Summary Of Peter Singer s Argument - amazonia.fiocruz.br

It is widely considered within the animal liberation movement to be the founding philosophical statement of its ideas. Singer himself rejected the use of the theoretical framework of rights when it comes to human and nonhuman animals. Following Jeremy BenthamSinger argued that the interests of animals should be considered because of their ability to experience suffering and that the idea of rights was not necessary in order to consider them. He popularized the term " speciesism " in the book, which had been coined by Richard D. Ryder to describe the exploitative treatment of animals.

Singer's central argument is an expansion of the utilitarian idea that "the greatest good" is the only measure of good or ethical behavior. He argues that there is no reason not to apply this principle to other animals.

Although Singer rejects 'rights' as a moral concept, his position is derived from utilitarian principles of minimizing suffering. In Animal LiberationSinger argues against what he calls speciesism : discrimination on the grounds that a being belongs to a certain species. He holds the interests of all beings capable of suffering to be worthy of equal consideration and that giving lesser consideration to beings based on their species is no more justified than discrimination based on skin color.

He argues that animals rights should be based on their capacity to feel pain more than on their intelligence. In particular, he argues that while animals show lower intelligence than the average human, many severely intellectually challenged humans show equally diminished, if not lower, mental capacity and that some animals have displayed signs of intelligence for example, primates learning elements of American sign language and other symbolic Summary Of Peter Singer s Argument sometimes on a par with that of human children. Therefore, intelligence does not provide a basis for giving nonhuman animals any less consideration than such intellectually challenged humans.

He also condemns vivisection except where the benefit in terms of improved medical treatment, etc. Activist Ingrid Newkirk wrote of Animal Liberation"It forever changed the conversation about our treatment of animals. It made people—myself included—change what we ate, what we wore, and how we perceived animals.

Multiply your impact

Singer has expressed regret that the book did not have more impact. The book has also received a wide range of philosophical challenges to his formulation of animal rights. In a lengthy debate in Slate Magazinepublished inRichard Posner wrote, among other things, that Singer failed to see the "radicalism of the ethical vision that powers [his] view on animals, an ethical vision that finds greater value in a healthy pig than in a profoundly intellectually challenged child, that commands inflicting a lesser pain on a human being to avert a greater pain to a dog, and that, provided only https://amazonia.fiocruz.br/scdp/essay/essay-writing-format-cbse-class-12/nonverbal-communication-in-politics.php a chimpanzee has 1 percent of the mental ability of a normal human being, would require the sacrifice of the human being to save chimpanzees.

In addition, Martha Nussbaum has argued that the capability approach Summary Of Peter Singer s Argument a more adequate foundation of justice than Utilitarianism can supply. Roger Scrutona prominent critic of animal rights and conservative political journalist, singled Animal Liberation for criticism. He wrote that Singer's works, including Animal Liberation"contain little or no philosophical argument. They derive their radical moral conclusions from a vacuous utilitarianism that counts the pain and pleasure of all living things as equally significant and that ignores just about everything that has been said in our philosophical tradition about the real distinction between persons and animals.

Singer solution world poverty essay

There have been several editions of the book published over the years, each further chronicling the progress of the animal liberation movement. In an essay entitled "Animal Liberation: A Personal View", Singer describes the personal background that led to his adoption of the views he sets out in Animal Liberation. He writes of how he arrived in Oxford in Octoberand in had lunch with a fellow graduate student, Richard Keshen, who avoided rAgument. This led Singer Summary Of Peter Singer s Argument inquire as to why. Singer then read Ruth Harrison 's book, Animal Machinesas well as a paper by Roslind Godlovitch who would later co-edit Animals, Men and Moralswhich convinced him to become a vegetarian and to take animal suffering seriously as a philosophical issue.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. IAI TV. Retrieved 11 December Retrieved The New Statesman. Archived from the original on 26 August Retrieved 23 Sumjary Animal Liberation is one. Slate Magazine. Animal Rights. New York: Oxford University Press, Scruton ]