Peter Singer & Vegetarian Dogs (was Re: The Heiress and theAnarchists)

Ken Hanly khanly at mb.sympatico.ca
Fri Mar 3 15:02:27 PST 2000


Comments are after selected sections

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:


> James Farmelant wrote:
>
> >Curiously enough one of the leading proponents of "animal liberation",
> >the Australian philosopher Peter Singer (who is now at Princeton) has
> >no great use for rights language either. In a classical utilitarian
> >manner he is rather dismissive of rights language which after all
> >Jeremy Bentham had referred to as "metaphysics on stilts."
>
> Peter Singer, to me, exemplifies what is wrong with "animal rights"
> discourse. "Torturing a human being is almost always wrong, but it is not
> absolutely wrong" (Peter Singer, quoted in Josephine Donovan, "Animal
> Rights and Feminist Theory," _Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and
> Society_, Winter 1990, p. 357).

So if torturing one person were somehow the only way you could save 10,000 innocent lives would it be wrong to do so?


> Peter Singer also says: "Why do we lock up
> chimpanzees in appalling primate research centres and use them in
> experiments that range from the uncomfortable to the agonising and lethal,
> yet would never think of doing the same to a retarded human being at a much
> lower mental level? The only possible answer is that the chimpanzee, no
> matter how bright, is not human, while the retarded human, no matter how
> dull, is." Apparently, Singer thinks that it is arbitrary and
> unjustifiable to make a distinction between bright chimpanzees and mentally
> retarded humans and to privilege the latter over the former. Singer's
> thinking betrays the problem of simple-minded theory of "social
> construction." Singer suggests that the category of "humanity" is "socialy
> constructed" and _therefore_ it is insignificant, merely a matter of
> prejudice. I disagree. _All_ categories are historically constructed, but
> it doesn't mean that all categories are equally bunk. Essentialist
> humanism may be subject to critique, but not in Peter Singer's terms.
>

But Singer is just asking for some justification for the fact that the mentally defiicient person's being human somehow justifies the differential treatment. That does not seem to be unreasonable. Why should just belonging to one species rather than another lead to such differential ethical evaluation? That's all Singer is asking.


> Cheers, Ken Hanly



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