Practical Ethics

by Peter Singer

the benefits to humans are either non-existent or very uncertain;

would the opponent of experimentation be prepared to let thousands die from a terrible disease that could be cured only by experimenting on one animal?

no experiment could ever be predicted to have such dramatic results,

the fur trade, hunting in all its different forms, circuses, rodeos, zoos and the pet business.

Animals in pain behave in much the same way as humans do, and their behaviour is sufficient justification for the belief that they feel pain.

It is significant that none of the grounds we have for believing that animals feel pain hold for plants.

This might be called the Benjamin

Franklin Objection because Franklin recounts in his Autobiography that he was for a time a vegetarian, but his abstinence from animal flesh came to an end when he was watching some friends prepare to fry a fish they had just caught.

When the fish was cut open, it was found to have a smaller fish in its stomach. ‘Well’, Franklin said to himself, ‘if you eat one another, I don't see why we ...

The most decisive point, however, is that nonhuman animals are not capable of considering the alternatives open to them or of reflecting on the ethics of their diet.

So animals don't have a choice, but we do. Is it being speciest if we do something that they don't do?

You cannot evade responsibility by imitating beings who are incapable of making this choice.

He is judging the need to avoid speciesm in the case where we might be causing unnecessary suffering to beings that can experience suffering much like we do; but does not hold them accountable to making the same sort of decisions that we should be making due to our ability to reason.

the stronger prey on the weaker,

This interpretation

He seems to be detracting attention from his earlier argument where he singles humans out for special duties.

For if the basis of ethics is that I refrain from doing nasty things to others as long as they don't do nasty things to me, I have no reason to avoid doing nasty things to those who are incapable of appreciating my restraint and controlling their conduct towards me accordingly.

ok he is finally addressing this issue

take us beyond our own personal interests and even beyond the interests of some sectional group to which we belong.

we may come to see that it would not be consistent with our other convictions to halt at that point.

where ethics should end.

we need to consider pros n cons instead of going blindly into the night

Because profoundly intellectually disabled humans are equally incapable of reciprocating, they must also be excluded.

The same goes for infants and very young children.

‘Why should I do anything for posterity? What has posterity ever done for me?’

missing the point? so this is obviously because of the idea of leaving a legacy so others can know of you and profit from it and likely build on your legacy; pretty pointless aiming for posterity otherwise. so he is using this argument to refute the claim that animals should be able to claim the same rights as humans (in some senses) even though they are on a different plane of 'being able to do anything' for us; however the two are not comparable in this fashion as the former is an idea in our minds, much like, i suppose, the idea that animals will be grateful in theory for what we do for them.

within the moral community all those who have or will have the capacity to take part in a reciprocal agreement,

later generations cannot enter into reciprocal relationships with us,

If contract theorists

Rather than cling to the husk of a contract view that has lost its kernel,

In the present context, the argument is used to suggest that we need a clear line to divide those beings we can experiment on, or fatten for dinner, from those we cannot. The species boundary makes a nice sharp dividing line, whereas levels of self-awareness, autonomy

In these circumstances, the right and courageous thing to do is not to side with the tribal instincts that prompt us to say, ‘My tribe (country, race, ethnic group, religion, etc.) right or wrong’ but to say, ‘I’m on the side that does what is right’.

misery, if this really were the case, we should reject the tribal – or species – instinct and answer Williams’ question in the same way.

We may take the doctrine of the sanctity of human life as simply a way of saying that human life has some very special value, a value quite distinct from the value of the lives of other living things.

It is possible to give ‘human being’ a precise meaning.

self-awareness, self-control, a sense of the future, a sense of the past, the capacity to relate to others, concern for others, communication and curiosity.

The word ‘person’ has its origin in the Latin term for a mask worn by an actor in classical drama. By putting on masks, the actors signified that they were acting a role.

Subsequently, ‘person’ came to mean one who plays a role in life, one who is an agent.

There was a specific theological motivation for the Christian insistence on the importance of species membership: the belief that all born of human parents are immortal and destined for an eternity of bliss or for everlasting torment.

because we are created by God we are his property, and to kill a human being is to usurp God's right to decide when we shall live and when we shall die.

it, taking a human life is a sin against God in the same way that killing a slave would be a sin against the master to whom the slave belonged.

Nonhuman animals, on the other hand, were believed to have been placed by Go...

To take the lives of any of these people, without their consent, is to thwart their desires for the future.

an indirect ground

the intuitive and the critical.

am not the infant from whom I developed.

Continued existence cannot be in the interests of a being who never has had the concept of a continuing self –

To have a right to life, one must have, or at least at one time have had, the concept of having a continuing existence.

but it will not have any preferences for the long-term future, and the desires it has do not survive periods