Stijn Bruers: Effective altruism and wild animal suffering

Lecture organized by the Centre for Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) and Effective Altruism (EA)

Effective altruism is a growing social movement that uses rational thinking and scientific evidence to help others as much as possible. Helping others includes helping animals. There is a lot of suffering in wild nature: hunger, disease, parasites, predation, competition, etc. Given the numbers of wild animals and the intensities of their suffering, we should not underestimate the moral importance of this problem of wild animal suffering. As this problem is still highly neglected, even by animal rights activists, it gets more and more attention within the effective altruism community. This lecture argues why we should start scientific research on how to intervene in nature to improve animal well-being.

Stijn Bruers has a PhD in physics and a PhD in moral philosophy at the University of Ghent. He is the co-founder of Effective Altruism Belgium and the Centrum voor Rationaliteit en Ethiek, and author of several books about animal rights, moral illusions and effective altruism.

When & where?

Wednesday, 12 December 2018, 20:00 - 21:30
Room Omega, Faculty of Philosophy