> It's a matter of discerning the morally relevant characteristics and then
> treating beings who are alike in the relevant respects similarly. For
> Singer, being "alive" isn't in and of itself a morally relevant
> consideration. This squares with common intuition. For Singer, the
> capacities to think and feel are the only morally relevant considerations.
> That's right, but perhaps more controversial. Singer consequently goes on
> to argue that if it's wrong to force unnecessary hardships and suffering of
> various sorts upon humans, it's also wrong to force the _same_ (or
> comparably similar) sorts of hardships and suffering upon animals. Even if
> Singer were wrong (he isn't), the arguments are free of inconsistency.
>
> -- Luke
Okay, let me try again: why is the capacity to think and feel morally relevant? The claim that this "squares with common intuition" is irrelevant (common sense leads us to believe that the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening!). It is only a valid claim if you arbitrarily take human life as the standard by which to value life that thinking and feeling become important. The logical inconsistency is this: Singer (and ravi?) chastise meat-users who distinguish between human and nonhuman animals and simultaneously use arbitrary, common-sense ideas derived from human experience to distinguish between life "deserving of rights" and that "not deserving of rights".
I've asked this a couple times in this thread: why is animal, human-like life more deserving of respects and rights than plant life? Note that any answer that refers to "thinking", "feeling" and "suffering" implicitly uses human life as the standard for what is valuable, and is thus the same form of reasoning a meat-eater uses to justify eating animals other than humans.
Miles