Quotes by Peter Singer

Peter Singer

…chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans are thinking, self-aware beings, capable of planning ahead, who form lasting social bonds with others and have a rich social and emotional life. The great apes are therefore an ideal case for showing the arbitrariness of the species boundary. If we think that all human beings, irrespective of age or mental capacity, have some basic rights, how can we deny that the great apes, who surpass some humans in their capacities, also have these rights?

Animal

Emotional

Thinking

…the nervous systems of other animals were not artificially constructed – as a robot might be artificially constructed – to mimic the pain behavior of humans. A capacity to feel pain obviously enhances a species’ prospects of survival…it is surely unreasonable to suppose that nervous systems that are virtually identical physiologically, have a common origin and a common evolutionary function, and result in similar forms of behavior in similar circumstances should actually operate in an entirely different manner on the level of subjective feelings.

Animal

Feelings

Pain

…the proposed air force and army experiments were designed so that many animals would suffer and die without any certainty that this suffering and death would save a single human life or benefit humans in any way at all; but the same can be said of millions of their experiments performed each year in the United States alone.

Animal

Army

Years

According to classical utilitarianism, the only intrinsic good is happiness; the only intrinsic bad is pain. That implies no intrinsic value in preserving nature, that preserving an endangered plant is valuable only if it benefits humans or other animals. Intuitively, that seems wrong but perhaps I shouldn’t trust my intuition here.

Animal

Intuition

Pain

According to the Dominant Western tradition, the natural world exists for the benefit of human beings.

Benefits

Tradition

World

After 9/11, the American Red Cross received more than half a billion dollars in donations to help the victims of the terrorist attacks. The families of the victims were already well-provided for by various government funds, so Red Cross simply drew a line across lower Manhattan and offered everyone there financial assistance, whether they needed it or not.

Donation

Financial

Helping

All the arguments to prove man’s superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering, the animals are our equals.

Animal

Encouragement

Nature

All the particular moral judgments we intuitively make are likely to derive from discarded religious systems, from warped views of sex and bodily functions, or from customs necessary for the survival of the group in social and economic circumstances that now lie in the distant past.

Lying

Religious

Sex

An animal experiment cannot be justifiable unless the experiment is so important that the use of a brain-damaged human would be justifiable.

Animal

Brain

Important

Ancient recipients of instant news probably couldn’t do very much about it, for instance. Xerxes would still need three months to get his army together, and he might not get home for years.

Army

Home

Years

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Abortion

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Adults

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Always Wrong

America

Ancient

Animal

Animal Intelligence

Answers

Argument

Army

Arrogance

Art

Athlete

Attitude

Average

Baby

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Bears

Behaviour

Believe

Benefits

Blood

Book

Bored

Brain

Broken

Capacity

Capitalist

Capitalist Economy

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Cat

Caught

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Quotes by Peter Singer

Peter Singer

According to the Dominant Western tradition, the natural world exists for the benefit of human beings.

All the arguments to prove man’s superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering, the animals are our equals.

All the particular moral judgments we intuitively make are likely to derive from discarded religious systems, from warped views of sex and bodily functions, or from customs necessary for the survival of the group in social and economic circumstances that now lie in the distant past.

An animal experiment cannot be justifiable unless the experiment is so important that the use of a brain-damaged human would be justifiable.

Ancient recipients of instant news probably couldn’t do very much about it, for instance. Xerxes would still need three months to get his army together, and he might not get home for years.

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