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Singer's Objection Of Animals Rights To Non-Human-Animals

501 Words3 Pages

Singer argues that non-human-animals deserve moral consideration using three claims: equality is based on equal consideration; equality is a moral idea, not factual; and sentience is a prerequisite for equality.
Singer demonstrates how arguments against extending rights to non-human-animals are inconsistent and thus unsupportable. He argues that membership to the species Homo sapiens is the only valid criteria that successfully excludes all non-humans and includes all humans; he cites that the difference between mentally-disabled-humans and healthy-humans is a wider gap than of certain non-human-animals. With current criteria for providing equality not being based on intelligence, or other relevant characteristics, Singer emphasizes that arguments against non-human-animals’ rights are circular with the premise: human beings have rights, and non-human-animals do not because they are not human beings.
He relates this issue to the Black, and Women’s Rights movements with arguments in both realms running parallel. Just as exclusion of rights based on sex/race is immoral, so too is exclusion based on species; there is no relevant difference between humans and non-human-animals thus there is no rational for believing that the members of the former …show more content…

He argues for sentience by highlighting how other criteria are insufficient as they are not inclusive of all humans. Intelligence is one criterion he rejects since some members of the Homo sapiens are less intelligent than some other non-human-animals, yet these members (e.g. dementia patients), do not receive lesser moral consideration. If intelligence were a criterion for equality then we should have no issue with using disabled-humans as a food source, leather source and so forth in the same way we use

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