Michael Chenchard’s Reviews > Animal Liberation > Status Update

Singer now refutes the argument that animals are incapable of any suffering at all, that they are as Descartes described, automata.

So then Singer considers another counterargument to Taylor: that while humans may have individual differences, there are no differences b/w race or sex, hence opposing racism and sexism. But this has 2 problems: 1) people can construct more nuanced classes, such as IQ > 100 ruling over IQ < 100; and 2) admittedly there are differences even b/w the races and sexes--we do not yet know whether these are 100% genetic or.

singer first brings up the example of Wollstonecraft's petition for women's rights back in 1792, and how a Cambridge philosopher wrote a satirical crticism about extending those rights to brutes. one response to this criticism is by saying that e.g. voting: women make are capable of similar rational thinking as to men, thus they resemble men more than animals. but this is a meaningless argument, as animals don't vote