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Equality/Animal/Human/Equal rights/Ethics/P. Singer: thesis: my book Practical Ethics
(1) fights the attitude that all members of the human species would have higher-ranked rights solely because of their belonging to this species.
>
Animals, >
Rights.
P. SingerVs: it would be unphilosophical to forbid any comparisons beyond a species. This is about injustice that we inflict on animals and the damage we do to our environment.
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Equality/ethics/P. Singer: what does it actually mean when we say that all people are equal?
Problem: the more we investigate individual cases, the more the belief in the universal validity of the principle of equality disappears. Example:
Intelligence/Jensen/Eysenk/P. Singer: (Debate in the 1970s between Arthur Jensen, psychologist UC Berkeley and Hans Jürgen Eysenk, psychology at the University of London):
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Question: to what extent do variances of intelligence depend on genetic differences?
This dispute was again taken up by Herrstein/Murray 1994
(2).
>
Intelligence, >
A. Jensen, >
H.J. Eysenck.
Racism: the critics of these authors say their theses, if justified, would justify racial discrimination. Are they right?
Similar problem: was Larry Summers a sexist when he - at that time president of the Harvard University - claimed biological factors in connection with difficulties to appoint more women to chairs in mathematics and sciences?
Similar question: should disadvantaged groups receive special preferential treatment in access to jobs or to the university?
P. Singer: Differences between genders and differences between giftedness exist in any case.
Range property/John Rawls: (in Rawls, Theory of Justice)
(3) if one belongs to a domain, one simply has the property to belong to this domain and all within the domain have this property alike.
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Equality/Rawls/P. Singer: Rawl's thesis: a moral attitude is the basis for equality.
>
Morals, >
Ethics.
VsRawls: 1. One might object that this is a gradual matter.
2. Small children are not capable of having a moral personality.
Solution/Rawls: small children are potentially moral personalities.
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VsRawls: Rawls does not provide a solution for people with irreparable impairments.
(3)
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Suffering/interest/Third person/P. Singer: Problem: we have to explain whether the pain of a certain person is less undesirable than that of another person.
>
Suffering, >
Pain.
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Interest/P. Singer: Principle: When it comes to equality, we should weigh interests as interests and not as interests of persons, as mine or someone else's interests. If then X loses more by an action than Y wins, the action should not be executed.
>
Interest.
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Then the race plays no role anymore in the weighing of interests. This is the reason why the Nazis were wrong: their policy was based only on the interests of the Aryan race.
>
Racism, >
Fascism.
1. Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, 3rd ed. Cambridge University Press (2011).
2. Herrnstein, R. J., & Murray, C. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. New York, NJ: Free Press (1994).
3. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice: Original Edition. Belknap Press (1971).
