Peter Singer All Animals Are Equal Singer is easily one

1
Peter Singer All Animals Are Equal

• Singer is easily one of the most important and
  influential living philosophers.
• He is consistently applied his utilitarian
  philosophy to issues like abortion, euthanasia,
  globalization, global poverty and environmental
  ethics, and has made profound contributions in
  all of these fields.
• His 1977 book Animal Liberation (from which the
  reading is taken) is often credited with
  inspiring the modern surge in animal ethics.
• Notice I didnt call it animal rights strictly
  speaking, as a utilitarian, Singer thinks rights
  are nonsense on stilts.

2
Womens Liberation, Animal Liberation

• Singers strategy is to argue that the exact same
  reasons why treating women or ethnic minorities
  as inferior was mistaken also apply to treating
  non-human animals as inferior.
• The same basic considerations of equality that
  lead to womens liberation will also lead us to
  animal liberation.
• Womens liberation in the 18th century was
  ridiculed by some because they thought the same
  logic could be applied to animals.
• Singer argues that they are right, but this
  doesnt mean we should reject womens liberation,
  it means we should accept animal liberation.

3
What Does Equality Mean?

• When we say all people are equal what do we
  mean by that?
• Clearly we dont mean they are equal in EVERY
  respect, there are obvious differences.
• Equality in the moral sense cant depend on
  equality of people because people simply arent
  equal.
• Maybe the point is that these inequalities do not
  track down ethnic or gender lines.
• Ones race and gender tell us nothing about
  intellectual or moral capacities maybe thats
  why racism and sexism are bad.
• That cant be right this would license
  discrimination based on, say, IQ.

4
Equality of Interests

• Rather, what we mean is that they deserve equal
  consideration.
• Equal consideration will lead us to treat
  different beings in different ways.
• What is required is not equal treatment, but
  rather treatment as equals.
• The principle of equality of human beings is not
  a description of an alleged actual equality among
  humans it is a prescription of how we should
  treat humans.
• In utilitarian terms each counts for one and
  none more than one.

5
Racism, Sexism and Speciesism?

• Just as racism is an irrational prejudice towards
  someone because of their ethnicity, and sexism is
  an irrational prejudice towards someone because
  of their gender, speciesism is an irrational
  prejudice towards someone because of their
  species.
• If we are going to justify treating animals in
  ways that we would never think of treating other
  human beings then we need to justify that
  difference in attitudes.

6
The question is not, Can they Reason? Nor Can
they talk? But, Can they suffer?

• We saw that intelligence cant demarcate the line
  of whose interests count.
• We can do the same thing with language infants
  cant speak, but they clearly we have to take
  their interests into account.
• So on what basis can we draw the line?
• Singer, as a utilitarian, holds that the single
  relevant factor in determining whether a being
  has interests (which should be considered
  equally) is whether or not they can feel pleasure
  and pain.
• Even if you reject utilitarianism, it is clear
  that this capacity is of the utmost moral
  importance.
• Singer doesnt rest his case on his
  utilitarianism, even though it is motivated by it.

7
Does Species Matter?

• Why cant we just say that the important
  difference between human and non-human animals
  just is the fact that one is human and the other
  is not?
• We would need an argument to justify such a
  position they would need to prove that the
  species barrier is not an arbitrary line, like
  the race barrier or the gender barrier.
• But what possible argument could be given for
  such a position? Any attempt to make such an
  argument quickly devolves into homilies about the
  human dignity.

8
Why Sentience is not Arbitrary

• If drawing the line at reason or language is
  arbitrary, then why isnt drawing the line at
  sentience (the capacity to feel pleasure and
  pain, taken broadly to include physical,
  psychological, emotional, etc.) equally
  arbitrary?
• Singer argues that sentience is a prerequisite
  for having interests in the first place.
• You can have interests without reason or without
  language.
• But what would it even mean to say that X has
  interests but isnt sentient?

9
Most Human Beings are Speciesists

• If X is sentient then X has interests and they
  must be given equal consideration.
• If a being has interests there can be no moral
  justification for not taking those interests into
  account.
• In the 18th century most people were racists and
  sexists they placed the interests of their own
  ethnic group/gender above the interests of
  others.
• Today, most people are speciesists they place
  the interests of their own species over the
  interests of others.
• It racism and sexism are morally wrong, then how
  can we justify our speciesism?

10
Speciesism in Practice

• For most people, their primary interaction with
  animals is eating them.
• This cannot be defended on nutritional grounds.
• In any industrial society it is very easy to meet
  all nutritional needs from a vegetarian diet.
• In fact, eating meat is generally much more
  harmful to human health than eating vegetarian
  alternatives.
• Thus, we are placing our trivial interests
  (desire for certain foods) over the most profound
  interests of animals (liberty, pain-free life,
  avoiding premature death, etc.)

11
The Greatest Cause of Suffering In The World

• The meat industry has done a tremendous job of
  keeping the populace at large ignorant about what
  goes on in modern factory farms.
• If factory farms were made of glass the whole
  world would be vegetarians.
• The practices of modern factory farms can only be
  described as unspeakably cruel. Singers
  description only barely scratches the surface.
• Each year in the U.S. alone between 8 and 10
  BILLION animals are raised, kept in confinement,
  and slaughtered.
• Their lives consist of nothing more than unending
  pain and suffering before their premature end.
• No human activity, not war, crime, or even
  poverty comes even close to causing the amount of
  suffering that modern factory farms do.

12
Vivisection and Animal Experimentation

• About 10 million animals are used in experiments
  each year in the US.
• The vast majority of this research is either
  trivial, redundant or useless or pointless.
• There are frequently alternative methods, such as
  computer modeling, tissue sampling, or stem-cell
  research that will do the job at least as well,
  if not better.
• Since we do these experiments on animals but
  would not do them on, say, brain-damaged orphans
  this is another example of speciesism.
• As a utilitarian, however, Singer must admit that
  any research that does lead to, say, a cure for
  cancer is justified.

13
The Value of Lives Humans and Nonhumans

• Not all species interests are alike because they
  have different traits.
• Horses interest in not being slapped on the
  backside is less than that of a human baby, since
  the babys skin is much more sensitive than the
  horses.
• Often, human mental abilities will make a
  different in their interests anticipation,
  better memory, etc. might make their suffering
  worse.
• Conversely, their ability to understand an
  explanation or a consolation might make their
  suffering not as bad.

14
The Problem of Marginal Cases

• Whatever criteria we try to use to distinguish
  human from non-human animals we will run into
  trouble.
• Pick a trait language, intelligence,
  self-awareness, tool use, people who care about
  them
• There will be some humans that fail this criteria
  (brain-damaged, vegetables, infants, senile) and
  some non-humans (the higher apes, dolphins) that
  meet it.
• Consistency demands one of two things
• Either we start treating such marginal humans
  the way we treat animals or we start treating
  animals the way we treat marginal humans.
• Singer thinks we should do the later.

15
Pollution, Waste and Inefficiency

• The meat industry produces a tremendous amount of
  pollution waste contaminated groundwater,
  methane gas, fossil fuels, etc.
• You can actually do more to help stop global
  warming by giving up meat than by switching to a
  hybrid car.
• It takes 86 gallons of water and 12 pounds of
  grain to produce one pound of beef.
• These resources could be spent much more
  efficiently by, say, feeding the exponentially
  growing population.

16
The Ben Franklin Objection

• Franklin was a vegetarian, until a friend gutted
  a fish and found inside a smaller fish.
• Franklin thought, if youre going to eat each
  other, I dont see why I shouldnt eat you.
• Reply not all animals eat each other.
• Reply those that do have no choice.
• Reply Humans eat each other, too.

17
The Theyre Better Off Objection

• Animals cant really complain about the way they
  are treated if it wasnt for us they wouldnt
  exist in the first place.
• If we all stopped eating meat there would be a
  lot less animals in the world. Surely it is
  better to live and suffer than to never come into
  existence at all.
• Reply The amount they suffer they would be
  better off never having existed.
• Reply the same reasoning would license eating
  people, beating children, etc.

18
The Social Contract Objection

• Morality is based upon mutual agreement You
  promise not to kill me I promise not to kill you.
• Animals cannot engage in this sort of social
  contract for many reasons.
• Because they cannot promise not to hurt us we
  dont need to promise not to hurt them.
• Reply Infants cant enter into the social
  contract either.
• Reply We dont need to contract with ALL people,
  only enough to ensure our survival.
• Whats to stop us from waging war and colonizing
  foreign lands after all THEY arent part of our
  social contract.