Equal consideration of interests, which is the principle under discussion is... the same as equal rights. I do not require pigs to be given the vote. They should, however, receive equal consideration of their interests.
For me this is exactly where Mr. Singer and i part company; it seems to me that there is something of a disconnect in his thinking. His writing takes on an hypothetical character that he fails to acknowledge. Like the structure of Wuthering Heights he enters the story in the middle of proceedings, but unlike Emily he denies the observer a chance to get the 'back story' that will bring them to the present.
The back story is long and informative. It is an extension, and a relative, of the 'technological' breakthrough of cultivating plant varieties. At some stage in our collective pasts we managed to coerce animals to live alongside us, even though this coexistence would ultimately lead to their death. When we 'equally consider' the interests of the pig, for example, we might want to wonder why the untethered pig in a remote village in the Andes doesn't do a runner and live free from the possibility of harm in the harsh surrounds that surrounds him/her. We may conclude that the pig actually gets a good deal out of the Faustian pact it has historically entered into.
Or we may choose to ignore this relationship altogether and take our viewpoint from what occurs 'now' and shudder at the inhumanity of it. I have searched long for a phrase that i first heard from my Attorney -
"The beastliness of Nature is as nothing in comparison to the inhumanity of man"
- but never found a 'who' who said it. Regardless, it is a great quote. I am one who can't equate racism with 'speciesism', because i can't see them being cut from the same cloth. The denial of someone of African origin having the same rights and considerations as someone of European origin is just not the same as denying that an entirely different being, of guinea pig origin say, has the same rights and considerations as someone of Polynesian origin, except as the extension of a forced game of logic that has left some of its preconditions behind. I can't hold with a statement such as -
There is also a sense in which [the use of animals for food] is the most basic form of animal use, the foundation stone on which rests the belief that animals exist for our pleasure and convenience.
- because there is a flaw in the flow of the 'foundation stone' - do we really believe that animals exist for our 'pleasure and convenience'? - that is not really warranted.
For a large part of the twenty or so pages, I have not seen a great deal of evidence of people with carnivorous or dairy eating tendencies to intelligently explain or justify it. What I have seen is a great deal of flippancy and denial, so I make no apology for my response.
Having had a few days 'sabbatical', i have been thinking about this - and of course what most people are saying is that they don't believe they have a case to answer. For them there is no 'argument' - no justification is necessary. But that is very different from laying out a 'justification', or any kind of argument/explanation whatsoever.
But then you know that.