Peter Singer Animal Liberation Analysis

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Deciding how to interact and improve the world through ethics and moral reasoning is an ongoing contentious debate that has lasted for thousands of years. Two of the largest moral theories to develop in the twentieth century, that try to deal with the world around us, is environmentalism and animal liberation. Environmentalism is best summarized as the moral principle that biotic communities and the relationships within those communities are of the utmost importance to preserve. Animal Liberation represents the belief that sentience of a being qualifies that individual for moral consideration. If Leopold’s maxim is followed as the standard for land ethicism and the “when” in his maxim is read as a necessary condition then animal liberation …show more content…
Animals would suffer tremendously from a lack of food and that individual suffering would be a violation of their moral code. Callicott would find this answer disturbing, he views the environment to have intrinsic value. He would not feel strongly about the suffering of the animals because their suffering can be integral to the integrity and sustainability of an ecosystem. To have intrinsic value in Singer’s world you would need to be able to feel pain. Whether plants feel pain is scientifically vague, plants seem to have a nervous system that responds to stimuli, but we cannot measure to see if the plants can feel pain. If plants do feel pain Singer may adjust his theory to compensate for the …show more content…
That principle is as follows “"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise” (Callicott 320). If the “when” part of Leopold’s maxim is treated like a necessary condition then I propose that land ethicism and animal liberation cannot co-exist. The biggest violation of each other’s theories is placing the values on different beings. The land ethicist cares for the environment and the animal liberationist cares for sentience. In the environment, there is necessary suffering that needs to exist to preserve the biotic community. The land ethicist brings up an important concept of a keystone species which exemplify the need for keeping species even if it involves killing sentient beings. The keystone species life takes priority on the scale of importance this conflicts with animal liberationists again. Peter Singer would put the importance of cognitive ability over how important a being is to the environment. For instance, a human being would be valued higher than an otter. The land ethicist would see the importance of the otter in a biotic community and how much more the otter’s life is unique and contributes to biodiversity compared to the

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