Utilitarian Defense of Animal Liberation
Uploaded by knoxville on Oct 30, 2004
This last century has assisted the births of such words as sexism, racism, etc. Women fought for their rights, as did the black people. Peter Singer, a graduate at Oxford and a member of the Philosophy Department at la Trobe University in Australia, defines the word prejudice as the actions performed by one group for their benefit at the expense of another group. Women and African American people resisted and fought off the oppressions that were hanging above their heads. Nevertheless, Singer asks, what happens to those who cannot speak up, those that do not have the ability to communicate with us, what about animals? Shouldn’t we direct the notion equality toward the animals, as another sort of species, Singer demands? Peter confirms.
Speciesism is relatively a new word in our modern society. Singer declares that for some people this new prejudice is just mind-boggling, compared to the most common ones, sexism and racism. Singer asks himself, why cannot animals be allowed to the same privileges as the humans. People say that men and women are very different from animals, and that these liberties cannot be extended to animals. The nonhumans, animals, simply are incapable of making rational decision, therefore, why should they be allowed any rights? Singer gives an example of how simply and quickly animal rights can be denied and unconsidered: “Men and women can vote; animals cannot vote, therefore why should we bother giving them right to vote. This just draws a picture saying, why should we give them any rights at all? Humans consider themselves superior, therefore why should they give in to a weaker species? Singer then compares racism to speciesism. He affirms that if we cannot judge by the race or the sex, why are we judging by species? Singer also tells us that we cannot judge people by their race or their sex, because these attributes do not give out the whole person. This is how Singer defines discrimination. To reach equality, we cannot base ourselves on the person’s intelligence, their strength or their moral capacity. Equality, according to Singer, is an ethical principle. From this, he declares that, even if two people are different, the level of satisfaction of their needs and interests should not be. Finally, Singer, ties the equality principle to speciesism. He argues that if humans cannot exploit each other, who gives them the right to exploit animals?...