Steve F. Sapontzis | |
---|---|
Born | Steven Frederic Sapontzis February 9, 1945 New York City, New York, U.S. |
Education |
|
Notable work | Morals, Reason, and Animals |
Spouse | Jeanne Marie Gocker (m. 1992) |
Institutions | California State University, East Bay |
Thesis | Merleau-Ponty and Philosophical Methodology (1971) |
Main interests | |
Website | www |
Steven Frederic Sapontzis [2] (born February 9, 1945) is an American philosopher and professor emeritus of philosophy at California State University, East Bay who specializes in animal ethics, environmental ethics and meta-ethics.
Sapontzis was born in New York City, the son of Zissis Peter and Lea Marie Vial Sapontzis. [1] He obtained his BA from Rice University in 1967, his MPhil in 1970, and PhD from Yale University in 1971; [3] his thesis was entitled Merleau-Ponty and Philosophical Methodology. [4] Sapontzis joined the philosophy faculty at California State University, East Bay, in 1971, and became professor emeritus in 1999. [3]
Sapontzis was co-founder in 1985 of the journal Between the Species: A Journal of Ethics and served as its initial co-editor. [5] He was a member of the board of the American Philosophical Quarterly (1991–1994), and sat on the animal welfare research committee at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (1986–1990). [6]
In 1983, Sapontzis founded, with his wife, the Hayward Friends of Animals Humane society. [7] They now operate Second Chance, Helping the Pets of People in the Need, in California. [7] Sapontzis was also one of the first members of the board of directors of the Society for the Study of Ethics and Animals. [1]
Sapontzis has authored numerous papers, [8] as well as two books: Morals, Reason, and Animals (1987) [9] and Subjective Morals (2011). [10] He also edited the book Food for Thought: The Debate over Eating Meat (2004). [11]
Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interest and he wrote on perception, art, politics, religion, biology, psychology, psychoanalysis, language, nature, and history. He was the lead editor of Les Temps modernes, the leftist magazine he established with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in 1945.
Neurophenomenology refers to a scientific research program aimed to address the hard problem of consciousness in a pragmatic way. It combines neuroscience with phenomenology in order to study experience, mind, and consciousness with an emphasis on the embodied condition of the human mind. The field is very much linked to fields such as neuropsychology, neuroanthropology and behavioral neuroscience and the study of phenomenology in psychology.
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women. Existentialism is a philosophical and cultural movement which holds that the starting point of philosophical thinking must be the individual and the experiences of the individual, that moral thinking and scientific thinking together are not sufficient for understanding all of human existence, and, therefore, that a further set of categories, governed by the norm of authenticity, is necessary to understand human existence. This philosophy analyzes relationships between the individual and things, or other human beings, and how they limit or condition choice.
Alphonso Lingis is an American philosopher, writer and translator, with Lithuanian roots, currently Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University. His areas of specialization include phenomenology, existentialism, modern philosophy, and ethics. Lingis is also known as a photographer, and he complements the philosophical themes of many of his books with his own photography.
Stephen Richard Lyster Clark is an English philosopher and professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Liverpool. Clark specialises in the philosophy of religion and animal rights, writing from a philosophical position that might broadly be described as Christian Platonist. He is the author of twenty books, including The Moral Status of Animals (1977), The Nature of the Beast (1982), Animals and Their Moral Standing (1997), G.K. Chesterton (2006), Philosophical Futures (2011), and Ancient Mediterranean Philosophy (2012), as well as 77 scholarly articles, and chapters in another 109 books. He is a former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Applied Philosophy (1990–2001).
Phenomenology of Perception is a 1945 book about perception by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in which the author expounds his thesis of "the primacy of perception". The work established Merleau-Ponty as the pre-eminent philosopher of the body, and is considered a major statement of French existentialism.
James Webster Rachels was an American philosopher who specialized in ethics and animal rights.
Thomas R. Baldwin is a British philosopher and has been a professor of philosophy at the University of York since 1995. He has written generally on 20th century analytic and Continental philosophy, as well as bioethics, the philosophy of language and of mind, particularly with regard to G. E. Moore, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Bertrand Russell.
Raymond G. Frey was a professor of philosophy at Bowling Green State University, specializing in moral, political and legal philosophy, and author or editor of a number of books. He was a noted critic of animal rights.
Michael Huemer is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has defended ethical intuitionism, direct realism, libertarianism, veganism, the repugnant conclusion, and philosophical anarchism.
Between the Species: A Journal for the Study of Philosophy and Animals is a peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to philosophical examinations of human relationships with other animals. It is, in part, a continuation of Ethics & Animals (E&A), a journal which ran from 1980 to 1984. Between the Species was founded as a print journal in 1985, published by the Schweitzer Center of the San Francisco Bay Institute/Congress of Cultures. The print version ceased publication in 1996. It was revived as an open access online-only journal in 2002. It is published by the Philosophy Department and Digital Commons at the California Polytechnic State University; Joseph Lynch is the current editor-in-chief.
Charles Russell Magel was an American philosopher, animal rights activist and bibliographer. He was professor emeritus of Philosophy and Ethics at Moorhead State University.
The predation problem or predation argument refers to the consideration of the harms experienced by animals due to predation as a moral problem, that humans may or may not have an obligation to work towards preventing. Discourse on this topic has, by and large, been held within the disciplines of animal and environmental ethics. The issue has particularly been discussed in relation to animal rights and wild animal suffering. Some critics have considered an obligation to prevent predation as untenable or absurd and have used the position as a reductio ad absurdum to reject the concept of animal rights altogether. Others have criticized any obligation implied by the animal rights position as environmentally harmful.
The ethics of uncertain sentience refers to questions surrounding the treatment of and moral obligations towards individuals whose sentience—the capacity to subjectively sense and feel—and resulting ability to experience pain is uncertain; the topic has been particularly discussed within the field of animal ethics, with the precautionary principle frequently invoked in response.
David Archard is a British moral philosopher who is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Queen's University Belfast. He is known for his work on children and families.
Morals, Reason, and Animals is a 1987 book by American philosopher Steve F. Sapontzis, that examines whether humans should give moral consideration to nonhuman animals and the practical implications of this.
Talbot Brewer is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia. He is known for his works on moral philosophy.
Adam Daniel Moore is a philosopher and Professor at the University of Washington's Information School. He conducts research and teaches in the areas of information ethics, social and political philosophy, philosophy of law, and normative ethical theory.
David Kleinberg-Levin is an American philosopher and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University. He is known for his works on 19th and 20th century continental European philosophy. His primary focus, influenced in part by Friedrich Schiller, is the formation of an approach to morality and ethical life with an emphasis on perception and sensibility. In 2005, he retired as Professor Emeritus from Northwestern University.