Most ethical discussions about diet are focused on the justification of specific kinds of products rather than an individual assessment of the moral footprint of eating products of certain animal species. This way of thinking is represented in the typical division of four dietary attitudes. There are vegans, vegetarians, welfarists and ordinary meat -eaters. However, the common “all or nothing” discussions between meat -eaters, vegans and vegetarians bypass very important factors in assessing dietary habits. I argue that if we want (...) to discover a properly assessed moral footprint of animal products, we should take into consideration not only life quality of animals during farming or violation of their rights—as is typically done—but, most of all, their body weight, life time in farms and time efficiency in animal products acquisition. Without these factors, an assessment of animal products is much too simplified. If we assume some easily accepted premises, we can justify a thesis that, regardless of the treatment of animals during farming and slaughtering, for example, eating chicken can be 163 times morally worse than eating beef, drinking milk can be 58 times morally better than eating eggs, and eating some types of fish can be even 501 times worse than eating beef. In order to justify such a thesis there is no need to reform common morality by, for example, criticizing its speciesism. The thesis that some animal products are much worse than others can be justified on common moral grounds. (shrink)

In my paper I discuss the argument that the absence of the legal possibility to contract same-sex marriages is discriminatory. I argue that there is no analogy between the legal situation of same-sex couples and African-Americans, women or disabled persons in the nineteenth century. There are important natural differences between same-sex and different-sex couples that are good reasons for the legal disparities between them. The probability of having and raising children is one of them. Therefore, demanding that same-sex couples have (...) rights similar to those that married couples currently have in Poland and justifying that claim by alleged discrimination is neither correct nor fair. (shrink)

My paper is a reaction to polemic of Tomasz Sieczkowski "Discrimination nonetheless. A reply to Krzysztof Saja” [ICF "Diametros" (36) 2013] that he wrote against my paper "Discrimination against same-sex couples" [ICF “Diametros" (34) 2012]. The purpose of the paper is to refute Sieczkowski’s objections that rely on wrong interpretation of the structure of my main argument. I will describe the proper course of the reasoning that I have expressed in the first article and undermine the Sieczkowski’s proposal to justify (...) gay marriages by referring to values such as dignity, freedom and equality. (shrink)

The article is a reductio ad absurdum of assumptions which are shared by a large number of followers of the animal welfare movement and utilitarianism. I argue that even if we accept the main ethical arguments for a negative moral assessment of eating meat we should not promote vegetarianism but rather beefism (eating only meat from beef cattle). I also argue that some forms of vegetarianism, i.e. ichtivegetarianism, can be much more morally worse than normal meat diet. In order to (...) justify these thesis I show that there are significant moral differences in the consumption of animal products from different species. (shrink)

Ethics of Richard M. Hare is widely considered as a classical example of the strong internalistic theory of motivation: he is thought to believe that having a moral motive is a sufficient condition to act accordingly. However, strong internalism has difficulties with explaining the phenomenon of acrasia and amoralism. For this reason some critics charge him with developing a false theory of moral motivation. In the article I present Hare's answer to these questions by dividing the discussion about motivation into (...) three levels: semantical, epistemological, and ontological. I also explain his concept of internal motivation and argue that his theory, contrary to what his critics assume, may be called a weak motivational internalism. (shrink)

Antyrealizm etyczny reprezentowany jest obecnie przez około 30% filozofów analitycznych. Podzielają oni przekonanie, że nie istnieją moralne własności, fakty czy wartości. Przez długi okres rozwijany był on zwłaszcza przez akognitywistów. Jednak od czasu publikacji książki J. Mackiego Ethics. Inventingright and wrong (1977) antyrealistyczny sceptycyzm został zradykalizowany, przybierając także formę teorii globalnego błędu. Przyjęcie powyższego przekonania prowadzi do trzech strategii postępowania: 1. fikcjonalizmu asertorycznego (J. Mackie), 2. fikcjonalizmu nieasertorycznego (R. Joyce) oraz 3. eliminatywizmu (I. Hinckfuss i R. Garner). W artykule, przyjmując (...) antyrealistyczny punkt wyjścia przedstawicieli teorii globalnego błędu, analizuję powody, dla których warto wyeliminować etykę, i powody, dla których moglibyśmy mieć z tym problem. Następnie przedstawiam argumenty, ze względu na które pomysł eliminacji etyki pośrednio wspiera zmianę myślenia o realizmie etycznym z paradygmatu ontologicznego na racjonalistyczny. W związku z tym prezentuję koncepcję rewizyjnego realizmu racji oraz dowodzę, że nie poddaje się ona argumentom zwolenników eliminacji etyki. (shrink)