POST 10: singer ch.1-5

Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2004 23:23:56

peter singer's view on ethics is that of some universalized law that relates to equality. his ethical views on practical issues are, as he himself stated, highly utilitarianist. making references to untilitarianists like bentham and mill, singer claims that utilitarian view on ethics is highly suitable for practical issues such as animal rights, abortions, euthanasia, and poverty. utilitarianism itself is an ethical view that considers good as being the maximization of pleasure and minimization of pain. this idea was formerly focused on individuals, but mill generalized it to maximizing the total pleasure of the whole society. now, holding this ethical view in high regards, singer incorporates this idea of utilitarianism into the notion of equality that he considers important in formulating morality and ethics.

singer apparently takes equality into account in all of his arguments. it seems that his claim is that something is moral, or correct, or justified, if it does not create inequality. for singer, equality in a nutshell is equal consideration of interests. so an action can only uphold equality if the interests of every side that is affected by this action have been equally taken into account. in his argument on animal rights, singer claims that just because animals are different from us in many ways, does not imply that their interests can be disregarded. doing so then leads to speciesism, which is not any different from racism, only that it discriminates against other species and not other races. while singer seems to be against the killing of animals, he does accept that there are some animals that are not self-conscious and not autonomous and says that the case against animal killings is weak for these animals. however, singer addresses other arguments that may be used against animal rights. he counters the argument on whether animals can feel pain by arguing that there is no reason that they cannot since vertebrates all have fundamentally similar nervous system, including us. thus if we can feel pain, then they can, too. singer also counters the argument claiming that we are justified to eat animals since animals eat each other. but we are not like animals: while some animals are herbivores, some other are carnivores and they NEED meat to live. human beings however, do NOT NEED animals to live. eating meat is a luxury, and the very fact that we can still survive without eating meat, gives no justification on eating them.

lane's argument on animal rights is simliar to singer's. similar in a sense that they address the same kind of objections to support their claim. lane, like singer, claims that animals can experience pain, based on the fact that they have nervous system. he strengthens his argument by claiming that when the central nervous system is shut down, pain disappears; thus, anything that has a central nervous system must be able to experience pain. another point lane tries to make is the question on whether it is NECESSARY to eat meat. like singer, lane also claims that human beings do not NEED meat to survive, and that meat is simply a luxury. lane also goes on, in defense of vegetarianism, to ask us to put ourselves in the animals' position. he invents a scenario in which a transhuman being which intelligence to us is like us to a cow, comes to us wanting to eat us. lane then claims that intelligence also cannot be used as an excuse to to kill animals for food.