By Rosslyn Ives

Australian Humanists have chosen Professor Peter Singer, internationally renowned philosopher and bioethicist, as the 2004 Australian Humanist of the Year (AHOY). Peter Singer, currently the DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University’s Centre for Human Values, received his award at a celebratory vegetarian dinner in his Australian home town of Melbourne, on 21 July 2004.

The annual AHOY award, begun in 1983, is given to outstanding Australians who have made a valuable contribution to public life consistent with humanist values. Previous recipients include the Hon. Bill Hayden – Australian Governor-General (1990-1995), Dr Philip Nitschke – euthanasia campaigner, Dr Ian Plimer – anticreationist geologist and the late Senator Olive Zakharov – social reformer.

In his acceptance speech, Peter Singer thanked Australian Humanists for bestowing on him the award of AHOY, and confirmed his long standing commitment to humanism. He then discussed the need for humanists to widen their circle of ethical concerns. Singer began by defining the core idea of being a humanist in the Renaissance period, namely to place ‘an emphasis on the central importance of human beings’, and compared this early definition with the more contemporary usage of ‘humanist’ as ‘taking a non-religious approach to life’.

Singer said he was more than happy to identify with the latter use, but cautioned against blindly being attached to the other sense. i.e. the belief in the central, indeed overriding, importance of human beings. Singer went on to argue that modern humanists should make a greater effort to free themselves from religious prejudices such as supposing that "humans have a right to rule over every other creature on this planet and to subdue them and have dominion over them", and to " use their flesh as meat". Two ideas that are Christian in origin and accepted by the Renaissance humanists. He pointed out that it is logically speceist to ground our values primarily on human welfare rather than the welfare of all sentient beings. Singer cited Jeremy Bentham, who over 200 years ago wrote "[T]he question is not, can we reason, nor can we talk, but can we suffer?". Singer went on to declare that "Bentham’s point is that if a being can suffer, it has a welfare to be taken into account, and there’s no reason to discount that welfare just because it cannot reason or talk as well as another being."

Singer noted that nearly all of the most philosophically important advocates of animals, at least in the west, such as, Plutarch, Montaigne, Hume, Bentham, J S Mill, Henry Salt, George Bernard Shaw – have been sceptical about religion. He said that the claim that ethics are a human invention and are necessarily based on the interests of humans, rests on a factual claim which is only partly true, and even if true the conclusion is a non-sequitor. Singer said the claim is only partly true because we can find the origins of human ethics in the behaviour of other social mammals. Most explicitly in the behavior of our closer relatives, the great apes, whose behaviour shows reciprocal altruism towards kin, and some understanding of breaches of these forms of behaviour. Singer continued "Even if that were not the case, and we say human ethics in its fullest form is a human invention, it doesn’t follow that it has to be based on human interests, anymore than the fact that human rights is a European invention, as it is, means that the notion of human rights has to be based on the interests of Europeans."

In thanking the organisers (Humanist Society of Victoria) for agreeing to his suggestion of a vegetarian meal, Singer said that he hoped that both his speech and the dinner would "be a stimulus to further thought, and to thinking about our conventional attitudes to animals as yet another part of religion that you want to give up."

He concluded with the hope that humanists would consider concern for sentient beings along with the many other issues that traditionally associated with the Humanist movement. "

Rosslyn Ives is Secretary of the Council of Australian Humanist Societies