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

Marta Russell ap888 at lafn.org
Fri Mar 3 15:59:32 PST 2000


Ken Hanly wrote:


>
> 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.

I ask why Singer chooses a mentally "deficient" person to make his case rather than a couch potato or some other (in some people's view) non productive person? Because he has a bias - about the worth of a human life. Disabled lives are not whole full lives to him, but I would argue neither is the average couch potato's life. Where is the line and why? And why are ethicists, steeped in their institutional biases, given such credibility to be the ones making such determinations? Where is the public? -- Marta Russell



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