IANAP, so will you please explain to me, as if to a three-year-old, why Singer's work is false and embarrassing? I mean, I can cover why it's boring all by myself.
Of course, they picked him to respond because all philosophers begin with an “S”.
*He does not, strictly speaking, have a truth value.
If you changed "Like Peter Singer himself" to "Like the writings of Peter Singer" the statement which this footnote references would scan better. I have no opinion on whether it would then be an accurate statement or no.
Would you say that the following holds?
Singer:Philosophy::Pat Robertson:Christianity
Baa, FL -- Singer obviously threatens you.
You guys torture kittens, right?
Singer:Philosophy::Pat Robertson:Christianity
He profitably sells his eccentric personal and political opinions as if they were the product of a complex moral tradition, when in fact they merely echo the prejudices of a credulous and ignorant public who mistakenly regard him as an honorable interpreter of an established body of thought?
Singer:Philosophy::Pat Robertson:Christianity
This isn't really right. Much better (though admittedly slightly less funny) is probably:
Singer:Philosophy::Posner:Economics
Singer:Philosophy::Andrew Sullivan:Gay Advocacy?
If babykilling is boring, I don't want to know what FL thinks is exciting.
Slol, the embarrassing part is that I can pretty much predict what Singer will say about something without consulting Singer's writing. He just turns the crank. Analogy: I wonder what Noam Chomsky will think about multinational companies? (This is not to say it's false, just that going through the motions time after time is not that interesting.)
False-- well, I'm a bigger fan of consequentialism than is baa, but I do think that defending C from some of the obvious objections (objections about intuitions of side-constraints, for example) require some fancy footwork when it comes to saying what's intrinsically valuable. I also think Singer's views have a problem with the objections about integrity, projects that give life meaning, and so on.
Baa should feel free to give his own gloss of why this stuff is so dreary, of course.
If babykilling is boring, I don't want to know what FL thinks is exciting.
Babykilling is boring. They're ridiculously easy to hunt. No challenge whatsoever. The excitement is in the preparation and presentation of the dish. Did you ever see that episode of Iron Chef? Now those guys know how to stretch a plate of babies.
I feel that my question was not properly answered.
FWIW, Singer is only a preference satisfier when it comes to nonsapient animals--dogs, babies under 18 months, etc. Adult members of the great apes are immune, among other things, from substitution arguments. You can't just kill us an replace us with equally happy great apes.
FWIW, IIRC.
You can't just kill us an replace us with equally happy great apes.
As long as my boss knows that.
You can't just kill us an replace us with equally happy great apes.
What about markedly happier great apes?
What about markedly happier great apes?
Not even. People with a concept of the future and death have a strong interest in living.
You may, however, be replaceable by a perpetually ecstatic great ape.
Or by many very happy apes, presumably. So (I think)
You can't just kill us an replace us with equally happy great apes.
should be read as "an equal number of equally happy..."
Of course, how happy and how many will be difficult, etc. etc.
Singer doesn't have any kind of incommensurable-values view, given the animal stuff.
FL: You're right, I should have said an equal number of equally happy great apes.
As for the incommensurable values thing, I think the value in Peter Singers thought is that when people are dealing with commensurable values but fail to treat them proportionately, he calls them on it. Animal pain is commensurable with human pain, so it shouldn't matter whether the creature in pain is animal or human.
The funny thing is, I like minimizing animal pain, euthanizing people, and feeding the starving. I just find PS's ways of getting there (theoretically, that is) to be tiresome.
Soylent Green -- an efficient way of meeting all three goals!
How about that infinite number of infinitely happy great apes? Will they reproduce Singer's writings?
The funny thing is, I like … euthanizing people
You might find that more of a problem for your job prospects than the occasional strong oath.
Or what about a very large but not infinite number of slightly happy great apes.
Suppose, for example, that for every grain of sand in the Ganges river there were another Ganges river, and for every grain of sand in all these Ganges rivers there were a continent inhabited entirely by great apes, and that each of these great apes rated 5.1 on the happiness scale.
Thanks to Fontana for the kind words, as always. What's not to like about Singer? Well, as Fontana says, everything Singer is going to say about an issue can be predicted by a 4k program.
It's also true that I personally hate preference satisfaction utilitarianism. But this is a hatred everyone can share! Consider, the moral act in a given situation is the one that increases the satisfaction of preferences. Even if we knew how on earth to concieve of this calculation (how many preferences does a person have, anyway? Is satisfaction on/off or scalar? how do we compare satisfaction between people?), one might still ask if this is the right thing to be maximizing. Question to all of you out there in blog-land: do you think your preferences have moral salience simply because you have them? Don't you distinguish between some moally salient preferences and other, less important ones, and isn't it clear that this principle of distinction has nothing at all to do with the degree to which they interfere or augment other people's preferences?
Oddly enough the best thing Singer has done -- advocate for greater concern for the moral status of animals -- is the one that gets him most of his bad press. Reducing the suffering of animals and giving them some weight in moral consideration is a highly defensible conclusion from any number of starting points. And it's to Singer's credit that he's done so much to bring the needless suffering of animals to public attention.
I've recommend it before, but among the virtues of Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction is an excellent disucssion of four different types of utilitarianism, preference satisfaction being the third and informed preference satisfaction being the fourth.
Honestly, I'm not sure how much to lean on the epistemic considerations. I can wrap my mind around ranking states of affairs, but I balk at the idea that the ranking I'm halfway pretending to imagine has a straightforward relationship to the extension of "right act."
For me, anyway, a lot of wind was taken out of various utilitarian sails when I read that famous Scanlon paper. ("Contractualism and utilitarianism"? Crap. I'm blanking on the name.) Oh, look-- *there's* the point of morality.
Predictable, but extreme, conclusions from a few simple ethical principles. That is just how the Cato Institute rolls, baby.
26, 27: "I done recommend it before" would also be correct.
OK, where's the line between a consistent position and a tediously predictable position?
JE in 24: that's what we in the biz call the "Repugnant Conclusion."