Bob Fischer
Biographic Data
| ID | 3974170 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bob Fischer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bob |
| FAMILY NAME | Fischer |
| SIGNATURE | FISCHER B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Texas State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9605-393X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Interspecies Welfare Comparisons
Interspecies welfare comparisons—judgments about whether one individual of a given species is better or worse off than another of a different species—are behind a wide range of moral and practical decisions. However, it remains unclear how to make such comparisons. This paper surveys the emerging literature on this problem. It distinguishes interspecies comparisons from related questions about individual welfare assessment and normative weighting…
Moral Parliament Tool for Allocating Healthcare Resources
The Moral Parliament Tool provides a framework for modeling participants' general moral views and simulating democratic deliberation among them. We show how the tool can be used to support democratic decisions about how to allocate healthcare resources. We apply the tool to three different bioethics case studies, showing how a hypothetical moral parliament composed of delegates of diverse worldviews would decide to distribute resources. This appr…
Counting subjects
We normally assume that there’s just one conscious individual per animal. Some question this, suggesting that there may be nonhuman taxonomic groups whose normal, adult members house more than one conscious subject. Call this the multitudes view (‘MV)’. Our aim is methodological: we hope to understand how we might assess whether MV is true. To that end, we distinguish two strategies for counting conscious subjects: the duplication strategy and th…
Minds Matter
Many claim that there is an important relationship between consciousness and welfare. Call this general view phenomenalism . One way of fleshing out phenomenalism is to hold that consciousness is what makes one the type of entity that can be noninstrumentally better or worse off in the first place. Consciousness is at least a necessary condition on welfare subjecthood . A different account holds that even if consciousness is not necessary for wel…
Navigating Uncertainty about Sentience
Consider the principle that, given two actions A and B, where A affects some number of (merely) possibly sentient individuals (e.g., shrimp) and B affects some number of clearly sentient individuals (e.g., humans), A and B are morally equivalent if their expected values are equivalent. This recently defended principle can have radical implications. This article considers alternatives to this principle that are based on two kinds of risk aversion—…
Farming insects in the zoopolis
The Ethical Implications of Panpsychism
The history of philosophy is a history of moral circle expansion. This history correlates with a history of expansionism about consciousness. Recently, expansionism about consciousness has exploded: to invertebrates, to plants, to logic gates, and to fundamental entities. The last of these expansions stems from a surge of interest in panpsychism. In an exploratory spirit, this paper considers some largely uncharted territory: the ethical implicat…
Monetizing Animal Welfare Impacts for Benefit–Cost Analysis
Animal welfare is often ignored in decision-making, despite widespread agreement about its importance. This is partly because of a lack of quantitative methods to assess the impacts of policies on humans and nonhumans alike on a common scale. At the same time, recent work in economics, philosophy, and animal welfare science has made progress on the fundamental theoretical challenge of estimating the well-being potential of different species on a …
Capacity for Welfare across Species
The principle of equal consideration of interests—according to which similar interests deserve similar weights in our moral deliberations, regardless of whose interests they are—appears to have uncomfortable implications. If, for instance, humans and hens have equally strong interests in continued existence, then in lifeboat cases where we have to choose between saving humans and saving equal numbers of hens, it could work out that, according to …
It/He/They/She
Many people in animal studies favor the use of gendered pronouns for nonhuman animals, even in cases where the animal’s sex is unknown. By contrast, many people in gender studies favor the use of the default singular they for humans. Our aim is to show that the most obvious ways of fitting these pronoun norm proposals together—a hybrid option (“he”/“she” for animals, “they” for humans) and a uniform one (i.e., default to the singular they when ge…
Internally Triggered Experiences of Hedonic Valence in Nonhuman Animals
Do any nonhuman animals have hedonically valenced experiences not directly caused by stimuli in their current environment? Do they, like us humans, experience anticipated or previously experienced pains and pleasures as respectively painful and pleasurable? We review evidence from comparative neuroscience about hippocampus-dependent simulation in relation to this question. Hippocampal sharp-wave ripples and theta oscillations have been found to i…
Hybrid theories, psychological plausibility, and the human/animal divide
Intersubstrate Welfare Comparisons
In the future, when we compare the welfare of a being of one substrate (say, a human) with the welfare of another (say, an artificial intelligence system), we will be making an intersubstrate welfare comparison. In this paper, we argue that intersubstrate welfare comparisons are important, difficult, and potentially tractable. The world might soon contain a vast number of sentient or otherwise significant beings of different substrates, and moral…
Morality on holiday
Despite the progression of animal welfare within the tourism literature and the industry itself, a significant change in public behaviour remains to be seen. Anthropocentric views of animals as objects are still widespread. This paper proposes a new approach to engaging the public in ethical behaviours by meeting visitors where they are in terms of their values and priorities. Drawing on Susan Wolf’s work, we propose a realistic line of attack to…
Disgust and the logic of contamination
Many people feel compelled to disassociate themselves from wrongdoing. We call judgments to the effect “disassociation intuitions.” Do disassociation intuitions have a common cause? Why do they seem so obvious and resistant to countervailing reasons? How did they become so widespread? Here, we argue that disassociation intuitions are a natural product of gene‐culture co‐evolution. We also consider the mechanism that gene‐culture co‐evolution empl…
Should we connect children to nature in the Anthropocene
To most conservationists and many parents, it seems obvious that it is a good thing to teach children to value the natural world. Not only does connection with nature support their development and well‐being, but it also supports ongoing efforts by humans to sustain the natural world. However, there are incontrovertible trends towards a diminution of the state of nature as a consequence of human activities. In this context, as a thought experimen…
Animal Ethics
There are many introductions to the animal ethics literature. There aren't many introductions to the practice of doing animal ethics. Bob Fischer's Animal Ethics: A Contemporary Introduction fills that gap, offering an accessible model of how animal ethics can be done today. The book takes up classic issues, such as the ethics of eating meat and experimenting on animals, but tackles them in an empirically informed and nuanced way. It also covers …
The Freegan Challenge to Veganism
There is a surprising consensus among vegan philosophers that freeganism —eating animal-based foods going to waste—is permissible. Some ethicists even argue that vegans should be freegans. In this paper, we offer a novel challenge to freeganism drawing upon Donaldson and Kymlicka’s ‘zoopolitical’ approach, which supports ‘restricted freeganism’. On this position, it’s prima facie wrong to eat the corpses of domesticated animals, as they are membe…
Quantifying the Valuation of Animal Welfare Among Americans
The Routledge Handbook of Animal Ethics
Boycotting and Public Mourning
Ethics of Eating Animals
Dignitarian Hunting
Faced with the choice between supporting industrial plant agriculture and hunting, Tom Regan’s rights view can be plausibly developed in a way that permits a form of hunting we call “dignitarian.” To motivate this claim, we begin by showing how the empirical literature on animal deaths in plant agriculture suggests that a non-trivial amount of hunting would not add to animal harm. We discuss how Tom Regan’s miniride principle appears to morally p…
Field Deaths in Plant Agriculture
Is Abolitionism Guilty of Racism? A Reply to Cordeiro-Rodrigues
Bugging the Strict Vegan
Morality on holiday
Despite the progression of animal welfare within the tourism literature and the industry itself, a significant change in public behaviour remains to be seen. Anthropocentric views of animals as objects are still widespread. This paper proposes a new approach to engaging the public in ethical behaviours by meeting visitors where they are in terms of their values and priorities. Drawing on Susan Wolf’s work, we propose a realistic line of attack to…
Intersubstrate Welfare Comparisons
In the future, when we compare the welfare of a being of one substrate (say, a human) with the welfare of another (say, an artificial intelligence system), we will be making an intersubstrate welfare comparison. In this paper, we argue that intersubstrate welfare comparisons are important, difficult, and potentially tractable. The world might soon contain a vast number of sentient or otherwise significant beings of different substrates, and moral…
The Freegan Challenge to Veganism
There is a surprising consensus among vegan philosophers that freeganism —eating animal-based foods going to waste—is permissible. Some ethicists even argue that vegans should be freegans. In this paper, we offer a novel challenge to freeganism drawing upon Donaldson and Kymlicka’s ‘zoopolitical’ approach, which supports ‘restricted freeganism’. On this position, it’s prima facie wrong to eat the corpses of domesticated animals, as they are membe…
Is Abolitionism Guilty of Racism? A Reply to Cordeiro-Rodrigues
Modal Epistemology After Rationalism
Bugging the Strict Vegan
Modal Epistemology After Rationalism
Introduction to Modal Epistemology After Rationalism
Modal Empiricism
Categorical Desires and the Badness of Animal Death
Philosophy Comes to Dinner
It's a good time to be in animal and food ethics: several strong volumes have been published in the last few years, and more are yet to come. Among them, however, Philosophy Comes to Dinner (PCD) deserves special attention. If you work in animal or food ethics, you should read it.The editors' introduction contains contributor-authored abstracts, which Routledge has made freely available online.1 So, I won't summarize PCD's contents in any detail.…
Dignitarian Hunting
Faced with the choice between supporting industrial plant agriculture and hunting, Tom Regan’s rights view can be plausibly developed in a way that permits a form of hunting we call “dignitarian.” To motivate this claim, we begin by showing how the empirical literature on animal deaths in plant agriculture suggests that a non-trivial amount of hunting would not add to animal harm. We discuss how Tom Regan’s miniride principle appears to morally p…
Field Deaths in Plant Agriculture
Is Abolitionism Guilty of Racism? A Reply to Cordeiro-Rodrigues
The Routledge Handbook of Animal Ethics
Boycotting and Public Mourning
Ethics of Eating Animals
Quantifying the Valuation of Animal Welfare Among Americans
Animal Ethics
There are many introductions to the animal ethics literature. There aren't many introductions to the practice of doing animal ethics. Bob Fischer's Animal Ethics: A Contemporary Introduction fills that gap, offering an accessible model of how animal ethics can be done today. The book takes up classic issues, such as the ethics of eating meat and experimenting on animals, but tackles them in an empirically informed and nuanced way. It also covers …
The Freegan Challenge to Veganism
There is a surprising consensus among vegan philosophers that freeganism —eating animal-based foods going to waste—is permissible. Some ethicists even argue that vegans should be freegans. In this paper, we offer a novel challenge to freeganism drawing upon Donaldson and Kymlicka’s ‘zoopolitical’ approach, which supports ‘restricted freeganism’. On this position, it’s prima facie wrong to eat the corpses of domesticated animals, as they are membe…
Disgust and the logic of contamination
Many people feel compelled to disassociate themselves from wrongdoing. We call judgments to the effect “disassociation intuitions.” Do disassociation intuitions have a common cause? Why do they seem so obvious and resistant to countervailing reasons? How did they become so widespread? Here, we argue that disassociation intuitions are a natural product of gene‐culture co‐evolution. We also consider the mechanism that gene‐culture co‐evolution empl…
Should we connect children to nature in the Anthropocene
To most conservationists and many parents, it seems obvious that it is a good thing to teach children to value the natural world. Not only does connection with nature support their development and well‐being, but it also supports ongoing efforts by humans to sustain the natural world. However, there are incontrovertible trends towards a diminution of the state of nature as a consequence of human activities. In this context, as a thought experimen…
It/He/They/She
Many people in animal studies favor the use of gendered pronouns for nonhuman animals, even in cases where the animal’s sex is unknown. By contrast, many people in gender studies favor the use of the default singular they for humans. Our aim is to show that the most obvious ways of fitting these pronoun norm proposals together—a hybrid option (“he”/“she” for animals, “they” for humans) and a uniform one (i.e., default to the singular they when ge…
Internally Triggered Experiences of Hedonic Valence in Nonhuman Animals
Do any nonhuman animals have hedonically valenced experiences not directly caused by stimuli in their current environment? Do they, like us humans, experience anticipated or previously experienced pains and pleasures as respectively painful and pleasurable? We review evidence from comparative neuroscience about hippocampus-dependent simulation in relation to this question. Hippocampal sharp-wave ripples and theta oscillations have been found to i…
Hybrid theories, psychological plausibility, and the human/animal divide
Intersubstrate Welfare Comparisons
In the future, when we compare the welfare of a being of one substrate (say, a human) with the welfare of another (say, an artificial intelligence system), we will be making an intersubstrate welfare comparison. In this paper, we argue that intersubstrate welfare comparisons are important, difficult, and potentially tractable. The world might soon contain a vast number of sentient or otherwise significant beings of different substrates, and moral…
Morality on holiday
Despite the progression of animal welfare within the tourism literature and the industry itself, a significant change in public behaviour remains to be seen. Anthropocentric views of animals as objects are still widespread. This paper proposes a new approach to engaging the public in ethical behaviours by meeting visitors where they are in terms of their values and priorities. Drawing on Susan Wolf’s work, we propose a realistic line of attack to…
The Ethical Implications of Panpsychism
The history of philosophy is a history of moral circle expansion. This history correlates with a history of expansionism about consciousness. Recently, expansionism about consciousness has exploded: to invertebrates, to plants, to logic gates, and to fundamental entities. The last of these expansions stems from a surge of interest in panpsychism. In an exploratory spirit, this paper considers some largely uncharted territory: the ethical implicat…
Monetizing Animal Welfare Impacts for Benefit–Cost Analysis
Animal welfare is often ignored in decision-making, despite widespread agreement about its importance. This is partly because of a lack of quantitative methods to assess the impacts of policies on humans and nonhumans alike on a common scale. At the same time, recent work in economics, philosophy, and animal welfare science has made progress on the fundamental theoretical challenge of estimating the well-being potential of different species on a …
Philosophy (19 works) · Epistemology (12 works) · Political science (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Environmental ethics (9 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Law (7 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (7 works) · Welfare (7 works) · Ecology (6 works)