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· One of Colin McGinn’s arguments for animal rights is a story of shumans. In his argument he talks of a civilization of vampires who live on human blood simply because the blood taste better than the alternative. The point of the story was make the reader see that eating animals is wrong because we have other options.
What is Peter Singer's concept of speciesism?
In his groundbreaking book Animal Liberation, philosopher Peter Singer defines speciesism as “a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species.” But it's also speciesist to treat one animal's life as more valuable than another's.
Which philosopher introduced the term speciesism in reference to the cruel treatment of animals?
Richard D. Ryder coined the term "speciesism" in 1970.
How does Singer argue against speciesism?
An influential argument against speciesism, advanced by Singer, rests on what he calls the principle of equal consideration of interests (PEC). This is the claim that one should give equal weight in one's moral decision making to the like interests of all those affected by one's actions.
What normative ethical principle is at the heart of Singer's analysis and conclusion regarding speciesism?
In Section 2, I introduce Singer's view of speciesism and highlight the core ethical principle on which it relies: the Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests.
What is speciesism and how does Singer use this concept to argue for his ethical position on the use of animals in scientific research?
Singer defines speciesism as, “a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species.” Roughly speaking, an 'interest' of a person or nonhuman animal is just anything that is good or bad for them (note this has nothing to do with being ...
What is the opposite of speciesism?
Non-speciesist relationships between animals, however, entail much more than consumption practices alone. The term also presupposes that eating other animals or their products is by definition excluded from a world that is not speciesist.
Why is speciesism a problem?
Speciesism and bigotry Speciesism is often condemned as the same sort of bigotry as racism or sexism. People who oppose speciesiesm say that giving human beings greater rights than non-human animals is as arbitrary (and as morally wrong) as giving white people greater rights than non-white people.
What is an example of speciesism?
A common form of speciesism that often goes unnoticed is the discrimination against very small animals. In general, we have a psychological disposition to care less about small animals. Many people consider a horse much more deserving of consideration than, for example, a mouse, simply because of their relative sizes.
What is Singer's main conclusion in all animals are equal?
Conclusion: Singer concludes that “all animals are equal”. That is, as we strive for equality, we should strive for equal consideration of the interests of human beings and non-human animals alike!
What implications does utilitarianism have for our treatment of non-human animals?
Utilitarians view non-human animals to be members of the moral community for the simple reason that they can suffer, and feel pain. We have to, according to utilitarians, treat animals well, unless of course it maximizes well-being to do otherwise, i.e feeding ourselves by butchering cattle.
What does human exceptionalism have to do with speciesism?
Like speciesism, human exceptionalism can be understood in different ways. The most common way of understanding it is to suggest that there are distinctly human capacities and it is on the basis of these capacities that humans have moral status and other animals do not.
What are the arguments that Peter Singer use to support his animal rights project?
In Animal Liberation, Singer argues that in assessing the consequences of our actions, it is necessary to take the interests of animals seriously and to weigh any adverse affect on those interests from human actions as part of the consequences of those actions.
Why do people take the cogito?
Consciousness and the Cogito I think it is fair to report that people take the Cogito to reflect something important about consciousness, thinking, and the existence of the self. Roughly, they take it to demonstrate (or purport to demonstrate) that conscious thinking entails personal existence: if you know that you consciously think, ]
What chapter does Russell think about universals?
Thinking About Universals In chapter IX of The Problems of Philosophy (1912) Russell makes a good case for the existence of universals in a roughly platonic sense. He ends with these stirring words: “The world of universals, therefore, may also be described as the world of being. The world of being is ]
What does "use" mean in Wittgenstein?
Use and the Will Wittgenstein tells us that meaning is use. Meaning involves practices, customs, and institutions. In the beginning was the deed. But he doesn’t say much about what use is. I propose to fill this gap. Evidently use is action, though we don’t find Wittgenstein saying as much. So the philosophy ]
Why is McGinn's Calm methodology so congenial?
McGinn's CALM methodology actually seems quite congenial for understanding the classic "free-will" problem, partly because of the strong analogy with the process of evolution by gene variation and natural selection that works for him as an explanatory theory.
Who is Colin McGinn?
Colin McGinn is an Anglo-American Analytic (AAA) philosopher who presented the standard argument against free will in its classic form in his 1993 book Problems in Philosophy: The Limits of Inquiry .
What is the difference between indeterminism and determinism?
The problem centres upon the significance of the phrase 'could have done otherwise'. Determinism seems to imply that one could not do otherwise, while indeterminism gives the wrong interpretation to the phrase.
How does domesticating treatment of free will work?
Domesticating treatments of free will attempt to assimilate it to some independent model or paradigm of how events come about. The nexus of decision is taken to be just a special case of some other type of natural nexus; and the modality involved is not fundamentally different from other modalities represented in our scheme of concepts. Such reductive accounts take either a deterministic or an indeterministic form. The former type of theory insists that prior states of the world, consisting essentially in psychological states of the agent, are causally sufficient for a specific choice to be made, so that freedom comes out as a certain kind of causal sequence — that kind which features an appropriate set of mental antecedents. Freedom consists in causation by one's desires and beliefs. 10 The causal relation itself is nothing special; what differentiates free choice from its opposite is what does the causing. The latter type of theory rejects the attempt to reconcile freedom with determinism, claiming instead that only an acausal model can do justice to the freedom modality. When we say that an agent could have acted otherwise we must mean that the totality of prior conditions was consistent with any of a range of possible outcomes, so that a replication of that totality would not determine the choice made. We can preserve the modality only if we adopt a radically indeterministic model of choice. Thus it is sometimes held that quantum indeterminacy must be the root of freedom: random events at the subatomic level in the brain are the origin of free will. 10 These occur causelessly and are then amplified into grosser processes in brain tissue. Since the initiating event was not necessitated by the prior state of the world, we can say that the agent could have acted otherwise.
What is McGinn's TN?
In Problems in Philosophy, McGinn expresses three important ideas as acronyms. The first of his new ideas is TN, for "transcendental naturalism." In Kantian terms, TN sounds like a contradiction, but for McGinn TN helps to clarify four sorts of philosophical question confronting a particular type of cognitive being B: problems, mysteries, illusions, and issues.
What is an illusion question?
An illusion is (or arises from) some kind of pseudo-question, or a question that is so formulated as to suggest an answer of a kind that does not objectively exist. An illusory question is not to be confused with a mysterious one, which latter reflects ill on B, not on the question.
What is a mystery in psychology?
A mystery is a question that does not differ from a problem in point of the naturalness of its subject-matter, but only in respect of the contingent cognitive capacities that B possesses: the mystery is a mystery for that being.
Why does Colin propose that animals are exploited?
Colin further proposes that the exploitation of animals because of their intellectual inferiority justifies the same treatment to simple humans, aged people, or retarded adults whose intellectual development is limited.
What does Colin conclude?
Colin concludes that intellectual superiority or species differences between animals and humans do not provide any moral justification of the human exploitative treatment of other animals.
What is the second analogy?
The second analogy addresses the human assumption of mental inferiority of animals as compared to humans. Colin tells of two humanlike species that are very much alike, and they even have similar intellectual capabilities.
What is the purpose of the invention of the right to life and the unconscious violinist?
Judith Thomson invented case; the right to life and the unconscious violinist offers a logical explanation that is important in addressing the problem of inconsistency.
Why should pro-life proponents oppose the death penalty?
For instance, a pro-life proponent arguing that abortion is an act of killing should also oppose the death penalty because it is also an act of killing. In order, to achieve consistency in judgment, the cases compared must have a morally relevant similarity. Otherwise, one can argue that the cases are not similar and therefore should not be judged ...
Can a human defend itself from a shuman?
However, one of these species ‘the human’ cannot defend itself from the other species, the human. As a result, the human species exploits the ‘shuman’ species without considering it morally wrong.