Evaluation and Critique of Peter Singer's _Animal Liberation: The Definitive Classic of the Animal Movement_

This is part of a paper I wrote for Ethics last semester. I have not included the exposition section of my paper, if you are interested you should read his book: http://books.google.com/books?id=VryqNwAACAAJ&dq=Animal+liberation&ei=iBEPTNGPJI-oygSIp5HvCg&cd=9

Humans have always viewed themselves as distinct from animals. We use animal names as insults: we call someone a dog if they are behaving poorly or cowardly, pig if they are being selfish or gluttonous, and mulish is they are stubborn and obstinate. Resulting from this belief that humans are somehow above animals is the belief that humans are able, for the most part, to treat animals any way they wish. Animals are used for labor, for food, for clothing, and for experimentation. In his book, Animal Liberation: The Definitive Classic of the Animal Movement, Singer seeks to challenge this long standing approach with his utilitarian ideal of animal liberation. Singer examines the supposed differences between humans and animals and decides, based on the utilitarian goal of maximizing pleasure, that there is no real distinction between humans and most of the animal kingdom. Singer’s view of animal rights is based upon a faulty view of the distinction in nature between humans and animals.

Peter Singer has several valid critiques of the status quo. The use of animals in experimental research having no obvious benefit to humans seems indefensible especially when it causes the research animals’ severe physical or mental/emotional trauma. There is no serious benefit to humanity in torturing monkeys into psychopathy. Additionally, in the face of the evidence of misery that he presents regarding aspects of the factory farm system, one is forced to consider the one’s justification for eating veal, the result of torturous treatment of calves, or eggs gathered from chickens so packed with other birds that they cannot move.

One is also forced to question, however, Singer’s reasons for treating animals better. He believes that we owe special treatment to any beings that can feel pain. This distinction is artificial for two reasons. First, Singer basically limits the ability to feel pain to animals with nervous systems(1). This distinction seems artificial. Assuming that the ability to feel pain is the necessary and sufficient condition for inclusion in the moral community, one is forced to wonder why the ability to feel pain is limited to animals with nervous systems. Such an arbitrarily created distinction seems naïve and hubristic. It would seem that a protective response to negative stimuli would be a more appropriate qualification. Amoebae quite obviously have no nervous system (they are single celled organisms), but they do seek to defend themselves from danger. Lightly poke an amoeba with a pointed object, and it will seek to move away or morph itself in such a way as to neutralize the threat(2). Certain types of trees such as pines and myrrh will respond to a cut by excreting exorbitant amounts of sap in an attempt to seal the wound(3).

If one is going to define the moral community as those beings which can feel pain, it would seem much safer to define the ability to feel pain as the attempt to respond protectively to negative stimuli. This would seem impossible, as nearly all fauna and flora respond against negative stimuli. Yet Singer advocates abstaining from eating a particular type of organism, mollusks, because though one may be very confident that then do not feel pain (they have no nervous system) one cannot be completely sure. Can we be completely sure that amoebae and plants feel no pain? They seem to have responses to negative stimuli unlike a stone for example. Yet we must eat something. The ability to experience pain, no matter how feeling pain is defined, is an inadequate and unrealistic method of determining the scope of the moral community, those beings which need to be considered.

Secondly, on the question of killing animals, Singer makes the utilitarian argument that to kill an animal ends its ability to experience pleasure and is, therefore, wrong. This begs the question of what one is able to do with animals (or people) who are living a life of misery. What if there was a cow that was so arthritic it could not move without incredible pain and began to be unable to digest food? Would not the general happiness be increased by anesthetizing the cow, killing it painlessly, and giving it to people to eat? Under Singer’s system, it is only wrong to kill animals, or humans, if their death increases misery.

Additionally, Singer does not adequately address the problem of animals killing and eating each other, even their own kind. One is left to wonder how beings can be part of a moral community and deserve the highest level of protection within that community without being subject to the rules of that moral community. It is senseless to say it is wrong for humans to kill animals for food merely because we do not need to in order to survive, yet not force the same line of reasoning on bears who are just as able to live a vegetarian life as we are. As mentioned earlier, Singer does recognize differences between humans and animals, yet asserts that these differences are merely limited to rights, not moral consideration. For example, we don’t allow dogs to vote, yet we must consider their pleasure and pain in any situation.

Singer’s argument is built off the faulty assumption that rationality does not work as a determinative for inclusion into the moral community because this would alienate infants and the severely mentally disabled. This argument ignores the idea of telos – an infant will become a rational, thinking, moral decision making human being; a dog will never participate in those activities of the mind. A better system for determining the moral community would be a system based on the ability to make moral decisions. Such a system should incorporate telos and recognize that even the severely mentally handicapped have more potential in this area than any animal. Additionally, the amount of shared characteristics between severely mentally handicapped humans and normal humans compared to the amount of shared characteristics with animals is so great that it warrants equal consideration, if not completely equal treatment (we do not allow the severely mentally handicapped to make certain decisions for themselves). Animals, due to their lack of participation in moral decisions are set in a different category than are humans.

Under such a moral system, there would be nothing wrong with killing animals in a humane way and eating them or in using them in research that benefits human lives. Even under Singer’s utilitarian system, causing extreme pain to a relatively few animals in order to discover a cure for cancer or AIDS would be completely acceptable, as would causing extreme pain to humans. As long as the general happiness is improved, personal misery may be imposed on either animals or humans. Singer fails to see that such practices as animal research and even the killing of animals for food, especially if it was done painlessly and the animal had lived a happy life, are actually perfectly acceptable under his system as well.

Even Singer does not attempt to argue that animal life is of equal importance to human life(4). Yet he continues to argue against the practice of eating animals. Given the lesser ability of animals to experience pleasure, it is no large assumption to think that an animal killed painlessly and used as food would not actually increase the general happiness rather than otherwise. A cow, for example, could provide food for many people. A simply mathematical moral system like utilitarianism cannot ultimately be used to enforce vegetarianism.

Singer’s attack on the Bible and Judeo-Christian thought regarding animals is a straw man attack at best. He does not address himself to the Bible’s actual argument that the creator God has given man stewardship over the creation and permission to use animals for food, clothing, and other purposes. Rather, Singer twists Biblical passages in an attempt to make the Biblical arguments for ethical treatment of animals consequentialist in nature. But that approach seems completely counterintuitive. What need is there for the Bible to tell men to take care of their animals merely because they will get better use of them? Is that not a self-evident truth? Rather it seems that the Bible, and consequently God Himself, is actually concerned about animal welfare and humanity’s stewardship role.

Proverbs 12:10 states, “A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” Exodus 23:12 orders, “Six days thou shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest: that thine ox and thine ass may rest….” Proverbs 27:23 commands, “Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds.” Deuteronomy 25:4 orders, “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn.” These verses demonstrate that a humane treatment of animals is compatible (at least it is commanded in) with a moral system that sets man’s nature and worth above that of animals.

Not surprisingly, after his attack on Christianity and the Bible, Singer goes on to talk about individuals who made an impact ending animal cruelty thereby implying that they were not motivated by Christianity. This is far from the case. One of the most well known people he cites is William Wilberforce. Wilberforce was a carefree, indulgent young rake before his conversion experience(5). It was his conversion that led him to change his ways and become interested in changing his world for the better. Wilberforce was motivated by his Christianity to oppose both the slave trade and animal cruelty(6).

Peter Singer’s argument that animals’ ability to feel pain and experience pleasure requires that we not kill or use them does not stand up even to his own utilitarian moral system. His definition of the scope of the moral community is, upon further examination of the definition of pain, so broad as to be absurd. His moral system regarding the treatment of beings that can experience pleasure is impossible and futile. Christianity provides a much more realistic system which takes into account the differences between man and animals and the responsibility man has as a steward of creation. Singer fails to adequately address the arguments posed by opponents of his moral theory, and his argument ultimately fails because of his flawed view of the distinction in nature, or lack thereof, between man and animals.

1. Peter Singer, Animal Liberation: The Definitive Classic of the Animal Movement (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2009), 11-13.
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, s.v. “Amoeba,” http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/21174/amoeba
(accessed April 3, 2010).
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, s.v. “Myrrh,” http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/400685/myrrh
(accessed April 3, 2010).
4. Peter Singer, Animal Liberation: The Definitive Classic of the Animal Movement (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2009),18.
5. John Piper, Amazing Grace in the Life of William Wilberforce (Wheaton, IL: Good News Publishers, 2006), 35.
6. Stephen Tomkins, William Wilberforce: a Biography (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2007), 207.