PHI 2396 Study Guide - Intentionality, Speciesism, Mental Event
Document Summary
Singer rejects from the very start the claim that intellectual capacity has anything to do with moral equality. If iq were a criterion for moral equality, then there will be no equality even among humans. So, moral equality" is defined in terms of the interests of every living being which are to be taken into account and treated with the like interests of other beings. If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration and count it equally with the like suffering. The important question then is whether animals can suffer. The answer will give us the criterion for treating animals as morally equal to us. Suffering is intimately related to the concept of pain and pain is a mental event, a state of consciousness, a feeling which can never be directly observed by another being. Second, by reading the external signs of their behaviour.
