| Richard D. Ryder |
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| CATEGORIES ABOUT RICHARD D. RYDER | |
| 1940 births | |
| living people | |
| british psychologists | |
| animal rights movement | |
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Richard D. Ryder (born 1940) is a British Psychologist who, after performing psychology experiments on animals, began to speak out against the practice, and became one of the pioneers of the modern animal liberation and Animal Rights movements. He was Mellon Professor at Tulane University , New Orleans , and is the author of ''Painism: A Modern Morality'' and ''Putting Morality Back into Politics'', due to be published in 2006. A former chairman of the Royal Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Animals council, and a past president of Britain's Liberal Democrat Animal Protection Group, he is parliamentary consultant to the Political Animal Lobby as of April 2004. Ryder was a contributor to the massively influential book 'Animals, Men and Morals' by Godlovitch, Stanley And Roslind And Harris, John (Editors). This was one of the first books in modern times to seriously question human beings use of animals and it was in a review of this book for the New York Review Of Books that Peter Singer first set forward his arguments that would later become the book Animal Liberation, which has been called the 'animal rights bible'. Ryder has called his position on the moral status of non-human animals Painism . He believes that all 'All beings that feel pain deserve human rights'. Painism can be seen as a third way between the Utilitarian position of Peter Singer and Tom Regan 's deontological rights view. Painism takes the utilitarian view that moral status comes from the ability to feel pain and the rights views prohibition of using others as a means to our ends. Ryder has criticised Tom Regan’s criterion for inherent worth claiming that all beings who feel pain have inherent value. He has also criticised the utilitarian idea that exploitation of others can be justified if there is an overall gain in pleasure - 'One of the problems with the utilitarian view is that, for example, the sufferings of a gang-rape victim can be justified if the rape gives a greater sum total of pleasure to the rapists'. Ryder's idea of painism is very similar to negative rule utilitarianism. Ryder coined the term '' that same year. SEE ALSO REFERENCES
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