2024 Annual Animal Rights Law Lecture delivered by Professor Peter Singer

This is a recording from our Centre’s 2024 Annual Lecture. In June 2024, Professor Peter Singer delivered a talk addressing the need for further progress in ethics and law regarding animals, and the prospects of achieving it. It opens with a welcome from the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law's co-founder and co-director Dr Sean Butler, as well as an introduction to the speaker and topic by Dr Richard Ryder, President of the RSPCA.

⭐ Thank you to the Jeremy Coller Foundation for their generous sponsorship of our lecture series.

ABOUT US:
Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law is an academic centre dedicated to the study, understanding and promotion of fundamental rights for non-human animals, based in Cambridge, UK.

ABOUT THE EVENT:
The first of our Annual Lecture events was with Professor Frans de Waal, in March 2023 at Cambridge University, and was on animal emotions and animal rights law. The second Annual Lecture with Professor Peter Singer, in June 2024 at Cambridge University, and was on the need for further progress in ethics and law regarding animals, and the prospects of achieving it.

ABOUT THE LECTURER:
Often described as the world’s most influential philosopher, Professor Singer is Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and became well-known internationally after the publication of his ground-breaking book Animal Liberation in 1975, which has been described as one of the most important books of the last 100 years. In 2023, he published the fully rewritten and updated Animal Liberation Now. Professor Singer’s other books include: Practical Ethics, The Expanding Circle, How Are We to Live?, Rethinking Life and Death, Pushing Time Away, The Life You Can Save, The Point of View of the Universe (co-authored with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek), Ethics in the Real World, and The Buddhist and the Ethicist (co-authored with Shih Chao-Hwei).

In 2005, Professor Singer was in Time Magazine’s list of 100 most influential people. In 2012, he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, the nation’s highest civic honour. He founded the charity The Life You Can Save and is a founding co-editor of the Journal of Controversial Ideas. In 2021, he was awarded the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture, and in 2023, he shared, with Steven Pinker, the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Humanities and Social Sciences.

The views expressed in this recording are that of the speakers and do not necessarily represent the views of the Centre directly.

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SPECIESISM:
Although the notion of “speciesism” is not directly associated with diet, or arguably even with veganism, its Glossary entry has been repeated here, in this chapter, due to the fact that most vegans seem to be in favour of the OBJECTIVELY-EVIL ideology (“adharma”, in Sanskrit) of “anti-speciesism”. Yes, counterintuitively for most humans, it is actually a holy and righteous concept (“dharma”, in Sanskrit) to be a speciesist! Not only that, but those utterly hypocritical vegans who assert that speciesism is evil/hateful/bad/wrong, will reveal their abject hypocrisy when they invariably favour the interests of members of their own species, in cases such as the scenario in which they are forced to save either the life of a fellow human being, or else rescuing a cat, a dog, or a pet budgerigar, that is drowning in a pool of water, or burning in a house fire.

British psychologist, Doctor Richard Hood Jack Dudley Ryder, who coined the term in a 1970 leaflet entitled “SPECIESISM”, defined it as:
“A prejudice or attitude of bias in favour of the interests of members of one’s own species, and against those of members of other species”.
Consequently, ANTI-SPECIESISM seems to be an egalitarian position, similar to the ideologies of anti-racism, which (at least in the minds of the vast majority of humans) advocates for the fundamental equality of all races and ethnicities, and anti-sexism.
See also the Glossary entries “racism” and “sexism”, which amply demonstrate that it is factually dharmic to be both a racist and a sexist (at least pursuant to the standard definitions of the terms, as well as according to the correct, etymological definition of the word “discriminate”).

In the animal rights movement, the term “speciesism” normally entails the belief that all species of animal life are fundamentally EQUAL.
This view is an extremist position, bordering on pathological, as it contradicts basic principles of biological science and applied ethics (see Chapter 12 of this “A Final Instruction Sheet for Humanity”, in order to properly understand both meta-ethics and normative ethics).

Anybody who believes that all animal species are equal in moral value, will not be able to sustain that view when confronted with the option of destroying the life of either a gnat or a housefly, or that of a fellow human being (or even a rodent or a rabbit). Equality is non-existent in this macro sphere. Equality exists solely in ABSTRACT concepts, such as mathematics (for instance, 1+1 is precisely equal to 2), and arguably on the atomic and QUANTUM levels (for example, two hydrogen atoms are essentially identical, as are two gluon or muon subatomic particles).

Opposition to speciesism is a truly INANE philosophical position, because, according to the principle of dharma (see that entry in the Glossary, as well as Chapter 12), it is normal, natural, and necessary for a member of any particular species of animal to have a preference for individuals of its own species. The negation or the suppression of in-group preference, especially in the case of humans’ preference for members of their own species in survival situations, is adharmic (meaning to say, unlawful), even if a higher species of life was to threaten our own species.

For example, if a pack of wolves was hunting a herd of deer, why would one of the deer encourage a family member to run in the direction of the wolves? That would be counterintuitive and detrimental to the deer’s own species. If a race of superior aliens was to take-over the world, what kind of Homo sapiens would assist the aliens to conquer our own planet? Only a human who was mentally deranged, I would posit, unless that human believed that the destruction of humanity would be TRULY beneficial to the planet (and even then, the typical human would seriously question the sanity of that individual, as it is seems to contradict common civility). Thus, in-group preferences may be justified.

Therefore, to claim that it is immoral for a human being to be biased towards members of his or her own species, in most every circumstance, is blatantly erroneous, just as it is fallacious to assert that one should not be partial towards one’s gender or race in specific cases.
If you happened upon a lion or a tiger mauling a fellow human being who was attacking the cat’s family, would you consider that big cat to be evil, immoral, or simply wrong in its behaviour towards the human? Most probably not, because if you were sufficiently wise and intelligent, you would realize that the lion or the tiger was merely acting on its natural in-group instinctual preferences. On the contrary, in fact – if any non-human animal was to assist a Homo sapiens to attack its own family members, one would be fully warranted in assuming that the animal was afflicted with some kind of psychological abnormality! Thus, speciesism is an entirely MORALLY-JUSTIFIED position to hold. See Ch. 12.

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