Dr. Jessica Pierce is an American bioethicist, philosopher, and writer. She currently has a loose affiliation with the Center for Bioethics and Humanities, University of Colorado Denver, but considers herself mostly independent. She has previously worked variously at the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of Nebraska Medical Center, and Randolph-Macon Women's College, having studied at the University of Virginia, Harvard Divinity School and Scripps College. Early in her career, she focused on questions of human health and the environment, co-authoring Environmentalism and the New Logic of Business (Oxford, 2000) and The Ethics of Environmentally Responsible Health Care (Oxford, 2004). Since the 2000s, much of her work has focused on human relationships with animals. She collaborated with Marc Bekoff for Wild Justice (Chicago, 2010), and authored The Last Walk (Chicago, 2012), Run, Spot, Run (Chicago, 2016), and The Animals' Agenda: Freedom, Compassion, and Coexistence in the Human Age (2017).

In this episode, we talk about animal ethics. First, we focus on the biological bases of morality and their importance to animal ethics, and some aspects of animal psychology that might be particularly relevant to the discussion, like consciousness and empathy. In the second part of the interview, we talk about specific topics, like animal research and testing in science, animal conservation in zoos and aquaria, and the food industry and veganism. Finally, Dr. Pierce gives us an overview of the research she is doing with Dr. Marc Bekoff for a new book, that is tentatively titled “A Dogs’ World”, and also a short teaser to a book that she will release next month, “Unleashing Your Dog”.

Time Links:

01:20 The importance of biology, comparative and evolutionary psychology, and neuroscience to animal ethics

04:12 The aspects of animal psychology that are relevant to ethics

10:10 Is consciousness important?

13:23 The ethical implications of knowing how morality works in other animals

21:13 About empathy

26:10 Are parental care and communal nursing moral behaviors?

29:14 What is the legal and moral status that we should attribute to animals?

33:22 Animal research and testing in science

40:13 Animal conservation in zoos and aquaria

46:42 The food industry, veganism, and lab meat

56:07 About Dr. Pierce’s upcoming book, A Dogs’ World, and how dogs would fare in a world without humans

1:06:46 And her new book coming out next month, Unleashing Your Dog

1:09:47 Follow Dr. Pierce’s work!

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