[SustainableTompkins] Controversial Animal Rights Ethicist to Speak at Ithaca College

[Maura Stephens]

The author of "Animal Liberation"---who believes that animals have the 
same moral status as humans---will deliver a free public lecture at 
Ithaca College on Thursday, Dec. 6. Peter Singer is the 2007 
Distinguished Speaker in the Humanities, sponsored by the School of 
Humanities and Sciences. His talk, "The Ethics of What We Eat," will be 
held at 8 p.m. in the Emerson Suites, Phillips Hall.
We routinely pick up neatly packaged cuts of meat, bottles of milk and 
cartons of eggs at the grocery store, giving little thought to how they 
are produced. But nothing has a bigger impact on our planet---or on the 
lives of billions of sentient beings---than the way we produce our food. 
What lies behind labels such as "organic" and "fair trade?" Is there 
such a thing as "humane meat?" Is fish better? And what about buying 
locally? Singer's lecture will offer a moral framework from which to 
respond to these difficult questions, and reveal the range of ethical 
issues that lie behind our food choices.
In "Animal Liberation," Singer argued against what he calls 
"speciesism"---discrimination on the grounds that a being belongs to a 
certain species. Dropping the traditional distinction between humans and 
nonhumans, Singer distinguishes instead between persons and non-persons. 
He argues that persons are beings that feel, reason, have self-awareness 
and look forward to a future, and therefore fetuses and some very 
impaired human beings are not persons in his view and have a lesser 
moral status than, say, adult gorillas and chimpanzees.
A native of Australia, Singer currently serves as the Ira W. deCamp 
Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University's Center for Human 
Values. His other books include "Practical Ethics," "Rethinking Life and 
Death" and "A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution, and Cooperation." In 
1996 he ran unsuccessfully as a Green Party candidate for the Australian 
Senate.
For more information, visit http://www.princeton.edu/~psinger 
<http://www.princeton.edu/%7Epsinger>.