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Peter Singer

 
Peter Singer

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Peter Singer



 
 
Peter Albert David Singer (born July 6, 1946) is an Australian philosopher
Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, justice, validity, mind, and language....
. He is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics
Bioethics

Bioethics is the philosophical study of the ethics controversies brought about by advances in biology and medicine. Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, philosophy, and theology....
 at Princeton University
Princeton University

Princeton University is a private university university located in Princeton, New Jersey, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League and has the largest per-student Financial endowment in the world....
, and laureate professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE)
Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE)

The Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at Australian National University, Charles Sturt University and University of Melbourne was established in 2000 as an Australian Research Council funded Special Research Centre and is the world?s largest concentration of applied philosophers....
, University of Melbourne
University of Melbourne

The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria . The second oldest university in Australia, and the oldest in Victoria, its main campus is in Parkville, Victoria, an inner suburb just north of the Melbourne CBD....
. He specializes in applied ethics
Applied ethics

Applied ethics is, in the words of Brenda Almond, co-founder of the Society for Applied Philosophy, "the philosophical examination, from a moral standpoint, of particular issues in private and public life that are matters of moral judgment"....
, approaching ethical issues from a secular preference utilitarian
Preference utilitarianism

Preference utilitarianism is quite probably the most popular form of utilitarianism in contemporary philosophy. In the same way as other utilitarian theorists, preference utilitarians define a morally right action as that which produces the most favorable consequences for the people involved....
 perspective.

He has served, on two occasions, as chair of philosophy at Monash University
Monash University

Monash University is a public university based in Melbourne, Australia. It is Australia's largest university with about 55,000 students.The University has a total of eight campuses: six in Victoria, Australia , one in Monash University Malaysia Campus and one in Monash South Africa....
, where he founded its Centre for Human Bioethics
Centre for Human Bioethics

The Centre for Human Bioethics is a research and teaching centre at Monash University, based in the Faculty of Monash University Faculty of Arts....
. In 1996, he ran unsuccessfully as a Green
Australian Greens

The Australian Greens, commonly known as The Greens, is a Worldwide green parties List of political parties in Australia.The party has its eastern Australian origins in the Franklin Dam campaign in Tasmania in the 1980s, and in Western Australia arising from concerns about nuclear disarmament....
 candidate for the Australian Senate.






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Peter Albert David Singer (born July 6, 1946) is an Australian philosopher
Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, justice, validity, mind, and language....
. He is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics
Bioethics

Bioethics is the philosophical study of the ethics controversies brought about by advances in biology and medicine. Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, philosophy, and theology....
 at Princeton University
Princeton University

Princeton University is a private university university located in Princeton, New Jersey, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League and has the largest per-student Financial endowment in the world....
, and laureate professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE)
Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE)

The Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at Australian National University, Charles Sturt University and University of Melbourne was established in 2000 as an Australian Research Council funded Special Research Centre and is the world?s largest concentration of applied philosophers....
, University of Melbourne
University of Melbourne

The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria . The second oldest university in Australia, and the oldest in Victoria, its main campus is in Parkville, Victoria, an inner suburb just north of the Melbourne CBD....
. He specializes in applied ethics
Applied ethics

Applied ethics is, in the words of Brenda Almond, co-founder of the Society for Applied Philosophy, "the philosophical examination, from a moral standpoint, of particular issues in private and public life that are matters of moral judgment"....
, approaching ethical issues from a secular preference utilitarian
Preference utilitarianism

Preference utilitarianism is quite probably the most popular form of utilitarianism in contemporary philosophy. In the same way as other utilitarian theorists, preference utilitarians define a morally right action as that which produces the most favorable consequences for the people involved....
 perspective.

He has served, on two occasions, as chair of philosophy at Monash University
Monash University

Monash University is a public university based in Melbourne, Australia. It is Australia's largest university with about 55,000 students.The University has a total of eight campuses: six in Victoria, Australia , one in Monash University Malaysia Campus and one in Monash South Africa....
, where he founded its Centre for Human Bioethics
Centre for Human Bioethics

The Centre for Human Bioethics is a research and teaching centre at Monash University, based in the Faculty of Monash University Faculty of Arts....
. In 1996, he ran unsuccessfully as a Green
Australian Greens

The Australian Greens, commonly known as The Greens, is a Worldwide green parties List of political parties in Australia.The party has its eastern Australian origins in the Franklin Dam campaign in Tasmania in the 1980s, and in Western Australia arising from concerns about nuclear disarmament....
 candidate for the Australian Senate. In 2004, he was recognized as the Australian Humanist
Humanism (life stance)

Humanism is a comprehensive life stance that upholds human reason, ethics, and justice, and rejects supernaturalism, pseudoscience, and superstition....
 of the Year by the Council of Australian Humanist Societies
Council of Australian Humanist Societies

The Council of Australian Humanist Societies is the national umbrella organisation for all Australian Humanism organisations. It is affiliated with the International Humanist and Ethical Union ....
.

Outside academic circles, Singer is best known for his book Animal Liberation
Animal Liberation (book)

Animal Liberation is a book by Australian philosopher Peter Singer, published in 1975.Although Singer is not the first person to apply the concept of moral standing to nonhuman animals the book is widely considered within the animal rights movement to be the founding philosophical statement of its ideas....
, widely regarded as the touchstone of the animal liberation movement
Animal liberation movement

The animal liberation or animal rights movement, sometimes called the animal personhood or animal advocacy movement, is a global movement with roughly three components: philosophical debate, legal development, and direct action....
. Not all members of the animal liberation movement share this view, and Singer himself has said the media overstates his status. His views on that and other issues in bioethics have attracted attention and a degree of controversy.

Life and career

Singer's parents were Viennese
Vienna

Vienna is the Capital of Republic of Austria and also one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.7 million...
 Jew
Jew

A Jew is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group that traces its ancestry to the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East....
s who escaped the German
Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany and the Third Reich are the colloquial English names for Germany under the regime of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party , which established a Totalitarianism dictatorship that existed from 1933 to 1945....
 annexation of Austria and fled to Australia in 1938. They settled in Melbourne
Melbourne

Melbourne is the more common name for the geographic region and Census in Australia of the Greater Melbourne metropolitan area. It is the second List of cities in Australia by population in Australia, with a population of approximately 3.8 million and serves as the List of Australian capital cities of Victoria ....
 where Singer was born. His grandparents were less fortunate: his paternal grandparents were taken by the Nazis to Lódz, and were never heard from again; his maternal grandfather died in Theresienstadt
Theresienstadt concentration camp

Theresienstadt concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. It was established by the Gestapo in the fortress and garrison city of Terez?n , located in what is now the Czech Republic....
. He has a sister, Joan (now Joan Dwyer). Singer's father imported tea and coffee, while his mother practised medicine. He attended Preshil
Preshil

Preshil, or The Margaret Lyttle Memorial School, is an Independent school, co-educational, non-denominational, Alternative school day school, located in Kew, Victoria, an eastern suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Victoria , Australia....
 and later Scotch College
Scotch College, Melbourne

Scotch College, Melbourne is an independent school, Presbyterian, Day school and boarding school for boys, located in Hawthorn, Victoria, an inner-eastern suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Victoria, Australia, Australia....
. After leaving school, Singer studied law
LAW

LAW may refer to:* Anti-tank warfare, e.g. the US Army M72 LAW or the British Army LAW 80*Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights ...
, history
HIStory

HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I is a double album by Michael Jackson, released on June 20, 1995, and is Jackson's ninth. The first disc, named "HIStory Begins" consists of a selection of Jackson's greatest hits from the singer's past fifteen years, while the second, named "HIStory Continues" features new songs, with the...
 and philosophy
Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, justice, validity, mind, and language....
 at the University of Melbourne
University of Melbourne

The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria . The second oldest university in Australia, and the oldest in Victoria, its main campus is in Parkville, Victoria, an inner suburb just north of the Melbourne CBD....
, gaining his degree in 1967. He received an MA for a thesis entitled Why should I be moral? in 1969. He was awarded a scholarship to study at the University of Oxford
University of Oxford

The University of Oxford , located in the city of Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation in the English-speaking world....
, obtaining a B.Phil
Bachelor of Philosophy

Bachelor of Philosophy is the title of an academic degree. The degree usually involves considerable research, either through a thesis or supervised research projects....
 in 1971 with a thesis on civil disobedience, supervised by R. M. Hare
R. M. Hare

Richard Mervyn Hare was an English Moral philosophy who held the post of White's Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford from 1966 until 1983 and then taught for a number of years at the University of Florida....
, and subsequently published as a book in 1973. Singer names Hare and Australian philosopher H. D. McCloskey as his two most important mentors.

After spending two years as a Radcliffe
John Radcliffe

John Radcliffe was an England physician. A number of landmark buildings in Oxford, including the Radcliffe Camera , the Radcliffe Infirmary, and the Radcliffe Observatory were named after him....
 lecturer at University College, Oxford
University College, Oxford

University College , is one of the Colleges of the University of Oxford of the University of Oxford in England. It is a contender for being the oldest of the colleges of the university, and is amongst the largest in terms of population....
, he was visiting professor at New York University
New York University

New York University is a private university, nonsectarian, research university in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan....
 for 16 months. He returned to Melbourne in 1977, where he spent most of his career, apart from many visiting positions internationally, until his move to Princeton in 1999.

Animal Liberation

Published in 1975, Animal Liberation is sometimes claimed to be a formative influence on the animal liberation 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 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." He began his book by defending against Mary Wollstonecraft's
Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century Kingdom of Great Britain writer, philosopher, and feminist. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel literature, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book....
 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. Taylor thought he had produced a reductio ad absurdum
Reductio ad absurdum

Reductio ad absurdum , also known as an apagogical argument, reductio ad impossibile, or proof by contradiction, is a type of logical argument where one assumes a claim for the sake of argument and derives an absurd or ridiculous outcome, and then concludes that the original claim must have been wrong as it led to an abs...
 of Wollstonecraft's view; Singer regards it as a sound logical implication.

In Animal Liberation, Singer argues against what he calls speciesism
Speciesism

Speciesism involves assigning different values or rights to beings on the basis of their species membership. The term was coined by British psychologist Richard D....
: discrimination
Discrimination

Discrimination toward or against a person or group is the treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit. It is usually associated with prejudice....
 on the grounds that a being belongs to a certain species. He holds the interests of all beings capable of suffering to be worthy of equal consideration
Equal consideration of interests

"Equal consideration of interests" is the name of a moral principle that states that one should both include all affected interests when calculating the rightness of an action and weigh those interests equally....
, and that giving lesser consideration to beings based on their having wings or fur is no more justified than discrimination based on skin color. He argues that animals should have rights based on their ability to feel pain more than their intelligence. In particular, he argues that while animals show lower intelligence than the average human, many severely retarded humans show equally diminished, if not lower, mental capacity, and intelligence therefore does not provide a basis for providing nonhuman animals any less consideration than such retarded humans. He also points out that many primates have learned to communicate with American sign language (ASL) or symbol languages. These include chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and an orang-utan. Primates that have learned ASL or symbol languages include Washoe
Washoe (chimpanzee)

Washoe was a Common Chimpanzee who was the first non-human to learn to use a human language, that of American Sign Language. She also passed on some of her knowledge to her adopted son, Loulis....
, Koko
Koko (gorilla)

Koko is a lowland gorilla who, according to Francine Patterson, is able to understand more than 1,000 signs based on American Sign Language, and understand approximately 2,000 words of spoken English....
, Chantek
Chantek

Chantek is a male orangutan who has mastered the use of a number of intellectual skills, including sign language, taught by anthropologist Doctor Lyn Miles....
, and Kanzi
Kanzi

Kanzi , is a male Bonobo who has been featured in several studies on great ape language. According to Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, a primatologist who has studied the bonobo throughout his life, Kanzi has exhibited advanced linguistic aptitude....
. Likewise, pig
Pig

Pigs, also called hogs or swine, are a genus of even-toed ungulates within the Family Suidae. The name pig, hog, or swine most commonly refers to the Domestic pig in everyday parlance, but technically encompasses several distinct species, including the Wild Boar....
s, bird
Bird

Birds are wing, Bipedalismal, endothermic , vertebrate animals that lay egg . There are around 10,000 living species, making them the most numerous tetrapod vertebrates....
s, primate
Primate

A primate is a member of the biological order Primates , the group that contains lemurs, the Aye-aye, Lorisidaes, galagos, tarsiers, monkeys, and apes, with the last category including humans....
s and cetaceans can rank as being as intelligent as children. Singer does not specifically contend that we ought not use animals for food insofar as they are raised and killed in a way that actively avoids the inflicting of pain, but as such farms are uncommon, he concludes that the most practical solution is to adopt a vegetarian or vegan diet. Singer also condemns vivisection
Vivisection

File:Frog vivisection.jpgFile:Activist against vivisection.JPGVivisection is surgery conducted upon a living organism, typically animals with a central nervous system....
 except where the benefit (in terms of improved medical treatment, etc.) outweighs the harm done to the animals used.

Applied ethics

His most comprehensive work, Practical Ethics
Practical Ethics

Practical Ethics is an introduction to applied ethics by modern bioethics philosopher Peter Singer. It was published in 1979 and has since been translated into a number of languages, causing outrage in Germany, Austria and Switzerland....
, analyzes in detail why and how beings' interests should be weighed. His principle of equal consideration of interests does not dictate equal treatment of all those with interests, since different interests warrant different treatment. All have an interest in avoiding pain, for instance, but relatively few have an interest in cultivating their abilities. 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, for instance, 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". The fundamental interest that entitles a being to equal consideration is the capacity for "suffering and/or enjoyment or happiness". He holds that a being's interests should always be weighed according to that being's concrete properties. He favors a 'journey' model of life, which measures the wrongness of taking a life by the degree to which doing so frustrates a life journey's goals. The journey model is tolerant of some frustrated desire and explains why persons who have embarked on their journeys are not replaceable. 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.

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 the most satisfied interests among those beings who already exist prior to the decision one is making. The second edition of Practical Ethics disavows the first edition's suggestion that the total and prior-existence views should be combined. The second edition asserts that preference-satisfaction utilitarianism, incorporating the 'journey' model, applies without invoking the first edition's suggestion about the total view. But the details are fuzzy and Singer admits that he is "not entirely satisfied" with his treatment.

Ethical conduct is justifiable by reasons that go beyond prudence to "something bigger than the individual," addressing a larger audience. 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
Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was an 18th-century German Philosophy from the Kingdom of Prussia city of K?nigsberg . He is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe and of the late Age of Enlightenment....
 to Hare, is crucial and sets him apart from moral theorists from Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes was an English philosophy, remembered today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory....
 to David Gauthier
David Gauthier

David Gauthier is a Canadian-American philosopher best known for his neo-Thomas Hobbes social contract of morality, as laid out in his book Morals by Agreement....
, who tie reasons to prudence. Universalization leads directly to utilitarianism, Singer argues, on the strength of the thought that one's own interests cannot count for more than the interests of others. Taking these into account, one must weigh them up and adopt the course of action that is most likely to maximize the interests of those affected; utilitarianism has been arrived at. 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
John Rawls

John Rawls was an United States philosopher and a leading figure in moral and political philosophy.Rawls received the Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy and the National Humanities Medal in 1999, the latter presented by U.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
Paradox of hedonism

The paradox of hedonism, also called the pleasure paradox, is the idea in the study of ethics which points out that pleasure and happiness are strange phenomena that do not obey normal principles....
', 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.

Practical Ethics includes a chapter arguing for the redistribution of wealth to ameliorate absolute poverty (Chapter 8, "Rich and Poor"), and another making a case for resettlement of refugees on a large scale in industrialized countries (Chapter 9, "Insiders and Outsiders"). Although the natural, non-sentient environment has no intrinsic value for a utilitarian like Singer, environmental degradation is a profound threat to sentient life, and for this reason environmentalists are right to speak of wilderness as a `world heritage'.

Abortion, euthanasia and infanticide


Consistent with his general ethical theory, Singer holds that the right to life is intrinsically tied to a being's capacity to hold preferences, which in turn is intrinsically tied to a being's capacity to feel pain and pleasure. In his view, the central argument against abortion is equivalent to the following logical syllogism
Syllogism

A syllogism, or logical appeal, , is a kind of logical argument in which one proposition is Inference from two others of a certain form....
:

First premise: It is wrong to take innocent human life.
Second premise: From conception onwards, the embryo or fetus is innocent, human and alive.
Conclusion: It is wrong to take the life of the embryo or fetus.


In his book Rethinking Life and Death Singer asserts that, if we take the premises at face value, the argument is deductively valid. Singer comments that those who do not generally think abortion is wrong attack the second premise, suggesting that the fetus becomes a 'human' or 'alive' at some point after conception; however, Singer remarks that human development is a gradual process, that it is nearly impossible to mark a particular moment in time as the moment at which human life begins.

Singer's argument for abortion differs from many other proponents of abortion; rather than attacking the second premise of the anti-abortion argument, Singer attacks the first premise, denying that it is wrong to take innocent human life:
[The argument that a fetus is not alive] is a resort to a convenient fiction that turns an evidently living being into one that legally is not alive. Instead of accepting such fictions, we should recognise that the fact that a being is human, and alive, does not in itself tell us whether it is wrong to take that being's life. (Rethinking Life and Death 105)


Singer states that arguments for or against abortion should be based on utilitarian calculation which weighs the preferences of a mother against the preferences of the fetus. A preference is anything sought to be obtained or avoided; all forms of benefit or harm caused to a being correspond directly with the satisfaction or frustration of one or more of its preferences. Since a capacity to experience suffering or satisfaction is a prerequisite to having any preferences at all, and a fetus, at least up to around 18 weeks, says Singer, has no capacity to suffer or feel satisfaction, it is not possible for such a fetus to hold any preferences at all. In a utilitarian calculation, there is nothing to weigh against a mother's preferences to have an abortion, therefore abortion is morally permissible.

Similar to his argument for abortion, Singer argues that newborns similarly lack the essential characteristics of personhood — "rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness" — and therefore "killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living."

Singer classifies euthanasia
Euthanasia

Euthanasia refers to the practice of ending a life in a painless manner. Many different forms of euthanasia can be distinguished, including euthanasia and human euthanasia, and within the latter, voluntary and involuntary euthanasia....
 as voluntary, involuntary, or non-voluntary. Voluntary euthanasia is that with the consent of the subject.

Singer's book Rethinking Life and Death: The Collapse of Our Traditional Ethics offers further examination of the ethical dilemmas concerning the advances of medicine. He covers the value of human life and quality of life ethics in addition to abortion and other controversial ethical questions.

World poverty

In "Famine, Affluence, and Morality
Famine, Affluence, and Morality

"Famine, Affluence, and Morality" is an essay written by Peter Singer in 1971 in literature and published in Philosophy and Public Affairs in 1972 in literature....
", 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 relief 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. (One point of contention is at what point a person may be said to be 'living comfortably' and "Famine, Affluence And Morality" does not set out how to specify this.) Singer himself reports that he donates 25 percent of his salary to Oxfam
Oxfam

Oxfam International is a confederation of 13 organizations working with over 3,000 partners in more than 100 countries to find lasting solutions to poverty and injustice....
 and UNICEF. In "Rich and Poor", the version of the aforementioned article that appears in the second edition of Practical Ethics, his main argument is presented as follows: If we can prevent something bad without sacrificing anything of comparable significance, we ought to do it; absolute poverty is bad; there is some poverty we can prevent without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance; 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 explains Dekker's belief that zoophilia
Zoophilia

Zoophilia, from the Greek language ???? and f???a , also known as bestiality, is the practice of sexual relations between humans and animals, or a preference or fixation on such practice....
 should remain illegal if it involves what he sees as "cruelty", but otherwise is no cause for shock or horror. However, Singer does not claim to endorse the views of either Dekker or Soyka, merely to be explaining them. 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". Some religious individuals and animal rights groups have condemned this view.

Social psychology
Singer also works in the field of social psychology
Social psychology

Social psychology is the study of how people and groups interact. Scholars in this interdisciplinarity area are typically either psychology or sociology, though all social psychologists employ both the individual and the group as their Unit of analysis....
. Singer's writing appeared in Greater Good magazine, published by the Greater Good Science Center
Greater Good Science Center

The Greater Good Science Center, located at the University of California, Berkeley is an interdisciplinary research center devoted to the scientific understanding of happy and compassionate individuals, strong social bonds, and altruism behavior....
 of the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley is a public university research university located in Berkeley, California, California, United States. The oldest of the ten major campuses affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley offers some 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines....
. Singer's contributions include the interpretation of scientific research into the roots of compassion, altruism, and peaceful human relationships. Singer's article, "Can You Do Good by Eating Well?" examines the ethics of eating locally grown food.

Evolutionary biology and liberal politics
In A Darwinian Left
A Darwinian Left

A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution and Cooperation is a book by Peter Singer , which argues that the view of human nature provided by evolution is compatible with and should be incorporated into the ideological framework of the Left-Right politics....
, Singer outlines a plan for the political left to adapt to the lessons of evolutionary biology
Evolutionary biology

Evolutionary biology is a sub-field of biology concerned with the origin of species from a common descent and descent of species, as well as their evolution, multiplication and diversity over time....
. He says that evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology attempts to explain Mind and psychology Trait theorys?such as memory, perception, or language?as adaptations, that is, as the functional products of natural selection or sexual selection....
 suggests that humans naturally tend to be self-interested. He further argues that the evidence that selfish tendencies are natural must not be taken as evidence that selfishness is right. He concludes that game theory
Game theory

Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that is used in the social sciences , biology, engineering, political science, international relations, computer science , and philosophy....
 (the mathematical study of strategy) and experiments in psychology offer hope that self-interested people will make short-term sacrifices for the good of others, if society provides the right conditions. Essentially Singer claims that although humans possess selfish, competitive tendencies naturally, they have a substantial capacity for cooperation
Co-operation (evolution)

Co-operation or co-operative behaviours are terms used to describe behaviours by organisms which are beneficial to other members of the same species....
 that has also been selected for during human evolution
Human evolution

Human evolution, or anthropogenesis, is the part of biological evolution concerning the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species from other hominans, great apes and placental mammals....
.

Vegetarianism

In an article for the online publication chinadialogue
Chinadialogue

'Chinadialogue.net' "????" is an independent, not-for-profit online publication and blog based in London and Beijing.It focuses on the Natural environment, especially in China, although it has an interest in environment and sustainability issues around the world....
 Singer called Western-style meat production cruel, unhealthy and damaging to the ecology. He rejected the idea that the method was necessary to meet the population’s increasing demand, explaining that animals in factory farms have to eat food grown explicitly for them, and they burn up most of the food’s energy just to breathe and keep their bodies warm. That loss of total energy has been verified in multiple studies, and the Nov. 2006 UN FAO Report states as much.

Misunderstanding, hate-speech and agitation against Singer

Singer's positions have been challenged 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. Singer has replied that many people judge him based on secondhand summaries and short quotations taken out of context, not his books or articles.

In Germany, his positions have been compared to Nazism
Nazism

Nazism, officially National Socialism , refers to the ideology and practices of the National Socialist German Workers? Party under Adolf Hitler, and the policies adopted by the dictatorial government of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945....
 and his lectures have been repeatedly disrupted. Some claim that Singer's utilitarian ideas lead to eugenics
Eugenics

Eugenics is a scientific field involving the controlled breeding of humans in order to achieve desirable traits in future generations. Eugenics was at its height in first half of the 20th century and was largely abandoned with the end of World War II....
. American economist Steve Forbes
Steve Forbes

Malcolm Stevenson "Steve" Forbes, Jr. is the son of Malcolm Forbes and the editor-in-chief of business magazine Forbes as well as president and chief executive officer of its publisher, Forbes Inc....
 ceased his donations to Princeton University
Princeton University

Princeton University is a private university university located in Princeton, New Jersey, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League and has the largest per-student Financial endowment in the world....
 in 1999 because of Singer's appointment to an honorable position. Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal
Simon Wiesenthal

Simon Wiesenthal KBE was an Austrian-Jewish architectural engineering and Holocaust survivor who became famous after World War II for his work as a Nazi hunter who pursued Nazi war criminals in an effort to bring them to justice....
 wrote to organizers of a Swedish book fair to which Singer was invited that "A professor of morals ... who justifies the right to kill handicapped newborns ... is in my opinion unacceptable for representation at your level." Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind
National Federation of the Blind

The National Federation of the Blind is an organization of blind people in the United States. It is the oldest and most likely largest national organization to be led by blind people....
, the leading organization for blind people in the United States, strongly 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 euthanizing disabled babies could lead to disabled older children and adults being valued less as well.

When Peter Singer attempted to speak during a lecture at Saarbrucken he was interrupted by a group of protesters including advocates for the handicapped. Dr. Georg Meggle offered the protesters the opportunity to explain why he shouldn't be allowed to speak. The protesters indicated that they believed he was opposed to all rights for the handicapped. They were unaware that although he believed that some lives were so blighted from the beginning their parents may decide their lives are not worth living; in other cases once the decision is made to keep them alive everything that could be done to improve the quality of their life should be done. The following discussion revealed that there were many misconceptions about his positions. This didn't end the controversy about his positions. One of the protesters made it clear that to enter the discussions was a tactical error. A lecture at the Zoological Institute of the University of Zurich was also interrupted by two groups of protesters. The first group was a group of disabled people who staged a brief protest at the beginning of the lecture. They objected to inviting an advocate of euthanasia to speak. At the end of this protest when Peter Singer attempted to address their concerns a second group of protesters rose and began chanting "Singer raus! Singer raus!" When Peter Singer attempted to address these concerns a protester jumped on stage and grabbed his glasses. The host of the lecture ended the lecture at this point. The first group were distressed at what happened afterwards. They didn't intend to halt the lecture and they had some questions that they wanted to ask Peter Singer following the lecture before it was abandoned.

Singer experienced the complexities of some of these questions in his own life. Singer's mother had Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease , also called Alzheimer disease, Senile Dementia of the Alzheimer Type or simply Alzheimer's, is the most common form of dementia....
. He said, "I think this has made me see how the issues of someone with these kinds of problems are really very difficult". In an interview with Ronald Bailey
Ronald Bailey

Ronald Bailey is the science editor for Reason . He was born in San Antonio, Texas and raised in Washington County, Virginia, and attended the University of Virginia, where he earned a B.A....
 published in December 2000 he explained that he is not the only person who is involved in making decisions about his mother (he has a sister). He did say that if he were solely responsible, his mother might not be alive today. (Singer's mother died shortly thereafter.) This incident has led to accusations of hypocrisy
Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy , is acting in a manner contradictory to one's professed beliefs and feelings, or conversely, expressing false beliefs and opinions in order to conceal one's real feelings or motives....
, on the grounds that Singer was giving his money to support his mother, in contradiction to his philosophy, and also that in general he has not always lived up to the philosophy he espouses.

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
Meta-ethics

In philosophy, meta-ethics is the branch of ethics that seeks to understand the nature of ethical property , and ethical statements, attitudes, and judgments....
, including why one ethical system should be chosen over others. In The Expanding Circle, he argues that the evolution of human society provides support for the utilitarian point of view. On his account, ethical reasoning has existed from the time primitive foraging bands had to cooperate, compromise, and make group decisions to survive. He elaborates: "In a dispute between members of a cohesive group of reasoning beings, the demand for a reason is a demand for a justification that can be accepted by the group as a whole." Thus, consideration of others' interests has long been a necessary part of the human experience. 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
Cognitive dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The "ideas" or "cognitions" in question may include attitude and beliefs, and also the awareness of one's behavior....
. This is the sense in which he means that reason may push people to accept a broader utilitarian stance. Critics like Ken Binmore say that this cognitive dissonance is apparently not very strong, since people often knowingly ignore the interests of faraway societies quite similar to their own, and that the "ought" above only applies if one already accepts Singer's basic premises about the equality of various interests.

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. He invokes the hedonistic paradox
Paradox of hedonism

The paradox of hedonism, also called the pleasure paradox, is the idea in the study of ethics which points out that pleasure and happiness are strange phenomena that do not obey normal principles....
, noting that those who pursue material gain seldom find the happiness they seek. Having a broader purpose in life may lead to more long-term happiness. On this account, impartial (self-sacrificing) behavior in particular matters may be motivated by self-interested considerations from a broader perspective.

Singer has also implicitly argued that a watertight defense of utilitarianism is not crucial to his work. In "", he begins by saying that he would like to see how far a seemingly innocuous and widely endorsed principle can take us; the principle is that one is morally required to forgo a small pleasure to relieve someone else's immense pain. He then argues that this principle entails radical conclusions — for example, that affluent people are very immoral if they do not give up some luxury goods in order to donate the money for famine relief. If his reasoning is valid, he goes on to argue, either it is not very immoral to value small luxuries over saving many lives, or such affluent people are very immoral. As Singer argues in the same essay, regardless of the soundness of his fundamental defense of utilitarianism, his argument has value in that it exposes conflicts between many people's stated beliefs and their actions.

Critics


Amoralists claim that Singer's views are completely unjustified because he hasn't given sufficient reason for holding others' preferences to be so important that one accepts personal disadvantages to get them fulfilled. They believe the hedonism paradox is not true; hedonists only hinder themselves from getting happy if they pursue happiness in an unsophisticated manner.

Publications

Singer is one of the most prolific writers in philosophy, sometimes publishing several books a year as well as public engagement. Some of his books include:
  • Animal Liberation
    Animal Liberation (book)

    Animal Liberation is a book by Australian philosopher Peter Singer, published in 1975.Although Singer is not the first person to apply the concept of moral standing to nonhuman animals the book is widely considered within the animal rights movement to be the founding philosophical statement of its ideas....
    : A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals
    , New York Review/Random House, New York, 1975; Cape, London, 1976; Avon, New York, 1977; Paladin, London, 1977; Thorsons, London, 1983. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, New York, 2009.
  • What Should a Billionaire Give-and What Should You, The New York Times, 2006
  • Democracy and Disobedience, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1973; Oxford University Press, New York, 1974; Gregg Revivals, Aldershot, Hampshire, 1994
  • Animal Rights and Human Obligations: An Anthology (co-editor with Thomas Regan), Prentice-Hall, New Jersey, 1976. 2nd revised edition, Prentice-Hall, New Jersey, 1989
  • Practical Ethics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1979; second edition, 1993. ISBN 0521229200 0521297206
  • Marx, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1980; Hill & Wang, New York, 1980; reissued as Marx: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2000; also included in full in K. 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. ISBN 0192830384
  • Hegel, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 1982; reissued as Hegel: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2001; 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. revised American edition, Making Babies, Scribner's New York, 1985
  • Should the Baby Live? The Problem of Handicapped Infants (co-author with Helga Kuhse), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1985; Oxford University Press, New York, 1986; Gregg Revivals, Aldershot, Hampshire, 1994. ISBN 0192177451
  • In Defence of Animals (ed.), Blackwells, Oxford, 1985; Harper & Row, New York, 1986. ISBN 0631138978
  • Ethical and Legal Issues in Guardianship Options for Intellectually Disadvantaged People (co-author with Terry Carney), Human Rights Commission Monograph Series, no. 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; paperback edition, updated, 1993
  • A Companion to Ethics (ed.), Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1991; paperback edition, 1993
  • Save the Animals! (Australian edition, co-author with Barbara Dover and Ingrid Newkirk), Collins Angus & Robertson, North Ryde, NSW, 1991
  • The Great Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity (co-editor with Paola Cavalieri), Fourth Estate, London, 1993; hardback, St Martin's Press, New York, 1994; paperback, St Martin's Press, New York, 1995
  • How Are We to Live?
    How Are We to Live?

    How Are We to Live? : Ethics in an Age of Self-Interest is a book on applied ethics by modern bioethics philosopher Peter Singer. It was first published in 1993....
     Ethics in an Age of Self-interest
    , Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1993; Mandarin, London, 1995; Prometheus, Buffalo, NY, 1995; 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; St Martin's Press, New York, 1995; reprint 2008. ISBN 0312118805 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; Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1999
  • Bioethics. An Anthology (co-editor with Helga Kuhse), Blackwell, 1999/ Oxford, 2006
  • A Darwinian Left
    A Darwinian Left

    A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution and Cooperation is a book by Peter Singer , which argues that the view of human nature provided by evolution is compatible with and should be incorporated into the ideological framework of the Left-Right politics....
    , Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1999; Yale University Press, New Haven, 2000. ISBN 0-300-08323-8
  • Writings on an Ethical Life, Ecco, New York, 2000; Fourth Estate, London, 2001. ISBN 0060198389
  • Unsanctifying Human Life: Essays on Ethics (edited by Helga Kuhse), Blackwell, Oxford, 2001
  • One World: The Ethics of Globalization, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2002; Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2002; 2nd edition, pb, Yale University Press, 2004; Oxford Longman, Hyderabad, 2004. ISBN 0300096860
  • Pushing Time Away: My Grandfather and the Tragedy of Jewish Vienna, Ecco Press, New York, 2003; HarperCollins Australia, Melbourne, 2003; Granta, London, 2004
  • The President of Good and Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush, Dutton, New York, 2004; Granta, London, 2004; Text, Melbourne, 2004. ISBN 0525948139
  • How Ethical is Australia? 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. The Second Wave (ed.), Blackwell, Oxford, 2005
  • The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter, Rodale, New York, 2006 (co-author with Jim Mason); Text, Melbourne; Random House, London. Auudio version: Playaway. ISBN 157954889X
  • Eating (co-authored with Jim Mason), Arrow, London, 2006
  • Stem Cell Research: the ethical issues. (co-edited by Lori Gruen, Laura Grabel, and Peter Singer. New York: Blackwells. 2007.
  • The Bioethics Reader: Editors' Choice. (co-editor with Ruth Chadwick, Helga Kuhse, Willem Landman and Udo Schüklenk). New York: Blackwells. 2007.
  • The Cambridge Textbook of Bioethics. (edited with with A. M. Viens). Cambridge University Press.
  • The Future of Animal Farming: Renewing the Ancient Contract (with Marian Stamp Dawkins, and Roland Bonney) 2008. New York: Wiley-Blackwell.
  • The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty. New York: Random House 2009


and see http://www.thelifeyoucansave.com
  • Shaeler, J. (ed.). 2008. Peter Singer Under Fire. Open Court Publishers.


See also

  • Argument from Marginal Cases
    Argument from marginal cases

    The Argument from Marginal Cases is a philosophical argument regarding the morality status of animals. Its proponents hold that if animals do not have direct moral status due to their lack of rationality, then neither do other members of society such as infants, the senile, the comatose, and the cognition....
  • Utilitarian Bioethics
    Utilitarian Bioethics

    Utilitarian Bioethics is a branch of utilitarian ethics and bioethics that recommends directing medical resources where they will have most long-term effect for good....
  • Utilitarianism
    Utilitarianism

    Utilitarianism is the idea that the morality of an action is determined solely by its contribution to overall utility: that is, its contribution to happiness or pleasure as summed among all persons....
  • Project Syndicate
    Project Syndicate

    Project Syndicate is an international not-for-profit Print syndication and association of newspapers. It distributes commentaries and analysis by experts, activists, Nobel laureates, statesman, economists, political thinkers, business leaders and academics to its member publications, and encourages networking among its members....
  • Jeremy Bentham
    Jeremy Bentham

    Jeremy Bentham was an England jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He was the brother of Samuel Bentham. He was a political radical, and a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law....
  • John Stuart Mill
    John Stuart Mill

    John Stuart Mill , United Kingdom philosopher, political economy, civil servant and Parliament of the United Kingdom, was an influential liberalism thinker of the 19th century....
  • The Demandingness Objection
    The Demandingness Objection

    The Demandingness Objection is a common objection raised against consequentialist ethics theories. The consequentialist requirement that we maximise utility impartially seems to this objection to require us to perform acts that we would normally consider optional....


External links

  • for Project Syndicate
    Project Syndicate

    Project Syndicate is an international not-for-profit Print syndication and association of newspapers. It distributes commentaries and analysis by experts, activists, Nobel laureates, statesman, economists, political thinkers, business leaders and academics to its member publications, and encourages networking among its members....