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Cora Diamond has argued that analytic animal ethics — animal ethics based on reasoned, theoretical analyses — risks becoming a form of "deflection' if it concentrates merely on argumentation and logic instead of what ought to be immediate and obvious (Diamond 2004). That is, reasoned analyses can distract us from what is right in front of us: what is easy and immediately known becomes something complicated and obscure. This argument has become increasingly common, as the Cartesian emphasis on reason has been accused of leading to an abstract view of the world, detached from the practical level. Philosophers argue about the logical relations between moral concepts and the abstract ramifications of specific theories, while remaining blind to the everyday level of reality, at which other beings are concretely and immediately grasped, and at which we are guided, not only by reason, but also by contextuality and emotion. Perhaps, therefore, ethics concerning non-human suffering should pay less attention to analytical theories and more attention to the "immediate'. However, what this immediate consists of remains an open question. In this section of the book, three potential channels of immediacy in particular — emotion, empathy and intersubjectivity — will be explored.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137271822_7

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