Reception
Since the publication of Animal Liberation, Singer has received a wide-range of philosophical challenges to his formulation of animal rights. In a lengthy debate in Slate Magazine, Richard Posner challenged that Singer failed to see the "radicalism of the ethical vision that powers view on animals, an ethical vision that finds greater value in a healthy pig than in a profoundly intellectually challenged child, that commands inflicting a lesser pain on a human being to avert a greater pain to a dog, and that, provided only that a chimpanzee has 1 percent of the mental ability of a normal human being, would require the sacrifice of the human being to save 101 chimpanzees."
In addition, Martha Nussbaum has argued that the Capability Approach provides a more adequate foundation of justice than Utilitarianism can supply. Utilitarianism, Nussbaum argues, ignores adaptive preferences, elides the separateness of distinct persons, misidentifies valuable human/non-human emotions such as grief, and calculates according to "sum-rankings" rather than inviolable protection of intrinsic entitlements. Singer replied to this critique.
Gary L. Francione's theory of animal rights rejects Singer's utilitarian view and uses an abolitionist approach that is based on sentience alone, rather than on any particular characteristics like self-awareness.
Read more about this topic: Animal Liberation (book)
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