If I had gained all my knowledge of Peter Singer from this article I likely could have said many of the negative things that others have previous to this letter. But the article is a mere glimpse into what Singer has written over many years, though he is especially concerned with animal rights.

His interest is in the alleviation of suffering, that is, the suffering of any being of any kind. I don't know that anyone would have a good argument against the alleviation of suffering; no one would say that suffering should continue. We humans don't like suffering, and the dislike of it is a complicated part of our genetic code (I won't go into this, as it is actually too complicated). One example of Singer's other points are that the war in Iraq was a bad choice because we didn't take into account the probable suffering of the Iraqi people. Another is that wealthy people waste money on so many things that they cross over into gluttony, thus harming people by their selfishness. Find others at www.utilitarian.net/singer/ for a broader view of the man. This should be a handy resource.

In response to Big Mac's letter, a professional ethicist is simply someone who writes on ethics and makes his money that way; he is also a philosophy professor at Princeton and I don't think that he would typically call himself a "professional ethicist". Apart from Princeton, where he holds a basically honorary position, he has been a typical college professor, publishing work and teaching classes.

It is enough to say (in response to Gene's letter) that we humans value kindness and generosity over meanness and selfishness: the fact that we reward good behavior and punish the bad, and the fact that we always have throughout existence, is good evidence of the ethical basis which is innate to us all, or almost all. Utilitarianism, I agree, is badly odd because dogmatically it suggests that everyone's duty is to alleviate suffering. I can't expect a duty widespread across humanity...but we do seem compelled to do the right thing most of the time, don't we? Don't we avoid having a guilty conscience? Again there is much more to say in this vein, many more particulars, and not enough time or space or reason to do so now. But if anyone wants, they can write a letter later and I will go into more detail for them.

Back to Singer; his great failure is in this. He says too much, too boldly, pushing too many people to become angry. His philosophy is a bit hampered by the fact that he seems to be attacking people all the time. krzmarzick felt personally attacked, in a previous letter. And of course; Singer is too harsh-sounding, too resolute in his claims. Find a copy of Bernard Williams' "The Human Prejudice", a lecture he gave at the University Center for Human Values (where Singer is now). It contains many good reasons for thinking that Singer is wrong, or at least that his thoughts are deeply flawed, or that he says too much.

I just wrote a letter on this article, but it came off as more of my own lecture on Singer, rather than on the subject. I somewhat agree with the last few articles that were posted while I was writing my own. I do think that people might have missed the point in the earlier letters.

And more, as much as I don't automatically agree with Singer on this topic:

Is a world in which we care about the sufferings of animals a world in which I don't want to live?

That is an easy "no". I think that we should all care about suffering of all kinds. I don't think that we should care about animals first necessarily...but then I don't think that Singer does. We are lucky to be well off enough that we can actually argue for or against the meat and dairy industry.

And look at it like this: I love my dog. But I love my wife much more, and my dog can't compare to her in importance. As soon as my wife and my dog are in a struggle for survival, I will bludgeon my dog to death.

But they aren't and they won't be; I won't have to make that choice. So why shouldn't I care about my dog very much? I'll still do everything that I can to make sure that my dog is treated well -- runs in circles a bit, is well fed, plays with her purple rubber ball, etc.

Singer is not working to get the government to legislate against the consumption of animal products. He is working to get the government to legislate so that animals are treated better. I don't find any problem with that. He does try to talk us out of eating animal products. Whether we listen or not is up to us, but we shouldn't be so offended that someone would ask us to be nice to pigs and chickens and cows.

Lastly, chicken is absurdly cheap. I eat it all the time, because it is inexpensive and very, very tasty. If the chicken that I eat rose a little in price, to compensate for chickens having a better life, I'd be happy for three reasons: it'd still be inexpensive, it would have been killed humanely after not leading a desperate, awful life, and yes, it would still be very tasty.

"You can ship something 10,000 miles for the same amount of fuel necessary to truck it 1,000 miles. So if you're getting your rice shipped to San Francisco from Bangladesh, fewer fossil fuels were used to get it there than if you bought it in California."

If it takes the same fuel to ship 10,000 miles and truck 1,000 miles, how is it using less fuels to use the 10,000 miles shipped from Bangladesh than to truck within California to San Francisco - which is far less than 1,000 miles?

Perhaps he's including the additional fuel involved with the artificial irrigation, but that isn't clear there.