Essay On Equal Consideration

We take it as a given that we ought to treat all human beings equally, i.e. that we must give equal consideration of interests to all human beings. Singer argues that we should extend our moral principle of equal consideration of interests to animals. Excluding them on the grounds of species difference is parallel to the reasoning behind racist and sexist attitudes and hence morally impermissible. Furthermore, Singer argues that there is no moral feature exclusive to humans which could grant our interests additional moral consideration. If Singer is right, then practices which carry out painful experiments on animals (rather than humans) in order to improve the lives of humans, such as finding cures for certain diseases, are morally unjustified. …show more content…
However, whilst this potentially fixes the issues with excluding many infants from our equality principle this argument cannot be extended to severely cognitively-disabled humans. Due to the extreme cognitive damage some humans will never be able to develop these moral cognitive capabilities. Having to rely on a variety of constant care-givers may cause them to never develop autonomy or a meaningful existence due to their lack of self-awareness. As singer explicates no matter how morally-relevant or important having these traits might be to achieving moral significance, if it excludes some humans from the equality principle we cannot use it as a morally- relevant factor to distinguish animals and humans.

If we want to counter Singer’s claim, we need to solve this moral dilemma presented by severely cognitive-disabled people. We need to find a morally significant feature aside from actual