All Animals Are Equal By Essay

The other half of Singer’s notion that our society is speciesist rests on how humans treat animals to produce food. “Factory farming” techniques cause “animals [to] lead miserable lives from birth to slaughter” (Singer, Animal Liberation, p.

Peter Singer’s argument is that all animals are equal and should be treated as such. He begins to build his argument by defining “equality”. Equality entails “equal consideration” for a being’s interests, with the potential for different treatment. Consider the difference in treatment between men and women in regards to abortion rights. Women have the right to get an abortion while men do not. This is not a difference in equality, but simply recognition of the fact that it could be in the interest of women to get one. Men on the other hand, have no desire or ability for this right. Singer

In the article “A Change of Heart About Animals”, Rifkin asserts that humans are treating animals in the most atrocious way, and he claims that in order for their lives to improve, we need to definitely adjust ours. He uses great amount of logos, and several experiments done with different animals and tries his best to closely relate animals to us, humans. Rifkin although, never inserts a call for action to this problem throughout his article. Instead, he puts the emphasis on the pathos of the argument. In the world we are living in today, there is about 8.7 million different living species. Whether they are land or marine animals, they do play a big role in our community such as being apart of the food pyramid, assisting handicapped people wherever they go, or being a transportation for people living on farms and fields. With this being said, the ranking of animals in our community has brought up a heated argument in connection to their rights and welfare. Eight legged, four legged, or two legged land or sea animals do not comprehend the concept of rights. If we, humans, give animals “rights”, we are basically inferring the fact that we are like animals, and they have the entitlement to share our rights. Although they don’t understand rights, the fact that many of these animals are being treated inhumanely is wrong and animal welfare should be ingrained into this community rather than the massive inhumane treatment.

Peter Singer has written many works in support of animal rights. In one of his greatest works Animal Liberation, Singer goes into great depths on how similar in biology animals are to human beings. Another strong point was not only the biological resemblance, but also the behavioral tendencies and traits humans and nonhuman species share. There are two major areas of focus that Singer puts emphasis on that need to be recognized for the purposes of my argument. One focus is this utilitarian approach that only the human species carry: the belief of ethical and morally good behavior should be extended to the consideration of nonhuman species. The second focus that is the basis for my argument is Singer’s argument against a huge human social construct labeled speciesism.

In Peter Singer’s article, All Animals are Equal, Singer claims that animals deserve the same equal rights and respect that the human lives get. His strongest argument is defined by all animals, human or non-human shall be defined as equal. Singer makes some very strong arguments within his article, but I feel some of his statements are humanist. As an animal lover and mother to two pets, I disagree that not all animals or living things endure the same amount. However, I do agree that animals do deserve the rights to live lives as animals should. This paper will analyze Singer’s argument in relation to the specific issue of animal equal rights. It will also include the counterarguments I have against his claims of his article.

A highly popularized and debated topic in our modern society is the promotion of animal equality or animal rights. Many people, philosophers included, have a wide range of opinions on this topic. Two of the philosophers studied in class who discussed animal rights were Peter Singer and Carl Cohen. Singer, who has the more extreme view on animal rights, believes that all animals are equal and that the limit of sentience is the only defensible boundary of concern for the interest of others (Singer, 171). While Cohen, who’s view is more moderate than that of Singer’s, believes that animals do not have rights, stating that to have rights one must contain the ability for free moral judgment. Though, he does believe that we as

On the topic of animal rights, Vicki Hearne and Peter Singer represent opposite ends of a belief spectrum. Singer describes, in numerous articles, that he believes animal rights should focus on if the animal is suffering, and the best option to prevent it is to limit interaction between animals and humans. Specifically, in “Speciesism and Moral Status” Singer compares the intelligence and ability of non-human animals to those with severe cognitive disabilities to establish an outrageous solution to animal belittlement. He uses logos (the appeal to reason) and ethos (the appeal to ethics), to question the current rights in place to appeal to other scholars. Nevertheless, his approach can cause an emotional disconnect to the readers; this apparent in contrast to Hearne’s pathos (the

Speciesism is a prejudice for or against a certain species. It is the belief that all and only human beings have moral status. Peter Singer, in “All Animals are Equal”, points out that people are contradicting themselves when they make the argument that non-human animals do not deserve the same rights as humans just because animals do not have the same intellectual abilities as us. Singer points out that humans come with different moral capacities and intellectual abilities, such as humans with irreparable brain damage and infant humans, so if people were to argue that animals don’t deserve the same equality as humans because they are basing it on actual equality, then humans who lack certain abilities and characteristics would also not deserve the same equality.

Both in and out of philosophical circle, animals have traditionally been seen as significantly different from, and inferior to, humans because they lacked a certain intangible quality – reason, moral agency, or consciousness – that made them moral agents. Recently however, society has patently begun to move beyond this strong anthropocentric notion and has begun to reach for a more adequate set of moral categories for guiding, assessing and constraining our treatment of other animals. As a growing proportion of the populations in western countries adopts the general position of animal liberation, more and more philosophers are beginning to agree that sentient creatures are of a direct moral concern to humans, though the degree of this

Singer starts the article by challenging the reader's idea of the last form of discrimination; too many the last form of discrimination was sex-based but to Singer that is not the case. He believes people false consciously accept sexism as the last form of discrimination because there are no other groups of women that have advocated for rights, but people fail to realize oppression and discrimination go unnoticed until the group being mistreated points out the mistreatment. People look past the mistreatment of animals because animals cannot advocate for their rights. He refers to the discrimination against animals as speciesism; speciesism is the innate superiority of a species (homo sapiens) to another species without a solid foundation other than self-interest. Just like a racist places the self-interest of members of their own race superior to members of another race, a speciesist places the self-interest of members of their own species superior to another species. He continues by saying people are often confused when talking about animal rights; are we supposed to give animals the right to vote? He explains this concern by bringing up a woman’s right to an abortion. Woman have the right to an abortion

Christine M. Korsgaard argues in the article ‘PERSONHOOD, ANIMALS, AND THE LAW’ that non-human animals, although may not be categorized as ‘persons’, should be regarded as ends in themselves and the subjects of rights against human treatment.

In Stanley Benn’s “Egalitarianism and Equal Consideration of Interests”, it is explained that animals and human imbeciles are distinguished not because of fundamental inequality, but solely on the basis that the two subjects are of different species. In regard to animals’ moral rights and the infringement of those rights due to the practice of speciesism, Singer employs a utilitarian style of argument to defend animals’ moral rights; in short, the interests of each being which is involved should be taken into consideration and said interests should be given the same weight as that of another being. Speciesism is morally wrong because it attempts to assign undeserved weight to the interests of beings of separate species, solely based off the difference of species. Naturally, or rather unnaturally, human beings have always awarded themselves the utmost importance due to the idea of human dignity, as in humans occupy the central spot within any earthly ranking. Logically, Singer argues that the practice of speciesism is wrong because the conditions in which it exists are synonymous to the conditions which facilitate racism and sexism, before they had been recognized as

Where I do not disagree with the basis of Singer’s argument, I do disagree with some of the minor facts used to support this argument. I disagree with the notion that the human race is ready to do anything to another species in order to satisfy our taste, that non-human animals are seen like machines and they are kept in unsuitable conditions. In general, Singer’s argument seems to be based on vague points and generalizes the human population.

Peter Singer addresses the ordeal of animal rights better than I have ever seen anyone address it. His analysis laid out in A Utilitarian Defense of Animal Liberation is remarkably stated. He pushes the viewer to see animals as equals to us.

In our world, protests occur each day on the issues of animal cruelty and human rights, but when the issues are put together which will reign over the other? The author Peter Singer of “All Animals are Equal” and “Tools for Research” presents his argument for determining when animal experiments are justified. The author starts his paper with a counter argument, questioning if one would be willing to let thousands of people die if those people could be saved by experimentation on a single animal. The answer is a unanimous no; in our culture we value human life over everything else. The author follows by asking the reader if they would be prepared to carry out their experiments on humans who are mentally retarded or orphaned babies, if that