Animal Question

Michael Pollan’s, An Animal’s Place, analyzes the controversial topic of animal abuse while Pollan himself struggles to comprehend the relationship between humans and non-humans. Whether animals are used for food or clothing, Pollan’s impartial view of the moral ethics behind the treatment of animals acknowledges that we as readers are susceptible to influence and he encourages the questioning of our own beliefs. Rather than succumbing to Singer’s, All Animals are Equal demands of making it our “Moral obligation to cease supporting the practice” (pg.4), Pollan conveys the benefits as well as the concerns to the consummation of animals. From the personal connection Pollan establishes with his readers, his progressive beliefs

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.

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

Dehumanization can be thought of as the process of losing one’s humanity. It can further be thought of as a way to make one’s “pain and [...] individuality irrelevant” (Garvey, 141). Dr. Moreau wanted to manufacture more humans through the trampling over of the animalism in the animals he experimented on. In order to succeed in his plans, Dr. Moreau must devoid himself of all natural, human, empathy.

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

For example, Haraway (2008) is troubled by the cultural narrative that animals like wild pigs are to be killed, that they are pests. She likens their fervent killing and repulsion by humans to ‘the xenophobic idiom of the immigration shy.’ 297. Put in these terms, the killing of pigs seems an awful injustice. She structures pigs in a frame unlike the cultural narrative, arguing that pigs are intelligent, social, emotional animals, not unlike dogs.

In Meditation six: Concerning the Existence of Material Things, and the Real Distinction between Mind and Body, Rene Descartes wrote of his distinctions between the mind and the body, first by reviewing all things that he believed to be true, then assessing the causes and later calling them into doubt, and then finally by considering what he must now believe. By analyzing Descartes’ writing, this paper will explicate Descartes’ view on bodies and animals, and if animals have minds. Before explicating the answer to those questions, Descartes’ distinctions between the mind and the body should first be summarized and explained.

One of the most controversial topics in modern philosophy revolves around the idea of non-human animals being considered human people. Controversy over what makes up an actual person has been long debated. However, society deems it as a set of characteristics. The average person normally does not realize how complicated a question this is, and in fact many scientists, philosophers, and individuals will side differently on this specific topic. I personally do not believe that animals are capable of being human people, but throughout this argumentative paper I will address critical views presented from multiple philosophers on why this seems to be the case.

All Animals are Equal: The Rights of Non-Humans If an oppressor group does not even stop to think that their victims may in some way be equal, they will not even realize that they are an oppressor in the first place. This is the line of argument that Singer uses in his paper All Animals are Equal, where he claims that most humans are deeply speciesist. Indeed, as civil rights groups for humans of different races, sexes, sexualities, religions, and more have pushed the notions of human equality in the mainstream further and further, Singer feels that discrimination of non-humans has largely been overlooked by common people and philosophers alike. This essay will go over Singer’s notion of rights and equality, arguments for the rights abuses

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 more recent times the rising prevalence around animal ethics, in the world itself as well as in the realm of philosophy, a multitude of people are finding connection between the somewhat hidden prejudice of speciesism and the indisputable prejudices of sexism and racism. To fully grasp this association, one must first understand the seriously

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

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

In regards to animals, the issue of rights and whether they exist becomes a touchy subject. In the essay, “Nonhuman Animal Rights: Sorely Neglected,” author Tom Regan asserts that animals have rights based upon inherent value of experiencing subjects of a life. Regan’s argument will first be expressed, later explained, and evaluated in further detail. Lastly, that fact that Regan thinks rights are harbored under the circumstance of being an experiencing subject of a life will also be discussed in terms of the incapacitated, etc.