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

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Sat Mar 4 04:09:03 PST 2000


Ken H.:


>Comment: I present no argument Neither does Singer. Singer makes a
>statement to
>the effect that torture is not absolutely wrong. I ask a question. Neither
>of us
>say anything about laws.

It seems an argument is implicit in Singer's statement & your question: torture is a justifiable means to achieve a "good" outcome that may be had through information extracted through torture, isn't it?


>I did not think that you are either Kantian or fundamentalist CHristian.

Why do you have to be a Kantian or fundamentalist Christian to believe that it is an *atrocious* idea to say "torturing a human being is almost always wrong, but it is not absolutely wrong" (Singer)? You can be a historical materialist, a utilitarian (especially a Millian utilitarian), a non-reductive naturalist, a non-fundamentalist religionist, or whatever and still believe that *absolutely nothing good* will come of Singer's statement, since his statement & your question give a justification for actually existing torturers, whereas in reality actually existing leftists & the working class in general have *absolutely nothing to gain & so much to lose* from making widespread the belief that "torturing a human being is almost always wrong, but it is not absolutely wrong" (Singer). A hypothetical gain in a hypothetical hard case that one would never actually encounter in reality shouldn't be used to give a moral justification for actually existing torture. I hope people (including you) believe that torture is absolutely wrong.


>Perhaps, I helped confuse matters here by my response, but you totally
>misconstrue
>Singer's argument. He is trying to prove that you cannot base the
>difference in
>treatment upon differences in intelligence but only upon the fact that the
>dull
>person is human. Read what he says even in your own quote. The only possible
>answer to why the dull person is given different treatment is that the
>person is
>human. For Pete's sake he is arguing that intelligence is not a marker of
>social
>worth as far as moral considerability is concerned. He does not question the
>disabled person's humanity.

Are you aware that Singer defines certain disabled persons as individuals who are living "a life not worth living" (_Practical Ethics_, 2nd edition, 182)? Singer suggests that the regulated killing of babies with spina bifida be permitted (_Practical Ethics_, 184, 202-03). He would extend to parents the authority to "replace" a Down's syndrome or hemophiliac infant (i.e. kill the child and conceive another) if adequate family or societal resources were not forthcoming (_Practical Ethics_, 186-90). Also, the reason why Singer picks mentally disabled people as a rhetorical wedge to argue for "animal rights" is that in his view the norms of human lives are to be defined by "rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness." Mentally disabled people, for Singer, don't qualify as "normal human beings" and are closer to animals than Singer or his readers (now, this view is common to many Western philosophers, in that [narrowly defined] "reason" is a defining marker of humanity for them; women, blacks, other oppressed groups, and often the working class in general have been defined as less than fully rational [sometimes as totally devoid of reason], which was then used as a justification for political disenfranchisement).

Well, now I would like to hear why you think Singer's views are justifiable.

Yoshie



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