Killing humans and killing animals

Inquiry (United Kingdom)

Volumn 22, Issue 1-4, 1979, Pages 145-156

  Singer, Peter ^a  

^a MONASH UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84947816183     PISSN: 0020174X     EISSN: 15023923     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00201747908601869     Document Type: Article

References (17)

1. Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, A New York Review Book, New York 1975; Jonathan Cape, London 1976.
2. See H. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed., Macmillan, London 1907, pp 414-16;
3. Jan Narveson, ‘Utilitarianism and New Generations’, Mind, Vol. 76 (1967) and ‘Moral Problems of Population’, The Monist, Vol. 57 (1973) and reprinted in M. Bayles (Ed.), Ethics and Population, Schenkman, Cambridge, Mass. 1976. Derek Parfit’s extremely influential contribution to the issue is as yet unpublished.
4. See Richard Henson, ‘Utilitarianism and the Wrongness of Killing’, Philosophical Review, Vol. 80 (1971). Henson’s objection does not apply if the average view is interpreted as directing us to maximize the average amount of happiness per life lived, rather than the average level of happiness of those alive at any given instant. Probably Sidgwick had in mind happiness per life lived. The objections in the following paragraph, however, apply to both versions of the average view.
5. I attempted to produce one in ‘A Utilitarian Population Principle’ in M. Bayles (Ed.), p. 93; but Parfit’s reply (‘On Doing the Best for Our Children’ in the same volume, pp 110-11) has convinced me that the attempt failed.
6. From Social Rights and Duties, quoted by Henry Salt, ‘The Logic of the Larder’ which appeared in Salt’s The Humanities of Diet, The Vegetarian Society, Manchester’ 1914, and has been reprinted in T. Regan and P. Singer (Eds.), Animal Rights and Human Obligations, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey 1976.
7. Jonathan Glover discusses whether human beings are ever replaceable in Causing Death and Saving Lives, Penguin, Harmondsworth 1977, pp 72-73, 159-60, 163.
8. See Animal Liberation, 1977, pp 72-73, 159-60, 163, Ch. 3.
9. ‘The Logic of the Larder’, in T. Regan and P. Singer (Eds.), p. 186.
10. Animal Liberation, pp 240-242.
11. See R. I. Sikora, ‘Is it Wrong to Prevent the Existence of Future Generations?’, forthcoming in an anthology on future generations edited by B. Barry, J. Margolis, and R. Sikora.
12. For a similar point see T. G. Roupas, ‘The Value of Life’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 7 (1978), p. 167.
13. The suggestion that simple consciousness is enough has been made by W. S. Pluhar, ‘Abortion and Simple Consciousness’, Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 74 (1977).
14. ‘Abortion and Infanticide’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 2 (1972); a revised version appears in J. Feinberg (Ed.), The Problem of Abortion, Wadsworth, Belmont, Ca. 1973.
15. See R. M. Hare, ‘Ethical Theory and Utilitarianism’ in H. D. Lewis (Ed.), Contemporary British Philosophy, 4th Series, Allen & Unwin, London 1976; for Hare’s own views on the application of this theory to a situation involving taking life, see his ‘Abortion and the Golden Rule’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 4 (1975).
16. See Animal Liberation, Ch. 1.
17. See James Rachels, ‘Active and Passive Euthanasia’, New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 292 (9 Jan. 1975); and Jonathan Glover, Causing Death and Saving Lives, Ch. 7. For an opposed view by a doctor involved in the treatment of spina bifida infants see the comments by John Lorber, ‘Early Results of Selective Treatment of Spina Bifida Cystica’, British Medical Journal, Vol. 4 (1973), esp. p. 204.