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Peter Singer's Utilitarian Arguments For Animal Rights

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The use of animal products is a very controversial topic in regards to ethics. Many people say that animals are meant to be used to better our lives, and then their are some who will elevate an animal’s life above humans. Neither side is entirely right or wrong. Animals are used to better our lives, they are used as work animals, their byproducts are used to make clothing or fertilize fields, and when they die they feed people. The morality of this use is questionable, due to the fact of the constantly increasing population, animal byproducts must be also increased at the same rate. Animals will be bred simply to be killed for their meat. The “mass produced” factory style that is taken with animals is where the other argument comes into place; …show more content…

The biggest arguments can be condensed down into if an animal is considered to be apart of the moral community or not. Often times if we considered them a member of the moral community it is wrong to hurt them, or use them, and if they are not apart of the member of the moral community it would be okay to hurt and use them. This is an abstract way of looking at the potential arguments and ideas for animal rights. A more indepth view of animal rights can be taken from Peter Singer’s Utilitarian Arguments. These essentially say that doing moral things makes you happy, and acting immoral causes pain, and animals can clearly feel pain, therefore animals are apart of the moral community. This means that we should not harm animals, it does not say do not use them. However, Singer has also argued the fact of speciesism, which is discrimination of a certain species due to the fact that they are not human. This argument dictates that humans and animals are not on different levels of power or importance, but rather at an equal level. This argument can be used to argue that using animals would be immoral, as acting against our equals to better ourselves would be immoral. In other words, we wouldn’t kill our neighbor to have the best lawn, why would we kill an animal for

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1462 Words | 6 Pages

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1191 Words | 5 Pages

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