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Have to say that one reason I don't take Singer seriously or consider him in any way an animal rights activist  even though I think he is sincere in thinking animals should be treated the same way humans should be treated is because he's said some absolutely vile  garbage about what he thinks is acceptable treatment of humans. I'm just 'oh, so you think murdering innocent human beings who don't want to die or horribly exploiting them is okay sometimes?! It's okay if you plug it into some equation and the numbers come out large enough?!' 

I mean, the problem in my opinion is that Singer is a utilitarian. Worst endless-paperclip-producing philosophy ever conceived. Interested far too much in the numbers and not nearly enough in the context in which they matter in the first place.

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I am frustrated immensely by how much energy it would take to fully detail my issues with Singer and his book, but to summarize:

* Talks about movements (primarily civil rights and feminism) that he has no little to no understanding of.  Uses these movements only as flat ideological props to talk about animal 'liberation', which despite the time he spends detailing very specific information on this topic, he also demonstrates nearly no ideological understanding of. Seems to be of the misapprehension that civil rights and feminist movements achieved their goals and don't have any significant struggles to face in the modern day, which has never at any time during the existence of this book been true.

* Is absolutely insultingly awful about disabled people.  Just straight-up eugenics-level terrible here.


* Immense intellectual cowardice which takes the form of frequent 'both-sidesism'. 'Both sides make strong points...' Oh really? But what is your position on the issue? Guess you...don't really...have one.

* The pretension of intellectualism being opposite emotion. To me, it is worse to not acknowledge that people are fundamentally motivated by emotion than it is to believe one can be shown to be less biased by not expressing it or expressing it by more formal means. Knowledge by itself is meaningless without the existence of wants or desires. This includes the desire for knowledge for its own sake, but in a book that purports to be about activism and not just knowledge for its own sake, this is an especially egregrious issue.

* A philosopher spending so little time on actual philosophy.

* The part where he does his own special version of 'oh, those preachy vegans' in a book called Animal Liberation referencing the work of animal rights activists.

I feel like I'm forgetting some things here, but yeah, those are some of the big ones.

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Past Me: Peter Singer is the worst actually.

Current Me: No...you don't understand...he's actually even worse than that...

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So, recently I read Animal Liberation by Peter Singer. What astounds me is that, despite the fact that I've fully despised this guy for years before I read this book (so much so that I got into an argument with another vegan when they recommended it), the actual text itself managed, if anything, to make me loathe him even more.

Despite what I knew about Singer going in, I was nonetheless surprised that his position, as stated in this text, is very clearly one of *animal welfarism*, not animal rights. This can be seen in such statements as:

"In keeping with the reasons given there, I do not, on balance, object to free-range egg production."

Animal Liberation (2015 Edition) by Peter Singer, Ch 4 Becoming A Vegetarian

This statement not only ignores the often less than cozy realities behind the 'free range' label, but ignores the fact that artificial selection has produced the chickens' prolific egg-laying entirely for the benefit of humans, and at great cost in overall health and happiness to the birds themselves.

While he does not spend (much) time criticizing vegans, he also focuses almost entirely on reform of an irretrievably broken capitalist system that serves neither human nor non-human animals. This is unsurprising because Singer is one of the few beneficiaries of that system. He seems to have very little actual understanding of the human social justice movements he casually brings up in the most clumsy, insulting, and ineffectual ways.

What surprised me is how little of the book is devoted to actual *philosophy*. To be sure, Singer stops after lengthy exposition of facts to occasionally muse on the meaning of it all, but he devotes little more time to this than any average news expose might. Excuse me if I thought a philosopher might spend more time actually philosophizing.

I guess you really can't criticize something until you've read it. I mean, I was right, Singer is not a vegan, but this book also does not advocate for veganism. Also I've read more thoughtful philosophy on Twitter, a social media site I have numerous philosophical objections to and do not use.

And that's my review of this book!

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