Just Turn Off The Television And Get On Our Own Bikes.

If They [animals] Were Really To Get The Equal Consideration That I Believe They Should, We Wouldn't Have Commercial Animal Production In This Country.

Philosophy Ought To Question The Basic Assumptions Of The Age. Thinking Through, Critically And Carefully, What Most Of Us Take For Granted Is, I Believe, The Chief Task Of Philosophy, And The Task That Makes Philosophy A Worthwhile Activity.

My View Is Different From This, Only To The Extent That If A Decision Is Taken, By The Parents And Doctors, That It Is Better That A Baby Should Die, I Believe It Should Be Possible To Carry Out That Decision, Not Only By Withholding Or Withdrawing Life-support - Which Can Lead To The Baby Dying Slowly From Dehydration Or From An Infection - But Also By Taking Active Steps To End The Baby's Life Swiftly And Humanely.

It's Also Much Clearer How Much Damage The Occupation Of Iraq Is Doing To America's Reputation And Prestige Around The World; And That's Just Starting Now To Hit Home In The United States.

If You Have The Abilities To Earn A Lot Of Money And If You Have The Character To Persist In Giving That To The Most Effective Charities You Can Find, Then That May Be The Best Thing That You Can Do. And - Also, If You Do Become A Wall Street Banker, I Think You Need To Be Aware Of What You're Doing In Terms Of Your Daily Work, Not Just Earning Money To Give A Lot Away. But You Need To Think About - Am I Harming People Through The Work That I'm Doing?

I Don't See How Anyone Could Really Think That If You Have A Choice Between Saving The Life Of One Person And Saving The Lives Of A Million People, To Say - Well, I've Saved The One - Can You Really Take That Seriously? I Can't.

What You Could Say, And What I Do Argue In The Book, Is That He Doesn't Have As Much Concern For The Lives Of Iraqis As He Does For The Lives Of Americans, Or Even Frozen American Embryos.

When Fish Experience Something That Would Cause Other Animals Physical Pain, They Behave In Ways Suggestive Of Pain, And The Change In Behaviour May Last Several Hours.

History Is Not Going To Look Kindly On Us If We Just Keep Our Head In The Sand On Armed Autonomous Robotics Issue Because It Sounds Too Science Fiction.

I'd Much Rather Be Part Of A Society Which Greatly Honors And Respects People Who Are Altruists And Who Are Effective In Their Altruism, Than One That Either Admires People Because They're, You Know, Celebrity Movie Stars Or Because They're Super Wealthy Just No Matter What They Do With Their Wealth Because I Think We Ought To Try To Encourage More People To Act In That Way.

Personal Purity Isn’t Really The Issue. Not Supporting Animal Abuse – And Persuading Others Not To Support It – Is.

If We Are Concerned About The Exploitation Of Human Workers In Countries With Low Standards Of Worker Protection, We Should Also Be Concerned About The Treatment Of Even More Defenceless Non-human Animals.

An Animal Experiment Cannot Be Justifiable Unless The Experiment Is So Important That The Use Of A Brain-damaged Human Would Be Justifiable.

Each Of Us Spends Money On Things That We Do Not Really Need. You Could Take The Money You're Spending On Those Unnecessary Things And Give It To This Organization The Against Malaria Foundation Which Would Take The Money You Had Given And Use It To Buy Nets To Protect Children. And We Know Reliably That If We Provide Nets, They're Used, And They Reduce The Number Of Children Dying From Malaria. Fortunately More And More People Are Understanding This Idea, And The Result Is A Growing Movement Effective Altruism.

Take For Example Providing A Guide Dog For A Blind Person. That's A Good Thing To Do, Right? All Right. It Is A Good Thing To Do. But You Have To Think What Else You Could Do With The Resources. It Costs About $40,000 To Train A Guide Dog And Train The Recipient So That The Guide Dog Can Be An Effective Help To A Blind Person. It Costs Somewhere Between 20 And $50 To Cure A Blind Person In A Developing Country If They Have Trachoma. So You Do The Sums, And You Could Provide One Guide Dog For One Blind American Or You Could Cure Between 400 And 2,000 People Of Blindness.

Bush Sees The Evil As Out There In The Wider World, Residing In People Who 'hate Freedom'. Look At His Immediate Response To The Pictures Of Prisoner Abuse; This Is Not What Americans Do, These Are Not Our Values.

We Wait Until Pandora's Box Is Opened Before We Say, "wow, Maybe We Should Understand What's In That Box." This Is The Story Of Humans On Every Problem.

The Pentagon Said That These Prisoners Were Kept In Accordance With The Geneva Convention, And Of Course I Was Not Reassured By That, But I Couldn't Prove That That Was Wrong; So We're Clearer About That.

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