In this episode Canadian philosopher Kyle Johannsen and I discuss the moral problem of predation and what can be done about it. We cover the positive view of nature, positive and negative rights/duties, beneficence, justice, and the advantages and disadvantages of 3 plausible ways of ending predation: 1) eliminating predatory species, 2) herbivorizing, and 3) separating predators from preys. In doing so, among other topics we talk about intrinsic value, biodiversity, ecosystem stability, over-exploitation by herbivores, urgency, species essentialism, animal experimentation, gene drives, genetic painkillers, moral capacity enhancement, turning R strategists into K strategists, eliminating parasites, engineering plants for predators (a part of herbivorization), environmentalism, welfare biology, and what we should be doing now.

For more information on Kyle Johannsen and his work:

https://philpeople.org/profiles/kyle-...

https://trentu.academia.edu/KyleJohan...

Kyle Johannsen is Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Queen’s University, Kingston. He is primarily interested in social and political philosophy, and in animal and environmental ethics. His first monograph – “A Conceptual Investigation of Justice” – was published with Routledge in 2018. Though many political philosophers and ethicists have the intuition that we should leave nature alone, Johannsen argues that we have a duty to research safe ways of providing large-scale assistance to wild animals. In “Wild Animal Ethics”, he explores how a collective, institutional obligation to assist wild animals should be understood. Among other things, Johannsen’s currently guest-editing a topical collection for the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics entitled ‘Positive Duties to Wild Animals’.

Art by: Paula Meninato

https://paulameninato.com

Music by: Joey Kukura and Matt Harnett

Recorded in September 2021