peter singer from a disability point of view

[kalmn]

i don't have much use for a person or for their views after they've decided that it's okay if i die. perhaps it's a bit selfcentered of me, but if they are so fundamentally wrong about that, i don't much trust them to be right about anything else. (i'm not saying they're automatically wrong; a stopped clock is right twice a day. i just want someone else to get to that same other viewpoint without the associated "and then, we'll miss you" before i'm going to take it seriously.)

peter singer thinks that it's okay to euthanize people with disabilities. (unless they're his mother; apparently people he loves are a special case. i hadn't known that; it does not make me like him any more.)

here is a write up about peter singer from the animal liberation front-- those are the people who break into laboratories and free animals, so you cannot say they are not committed to animal rights. (you can say they're doing it wrong, you can say they're criminals, you can say all sorts of things. you can't say they aren't committed to recognizing the value of animal life.)

the article seems to me to be pretty well written and fair-- it points out the problems with his views, while being relatively calm. other articles have been written that i feel are better, but that require either a commitment to deal with the anger in the writing or some background in disability theory.

links to those articles in comments would be welcome. links to other critical discussion of peter singer's theories about disability by vegetarians would be welcome. links to other theories of vegetarianism would be welcome.

(eta: peter singer is a utilitarian philosopher who teaches at princeton and is a staunch proponent of vegetarianism.)

Comments

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I am assuming that you are probably already familiar with Harriet McBryde Johnson's article "Unspeakable Conversations," but I include a link there for the convenience of your fans.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/16/magazine/unspeakable-conversations.html

(Edited to add the damn link.)

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

i am! that's a really good article.

[tesseract26.livejournal.com]

what a great article! thanks so much for sharing it.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Also: I have never understood the mindset of people who could say to me "Wow, if I had your condition I'd kill myself," without meaning for that to be a friendship-ending remark.

(They don't say that to me anymore; this was pre hip replacement.)

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

people have not yet said it to me. which is good, because i have not yet developed a response to it. actually, margaret cho has-- AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA (http://www.therotund.com/?page_id=184)

[lovecraftienne.livejournal.com]

How about, "It would have been easier for me if you'd died instead?"

I've heard that one. More's the surprise, the speaker lives yet.

[badgerbag.livejournal.com]

I've had people explain to me about someone in their family who they wish had died instead rather than be a burden. But never directly that I should die! (Though many many times people say they would rather die!)

It always amazes me how people can toss that out there!

[lovecraftienne.livejournal.com]

Will it make it better or worse that it was my mother?

[badgerbag.livejournal.com]

So much worse... gah!!!!!

[daedala.livejournal.com]

I saw that and was thinking, My father said that....

[lovecraftienne.livejournal.com]

If it's welcome, I extend my sympathies. Mine came in a letter eighteen years ago, and I doubt I'll ever forget the words.

[daedala.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I appreciate it. :) It's not really a big deal any more -- I haven't had anything to do with him since I was sixteen.

[mizzlaurajean.livejournal.com]

Wow as leading philosophers go he's a crack pot. I can't quite wrap my brain around someone who thinks that animals are on the same moral ground as humans and at the same time thinks infanticide and euthanizing disabled infants is acceptable. He does not strike me as very enlightened.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. I hadn't heard about this guy before. Very disturbing.

[littlebutfierce]

It is a great source of dismay to me that Peter Singer is still, for so many people, the face of animal rights, b/c yeah, he has some extremely fucked-up views, including the ones you mention.

There are a lot of other people out there talking about veg*nism from a more intersectional perspective; I wish they would get half the attention that Singer (& PETA, for that matter) would, alas. I don't have the energy to link-drop right now but I'll try to remember to come back later.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

i'd really like that.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I'm vegetarian and had never heard of Singer before this post. I'm willing to talk about the article that you linked to, but I'm not sure that would qualify as "critical discussion". I'm a little confused by the "other theories of vegetarianism," question, since I'm not sure that a stance on euthasia and infanticide of those with disabilities is ordinarily a part of any theory of vegetarianism. I'm not entirely sure how to read the implied link -- you seem to be saying here that Singer's views on that subject are a fundamental tenet of being a vegetarian for most people.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

boy, there's a lot of this post that stayed in my head, isn't there?

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

This position seems completely off balance when considered against the backdrop of our western culture's continuing work (contrasted against centuries of past practice) to recognize every person as equally valuable. Is it a reflection of the current unstable ground holding up our society, I wonder?

K.

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

Singer makes me so angry I can hardly even make myself read about him. The fact that he has so much prestige and shit makes me want to go AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

[badgerbag.livejournal.com]

me too.

[quadong.livejournal.com]

Working entirely from the article you link to, and not having looked at any of the man's own writings, there seems to be some contradition. In one place, they quote him as saying that he supports euthanizing "disabled" infants and in the other infants whose lives would be "irredeemably difficult and painful". These are not at all the same (unless he's invented his own jargon in which they are). For suitable definitions of "irredeemably difficult and painful" I would support this view, as I see no reason a baby should live for a month in terrible pain before dying, if it must die.

[badgerbag.livejournal.com]

No... he means "difficult and painful for the disabled person's parents or other caretakers and the entire rest of society".

[pants-of-doom.livejournal.com]

I've been veg approximately forever and Singer's not a big influence on most of the veg*ns I've known other than making a good coherent statement that animal suffering is a valid consideration. As far as other theories of vegetarianism go (and are you asking for vegetarianism or veganism?) I'm not sure what you're looking for.

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, I've never heard him described in the context of vegetarianism, only medical ethics. We might now laugh hollowly at the term, I suppose.

[firecat]

From the article you linked: Whether or not animals can author treatises on mathematics, they, like us, feel pain, and we therefore have an obligation not to cause them needless suffering.

You know, this is reasonable, but before we enforce veganism on everyone, I think we should first figure out how to implement "not causing needless suffering" in how humans treat other humans. Then we can try to perfect it in how humans treat other animals.

Defining personhood as the possession of traits like the capacity to feel and reason, self-awareness and autonomy, and the ability to imagine a future

Strictly because of some of the ways humans treat other humans, I would say that the requirement for "autonomy" (which wikipedia describes as "the capacity of a rational individual to make an informed, un-coerced decision") rules out a majority of humans as persons.

So I would argue that Singer's position leads to the idea that because we live in a racist kyriarchy/patriarchy, we get to continue to define humans exclusively as white able bodied property owning males.

(The article gets close to this argument but doesn't quite make it explicitly.)

We don't need to envision a slippery slope to be alarmed. We're already 3/4 of the way to the bottom of the hill.

[firecat]

Also it's really ironic that Singer doesn't think his philosophy applies to his mother with Alzheimers. (Personal details not provided but available on request.)

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

So I would argue that Singer's position leads to the idea that because we live in a racist kyriarchy/patriarchy, we get to continue to define humans exclusively as white able bodied property owning males.

but wait! singer is one of those!

are you suggesting he's entirely selfserving?

pardon me while i fall over in shock.

okay, done now.

[firecat]

Funny how that works.

[buttonlass.livejournal.com]

So I'm confused.

Are you looking for a discussion about Singer or about vegetarianism? Cause I have a whole lot of venom for Singer's views on those with disabilities and challenges. I don't want to blow up all over your page but let's just say I can't swear enough over the asshat. I cannot fathom how a person can value animals (as a class)more than other humans (as a class).

And OMG would I like to argue with him about who decides which lives are worth what. Because not that long ago, and in quite a large swath of society still, people like my son are aborted in gigantic numbers, and his life is fan-fuckin-tastic. But, it's only recently (past few decades) that people have begun to see how true that can be. Who else is going to have a great life in spite of his opinions about their potential? Or worse, who isn't getting the chance?

Did I mention the part where I think Peter Singer is a complete asshole?

Vegetarianism or veganism? I got nothin'.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

that's okay; i'm confusing. ;)

in this post, i am mostly angry with singer, and angry/baffled with people who use singer as the backbone of their vegetarianism. i think, as you may have gathered, that he's an overprivileged ass. and people who either take him in bits and pieces or else i am their special disabled friend and therefore oh they couldn't apply that piece of his philosophy to meeeee; well, i kinda want to kick them. a few times.

[pgdudda.livejournal.com]

From the article: "Because I am still seeking acceptance of my humanity, Singer's call to get past species seems a luxury way beyond my reach."

Can I get an "Amen!" for that? Please? Because Singer's whole argument is based on defining who, in fact, counts as a person. Which is the "do Native Americans really have souls?" debate all over again.

[matthewwdaly.livejournal.com]

I had an opinion, but then I started staring at your icon with a vacant smile on my face and quite forgot what I was going to say.

Oh yeah. I have a really short fuse for philosophers who jump off the rails and then think it's my job to point out the flaws in their arguments. If he can't figure out for himself that being more compassionate to animals than humans is irrational, then he shouldn't be a trusted authority on any intellectual matter.

[guppiecat]

I had to read the article a couple times to really start to understand where everyone was coming from. I had some difficulty because the logical underpinning (i.e. that some animals count as people) is the same reason I had to stop eating mammals, and the suffering argument (really, capacity to obviously experience pain) is why I drew the line where I did. At the same time, I can see how his logic extends from this premise and attempts to resolve the "why is euthanasia OK for pets, but not loved ones" in the way it does.

In the end, I think that his system fails for the same reason as most (Western) philosophers I've read. Logic goes from being a tool used to resolve conflict to being the path that one follows. (Interestingly, this is in the face of Gödel's work logically proving that logic is necessarily incomplete).

I don't know enough about Singer to either attack or defend him or his work. However I do agree with some of the fundamental beliefs he cites. Namely, that some (or all) animals have "personhood" and that people (or creatures with personhood) should have a right to end their lives when they wish. I disagree with the other conclusions listed, namely that others have the right to both remove personhood and then take actions based on that. I find that both morally and practically troublesome. (Were I critiquing this professionally, I would say that the functions of defining user roles and operating with them should be controlled via segregation of duties.)

I also think that "personhood" is probably a non-binary variable, despite the fact that we all wish it weren't. I've noticed that a lot of philosophers and academics tend to assume too few variables and that those variables are not spectral in nature... one of the reasons I didn't really fit as well in that environment as I thought I would.