Peter (Albert David) Singer - Applied ethics, Meta-ethics and foundational issues
Philosopher, born in Melbourne, Victoria, SE Australia. He was educated at the universities of Melbourne and Oxford, then taught at New York University before becoming professor of philosophy at Monash University in 1977, where he is associated with the Centre for Human Bioethics. His writing focuses on ethics, particularly in relation to animals and the environment. Also known as a political activist, his best known works, Animal Liberation (1977) and Practical Ethics (1979), were still exercising influence in the 1990s.
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Western Philosophy Contemporary philosophy, |
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| Peter Singer | |
| Name: | Peter Singer |
| Birth: | 1946 |
| School/tradition: | Utilitarianism |
| Main interests: | Ethics |
| Influences: | John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick, R. Hare, Jeremy Bentham |
| Influenced: | Peter Unger, Colin McGinn, Roger Crisp, Dale Jamieson |
Peter Albert David Singer (born July 6, 1946 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) is an Australian philosopher.
Singer's parents were Viennese Jews who escaped to Australia in 1938. Singer studied law, history and philosophy at the University of Melbourne, gaining his degree in 1967.
After spending two years as a Radcliffe lecturer at University College, Oxford, he was visiting professor at New York University for 16 months. font-size:11px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
| Animal rights |
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Published in 1975, Animal Liberation was a major formative influence on the modern animal rights movement. Although Singer rejects rights as a moral ideal independent from his utilitarianism based on interests, he accepts rights as derived from utilitarian principles, particularly the principle of minimizing suffering. Singer allows that animal rights are not exactly the same as human rights, writing in Animal Liberation that "there are obviously important differences between human and other animals, and these differences must give rise to some differences in the rights that each have." But he is no more skeptical of animal rights than of the rights of women, beginning his book by defending just such a comparison against Mary Wollstonecraft's 18th-century critic Thomas Taylor, who argued that if Wollstonecraft's reasoning in defense of women's rights were correct, then "brutes" would have rights too. Singer regards it as a sound logical implication. Taylor's modus tollens is Singer's modus ponens.
In Animal Liberation, Singer argues against what he calls speciesism: discrimination on the grounds that a being belongs to a certain species. In particular, he argues that while animals show lower intelligence than the average human, many severely retarded humans show equally diminished mental capacity, and intelligence therefore does not provide a basis for providing nonhuman animals any less consideration than such retarded humans. Singer also condemns most vivisection, though he believes a few animal experiments may be acceptable if the benefit (in terms of improved medical treatment, etc.) outweighs the harm done to the animals used. If performing the experiment on the infant isn't justifiable, then Singer believes that the experiment shouldn't happen at all — instead, the researchers should pursue their goals using computer simulations or other methods.
Applied ethics
His most comprehensive work, Practical Ethics, analyses in detail why and how beings' interests should be weighed. His principle of equality encompasses all beings with interests, and it requires equal consideration of those interests, whatever the species. The principle of equal consideration of interests does not dictate equal treatment of all those with interests, since different interests warrant different treatment. Not only does his principle justify different treatment for different interests, but it allows different treatment for the same interest when diminishing marginal utility is a factor, favoring (say) a starving person's interest in food over the same interest of someone who is only slightly hungry.
Among the more important human interests are those in avoiding pain, in developing one's abilities, in satisfying basic needs for food and shelter, in enjoying warm personal relationships, in being free to pursue one's projects without interference, "and many others". Although sentience puts a being within the sphere of equal consideration of interests, only a personal interest in continuing to live brings the journey model into play. This model also explains the priority that Singer attaches to interests over trivial desires and pleasures. For instance, one has an interest in food, but not in the pleasures of the palate that might distinguish eating steak from eating tofu, because nutrition is instrumental to many goals in one's life journey, whereas the desire for meat is not and is therefore trumped by the interest of animals in avoiding the miseries of factory farming.
In order to avoid bias towards human interests, he requires the idea of an impartial standpoint from which to compare interests. He has wavered about whether the precise aim is the total amount of satisfied interests, or instead the most satisfied interests among those beings who already exist prior to the decision one is making. This would mean that rats and human infants are replaceable — their painless death is permissible as long as they are replaced — whereas human adults and other persons in Singer's expanded sense, including great apes, are not replaceable. But the details are fuzzy and Singer admits that he is "not entirely satisfied" with his treatment of choices that involve bringing beings into existence. Singer thinks this going-beyond identifies moral reasons as "somehow universal", specifically in the injunction to 'love thy neighbor as thyself', interpreted by him as demanding that one give the same weight to the interests of others as one gives to one's own interests. This universalizing step, which Singer traces from Kant to Hare, is crucial and sets him apart from moral theorists from Hobbes to David Gauthier, who regard that step as flatly irrational. Universalization leads directly to utilitarianism, Singer argues, on the strength of the thought that my own interests cannot count for more than the interests of others. Singer's universalizing step applies to interests without reference to who has them, whereas a kantian's applies to the judgments of rational agents (in Kant's kingdom of ends, or Rawls's Original Position, etc.). Singer regards kantian universalization as unjust to animals. As for the hobbesians, Singer attempts a response in the final chapter of Practical Ethics, arguing that self-interested reasons support adoption of the moral point of view, such as 'the paradox of hedonism', which counsels that happiness is best found by not looking for it, and the need most people feel to relate to something larger than their own concerns.
Abortion, euthanasia and infanticide
Consistent with his general ethical theory, Singer holds that the right to physical integrity is grounded in a being's ability to suffer, and the right to life is grounded in, among other things, the ability to plan and anticipate one's future. therefore it is wrong to kill a human fetus. The second premise is more plausible, but its first premise is less plausible, and Singer denies that a potential X has the same value or moral rights as an X.
Singer classifies euthanasia as voluntary, involuntary, or non-voluntary.
World poverty
In "Famine, Affluence, and Morality", one of Singer's best-known philosophical essays, he argues that the injustice of some people living in abundance while others starve is morally indefensible. Singer proposes that anyone able to help the poor should donate part of their income to aid poverty and similar efforts. Singer reasons that, when one is already living comfortably, a further purchase to increase comfort will lack the same moral importance as saving another person's life. Singer himself donates 20% of his salary to Oxfam and UNICEF. therefore we ought to prevent some absolute poverty.
Other views
Zoophilia
In a 2001 review of Midas Dekkers's Dearest Pet: On Bestiality, Singer stated that "mutually satisfying activities" of a sexual nature may sometimes occur between humans and animals and that writer Otto Soyka would condone such activities. Singer states that Dekkers believes that zoophilia should remain illegal if it involves what he sees as "cruelty", but otherwise is no cause for shock or horror. Singer believes that although sex between species is not normal or natural, it does not constitute a transgression of our status as human beings, because human beings are animals or, more specifically, we are great apes. Religious groups, animal rights groups, and others have condemned this view, while the animal rights organization PETA has supported them.
Immigration
Singer holds that affluent nations have a duty to increase their refugee intake greatly.
The Natural Environment
As the natural world is not sentient, Singer claims it has no intrinsic value.
Evolutionary Biology and Liberal Politics
In A Darwinian Left, Singer outlines a plan for the political left to adapt to the lessons of Darwinism and evolutionary biology. Essentially Singer claims that although humans possess selfish, competitive tendencies naturally, they have a substantial capacity for cooperation that has also been selected for by evolution.
Criticism
Singer's positions have been attacked by many different groups concerned with what they see as an attack upon human dignity, from advocates for disabled people to right-to-life supporters.
Critics argue that Singer is in no position to judge the quality of life of disabled people. Some claim that Singer's utilitarian ideas lead to eugenics. Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal wrote to organizers of a Swedish book fair to which Singer was invited that "A professor of morals ... Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, the leading organization for blind people in the United States, harshly criticized Singer's appointment to the Princeton Faculty in a banquet speech at the organization's national convention in July 2001, claiming that Singer's support for euthenizing disabled babies could lead to disabled older children and adults being valued less as well. Singer's conclusions in controversial areas such as abortion, infanticide and euthanasia may help explain why his works have attracted particular attention.
Some commentators expressed their disapproval at the publication of Singer's review essay in which he discusses bestiality as a logical conclusion to some of the arguments he has made with respect to the relationship of humans to animals.
Proponents of other ethical systems like deontology or virtue ethics have found in Singer's work ammunition against utilitarianism and its consequentialism (that is, its assumption that the morality of an act is to be evaluated according to its consequences).
Singer has replied that many people judge him based on secondhand summaries and short quotations taken out of context, not his books or articles. For example, when people hear that Singer thinks that a dog has the same moral importance as a newborn baby, they might interpret the statement as dehumanising, because of the low value traditionally placed on the interests of animals. However, although Singer does not regard the newborn child as deserving the same degree of consideration as an adult, he regards animals as deserving a much higher degree of consideration than they have traditionally been given.
Singer experienced the complexities of some of these questions in his own life. Singer's mother had Alzheimer's disease, which rendered her, in Singer's system, a "nonperson". (Singer's mother died shortly thereafter.) This incident has led to accusations of hypocrisy. However, Singer has never argued that a non-person who is not suffering has to be euthanised — only that it could be morally acceptable to euthanise.
Meta-ethics and foundational issues
Though Singer focuses more than many philosophers on applied ethical questions, he has also written in depth on foundational issues in meta-ethics, including why one ethical system should be chosen over others. Singer believes that contemplative analysis may now guide one to accept a broader utilitarianism:
If I have seen that from an ethical point of view I am just one person among the many in my society, and my interests are no more important, from the point of view of the whole, than the similar interests of others within my society, I am ready to see that, from a still larger point of view, my society is just one among other societies, and the interests of members of my society are no more important, from that larger perspective, than the similar interests of members of other societies… Taking the impartial element in ethical reasoning to its logical conclusion means, first, accepting that we ought to have equal concern for all human beings.Singer elaborates that viewing oneself as equal to others in one's society and at the same time viewing one's society as fundamentally superior to other societies may cause an uncomfortable cognitive dissonance. Singer has responded that his argument in Expanding the Circle wasn't intended to provide a complete philosophical justification for a utilitarian categorical imperative, but merely to provide a plausible explanation for how some people come to accept utilitarianism.
An alternative line taken by Singer about the need for ethics is that living the ethical life may be, on the whole, more satisfying than seeking only material gain.
Singer has also implicitly argued that a watertight defense of utilitarianism is not crucial to his work. From this perspective, regardless of the soundness of Singer's fundamental defense of utilitarianism, his work has value in that it exposes conflicts between many people's stated beliefs and their actions. Oxford University Press, New York, 1974; Marx, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1980; Thomas (ed.), Great Political Thinkers: Machiavelli, Hobbes, Mill and Marx, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992 Animal Factories (co-author with James Mason), Crown, New York, 1980 The Expanding Circle: Ethics and Sociobiology, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1981; Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1981; New American Library, New York, 1982 Hegel, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 1982; also included in full in German Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997 Test-Tube Babies: a guide to moral questions, present techniques, and future possibilities (co-edited with William Walters), Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1982 The Reproduction Revolution: New Ways of Making Babies (co-author with Deane Wells), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1984. The Problem of Handicapped Infants (co-author with Helga Kuhse), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1985; 2, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1986 Applied Ethics (ed.), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1986 Animal Liberation: A Graphic Guide (co-author with Lori Gruen), Camden Press, London, 1987 Embryo Experimentation (co-editor with Helga Kuhse, Stephen Buckle, Karen Dawson and Pascal Kasimba), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990; Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997 Ethics (ed.), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994 Individuals, Humans and Persons: Questions of Life and Death (co-author with Helga Kuhse), Academia Verlag, Sankt Augustin, Germany, 1994 Rethinking Life and Death: The Collapse of Our Traditional Ethics, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1994; Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995 The Greens (co-author with Bob Brown), Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1996 The Allocation of Health Care Resources: An Ethical Evaluation of the "QALY" Approach (co-author with John McKie, Jeff Richardson and Helga Kuhse), Ashgate/Dartmouth, Aldershot, 1998 A Companion to Bioethics (co-editor with Helga Kuhse), Blackwell, Oxford, 1998 Ethics into Action: Henry Spira and the Animal Rights Movement, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, Maryland, 1998; Fourth Estate, London, 2001 Unsanctifying Human Life: Essays on Ethics (edited by Helga Kuhse), Blackwell, Oxford, 2001 One World: Ethics and Globalization, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2002; An Examination of Australia’s Record as a Global Citizen (with Tom Gregg), Black Inc, Melbourne, 2004 The Moral of the Story: An Anthology of Ethics Through Literature (co-edited with Renata Singer), Blackwell, Oxford, 2005 In Defense of Animals. Random House, London, forthcoming Peter Singer Under Fire, Open Court, forthcoming
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