Bob Fischer (philosopher)

Last updated
Bob Fischer
Born
Robert William Fischer
Education
OccupationAssociate Professor
Era Contemporary philosophy
RegionUnited States
Institutions Texas State University
Thesis Modal Knowledge, in Theory  (2011)
Doctoral advisor W. D. Hart
Main interests
Epistemology; ethics
Notable ideas
Theory-Based Epistemology of Modality
Website www.bobfischer.net

Robert William Fischer is an American philosopher who specializes in epistemology (especially modal epistemology) and ethics (especially animal ethics). He is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at Texas State University, a Senior Research Manager at Rethink Priorities, and the Director of the Society for the Study of Ethics and Animals. His books include Modal Justification via Theories, in which he defends his account of "Theory-Based Epistemology of Modality", and The Ethics of Eating Animals, in which he argues that animal agriculture is frequently morally impermissible, but that veganism is nonetheless not morally required.

Contents

Education and career

Fischer read for a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and English at State University of New York at Geneseo from 2001 to 2004. [1] He went on to read for a Master of Arts at Trinity International University (awarded 2006), [2] and then pursued a PhD in philosophy at the University of Illinois Chicago [1] (being awarded a second MA, this time from Illinois, in 2010). [2] He submitted his doctoral thesis, which was entitled Modal Knowledge, in Theory, in 2011. His advisor (and thesis committee chair) was W. D. Hart; the other committee members were Colin Klein, Walter Edelberg, Daniel Sutherland, and Karen Bennett. [2]

From Illinois, he moved to Texas State University, first (2011–2013) as a Senior Lecturer, and subsequently as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy (2013–19) and then an Associate Professor of Philosophy (2019–present). [1] Fischer is a Senior Research Manager at Rethink Priorities [3] and the Director of the Society for the Study of Ethics and Animals. [4]

Research

Fischer's first sole-authored monograph was Modal Justification via Theories, [5] in which he defends a "Theory-Based Epistemology of Modality". According to this account, agents can have a justified belief in modal claims about certain kinds of "extraordinary" matters (e.g., philosophical issues) only if the claim follows from a theory in which they have a justified belief. Key to Fischer's account is that abductive reasoning (such as appeals to the virtue of simplicity) is well-placed to help agents to identify the theories that they are justified in believing. [6] The epistemologists Antonella Mallozzi, Anand Vaidya, and Michael Wallner give the example of mind-body dualism. On Fischer's Theory-Based Epistemology of Modality, "we are justified in believing that mind-body dualism is metaphysically possible only if we are justified in believing a theory T from which mind-body dualism follows", but if T "is not the simplest theory, all else being equal, then one would not be justified in believing it, and thus not be justified in believing that mind-body dualism is metaphysically possible". [6]

His second was The Ethics of Eating Animals: Usually Bad, Sometimes Wrong, Often Permissible. Fischer initially set out argue that veganism was morally required on all major ethical theories, but this is not the argument of the book. [7] Instead, Fischer argues that although raising animals for food is frequently morally impermissible, it does not follow that veganism is morally required. He argues that act consequentialism and deontological cases for veganism fail to establish that we are obliged to be vegan. For consequentialists, he says, the "causal inefficacy problem" shows that an individual's dietary choices will fail to impact animal agriculture. He claims that deontologists, meanwhile, need to bridge the "production/consumption gap", and explain why the wrongness of producing animal products grounds the wrongness of eating animal products. These problems aside, he further argues, both consquentialist and deontological cases for veganism will permit (or favor) eating "unusual" animal products, including roadkill and insects. Nonetheless, Fischer argues that people who voluntarily choose to become animal activists may oblige themselves to be vegan. [8]

In 2024, Fischer published Weighing Animal Welfare, which collects the research that he and his team did from 2021-2023 on interspecies welfare comparisons. Interspecies welfare comparisons involve estimating the relative well-being levels of members of different species. For instance, if someone judges that a chicken in a battery cage is worse off than a human living a normal life, that person is making an interspecies welfare comparison. The book shows how it may be possible to make such comparisons by finding a mix of behavioral and physiological proxies for possible differences in the intensities of valenced experiences (like pleasure and pain). It then reports the results of applying that methodology.[ citation needed ]

Selected publications

Monographs
Debate books

Jauernig, Anja, and Bob Fischer (2024). What Do We Owe Other Animals? A Debate. Routledge.

Textbooks
Collections

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ethics</span> Philosophical study of morality

Ethics or moral philosophy is the philosophical study of moral phenomena. It investigates normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. It is usually divided into three major fields: normative ethics, applied ethics, and metaethics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Singer</span> Australian moral philosopher (born 1946)

Peter Albert David Singer is an Australian moral philosopher and Emeritus Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He specialises in applied ethics, approaching the subject from a secular, utilitarian perspective. He wrote the book Animal Liberation (1975), in which he argues for vegetarianism, and the essay "Famine, Affluence, and Morality", which favours donating to help the global poor. For most of his career, he was a preference utilitarian, but he revealed in The Point of View of the Universe (2014), coauthored with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek, that he had become a hedonistic utilitarian.

Moral skepticism is a class of meta-ethical theories all members of which entail that no one has any moral knowledge. Many moral skeptics also make the stronger, modal claim that moral knowledge is impossible. Moral skepticism is particularly opposed to moral realism: the view that there are knowable and objective moral truths.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Applied philosophy</span> Branch of philosophy

Applied philosophy is a branch of philosophy that studies philosophical problems of practical concern. The topic covers a broad spectrum of issues in environment, medicine, science, engineering, policy, law, politics, economics and education. The term was popularised in 1982 by the founding of the Society for Applied Philosophy by Brenda Almond, and its subsequent journal publication Journal of Applied Philosophy edited by Elizabeth Brake. Methods of applied philosophy are similar to other philosophical methods including questioning, dialectic, critical discussion, rational argument, systematic presentation, thought experiments and logical argumentation.

Michael A. Slote is a professor of ethics at the University of Miami and an author of a number of books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gary L. Francione</span> American legal scholar (born 1954)

Gary Lawrence Francione is an American academic in the fields of law and philosophy. He is Board of Governors Professor of Law and Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He is also a visiting professor of philosophy at the University of Lincoln (UK) and honorary professor of philosophy at the University of East Anglia (UK). He is the author of numerous books and articles on animal ethics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virtue epistemology</span> Philosophical approach

Virtue epistemology is a current philosophical approach to epistemology that stresses the importance of intellectual and specifically epistemic virtues. Virtue epistemology evaluates knowledge according to the properties of the persons who hold beliefs in addition to or instead of the properties of the propositions and beliefs. Some advocates of virtue epistemology also adhere to theories of virtue ethics, while others see only loose analogy between virtue in ethics and virtue in epistemology.

Loren E. Lomasky is an American philosopher, formerly the Cory Professor of Political Philosophy, Policy and Law at the University of Virginia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ethics of eating meat</span> Food ethics topic

Conversations regarding the ethics of eating meat are focused on whether or not it is moral to eat non-human animals. Ultimately, this is a debate that has been ongoing for millennia, and it remains one of the most prominent topics in food ethics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mylan Engel</span> American philosopher

Mylan Engel Jr. is a full professor of philosophy at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb.

Alastair Norcross is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder, specializing in normative ethics, applied ethics, and political philosophy. He is a defender of utilitarianism.

Animal ethics is a branch of ethics which examines human-animal relationships, the moral consideration of animals and how nonhuman animals ought to be treated. The subject matter includes animal rights, animal welfare, animal law, speciesism, animal cognition, wildlife conservation, wild animal suffering, the moral status of nonhuman animals, the concept of nonhuman personhood, human exceptionalism, the history of animal use, and theories of justice. Several different theoretical approaches have been proposed to examine this field, in accordance with the different theories currently defended in moral and political philosophy. There is no theory which is completely accepted due to the differing understandings of what is meant by the term ethics; however, there are theories that are more widely accepted by society such as animal rights and utilitarianism.

<i>Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows</i> Book by Melanie Joy

Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism is a 2009 book by American social psychologist Melanie Joy about the belief system and psychology of meat eating, or "carnism". Joy coined the term carnism in 2001 and developed it in her doctoral dissertation in 2003. Carnism is a subset of speciesism, and contrasts with ethical veganism, the moral commitment to abstain from consuming or using meat and other animal products. In 2020, an anniversary edition of the book was published by publisher Red Wheel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carnism</span> Ideology that supports the use and consumption of animal products

Carnism is a concept used in discussions of humanity's relation to other animals, defined as a prevailing ideology in which people support the use and consumption of animal products, especially meat. Carnism is presented as a dominant belief system supported by a variety of defense mechanisms and mostly unchallenged assumptions. The term carnism was coined by social psychologist and author Melanie Joy in 2001 and popularized by her book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows (2009).

Vegetarian ecofeminism is an activist and academic movement which states that all types of oppression are linked and must be eradicated, with a focus on including the domination of humans over nonhuman animals. Through the feminist concept known as intersectionality, it is recognized that sexism, racism, classism, and other forms of inter human discrimination are all connected. Vegetarian ecofeminism aims to include the domination of not only the environment but also of nonhuman animals to the list. Vegetarian ecofeminism is part of the academic and philosophical field of ecofeminism, which states that the ways in which the privileged dominates the oppressed should include the way humans dominate nature. A major theme within ecofeminism is the belief that there is a strong connection between the domination of women and the domination of nature, and that both must be eradicated in order to end oppression.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gary Varner</span> American philosopher (1957–2023)

Gary Edward Varner was an American philosopher specializing in environmental ethics, philosophical questions related to animal rights and animal welfare, and R. M. Hare's two-level utilitarianism. At the time of his death, he was an emeritus professor in the department of philosophy at Texas A&M University; he had been based at the university since 1990. He was educated at Arizona State University, the University of Georgia, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison; at Madison, where he was supervised by Jon Morline, he wrote one of the first doctoral theses on environmental ethics. Varner's first monograph was In Nature's Interests?, which was published by Oxford University Press in 1998. In the book, Varner defended a form of biocentric individualism, according to which all living entities have morally considerable interests.

Nick Zangwill is a British philosopher and honorary research professor at University College London and Lincoln University. He is known for his expertise on moral philosophy, and aesthetics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oscar Horta</span> Spanish animal activist and moral philosopher

Óscar Horta Álvarez is a Spanish animal activist and moral philosopher who is currently a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Anthropology at the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) and one of the co-founders of the organization Animal Ethics. He is known for his work in animal ethics, especially around the problem of wild animal suffering. He has also worked on the concept of speciesism and on the clarification of the arguments for the moral consideration of nonhuman animals. In 2022, Horta published his first book in English, Making a Stand for Animals.

Andy Lamey is a Canadian philosopher and journalist. He is a teaching professor at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Frontier Justice: The Global Refugee Crisis and What To Do About ItDuty and the Beast: Should We Eat Meat in the Name of Animal Rights? and The Canadian Mind: Essays on Writers and Thinkers.

<i>Wild Animal Ethics</i> Book about wild animal suffering and ethics

Wild Animal Ethics: The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering is a 2020 book by the philosopher Kyle Johannsen, that examines whether humans, from a deontological perspective, have a duty to reduce wild animal suffering. He concludes that such a duty exists and recommends effective interventions that could be potentially undertaken to help these sentient individuals.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Fischer, Bob (2021). "Bob Fischer's CV". Texas State University. Archived from the original on 2023-06-17. Retrieved 8 July 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 Fischer, Robert William (2011). Modal Knowledge, in Theory (Thesis). University of Chicago at Illinois.
  3. "Rethink Priorities' Worldview Investigation Team: Introductions and Next Steps". Rethink Priorities. 21 June 2023. Retrieved 8 July 2023.
  4. "People". Society for the Study of Ethics and Animals. Retrieved 8 July 2023.
  5. Reviews:
  6. 1 2 Mallozzi, Antonella; Vaidya, Anand; Wallner, Michael (7 July 2023). "The Epistemology of Modality". In Zalta, Edward N.; Nodelman, Uri (eds.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2023 ed.). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
  7. Milburn, Josh (19 April 2021). "Knowing Animals 164: Is veganism morally required? With Bob Fischer". Knowing Animals (Podcast). Retrieved 8 July 2023.
  8. Reviews:
    • Bernstein, Justin; Anne Barnhill (2021). "Fischer, Bob. The Ethics of Eating Animals". Ethics . 131 (3): 605–10. doi:10.1086/712575.
  9. Reviews:
  10. Reviews:
  11. Reviews:
  12. Reviews: