January 30, 2003
The Assignment
Be careful about webs sources
You shouldn’t need them
Make sure to answer each part of the question
Test
Responsible for everything from class, class notes and readings
The notes should give you focus. They pick out what I think is most important.
Format: short answer and true/false.
Extending our Moral Consideration to Animals
Anthropocentrism: we only have indirect duties or obligations to animals. Animals don’t have independent moral standing.
Peter Singer, Tom Regan and Joel Feinberg: we do have obligations directly to animals.
What is the Mark of Moral Consideration?
It can’t be rationality or intelligence as Immanuel Kant suggested.
Infants, the mentally defective
Singer: we must look to the “lowest common denominator, pitched so low that no human lacks them” (p. 192)
Peter Singer
Moral standing = ability to experience pleasure and pain.
This is why all humans should be given equal moral consideration.
Singer and the origins of our moral obligations
Utilitarianism
Bentham, Mill.
An act is right if it promotes the good better than its alternatives and wrong if it does not.
Maximize the good.
The Good
Good = pleasure and the absence of pain,
Bad = pain and the absence of pleasure
Everyone’s good and bad counts equally
How It Works
To determine right action subtract overall pain from overall pleasure. Compare with alternatives.
Example: killing
Singer’s Utilitarianism
To be consistent, the pains and pleasures of other species should count too.
Otherwise we are being prejudice. Speciesism like racism and sexism.
The good of all, and only, entities that can experience pleasure and pain should be treated equally.
Implications
It is wrong for animals to suffer and be killed for the amount of overall pleasure we get from taste.
More good would be promoted by being vegetarian.
Animal Experimentation
It is wrong to do experiments on animals
Would we do the same experiments on infants?
Infants have a level of sentience, awareness and ability to be self-directed that is equal or lower than a lot of animals.