Clubbing a rockfish to death was wildly inconsistent with my habitual way of living. It’s precisely the inconsistency that intrigued me. I doubt that there’s any wholly consistent way to live and there’s much to be learned by applying pressure to deeply held principles.
In some respects, animal ethics has more in common with anthropocentric ethics than it does with environmental ethics.
Especially on matters of value, it often seems settled from the outset that our minds or our hearts aren’t actually supposed to be changed in the process of reading or writing philosophy.
How are animals of the same species subjected to such different treatments? Part of the answer, I think, is that we humans don’t quite know what to make of creatures that are both so similar to us and so different.