Question

What are your thoughts on Peter Singer's approach to non-humans and his distinctions between persons and non-persons? Explain.

Answer 1

According to Peter Singer mistreating animals is a bad or an inhumane thing for humans to do. Instead of that, Singer advocated a utilitarian case against harming animals .He was against the idea of using Animals for food or experiments. He advocated that the Animal rights should be protected. Singer explains that the suffering of livestock animals is a real and great evil and directs people to become vegetarian on the grounds that this will undermine the economics of industrial farming and thereby reduce the amount of animal suffering in the world.

However, Singer is not only eager to stress the moral importance of the animals' interests, but also the moral importance of the distinction between persons and non-persons. These distinctions do not coincide, according to Singer, since some non-human animals are and some humans are not persons. Singer believes that under normal conditions, killing human being is more worse than killing a non-human being.