All Animals Are Equal By Singer

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

I am going to argue in support of Peter Singer’s claims against speciesism. It is right to claim that human suffering and animal suffering should be given equal considerations. Both humans and nonhuman species suffer both physically and emotionally and both deserve equal considerations on the basis of morality.

Justin Torres Novel We the Animals is a story about three brothers who lived a harassed childhood life. There parents are both young and have no permanent jobs to support their family. The narrator and his brothers are delinquents who are mostly outside, causing trouble, causing and getting involved in a lot of problems and barely attending school, which their parents allowed them to do. The narrator and his brothers were physically abused by their father, leading them to become more violent to one another and others, drinking alcohol and dropping out of school. Physical abuse is an abuse involving one person’s intention to cause feelings of pain, injury and other physical suffering and bodily harm to the victim. Children are more

Peter Singer is a utilitarian a philosopher who was much different from other utilitarians. The book Doing Ethics states that “Classic Utilitarianism say that the right action is the one that produces the best balance of happiness over unhappiness.(page 547)” SInger’s takes a different approach. He thinks of including both animals and humans in the word or category of “Everyone” “The pain and pleasure of all sentient beings much be considered when we are deciding which action maximizes the greater good.(page547)” I believe that Peter Singer would be one that has the possibility of being in favor of the ban on all seal hunting even if it would devastate the Inuit, if they did not take pain

For this reason, most would oppose the notion that we must treat our loved ones no different than the way we treat complete strangers. This is what utilitarianism ultimately does to our society, we become numbers and we must always put the interests of society as a whole before our own. As a consequence, this new way of thinking will constantly challenge or deny our moral obligation to one another. This lack of consciousness is what leads Singer to believe that, “That there is no characteristic that human infants possess that adult mammals do not have to the same or higher degree” (213). All things considered, how could we ever choose the life of an animal before the life of another human being? Or how could we ever surrender our right to breed, for that matter? When you add animals and conditions to breeding to the equation, the scales in our society become severely unbalanced. Our feelings and family matter not to Hardin and Singer, only cold, hard

In this case, Singer is discussing nonhuman equality. Singer argues that if a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration. He characterises this as ‘sentience’ the ability having the capacity to suffer or experience enjoyment or happiness. Human speciesists do not accept that pain is as bad when it is felt by animals as it is felt by humans, which is the argument for extending the principle of equality to nonhumans. When making a distinction between animals and humans Singer states that there are many areas in which the superior mental powers of normal adult humans make a difference: anticipation, more detailed memory, greater knowledge of what is happening and so on. These differences between humans and animals lead to the conclusion that normal adult human beings have mental capacities which will, in certain circumstances lead them to suffer more than animals would in the same circumstances. However, Singer proposes that if we use this argument to justify experiments on nonhuman animals then we have to ask ourselves whether we are also prepared to allow experiments on human infants and retarded adults as they too would have no idea of what was going to happen to them. In conclusion, Singer argues that the difference between humans and animals should not be considered when defining the moral standards of animal equality, as the

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

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.

In his article “All Animals Are Equal,” Peter Singer discusses the widely-held belief that, generally speaking, there is no more inequality in the world, because all groups of formerly oppressed humans are now liberated. However, it often goes without notice that there are groups of nonhuman animals that continue to face unequal treatment, such as those that are consumed or used as scientific test subjects. Singer’s article criticizes the belief that because humans are generally more intelligent than nonhuman animals, then all humans are superior to all nonhuman animals. Singer argues that intelligence is an arbitrary trait to base the separation of humans and nonhumans, and declares that the only trait that one can logically base moral value is the capacity to have interests, which is determined by a creature’s ability to suffer. Singer explains that in order to stay consistent with the basic principle of equality, anything that has the capacity to suffer ought to have its needs and interests recognized, just as humans’ needs and interests are currently recognized through what he calls “equal consideration.” In this paper, I will explain Singer’s notion of equal consideration as the only relevant sense of equality and why it applies to the rights of both human and nonhuman species that are

“Suffering” is a word which carries negative connotations, used to incite pity, empathy or fear. Why would it not? Is suffering not simply agony, defined justly by the Oxford Dictionary as “the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship” (“Suffering)? Yet, we accept suffering as part of life, a fundamental aspect that defines living. Nietzsche tells us that the very act of living is suffering itself, but to survive is to find value in that suffering. Yet, what sort of value can be attached to an idea so negative? Pico Iyer’s editorial in the New York Times explores the value of suffering, likening suffering to passion and “[p]assion with the plight of other’s makes for ‘compassion’” (________________).I began to think upon the cohesive

Peter Singer’s argues that we should take a utilitarian viewpoint on how people should treat animals. He sees that animals can, in some cases, be smarter than humans and should therefore have some rights in how the animals should be treated. His argument holds this general viewpoint, “..we [should] extend to other species the basic

Suffering shapes morality through the way an individual responds to a situation. Dr. Bernard Rieux’s reaction to the death of a child differs from those of Father Paneloux because of their views on morality. While Rieux “is concerned with a man’s health; and for [him] his health comes first” Planeloux is “working for a man’s salvation” (Camus, 219). So, as Rieux lashes out the priest, he is expressing his suffering in an earthly manner, knowing the final pain in the human condition. Rieux sees the agony of people on a daily basis,

Peter Singer’s argument for determining when animal experiments are justified is stated in his papers “All Animals are Equal” and “Tools for Research”. His argument in regards to animal experimentation and speciesism is very thought provoking and makes the readers review their own biases regarding human/animal relations. Although some of the ideas the author brings forward, such as using mentally retarded or orphaned babies for experimentation, are radical, they do make one think about the biases we have as a species. Also, his thoughts on mammals and birds ability to feel pain being