Hi Adam, thank you for your question, and apologies for the late reply! (Been on holiday and managed to get offline for much of it.)
It's a good question - I think Singer would probably say that anaesthetising an animal to kill it would certainly be more merciful, as it wouldn't suffer in the moment. But I think he'd say that, looking at the animal's life overall, the animal in question would still 'suffer' from being killed in the sense that it would lose out on a future and all that it contains.
Personally I think that makes sense, even if I don't share Singer's broader utilitarian outlook on life and morality. What do you reckon? I think he's an provocative writer (in both good and bad senses!).
Thanks for your comment, and apologies for the late reply!
It's a really interesting objection - I think the difference between our positions here is one of terminology: the way I'm using 'sentience', it covers physical things like a nervous system, as well as psychological qualities like intelligence. 'Sapience' I would usually take to mean something like wisdom, which I wouldn't attribute to our eight-tentacled friends.
On the eating front, I agree octopuses are no difference to eating the other intelligent animals you mention - hence why I think we need to consider their welfare just as much as we do cows, pigs, sheep and so on...
Hi Lewis, I was wondering if Peter Singer would be ok with eating any sentient being as long as it didn't suffer (e.g: anesthetized).
Hi Adam, thank you for your question, and apologies for the late reply! (Been on holiday and managed to get offline for much of it.)
It's a good question - I think Singer would probably say that anaesthetising an animal to kill it would certainly be more merciful, as it wouldn't suffer in the moment. But I think he'd say that, looking at the animal's life overall, the animal in question would still 'suffer' from being killed in the sense that it would lose out on a future and all that it contains.
Personally I think that makes sense, even if I don't share Singer's broader utilitarian outlook on life and morality. What do you reckon? I think he's an provocative writer (in both good and bad senses!).
Thanks for your comment, and apologies for the late reply!
It's a really interesting objection - I think the difference between our positions here is one of terminology: the way I'm using 'sentience', it covers physical things like a nervous system, as well as psychological qualities like intelligence. 'Sapience' I would usually take to mean something like wisdom, which I wouldn't attribute to our eight-tentacled friends.
On the eating front, I agree octopuses are no difference to eating the other intelligent animals you mention - hence why I think we need to consider their welfare just as much as we do cows, pigs, sheep and so on...