Mid-Term
10-7-15
Prompt 8
Equality of Animals or
Peter Singer is a well-known Ethicist who rights about his thoughts that animals and humans should have equal interests. Before deciding to debate this topic, I took the time to read Singer’s “All Animals are Equal”. After reading this I believe that Singer ignored the reality of nature to build his argument; however, one cannot just simply “forget” the irreversible acts of nature.
There is a great debate over whether animals should have rights that are equal to human rights. In Singer’s theory, “All Animals are Equal” the principle of equality is given equal consideration to all interests, regardless of actual abilities. Interest means that there is a feeling of a being, whose …show more content…
He lists a lot of animals that humans would deem “furry friends.” He doesn’t really give a position on amphibians or reptiles, animals that humans do not necessarily find as appealing. These animals do not seem quite like humans, on the contrary they do share quite a few correlations with mammals in the way they behave, and also in their structure.
So if these animals are going to be included why can we not inclue a fish? And then if a fish were allowed animals such as insects and even invertebrates would be able to be included. The bottom line is that there are too many similarities and relations between groups to draw a boundary. Singer never states where he believes the boundary should be appointed.
Mammals that are closely related to humans can similarly compare to humans in their understanding, and behavior, and I agree with Singer on this. There is a fuzzy line in knowing what animals should have rights and what animals are exempt from these rights. For this reason when Singer objects to experimentation that causes harm to animals and believes that such treatment should be undertaken only in cases where an experiment that caused similar harm to humans would be justified it is hard to understand exactly what animals he is talking