John Hadley

After his PhD, Hadley worked as a lecturer in communication ethics in the Charles Sturt University (CSU) School of Communication and a lecturer in philosophy at the CSU School of Humanities and Social Sciences. He then joined the University of Western Sydney School of Humanities and Communication Arts, first as a lecturer in philosophy, and then as a senior lecturer in philosophy. Animal Ethics and Philosophy: Questioning the Orthodoxy, a collection edited by Hadley with the Finnish philosopher Elisa Aaltola, was published in 2015 by Rowman & Littlefield International. The book aimed to move debate in animal ethics beyond developing extensionist accounts and to examine the metaphilosophical and metaethical problems with extensionist accounts. Hadley's own contribution drew attention to a perceived inconsistent triad in animal rights philosophy: the idea that moral status is determined by psychological factors (like sentience), and not species; that human and nonhuman animals are of the same kind; and that genomic plasticity offers the best explanation for change in natural selection. In the same year, Hadley published a monograph with Lexington Books entitled Animal Property Rights: A Theory of Territory Rights for Wild Animals. The book, partially building upon his doctoral research, presents a large amount of new material on Hadley's animal property rights theory. A second monograph, Animal Neopragmatism, was published in 2019 by Palgrave Macmillan. This presented a neopragmatist approach to animal ethics.

Hadley is known for his theory of animal property rights, according to which animals should be afforded property rights over their territory. Hadley has developed his theory of animal property rights through his doctoral research, his 2015 monograph, and other academic works. In addition, he has authored popular articles on the subject for The Guardian, The Conversation and The Ethics Centre. He also discussed the topic on Knowing Animals, a podcast series produced by Siobhan O'Sullivan. His proposal has received attention in the popular press, with strong criticism from farmers' groups and journalists writing on rural affairs.

It is one thing to say that a bird has a property right in its nest, or that a wolf has a property right in its den – specific bits of territory used exclusively by one animal family. But the habitat that animals need to survive extends far beyond such specific and exclusive bits of territory – animals often need to fly or roam over vast territories shared by many other animals. Protecting a bird’s nest is of little help if the nearby watering holes are polluted, or if tall buildings block its flight path. It’s not clear how ideas of property rights can help here.

Having published a number of papers critical of the metaethical and metaphilosophical stances of mainstream animal ethicists in the 2010s, in 2019, Hadley published Animal Neopragmatism. In the book, Hadley sets out a neopragmatist approach to animal ethics. This theory responds to both the "political problem of welfare" and the "philosophical problem of welfare". The former is a perceived difficulty with the democratic legitimacy of animal welfare law, given that folk understanding of welfare stretches beyond the measurable suffering with which a policy approach is concerned. The latter is that, given metatheoretical assumptions of contemporary animal ethicists (especially moral realism), any attempt to extend discussion of welfare beyond feelings is met with the accusation that the subject is being changed: hence Hadley's earlier exploration of the "changing the subject problem". In response to these problems, Hadley outlines his vision of "relational hedonism", according to which a concern for the pain of animals underlies a broader concern that extends beyond a narrow sense of animal welfare, and endorses both experiential pluralism (welfare can be affected by things other than pleasure and pain) and expressivism. The theory of "animal neopragmatism", Hadley argues, is able to overcome metalevel problems in mainstream animal rights theory.

Hadley read for a bachelor of arts and doctorate in philosophy at the University of Sydney (USYD). His doctoral thesis was supervised by Caroline West, in USYD's Department of Philosophy, and was submitted in 2006 under the title of Animal Property: Reconciling Ecological Communitarianism and Species-egalitarian Liberalism. During his doctoral research, the "basic elements" of his animal property rights theory were "first assembled", leading to the publication of "Nonhuman Animal Property: Reconciling Environmentalism and Animal Rights" in the Journal of Social Philosophy. During this time, he also published in the Journal of Value Inquiry, Philosophy in the Contemporary World, and the Journal of Applied Philosophy, as well as working as a lecturer in the USYD philosophy department and a guest lecturer for the USYD Laboratory Animal Services.

John Hadley (born 27 September 1966) is an Australian philosopher whose research concerns moral and political philosophy, including animal ethics, environmental ethics, and metaethics. He is currently a senior lecturer in philosophy in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University. He has previously taught at Charles Sturt University and the University of Sydney, where he studied as an undergraduate and doctoral candidate. In addition to a variety of articles in peer-reviewed journals and edited collections, he is the author of the 2015 monograph Animal Property Rights (Lexington Books) and the 2019 monograph Animal Neopragmatism (Palgrave Macmillan). He is also the co-editor, with Elisa Aaltola, of the 2015 collection Animal Ethics and Philosophy (Rowman & Littlefield International).