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.)