Peter Singer and some conclusions

Peter Singer has some inconsistent and problematic opinions, this I have known for a while. But I've never cared enough to actually read any of his "philosophy" - I'm not sure I knew that such a thing even existed.

However, while reading a totally different book, I came across a quote summarizing his views on animal rights and was fascinated that he completely lost me immediately, as I will respect a well-crafted argument regardless of its content : "Take the premise of equality among people, which most of us readily accept" Huh? Where do people readily accept this and how do they do it? I've traveled vast swaths of the world and have never seen this. As a general rule if you have money, good looks, athleticism, intelligence, stylish clothes, a well-known family, creativity, opinions etc. you are better than other people who lack these things. That's how it works. And that list goes on forever and varies by culture and sub-culture but it doesn't matter. No one who spends more than 5 seconds thinking about it can actually honestly believe that our society treats people equally.

It goes on: "Equality is a moral idea, not an assertion of fact" - that of course, means nothing. There is a bit of explanation that follows: "The moral idea is that everyone's interests ought to receive equal consideration, regardless of 'what they like or what abilities they have.' Fair enough" - no again, not fair enough. In no way shape or form do people honestly believe that every person's interests should receive equal consideration. It doesn't even make any sense. Some people's interests are useless and even detrimental to society while others are quite beneficial. If we gave every person's interests equal consideration, we'd be living in the third world, in a best case scenario.

And finally, the, I'm sorry you took this where?, tour de force: "If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his or her own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit non-humans for the same purpose?" - right so, beginning with the first clause, having a higher degree of intelligence ALWAYS entitles you to use other humans for your own ends. That's how corporations, firms, household cleaning services, governments, families, pretty much everything in our society works. We, in fact, believe just the opposite - that a higher degree of intelligence allows you to control anyone less intelligent than you, unless they possess other qualities we deem more important (like money etc.). Now, that's just within the human realm. As to animals, I personally have no opinions on this subject, but there is an essential logical link missing here - that being that somehow animals are the same as humans. And here is where I get confused.

It seems to me that if animals are the same as humans, so are vegetables and water and the rays of the sun and pretty much everything around us. I've never once understood the distinction between animals and vegetables by those who are vegetarians and I've never had someone give me more of an explanation than that animals were alive - well, so was that lettuce before you chopped it up to eat it. I rather doubt there is an explanation for it. I searched for "vegetarian philosophy" and this came up as the first hit, a piece by Peter Singer vilifying McDonalds.

McDonald's is a throw-away for so many reasons, mostly having to do with the fact that the organization engages in mass production of food for people with limited budgets and so you can expect things won't be ideal anywhere along the food chain. It's very very easy to criticize. But the interesting part was a quote from a group that was attacking McDonald's with regards to its means of raising animals: "Their deaths are bloody and barbaric." And then, I thought, perhaps I had landed on it. It was simple anthropomorphism. Perhaps because you can have a "bloody" death with an animal, it can somehow be barbaric if you think the animals are people. And because you're not allowed to kill people that way, you shouldn't be able to kill animals. But it doesn't really work.

I don't deny that Mr. Singer does an admirable job for his cause by throwing in supply and demand and fully agree that people can't ignore this fundamental force of our economy when they calculate the impact of individual choices on the world as a whole - too many people are bizarrely ignorant of the way in which multiple individual choices combine together to create a market force. It's just that he never explains why there is a problem with treating animals the same way we do lettuce or tomatoes. I don't deny that the explanation exists, I would just like to hear it in a form that doesn't presume the belief that animals should be treated "humanely" - the argument needs to be made for that as well. Indeed, given that all humans aren't treated with the same stanards, that many are treated quite horribly, it's difficult to even know what a humane standard would be if then applied to something we know relatively little about, like cows. The bases for defining "humane" treatment have to do with how humans interpret things that happen to them and then how they project their feelings onto the potential feelings of others. Somehow it is humane to kill someone by lethal injection but not by strangulation. It seems to me that for the person being killed it can't matter very much at all, but in any case, it is clearly highly dependent on the concept of a "human" and what is appropriate.

To go full circle, it seems to me that there is also little support for the divide between animals and humans and vegetables; we only support such a divide because we need to in order to have a functioning society - we can't have cannibalism running rampant, we can't have people beating each other up in the streets, it just doesn't work, it would create a wildly inefficient society in which people were fighting merely to stay alive. Perhaps there is an argument that we have a more developed society and thus no longer need to maintain that animals are different from humans, but then I have to ask again, why do we get to keep raising vegetables to kill and ingest them? I don't see how this line is drawn and at the end of the day, we have to eat or else we die as well. Assuming factory farmed animals aren't being raised and so the environment isn't being unduly harmed, it is hard to see the argument for using animals to create energy for our bodies as being worse than using vegetables.