Peter Singer's Philosophy is Anti-Vegan.
04 November 2018 [link youtube]
A video primarily discussing the legacy of Peter Singer's work, but also involving Unnatural Vegan and Gary Francione.
#PeterSinger #UnnaturalVegan #GaryFrancione
Youtube Automatic Transcription
- yen this video is going to be quick
because most of you can already guess what it is I've got to say but all the text that appears on screen we have a series of quotations that's led by really quickly I am going to read out to you and briefly discuss so the next one number six I think do I worship at the altar of Peter Singer and think that painlessly killing animals is okay so this is actually a pretty simplistic understanding of Peter singers views as well as I know [Music] and I actually did once agree with them as evidenced by this interview which I think is where this is all coming from which is totally fair this is one of those examples where why I didn't want to call this video trolling you think that you may have guessed that I've had a lot of feedback lately positive feedback from people indicating that they really didn't know the things about the philosophy of Peter Singer that I have recently unwrapped idli referred to as things that everybody knows so here on screen this quotation you've seen me present in a recent video and I knew that I'd used the same quotation at some point in the past many videos ago but when I was searching my own channel for it I couldn't find it myself so this combination of factors makes me want to record a new video try to get this across to you rapidly and efficiently singer does not think that is necessarily a problem that we use nonhumans for human purposes because he does not regard the killing of animals is necessarily immoral you're gonna see what his philosophical reason or excuse for that is in just a moment here it was skipping ahead just to summarize this more briefly the core of Peter singers philosophy is what is stated here as he claims that animals do not care that we use them they only care about how we use them that includes the bizarre caveat that they do not care if they are killed and further this is not sit here singer does not believe there's any harm done if you kill an animal so long as that animal is replaced that somehow harm is negated by replacement and believe it or not he does apply this to humans he believes that if a parent has a child with quote unquote bad prospects so this is part of the eugenics argument with with Peter Singer a child who has say dyslexia or some form of retardation the parents can kill that child as painlessly as possible and then replace it with another child and because of the principle of replacement that he believes in no harm is done by killing one child and replacing with another that would have better prospects so likewise he believes that a pig if done without pain and suffering or as little pain and suffering as possible given that the pig is replaced with another Pig this somehow does no harm so that is a bizarre philosophical sense of harm as you see he has a bizarre physic philosophical sense of use of animals and how they're used versus that they are used etc etc well that's the legacy of Peter Singer he spent decades and published books arguing this quote so the first part of this quotation is of someone writing in - Gary Francis II own a and then a reply from Kate France and I quote I recently attended a talk by Peter Singer I was horrified and mystified to hear him explicitly state that killing animals is not a species astac if done painlessly I have read some of your work and of course objected this assertion alright so Gary francium replies as I stated in the preceding essay no one should be surprised or shocked that singer does not regard killing animals as objectionable per se he has been taking this position for the past 33 years ever since he wrote Animal Liberation so it's now more than 33 years I know long ago this is written this this comment in the internet singer does not regard killing animals as speciesist because he does not think that animals have an interest in continuing to live so we we do not harm them therefore we do not harm them when we kill them painlessly what is the meaning of harm if you genuinely believe you do not harm someone or something in killing them it's bizarre you must regard life itself as a kind of disease to be cured by death to believe in this and here is the quotation that unnatural vegan Swayze herself chose where she says I agree with singer while I personally would not consume animals even if no suffering could be guaranteed I would have no qualms with others choosing to do so now I think that it is very fair to say if you have no qualms with others eating meat but you just personally choose not to eat meat then you are not vegan I think this is the most important element of the difference between being vegan and plant-based just not a sinker expert [Music] [Music] eggs from rescued chickens that live like in someone's backyard and they're well cared for they're treated like like you would treat a dog or a cat right I think a really good example would be a in a backyard hen you know having a hen who produces unfertilized eggs and then consuming those eggs assuming the hen is well cared for and loved and all of that kind of stuff what would be the harm drinking milk like drinking cow's milk it could be another example abuse without exploitation just not a sinker expert okay continuing in the same vein and quoting from France Leone's website although he is himself quoting Peter Singer all those singer has stated this position at various places in his writings his interview in the vegan so it's a magazine called the vegan in the vegan contains a recent brief and clear reiteration of his view quotes this is quoting Peter Singer I do think that there are morally relevant differences between various species because the cognitive capacities of beings are relevant to for example the wrongness of killing them I think that it is worse to kill a self-aware being that is a being who is aware of its own existence over time and is able to have desires for the future than a being who may be conscious but is not self-aware and lives in a kind of eternal present now this to me is a religious statement this is someone who has a religious belief that animals are not capable of ID aiding the future and then who want that basis claims that it is okay to kill animals um this was never based on science and you know there are different intelligence tests that we use with different types of animals but including can they recognize themselves in a mirror ie can they look at a mirror and realize that this is a reflection of who they are and not an imager not a different animal that they're looking at can they recognize that they're looking at themselves there are many different standards for how we can objectively empirically scientifically measure or estimate animal intelligence we put them in laboratories and test their ability to go through a maze and solve problems and so on and so forth with many species of animal we now have proof that they use spoken language including by the way groundhogs Richardson's ground squirrel is the species have read about but groundhogs that actually do speak to each other and we've been able to through computational linguistics record and in a limited sense translate what it is they're saying and prove that they have rational communication and we kill groundhogs every day just in order to produce weed and corn even if you're a vegan you're responsible for killing this this type of mammal so look there are extensive Studies on even the language capacity of social insects bees and ants communicating with each other and the reasoning and planning and doing things in the future doing things tomorrow that the honeybees plan to do today even the intelligence of marine animals I've seen studies on the intelligence of cuttlefish so cuttlefish have a pretty big brain relative to their body capacity their language and thinking this is just a religious claim this is just as ridiculous as someone claiming that they were handed down the truth written into a piece of stone on the top of a volcano he claims he has this magical truth that is not based on any kind of scientific evidence and can't be refuted or questioned or challenged by scientific evidence he claims animals with a few exceptions such as Apes primates animals generally and obviously including cats dogs cows pigs and sheep the animals we exploit most frequently on earth they have no ability to think of their own existence over time and have no desires for the future it's a really low standard I mean it's v's if you oh if you've grown up with a dog as a pet or something it's really not hard to challenge this empirically and that because they live in an eternal present he is dooming them to perpetual captivity suffering exploitation and death now even if I knew a human being named that trait even if I knew a human being that was true of I knew a human being who was mentally [ __ ] to the extent that they couldn't think about the future desire things for the future I still would never wish on them the life that we condemned farm animals - to me that's that's ridiculous that's deeply immoral whether you're vegan or not and you know this is a discourse happening within veganism okay again another quote from Peter Singer but presented by girlfriend Sione for example in 2006 interview in the vegan Peter Singer states to avoid inflicting suffering on animals not to mention the environmental costs of intensive animal production we need to cut down drastically on the animal products we consume but does that mean a vegan world that's one solution but not necessarily the only one if it is the infliction of suffering that we are concerned about rather than killing then I can also imagine a world in which most people mostly eat plant foods but occasionally treat themselves to the luxury of free-range eggs or possibly even meat from animals who live good lives under conditions natural for their species and then are humanely killed on the farm obvious that's completely absurd if you were talking about hunting you can have animals living in the wild and conditions that are natural for their species in the jungle and then being killed by hunters there's absolutely no way you're gonna have conditions resembling what's natural or the species on a farm so this is absurd and immoral and it's anti vegan ok one more quote here I think singers focus on the treatment rather than the killing of animals leads the position that veganism is simply one of a number of ways to reduce suffering but that there is nothing mandatory or required of a veganism because there is nothing inherently wrong with killing animals indeed singer regards being a consistent vegan as quote unquote fanatical so if you have been watching unnatural vegans content that might sound awfully familiar to you guess what guys when I found the older video that I did on this topic the number of thumbs down was much much greater than the number of thumbs up and that was just about one year and one month ago when I raised these same issues two years ago and three years ago again there was a chorus of public opinion this is with the in veganism supporting a natural vegan and opposing me and saying that I was somehow being unreasonable and today I look at the thumbs-up and thumbs-down ratios and I see the overall discourse comments discussion and commentary and it's very obvious that the bulk of public opinion within our tiny political movement has come over to my side I don't know if things are getting better but this is one example at least in which they're getting more rational and less ridiculous virus yen
because most of you can already guess what it is I've got to say but all the text that appears on screen we have a series of quotations that's led by really quickly I am going to read out to you and briefly discuss so the next one number six I think do I worship at the altar of Peter Singer and think that painlessly killing animals is okay so this is actually a pretty simplistic understanding of Peter singers views as well as I know [Music] and I actually did once agree with them as evidenced by this interview which I think is where this is all coming from which is totally fair this is one of those examples where why I didn't want to call this video trolling you think that you may have guessed that I've had a lot of feedback lately positive feedback from people indicating that they really didn't know the things about the philosophy of Peter Singer that I have recently unwrapped idli referred to as things that everybody knows so here on screen this quotation you've seen me present in a recent video and I knew that I'd used the same quotation at some point in the past many videos ago but when I was searching my own channel for it I couldn't find it myself so this combination of factors makes me want to record a new video try to get this across to you rapidly and efficiently singer does not think that is necessarily a problem that we use nonhumans for human purposes because he does not regard the killing of animals is necessarily immoral you're gonna see what his philosophical reason or excuse for that is in just a moment here it was skipping ahead just to summarize this more briefly the core of Peter singers philosophy is what is stated here as he claims that animals do not care that we use them they only care about how we use them that includes the bizarre caveat that they do not care if they are killed and further this is not sit here singer does not believe there's any harm done if you kill an animal so long as that animal is replaced that somehow harm is negated by replacement and believe it or not he does apply this to humans he believes that if a parent has a child with quote unquote bad prospects so this is part of the eugenics argument with with Peter Singer a child who has say dyslexia or some form of retardation the parents can kill that child as painlessly as possible and then replace it with another child and because of the principle of replacement that he believes in no harm is done by killing one child and replacing with another that would have better prospects so likewise he believes that a pig if done without pain and suffering or as little pain and suffering as possible given that the pig is replaced with another Pig this somehow does no harm so that is a bizarre philosophical sense of harm as you see he has a bizarre physic philosophical sense of use of animals and how they're used versus that they are used etc etc well that's the legacy of Peter Singer he spent decades and published books arguing this quote so the first part of this quotation is of someone writing in - Gary Francis II own a and then a reply from Kate France and I quote I recently attended a talk by Peter Singer I was horrified and mystified to hear him explicitly state that killing animals is not a species astac if done painlessly I have read some of your work and of course objected this assertion alright so Gary francium replies as I stated in the preceding essay no one should be surprised or shocked that singer does not regard killing animals as objectionable per se he has been taking this position for the past 33 years ever since he wrote Animal Liberation so it's now more than 33 years I know long ago this is written this this comment in the internet singer does not regard killing animals as speciesist because he does not think that animals have an interest in continuing to live so we we do not harm them therefore we do not harm them when we kill them painlessly what is the meaning of harm if you genuinely believe you do not harm someone or something in killing them it's bizarre you must regard life itself as a kind of disease to be cured by death to believe in this and here is the quotation that unnatural vegan Swayze herself chose where she says I agree with singer while I personally would not consume animals even if no suffering could be guaranteed I would have no qualms with others choosing to do so now I think that it is very fair to say if you have no qualms with others eating meat but you just personally choose not to eat meat then you are not vegan I think this is the most important element of the difference between being vegan and plant-based just not a sinker expert [Music] [Music] eggs from rescued chickens that live like in someone's backyard and they're well cared for they're treated like like you would treat a dog or a cat right I think a really good example would be a in a backyard hen you know having a hen who produces unfertilized eggs and then consuming those eggs assuming the hen is well cared for and loved and all of that kind of stuff what would be the harm drinking milk like drinking cow's milk it could be another example abuse without exploitation just not a sinker expert okay continuing in the same vein and quoting from France Leone's website although he is himself quoting Peter Singer all those singer has stated this position at various places in his writings his interview in the vegan so it's a magazine called the vegan in the vegan contains a recent brief and clear reiteration of his view quotes this is quoting Peter Singer I do think that there are morally relevant differences between various species because the cognitive capacities of beings are relevant to for example the wrongness of killing them I think that it is worse to kill a self-aware being that is a being who is aware of its own existence over time and is able to have desires for the future than a being who may be conscious but is not self-aware and lives in a kind of eternal present now this to me is a religious statement this is someone who has a religious belief that animals are not capable of ID aiding the future and then who want that basis claims that it is okay to kill animals um this was never based on science and you know there are different intelligence tests that we use with different types of animals but including can they recognize themselves in a mirror ie can they look at a mirror and realize that this is a reflection of who they are and not an imager not a different animal that they're looking at can they recognize that they're looking at themselves there are many different standards for how we can objectively empirically scientifically measure or estimate animal intelligence we put them in laboratories and test their ability to go through a maze and solve problems and so on and so forth with many species of animal we now have proof that they use spoken language including by the way groundhogs Richardson's ground squirrel is the species have read about but groundhogs that actually do speak to each other and we've been able to through computational linguistics record and in a limited sense translate what it is they're saying and prove that they have rational communication and we kill groundhogs every day just in order to produce weed and corn even if you're a vegan you're responsible for killing this this type of mammal so look there are extensive Studies on even the language capacity of social insects bees and ants communicating with each other and the reasoning and planning and doing things in the future doing things tomorrow that the honeybees plan to do today even the intelligence of marine animals I've seen studies on the intelligence of cuttlefish so cuttlefish have a pretty big brain relative to their body capacity their language and thinking this is just a religious claim this is just as ridiculous as someone claiming that they were handed down the truth written into a piece of stone on the top of a volcano he claims he has this magical truth that is not based on any kind of scientific evidence and can't be refuted or questioned or challenged by scientific evidence he claims animals with a few exceptions such as Apes primates animals generally and obviously including cats dogs cows pigs and sheep the animals we exploit most frequently on earth they have no ability to think of their own existence over time and have no desires for the future it's a really low standard I mean it's v's if you oh if you've grown up with a dog as a pet or something it's really not hard to challenge this empirically and that because they live in an eternal present he is dooming them to perpetual captivity suffering exploitation and death now even if I knew a human being named that trait even if I knew a human being that was true of I knew a human being who was mentally [ __ ] to the extent that they couldn't think about the future desire things for the future I still would never wish on them the life that we condemned farm animals - to me that's that's ridiculous that's deeply immoral whether you're vegan or not and you know this is a discourse happening within veganism okay again another quote from Peter Singer but presented by girlfriend Sione for example in 2006 interview in the vegan Peter Singer states to avoid inflicting suffering on animals not to mention the environmental costs of intensive animal production we need to cut down drastically on the animal products we consume but does that mean a vegan world that's one solution but not necessarily the only one if it is the infliction of suffering that we are concerned about rather than killing then I can also imagine a world in which most people mostly eat plant foods but occasionally treat themselves to the luxury of free-range eggs or possibly even meat from animals who live good lives under conditions natural for their species and then are humanely killed on the farm obvious that's completely absurd if you were talking about hunting you can have animals living in the wild and conditions that are natural for their species in the jungle and then being killed by hunters there's absolutely no way you're gonna have conditions resembling what's natural or the species on a farm so this is absurd and immoral and it's anti vegan ok one more quote here I think singers focus on the treatment rather than the killing of animals leads the position that veganism is simply one of a number of ways to reduce suffering but that there is nothing mandatory or required of a veganism because there is nothing inherently wrong with killing animals indeed singer regards being a consistent vegan as quote unquote fanatical so if you have been watching unnatural vegans content that might sound awfully familiar to you guess what guys when I found the older video that I did on this topic the number of thumbs down was much much greater than the number of thumbs up and that was just about one year and one month ago when I raised these same issues two years ago and three years ago again there was a chorus of public opinion this is with the in veganism supporting a natural vegan and opposing me and saying that I was somehow being unreasonable and today I look at the thumbs-up and thumbs-down ratios and I see the overall discourse comments discussion and commentary and it's very obvious that the bulk of public opinion within our tiny political movement has come over to my side I don't know if things are getting better but this is one example at least in which they're getting more rational and less ridiculous virus yen