Singer believes that both animals and humans are sentient beings, because all sentient beings have interests. Nice work! You just studied 21 terms! Now up your study game with Learn mode. How does Singer interpret the principle of equality?
What kinds of suffering/enjoyment a being is capable of depends on that being's capabilities. Singer believes that both animals and humans are sentient beings, because all sentient beings have interests. Nice work! You just studied 21 terms! Now up your study game with Learn mode. How does Singer interpret the principle of equality?
^ these arguments pose a prob for Singer's opponents to make clear distinction b/w humans and animals. For Singer, they have to point out distinction, b/w humans and animals. What is speciesism?
In the past, Singer has not held that objective moral values exist, on the basis that reason could favour both egoism and equal consideration of interests.
Singer holds that a being's interests should always be weighed according to that being's concrete properties. He favors a "journey" model of life, which measures the wrongness of taking a life by the degree to which doing so frustrates a life journey's goals.
Anthropologists have criticised Singer's foundational essay " Animal Liberation " (1973) for comparing the interests of "slum children" with the interests of the rats that bite them – at a time when poor and predominantly Black American children were indeed regularly attacked and bitten by rats, sometimes fatally.
When writing in 2017 on Trump's denial of climate change and plans to withdraw from the Paris accords, Singer advocated a boycott of all consumer goods from the United States to pressure the Trump administration to change its environmental policies.
Singer features in the 2017 documentary "Empathy," directed by Ed Antoja, which aims to promote a more respectful way of life towards all animals. The documentary won the "Public Choice Award" of the Greenpeace Film Festival.
Singer himself adopted utilitarianism on the basis that people's preferences can be universalised, leading to a situation where one takes the "point of view of the universe" and "an impartial standpoint". But in the Second Edition of Practical Ethics, he concedes that the question of why we should act morally "cannot be given an answer that will provide everyone with overwhelming reasons for acting morally".
His principle of equal consideration of interests does not dictate equal treatment of all those with interests, since different interests warrant different treatment. All have an interest in avoiding pain, for instance, but relatively few have an interest in cultivating their abilities. Not only does his principle justify different treatment for different interests, but it allows different treatment for the same interest when diminishing marginal utility is a factor. For example, this approach would privilege a starving person's interest in food over the same interest of someone who is only slightly hungry.
Singer's parents were Austrian Jews who immigrated to Australia from Vienna after Austria's annexation by Nazi Germany in 1938. They settled in Melbourne, where Singer was born.