A while back, I wrote a piece called “A Critique of Peter Singer“, one of my more popular pieces on moral theory. Since I wrote that piece, I’ve spent more time reading and thinking about Singer, and I am now prepared to offer an additional critique that in some places supersedes and in other places adds to that one. Read the rest of this entry »
I recently found out that one of my professors is a self-described extinctionist. He believes that we have a moral duty to bring about the extinction of most, if not all, animal life. What makes this more interesting is that this particular professor is a vegetarian, and that he is an extinctionist for animal welfare reasons. I realise that the reader is probably not predisposed to agree with such a radical view, but I think for that very reason it is worth examining and thinking about. So today, I aim to take up, without prejudice, the question of whether or not the extinctionists are correct. Read the rest of this entry »
I had an interesting lecture today in which Peter Singer came up. Singer is an interesting philosopher in so far as he is, like me, a utilitarian and a consequentialist, but I nonetheless find myself from time to time in conflict with him. Today I seek to identify where precisely Singer and I differ, and why one should agree with me rather than with him.
Over the last couple of weeks I have found myself engaged three times in discussions about the ethical standing of the animal. In the first instance, the question was one of vegetarianism, the second was one of animal testing, and the third was of the validity of antihumanism, specifically the notion that human beings should diminish both in number and in environmental impact for the benefit of animals. It seems that the animal liberation movement grows stronger and more politically relevant, so it is time to evaluate its central proposition–that animals are non-human persons with the same ethical standing to that of human beings. To answer this question, we must investigate what precisely it means to be a person.
Benjamin Studebaker 