Peter Singer

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“What Moral Status Would Extra-Terrestrials Have?”

April 13, 2017 in Misc., Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Peter Singer advised utilitarians of good conscience to serve in the Trump Administration if they felt they could mitigate the awfulness of what was to be a deeply dishonest, bigoted, sociopathic White House, the caveat being they need be prepared to resign if asked to participate in unethical behavior.

The jury is still out on that advice. Everyone involved is complicit in the wanton destruction of the environment, an existential threat, and any attempts at neutralization will be rebuffed. Civil rights, voting rights, and women’s rights will be rolled back, no exceptions. Scientific research and culture will be casualties.

Mattis and McMaster are sometimes exhibited as examples of those who can inject some sanity into an unprecedented shitstorm, but they’ve both already had to often act within the constraints of Trump’s alternative universe, a constellation of lies about his predecessor wiretapping him, millions of illegal voters casting ballots, etc. McMaster has been able to eject Bannon and other kooks from the NSA, a real plus, but over time he’ll certainly have to carefully weigh how far he’s willing range from his core values.

A poisonous environment can gradually work on the healthiest bodies.

· · ·

In a Nautilus essay, Singer analyzes a different ethical question: How should we treat non-humans who possess some form of consciousness, whether we’re talking about ETs or animals that help make a BLT? The moral philosopher breaks no new ground in his arguments but states them well. As he writes, “the existence of another mind—another center of consciousness—places moral demands on us.”

The opening:

Last January I was walking with my granddaughter along a beach near Melbourne when we noticed several people gathered around a rock pool, peering into the water. Wondering what had attracted their attention, we went over and saw that it was an octopus. If the spectators were interested in it, it also seemed interested in them. It came to the edge of the pool, one of its eyes directed at the people above, and stretched a tentacle out of the water, as if offering to shake hands. No one took up the offer but at least no one tried to capture the animal or turn it into calamari. That was pleasing because, as Peter Godfrey-Smith says in his recent book Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, an octopus is “probably the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien.”

If we do ever meet an intelligent alien, even a tasty one, I hope we have sufficient ethical awareness to think of more than pleasing our palates or filling our stomachs. My view that this would be the wrong way to respond to such an encounter, however, leads to a deeper question: What moral status would extra-terrestrials have? Would we have obligations to them? Would they have rights? And would our answers depend on their intelligence?•

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“They Celebrate A Clinical Assessment Of Outcomes Above All”

November 30, 2016 in Books, Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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While lessons can be learned from utilitarian philosophy, taken as a whole it seems to run counter to human nature, holding that we can constantly view the world with clinical, calculated precision. That’s just not so.

Moral philosopher Peter Singer believes utilitarianism should be applied by those considering working in the Trump Administration. He suggests that if you feel you can mitigate the considerable pain about to be administered to our most vulnerable, take the job, but also be prepared to resign if you’re forced to contribute to evil.

That might work on paper but not so much in real life, and not just for pragmatic concerns like someone being unable to quit a position because they need to care for their family. If you’re on the inside of Team Trump, you will in some way casue harm. Even if you believe another would be doing more damage, there’s no way to know how your small efforts to protect will be used to do a much greater bad a few steps down the line.

In her New York Review of Books essay “Trump: The Choice We Face,” Masha Gessen reflects on the thorny compromise of Jewish Councils during the age of Nazism, concluding that “we need to shift from realist to moral reasoning.” That seems a more apt and human response to our moment.

In a wonderful Five Books interview, Nigel Warburton discusses his favorite philosophy titles from 2016, including Singer’s Ethics in the Real World. An excerpt:

Question:

Does [Singer’s] controversiality stem from his utilitarianism? Say in the article in this book, about Thabo Mbeki refusing to admit that HIV causes AIDS. He is saying, ‘OK Mbeki killed more people because of this view on HIV/AIDS than the entire apartheid regime did, so how do we compare these two?’ That’s what he is measuring up. Is that the kind of thing a utilitarian does, count up numbers of people killed?

Nigel Warburton:

There are lots of different forms of utilitarianism. The basic principle is that it focuses on the consequences of actions and not the intentions (though the intentions might have consequences as well — in terms of how other people perceive what you do if you express them, for instance).

This is a case of somebody who, without an explicit intention to bring about people’s deaths, through their actions has done so. Utilitarianism, traditionally, looks for a currency that can measure different actions through the probable consequences and plays off those different consequences. Weighing the consequences against each other is the basic benefit of utilitarianism.

You can work out the best course of action because it is the one with the best consequences, or most likely to have the best consequences. So, if you take that really seriously, if you had to choose a world without apartheid, or a world without this statement from Mbeki, the world without Mbeki would be better (in terms of lives lost), even if it had apartheid. There might be other negative consequences of apartheid, there certainly were, but just on that factor, a consequentialist approach would lead to that conclusion.

Obviously in some situations, the consequences are incredibly important. But the obsession with consequences can seem inhumane in many situations. It’s a kind of straightforward cost-benefit analysis, and when applied to people close to you, it seems incredibly cruel and lacking in compassion.

Question:

Is compassion not important then?

Nigel Warburton:

Utilitarians find a value in compassion, but they celebrate a clinical assessment of outcomes above all. I think, in a sense, that is both the strength and weakness of the approach.•

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“He Said That Humanity Would Be The Winner”

April 18, 2016 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

VW-Werk, Wolfsburg Forschung und Entwicklung Reparatur und Vorbereitung eines Dummy (Testpuppe) für Crash-Test.

Superintelligent machines may be the death of us, but far-less-smart AI can also lead to disasters, even cascading ones. In a Japan Times op-ed, philosopher Peter Singer thinks that AlphaGo’s stunning recent victory and the progress of driverless cars should spur an earnest discussion of the moral code of microchips and sensors and such. “It is not too soon to ask whether we can program a machine to act ethically,” he writes.

We shouldn’t set rules governing AI that will bind people deep into a future that will present different realities than our own, but laying a foundation for constantly assessing and reassessing the prowess of machine intelligence is vital.

An excerpt:

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google’s parent company, the owner of AlphaGo, is enthusiastic about what artificial intelligence means for humanity. Speaking before the match between Lee and AlphaGo, he said that humanity would be the winner, whatever the outcome, because advances in AI will make every human being smarter, more capable and “just better human beings.”

Will it? Around the same time as AlphaGo’s triumph, Microsoft’s “chatbot” — software named Taylor that was designed to respond to messages from people aged 18 to 24 — was having a chastening experience. Tay, as she called herself, was supposed to be able to learn from the messages she received and gradually improve her ability to conduct engaging conversations. Unfortunately, within 24 hours, people were teaching Tay racist and sexist ideas. When she starting saying positive things about Hitler, Microsoft turned her off and deleted her most offensive messages.

I do not know whether the people who turned Tay into a racist were themselves racists, or just thought it would be fun to undermine Microsoft’s new toy. Either way, the juxtaposition of AlphaGo’s victory and Taylor’s defeat serves as a warning. It is one thing to unleash AI in the context of a game with specific rules and a clear goal; it is something very different to release AI into the real world, where the unpredictability of the environment may reveal a software error that has disastrous consequences.

Nick Bostrom, the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, argues in his book “Superintelligence” that it will not always be as easy to turn off an intelligent machine as it was to turn off Tay.•

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“It Was Not Until The 1990s That The Animal Protection Movement Adopted A Legislative Strategy”

August 4, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

In a tweet she published in the uproar after Cecil the lion’s killing, Roxane Gay delivered a line as funny and heartbreaking as anything George Carlin or Richard Pryor could have conjured. It was this:

“I’m personally going to start wearing a lion costume when I leave my house so if I get shot, people will care.”

It speaks brilliantly to racial injustice and the unequal way our empathy is aroused. Later on, in a separate tweet, the critic said something much less true while defending that great line:

“Speciesism is not a thing.“

Oh, it is a thing. We’ve based so much of our world on that very thing, and all of us, even those who’ve tried to be somewhat kinder, have benefited from this arrangement.

In a winding Foreign Affairs piece that traces the history of the long struggle against animal cruelty, Humane Society CEO Wayne Pacelle reveals what is uneven but significant progress and how the movement, which coalesced around a book written 40 years ago by moral philosopher Peter Singer, gained steam after shifting tactics, replacing moralizing with legislative efforts. An excerpt:

There was forward progress, many setbacks through the decades, and a wave of lawmaking in the early 1970s, but the biggest catalyst for change came with the publication of Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation in 1975.

Singer’s book spurred advocates to form hundreds more local and national animal protection groups, including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in 1980. I was part of that wave, forming an animal protection group as an undergraduate at Yale University in 1985, protesting cruelty, screening films, and generally trying to shine a light on large-scale systemic abuses that few wanted to acknowledge. This grass-roots activism pushed established groups to step up their calls for reform and adopt more campaign-oriented tactics. Nevertheless, throughout the 1980s, the animal protection movement was still fundamentally about protest. The issues that animal advocates raised were unfamiliar and challenging, and their demands were mainly for people to reform their lifestyles. Asking someone to stop eating meat or to buy products not tested on animals was a hard sell, because people don’t like to change their routines, and because practical, affordable, and easily available alternatives were scarce.

It was not until the 1990s that the animal protection movement adopted a legislative strategy and became more widely understood and embraced. A few groups had been doing the political spadework needed to secure meaningful legislative reforms, focusing mostly on the rescue and sheltering of animals. Then organizations such as the HSUS and the Fund for Animals started introducing ballot measures to establish protections, raise awareness, and demonstrate popular support for reform. The ball got rolling with a successful initiative in 1990 to outlaw the trophy hunting of mountain lions in California, which was followed by the 1992 vote in Colorado to protect bears. Other states followed suit with measures to outlaw cockfighting, dove hunting, greyhound racing, captive hunts, the use of steel-jawed traps for killing fur-bearing mammals, and the intensive confinement of animals on factory farms. Today, activists are working to address the inhumane slaughter of chickens and turkeys, the captive display of marine mammals, the hunting of captive wildlife, and the finning of sharks for food. The United States alone now counts more than 20,000 animal protection groups, with perhaps half of them formed in just the last decade. The two largest groups, the HSUS and the ASPCA, together raise and spend nearly $400 million a year and have assets approaching $500 million.•

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“If We’re Going To Wait For Capitalism To Disappear, People Are Going To Wait Along Time”

April 17, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Fresh from his Reddit Ask Me Anything, moral philosopher Peter Singer discusses his new book about altruism in a Gawker Q&A conducted by Hamilton Nolan, a consistently intelligent and passionate voice on the New York media scene. Among other topics, the two discuss the continued viability of capitalism and the validity of revolutions predicated on income inequality. An excerpt:

Gawker:

Can capitalism solve these problems, ultimately? Is capitalism equipped to address human poverty in the long run?

Peter Singer:

I don’t think capitalism alone is going to solve the problems, but capitalism supplemented by enough concerned individuals who would both donate some of their resources and lobby governments to prevent some of the possible abuses of capitalism, I think that could deal with the problem of poverty. If we’re going to wait for capitalism to disappear, people are going to wait a long time. I think most of them will be dead before that happens. So I don’t think that’s the right approach. We have to try to do things within the framework we have.

Gawker:

With the U.S. presidential election coming up, do you have any endorsements? Any issues you’d like to see get attention?

Peter Singer:

I don’t know that any candidate wants my endorsement! I certainly think that America’s aid to the global poor is shamefully low, and most Americans have no idea how low it is. All the surveys that ask Americans “How much of the federal budget do you think goes to foreign aid?” they come back with a median figure of 15%. And if you ask them what they think would be the right level, they’re somewhere between 5-10%. And the actual level, of course, is 1%… The other big issue is climate change. Climate change needs to come up. That’s one of the critical moral challenges we face in this century.

Gawker:

Economic inequality has become a big part of the political conversation in America. How does that tie into the poverty and altruism issues you’re writing about?

Peter Singer:

I agree that inequality in America is a problem, but I think that what a lot of Americans don’t realize is that if you look at the picture globally, they’re the top 1%. Not all Americans, but if you’re $52,000 a year, that puts you in the top 1% globally. So if people think it’s bad that there’s this top 1% in the United States, they should think it’s much worse that there is this much steeper inequality.•

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“We Tend To Be Ethical Only When Our Survival, And That Of Those We Care About, Is Not At Stake”

April 14, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

I’m sure reading moral philosopher Peter Singer’s classic book Practical Ethics played some role in my giving up eating and wearing animals. In a new Reddit AMA, which is tied to the publication of his latest title, The Most Good You Can Do, Singer assesses the correct responses to various ethical challenges. A few exchanges below.

_________________________

Question:

What are your thoughts on a universal basic income?

Peter Singer:

Nice idea, but it would need to be truly universal, i.e. I’d like to see everyone in the world have a guaranteed minimum that would mean that no one was unable to buy enough food to live. Unfortunately, I can’t see this being implemented in the near future, so in The Most Good You Can Do I focus on action that is cost-effective and practical right now.

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Question:

Do you think that it’s wrong to buy lamb and beef that has come from sheep and cattle that have lived non-factory farmed lives outdoors in fields? It’s seems to me that the lives of such animals are worth living, i.e. that the world is better off for containing such animals than not, and therefore (from an animal welfare perspective at least) it is good and right to buy lamb and beef from these sources; this would not preclude simultaneously compaigning for improved treatment of these animals. Do you agree?

Peter Singer:

The lives of sheep and cows kept on grass rather than in feedlots may be worth living, but unfortunately these ruminants produce a lot of methane (essentially, belching and farting) and so make a big contribution to climate change. Despite the myth of this being “natural” grass-fed beef and lamb, on the scale on which we are producing it, is simply not sustainable.

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Question:

In an interview you did with Tyler Cowen back when you wrote The Life You Can Save, you were asked what you think about immigration as an anti-poverty tool. At the time you said you need to think about it more. It seems to me that allowing more immigration may be the most effective political change we can make toward reducing poverty, so I’m curious if you’ve spent more time on that question since then and have an opinion on it?

Peter Singer:

Yes, I’ve thought about it some more, and looked at some of the arguments in favor of Open Borders. To me, though, the problem is that any political party that advocated this would lose the next election, and that election contest would probably bring out all the racist elements in society in a very nasty way. So until people in affluent nations are much more accepting of large-scale immigration than they are now, in any country that I am familiar with, I don’t think a large increase in immigrants from developing nations is feasible.

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Question:

I recently completed my PhD in philosophy, but throughout grad school, I have become completely disillusioned with academic philosophy (no jobs, prestige-obsessed, intimidating/arrogant people, etc.). But I love philosophy very dearly, and I’ve been told I stand a decent chance at getting a postdoc. If you weren’t doing what you do now, what do you think you’d be doing? And do you think you’d have any regrets?

Peter Singer:

I suppose I might be a political activist of some kind. Back in Australia in the ’90s, I was a political candidate for the Greens. I didn’t get elected, but support for the Greens has grown since then, and Green candidates have won the Senate seat for which I stood. I’m not sorry that I lost, because it was after that that I was offered the position at Princeton that has enabled me to have a lot more influence in discussions of the issues raised both in Animal Liberation and in The Most Good You Can Do but I often wonder what my life would have been like if I’d won. (Incidentally, Australia has proportional voting for the Senate, so it’s not the case that I could have helped the worse candidate get elected, as Ralph Nader’s candidacy did in the 2000 presidential election between Bush and Gore. I would not stand as a minor party candidate under those circumstances.)

_________________________

Question:

What would you consider to be the greatest danger to a more ethical future?

Peter Singer:

We tend to be ethical only when our survival, and that of those we care about, is not at stake. One of the big present dangers to our present level of security is climate change, which could create a chaotic world with hundreds of millions of people who are unable to feed themselves, and become climate refugees, causing a chaotic world.

_________________________

Question:

Would you rather save the life of 1 horse-size duck or 100 duck-size horses?

Peter Singer: 

An effective altruist would always prefer to save 100 lives rather than just one.•

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“The Art Market’s Greatest Strength Is Its Ability To Co-Opt Any Radical Demands That A Work Of Art Makes”

June 14, 2014 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

At Project Syndicate, ethical philosopher Peter Singer, that necessary nudge, assails those who spend tens of millions of dollars on status-boosting art works. While I don’t agree with all of Singer”s ideas about art, I’m with his larger point about philanthropy. An excerpt:

“Perhaps, though, the importance of postwar art lies in its ability to challenge our ideas. That view was firmly expressed by Jeff Koons, one of the artists whose work was on sale at Christie’s. In a 1987 interview with a group of art critics, Koons referred to the work that was sold last month, calling it ‘the ‘Jim Beam’ work.’ Koons had exhibited this piece – an oversize, stainless steel toy train filled with bourbon – in an exhibition called ‘Luxury and Degradation,’ that, according to the New York Times, examined ‘shallowness, excess and the dangers of luxury in the high-flying 1980s.’

In the interview, Koons said that the Jim Beam work ‘used the metaphors of luxury to define class structure.’ The critic Helena Kontova then asked him how his ‘socio-political intention’ related to the politics of then-President Ronald Reagan. Koons answered: ‘With Reaganism, social mobility is collapsing, and instead of a structure composed of low, middle, and high income levels, we’re down to low and high only… My work stands in opposition to this trend.’

Art as a critique of luxury and excess! Art as opposition to the widening gap between the rich and the poor! How noble and courageous that sounds. But the art market’s greatest strength is its ability to co-opt any radical demands that a work of art makes, and turn it into another consumer good for the super-rich. When Christie’s put Koons’s work up for auction, the toy train filled with bourbon sold for $33 million.

If artists, art critics, and art buyers really had any interest in reducing the widening gap between the rich and the poor, they would be focusing their efforts on developing countries, where spending a few thousand dollars on the purchase of works by indigenous artists could make a real difference to the wellbeing of entire villages.”

 

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“I Haven’t Thought A Lot About Immigration As A Way Of Dealing With World Poverty”

March 30, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Very happy to see that the bizarre attack on economist Tyler Cowen at George Mason didn’t result in any serious injury. Strange world.

I think any nation as mobile and armed as this one (though thankfully there was no gun involved in this case) desperately needs universal healthcare with a strong mental-wellness component. Are there fewer incidences of gun violence in a country which has abundant firearms and universal coverage (e.g., Canada) than in the U.S., which is only now belatedly trying to guarantee care for all its citizens, because insured people can see a doctor when they need to? There are probably lots of cultural reasons for the disparity, but it seems like focus in this area could be beneficial.

From a really interesting 2009 interview Cowen conducted with philosopher Peter Singer, a dialogue about using immigration as a poverty-fighting tool:

“Tyler Cowen:

For instance, in my view, what is by far the best anti-poverty program, the only one that’s really been shown to work, and that’s what’s called ‘immigration.’ I don’t even see the word ‘immigration’ in your book’s index. So why don’t we spend a lot more resources allowing immigration, supporting immigration, lobbying for immigration? This raises people’s incomes very dramatically, it’s sustainable, for the most part it’s also good for us. Why not make that the centerpiece of an anti-poverty platform?

Peter Singer:

That’s an interesting point, Tyler. I suppose, one question I’d like to ask is: is it sustainable? Isn’t it the case that if we take, as immigrants, the people who are the most enterprising, perhaps, of the poor countries that we’re still going to leave those countries in poverty, and their populations may continue to rise, and eventually, even if we keep taking immigrants, we will reach a capacity where we’re starting to strain our own country?

Tyler Cowen:

There’s two separate issues: one is ‘brain drain’ from the third world. I think here’s a lot of research by [Michael Clemens], showing that it’s not a problem, that third world countries that have even somewhat functional institutions tend to benefit by sending people to other countries. India’s a good example: a lot of Indians return to India and start businesses, or they send money back home. Mexico is another example. Maybe North Korea is somewhat different, but for the most part immigration seems to benefit both countries.

I don’t think we could have open borders; I don’t think we could have unlimited immigration, but we’re both sitting here in the United States and it hardly seems to me that we’re at the breaking point. Immigrants would benefit much more: their wages would rise by a factor of twenty or more, and there would be perhaps some costs to us, but in a cost-benefit sense it seems far, far more effective than sending them money. Do you agree?

Peter Singer:

I must admit that I haven’t thought a lot about immigration as a way of dealing with world poverty. Obviously, from what you’re saying, I should be thinking more about it, but I can’t really say whether I agree until I have thought more about it.”

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“No One Cleans Up His Act Unless He’s Attacked A Bit”

March 18, 2014 in Politics, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

In my nightmares, ranked just below Ed McMahon’s direct participation in the Johnny Carson sex tape, is William F. Buckley discussing vivisection. That’s what he does in this 1990 Firing Line episode about animal rights that featured surgeon, Yale professor and author Dr. Sherwin Nuland (who passed away two weeks ago). The host and guest agree that animals should be used in medical experiments, though treated as “humanely” as possible. Nuland scoffs at the notion of speciesism and misnames the philosopher who popularized the concept in the 1970s, Peter Singer, as Peter “Berger.” All the while, Michael Kinsley darts around just offscreen, like an opossum with an impeccable résumé.

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“Although I Regret The Unnecessary Killing Of Dogs And Cats, I Don’t Think That Should Be Your Main Focus”

February 25, 2014 in Excerpts | Permalink

I don’t look at Gawker very much anymore, unless, of course, the site has an interview with moral philosopher Peter Singer and allows him to do an Ask Me Anything with readers. Singer is the author of the great book Practical Ethics and has sharp and controversial opinions about animal rights and charitable giving, among other topics. Beginning March 1, the Princeton professor is offering a MOOC ethics course. Below are excerpts from the post by Hamilton Nolan in which Singer answers a couple of Gawker questions and a couple from readers.

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Gawker:

What are the implications of your thoughts on charity for the arts? It seems that your position tends to cause outrage among fans of the arts who think that you’re not counting the arts as a real charity.

Peter Singer:

I’m not saying the arts are not a real charity, I’m just saying that in the world as it is, it’s not a charity that I would give the highest priority to. I think it’s great for people to promote and encourage the arts. But I do think you have to look at the world we live in. And if we could get out of the situation where we have a billion people living in extreme poverty, if we could meet basic needs… and provide some minimal education and health care and so on, then I think would be the time to say, “Yeah, let’s help to promote the arts.” But I just don’t think that the differences you make by donating to a museum or an art gallery really compare to the differences you make by donating to the charities that fight global poverty.

Gawker:

Sometimes you’re perceived as not having gratitude for charitable donations from the rich, i.e., saying someone like Bill Gates could donate more money. Is there a role for gratitude in your ethics?

Peter Singer:

Sure. I think there’s a place for—I’m not sure gratitude is quite the right word—I would say rather appreciation and recognition are what we should give to Bill Gates. And it’s true that Bill Gates and Melinda Gates could give more, but I don’t spend a lot of time saying that or criticizing them, because I think what they’re doing is fantastic. I think they have made a huge difference to the world, they’ve saved millions of lives, they’ve set an example of what wealthy people can be doing. They’re not saints or angels, but nor am I.

________________

Reader Question:

What can we do as a species to stop the needless and endless slaughter of dogs/cats in America?

Peter Singer:

Look, I like dogs and cats too, but the numbers matter… in the US, nearly 10 BILLION animals – chickens, pigs, cows – are slaughtered for food each year, and that’s completely unnecessary too, plus they mostly have MUCH worse living conditions than dogs and cats. That’s why, although I regret the unnecessary killing of dogs and cats, I don’t think that should be your main focus – and if you are actively participating in the slaughter of chickens, pigs and cows by eating them, you really have no basis to object to the killing of dogs and cats.

Reader Question:

What would you say is a more valuable use of time: Working for a huge corporation for the sake of making as much money as you can so you can give it to or finance your own charity of your choice, or leaving the corporate world and taking on a life of relative poverty devoted to directly helping those in need, like becoming a nun or something? Are one of those inherently more valuable, less harmful, or a better use of time and energy in your opinion?

Peter Singer:

Depends.. on the corporation and what it is doing, and whether you can have any influence on that.. also on whether you will be able to maintain your giving despite being part of a culture that doesn’t give a lot… But there are good arguments for saying that “earning to give” can, in the right circumstances, be the most effective thing one can do. See www.80000hours.org for more discussion.

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“It’s Obvious, Isn’t It, That Saving A Child’s Life Is Better Than Fulfilling A Child’s Wish To Be Batkid?”

December 20, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Moral philosopher Peter Singer is a bothersome man, a stickler, a provider of inconvenient truths. He’s the humanist who’s tough to take. But if you were sick or impoverished, you’d want him on your side. 

Two excerpts: The opening of his new Washington Post editorial about the Make-a-Wish Batkid celebration in San Francisco and the beginning of “The Dangerous Philosopher,” Michael Specter’s 1999 New Yorker profile of the ethicist.

From WaPo:

“You’d have to be a real spoilsport not to feel good about Batkid. If the sight of 20,000 people joining in last month to help the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the city of San Francisco fulfill the superhero fantasies of a 5-year-old — and not just any 5-year-old, but one who has been battling a life-threatening disease — doesn’t warm your heart, you must be numb to basic human emotions.

Yet we can still ask if these basic emotions are the best guide to what we ought to do. According to Make-A-Wish, the average cost of realizing the wish of a child with a life-threatening illness is $7,500. That sum, if donated to the Against Malaria Foundation and used to provide bed nets to families in malaria-prone regions, could save the lives of at least two or three children (and that’s a conservative estimate). If donated to the Fistula Foundation, it could pay for surgeries for approximately 17 young mothers who, without that assistance, will be unable to prevent their bodily wastes from leaking through their vaginas and hence are likely to be outcasts for the rest of their lives. If donated to the Seva Foundation to treat trachoma and other common causes of blindness in developing countries, it could protect 100 children from losing their sight as they grow older.

It’s obvious, isn’t it, that saving a child’s life is better than fulfilling a child’s wish to be Batkid? If Miles’s parents had been offered that choice — Batkid for a day or a cure for their son’s leukemia — they surely would have chosen the cure.”•

From Specter’s profile:

“Peter Singer may be the most controversial philosopher alive; he is certainly among the most influential. And this month, as he begins a new job as Princeton University’s first professor of bioethics, his unorthodox views will be debated in America more passionately than ever before. For nearly thirty years, Singer has written with great severity on subjects ranging from what people should put on their dinner plates each night to how they should spend their money or assess the value of human life. He is always relevant, but what he has to say often seems outrageous: Singer believes, for example, that a human’s life is not necessarily more sacred than a dog’s, and that it might be more compassionate to carry out medical experiments on hopelessly disabled, unconscious orphans than on perfectly healthy rats. Yet his books are far more popular than those of any other modern philosopher. Animal Liberation, which was first published in 1975, has sold half a million copies and is widely regarded as the touchstone of the animal-rights movement. In 1979, he brought out Practical Ethics, which has sold more than a hundred and twenty thousand copies, making it the most successful philosophy text ever published by Cambridge University Press.

Singer laid out his brutally frank approach to ethics in his first major paper, ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality,’ which has become required reading for thousands of university students. ‘As I write this in November 1971, people are dying in East Bengal from lack of food, shelter, and medical care,” Singer’s essay began. ‘The suffering and death that are occurring there now are not inevitable, not unavoidable.’ The problem, he explained, is a result of the moral blindness of rich human beings who are far too selfish to come to the aid of the poor.

Following in the tradition of the eighteenth-century moral philosopher William Godwin–who asked, famously, ‘What magic is there in the pronoun `my’ to overturn the decisions of everlasting truth?’–Singer argues that proximity means nothing when it comes to moral decisions, and that personal relationships don’t mean much, either. Saving your daughter’s life is a fine thing to do, for example, but it can never measure up to saving the lives of ten strangers. If you were faced with the choice, Singer’s ethics would require you to save the strangers. ‘It makes no moral difference whether the person I can help is a neighbor’s child ten yards from me or a Bengali whose name I shall never know, ten thousand miles away,’ he wrote in his essay. Singer believes we are obliged to give money away until our sacrifice is of ‘comparable moral importance’ to the agony of people starving to death. ‘This would mean, of course,’ he continued, approvingly, ‘that one would reduce oneself to very near the material circumstances of a Bengali refugee.’

Singer’s views on animal rights are even bolder: he calls man’s dominion over other animals a ‘speciesist’ outrage that can properly be compared only to the pain and suffering ‘which resulted from the centuries of tyranny by white humans over black humans.’ For Singer, that ‘tyranny’ is one of the central social issues of our age. Yet what has brought him infamy is his radical position on an even more compelling set of moral questions: how to cope with the borders between birth, life, and death in an era when we are becoming technologically capable of controlling them all.”•

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“Given This Choice, Where Would $100,000 Do The Most Good?”

August 12, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Giving is good, but all giving is not equal. From the moral philosopher Peter Singer in the New York Times:

“Suppose your local art museum is seeking funds to build a new wing to better display its collection. The museum asks you for a donation for that purpose. Let’s say that you could afford to give $100,000. At the same time, you are asked to donate to an organization seeking to reduce the incidence of trachoma, an eye disease caused by an infectious micro-organism that affects children in developing countries. Trachoma causes people to slowly lose their sight, typically culminating in their becoming blind between 30 and 40 years of age. It is preventable. You do some research and learn that each $100 you donate could prevent a person’s experiencing 15 years of impaired vision followed by another 15 years of blindness. So for $100,000 you could prevent 1,000 people from losing their sight.

Given this choice, where would $100,000 do the most good? Which expenditure is likely to lead to the bigger improvement in the lives of those affected by it?

On one side we have 1,000 people spared 15 years of impaired vision followed by 15 years of blindness, with all the ensuing problems that that would cause for poor people with no social security. What do we have on the other side?

Suppose the new museum wing will cost $50 million, and over the 50 years of its expected usefulness, one million people will enjoy seeing it each year, for a total of 50 million enhanced museum visits. Since you would contribute 1/500th of the cost, you could claim credit for the enhanced aesthetic experiences of 100,000 visitors. How does that compare with saving 1,000 people from 15 years of blindness?

To answer, try a thought experiment. Suppose you have a choice between visiting the art museum, including its new wing, or going to see the museum without visiting the new wing. Naturally, you would prefer to see it with the new wing. But now imagine that an evil demon declares that out of every 100 people who see the new wing, he will choose one, at random, and inflict 15 years of blindness on that person. Would you still visit the new wing? You’d have to be nuts. Even if the evil demon blinded only one person in every 1,000, in my judgment, and I bet in yours, seeing the new wing still would not be worth the risk.”

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“The Purpose Of This Discussion Is Not To Impugn The Character Of Billionaires”

January 10, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Gawker writer Hamilton Nolan thinks that everything is terrible and everybody is horrible. He’s probably right. In his post “Do the ‘Good Rich’ Exist?” Nolan references a great 2006 essay by philosopher Peter Singer and a new book by historian Robert F. Dalzell to consider if the super-rich who give away great wealth while still in possession of even greater wealth are actually deserving of our praise. An excerpt:

“The purpose of this discussion is not to impugn the character of billionaires. It is to ask: What is the cost to society of the perception that we should be grateful to these wealthy men for their generosity? The assumptions implicit in that view are A) that the wealthy are fully entitled to their money because they earned it on the basis of their own talents, and B) that the need for society and its laws to protect the entitlement of the rich to their own wealth outweighs the aggregate societal needs that could be cured or ameliorated by that wealth (poverty, disease, etc.). Gratitude towards the great philanthropists is based on the assumption that they are not and should not be expected to give their wealth back to the world; it is based on the assumption that the normal, default, acceptable behavior for the very wealthy is to hoard most of their wealth and put it solely to their own use. It is a view in which society grovels at the feet of great men who have succeeded where the rest of us have failed.

Warren Buffett himself has attributed most of his success to the society he lives in—its governmental protections, its rule of law, its fair and transparent markets, its educational system, and so on. The wise rich (and anyone realistic about the role of chance in the outcomes of all of our lives) recognize that personal talent is but one minor ingredient of vast success. If society is responsible for the vast majority of the success of the rich, then returning the vast majority of that wealth back to society is the least that the rich can do. (Really, it’s the least, considering the fact that they would still be left incredibly wealthy.) This level of giving back to the society that spawned them should be expected of the rich. Yes, society owes them its gratitude—the same gratitude that it owes you for paying your taxes, and volunteering, and making your annual donation to UNICEF. The same gratitude, regardless of the number of zeroes on the check. The gratitude that comes when someone does a good thing that they are expected to do. The gratitude you get for fulfilling your role as a responsible member of society.

To the extent that we should be grateful to the great philanthropists, we should be grateful to them for fulfilling a duty. And to the extent that that duty is to be truly generous, it is a duty that none of them have fulfilled.”

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“Forget About The Shoes. You’ve Just Got To Save The Child.”

June 25, 2012 in Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

From Astra Taylor’s Examined Life, a section in which moral philosopher Peter Singer questions how we spend our money in a world of unevenly distributed plenty. Though I wonder if the free market isn’t part of the solution.

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“It Is Not Thought That There Is Anything Wrong With Not Giving”

May 14, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

In 1971, when philosopher Peter Singer wrote “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” the world was a much different place, a much less interdependent place. His main idea was that people purchasing things they didn’t absolutely need while someone in the world was starving was morally indefensible. Sure, that’s true, I agree. But what about beyond stabilizing such a society? What if consumer spending is the only way to raise others above a basic and tenuous subsistence?

I don’t mean this as a personal rationalization. I don’t buy a lot of crap I don’t need. But what if buying surplus goods is the only way to truly help not only ourselves but to bring struggling people into the marketplace and let them share in the material wealth (and the burdens) of such a system? Globalization could be a slow, painful step in the right direction. Or not. It depends on us. I’m really not interested in ideologies or what appears correct, just results. From the essay:

“The outcome of this argument is that our traditional moral categories are upset. The traditional distinction between duty and charity cannot be drawn, or at least, not in the place we normally draw it. Giving money to the Bengal Relief Fund is regarded as an act of charity in our society. The bodies which collect money are known as ‘charities.’ These organizations see themselves in this way – if you send them a check, you will be thanked for your ‘generosity.’ Because giving money is regarded as an act of charity, it is not thought that there is anything wrong with not giving. The charitable man may be praised, but the man who is not charitable is not condemned. People do not feel in any way ashamed or guilty about spending money on new clothes or a new car instead of giving it to famine relief. (Indeed, the alternative does not occur to them.) This way of looking at the matter cannot be justified. When we buy new clothes not to keep ourselves warm but to look ‘well-dressed’ we are not providing for any important need. We would not be sacrificing anything significant if we were to continue to wear our old clothes, and give the money to famine relief. By doing so, we would be preventing another person from starving. It follows from what I have said earlier that we ought to give money away, rather than spend it on clothes which we do not need to keep us warm. To do so is not charitable, or generous. Nor is it the kind of act which philosophers and theologians have called ‘supererogatory’ – an act which it would be good to do, but not wrong not to do. On the contrary, we ought to give the money away, and it is wrong not to do so.”

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New DVD: Examined Life

February 23, 2010 in Film | Permalink

Slovenian theorist Slavoj Žižek is down in the dump in "Examined Life."

Following up the heady burst of fun that was her 2005 documentary Zizek!, filmmaker Astra Taylor keeps one foot planted firmly on campus with Examined Life. an interesting investiagtion into the minds of eight diverse academics.

Taylor presents a platform for ideas to Cornel West, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Hardt, Judith Butler, Peter Singer, Avital Ronell and Slavoj Žižek. Because of the static nature of talking about thinking, she has her subjects constantly walking, riding, rowing or rolling, as they delve into a variety of philosophical ideas, from cosmopolitanism to ecology.

While these thinkers are all superstars behind the ivy, they don’t all translate equally well to this format. For some reason, Hardt scolds himself for discussing the possibility of revolution while he’s in Central Park, as if it were an exclusive piece of land instead of a public venue that has served people from every economic strata. That park is one the egalitarian accomplishments of our society, not a place of aristocratic shame as he seems to believe. Others like Singer, Butler and Žižek make far more interesting points.

It would appear that the director had a little bit more time and money for her new film than she did for Zizek!, and she uses it well, showing off a strong sense of composition that was impossible to display with the breakneck schedule of her first feature. Taylor is growing as a filmmaker, and even though she might not be a hard-nosed interviewer as of yet, she knows how to provoke thought.

Read other Film posts.

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