Peter Singer All Animals Are Equal

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In Peter Singer’s “All Animals Are Equal” he writes an incredibly compelling argument for the equal consideration of animals. He bases this need for equality off of an animal’s sentience and interests and not their distinct species. Singer urges us to “extend to other species the basic principle of equality that most of us recognize should extend to all members of our own species”. In a situation where a research lab has caught on fire, and a person only has the ability to save one human or three dogs, I question what Singer would do. I absolutely know that he would be against the saving of the human just because of their human status, as doing so would technically be speciesist. He would require that before saving either one, both of the two groups are considered. Dogs and humans are both sentient creatures and for that reason must both be considered when deciding whose life should be saved. Singer briefly describes Jeremy Bentham’s basis of equality, where each…show more content…
Unfortunately, I am not sure what that right thing would be. Before reading any of Singer’s work I would have said with no doubt to save the human. After reading Singer’s “All Animals Are Equal”, I still believe I would save the human, but my logic of saving the human seems skewed and my argument for doing so, flawed. Singer also refers to Stanley Benn, who wrote, “however faithful or intelligent a dog may be, it would be a monstrous sentimentality to attribute to him interests that could be weighed in an equal balance with those of human beings.” Benn then goes on to say that if someone chose feeding a hungry dog, over a hungry baby, they would be considered “morally defective”. I think the same goes along with the case of a burning building. No matter how many humans or dogs are in the scenario, if a human went against their own species, to save another, they would be considered very

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