#Peter singer

[pet-shop-of-horror-fan]

Whenever a disabled person's post on vegan ableism gets any popularity you find the same responses from angry vegans.

"Um, actually, veganism is about harm reduction. So you can be vegan and eat meat if you need to. Please educate yourself because you are being veganphobic right now."

"I smelled someone with your stated disability once so I know you are lying about having it to further your anti-vegan agenda!"

"No person needs to eat meat or use animal-based products. Stop lying!"

"Nature is important so if you must eat meat or use animal-based products to live, you should just die."

"Veganism does not have an ableism problem. You only think that because you listen to That Vegaon Teacher, Vegan Art Book, and other cringy vegans while ignoring upstanding vegan activists. Like Peter Singer."

[cinematic-literature]

Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde (2003) by Charles Herman-Wurmfeld

Book title

Animal Liberation (1975) by Peter Singer

Living in Harmony with Animals (2000) by Carla Bennett

Constitution, Jefferson’s Manual, and the Rules of the House of Representatives

Food Drug and Cosmetic Act: A Practical Guide to Law & Regulation

Animal Testing Question: Alternatives & Analyses

History of the FDA 

[jameethelamee]

I have a 22 hour playlist dedicated to kiss

SOMEBODY SEDATE ME

[mattydemise]

We have to speak up on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves.

Peter Singer, 'Animal Liberation', 1975.

[apenitentialprayer]

Jérôme Lejeune (left) and Peter Singer (right)

Similarly, the preference utilitarian reason for respecting the life of a person cannot apply to a newborn baby. Newborn babies cannot see themselves as beings who might or might not have a future, and so cannot have a desire to continue living. For the same reason, if a right to life must be based on the capacity to want to go on living, or on the ability to see oneself as a continuing mental subject, a newborn baby cannot have a right to life. Finally, a newborn baby is not an autonomous being, capable of making choices, and so to kill a newborn baby cannot violate the respect for autonomy.

Peter Singer

We need to be clear: the quality of a civilization can be measured by the respect it has for its weakest members. There is no other criterion.

Jérôme Lejeune

First, while there has been a growing awareness of human dignity, many misunderstandings of the concept still distort its meaning. Some people propose that it is better to use the expression "personal dignity" (and the rights "of the person") instead of "human dignity" (and the rights "of man") since they understand a "person" to be only "one who is capable of reasoning." They then argue that dignity and rights are deduced from the individual's capacity for knowledge and freedom, which not all humans possess. Thus, according to them, the unborn child would not have personal dignity, nor would the older person who is dependent upon others, nor would an individual with mental disabilities. On the contrary, the Church insists that the dignity of every human person, because it is intrinsic, remains "in all circumstances." The recognition of this dignity cannot be contingent upon a judgment about a person's ability to understand and act freely; otherwise, it would not be inherent in the person, independent of the individual's situation, and thus deserving unconditional respect. Only by recognizing an intrinsic and inalienable dignity in every human being can we guarantee a secure and inviolable foundation for that quality. Without any ontological grounding, the recognition of human dignity would vacillate at the mercy of varying and arbitrary judgments. The only prerequisite for speaking about the dignity inherent in a person is their membership in the human species, whereby "the rights of the person are the rights of man."

Dignitas Infinita, or "On Human Dignity" (§24)

[rfallfish]

I think my fellow utilitarians need to read Cullity's "Asking Too Much". Like, I for sure get why it's tempting to think that we need to be spending as much of our time as we can helping those less fortunate than us, but we need to keep ourselves fulfilled, too.

And this isn't just egoism. Cullity makes a very strong point.

[maklodes]

*Starts asking Peter Singer about the ethics of eating sessile and non-sessile mollusks, trying to gauge whether and when he recognizes that I've slipped into directly quoting Crassus's "oysters and snails" bisexuality dialog from Kubrick's Spartacus.*

[lacebird]

Animal Liberation Now by Peter Singer (2023)

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

3.2: Thinking About How We Think About Animals with Dr Chloë Taylor

Today’s episode is all about animal ethics—or do we mean critical animal studies? @arielkroon discusses this linguistic nuance and the differences between them (and much, much more!) with Dr Chloë Taylor, professor of women and gender studies at University of Alberta.

Today’s episode is all about animal ethics—or do we mean critical animal studies? Ariel discusses this linguistic nuance and the difference between them (and much, much more!) with Dr Chloë Taylor, professor of women and gender studies at the University of Alberta. Dr Taylor has been involved in a five-year-long project researching the “Intersections of Animality” and is a trained philosopher who works in gender studies, and sees a lot of intersections between the way that we think about and treat animals and the way that we think about and treat minoritized subjects. Come join us for a thought-provoking and highly educational discussion here!

Links

Dr Chloë Taylor’s profile at University of Alberta 

Peter Singer and Tom Regan

North American Association for Critical Animal Studies

Where Disability Rights and Animal Rights Meet: A Conversation with Sunaura Taylor

Making Kin: An Interview with Donna Haraway 

Auroch de-extinction and rewilding

Connect with Solarpunk Presents Podcast on Twitter, Mastodon, or at our blog.

Connect with Ariel at her blog, on Twitter at @arielletje, and on Mastodon.

Connect with Christina at her blog, on Twitter, and on Mastodon

Support the show on Patreon or make a one-time donation via PayPal.

[smthngwitty]

Utilitarianism and Physicalism

Ever thought about how you know whether you could add utility? Can you actually compare how good two things actually are? The answer may depend on what exactly you think consciousness is. For a deeper discussion on the topic, read here. Criticism welcome!

[elegantzombielite]

"All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals."

Peter Singer, philosopher and professor (b. 6 July 1946)

[filosofiavegana]

Este libro de Peter Singer es una lectura imprescindible para conocer la trayectoria de la filosofía y el movimiento animalista. Esto no significa que uno tenga que estar de acuerdo con todos los postulados y conclusiones que se exponen en él. De hecho, si adoptamos un enfoque vegano abolicionista entonces es imposible no estar en desacuerdo con ellos: https://filosofiavegana.blogspot.com/2013/04/liberacion-animal.html

[w-ht-w]

Peter Singer would sooner donate a kidney than sponsor a concert hall. So when entertainment mogul David Geffen gave $100 million in early March for the renovation of Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York—it will soon be renamed David Geffen Hall—Mr. Singer questioned why people thought he was doing so much good.

Over Skype from his home in Melbourne, Australia, Mr. Singer says that he doesn’t understand “how anyone could think that giving to the renovation of a concert hall that could impact the lives of generally well-off people living in Manhattan and well-off tourists that come to New York could be the best thing that you could do with $100 million.” He notes, for example, that a donation of less than $100 could restore sight to someone who is blind. Mr. Geffen declined to comment.

In his new book, “The Most Good You Can Do,” to be released on Tuesday, Mr. Singer argues that people should give a substantial percentage—ideally a third—of their income to charities. Mr. Singer himself has given away at least 10% of his income for 40 years; that number has gradually risen to between a quarter and a third of his income. He advocates focusing donations on the developing world. Once the world’s more basic needs have been met, he says, “then help people listen to concerts in beautiful concert halls.”

It’s a controversial way to encourage philanthropy. Some critics find it uncharitable—and counterproductive—to wag a disapproving finger at any sort of charitable giving, or to rank one type above another. Supporting cultural institutions through private donations, they argue, improves the quality of life for an entire society.

I understand where this argument is coming from. Art and culture still contribute value (ex. providing communal spaces / subjects for discussion or relaxation), but this value is very difficult to quantify. But still, my intuition tells me that the $100 million dollars would contribute more toward the reduction of suffering if invested in more directly altruistic causes.

A scholar with appointments at Princeton University and the University of Melbourne, Mr. Singer, 68, considers himself a utilitarian philosopher. “To be a utilitarian is to decide what one ought to do by the principle of what will have the best consequences,” he says. “To be a utilitarian philosopher is to think about how this view can be defended and how it should be applied in a variety of contexts.”

With his recent book’s focus on philanthropy, he hopes to change how we think about what it means to be ethical. “If you ask people what it means to live ethically, it’s a ‘Thou shalt not’ statement: ‘You shouldn’t cheat’ and ‘You shouldn’t lie,’ ” he says. “But if you’re fortunate enough to be part of the more affluent billion in the world, to live ethically, you have to do something to help those who are less fortunate, who just happened to have been born in impoverished countries, and that’s part of living an ethical life.”

Mr. Singer rose to prominence with his 1975 book “Animal Liberation,” in which he argued that animals should be treated with the same respect as humans and that some animals are smarter than both children and severely impaired adults. The capacity to have conscious experiences, such as pleasure and pain, he says, is the key difference between beings that are morally significant and those that are not. He has drawn harsh criticism for his support of certain types of euthanasia and, in some circumstances, infanticide.

The author of more than a dozen books, including “Practical Ethics” (1979) and “Rethinking Life and Death” (1994), Mr. Singer has long argued that it is morally wrong for some people to live luxuriously while others starve. His new book, along with the “effective altruism” movement that he has helped to start, is an effort to put those beliefs into practice.

In the past few years, Mr. Singer began to find that students and recent graduates were more receptive to his philosophy on giving than were older adults. Millennials, he says, are the most altruistic generation he has yet to come across, which he attributes in part to technology. “It connects them all over the world, so they’re more cosmopolitan, and the barriers between people in different countries and far away have declined,” he says. “Another factor is that with the IT revolution, a different kind of person makes a lot of money and…they’re extremely well paid, and they’re wondering what to do with that money.”

Across generations, he also finds that the newly wealthy tend to be more driven by data. They want evidence that charities are sending funds to where they are most needed, an effort that Mr. Singer champions in his book.

“The normal thing to do is accumulate wealth for yourself and spend it for yourself,” he says. “But if [people] were to stop and think and say, ‘Does my welfare really matter more than someone else’s?’ they might say, ‘Well, it matters more to me, yes, but then his or her welfare matters more to him or her.’ ” Ultimately, he hopes that people will get beyond focusing on themselves and “look at this larger point of view of the universe.”

Born in Melbourne to parents who had escaped from Nazi-occupied Austria, Mr. Singer now splits his time between Princeton, N.J., and Melbourne. He and his wife have three adult children.

As for how he has disposed of his own income over the years, Mr. Singer concedes that he did make family vacations a priority. “We spend money on [vacations] that no doubt could do more elsewhere, but that’s something that’s important…. I work pretty hard during the normal year, and my wife’s been working as well, so we think it’s worth making that time” for the family, he explains. (1)

^I don’t think this is problematic hypocrisy - to still spend money on family vacation. We all need hobbies + activities that recharge us so we can better show up in our work. And besides, the point of life can’t only be to reduce suffering. The point of reducing suffering is to give people freedom so that they can enjoy the pleasures of this precious life. As Thomas Nagel put it in The View from Nowhere:

There is a great deal of misery in the world, and many of us could easily spend our lives trying to eradicate it… But how could the main point of human life be the elimination of evil? Misery, deprivation, and injustice prevent people from pursuing the positive goods which life is assumed to make possible. If all such goods were pointless and the only thing that really mattered was the elimination of misery, that really would be absurd.

Mr. Singer and his wife give mostly to charities that aid people in the developing world, including to groups that send money to people in need and that provide bed nets to help prevent the spread of malaria in Africa.

Though he has focused in recent years on giving, Mr. Singer says that his views on other subjects have not changed. He still thinks that the suffering of animals is comparable to human suffering. “At the moment, I’d say we don’t really know enough about how we compare the tragedy of a family losing a child with the suffering of chickens confined for a year in a crowded space [where they] can’t stretch their wings,” he says.

Mr. Singer has also been both criticized and lauded for his position on income inequality. He supports higher, more progressive tax rates. “I think most sensible people do believe if you earn half a million, you should be taxed at a higher percentage rate than someone who earns $50,000 or $100,000.”

In his new book, he makes a case for people to tax themselves through giving. “They’re adding more meaning to their lives rather than spending money on things that don’t make much of a difference to quality of life,” he says. “There are plenty of studies,” he adds, “showing that beyond a certain level—around $75,000—having more money doesn’t make much of a difference in well-being.”

In the years ahead, Mr. Singer hopes to increase the percentage of his own income that he donates. “I see it as a continuing process,” he says. How can others learn to be more altruistic? He pauses and then responds, “I suppose studying philosophy is really the answer.”

1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-singer-on-the-ethics-of-philanthropy-1428083293

[mattydemise]

If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his or her own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit non-humans?

Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, 1975.

[apenitentialprayer]

There is something incredibly ironic about Peter Singer claiming that we are morally obligated to speak for creatures that can't speak for themselves.

[raymondrroberts]

The Limits of Enlighten Selfishness

I have before me a really intersting article by Peter Singer, THE DROWNING CHILD AND THE EXPANDING CIRCLE, you can find it here. 

Singer want us to cultivate an ethic of global responsibility and views the abstraction of the global community (the expanded circle) compared with the concrete proximity of our locally lived lives as the most significant obstacle to developing this ethic. 

I think Singer runs into trouble when he tries to ground an ethic of global responsibility in an account of enlightened self interest.  

This is not where he starts.  In fact, to my mind, he starts in a more promising place:  a thought experiment that reveals that his students’ sense that they are obliged to save a child from drowning in a shallow pond.  (BTW - obligation contains the word "ligament" which refers to the covenantal ties that bind us to others).  He challenges the adequacy of the language of obligation by observing that the world is so big that we often don't feel and cannot make sense of these ties.  Singer is right about the problem.  But I think he is wrong to conclude that these difficulties mean that this avenue of moral inquiry is a dead end.  

The fact that we have difficulty sensing or understanding how to respond to global needs does not make them evaporate. Indeed, the world faces a global crisis that threatens all human life.  He goes on to say,

In these circumstances the need for a global ethic is inescapable. Is it nevertheless a vain hope? Here are some reasons why it may not be.  We live in a time when many people experience their lives as empty and lacking in fulfilment. The decline of religion and the collapse of communism have left but the ideology of the free market whose only message is: consume, and work hard so you can earn money to consume more.

This statement begs a number of questions:  First, who are the "many” who “experience their lives as empty and lacking in fulfillment"? Are the Pakistanis, desperately demanding that those who benefited from burning carbon help them address its climatic consequences, experiencing their lives as “empty”?  I point this out to note that he's talking to a privileged audience.

Second, is "the ideology of the free market" really is all that is left?  Leave aside that this statement makes more sense in the secular west than in the global south.  It is not clear to me that free market values are as broadly shared as he seems to think, a point that I will come back to later.  

It is odd that Singer claims this is the only language left, for he knows it is deeply problematic. Moreover, Singer doesn’t claim that we must settle for the ideology of the free market. He goes out of his way to argues that self-interest is self-defeating. It can’t deliver what it promises and heightens the global crisis.  Instead, he encourages us to adopt an enlightened self interest. While I think this is an improvement, it is not clear to me what he means by “enlightened” or how this solves the problems he identified with language of obligation in a global context.   Singer doesn't define the modifier “enlightened,” but imagines that if we were “enlightened” our sense of self-interest would expand to include the flourishing of others and of the planet.  By claiming, rightly, that our welfare is “bound up” with the flourishing of others, Singer returns to the covenantal ideas at the beginning of the article that he found lacking. In truth I don’t think we can escape the temptation to attend to the local at the expense of the distant, or focus on the now at the expense of the future.  I just think this is the human predicament.  We evolved in small social groups. We live in a big world.

I note that when his students talked about what they “owed” the drowning child, they did not frame it in terms of enlightened self-interest.  Indeed, one reason many would call saving the child moral is because saving the child involves sacrifice (small in his thought experiment).  (I leave aside the possibility that agents should have an interest in becoming a virtuous person.)  Maybe the student ruined their shoes or a suit.  Maybe saving the child and missing class negatively impacted their grades, diminishing future earning power and its associated happiness. Language of self-interest, even enlightened self-interest, doesn’t seem to capture what going on or explain why it might be important. Indeed, it is not exactly clear why it should still be called self-interest.   By contrast, covenantal language of obligation has much more power.

Anthropology and Classical Economics 

I confess that I resist Singer’s attempt to redeem the ideology of the free market. Classical economics' portrait of human nature as individualistic and essentially selfish may help predict aggregate economic behavior, but, as Singer notes, it is a terrible moral guide.

I prefer a more social portrait of human nature.  The language of obligation, growing as it does out of covenantal thinking points to the social nature of human beings.  We feel the pull of these ties, even if we cannot always explain them.  While we frequently chafe when they constrict us, they can also be lifelines that make our lives possible. We feel obliged.

Equally problematic is that the anthropology of classical economics does not adequately describe how human beings actually behave, which is why I earlier doubted that it is widely shared. Do parents really pursue their enlightened self interest when they sacrifice for their children?  Does a parent think, "I am doing this for me because this child matters to me?" Doesn't parental love find its fulfillment in losing one's self and taking delight in the flourishing of another?  Isn’t the goal of parenting to help a child discover their independence and leave the nest? Making a child or anything else a project for personal fulfillment, even “enlightened” personal fulfillment can inspire a lot of dark, twisted shit. 

Not only does enlightened self-interest fail to explain family ties, it doesn’t explain the ordinary and extraordinary sacrifices people make for their community and country.   I could say more, but it seems self-evident.

More than simply selfishly loving themselves, people are more likely to love and serve their families, their colleagues, clients, their work, their neighborhoods, nation, causes, and even nature.  

Augustine gave a social account of human nature when he taught that people are motivated by loves.  A full account of love involves things like loyalties, attention, service and sacrifice.  He defined sin as loving the wrong thing or loving the right thing wrongly.  Salvation, by his account, involves reordering of our loves bringing us get it closer to getting it right.  

Indeed, love provides way to connect the local with the global. For where love for the whole is weak, one might be persuaded to preserve the environment so one’s children may flourish or to prevent the ocean from flooding one’s beloved city.  One might even saw that we owe them.  

Given the problem of disordered loves, however, we can expect that just as love for children can inspire great good, it can also inspire evil.  Witness angry parents on the sidelines at a children’s sports events or the scandal where parents bribed people to get their children into competitive universities. Nothing assures us that love for children will, by itself, lead parents to preserve the environment for distant others or for the sake of life itself. We can do the right thing for the wrong reason.

Jonathan Edwards resolved this problem theologically.  He defined “true virtue” as “benevolence toward being in general,” which he viewed as the great chain of being that emanated from God.  Love for God provides motivation to love the world as a whole and to love its parts as God does.  The love of God lures us away from the temptation to idolatry, where we absolutize a finite part of the world and sacrifice others on its behalf (such as parents who bribed people to get their children into competitive universities).  From this view point there is an appropriate self interest or self love because the self has a worthy place before God.  Self-interest is enlightened when it is reordered to appropriately honor the good of others. 

I have two other observations:  I note that Singer’s attempt to rehabilitate free market ideology is individualistic.  This explains why, though Singer mentions collective action, he does not really address social policy, which is where many challenges facing the global world will be resolved. 

Also Singer notes the localism of the saying "charity begins at home."  But he is wrong to think it means that we have no obligations to others more distant. The saying is not that charity “ends at home.”  Rather, it "begins at home,” for how can we love those far away unless we first learn to love those close to us?