Talk:Peter Singer

I thnk the articles needs a more detailed explanation of Singer's ethic. I don't kow his work, but I think his ethic is logical consequence of some principles (for example, ethics must be as much universal as possible).

Go ahead. You can edit that page right now! (http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?action=edit&id=Peter_Singer)

Singer is in/famous also for arguing that human children up to 30 days old should potentially be subject to euthanasia if keeping them alive creates extreme hardship for themselves, parents, or society.

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"He almost single-handedly jump-started the [animal rights]? movement ... in which he argues against what he calls 'speciesm'..."

Google gives 3,00 hits for "speciesism" and 103 for "speciesm". Therefore changing the spelling in the entry.

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Isn't Peter Singer also the author of "Towards a Darwinian Left"?

Isn't he currently head of bioethics at the University of Toronto?

He is the author of "Darwinian Left" (pretty obvious boring stuff though, at least for Darwinian leftists :-)) and he is at Princeton, not Toronto. AxelBoldt 01:06 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)

There's another Peter Singer working at Toronto. He usually writes under 'Peter A. Singer', to distinguish himself from his Princetonian namesake. Ironically, Singer's second name is Albert, and so 'Peter A. Singer' could also stand for the name of the author of Animal Liberation. But actually Singer never uses his second name.Sir Paul 02:28, Feb 10, 2004 (UTC)

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I very much doubt that "disabled infants he wishes to kill" could be classed as NPOV. To my knowledge Singer has never expressed a wish to kill anyone. He has argued that in certain circumstances it is ethical to kill disabled infants, which is not the same thing. Adam 14:27, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I am upset by Singer's views (which I have read outside of this article.) He thinks it is Ok to kill sick babies, sick old people, and to have sex animals, yet there is barely any criticism of him at all in this article. I can say with near certainty that 99% of Americans would want this man behind bars. Considering such extremist views (many of which would land him in jail if he practiced what he preached), the lack of presenting an opposing point of view in this article is a derelection of our POV policy. RK 15:03, Dec 6, 2003 (UTC)

Danny, please stop writing incorrecy statements. Pete Singer is not opposed only by right-wing Christian right-to-lifers. That is a dishonest thing to imply. The strong criticisms of his position come from humanists, Jews, Muslims, Christians and people who are against cruelty to animals, and from people who are against murdering 27 day old sick babies. When you reframe this as a debate between him and right-to-lifers, you are being disingenuous. RK 15:39, Dec 6, 2003 (UTC)

RK. You have long ago made the point that you are an idiot. No need to hammer it home any further. As for my changes in the article, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish groups are indeed "religious" groups. Why do you insist on saying Jewish twice? Yes, they criticize his conclusions. Why is it necessary to include the word immoral twice? Are you afraid people won't get that point either? Your choice of language--killing babies, for instance--is a gross misrepresentation of the man's beliefs. Adding a dozen links as to why he is "wrong" while bringing just one group that supports him is POV because it lacks balance. Telling me to "get control" over myself because you disagreed with an edit I made lacks the slightest hint of "Wiki etiquette." Writing "killing babies and fucking animals" on the Recent Changes page is simply gross. Claiming that I deny religious groups condemn him is simply wrong. I made that point in each edit. Fortunately, I do not expect more from you. Danny 15:52, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Uh, I am not the one who says it it might be Ok for humans to f___ animals. Peter Singer does, and so does the president of PETA. Your disgust at me, and not them, is unjustified. Don't let your disagreements with me warp your understanding of which people are promoting these horrific positions. RK

The article as it stands clearly states Singers position, then clearly states that there are many people who find his views odious and unacceptable. Adding hysterical comments and tabloid style headings doesn't help create an NPOV encyclopedia article, and we arn't stupid you know. I don't have to be shouted at and hectored to realise that Singers views on euthenasia and inter-species sex are bonkers quercus robur

RK - Having extremist views is not a reason to be put behind bars. What do your 99% of Americans think about freedom of speech? Dankelleher

Contents

1 Questionable sentences and more 1 Trimming and bestiality 2 Bestiality 3 POV sentence removed

Questionable sentences and more

• He holds the interests of all beings which are capable of suffering to be worthy of equal consideration (Reading this, I want to know how PS defines suffer. Does a fish suffer? and a jellyfish? I'd like an explanation.) gbog
  • Although I don't know exactly how he defines it, I would surmise that suffering to PS requires an appropriately developed and powerful brain. In the same way that a dog and a newborn can neither "understand that [they] have a past and a future" (The President of Good and Evil, p. 42) and consequently may not merit our absolute protection, there is evidence that many animals simply lack the brain capacity to feel pain and therefore cannot suffer (see this article (http://www.nal.usda.gov/awic/pubs/Fishwelfare/RoseC.pdf), for example). Timbo
    • It might help to distinguish the philosophical question from the empirical one. Singer's position as a philosopher is quite clear: anything that can suffer deserves ethical consideration. The empirical question of what can suffer is one for the scientists to answer, not the philosophers. Incidentally, Singer's position on that point is that since he doesn't know which animals can and cannot suffer, he gives them all the benefit of the doubt and doesn't eat any of them. Markalexander100 05:12, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• Since the unborn, infants and severely disabled people lack the latter (but not the former) ability (NOTE This assumption only considers a human perspective and gives no thought to the possbility of an alternate intelligence of the human or prehuman entity described, which, in itself is contrary to his underlying argument), he states that abortion and painless infanticide and euthanasia can be justified in certain circumstances (This uppercase NOTE shows that there likely is a better way to explain that.) gbog

• Singer's position has been vigorously attacked by religious groups, right-to-life supporters, and advocates for disabled people. (I guess that ethical groups have also attacked PS position.) gbog

• Singer's fundamental principles are shared by many philosophers (I'd like to know which philosophers and I doubt they are so numerous.) gbog

• Singer laments the injustice... and give money to UNICEF and Singer served as chair of philosophy... (Why the Hell are those paragraphs under Criticism?) gbog

• Singer's views on inter-species sexual relationships chapter (imo, should be moved before Criticis) gbog

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I removed irrelevant and/or possibly apocriphal quotes, regrouped some oddly-placed paragraphs, deleted enormous list of anti-Singer sites (especially given that there's not a single pro-Singer article), and NPOVed a few passages.

I'm not entirely happy with my proposed categorization, though it will hopefully be less arbitrary than the previous one.

It would be nice to expand the article with more detailed discussion covering what Singer said in books such as Democracy and Disobedience, The Expanding Circle, One World, and The President of Good and Evil, as well as extending the treatment of the issues covered in Practical Ethics. As it stands, the entry seems little more than an excuse to ventilate the disgust that Singer's views provoke in certain people. Sir Paul 00:11, Feb 9, 2004 (UTC)

I reverted your edit because removing all anti-Singer sites is too much, and I wasn't able to correctly diff your other edits. (All in red because of a line added in the beg.) I agree that many edits are needed on the page, though. gbog 05:01, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The anti-Singer links are completely out of place. This should be primarily an entry on the views of a philosopher, not a platform for people to attack them. What would you say if the entry on Bertrand Russell was filled with links to sites condemning his views on nudity, atheism or premarital sex? This hysterical abuse of Wikipedia just damages the image of an otherwise excellent resource, and as such should be firmly resisted. Sir Paul 02:23, Feb 10, 2004 (UTC)

I agree that the anti-Singer links list could be a little bit more balanced. Btw, please don't compare Russel and Singer, stop kidding me :) gbog

You are missing the point of the comparison. It is not necessary to grant that Singer is a philosopher of the stature of Russell to acknowledge that if anti-Russell links are unacceptable in the Russell article, so are anti-Singer ones in his.Sir Paul 06:30, Feb 11, 2004 (UTC)

I don't agree, sorry. I don't think Russel is as controversial as Singer, that why the comparison doesn't match. Take Heidegger. I would be horrified if WP didn't tell anything about bad sides of his thought and acts, wouldn't you ? gbog 12:11, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Let's take the Heideggerian example. I would say that his Nazi views merit one additional external link -- and note we are talking about Nazism. Interestingly enough, after writing this last sentence I actually went to the Heidegger article and discovered that there are four external links, only one of them dealing with his ties to National Socialism. So my proposal is this: either leave the Princeton Students Against Infanticide link, which was in the article before the inclusion of the anti-Singer links, or choose another site that you consider representative of those opposed to Singer. Sir Paul 00:05, Feb 15, 2004 (UTC)

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Gbog, don't revert without considering my reasons for deletion. Your addition is confusing and badly worded, is not integrated to the rest of the article, and adds little if anything to the long list of criticisms made earlier. Sir Paul 00:16, Feb 15, 2004 (UTC)

I agree, my little addition is confusing, badly worded and not perfectly integrated, so feel free to refactor it. If you show me where in the article it is said that Singer's "uneuphemistic" conclusions shows clearly the limits of utilitarism and consequentalism to any human being that wouldn't agree with infanticide or disabled killing (even if painless), I will also agree that my add is redundant and should be removed. gbog 04:39, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I don't understand what you mean when you ask me to point "where in the article it is said that Singer's "uneuphemistic" conclusions show clearly the limits of utilitarianism and consequentialism to any human being that wouldn't agree with infanticide or disabled killing". I read the sentence several times, but still don't get it. Please rephrase it, and I'll do my best to answer you. Sir Paul 05:26, Feb 15, 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, my English is far from perfect. I hope you can forgive me. The thing I wish to add in article is this one : Singer take utilitarism and drive it to it's natural conclusions or consequences, like allowing painless infanticide, (pseudo) eugenism, bestiality and so on. Therefore, from an anti-utilitarist point of view (that you may have guessed I share), Singer's work is a good thing, because it shows that utilitarist ethic is not able to prevent us from those evil things, and shows that we need a more efficient kind of ethic. Stated in another way, if I were a convinced utilitarist, I would hate Singer's work and do my best to prove that his conclusions are wrongly deduced from utilitarian axioms, because there are few things that I don't want to be allowed by the ethical system I believe in. Do I explaim myself clearly enough? gbog 10:39, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I think so. But to be honest I think your criticism is too subtle and infrequent to merit inclusion in an article that does not even deal with Singer's own views on many issues. Remember, also, that our purpose should be to expose the current state of the question, not to add our own viewpoints on it. What you say may be relevant for a paper about Singer, but not for an encylopedia that should aim to cover the most important and / or frequent objections to Singer's ethical system. Sir Paul 03:15, Feb 16, 2004 (UTC)

You know, objections against utilitarism (and its "strong" interpretations as Singer's) are not very new nor very "infrequent. Most confucianists and daoists have already spoken against Mohism (Chinese utilitarism, aborted) in -200. In contimental Europe, utilitarism is something that only few people would adopt. The hardest point for Germans is that utilitarism isn't able to forbid eugenism. I our article, this point is only mentioned, and I would like to know what is the real answer (something like "read the books" is not enough). In short, the article don't go deep in debate on Singer's ideas and it could. When you say that my critics is too subtle, it's flattering for me, but not for other readers that are probably much more intelligent than you suppose them to be. gbog 04:49, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

That utilitarianism is unpopular in Europe is completely irrelevant. It is also unpopular in my country (Argentina), but so what? It is also irrelevant that your objection has been often leveled against utilitarianism. We are talking about the philosophy of Peter Singer here, and in that context the objection is very infrequent --and certainly not frequent enough to have become established as one of the standard objections against Singer that a reputable encyclopedia like Wikipedia would want to incorporate. This is not a place to settle, let alone initiate, a controversy: it is a place to report the usual ones. Sir Paul 05:27, Feb 17, 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure to understand you. Except if, for you, an article in a reputable encyclopedia is to state nothing more than "P. Singer is an australian utilitarianist who wrote controversed books", I don't see why the fact that many people disagree (and why) couldn't be written here in a certain level of details, with the answers to objections that the author and his defenders may have given. My main goal is to know more about Singer's ideas (that's my first reaction when I read the article: I want to know more, I want theis article to say more, for example I want to know why killing disabled is not eugenism). My little addition was intended to spark off answers that would be good meat to add. I see that it didn't work very well and we got into a meta-discussion on whether or not to include this little thing... gbog 14:11, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

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Just wanted to question the section about Singer's mother. According to a BBC interview broadcast (most recently) last night (29 June 2004), his mother was not euthanised because a decision was made among Singer's siblings. Singer said that had it been purely his decision, he would have chosen euthanasia. I don't know how well this fits in with previous statements he may have made, but perhaps those previous statements don't give the full picture. Dankelleher 11:37, 30 June 2004 (UTC)

Trimming and bestiality

I've pruned some of the discussion, bearing in mind that this is a place for describing Singer's views and the criticism of them, not for us to debate those views.

I'm very suspicious of the comment that These views themselves [on bestiality] are regarded as criminal in a few legal systems. Can anyone give a source/be more specific? It seems very unlikely to me that a hypothetical comment such as Singer's would be illegal in itself. Markalexander100 08:25, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Bestiality

It is my view that this bestiality section is inappropriate to the current state of the article. The article is not long enough for the inclusion of what is a brief comment in relation to the entire body of Singer's work.

LegCircus 01:29, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)

I entirely agree that the article is not long enough. The solution is to write something more. Markalexander100 05:11, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

POV sentence removed

I removed the comment "(Of course he feels in a position to deem what the "benefit" is. The benefit for who?)" in the section "Animal liberation" and replaced it with "Due to the subjectivity of the term "benefit", controversy exists about this and his other views." I thought the old comment was very encocyclopaedic and POV. Feel free to change my sentence.--capnez 21:56, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)