Bias, A Dish Best Served Hot

In Singers article, “All Animals Are Equal”, singer argues that humanity as a whole is guilty of discriminating against nonhuman animals. Singer calls humans that discriminate against animals in this way: Specialists. Singer’s argument is that if one views the treatment of animals in accordance with the way that humans have been discriminated against throughout history, one will see that the plight of the nonhuman animal is very similar to minority humans.

Singer recounts the black liberation movement, and the women’s rights movements as two prime examples of minority groups that have demanded the same rights as their white male counterparts. The striking parallel that is drawn in this essay is not merely the parallel between these movements and the avocation for animal rights, but instead how blacks, women, and Native Americans all were portrayed as animals before they received their position as equals among white males. Singer notes that, like animals, these groups were seen as commodities that only served the end of the majority. Women were seen as concubines for child bearing before they received equal rights as males. Both Africans and Native Americans were used purely for their labor, and could be held as property into the nineteenth century. All of these groups were before they achieved equal rights, like animals are today, only a resource for human ends.

This way of thinking about animals as a product is something that Singer argues is a consequence of our bias towards them and nothing more. This bias first and foremost is formed in the way that we interact with animals. Singer notes that for most of the human population we only interact directly with animals at the dinner table, or we interact with them indirectly when we purchase products, which have been tested on animals. Both of these examples color the lenses through which we understand and interact with animals. These lenses are the bias, which Singer refers to, and it is a viewpoint that we need to adjust in order to talk about the issue of animal rights.

Singers next move is to present a couple of thought exponents. Singer claims that one common justification for using animals as test subjects in experiments is that using them ultimately spares thousands of human lives. Singers counter argument to this is the following: what if by using an orphaned human infant for chemical-testing thousands of human lives could be saved? This example may seem farfetched but Singer is able to show why it is not. Singer points out that nearly any line we may draw in an attempt to divide moral obligations to human and moral obligations to animals is not clear-cut. If we use reason as our basis it is easy to find humans that lack reason. If it is that humans are purposeful, it is also clear that animals have a natural purpose. While it is clear that we are “different” from animals to me, it is not easy to say exactly how we owe or don’t owe the same moral consideration to them as we do to our own species.

It is clear after reading singers article that I too am bias towards my own species. If I were forced to choose between a person’s life and an animal’s life I would most certainly choose the person. Singer’s argument revolves around and irritates this bias that I have, and I think I am safe in saying we all share. But, the difference that I see in myself and singer is that I am ok with that bias. I do not think that I am justified in choosing the life of an animal over the life of a fellow human, but I feel completely at ease with that choice nonetheless. It may not be morally right, but I do not think we owe the same moral considerations to animals that we do to other people. Besides, animals taste too good not to eat anyway.