Oh my god it is too late for this and I am fairly certain everyone else on this thread is going to hate us, but I'll try to concisely say a few things to make my positions more clear
I don't know if Singer ever mentioned pigs. Ever. But I have heard the argument that pigs are intelligent (I think I've heard people say as intelligent as a three year old--but that's not quite the point). As I said earlier in some thread somewhere I am an atheist and I don't think animals or humans have souls. So if you start from that premise you have to start thinking about--well what is a life? What is something worth protecting? Obviously, I think the death a human is a tragedy. I don't really care about the death of plankton though. Why? Is it because plankton don't have a soul and humans don't. Obviously not. But what is it? And what about the spectrum of life between plankton and humans?
Are humans special because they are human? Maybe? But if so why do I think that? Is it because I am human and not only need to be loved, but don't want to be eaten? Probably, but is it something else? Is it about the level of cognitive development? The ability to feel pain? To suffer? And than we're getting into if a pig is as intelligent as a three year old or you know there are animals species that engage in what's clearly mourning than we have to ask aren't these worthy lives to? What are are criteria? And than I feel like we're getting into Peter Singer territory.
I said earlier the question of animal versus human life is complicated and I said that because I think this is something that really science is going to determine and as we learn more about animals and their cognitive capacity, their ability to feel emotional and physical pain we are going to have to start asking ourselves some tough questions. Though probably not about plankton.
Peter Singer and abortion. I said his comments are unhelpful and I meant just that. I feel like he's one of those academics who likes to make controversial remarks and draw a lot of attention to themselves, but than completely undermines larger causes. Zizek is another one. Zygotes, fetuses, etc. aren't people. They are not. And running around saying they are, but it's not wrong to take human life I feel like you are playing way too much into the arguments the rabid anti-abortion people are saying and I don't think it makes people more supportive of reproductive health care. And I guess what matters to me isn't that some guy at Princeton can make super slick intellectual arguments and show his peers how clever he is, but how do we win the right for women to be able to access reproductive medical care and make sure we don't lose it. That's sloppy and more flippant than I'd like it to be, but like I said it's late and I am being brief. I suspect you're probably not sympathetic to this perspective, but at least I am honest about what it is I ultimately care about.
Utilitarianism. I don't have anything against it per se, but I think it has a tendency to sidestep a lot of issues about oppression and just quite frankly ignore the world as it actually is. Peter Singer's book "The Life You Can Save" is a perfect example of it. I found it to be an incredibly frustrating book that doesn't really say very much about global poverty. I don't have a problem with giving to charities and I understand the immediate life versus death issues--and there is a case to be made for that. But ultimately individuals giving to charity isn't going to solve the issue of poverty and poverty isn't caused by the fact that not enough people gave to Oxfam. It has to do with the big structural issues that no one likes to talk about--the legacy of colonialism, how the international economic institutes were set up to perpetuate power imbalances, the role of exploitative corporations, corruption, geopolitical wrangling, the usual things you can solve over afternoon tea. If you have a country that's rich in resources, but everyone is poor because the dictator made an agreement with some foreign company and when people try to protest it the company pays the local military to hang them or brings in its own thugs that's not a problem I can fix for just the price of coffee a day. It is a problem that can be fixed though--I very much believe in "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will" (bonus points to which ever soloer knows who I am quoting--no google please). But if we're going to solve these problems we've got to be clear about what they are and clear about what kinds of solutions there are. I don't see Singer doing that. And I don't see other utilitarians doing that.
Anyways whose this guy Morrissey--I think he sings songs demeaning Norwegian chickens for wearing sweatpants or something--what's that about?