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Our Duties to Animals. Animal Liberation: All Animals Are Equal —Peter Singer A prejudice or bias toward the interests of members of one’s own species and against members of other species is called speciesism .
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Our Duties to Animals Animal Liberation: All Animals Are Equal —Peter Singer • A prejudice or bias toward the interests of members of one’s own species and against members of other species is called speciesism. • Our present attitudes toward animals are based on a long history of prejudice and arbitrary discrimination. • The basic principle of equality requires equal consideration of interests.
Our Duties to Animals Animal Liberation: All Animals Are Equal— Peter Singer • The vital characteristic that gives a being the right to equal consideration is the capacity for suffering. • The principle of equality requires that a being’s suffering be considered equally with the like suffering of any other being.
Our Duties to Animals Animal Liberation: All Animals Are Equal— Peter Singer • Perhaps the clearest indication of our speciesism is the suffering we inflict on animals in captivity. • We cannot distinguish between animals and humans by appeals to “the intrinsic dignity of human beings.”
Our Duties to Animals The Case Against Animal Rights—Carl Cohen • Whatever else rights may be, they are necessarily human. • Because animals are not beings capable of exercising or responding to moral claims, they therefore have no rights. • Animals are not members of a moral community.
Our Duties to Animals The Case Against Animal Rights—Carl Cohen • On utilitarian grounds, to refrain from using animals in biomedical research is morally wrong. • One cannot coherently object to the killing of animals in biomedical research while continuing to eat them. • Animals ought not to be made to suffer needlessly.
Our Duties to Animals The Case Against Animal Rights— Carl Cohen • It is not the case that all sentient animals have equal moral standing. • We should embrace speciesism.
Our Duties to Animals The Case Against Animal Rights— Carl Cohen • Absurd consequences would follow from embracing a strong position on animal rights. • Between animate species, the morally relevant differences are enormous.