If Peter Singer and I are forced back into court under a different claim, we will face a different California judge. The next one might not virtually shrug when it is pointed out that Singer’s lawyer outright lied on court documents, for example, in relaying that I had invited Peter Singer, in 2019, to spend a few days with me in Los Angeles. An email trail I presented proved he had been invited to spend a few hours while changing planes, not days, all of those hours at a fundraising dinner. We might face a judge who finds Singer’s overall conduct to have been reprehensible, and whose choices to censure or not, where there is leeway, will reflect that impression.
” to warn people about films in which the story line involves animal suffering. Based on my commitment to keep our movement informed of major media stories about animals, I recently sent out, on DawnWatch, a New York Times op-ed written by Peter Singer. I did not comment on it, though I know my readers expect me to weigh in on what I send. I hesitated because it is vital to me to keep my personal life away from the work I do for animals, but they converge here, for I have filed suit against Peter Singer for Sexual Harassment and the Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress. In Latin America, the Quechua people of the Andes draw on the concept, rooted in indigenous spirituality, of sumak kawsay (also known by the Spanish name buen vivir), an understanding of the good life that entails living in harmony with the natural environment. In this paradigm, nature is not property with instrumental value — it’s inherently valuable and has its own inalienable rights.
Strategies for proactively expanding the moral circle — for example, to include animals
So, organisms must be able to experience pain or pleasure if they are to value their experiences. This group includes most human beings and the higher animals. Using this criterion leads to a conclusion that would shock most people. The approach below is what philosophers call consequentialist. Although this line of thinking is both useful and persuasive it does lead to one rather unpleasant conclusion.
- Many people think that sentience, the ability to feel sensations like pain and pleasure, is the deciding factor.
- Animal experimentation is now regulated in many developed nations, but what’s notable is how minimal it is in the US, where the vast majority of animals used in experiments aren’t covered.
- That’s a fair point, and it brings up one last important observation.
- For two decades, torn and tormented, I buried my anger, continued to work with him, and even, at his urging, continued to let him put his name, first, on what was largely my work, because he convinced me that was best for animals.
- She tells me she will confirm all I wrote about the supposed arrangement Peter Singer had with his wife, which she knows ended long before I met him, and his habit of keeping the existence of his harem well-hidden from women he pursues – all while lecturing on ethics.
- The circle may have expanded to include more beings in more places over the centuries, but the expansion is by no means linear.
In times of sweeping change, clarity matters most.
- The idea that non-human animals have significant moral status is comparatively modern.
- Based on my commitment to keep our movement informed of major media stories about animals, I recently sent out, on DawnWatch, a New York Times op-ed written by Peter Singer.
- For Singer, the question of whether future robots will belong in our circle is straightforward.
- Singer, a utilitarian, is a professor of bioethics at Princeton University.
- One marginal case not tested for in the moral expansiveness scale is artificial intelligence.
- How sad to see such a strong stand on shots and weak stand on meat from the author of Animal Liberation Now.
- Conscientious omnivores oppose factory farming but continue to eat animal products from farmers who treat their animals well and don’t subject them to suffering.
Of course, I am personally against deadly animal testing, even for the purpose of saving human life, because I believe in a circle of life rather than a hierarchy of life, and don’t see other species as expendable objects here for our use. These are questions that activists for the rights of animals, nature, and robots all grapple with as they use the idea of the moral circle to mount their arguments. They say there’s no reason to assume that once we’ve included all human beings, the circle has expanded as far as it should. They invite us to envision a possible future in which we’ve stretched our moral universe still further. Conscientious omnivores oppose factory farming but continue to eat animal products from farmers who treat their animals well and don’t subject them to suffering.
Sentientism
Peter Singer can have animal welfare now, climate change now, or effective altruism now. Our quest for Animal Liberation Now, a quest for justice and compassion, cannot be led by a heavily compromised man who stands, at best, for animal liberation now and then. Many of us care deeply about climate change, and discussing it can help animals. If people give up eating meat daily, for environmental reasons, they might find it easier to consider our fundamental arguments for animal rights. But will their professed concern about climate change really cause them to change their diets? Check out Bill Maher’s recent segment on the celebrity climate activists (other than Greta) all riding around in their private jets.
A critical perspective on the idea of the moral circle
They display a style that is friendly and soft sell, while never suggesting that our end goal is anything other than animal liberation. In a private conversation at that dinner, which began warmly, he mentioned that I had always had good self-esteem. Prodded by him, I reminded him of my profound hurt during our time together, and finally shared an episode during that period that had damaged me severely, even physically. I truly expected compassion, and perhaps an offer to discuss the matter at a more fitting time.
Though the philosophical arguments have stood up well, the chapters that describe factory farming and what we do to animals in labs needed to be almost completely rewritten. I also hadn’t really discussed factory farming’s contribution to the climate crisis and I wanted to reflect on our progress towards animal rights. Effectively, this is a new book for the next generation, hence the new title. If Peter Singer thinks there is nothing wrong with his conduct, he has every right to say so, but not to lie about my claim against him, whether with provable untruths or glaring lies of omission. If he continues, we will go back to court, and this time I won’t stand alone.
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They’ve found that a lot depends on how the issue is phrased. One debate common to both movements is whether incremental reforms do more harm than good. Even as abolitionists campaigned for small reforms that they hoped would make life a bit easier for slaves, some worried that approach would lead people to think the problem had been solved and would cause complacency about ending slavery altogether.
Let’s hang the “Animal Liberation Now” banner over the activists fighting for it. In order to answer these practical ethical questions, then, we would have to figure out not only who larabet casino or what deserves moral consideration but also how to treat the things that deserve moral consideration. This requires combining theories of moral considerability, ethical theories, and an understanding of who or what is being considered. Analogously, speciesism involves using a seemingly morally irrelevant feature (namely, species membership) to justify treating certain individuals (e.g., nonhuman animals) worse than others (namely, humans). Ratiocentrists could respond to this worry by saying that what matters for moral considerability isn’t being rational but being potentially rational. On this view, infants and people with severe mental disabilities deserve moral consideration, not because of the capacities they have, but because of the capacities they could have.
I sure didn’t recommend it for people committed to our movement, who are calling themselves leaders of it. Again, Singer’s argument, this time about conscious omnivorism, is not entirely unreasonable, but coming from somebody currently speaking on behalf of our movement it is dispiriting. We should not have to argue about the worth of animal life against somebody promoting Animal Liberation Now. I don’t know how anybody could look at a photo of a sow living in a coffin-sized gestation crate and not want to get her out of it, even if it’s only into a bleak and overcrowded communal pen.