Humanity in the Living, the Living in Humans

AbstractRecent studies in biology, ecology, and medicine make it clear that relationships between living organisms are complex and comprise different forms of collaboration and communication in particular in getting food. It turns even out that relations of collaboration and valuing are more important than those of aggression and predation. I will outline the ways organisms select and value specific items in their network of living and non-living entities. No organism eats everything; all organisms prefer certain foods, companions, and habitats. Relations between organisms are established on the basis of communication, exchange of signs, actions and goods, through mutual learning processes on all levels of life. Micro, meso and macro organisms participate in this process of valuing and communication. Animals and plants therefore show features that were traditionally attributed only to humans, like selfless assistance. The usual distinction between humans and other living beings on the basis of human's sensitivity for altruism, language and values crumbles down due to the circumstance that also non-human living beings are prone to selfless assistance, communication and valuing

A Latin American Perspective to Agricultural Ethics

The mixture of political, social, cultural and economic environments in Latin America, together with the enormous diversity in climates, natural habitats and biological resources the continent offers, make the ethical assessment of agricultural policies extremely difficult. Yet the experience gained while addressing the contemporary challenges the region faces, such as rapid urbanization, loss of culinary and crop diversity, extreme inequality, disappearing farming styles, water and land grabs, malnutrition and the restoration of the rule of law and social peace, can be of great value to other regions in similar latitudes, development processes and social problems. This chapter will provide a brief overview of these challenges from the perspective of a continent that is exposed to the consequences of extreme inequality in multiple dimensions and conclude by arguing for the need to have a continuous South-South dialogue on the challenges of establishing socially and environmentally sustainable food systems

Goed eten : filosofie van voeding en landbouw

Eten is een van de belangrijkste dingen in ons leven. Maar wat stoppen we precies in onze mond? En is het niet zo dat uitbuiting, extreem over- gewicht, ondervoeding, honger en grote milieuschade enkele gevolgen zijn van onze wijze van consumeren? Dit zou toch anders moeten kunnen, maar de vraag is: hoe dan? In Goed eten. Filosofie van voeding en landbouw behandelt Michiel Korthals deze vragen en ontwikkelt hij een model om de kloof tussen productie en consumptie te overbruggen. Directe verbindingen tussen voedsel en het dagelijks leven, de voorkeur voor regionale verbanden boven de wereldmarkt, bevordering van voedselvaardigheden en een eerlijkere verdeling van aandacht voor voedingsstijlen staan daarin centraal. Goed eten draait om de vraag welke rol consumenten, overheden en marktpartijen kunnen spelen in de productie van smaakvoller en ethisch verantwoord voedsel

Deliberative and pragmatist agriculture

It is well known how stimulatingly John Dewey could write about gardens, in particular school gardens ('edible gardens', not flower gardens). Edible gardens provide children opportunities for the full development of social, cognitive and manual skills, which in his view are the most important skills that together bring something like republic attitudes. I will first give a short introduction into Dewey's thoughts about edible gardens and then will try to construct his view on farming and industrial food processing on the basis of the scarce remarks that he made about these activities. Inspired by his thoughts, but also radically transforming them, I will elaborate a pragmatist view on agriculture, by outlining the current challenges on global and regional level. It turns out that edible gardens are important, but in general cannot be seen as an alternative for the food processing and retail sector and they cannot definitively deal with food security. It is therefore necessary to develop a deliberative pragmatist theory of the food processing and retail sector

Human-Animal Interfaces from a Pragmatist Perspective

In this chapter, I argue from a pragmatist point of view that one should focus not only on ethical principles but also, and above all, on practices that embody human-animal interactions and on their dynamic interfaces. In doing so, one can discern that animal-human interactions can have far more meanings and values than only loving, killing, or eating animals. Besides being subjects of harm and suffering, animals are also active agents of symbolization, history, learning, and the breaking down and reconstruction of established world perspectives. We admire or reject traits of our own that acquire their meaning from animals; we symbolize animals, and they inspire us to behave in a courageous or an admirable way. They can sometimes make us realize that life offers more than we imagine and that new perspectives are around that may enrich our life. They can open up hidden resources in ourselves and in our relationship with the world and therefore have world-disclosing capacities with far-reaching consequences for the way we think and behave.</p

Genomics, Patents, and Human Rights

The life sciences have changed enormously: new disciplines, such as genomic and metabolomic technologies, have revolutionized the descriptive and normative power wielded by these disciplines. The technological developments accompanied by new scientific approaches and positions make the daily practices in the laboratories of the life sciences radically different from life science practices before these developments. New organizations of scientific work emerge and this has a deep social and normative impact. In these new life science approaches and practices, new norms and values are incorporated which are significantly different from the earlier forms of life science practices. Both internally and externally these new sciences have acquired new forms of descriptive and normative impact. These impacts affect human rights, both in a positive and in a negative way, but they also regard ownership issues. We will first discuss the role of human rights focused on the life sciences, and then discuss the functions and roles of the life sciences. Although currently ownership issues of the life sciences are regulated via the worldwide agreed-upon Intellectual Property Rights regime, it is doubtful how far this regime can fruitfully organize life science innovations, both from the view of the progressive developments of the life sciences as well as from a human rights' perspective. The function of patents and other types of ownership will therefore be extensively discussed. Finally, we finish with a short discussion of several alternative or complimentary proposals to the current patenting regime that are more firmly based on human rights