Ken Hanly wrote:
> In answer to Marta's question. Singer uses the example of the mentally
> deficient person because he is wanting to make the point that mental deficiency
> has no bearing at all on your status as human. His point is that if reason were
> privileged then one would have to conclude that the ape actually should not be
> experimented upon (and perhaps the mentally deficient person should)
> My comment relates to a later part of Singer's argument concerning speciecism.
> Sentience and the capacity to have interests is what confers a right to equal
> moral consideration. However the nature of an individuals' interests depends upon
> their capacities, qualities, etc. A dog has no right to an education because it is
> not a possible interest of a dog. However, Singer would no doubt approve precisely
> the sort of thing that Marta would. Disabled people have special interests
> precisely because they are disabled. So showing equal moral consideration for the
> disabled could very well involve spending public money to ensure there were
> parking spaces near shopping, ramps for access to buildings etc. These are the
> implications of Singers' views for the disabled. But also he would claim that
> chimpanzees as sensitive and intelligent etc. also have interests and it is wrong
> to ignore them to simply use them as means to our ends in painful experiments etc.
> We would not treat intelligent and sentient humans as we do chimpanzees so
> unless we can give some justification for this we are guilty of speciecism. Singer
> is not saying that we are unjustified in treating animals differently than humans
> or that we must give animals the same rights as humans. That is nonsense. We
> ought to be able to show that differential treatment is not based upon
> speciecism, just as we ought to be able to show that differential treatment of
> women or blacks is not based upon sexism or racism. Singer points out that of
> course only women can have a right to abortion but there is nothing sexist about
> that since men can't get pregnant! This is a bit simplistic but it conveys the
> idea.
Ok I see your point re speciesism, but when one reads Singer further, one comes to realize that he does make intelligence and physical ability a marker of social worth. He openly advocates for euthanizing any infant under one month old because it does not meet his criteria of "personhood" but he particularly singles out disabled infants as subjects for killing. In Should the Baby Live, he makes this clear. If you want some quotes, I can dig them up. Singer bloody well knows that parents are not going to be killing nondisabled children (maybe they would kill females in some countries) - it is the disabled children who are his target.
Then if you would apply his reasoning to the animal world - say to dogs - would it be alright to kill a newborn puppy because it does not experience "doghood"? Singer would never carry his same argument over to legitimize killing puppies because the animal rights activists would be all over him.
Disabled activists are all over him all over the world for his bias.
The thing about these ethicists is that you really cannot separate what they ethicize about from who they are. I believe that Peter Singer, the man, would never want to have a disabled child becuase he perceives that as too much trouble and interfere with his lifestyle, so he has rationalized his ethics accordingly. He has given the "right" to the parent to dispose of it. It was only a couple years ago that he even bothered to get to know any disabled adults. In other words, he doesn't know of what he assumes.
best, Marta