Pete Singer
I’m working on a new hypothesis. My hypothesis is that philosopher Peter Singer is actually attempting to achieve flight by waving his hands so frantically in his arguments. I’m reading Practical Ethics (maybe for not much longer). He’ll plod, at a fifth-grade reading level, through obvious facts. Occasionally, he will try to shoehorn in some extremely counterintuitive arguments, apparently hoping the reader doesn’t notice. Then he will skip a couple steps in his argument and make grand pronouncement. The Far Side is recalled. “Then a miracle occurs.”
From the Cambridge press Second Edition:
[The] most important human interests [include] avoiding pain, … developing one’s abilities, … satisfying basic needs for food and shelter, … enjoying warm personal relationships, … being free to pursue one’s projects without interference. p. 31
Let’s stop here a moment and divide these into three columns. Food, pain avoidance, and shelter we’ll put in Column 1. These are basic animal drives. Warm personal relationships we’ll put in Column 2. This is a social animal drive, probably requiring a complex nervous system. The drive to develop one’s abilities and being free to pursue one’s projects without interference we’ll put way over in Column 3. These are highly complex and abstract, probably requiring a cerebral cortex and a whole host of supporting drives. A lyre bird cares not to develop its singing skills for the skill’s own sake. It does so as a programmed behavior that predisposes it to having more grandchildren. And pursuing one’s projects without interference? He’s using a word with multiple meanings. Who has projects, narrowly construed, but Homo? I suppose one could call nest-building or mound-digging a project, and bless it into the Column 1, but that seems not to be what he is getting at, as he discusses drive, initiative, challenge, and what we would traditionally call calling. So he has, rather haphazardly, combined three strata of “interests” into one paragraph. Which is fine, so far as it goes, when we’re just talking about humanity. But then:
Interests are interests, and ought to be given equal consideration whether they are the interests of human or non-human animals, self-conscious or non—self-conscious animals. p. 74
Of course this is what he was aiming for all along, as he is the author of Animal Liberation. But not only does he not get there, he’s not even aiming correctly. Human interests admit all three Columns. But a male lion does not yearn for warm personal relationships. It does not study mycology for the sake of bettering itself. It does not build an abode. It may have a project, widely construed, to chase, subdue, kill, and devour an antelope, and may in fact be rather miffed if there is interference in this process. But it is patently false that “Interests are interests”. Human interests are not lion interests, and when there is non-conformity, we need to investigate.
It may be thoroughly unethical to use a nonhuman animal as a means to an end. It may be thoroughly ethical to do so. The question might not even have a truth value. I’m putting that aside. I’ve struggled with personal vegetarianism and veganism in relation to personal ethics since I was nine years old, but that’s not the point. Interests are not interests. Interests differ. And basing an entire ethos upon a Benthamesque desire to decrease suffering, while it may be admirable, is not accomplishing one’s mission if one has axiomatically declared “developing abilities” and “pursuing projects” as core interests. You need more.
Or, perhaps, you need less. You identify human interests entirely with Column 1. My guess is Singer probably started here, then was pressured by discussion with colleagues and editors to admit Columns 2 and 3. But once those latter Columns are axiomatic, the barn door’s open and the horse has escaped.
This has, possibly, had beneficial effects on the horse’s interests. But the interests of an airtight logical argument? Not so much.
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August 23rd, 2007 at 9:45 pm
I’ll sum up my response like this: If he’s right, he’s right for the wrong reasons. And that’s as bad as being wrong in the first place.