Apparently all my recent posts relate to re-reading material for lecture. From Piers Beirne’s “For a Nonspeciesist Criminology: Animal Abuse as an Object of Study” (Criminology 37(1): 117-47):
Singer’s many exhortations have successfully acquired a large and quite influential following. But it must be said that his act-utilitarianism does not place the liberation of animals from suffering on very secure footing. If the rightness or wrongness of any given action is to be judged only by its consequences, and if the criterion of this is a utilitarian calculus aimed at the maximization of pleasure and the minimization of suffering, it follows that particular acts of suffering may be justified if they serve to increase the collective good. Singer’s theory of animal liberation does not condemn animal experimentation absolutely, for example, and actually supports particular instances of it if they are believed to lead to a scientific cure for illness and disease in humans. (One wonders if there are scenarios that would allow Singer to support experimentation on humans if so doing might lead to good health in sick animals.) In principle, there is nothing in such utilitarianism that would preclude any form of torture or suffering inflicted on a minority if the result was a decrease in the suffering of the majority (132).
The main thrust of the paragraph is a standard criticism of Singer in particular and utilitarianism in general–although most critics of Singer attack him on the grounds that he seems to allow for the abuse of severely handicapped humans in order to further the interests of non-handicapped humans. The parenthetical comment is, however, quite good: has anyone pursued this line of thought in general or against Singer in particular?
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