Singer: Animal Liberation

This book is a straightforward application of the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill to questions of animal ethics.

Preface to the 1975 Edition

Topic of book: "This book is about the tyranny of human over nonhuman animals. This tyranny has caused and today is still causing an amount of pain and suffering that can only be compared with that which resulted from the centuries of tyranny by white humans over black humans." (i)

The point that our treatment of animals is a result of prejudice just as pernicious as racial or sexual prejudice.

Why the book is called "Animal Liberation":

Liberation movement =df a demand for an end to prejudice and discrimination based on an arbitrary characteristic, like race or sex. (iv)

Aim of book: "The aim of this book is to lead you to make this mental switch [considering our attitudes from the point of view of those who suffer by them] in your attitudes and practices toward a very large group of beings: members of species other than our own." (iv-v)

Why animal liberation is handicapped relative to other liberation movements:

  1. Members of the exploited group cannot mount an organized protest (though they do protest individually).
  2. The oppressing group is not seriously divided; almost all humans benefit from exploitation of animals; hence few can view our treatment of animals with detachment.
  3. Habits of thought lead us to brush aside descriptions of animal suffering as merely emotional.
Speciesism is inherent in language—as in the use of the term 'animal' to mean "nonhuman animal."

If the recommendations of this book are followed, not only animals but also humans would benefit, since if we all were vegetarian we could easily feed the world. (vi-vii)

Preface to the New Edition (1990)

Three revisions are in order:

    1. The book should discuss the animal liberation movement, which was almost nonexistent in 1975. Here he refers us to the book In Defense of Animals, which he edited.
    2. Some response to criticisms of the book seemed necessary, but he has done this only by adding references to papers in which these responses have been made.
    3. It needs to be shown that matters have not improved much since the book was written. This Singer has done in the book. The evidence he adds is not a comprehensive account of animal suffering but merely sufficient for Singer's purposes.
Singer closes his new preface with a disavowal of violence: The alternative to the path of increasing violence is to follow the lead of the two greatest—and not coincidentally, most successful—leaders of liberation movements in modern times: Gandhi and Martin Luther King. …In the end they succeeded because the justice of their cause could not be denied, and their behavior touched the consciences even of those who had opposed them. …it is in the rightness of our cause, and not the fear of our bombs, that our prospects of victory lie. (xiii) Chapter 1: All Animals Are Equal

Purpose of the chapter is to establish a principle of equality: the interests of every being affected by an action are to be taken into account and given the same weight as like interests of any other being. (5)

Thomas Taylor attempted to refute Wollstonecraft's arguments for equality of women with men by pointing out that similar arguments would imply equality of animals with men.

This was supposed to be a reductio, but Singer thinks the conclusion, far from being absurd, is true.

Principle of equality does not imply identical treatment; it implies identical consideration. (2)

It is prescriptive, not descriptive. (4-5)

Moral equality does not imply actual equality in intellect or abilities; if it did, then since people are rarely equal in intellect or abilities, all sorts of discrimination would be justified—maybe even including racial and sexual discrimination (since there are racial and sexual differences in ability).

A thing has interests iff it can suffer. (8)

sentience =df the capacity to suffer and/or experience enjoyment (8-9)

Singer's argument for moral consideration for animals:

1 Equivalent interests should receive equal moral

consideration. (principle of equality)

2 Anything that is sentient has interests equivalent to some

of the interests of human beings.

3 Many nonhuman animals are sentient.

So 4 The interests of many nonhuman animals deserve the

same moral consideration as equivalent interests of

human beings.

 Hence it is wrong not to give equal consideration to interests of these animals.

speciesism =df a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species. (6)

Rights talk is, strictly, inappropriate here.

Response to the objection that animals do not suffer (are not sentient):

1 Human beings suffer.

2 Higher animals exhibit most of the same external signs of suffering that humans do.

3 Higher animals have the same neural structures that enable humans to suffer.

4 Suffering would serve the same evolutionary purpose in humans as in animals.

5 Nothing we know about animals precludes their suffering in many of the same ways that humans do.

 So 6 Animals suffer. Regarding 5, ability to use language is irrelevant to ability to suffer (as we see in the retarded or in infants).

The problem of interspecies comparison of interests:

The question of killing:

Questions of killing bring up the issue of the value of a life and questions of balancing life against pain. Singer avoids this issue.

Rejection of speciesism does not imply all lives are of equal worth. (follows from definition of speciesism)

Some individuals and species may have greater interests in continuing to live than others.

1 In a choice between saving the life of a normal human an saving the life of a retarded person, we should save the life of the normal person.
So 2 Value of life depends on intellectual characteristics (or more broadly on its quality.   So 2 The evil of pain is unaffected by intellectual characteristics or         other such characteristics. The conclusions of this book are independent of considerations about value of life; they hinge only on matters of suffering.

The next two chapters discuss two of many possible examples of speciesism: animal research and factory farming.
 

John Nolt's Course Listings
John Nolt's Home Page