September 7–14, 2000

cover story

Philosophical Differences

Gary Francione is very clear that Princeton’s Peter Singer is a "wonderful and generous person." His problem is with the Animal Liberation author’s philosophy.

First of all, although Singer is often called the father of the modern animal rights movement, he doesn’t actually pitch a rights-based philosophy. In fact, he doesn’t believe in rights. I asked Singer about this.

"Yes," he agreed, "there is some irony in me being thought of as the father of the animal rights movement when I don’t, strictly speaking, believe in rights for other animals — or for humans — as a foundation of ethics. I do believe in the value of talking about rights as a convenient shorthand way of getting across what you mean. I think probably a lot of people who talk about rights, once they start thinking seriously about the underlying philosophy, would share that view. So," he concludes, reconsidering, "I don’t think it’s all that ironic, actually."

Singer’s philosophy is utilitarian, descended from 18th-century thinker Jeremy Bentham. Both Singer and Francione credit Bentham with overturning the previous idea of animals — that of Descartes — as things, property, mere soulless machines. In the quote that launched a thousand T-shirts, Bentham argued that "the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?" and thus concluded that animals are similar to us in at least one way: They are sentient. They can feel pain and wish to avoid it.

Utilitarianism works to reduce the greatest amount of suffering, or produce the greatest amount of pleasure, for the greatest number of people. Decisions are judged on whether they’ll reach that goal. Francione finds Singer’s utilitarianism to lead in several disturbing directions.

First, there’s Singer’s passage in Practical Ethics (and elsewhere) giving parents the theoretical green light to kill severely disabled infants on the principle of reducing the suffering of both the child and the parents. This stance, since qualified only slightly, caused massive protests by advocates for the disabled last year when Singer was installed as chair of the Center for Human Values at Princeton University.

Francione also finds Singer’s logic problematic because it potentially excludes animals from the moral community. In his book, Francione writes that "Singer maintains that we can always override the interest of the animal in not suffering, depending on the consequences for all affected."

Singer says it’s not that simple: "Obviously I understand one cow’s pain is different from another’s," he says, "but that doesn’t mean that if you could save ten cows from feeling pain by causing the identical pain to one of them that it wouldn’t be the right thing to do. I think it would."

—Vance Lehmkuhl