The evidence we are accumulating in neuroscience demonstrates that consciousness isn’t a phenomenon specific to humans, or even to primates, but it comes from much further back in evolution.
JAVIER SAMPEDRO: Peter Singer is the man who has convinced half the planet that animals feel pain, the philosopher that has pushed parliaments to legislate on animal well-being, the bioethicist that has become a referent for moral questions across the globe… Singer, born in Melbourne, Australia, 75 years ago, is an ethical and political philosopher whose work covers a broad spectrum of topics. He is best known as one of the founders of the animal rights movement…
His animalism is a genuine intellectual posture, not the whim of a citizen bored by other people. His book Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals, published in English in 1975, catapulted him to philosophical stardom. He has taught bioethics at Princeton University for 23 years, and he has just published a Spanish-language adaptation of The Golden Ass, a book by second-century Roman philosopher Apuleius, who shared Singer’s profound empathy for animals. Soon to be published in Spanish is also Singer’s The Great Ape Project.
I spoke with Singer over a video call about the latest advances in the neuroscience of consciousness. Recent discoveries demonstrate that the quality that we believed to be exclusive to humans is located not in the front of the brain, the part that has developed the most during human evolution, but in the areas that we share with animals. On whether he sees the discovery as a confirmation of his theories, he says, “yes, I think that consciousness goes very far back in Earth’s evolutionary history. Its presence has been confirmed in other mammals, and I think in all vertebrates, including fish, and even in certain invertebrates”.
“We have all now seen the famous documentary about the octopus, My Octopus Teacher, which demonstrated to people that octopuses are also conscious beings, even when their consciousness has evolved independently from ours. The evidence we are accumulating in neuroscience demonstrates that consciousness isn’t a phenomenon specific to humans, or even to primates, but it comes from much further back in evolution”…
“Darwin recognized that we aren’t a separate creation, a very important point… We aren’t masters of animals. We simply live on the same planet as they do, and we have no right to suppose that our pleasures and pains are unique or different from theirs”…
Some thinkers–perhaps the vast majority–do not accept that animals are capable of suffering. Singer is impatient with them. “In a philosophical sense, we can’t be certain that animals suffer and feel pain. Solipsism is a difficult position to refute. Because I suffer, I can be certain of my pain, but not of yours. Though this idea is hard to refute, it does not seem convincing to me. We see the same reactions to pain in animals as in humans, based on the same nerve phenomena. An aspirin or paracetamol relieves pain in both humans and animals. The proposal that they are not conscious of their suffering seems unlikely.”
Since Singer is a vegetarian, I ask him my favorite question for vegetarians: would you eat a hamburger made of stem cells? “I would eat a hamburger of stem cells if no animal had suffered in the process. I’m not vegetarian because I reject a type of cell, but because of the pain that obtaining them causes.”
One concern of scientists is that the animal movement can pose obstacles to experiments with lab animals, which today are essential for research on human health. Singer has a nuanced posture: “I don’t share the idea of any animal group that believes that experimentation with animals is always unjustified. I am a consequentialist. I judge what is good or bad by its consequences. But when I examine experiments with animals, I find a great number that are not necessary for human health or survival, for cosmetics, for example, or to test food coloring”…
Singer is clear about his stance against bullfighting… “It is incredible to me that the bullfights have survived until today, despite the general rejection to the public’s entertainment being based on inflicting suffering on animals. It is a peculiar tradition, and there are so many other ways of having a party, with all those magnificent soccer teams you have in Spain and so many people who enjoy watching them, that I would recommend soccer before bullfights”…
I first interviewed Singer over 20 years ago. I remember that I arrived at our appointment ready for a fight, with provocative questions including, “humans have invented human rights, shouldn’t monkeys invent their own?” Not a minute of the interview went by before I realized how wrong I was. It was clear that Singer was a deep, reflective thinker, not the plant-eating bigmouth I had envisioned. SOURCE…
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