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Practical Ethics
Peter Singer's remarkably clear and comprehensive Practical Ethics has become a classic introduction to applied ethics since its publication in 1979 and has been translated into many languages. For this second edition the author has revised all the existing chapters, added two new ones, and updated the bibliography. He has also added an appendix describing some of the deep misunderstanding of and consequent violent reaction to the book in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland where the book has tested the limits of freedom of speech. The focus of the book is the application of ethics to difficult and controversial social questions.
411 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
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8815 people want to read
About the author
Peter Singer
173 books10.1k followersPeter Singer is sometimes called "the world’s most influential living philosopher" although he thinks that if that is true, it doesn't say much for all the other living philosophers around today. He has also been called the father (or grandfather?) of the modern animal rights movement, even though he doesn't base his philosophical views on rights, either for humans or for animals.
In 2005 Time magazine named Singer one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute ranked him 3rd among Global Thought Leaders for 2013. (He has since slipped to 36th.) He is known especially for his work on the ethics of our treatment of animals, for his controversial critique of the sanctity of life doctrine in bioethics, and for his writings on the obligations of the affluent to aid those living in extreme poverty.
Singer first became well-known internationally after the publication of Animal Liberation in 1975. In 2011 Time included Animal Liberation on its “All-TIME” list of the 100 best nonfiction books published in English since the magazine began, in 1923. Singer has written, co-authored, edited or co-edited more than 50 books, including Practical Ethics; The Expanding Circle; How Are We to Live?, Rethinking Life and Death, The Ethics of What We Eat (with Jim Mason), The Point of View of the Universe (with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek), The Most Good You Can Do, Ethics in the Real World and Utilitarianism: A Very Short Introduction. His works have appeared in more than 30 languages.
Singer’s book The Life You Can Save, first published in 2009, led him to found a non-profit organization of the same name. In 2019, Singer got back the rights to the book and granted them to the organization, enabling it to make the eBook and audiobook versions available free from its website, www.thelifeyoucansave.org.
Peter Singer was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1946, and educated at the University of Melbourne and the University of Oxford. After teaching in England, the United States and Australia, he has, since 1999, been Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. He is married, with three daughters and four grandchildren. His recreations include hiking and surfing. In 2012 he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, the nation’s highest civic honour.
In 2005 Time magazine named Singer one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute ranked him 3rd among Global Thought Leaders for 2013. (He has since slipped to 36th.) He is known especially for his work on the ethics of our treatment of animals, for his controversial critique of the sanctity of life doctrine in bioethics, and for his writings on the obligations of the affluent to aid those living in extreme poverty.
Singer first became well-known internationally after the publication of Animal Liberation in 1975. In 2011 Time included Animal Liberation on its “All-TIME” list of the 100 best nonfiction books published in English since the magazine began, in 1923. Singer has written, co-authored, edited or co-edited more than 50 books, including Practical Ethics; The Expanding Circle; How Are We to Live?, Rethinking Life and Death, The Ethics of What We Eat (with Jim Mason), The Point of View of the Universe (with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek), The Most Good You Can Do, Ethics in the Real World and Utilitarianism: A Very Short Introduction. His works have appeared in more than 30 languages.
Singer’s book The Life You Can Save, first published in 2009, led him to found a non-profit organization of the same name. In 2019, Singer got back the rights to the book and granted them to the organization, enabling it to make the eBook and audiobook versions available free from its website, www.thelifeyoucansave.org.
Peter Singer was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1946, and educated at the University of Melbourne and the University of Oxford. After teaching in England, the United States and Australia, he has, since 1999, been Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. He is married, with three daughters and four grandchildren. His recreations include hiking and surfing. In 2012 he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, the nation’s highest civic honour.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 210 reviews
February 6, 2013
Practical Ethics is one of those books that authors cite all the time, but which I had never actually read**. In terms of discussing personal ethics in a humanist framework, there's nothing better than this book. Singer goes through the issues so clearly and yet conversationally, and also thoroughly addresses criticisms of and weaknesses in his arguments.
However I was unprepared for Singer appearing to be in favour of euthanizing babies with Down syndrome and Myelomeningocele (spina bifida) (pp. 127-138). Singer refers to children with these conditions as "defective". WHAT. THE. EVERLOVING. FUCK?! When people cite Singer they always seem to skip this bit. Singer's reasoning here is the lack of mobility, lack of bladder control, and "mental retardation" makes a life with spina bifida not worth living, and that people with Down Syndrome are not capable of rational reasoning, rather, leading lives primarily driven by emotions, and are therefore not persons ("although their lives may be pleasant enough, as the lives of children are"). (You'll be happy to know Singer excludes haemophilia: haemophiliacs "find life worth living". Also, "it could be that a childless couple would be prepared to adopt a haemophiliac" (p. 138) if the parent doesn't want them.)
Singer states, "killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all" (p. 138).
I acknowledge this is an incredibly complex situation, and one I have never been in (and likely will never be). People in this situation may make different decisions.
I support abortion: I believe a human's right to determine what happens to their body overrides the rights of the potential human. This couple would have aborted their fetus had they known she would be disabled. This is the mother's decision: her right to decide, not mine. But the implication here is that they would have preferred the right to kill the infant once born. Ethically is there a difference? This is the basis of Singer's argument.
Dr Henk Prins did just this: he euthanized newborn Rianne Quirine Kunst at the parents' request, because she had "hydrocephaly, spina bifida and leg deformities". This British ethicist argues that a post-birth abortion is no different to a pre-birth abortion.
But where do we draw the line? Who gets to judge if a life is worth living? The voices of those affected by euthanasia are often the least likely to be heard. It's so complex, but I do know there is absolutely no way I could ever support the right of a parent to euthanise a infant with Down syndrome. No way. Nope. It would mean we have the right to determine which kind of conscious, self-aware life can have meaning. A determination that difference = disposable.
So I think to myself, at the extreme end, what about an infant with no brain at all, would I be OK with euthanizing this hypothetical infant? Then I find out that's not unheard of. Nicholas Coke lived three years with no brain, but with a brain stem. As Nicholas was from the US I cringe to think what medical costs the family was shouldering, as he needed 12 daily medications. But this Kiwi kid needs to raise NZ$500,000 a year for his medical costs, and I couldn't possibly consider for a second that we have a right to euthanize him. And Nicholas's family describe him laughing and finding things funny. That doesn't sound like a life with no meaning.
What I do know is I personally could never make the determination to euthanise anyone but myself (and I do hope NZ has legalised euthanasia when I get to the end of my life, whenever that may be).
Anyway, I'm rating the book a five. Although I don't agree with Singer on everything, it's incredibly thought-provoking. And I'm going to read some of his more recent work, as I assume he has modified his stance on infant euthanasia in the last 30 years (or maybe not, who knows).
** Clearly I'm not the only one. While I was reading this on lunch breaks three different people said to me, "Ohhh, you're reading Singer!". When I asked if they had read him, they all said no, but they'd read of and on him frequently.
However I was unprepared for Singer appearing to be in favour of euthanizing babies with Down syndrome and Myelomeningocele (spina bifida) (pp. 127-138). Singer refers to children with these conditions as "defective". WHAT. THE. EVERLOVING. FUCK?! When people cite Singer they always seem to skip this bit. Singer's reasoning here is the lack of mobility, lack of bladder control, and "mental retardation" makes a life with spina bifida not worth living, and that people with Down Syndrome are not capable of rational reasoning, rather, leading lives primarily driven by emotions, and are therefore not persons ("although their lives may be pleasant enough, as the lives of children are"). (You'll be happy to know Singer excludes haemophilia: haemophiliacs "find life worth living". Also, "it could be that a childless couple would be prepared to adopt a haemophiliac" (p. 138) if the parent doesn't want them.)
Singer states, "killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all" (p. 138).
I acknowledge this is an incredibly complex situation, and one I have never been in (and likely will never be). People in this situation may make different decisions.
I support abortion: I believe a human's right to determine what happens to their body overrides the rights of the potential human. This couple would have aborted their fetus had they known she would be disabled. This is the mother's decision: her right to decide, not mine. But the implication here is that they would have preferred the right to kill the infant once born. Ethically is there a difference? This is the basis of Singer's argument.
Dr Henk Prins did just this: he euthanized newborn Rianne Quirine Kunst at the parents' request, because she had "hydrocephaly, spina bifida and leg deformities". This British ethicist argues that a post-birth abortion is no different to a pre-birth abortion.
But where do we draw the line? Who gets to judge if a life is worth living? The voices of those affected by euthanasia are often the least likely to be heard. It's so complex, but I do know there is absolutely no way I could ever support the right of a parent to euthanise a infant with Down syndrome. No way. Nope. It would mean we have the right to determine which kind of conscious, self-aware life can have meaning. A determination that difference = disposable.
So I think to myself, at the extreme end, what about an infant with no brain at all, would I be OK with euthanizing this hypothetical infant? Then I find out that's not unheard of. Nicholas Coke lived three years with no brain, but with a brain stem. As Nicholas was from the US I cringe to think what medical costs the family was shouldering, as he needed 12 daily medications. But this Kiwi kid needs to raise NZ$500,000 a year for his medical costs, and I couldn't possibly consider for a second that we have a right to euthanize him. And Nicholas's family describe him laughing and finding things funny. That doesn't sound like a life with no meaning.
What I do know is I personally could never make the determination to euthanise anyone but myself (and I do hope NZ has legalised euthanasia when I get to the end of my life, whenever that may be).
Anyway, I'm rating the book a five. Although I don't agree with Singer on everything, it's incredibly thought-provoking. And I'm going to read some of his more recent work, as I assume he has modified his stance on infant euthanasia in the last 30 years (or maybe not, who knows).
** Clearly I'm not the only one. While I was reading this on lunch breaks three different people said to me, "Ohhh, you're reading Singer!". When I asked if they had read him, they all said no, but they'd read of and on him frequently.
January 14, 2018
Of course this book is far from impartial. But it offer good and scrupulous arguments for his choices.
The book is written in a very dry and unhelpfully, boring manner. Yet the content of the book is far from boring.
I'm not going to write more on this review, my dog is barking at me to take him for a walk.
The book is written in a very dry and unhelpfully, boring manner. Yet the content of the book is far from boring.
I'm not going to write more on this review, my dog is barking at me to take him for a walk.
February 6, 2017
Practical Ethics was recommended to me by my ethics professor. She claimed that the book was the reason she became a vegetarian.
Reading this book will be an eye-opening experience for many. The discussions tackle the biggest questions facing ethics. At what point should we consider a fetus a human being? What is the value of one human life compared to another? Why worry about saving the environment?
A highlight of the text is that Singer starts with a simple question or example which you will intuitively answer. He then follows the line of logic to a conclusion that may surprise or even shock you. This will make you go back and analyze your own values and presumptions. In that respect, Practical Ethics is an amazing and thought-provoking work.
Because of this structure, Practical Ethics needs to be read in order. Chapters build on arguments made (and supposedly resolved, or at least presumed to be resolved) in previous chapters. So you can't just jump to the clickbait 'euthanasia' section and come away with a clear understanding. The conclusions can run counter to conventional wisdom, but he's not afraid to follow the logic.
It will be no surprise that Singer gets plenty of flak on his conclusions, some of which comes from people who didn't get the whole picture. (See the appendix of the 2nd edition to learn how he was unfairly treated in Germany for exactly this reason...)
All that said, I did find the final chapter discussion of 'why we should act morally' would have fit better at the beginning of the book. Although the results of that discussion are probably the most eye-opening of all, and I can understand why the author would hold that big reveal off till the end.
Regardless of whether I agreed or disagreed with Singer's conclusions, Practical Ethics helped me to clarify my own position on complicated and emotionally loaded issues like abortion, euthanasia, animal rights and environmental ethics. It made me more aware of critical aspects of what it means to be human in the first place.
And No, reading Practical Ethics did not turn me into a vegetarian. Your mileage may vary...
-Zero
Reading this book will be an eye-opening experience for many. The discussions tackle the biggest questions facing ethics. At what point should we consider a fetus a human being? What is the value of one human life compared to another? Why worry about saving the environment?
A highlight of the text is that Singer starts with a simple question or example which you will intuitively answer. He then follows the line of logic to a conclusion that may surprise or even shock you. This will make you go back and analyze your own values and presumptions. In that respect, Practical Ethics is an amazing and thought-provoking work.
Because of this structure, Practical Ethics needs to be read in order. Chapters build on arguments made (and supposedly resolved, or at least presumed to be resolved) in previous chapters. So you can't just jump to the clickbait 'euthanasia' section and come away with a clear understanding. The conclusions can run counter to conventional wisdom, but he's not afraid to follow the logic.
It will be no surprise that Singer gets plenty of flak on his conclusions, some of which comes from people who didn't get the whole picture. (See the appendix of the 2nd edition to learn how he was unfairly treated in Germany for exactly this reason...)
All that said, I did find the final chapter discussion of 'why we should act morally' would have fit better at the beginning of the book. Although the results of that discussion are probably the most eye-opening of all, and I can understand why the author would hold that big reveal off till the end.
Regardless of whether I agreed or disagreed with Singer's conclusions, Practical Ethics helped me to clarify my own position on complicated and emotionally loaded issues like abortion, euthanasia, animal rights and environmental ethics. It made me more aware of critical aspects of what it means to be human in the first place.
And No, reading Practical Ethics did not turn me into a vegetarian. Your mileage may vary...
-Zero
May 26, 2009
Read down in Savannah back in 2002; I picked up an archival copy back in 2004. Lots of good thinking here, but Singer's *way* too quick to consider something "conclusively demonstrated." I found his animal rights doctrine a particularly grotesque pill to swallow, and his arguments regarding abortion rather slipshod reasoning (although not so much as the roe v wade decision itself) -- I'm staunchly pro-choice, but certainly not due to Singer-style arguments. For that matter, the 700,000 Americans arrested each year for marijuana possession -- the major ethical failure of our times, and a barbarism that future generations will look upon with shudders -- are never mentioned. Sorry Pete, but while billions of dollars are being spent to restrict basic pharmaceutical freedoms, the cows can wait.
For a non-scientist, though, his reasoning's not too bad and cut well above the typical jib surrounding such passionate topics. Until my comrades in the neurological arts get off their duffers and solve this problem, armchair ethicists like Singer will lead the way.
(Singer, featured on the cover, is far too thin and needs badly to eat some delicious animals. It'd probably leave him much less worried and flighty.)
For a non-scientist, though, his reasoning's not too bad and cut well above the typical jib surrounding such passionate topics. Until my comrades in the neurological arts get off their duffers and solve this problem, armchair ethicists like Singer will lead the way.
(Singer, featured on the cover, is far too thin and needs badly to eat some delicious animals. It'd probably leave him much less worried and flighty.)
April 27, 2019
Deliciei-me a ler, quase compulsivamente, esta ética prática relatada com recurso a uma linguagem totalmente acessível a leigos e na qual são suscitadas perspectivas de temas actualíssimos que se espera que façam o leitor questionar as suas prévias concepções,assim as tivesse, ou a pensar em matérias da maior importância com as quais, por qualquer motivo, não se tivesse cruzado ou nas quais não houvesse reflectido.
Independentemente de se concordar ou não com as posições do autor - e, na verdade, no que me respeita, não vejo muito por onde discordar, pese embora a “novidade” de algumas das soluções-, o que mais me surpreendeu em toda a obra foi o capítulo complementar em que é relatado o extremismo radical- expressão pleonástica propositadamente utilizada- dos que discordam das posições de Singer, que na Alemanha das décadas de 80 e 90 chegou a atingir foros de censura que nem o passado de má memória deste país justifica.
Renovo os meus agradecimentos a quem, por interposta e bem intencionada pessoa, me recomendou a obra, sendo que à dita interposta e bem intencionada pessoa já fui manifestando o meu agrado e reconhecimento pela generosa mediação.
Independentemente de se concordar ou não com as posições do autor - e, na verdade, no que me respeita, não vejo muito por onde discordar, pese embora a “novidade” de algumas das soluções-, o que mais me surpreendeu em toda a obra foi o capítulo complementar em que é relatado o extremismo radical- expressão pleonástica propositadamente utilizada- dos que discordam das posições de Singer, que na Alemanha das décadas de 80 e 90 chegou a atingir foros de censura que nem o passado de má memória deste país justifica.
Renovo os meus agradecimentos a quem, por interposta e bem intencionada pessoa, me recomendou a obra, sendo que à dita interposta e bem intencionada pessoa já fui manifestando o meu agrado e reconhecimento pela generosa mediação.
June 12, 2021
Practical Ethics is a great book to start your journey in the complicated field of ethics, especially for a philosophy neophyte (such as I am). It has been written in a very accessible manner so you don't have to worry about your brain getting blown to smithereens by the complexity of the concepts or the dire nature of the commentary- characteristics that many who attempt to read philosophy have come to detest.
For someone who hasn't read much on this subject, this book can shake many assumptions that they have taken for granted and offers an excellent approach on how to think about them.
It covers diverse topics- from animal rights and abortion to civil disobedience and charity and argues effectively to upend many of the ideas that we may hold, thanks to societal/theological conditioning or just because we've never taken the effort to reflect upon and question them. Some conclusions may certainly shock the reader, which is why I found this to be a very thought-provoking (yet well-balanced and non-aggressive) read.
On the whole, it might massively benefit you (and the society) by nudging you to walk the ethical path. The title contains the word 'Practical' for a reason.
For someone who hasn't read much on this subject, this book can shake many assumptions that they have taken for granted and offers an excellent approach on how to think about them.
It covers diverse topics- from animal rights and abortion to civil disobedience and charity and argues effectively to upend many of the ideas that we may hold, thanks to societal/theological conditioning or just because we've never taken the effort to reflect upon and question them. Some conclusions may certainly shock the reader, which is why I found this to be a very thought-provoking (yet well-balanced and non-aggressive) read.
On the whole, it might massively benefit you (and the society) by nudging you to walk the ethical path. The title contains the word 'Practical' for a reason.
July 13, 2010
*I am presently homeless and can only use the public library's computers for a limited amount of time each day, so this review is probably going to be done piecemeally.
One thing I had been wondering about Peter Singer for some time now is what his position is on meta-ethics. It is well know that he is a preference utilitarian, and he spends the bulk of his books discussing the application of that normative system. What I hadn't remembered from my previous reading of this book is that Singer lays out his stance on meta-ethics in chapter 1. What is clear from that reading is that Singer does not hold to any particular meta-ethical view, but maintains that several meta-ethical positions are plausible. Among these are the prescriptivism of his former instructor R.M. Hare, J.L. Mackie's error theory, and some form of ideal observer theory.
Singer goes on to discuss different conceptions of equality, ultimately arriving at the one that forms the basis of applicability for his system of ethics. Basing ethical equality on a descriptive property shared by the bearers of ethical considerablility does not work because only some subset of said bearers may have that property, and not to the same degree. For instance, using self awareness as the basis for equality would likely include only subsets of a handful of species, including humans. If such a criterion were consistently applied, infants and some severely mentally handicapped persons would be excluded. Such people would be but objects for us to use at our disposal.
Singer goes through a number of possible criteria of this kind, each time showing some critical flaw in what its logical consequences would have us do. The system of equality that Singer ends up with is one that owes a great deal to R.M. Hare, who in turn derives a major component of his ethics from Kant's categorical imperitive, which states: "act only according to that maxim that whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law". Thus, for Hare as well as Singer, universalizabiltiy in ethics is a fundamental concept, to be applied across the board in all like cases. For Singer, this means that the interests of all beings are to be weighted equally. My interests don't count for more simply because they're MY interests, for example.
From there Singer applies preference utilitarianism with the above mentioned conception of equality to what he considers to some of the biggest ethical problems of our time. These include world hunger, euthanasia, abortion, speciesism, environmentalism, and refugee issues. With that it is time for us to turn our attention to these issues.
Speciesism: In terms of the scale of the suffering involved, and the damage done to the environment thereby, speciesism and the manner in which humans treat non-human animals is most probably the biggest ethical problem facing the world today. Billions of animals are raised and killed for food per year in the United States alone, under horrendous conditions for the well being of the animals, and which contributes more to global warming than automobiles. What makes this possible is both a lack of transparency in agribuisness and a moral attitude called "speciesism", which holds that species membership is a valid ethical distinction to make for purposes of the ethical considerability of the beings involved. There is in fact a sharp distinction drawn in many societies between the moral worth of humans versus all other creatures.
The religious history of the world, for Western religions in particular, does not fair well in this regard. For instance, Christian history is full of speciesism justified on the grounds that non-human animals do not have souls. Decartes' monstrous proclamation that non-human animals were like clocks (meaning that they made noises but didn't have minds) paved the way for much cruelty against those creatures.
More to come...
One thing I had been wondering about Peter Singer for some time now is what his position is on meta-ethics. It is well know that he is a preference utilitarian, and he spends the bulk of his books discussing the application of that normative system. What I hadn't remembered from my previous reading of this book is that Singer lays out his stance on meta-ethics in chapter 1. What is clear from that reading is that Singer does not hold to any particular meta-ethical view, but maintains that several meta-ethical positions are plausible. Among these are the prescriptivism of his former instructor R.M. Hare, J.L. Mackie's error theory, and some form of ideal observer theory.
Singer goes on to discuss different conceptions of equality, ultimately arriving at the one that forms the basis of applicability for his system of ethics. Basing ethical equality on a descriptive property shared by the bearers of ethical considerablility does not work because only some subset of said bearers may have that property, and not to the same degree. For instance, using self awareness as the basis for equality would likely include only subsets of a handful of species, including humans. If such a criterion were consistently applied, infants and some severely mentally handicapped persons would be excluded. Such people would be but objects for us to use at our disposal.
Singer goes through a number of possible criteria of this kind, each time showing some critical flaw in what its logical consequences would have us do. The system of equality that Singer ends up with is one that owes a great deal to R.M. Hare, who in turn derives a major component of his ethics from Kant's categorical imperitive, which states: "act only according to that maxim that whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law". Thus, for Hare as well as Singer, universalizabiltiy in ethics is a fundamental concept, to be applied across the board in all like cases. For Singer, this means that the interests of all beings are to be weighted equally. My interests don't count for more simply because they're MY interests, for example.
From there Singer applies preference utilitarianism with the above mentioned conception of equality to what he considers to some of the biggest ethical problems of our time. These include world hunger, euthanasia, abortion, speciesism, environmentalism, and refugee issues. With that it is time for us to turn our attention to these issues.
Speciesism: In terms of the scale of the suffering involved, and the damage done to the environment thereby, speciesism and the manner in which humans treat non-human animals is most probably the biggest ethical problem facing the world today. Billions of animals are raised and killed for food per year in the United States alone, under horrendous conditions for the well being of the animals, and which contributes more to global warming than automobiles. What makes this possible is both a lack of transparency in agribuisness and a moral attitude called "speciesism", which holds that species membership is a valid ethical distinction to make for purposes of the ethical considerability of the beings involved. There is in fact a sharp distinction drawn in many societies between the moral worth of humans versus all other creatures.
The religious history of the world, for Western religions in particular, does not fair well in this regard. For instance, Christian history is full of speciesism justified on the grounds that non-human animals do not have souls. Decartes' monstrous proclamation that non-human animals were like clocks (meaning that they made noises but didn't have minds) paved the way for much cruelty against those creatures.
More to come...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 20, 2020
Haven't read in full- still confident in saying the text is painfully underwhelming: makes Mill seem well-spirited & subtle.
Comments on Marxism make me despair that this guy wrote the OUP intro to it.
Comments on Marxism make me despair that this guy wrote the OUP intro to it.
May 16, 2020
I picked up Peter Singer's book upon many describing it as a comprehensive introduction to applied ethics, and although I didn't agree with all of Peter Singer's moral judgments he has given me so many valuable tools to think about moral issues. The book has 12 chapters, that touch into topics of equality, equality for animals, killing animals, abortion, Euthanasia, income inequality, climate change, the environment, civil disobedience, and violence.
I don't understand why Singer chose preferential utilitarianism ( which values the fulfillment of the greatest amount of personal interests) over hedonistic utilitarianism ( which values the fulfillment of the greatest amount of personal pleasure) to argue for all the topics he addressed. If we can agree that the role of morality is to advance the well being of humans than it makes sense that we take into account people's pleasure rather than their personal interests. Besides that how do we calculate the value of opposing interests? His choice was obviously a way to escape the problems with classical utilitarianism, which wasn't so convincing to me
This, of course, leads him to some counter-intuitive conclusions, he, for example, doesn't see infants as persons, and therefore doesn't consider their killing any worst than killing an animal, of course, he takes into account the fact that human infants have human parents that would have their interests being violated if the infant gets killed, making it worst than killing an animal, but if the parents agree then it isn't any worst.
Now he doesn't use that to justify killing infants but to argue for euthanasia for infants with severe disabilities, something that I am a little unsettled with
At the end of the book Singer tried to make a case for Altruism and for acting morally, by urging us to seek a meaning to life that comes from being a part of an environment that cares for us, and we care for it. But how can we be persuaded by such a plea, if we were asked several times to cast our moral instincts aside, and focus on the reasoning through? wouldn't reason just lead us to egoism? which he acknowledges being the rational thing to do
That being said, I absolutely enjoyed it when Singer was being the devil's advocate, and showing the full scope of arguments that exist for and against a certain practice. I find his arguments for abortion and euthanasia to be really well developed. I also liked his arguments on the obligation of the rich countries to aid the poor ones.
The climate change chapter was the most challenging to read, because of population ethics that I don't seem to be able to wrap my head around it. I, however, enjoyed the practical suggestion that was mentioned in this chapter like an international carbon trading scheme, and carbon taxation.
Overall I think it is pretty obvious that Peter Singer is an empathetic person, trying to do the best he can to convince people to help each other, animals, and the planet effectively.
January 7, 2016
Peter Singer's Practical Ethics is a very considerate book. Singer's writings about equality, the ethical treatment of animals, and ending world poverty are best, it seems to me. I will reframe Singer's positions regarding these, not exactly as Singer put them, but being as charitable as possible as to what he was arguing for. Singer argues that among the varieties of conceptions of equality, we should choose equality of interests of persons (self-conscious rational creatures) and anything capable of experiencing pain or suffering. When we take into account these interests, it becomes abundantly clear that among those who suffer are animals, and by not killing animals for food we could prevent their suffering. Regarding ending world poverty, if we think it is always better, all things being equal, to help someone who is suffering so long as we don't sacrifice anything of comparable moral significance, we should. Therefore, we should help those suffering and subsequently dying of poverty. The ethical treatment of animals and the attempt to end world poverty read as two of the most powerful and convincing arguments I have ever read.
August 19, 2018
A little tip; when reading Singer, surrender your mind (and your whole self) to Singer. A lot of what he says will sit uncomfortably with your basic instinct and gut feeling (no matter how broad minded you thought yourself to be), yet his arguments are compelling. I’ve spent tremendous time try to rebut his arguments in my head. Unfortunately I was unsuccessful in coming with any, let alone good ones.
Not many books leave you with this conflicted feeling; I feel what you are saying is mistaken, yet it makes perfect sense.
You are definitely left wanting to explore more. And that’s always good.
This book is exactly as titled; practical ethics. I don’t think I’ve read a book that tackles such intricate topics with considerable clarity and simplicity. Literally anyone can pick this book and have no doubt at any given page as to what Singer actually meant. After all, Singer has no time for the theoretical.
Not many books leave you with this conflicted feeling; I feel what you are saying is mistaken, yet it makes perfect sense.
You are definitely left wanting to explore more. And that’s always good.
This book is exactly as titled; practical ethics. I don’t think I’ve read a book that tackles such intricate topics with considerable clarity and simplicity. Literally anyone can pick this book and have no doubt at any given page as to what Singer actually meant. After all, Singer has no time for the theoretical.
May 28, 2009
Interesting, not that I agree with all of it. Pretty easy to read, thankfully, and clear.
Edit on reread: I can understand why this book gets some pretty extreme reactions, now I've read it straight through like this. His view of ethics builds up throughout the book, too, so if you don't read all of it, if you read some of it out of context, then he sounds pretty awful.
It also should, if you're properly thinking about it, make you wonder why our society -- globally -- is the way it is, if we claim to be so concerned with morality. Even Christian ethics points the same way as Singer's ethics, despite his intent to make a new, practical system. Why do we let things go on the way we do?
I do agree with a lot of his conclusions, but not because I've necessarily gone through the same thought process. He points out some discomforting truths.
Edit on reread: I can understand why this book gets some pretty extreme reactions, now I've read it straight through like this. His view of ethics builds up throughout the book, too, so if you don't read all of it, if you read some of it out of context, then he sounds pretty awful.
It also should, if you're properly thinking about it, make you wonder why our society -- globally -- is the way it is, if we claim to be so concerned with morality. Even Christian ethics points the same way as Singer's ethics, despite his intent to make a new, practical system. Why do we let things go on the way we do?
I do agree with a lot of his conclusions, but not because I've necessarily gone through the same thought process. He points out some discomforting truths.
July 13, 2021
[Utilitarian BS] drenched in pseudo-compassion. Absolutely revolting. I highly recommend reading his conversations with Harriet Mcbryde Johnson at the NYT. Singer is (arguably) one of the most *intellectually dangerous* living philosophers. His "ethics" are infectious and insidious in their saccharine self-righteousness. And to top it all off-he's a shit thinker! Where is the rigor?! To every edgelord giving this a 5---GAGF.
September 28, 2015
This is the kind of "humanist" BS that you are likely to find everyday on Facebook.
June 2, 2024
Singer plays the hits (utilitarianism, abortion, euthanasia, animal well-being, giving to the poor). This is probably the best summary of his overall views, all very well-argued and readable. I always marvel at his ability to anticipate every counter-argument ahead of time and address it. Some conclusions are hard to accept, like euthanasia for disabled infants with parental consent, but it's so well argued that you do find yourself struggling to find out what's wrong with it. Also, decent amount of social science if you're into that sort of thing.
He spent on a chapter on why its wrong to kill, which I thought was the most interesting. Obviously, we all think it is wrong, but for such a strong taboo, it's not clear why it's so bad. Peter pretty convincingly argues that killing is a wrong that can only be done to conscious, self-aware beings (regardless of species). Even a sentient being, who can feel pleasure or pain, is not necessarily wronged by being killed if the death is painless. I think that's probably right and it sets the stage for all his later arguments on animals, abortion, euthanasia and the like.
Also kinda funny that he has such a matter-of-fact, almost dry, way of talking about these gut-wrenching moral issues. Never change Peter.
Quotes
“I have looked at the paintings in the Louvre, and of many of the other great galleries of Europe and the United States. I think I have a reasonable sense of appreciation of the fine arts; yet I have not had, in any museum, experiences that fill my aesthetic senses as they are filled when I hike to a rocky peak and pause there to survey the forested valley below, or if I sit by a stream tumbling over moss-covered boulders set among tall tree ferns growing in the shade of the forest canopy. I do not think I am alone in this – for many people, wilderness is the source of the greatest feelings of aesthetic appreciation, rising to an almost spiritual intensity.”
“For anyone seeking to escape this cycle of accumulation and ruin, ethics can provide a more durable alternative. If we are looking for a purpose broader than our own interests, something that will allow us to see our lives as possessing significance beyond the narrow confines of our wealth or even our own pleasurable states of consciousness, one obvious solution is to take up the ethical point of view. ”
He spent on a chapter on why its wrong to kill, which I thought was the most interesting. Obviously, we all think it is wrong, but for such a strong taboo, it's not clear why it's so bad. Peter pretty convincingly argues that killing is a wrong that can only be done to conscious, self-aware beings (regardless of species). Even a sentient being, who can feel pleasure or pain, is not necessarily wronged by being killed if the death is painless. I think that's probably right and it sets the stage for all his later arguments on animals, abortion, euthanasia and the like.
Also kinda funny that he has such a matter-of-fact, almost dry, way of talking about these gut-wrenching moral issues. Never change Peter.
Quotes
“I have looked at the paintings in the Louvre, and of many of the other great galleries of Europe and the United States. I think I have a reasonable sense of appreciation of the fine arts; yet I have not had, in any museum, experiences that fill my aesthetic senses as they are filled when I hike to a rocky peak and pause there to survey the forested valley below, or if I sit by a stream tumbling over moss-covered boulders set among tall tree ferns growing in the shade of the forest canopy. I do not think I am alone in this – for many people, wilderness is the source of the greatest feelings of aesthetic appreciation, rising to an almost spiritual intensity.”
“For anyone seeking to escape this cycle of accumulation and ruin, ethics can provide a more durable alternative. If we are looking for a purpose broader than our own interests, something that will allow us to see our lives as possessing significance beyond the narrow confines of our wealth or even our own pleasurable states of consciousness, one obvious solution is to take up the ethical point of view. ”
August 30, 2024
An academic treatise on many topics within the larger field of applied ethics, Practical Ethics seeks to apply consequentialist theory to the real world. My review pertains to the updated third edition, though this has been used in my field for decades in its various forms. Each chapter takes on a different topic, sometimes connected to the last but often a completely new topic, ranging from what even is ethics to killing animals to civil disobedience. On a positive note, Singer is methodical with his argument creation and can construct valid or cogent arguments for each of his positions with ease. For those outside philosophy, valid and cogent have specific meanings in philosophy and ethics: valid pertains to deductive arguments and means that if the premises are true then the conclusion must be true, whereas cogent is the inductive counterpart which means if the premises are true then the conclusion is almost certainly true. Essentially, he is quite skilled is making the structure of his arguments both solid and compelling.
Herein lies the problem, however. While his arguments are valid or cogent, many are not sound. Soundness is how we evaluate the premises to see if they are true, since their truth is what points to the conclusion's truth. Singer uses emotional statements to scaffold his arguments to make them seem sound - for example, saying that some nonhuman arguments are persons, and some humans are not persons or will never attain personhood, and therefore if we wouldn't kill non-person humans why would we kill person non-humans. Worse, however, are the uses of fringe cases to then justify the arguments he creates, morphing the fringe case through minor reductions so that it bridges to the average case. For example, using the example of a fertility worker who mistakenly dumps both a harvested human egg sample and a harvested human sperm sample into the same drain, where it then becomes a fetus, and this is meant to evoke an argument around abortions.
I give the book two-stars because of it's impact and influence on my field, but if it didn't have such an impact then it would only be a one-star for me. Part of giving a review entails identifying the reach of the book and/or the intended audience, even if one doesn't like it.
Herein lies the problem, however. While his arguments are valid or cogent, many are not sound. Soundness is how we evaluate the premises to see if they are true, since their truth is what points to the conclusion's truth. Singer uses emotional statements to scaffold his arguments to make them seem sound - for example, saying that some nonhuman arguments are persons, and some humans are not persons or will never attain personhood, and therefore if we wouldn't kill non-person humans why would we kill person non-humans. Worse, however, are the uses of fringe cases to then justify the arguments he creates, morphing the fringe case through minor reductions so that it bridges to the average case. For example, using the example of a fertility worker who mistakenly dumps both a harvested human egg sample and a harvested human sperm sample into the same drain, where it then becomes a fetus, and this is meant to evoke an argument around abortions.
I give the book two-stars because of it's impact and influence on my field, but if it didn't have such an impact then it would only be a one-star for me. Part of giving a review entails identifying the reach of the book and/or the intended audience, even if one doesn't like it.
May 24, 2024
Was soll ik sagen ihr Lieben es ist eins von zwei Sachbüchern die ich in meine Leben gelesen hatte und es ist durchaus gude. Sprache ist easy-peasy und das ist bei einer philosophischen Schrift, was meine beschränkte Erfahrung betrifft, nicht unbedingt der Standard. Mir gefällt das weil man kricht den Gefühl es geht dem Peter tatsächlich um die Sache und nicht um das Profilieren seiner akademischen Persönlichkeit. Klar, es ist nunmehr die wasweißichwievielte Ausgabe und es wurde mal was rausgestrichen und angefügt - sprich: der gute Peter hatte mehr als eine Versuch beim Schreibulieren - aber trotzdessen würde man vllt nicht die Stichhaltigkeit und Tragweite der Argumente erwarten, die man dort unterbreitet bekommt. Dolle Buch
January 13, 2025
He never defined the “interests” that his framework of utilitarianism is built on, and the reasoning was clumsy and neither academic nor sincere. Also, for having multiple editions this is astonishingly dated.
December 17, 2024
Magistral libro de ética y bioética contemporánea, de aquellos que te alegras de tener en tu biblioteca como referencia.
March 27, 2025
Cool book. I found the discussions regarding where Singer’s preference utilitarianism takes us regarding ending and creating life very interesting.
Utilitarianism
Preference utilitarianism seems to be Singer’s own personal position and the one he outlines in the book. He claims to choose it because it is a “minimalist” position, all that matters ethically are the preferences of beings. Preferences are basically a being’s wants or desires. They can be strong, like the preference to live not be harmed, or weak, like a preference to drink lemonade over water. We can simply weigh the preferences and their weights among different people in order to reach ethical decisions. This differs from hedonistic utilitarianism where pleasure and pain, rather than fulfilled or thwarted preferences, are the metric we use to evaluate ethical decisions.
Why is Killing Wrong
Using preference utilitarianism, it’s fairly trivial to see why harming people is unjust. People might have a strong desire to feel safe, not feel pain, or live, and to take these away from others would be unethical. We can also extend this to animals as well. However, what is more interesting is to consider the ethics of ending life, since once a being is dead there is no more being that can have its preferences thwarted or fulfilled. So while I am alive I might have the preference to not be killed, after I’m dead none of my preferences continue to exist. Singer writes:
“When I am killed, the desires I have for the future do not continue after my death, and I do not suffer from the fact that I cannot satisfy them. Does this mean that preventing the fulfillment of these desires does not matter?”
Singer brings up some indirect reasons for not killing, such as people that continue to live may feel more scared and distressed worrying if they will be killed, leading us to consider that overall it’s better to protect the sanctity of life for the sake of the living. But this says nothing about the entity who was killed, and if they in particular were wronged. To explain this, Singer argues that with preference utilitarianism, we can explain that we actually did wrong the person killed, specifically humans who have the ability of self-reflection. Humans with this capacity do not only have the preference to live in the current moment, but also have future oriented preferences, and as such killing them would thwart these lifelong and future preferences. He contrasts this with other beings like animals, that may not have these future oriented preferences, and instead only have the preference to not feel pain in the present moment. Thus, if we are able to kill a being with not only the preference to not feel present painlessly, we haven’t harmed it. Singer gives the example of killing a fish:
“In contrast [to humans], beings that cannot see themselves as entities with a future do not have any preferences about their own future existence. This is not to deny that such beings might struggle against a situation in which their lives are in danger, as a fish struggles to get free of the barbed hook in its mouth; but this indicates no more than a preference for the cessation of a state of affairs that causes pain or fear. The behavior of a fish on a hook suggests a reason for not killing fish by that method but does not in itself suggest a preference utilitarian reason against killing fish by a method that brings about death instantly, without first causing pain or distress.”
Singer’s argument leads us to the conclusion that only beings who are capable of conceiving themselves as a distinct entity, with preferences that last over time, as being immoral to kill. This makes it wrong to kill most humans, since most people have these characteristics. But interestingly this leaves out some beings that we generally think we shouldn’t kill, like human infants. Since Singer thinks that only beings that have at one point had a continuing sense of self have something to lose by being killed, an infant that is killed instantly is not against the interests of the infant, since it doesn’t have a concept of existing over time. It’s true the infant might grow up to be a fully functioning human who looks back and is glad that they weren’t killed, but that ability to look back due the person’s concept of a continuing self is what gives them moral worth after they have gained the ability to self-reflect, but this moral worth didn’t exist when they were an infant. While this is counterintuitive since it’s likely that infants will grow up to be happy they survived, Singer’s idea is that moral worth depends on what preferences, present or future, a being has at a given moment; any further preferences that a being may potentially gain in the future are irrelevant. This view has implications for abortion and infanticide which are addressed later in the book.
Morality of Creating Life
Since we now understand the implications of taking life, we can move to the part I found more interesting regarding creating life (having children). He first discusses what seems to be a hedonistic utilitarian account of creating life. When we create a new life that we believe to be on all accounts happy and good, we might think that we have done something good by increasing the total amount of pleasure in the world. And if the child has a bad life of suffering, we would do something wrong by creating this child. This is called the “total” view, where 1) creating happy children is good and 2) creating suffering children is bad. The second point is clearly true, since if we knowingly create a child who will experience a life of suffering from a genetic disease and die before their 5th birthday, we clearly would do something wrong by creating this being. On the other hand, the first point about having happy children is more contentious. Parents generally don’t have children on the basis that it is good for the child, or to increase the world’s happiness, and people don’t think they have a moral obligation to increase the world’s happiness by having more children. This would lead to strange views like contraception or even abstinence being immoral, since we would be failing to do the morally right thing of creating beings who all things considered would be happy. Furthermore, this leads to even stranger views like the repugnant conclusion (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/re...) popularized by Derek Parfit. This thought experiment asks to imagine world A with 10 beings with 100 units of happiness. We also can conceive of world B with 20 beings with 99 units of happiness, and since the sum of world B's happiness is greater, we should say it is better than world A. We can then conceive of world C… and continue with this until the most moral we can imagine would be world Z with one zillion beings all with 0.0001 happiness, with lives just barely worth living, but overall higher total combined happiness than world A. Thus, the “total” view of happiness has some problems.
The second view Singer calls the “prior existence” view. This view denies that we can measure if it is good/bad to have children depending on the happiness of the future child. So in this view, having children with happy lives is not necessarily good, which is in line with how most people think as we saw above. But if this is true, then we must also deny that having a suffering child is not necessarily bad, as Signer states: “if the pleasure a possible child will experience is not a reason for bringing it into the world, why is the pain a possible child will experience a reason against bringing it into the world.” Thus, we find an asymmetry in our intuitions, as we intuitively would think that it is neutral to knowingly create happy children, but bad to knowingly create suffering ones. Both the “total” view and “prior existence” view of happiness that derive from hedonistic utilitarianism seem to fail to explain these intuitions.
Singer then moves to consider creating life under the preference utilitarian view rather than hedonistic utilitarianism. It’s clear that definitionally, preference utilitarianism is based around maximizing satisfaction of preferences:
“If I put myself in the place of another with an unsatisfied preference and ask myself if I would, other things being equal, want that preference satisfied, the answer is self-evidently yes, because that is just what it is to have an unsatisfied preference.”
However, he interestingly points out how it would be odd to think it is a good thing to create new preferences that are then satisfied. For example he writes:
“We don’t deliberately make ourselves thirsty because we know that there will be plenty of water on hand to quench our thirst. This suggests the creation and satisfaction of a preference is in itself neither god nor bad.”
He calls this a “debit” view of preferences, where creating unsatisfied preference creates a debit, and satisfying it cancels out the debit. Satisfying a debit that already exists is obviously good, but creating and then satisfying the preference can at most cancel out and be neutral. Using this, we may gain insight on the discussion regarding the morality of creating life, since creating new life entails creating new preferences that need to be satisfied. If a parent knows a child they will create will suffer horribly and thus not have their preferences satisfied, then the child’s outstanding debit makes it immoral to bring them into existence. On the other hand, creating a child with a happy life that has their debits satisfied would be ethically neutral, as this is similar to our case above where we created a desire for water just to quench it, which doesn’t exactly seem good or bad. Thus the debit view of preferences actually leads us to the conclusion we intuitively want, and which the “total” and “prior existence” views under hedonistic utilitarianism failed to lead us to. That is, it is immoral to have children who we know will suffer, but it isn’t more moral to have children who all things considered will be happy. However, Singer then gives us an extremely interesting objection to his debit view position:
“There is, however, one serious objection to this account of preferences: if the creation of each preference is a debit that is cancelled only when the desire is satisfied, it would follow that it is wrong, other things being equal, to bring into existence a child who will on the whole be very happy and will be able to satisfy nearly all, but not quite all, of her preferences. Because everyone has some unsatisfied desires, even the best life anyone can realistically hope to lead is going to leave a small debit in the ledger. The conclusion to be drawn is that it would have been better if none of us had been born!”
The objection points out how in any person’s life, even in the best of the best life we can think of, there will still be some small amount of unsatisfied desires. This is reminiscent of ideas like the hedonic treadmill, or the Buddhist or Schopenhauerian line of thought that all life is suffering because we will never be able to completely satisfy our desires. Thus, this would lead us to the conclusion that creating life creates some amount of unsatisfied preferences, which is wrong, meaning it is better to do the ethically neutral thing and not procreate. However, Singer clearly is not content with this conclusion. He asks us to imagine 2 universes. The first is the Peopled Universe, where several billion humans are living some of the best lives we can think of. Their lives are rich, fulfilling, and meaningful, with art and music, and they are able to satisfy close to all their desires (but obviously not them all). Next we have the Nonsentient universe, which contains no sentient life. On the debit view of preferences, the Nonsentient universe is actually better because the Peopled Universe, while flourishing, contains some small amount of unsatisfied preferences. But this intuitively seems wrong to Singer, despite being the conclusion preference utilitarianism seems to lead us. Thus, he admits that there must be some sort of value outside of just preferences to solve this. He writes:
“We could try to distinguish two kinds of value: preference-dependent value, which depends on the existence of beings with preferences and is tied to the preferences of those specific beings, and value that is independent of preferences. When we say that the Peopled Universe is better than the Nonsentient Universe, we are referring to value that is independent of preferences.”
Obviously this is pretty odd, and goes against the notion of a “minimalist” form of preference utilitarianism outlined in the first chapters by creating a new value outside of preferences in order to solve the problem that his preference utilitarianism arguments may lead to antinatalism. He himself admits this, claiming that “a view that most philosophers find even tolerably satisfactory is still yet to be found”. Nevertheless I found this chapter super interesting. I give a lot of credit to Singer here for taking an intellectually honest approach to the fact his philosophy leads to this odd conclusion that he himself doesn’t want to accept, and that he freely admits he doesn’t know all the answers to this problem. I find that other authors sometimes want to beat into your head that their position is definitively the correct one, so I appreciated this honest discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of his view.
Abortion
In the next chapter Singer discusses the ethics of abortion, which I found equally interesting but don’t have time to write about. To give a brief summary, Singer outlines why he finds many liberal arguments, such as life actually beginning at a given gestation stage such as viability outside the womb to be lacking. He even rejects the common view of the right to bodily autonomy of the mother overriding the right to life of the fetus (argued by Judith Jarvis Thomson, which I found pretty convincing) because as a preference utilitarian he rejects this type of notion of intrinsic rights, and instead only determines if actions are ethical based on thwarted or fulfilled preferences. His stance on abortion is one I discussed before, which is that abortion is justified because it is fine to kill a being painlessly that has no conception of themselves or the future, such as a fish or fetus. But problematically, this also leads to infanticide being permissible as well. From what I understand this is one of Singer’s most controversial positions and one that sparks outrage from people. But Singer responds that this is where the argument leads him, and that the point of philosophy is to question embedded beliefs if they are not logically justifiable. Once again I give him credit to honestly go where the argument takes him despite it being counterintuitive once again, and though even though I personally disagree, Singer clearly explains the line of reasoning that reaches this conclusion. This was also a very interesting chapter!
These chapters were my favorites, but the other chapters were quite interesting as well and went over topics like donating to charity, animal rights, euthanasia, environmental issues, civil disobedience, and more. Overall every one of Singer's books I've read has been fantastic, this one being no exception.
Utilitarianism
Preference utilitarianism seems to be Singer’s own personal position and the one he outlines in the book. He claims to choose it because it is a “minimalist” position, all that matters ethically are the preferences of beings. Preferences are basically a being’s wants or desires. They can be strong, like the preference to live not be harmed, or weak, like a preference to drink lemonade over water. We can simply weigh the preferences and their weights among different people in order to reach ethical decisions. This differs from hedonistic utilitarianism where pleasure and pain, rather than fulfilled or thwarted preferences, are the metric we use to evaluate ethical decisions.
Why is Killing Wrong
Using preference utilitarianism, it’s fairly trivial to see why harming people is unjust. People might have a strong desire to feel safe, not feel pain, or live, and to take these away from others would be unethical. We can also extend this to animals as well. However, what is more interesting is to consider the ethics of ending life, since once a being is dead there is no more being that can have its preferences thwarted or fulfilled. So while I am alive I might have the preference to not be killed, after I’m dead none of my preferences continue to exist. Singer writes:
“When I am killed, the desires I have for the future do not continue after my death, and I do not suffer from the fact that I cannot satisfy them. Does this mean that preventing the fulfillment of these desires does not matter?”
Singer brings up some indirect reasons for not killing, such as people that continue to live may feel more scared and distressed worrying if they will be killed, leading us to consider that overall it’s better to protect the sanctity of life for the sake of the living. But this says nothing about the entity who was killed, and if they in particular were wronged. To explain this, Singer argues that with preference utilitarianism, we can explain that we actually did wrong the person killed, specifically humans who have the ability of self-reflection. Humans with this capacity do not only have the preference to live in the current moment, but also have future oriented preferences, and as such killing them would thwart these lifelong and future preferences. He contrasts this with other beings like animals, that may not have these future oriented preferences, and instead only have the preference to not feel pain in the present moment. Thus, if we are able to kill a being with not only the preference to not feel present painlessly, we haven’t harmed it. Singer gives the example of killing a fish:
“In contrast [to humans], beings that cannot see themselves as entities with a future do not have any preferences about their own future existence. This is not to deny that such beings might struggle against a situation in which their lives are in danger, as a fish struggles to get free of the barbed hook in its mouth; but this indicates no more than a preference for the cessation of a state of affairs that causes pain or fear. The behavior of a fish on a hook suggests a reason for not killing fish by that method but does not in itself suggest a preference utilitarian reason against killing fish by a method that brings about death instantly, without first causing pain or distress.”
Singer’s argument leads us to the conclusion that only beings who are capable of conceiving themselves as a distinct entity, with preferences that last over time, as being immoral to kill. This makes it wrong to kill most humans, since most people have these characteristics. But interestingly this leaves out some beings that we generally think we shouldn’t kill, like human infants. Since Singer thinks that only beings that have at one point had a continuing sense of self have something to lose by being killed, an infant that is killed instantly is not against the interests of the infant, since it doesn’t have a concept of existing over time. It’s true the infant might grow up to be a fully functioning human who looks back and is glad that they weren’t killed, but that ability to look back due the person’s concept of a continuing self is what gives them moral worth after they have gained the ability to self-reflect, but this moral worth didn’t exist when they were an infant. While this is counterintuitive since it’s likely that infants will grow up to be happy they survived, Singer’s idea is that moral worth depends on what preferences, present or future, a being has at a given moment; any further preferences that a being may potentially gain in the future are irrelevant. This view has implications for abortion and infanticide which are addressed later in the book.
Morality of Creating Life
Since we now understand the implications of taking life, we can move to the part I found more interesting regarding creating life (having children). He first discusses what seems to be a hedonistic utilitarian account of creating life. When we create a new life that we believe to be on all accounts happy and good, we might think that we have done something good by increasing the total amount of pleasure in the world. And if the child has a bad life of suffering, we would do something wrong by creating this child. This is called the “total” view, where 1) creating happy children is good and 2) creating suffering children is bad. The second point is clearly true, since if we knowingly create a child who will experience a life of suffering from a genetic disease and die before their 5th birthday, we clearly would do something wrong by creating this being. On the other hand, the first point about having happy children is more contentious. Parents generally don’t have children on the basis that it is good for the child, or to increase the world’s happiness, and people don’t think they have a moral obligation to increase the world’s happiness by having more children. This would lead to strange views like contraception or even abstinence being immoral, since we would be failing to do the morally right thing of creating beings who all things considered would be happy. Furthermore, this leads to even stranger views like the repugnant conclusion (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/re...) popularized by Derek Parfit. This thought experiment asks to imagine world A with 10 beings with 100 units of happiness. We also can conceive of world B with 20 beings with 99 units of happiness, and since the sum of world B's happiness is greater, we should say it is better than world A. We can then conceive of world C… and continue with this until the most moral we can imagine would be world Z with one zillion beings all with 0.0001 happiness, with lives just barely worth living, but overall higher total combined happiness than world A. Thus, the “total” view of happiness has some problems.
The second view Singer calls the “prior existence” view. This view denies that we can measure if it is good/bad to have children depending on the happiness of the future child. So in this view, having children with happy lives is not necessarily good, which is in line with how most people think as we saw above. But if this is true, then we must also deny that having a suffering child is not necessarily bad, as Signer states: “if the pleasure a possible child will experience is not a reason for bringing it into the world, why is the pain a possible child will experience a reason against bringing it into the world.” Thus, we find an asymmetry in our intuitions, as we intuitively would think that it is neutral to knowingly create happy children, but bad to knowingly create suffering ones. Both the “total” view and “prior existence” view of happiness that derive from hedonistic utilitarianism seem to fail to explain these intuitions.
Singer then moves to consider creating life under the preference utilitarian view rather than hedonistic utilitarianism. It’s clear that definitionally, preference utilitarianism is based around maximizing satisfaction of preferences:
“If I put myself in the place of another with an unsatisfied preference and ask myself if I would, other things being equal, want that preference satisfied, the answer is self-evidently yes, because that is just what it is to have an unsatisfied preference.”
However, he interestingly points out how it would be odd to think it is a good thing to create new preferences that are then satisfied. For example he writes:
“We don’t deliberately make ourselves thirsty because we know that there will be plenty of water on hand to quench our thirst. This suggests the creation and satisfaction of a preference is in itself neither god nor bad.”
He calls this a “debit” view of preferences, where creating unsatisfied preference creates a debit, and satisfying it cancels out the debit. Satisfying a debit that already exists is obviously good, but creating and then satisfying the preference can at most cancel out and be neutral. Using this, we may gain insight on the discussion regarding the morality of creating life, since creating new life entails creating new preferences that need to be satisfied. If a parent knows a child they will create will suffer horribly and thus not have their preferences satisfied, then the child’s outstanding debit makes it immoral to bring them into existence. On the other hand, creating a child with a happy life that has their debits satisfied would be ethically neutral, as this is similar to our case above where we created a desire for water just to quench it, which doesn’t exactly seem good or bad. Thus the debit view of preferences actually leads us to the conclusion we intuitively want, and which the “total” and “prior existence” views under hedonistic utilitarianism failed to lead us to. That is, it is immoral to have children who we know will suffer, but it isn’t more moral to have children who all things considered will be happy. However, Singer then gives us an extremely interesting objection to his debit view position:
“There is, however, one serious objection to this account of preferences: if the creation of each preference is a debit that is cancelled only when the desire is satisfied, it would follow that it is wrong, other things being equal, to bring into existence a child who will on the whole be very happy and will be able to satisfy nearly all, but not quite all, of her preferences. Because everyone has some unsatisfied desires, even the best life anyone can realistically hope to lead is going to leave a small debit in the ledger. The conclusion to be drawn is that it would have been better if none of us had been born!”
The objection points out how in any person’s life, even in the best of the best life we can think of, there will still be some small amount of unsatisfied desires. This is reminiscent of ideas like the hedonic treadmill, or the Buddhist or Schopenhauerian line of thought that all life is suffering because we will never be able to completely satisfy our desires. Thus, this would lead us to the conclusion that creating life creates some amount of unsatisfied preferences, which is wrong, meaning it is better to do the ethically neutral thing and not procreate. However, Singer clearly is not content with this conclusion. He asks us to imagine 2 universes. The first is the Peopled Universe, where several billion humans are living some of the best lives we can think of. Their lives are rich, fulfilling, and meaningful, with art and music, and they are able to satisfy close to all their desires (but obviously not them all). Next we have the Nonsentient universe, which contains no sentient life. On the debit view of preferences, the Nonsentient universe is actually better because the Peopled Universe, while flourishing, contains some small amount of unsatisfied preferences. But this intuitively seems wrong to Singer, despite being the conclusion preference utilitarianism seems to lead us. Thus, he admits that there must be some sort of value outside of just preferences to solve this. He writes:
“We could try to distinguish two kinds of value: preference-dependent value, which depends on the existence of beings with preferences and is tied to the preferences of those specific beings, and value that is independent of preferences. When we say that the Peopled Universe is better than the Nonsentient Universe, we are referring to value that is independent of preferences.”
Obviously this is pretty odd, and goes against the notion of a “minimalist” form of preference utilitarianism outlined in the first chapters by creating a new value outside of preferences in order to solve the problem that his preference utilitarianism arguments may lead to antinatalism. He himself admits this, claiming that “a view that most philosophers find even tolerably satisfactory is still yet to be found”. Nevertheless I found this chapter super interesting. I give a lot of credit to Singer here for taking an intellectually honest approach to the fact his philosophy leads to this odd conclusion that he himself doesn’t want to accept, and that he freely admits he doesn’t know all the answers to this problem. I find that other authors sometimes want to beat into your head that their position is definitively the correct one, so I appreciated this honest discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of his view.
Abortion
In the next chapter Singer discusses the ethics of abortion, which I found equally interesting but don’t have time to write about. To give a brief summary, Singer outlines why he finds many liberal arguments, such as life actually beginning at a given gestation stage such as viability outside the womb to be lacking. He even rejects the common view of the right to bodily autonomy of the mother overriding the right to life of the fetus (argued by Judith Jarvis Thomson, which I found pretty convincing) because as a preference utilitarian he rejects this type of notion of intrinsic rights, and instead only determines if actions are ethical based on thwarted or fulfilled preferences. His stance on abortion is one I discussed before, which is that abortion is justified because it is fine to kill a being painlessly that has no conception of themselves or the future, such as a fish or fetus. But problematically, this also leads to infanticide being permissible as well. From what I understand this is one of Singer’s most controversial positions and one that sparks outrage from people. But Singer responds that this is where the argument leads him, and that the point of philosophy is to question embedded beliefs if they are not logically justifiable. Once again I give him credit to honestly go where the argument takes him despite it being counterintuitive once again, and though even though I personally disagree, Singer clearly explains the line of reasoning that reaches this conclusion. This was also a very interesting chapter!
These chapters were my favorites, but the other chapters were quite interesting as well and went over topics like donating to charity, animal rights, euthanasia, environmental issues, civil disobedience, and more. Overall every one of Singer's books I've read has been fantastic, this one being no exception.
June 10, 2023
Peter Singer lays out a basic moral system in this book that consists of two premises. 1) To have any meaningful discussion about ethics, ethics has to take a universal point of view. Basically what is good for everyone according to an impartial spectator. 2) In isolation of considerations for others, an individual bases his decisions / actions solely on how they affect the fulfilment of his preferences.
Conclusions from 1) and 2): If we universalize the fulfilment of personal preferences we get a basic ethical system: maximizing the fulfillment of the preferences of everyone.
For me these premises are very easy to agree to, and I think that will hold for most people, and then the conclusion logically follows. This conclusion provides an ethical basis with minimal metaphysical or meta-ethical baggage. This seems preferable to the wishy-washy intuitive morality I and most other people operate under, which seems to be very dependent on our local environments and zeitgeist. Also, my justification for my intuitive moral stances generally seemed to break down within one to three "why?" questions and had some inconsistences below the surface.
The rest of the book proceeds with this ethical basis to provide moral arguments for positions on most of the salient ethical dilemma's in our world with great clarity and rigor, and it shows that this minimal ethical basis is actually quite powerful. Many of the provided arguments fell in line with what I already thought, for example on equality, charity, euthanasia and care for the environment, but I now have a stronger and more consistent basis to justify why I think the way I do. On some topics I have actually changed my mind based on the arguments, namely on equality of outcome over equality of opportunity, ethical arguments for veganism and the justifiability of positive discrimination.
While I think the base premises are true, number 2 is only true by virtue of being very general and broad. "Preferences" is a great catch-all term, which feels sufficient when talking about the big ethical discussions on life and death and extreme poverty versus buying a third car. However, there are limits how similar these "preferences" are across cultures and zeitgeists and ultimately the balance of preferences cannot be calculated. As such, I think this system provides little guidance when it comes to the smaller moral decisions I have to make on a daily basis. Nevertheless, I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in why they have the moral values they have, because the big ethical discussions are rather important. There are some complicated sections here and there which require a focused read, but I think it would be a doable and valuable read for most people that are capable of caring about the why of ethics.
Most of the criticism of this book on this website and in general centers on a more controversial stance Peter Singer puts forth based on the arguments, but I think it is unproductive to discuss that stance in isolation of the sequence of arguments in the book.
Conclusions from 1) and 2): If we universalize the fulfilment of personal preferences we get a basic ethical system: maximizing the fulfillment of the preferences of everyone.
For me these premises are very easy to agree to, and I think that will hold for most people, and then the conclusion logically follows. This conclusion provides an ethical basis with minimal metaphysical or meta-ethical baggage. This seems preferable to the wishy-washy intuitive morality I and most other people operate under, which seems to be very dependent on our local environments and zeitgeist. Also, my justification for my intuitive moral stances generally seemed to break down within one to three "why?" questions and had some inconsistences below the surface.
The rest of the book proceeds with this ethical basis to provide moral arguments for positions on most of the salient ethical dilemma's in our world with great clarity and rigor, and it shows that this minimal ethical basis is actually quite powerful. Many of the provided arguments fell in line with what I already thought, for example on equality, charity, euthanasia and care for the environment, but I now have a stronger and more consistent basis to justify why I think the way I do. On some topics I have actually changed my mind based on the arguments, namely on equality of outcome over equality of opportunity, ethical arguments for veganism and the justifiability of positive discrimination.
While I think the base premises are true, number 2 is only true by virtue of being very general and broad. "Preferences" is a great catch-all term, which feels sufficient when talking about the big ethical discussions on life and death and extreme poverty versus buying a third car. However, there are limits how similar these "preferences" are across cultures and zeitgeists and ultimately the balance of preferences cannot be calculated. As such, I think this system provides little guidance when it comes to the smaller moral decisions I have to make on a daily basis. Nevertheless, I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in why they have the moral values they have, because the big ethical discussions are rather important. There are some complicated sections here and there which require a focused read, but I think it would be a doable and valuable read for most people that are capable of caring about the why of ethics.
Most of the criticism of this book on this website and in general centers on a more controversial stance Peter Singer puts forth based on the arguments, but I think it is unproductive to discuss that stance in isolation of the sequence of arguments in the book.
May 23, 2018
I disagree with Singer's implicit premise that ethics can be systematized or rigorously examined with logic, but taken for what it is this book must be as good as it gets. His arguments are clear and consistent, although he does get a little ad hoc every now and then. Overall it could be useful as heuristics for when you're undecided about the morality of a certain action; but I don't think you can say any of this stuff is right or use it to argue against competing conceptions of ethics.
update 2018-05-23:
i would today like to intensify the opinion expressed above and declare singer to be wholly full of shit
update 2018-05-23:
i would today like to intensify the opinion expressed above and declare singer to be wholly full of shit
June 8, 2019
Offers lots of insight into issues in applied ethics, from euthanasia to climate change. Singer builds his positions using preference-based utilitarianism, which seeks to maximize individuals’ abilities to satisfy their preferences. I loved his discussion around harming potential persons and the ethics of killing animals! At times though, I felt like there was room for more engagement with real-world data and evidence (e.g., Kahneman’s studies on psychological preferences for minimizing suffering versus maximizing happiness, studies on foreign aid sustainability) but learned a lot overall
March 14, 2021
notes to condense later:
Chapter 1: About ethics
-Argues that our moral intuitions are a product of natural selection. pg. 5 "We have inherited a set of moral intuitions from our ancestors. Now we need to work out which of them should be changed.
-This latter bit seems a bit problematic to me. On what basis can we reason about/revise these intuitions without an appeal to a natural law? How do we go from an "is" to an "ought"?
-Singer agrees that moral intuitions are subjective in the sense that they are not natural kinds that exist independently of human observers. But he still believes that we can reason about these intuitions. P.g. 8 "the denial of objective ethical facts does not imply the rejection of ethical reasoning".
-After a brief analysis, Singer concludes that our intuitions about ethics are tied up with notions of justifiability and universalism. Someone is living according to an ethical standard if they can justify their actions to others (Scanlon), and if the reasons they give are not selfish but take others into account. On the basis of justifiability and universalism we will use reason to modify our ethical intuitions.
-Singer notes that most major ethical theories take this universal stance, although they sometimes conflict with each other because they are maximizing different things across people (happiness, preferences, rights, etc.). As a simple starting point, Singer adopts "preference utilitarianism" - satisfying the preferences of the most people.
-The lacuna in Singer's argument in this chapter, I think, is the basis of putting justifiability and universalism on a pedestal above all our other moral intuitions. An answer might be that we intuitively feel that these are our most important and fundamental intuitions (+ this feeling itself is a product of our biology). This rescues us from appealing to something "outside" or "above" our inherited oughts. We inherent a constellation of moral intuitions, and intuitively recognize some as more important than others. These become the axioms that guide our moral reasoning.
Chapter 2: Equality and its implications
-On what basis can we claim that all humans are equal? We obviously differ in physical, intellectual, + moral competence.
-Singer argues that equality fall out of our intuition that our moral judgements should be universal, not selfish (i.e., considering the preferences of others).
-Thus, agents are equal (in terms of the moral consideration that they should be given), so long as they have preferences. Pg. 21 "The principle of equal consideration of interests prohibits making our readiness to consider the interests of others depend on their abilities or other characteristics, apart from having interests."
-Equal consideration of interests provides a natural counter to discrimination based on supposed differences among racial groups or genders. Even if we suppose that there are differences in ability - and this is a big if - this is immaterial because we should be considering preferences, not ability (especially because achieving genetic and environmental equality is a pipe dream).
-This naturally leads to a principle "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Singer acknowledges that perfect realization of this principle is impractical, as those blessed with natural gifts and favorable conditions will strive to maintain their advantage, but suggests "we should try to create a climate of opinion" that will lead to a reduction in excessive disparities in resources (i.e., create a culture openly hostile to inequality - this may have started to emerge in the past few years)
-Interesting side note: argues that affirmative action is not in conflict with equal consideration of interests. Choosing based on race is no less arbitrary than choosing based on intelligence. The institution in each case is just trying to further certain goals, and so long as the institution is not rejecting applicants for reasons unrelated to these goals, then all applicants have been given due consideration, and we are just angry about changing goals.
Chapter 3: Equality for animals?
-Following the consequences of preference utilitarianism further, we see that it natural extends moral consideration to animals as well.
-If the chief point of consideration is whether an agent has interests, it seems that the number of legs and the presence of fur is just as immaterial as intelligence or strength.
-On one hand this is intuitively appealing: most of us have a natural empathy and affinity for animals. But at the same time this raises some troubling comparisons of moral worth, e.g., an infant newborn human vs a fully grown dog, the latter of which likely has a more fully developed and acute sense of preferences.
Chapter 4: What's wrong with killing?
-Singer next considers the morality of killing people. "People" are self aware beings with a capacity to imagine and desire particular futures. Most humans and a few animals are people. Consistent with his emphasis on preferences, Singer doesn't consider mere membership in homo sapiens a meaningful moral consideration.
-Both major flavors of utilitarianism conclude that killing people is particularly bad. For the preference utilitarian, it is a straightforward case of thwarting another's preferences (at least typically). For the hedonistic utilitarian, even though the effect on the person could be argued to be curiously morally neutral (because there is no pleasure or pain in non-existence), a culture in which wanton killing is permitted would be stressful for the extant future-loving persons. (Strangely, it seems this second argument could be recast in terms of preferences and apply equally to the preference utilitarian, which Singer does not address. Throughout the book, the distinction between preference and hedonistic utilitarianism often seems tenuous).
-What about killing sentient non-persons (e.g., a merely conscious animal)? For preferences utilitarians, killing here is not a moral violation. If a being cannot imagine its future, it can't have preferences about that future. A fish on the hook struggles out of a desire to escape confinement + avoid pain. It is not despairing over unfulfilled dreams. An instantaneous, painless death would not violate any of its preferences. Singer suggests that hedonistic utilitarianism runs into all kinds of hell here. One could argue that you are denying the animal its future pleasure (again, why not say future preferences???). However, this implies that our goal should be to increase the sum total happiness in the universe, which has the curious consequence of suggesting, for example, that all other things being equal, if we expect our children to have happy lives then we are morally impelled to have more. Alternatively, the view that we should only consider extant (not future) life suggests that it is fine to bring a severely disabled child (a sentient non-person) to term and then euthanize it.
-I think this rather academic digression, while interesting, falls out of a mistake in objective function. Why not argue for maximizing present and future average, not summed, happiness? This normalizes our metric to focus on the average person. We intuitively care about the happiness at the level of single persons, not a collective sum.
Chapter 5: Taking life: animals
-Singer explores the killing of non-person animals in more detail. For him, this is tied closely to questions of replaceability - to what extent are extant and potential beings all replaceable with each other - because many domestic animals only come into existence in the first place as replacements for their consumed ancestors.
-Hedonistic utilitarianism supports replaceability, because if you replace one happy animal with another, the sum total pleasure in the universe is conserved. However, valuing summed pleasure in this way has odd consequences, as we saw in the previous chapter.
-As we saw, preference utilitarianism is neutral on the painless killing of non-persons because no preferences are violated (by definition).
-A potential counter to Singer's thought is that preference utilitarianism runs into the same issue as hedonistic utilitarianism. If our goal is to maximize summed satisfied preferences, then we are under a moral obligation to replace the animal, and this has the odd consequence that we should maximize the number of lives (assuming preference satisfaction). Singer gets around this by proposing a normalization procedure of his own. Preference satisfaction should not be counted as a positive, but as a satisfaction of a negative debt. This raises all sorts of thorny questions about the value of existence (if we are all a little unsatisfied, is an empty universe preferable?) which Singer (self-admittedly) squirms his way out of by appending a generic value for life to preference utilitarianism.
-Anyway, the (unstated) consequence seems to be that killing a satisfied non-person leaves you with a neutral moral ledger, with an incentive for replacement due to our intrinsic appreciation of life.
Chapter 6: Taking life: the embryo and the fetus
-The conservative argument against abortion: (1) killing an innocent human being is wrong (2) a fetus is an innocent human being (3) therefore it is wrong to kill a fetus
-Most liberal positions do not tackle this argument head on, because if we deny that a fetus is a human being, it is difficult to identify a clear point at which it is one. Most liberal responses are practical arguments about abortions laws that are agnostic to the moral status of abortion itself (e.g., abortion laws just create unsafe illegal abortions, abortion is not of the government's business, etc.).
-Singer insists that we should focus not on the second premise, but on the first. As we have seen, membership in homo sapiens is not a relevant moral factor - the key moral considerations are consciousness, the capacity to feel pain (the most rudimentary preference), and personhood, which grants additional moral weight. Singer argues that once the fetus is sufficiently developed to feel pain, we should render unto it the same moral consideration as other conscious non-persons.
-Arguments based on the premise that it is wrong to kill potential persons are weak - theoretically, you have to justify why bringing persons into the world is intrinsically valuable (although note that Singer just argued this in the previous chapter), and practically, we act against this all the time (e.g., via artificial or natural birth control).
-Finally, Singer admits a rather uncomfortable consequence of his conclusions. Birth does not mark a meaningful landmark in the moral status of a human (the are conscious non-persons before and after birth). Singer suggests that, as a result, we may have to rethink our cultural taboo on infanticide.
-I'm not sure Singer's though puts us in as uncomfortable a spot as he suggests. Under utilitarianism, killing a person is especially morally weighty, but killing conscious non-persons is still not taken lightly, both due to the difficulty of painless, instant death and the effect that such acts have on others.
-The ethical conclusion offered by utilitarianism thus seems to be very permissive abortion laws for the 18 weeks before the fetus is likely conscious and judicious permission of abortion and infanticide after this point.
Chapter 12: Why act morally?
I.e, why should we base our decisions on moral considerations rather self-interested, cultural, or aesthetic ones?
There's an old line of thought in philosophy that argues that we should be ethical because to be ethical is to be rational. This is based on the observation that both rationality and ethics are rooted in universalizability. Proper logical reasoning is universally valid - a mathematical proof is not true for one person and false for another. Ethics involves universalizing our preferences, taking others into consideration and so basing our actions on principles that are acceptable to others. The problem is, obviously, that ethical universalizability is stricter than rational universalizability, so the two can't be so easily equated. A person acting out of conspicuous self-interest is not necessarily acting irrationally (e.g., in highly competitive environments where such behavior is the norm. Even if we had a better argument for why morality is rational, this just to seems to be a form of can-kicking - then we have to ask 'why be rational?' - an even trickier question.
A more intuitive answer is that behaving ethically is in our self-interest. Moral feelings seem to have evolved to help humans live cooperatively together, promoting the good of all and preventing exile. Critics argue that such thinking takes us out of the realm of ethics entirely, but Singer takes a dim view of this purist view. In practice, we seem to understand rationally (and feel deeply intuitively) that moral behavior is in our interest. But this doesn't mean that we go around weighing the personal benefit of moral behavior in every interaction. Rather, understanding that morality is important, we conceive ourselves as moral people (or at least as people trying to be moral), and then let that self conception guide our behavior on an intuitive level. This stance feels less Machiavellian.
Finally, Singer suggests that for many, striving for an ethical life can offer some existential satisfaction. People who we label as 'psychopaths' are unconcerned with anything past the immediate present and live their life accordingly, and apparently quite pleasantly. Most people aren't satisfied with a purpose as limited as the constant pursuit of immediate pleasure, and may find meaning in hobbies, sports, careerism, or the accumulation of wealth. Sounding a little like Rudolf Bultmann, Singer suggests that the pursuit of an ethical life is a particular useful source of meaning, since it allows us to transcend ourselves and shields us from the vicissitudes of our lives as imperfect, mortal creatures. There is calm in the universal perspective offered by ethics. He summarizes this prettily:
"I am now suggesting that rationality, in the broad sense that includes self-awareness and reflection on the nature and point of our own existence, may push us towards concerns broader than the quality of our own existence; but the process is not a necessary one, and those who do not take part in it are not irrational or in error. Some people find collecting stamps an entirely adequate way of giving purpose to their lives. There is nothing irrational about that; but others again seek something more significant as they become more aware of their situation in the world and more reflective about their purposes. To this third group, the ethical point of view offers a meaning and purpose in life that one does not grow out of."
Chapter 1: About ethics
-Argues that our moral intuitions are a product of natural selection. pg. 5 "We have inherited a set of moral intuitions from our ancestors. Now we need to work out which of them should be changed.
-This latter bit seems a bit problematic to me. On what basis can we reason about/revise these intuitions without an appeal to a natural law? How do we go from an "is" to an "ought"?
-Singer agrees that moral intuitions are subjective in the sense that they are not natural kinds that exist independently of human observers. But he still believes that we can reason about these intuitions. P.g. 8 "the denial of objective ethical facts does not imply the rejection of ethical reasoning".
-After a brief analysis, Singer concludes that our intuitions about ethics are tied up with notions of justifiability and universalism. Someone is living according to an ethical standard if they can justify their actions to others (Scanlon), and if the reasons they give are not selfish but take others into account. On the basis of justifiability and universalism we will use reason to modify our ethical intuitions.
-Singer notes that most major ethical theories take this universal stance, although they sometimes conflict with each other because they are maximizing different things across people (happiness, preferences, rights, etc.). As a simple starting point, Singer adopts "preference utilitarianism" - satisfying the preferences of the most people.
-The lacuna in Singer's argument in this chapter, I think, is the basis of putting justifiability and universalism on a pedestal above all our other moral intuitions. An answer might be that we intuitively feel that these are our most important and fundamental intuitions (+ this feeling itself is a product of our biology). This rescues us from appealing to something "outside" or "above" our inherited oughts. We inherent a constellation of moral intuitions, and intuitively recognize some as more important than others. These become the axioms that guide our moral reasoning.
Chapter 2: Equality and its implications
-On what basis can we claim that all humans are equal? We obviously differ in physical, intellectual, + moral competence.
-Singer argues that equality fall out of our intuition that our moral judgements should be universal, not selfish (i.e., considering the preferences of others).
-Thus, agents are equal (in terms of the moral consideration that they should be given), so long as they have preferences. Pg. 21 "The principle of equal consideration of interests prohibits making our readiness to consider the interests of others depend on their abilities or other characteristics, apart from having interests."
-Equal consideration of interests provides a natural counter to discrimination based on supposed differences among racial groups or genders. Even if we suppose that there are differences in ability - and this is a big if - this is immaterial because we should be considering preferences, not ability (especially because achieving genetic and environmental equality is a pipe dream).
-This naturally leads to a principle "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Singer acknowledges that perfect realization of this principle is impractical, as those blessed with natural gifts and favorable conditions will strive to maintain their advantage, but suggests "we should try to create a climate of opinion" that will lead to a reduction in excessive disparities in resources (i.e., create a culture openly hostile to inequality - this may have started to emerge in the past few years)
-Interesting side note: argues that affirmative action is not in conflict with equal consideration of interests. Choosing based on race is no less arbitrary than choosing based on intelligence. The institution in each case is just trying to further certain goals, and so long as the institution is not rejecting applicants for reasons unrelated to these goals, then all applicants have been given due consideration, and we are just angry about changing goals.
Chapter 3: Equality for animals?
-Following the consequences of preference utilitarianism further, we see that it natural extends moral consideration to animals as well.
-If the chief point of consideration is whether an agent has interests, it seems that the number of legs and the presence of fur is just as immaterial as intelligence or strength.
-On one hand this is intuitively appealing: most of us have a natural empathy and affinity for animals. But at the same time this raises some troubling comparisons of moral worth, e.g., an infant newborn human vs a fully grown dog, the latter of which likely has a more fully developed and acute sense of preferences.
Chapter 4: What's wrong with killing?
-Singer next considers the morality of killing people. "People" are self aware beings with a capacity to imagine and desire particular futures. Most humans and a few animals are people. Consistent with his emphasis on preferences, Singer doesn't consider mere membership in homo sapiens a meaningful moral consideration.
-Both major flavors of utilitarianism conclude that killing people is particularly bad. For the preference utilitarian, it is a straightforward case of thwarting another's preferences (at least typically). For the hedonistic utilitarian, even though the effect on the person could be argued to be curiously morally neutral (because there is no pleasure or pain in non-existence), a culture in which wanton killing is permitted would be stressful for the extant future-loving persons. (Strangely, it seems this second argument could be recast in terms of preferences and apply equally to the preference utilitarian, which Singer does not address. Throughout the book, the distinction between preference and hedonistic utilitarianism often seems tenuous).
-What about killing sentient non-persons (e.g., a merely conscious animal)? For preferences utilitarians, killing here is not a moral violation. If a being cannot imagine its future, it can't have preferences about that future. A fish on the hook struggles out of a desire to escape confinement + avoid pain. It is not despairing over unfulfilled dreams. An instantaneous, painless death would not violate any of its preferences. Singer suggests that hedonistic utilitarianism runs into all kinds of hell here. One could argue that you are denying the animal its future pleasure (again, why not say future preferences???). However, this implies that our goal should be to increase the sum total happiness in the universe, which has the curious consequence of suggesting, for example, that all other things being equal, if we expect our children to have happy lives then we are morally impelled to have more. Alternatively, the view that we should only consider extant (not future) life suggests that it is fine to bring a severely disabled child (a sentient non-person) to term and then euthanize it.
-I think this rather academic digression, while interesting, falls out of a mistake in objective function. Why not argue for maximizing present and future average, not summed, happiness? This normalizes our metric to focus on the average person. We intuitively care about the happiness at the level of single persons, not a collective sum.
Chapter 5: Taking life: animals
-Singer explores the killing of non-person animals in more detail. For him, this is tied closely to questions of replaceability - to what extent are extant and potential beings all replaceable with each other - because many domestic animals only come into existence in the first place as replacements for their consumed ancestors.
-Hedonistic utilitarianism supports replaceability, because if you replace one happy animal with another, the sum total pleasure in the universe is conserved. However, valuing summed pleasure in this way has odd consequences, as we saw in the previous chapter.
-As we saw, preference utilitarianism is neutral on the painless killing of non-persons because no preferences are violated (by definition).
-A potential counter to Singer's thought is that preference utilitarianism runs into the same issue as hedonistic utilitarianism. If our goal is to maximize summed satisfied preferences, then we are under a moral obligation to replace the animal, and this has the odd consequence that we should maximize the number of lives (assuming preference satisfaction). Singer gets around this by proposing a normalization procedure of his own. Preference satisfaction should not be counted as a positive, but as a satisfaction of a negative debt. This raises all sorts of thorny questions about the value of existence (if we are all a little unsatisfied, is an empty universe preferable?) which Singer (self-admittedly) squirms his way out of by appending a generic value for life to preference utilitarianism.
-Anyway, the (unstated) consequence seems to be that killing a satisfied non-person leaves you with a neutral moral ledger, with an incentive for replacement due to our intrinsic appreciation of life.
Chapter 6: Taking life: the embryo and the fetus
-The conservative argument against abortion: (1) killing an innocent human being is wrong (2) a fetus is an innocent human being (3) therefore it is wrong to kill a fetus
-Most liberal positions do not tackle this argument head on, because if we deny that a fetus is a human being, it is difficult to identify a clear point at which it is one. Most liberal responses are practical arguments about abortions laws that are agnostic to the moral status of abortion itself (e.g., abortion laws just create unsafe illegal abortions, abortion is not of the government's business, etc.).
-Singer insists that we should focus not on the second premise, but on the first. As we have seen, membership in homo sapiens is not a relevant moral factor - the key moral considerations are consciousness, the capacity to feel pain (the most rudimentary preference), and personhood, which grants additional moral weight. Singer argues that once the fetus is sufficiently developed to feel pain, we should render unto it the same moral consideration as other conscious non-persons.
-Arguments based on the premise that it is wrong to kill potential persons are weak - theoretically, you have to justify why bringing persons into the world is intrinsically valuable (although note that Singer just argued this in the previous chapter), and practically, we act against this all the time (e.g., via artificial or natural birth control).
-Finally, Singer admits a rather uncomfortable consequence of his conclusions. Birth does not mark a meaningful landmark in the moral status of a human (the are conscious non-persons before and after birth). Singer suggests that, as a result, we may have to rethink our cultural taboo on infanticide.
-I'm not sure Singer's though puts us in as uncomfortable a spot as he suggests. Under utilitarianism, killing a person is especially morally weighty, but killing conscious non-persons is still not taken lightly, both due to the difficulty of painless, instant death and the effect that such acts have on others.
-The ethical conclusion offered by utilitarianism thus seems to be very permissive abortion laws for the 18 weeks before the fetus is likely conscious and judicious permission of abortion and infanticide after this point.
Chapter 12: Why act morally?
I.e, why should we base our decisions on moral considerations rather self-interested, cultural, or aesthetic ones?
There's an old line of thought in philosophy that argues that we should be ethical because to be ethical is to be rational. This is based on the observation that both rationality and ethics are rooted in universalizability. Proper logical reasoning is universally valid - a mathematical proof is not true for one person and false for another. Ethics involves universalizing our preferences, taking others into consideration and so basing our actions on principles that are acceptable to others. The problem is, obviously, that ethical universalizability is stricter than rational universalizability, so the two can't be so easily equated. A person acting out of conspicuous self-interest is not necessarily acting irrationally (e.g., in highly competitive environments where such behavior is the norm. Even if we had a better argument for why morality is rational, this just to seems to be a form of can-kicking - then we have to ask 'why be rational?' - an even trickier question.
A more intuitive answer is that behaving ethically is in our self-interest. Moral feelings seem to have evolved to help humans live cooperatively together, promoting the good of all and preventing exile. Critics argue that such thinking takes us out of the realm of ethics entirely, but Singer takes a dim view of this purist view. In practice, we seem to understand rationally (and feel deeply intuitively) that moral behavior is in our interest. But this doesn't mean that we go around weighing the personal benefit of moral behavior in every interaction. Rather, understanding that morality is important, we conceive ourselves as moral people (or at least as people trying to be moral), and then let that self conception guide our behavior on an intuitive level. This stance feels less Machiavellian.
Finally, Singer suggests that for many, striving for an ethical life can offer some existential satisfaction. People who we label as 'psychopaths' are unconcerned with anything past the immediate present and live their life accordingly, and apparently quite pleasantly. Most people aren't satisfied with a purpose as limited as the constant pursuit of immediate pleasure, and may find meaning in hobbies, sports, careerism, or the accumulation of wealth. Sounding a little like Rudolf Bultmann, Singer suggests that the pursuit of an ethical life is a particular useful source of meaning, since it allows us to transcend ourselves and shields us from the vicissitudes of our lives as imperfect, mortal creatures. There is calm in the universal perspective offered by ethics. He summarizes this prettily:
"I am now suggesting that rationality, in the broad sense that includes self-awareness and reflection on the nature and point of our own existence, may push us towards concerns broader than the quality of our own existence; but the process is not a necessary one, and those who do not take part in it are not irrational or in error. Some people find collecting stamps an entirely adequate way of giving purpose to their lives. There is nothing irrational about that; but others again seek something more significant as they become more aware of their situation in the world and more reflective about their purposes. To this third group, the ethical point of view offers a meaning and purpose in life that one does not grow out of."
March 15, 2021
Singer si occupa in questo saggio della messa in opera delle teorie sull'etica, in un contesto in cui i sistemi di pensiero sembrano contraddirsi senza soluzioni ragionevoli. L'Autore tratta diversi temi etici, dal concetto di specie all'eutanasia, dai diritti degli animali alla sperimentazione sulle cellule staminali.
Singer introduce il discorso descrivendo prima ciò che l'etica non è, per poi attribuirle il compito precipuo di guidare la vita nella pratica. Sostenendo una posizione di ispirazione utilitarista, egli mira a circoscrivere un sistema coerente, capace di dialogare anche con altri studi inerenti la teoria dei diritti, l'idea della sacralità della vita, etc.
I capitoli sono ricchi di spunti di riflessione, ma anche di soluzioni (talvolta decisamente convinte, altre in forma di proposta): in particolare, il capitolo incentrato sul rapporto tra fini e mezzi porta ad una ridefinizione del concetto di disobbedienza civile e dell'azione illegale, pur nella piena coscienza del valore positivo del sistema legislativo democratico, al di là delle singole leggi.
Nel finale, Singer si domanda perché valga la pena agire moralmente. Le risposte date sono diverse e tutte oggetto di opinioni contrastanti, tuttavia egli ritiene che nel guardare alle cose eticamente vi sia un modo di trascendere le preoccupazioni personali immediate, per potersi così identificare con un punto di vista che sia il più oggettivo possibile.
L'etica pratica, in poche parole, si configura come una scelta che aspira alla ragionevolezza, alla coerenza e alla presa di coscienza dell'individuo in quanto tale e in quanto membro di un vero e proprio ecosistema.
Singer introduce il discorso descrivendo prima ciò che l'etica non è, per poi attribuirle il compito precipuo di guidare la vita nella pratica. Sostenendo una posizione di ispirazione utilitarista, egli mira a circoscrivere un sistema coerente, capace di dialogare anche con altri studi inerenti la teoria dei diritti, l'idea della sacralità della vita, etc.
I capitoli sono ricchi di spunti di riflessione, ma anche di soluzioni (talvolta decisamente convinte, altre in forma di proposta): in particolare, il capitolo incentrato sul rapporto tra fini e mezzi porta ad una ridefinizione del concetto di disobbedienza civile e dell'azione illegale, pur nella piena coscienza del valore positivo del sistema legislativo democratico, al di là delle singole leggi.
Nel finale, Singer si domanda perché valga la pena agire moralmente. Le risposte date sono diverse e tutte oggetto di opinioni contrastanti, tuttavia egli ritiene che nel guardare alle cose eticamente vi sia un modo di trascendere le preoccupazioni personali immediate, per potersi così identificare con un punto di vista che sia il più oggettivo possibile.
L'etica pratica, in poche parole, si configura come una scelta che aspira alla ragionevolezza, alla coerenza e alla presa di coscienza dell'individuo in quanto tale e in quanto membro di un vero e proprio ecosistema.
March 26, 2024
i thought this was pretty convincing especially if i put my atheist hat on. the friends i read it with wildly disagreed; generally they felt the anti-speciest argument went too far, and they wanted the book to feel more intuitive. (they didn't find it ironic in the least that this is exactly what singer is pushing against.) i can't decide what to make of this divide between my reaction and their reactions. i had expected to debate the actual particulars of his argument, or if not, debate the merits of consequentialism and/or preference utilitarianism. instead, much of the book was dismissed a priori. i found that frustrating, especially because (unlike my friends) i really do think this book's ideas are pervasive in today's society - even if most people aren't taking them to the extreme. and then i wondered - why don't they? and why don't i?
personally, i used this book as a foil, to really push myself to question what i do, and why, and whether i am falling too short of an ideal.
i also thought a lot about suffering; singer is very anti-suffering. christianity recognizes suffering, but it's hard to argue that it is anti-suffering, because its central belief is predicated on suffering, or more accurately, the overcoming of suffering. what does that mean for a christian activist? to what lengths should i go to prevent suffering in this world, mine or others'? (no one else found this line of thinking at all interesting, by the way. one person said, "suffering exists, and we have to just accept it." another person said, "i give what i can via mutual aid networks, and it's more than i realized i could." fair enough.)
i wanted someone else to relate to this feeling of urgency in the face of an unethical world, an unethical self. or - at the very least - urgency in turning faith into action.
i also felt like i should be vegetarian again, but then decided i should only go vegetarian if i am willing to evangelize my vegetarianism. i don't feel like doing that... unethical?!
in short, reading philosophy with a book club is a risk that i'm not sure i will take again.
personally, i used this book as a foil, to really push myself to question what i do, and why, and whether i am falling too short of an ideal.
i also thought a lot about suffering; singer is very anti-suffering. christianity recognizes suffering, but it's hard to argue that it is anti-suffering, because its central belief is predicated on suffering, or more accurately, the overcoming of suffering. what does that mean for a christian activist? to what lengths should i go to prevent suffering in this world, mine or others'? (no one else found this line of thinking at all interesting, by the way. one person said, "suffering exists, and we have to just accept it." another person said, "i give what i can via mutual aid networks, and it's more than i realized i could." fair enough.)
i wanted someone else to relate to this feeling of urgency in the face of an unethical world, an unethical self. or - at the very least - urgency in turning faith into action.
i also felt like i should be vegetarian again, but then decided i should only go vegetarian if i am willing to evangelize my vegetarianism. i don't feel like doing that... unethical?!
in short, reading philosophy with a book club is a risk that i'm not sure i will take again.
October 27, 2021
Five stars for those interested in ethics.
Practical Ethics covers a range of controversial ethical topics from a preference-utilitarian perspective. Personally I think he does a great job covering most of the topics while providing reason-based objective and impartial arguments on the topic.
Chapter 5 "To take lives: Animals" is perhaps the one that I felt less satisfied with. Singer exposes both existentially-focused and totally-focused view on the interests of beings that are and will be. The investigation becomes rather muddy as soon as he insists that bringing a will-be unlucky child needs, in and by itself, be an unethical choice, regardless of the effects on the parents and society. My feeling is that he unnecessarily complicates his argument. Nonetheless, on the flip side, it effectively presents some other controversial and very interesting points of view such as the one of David Benatar (always wrong to bring a child into existence).
If anything, I would be very keen to hear how other controversial topics would be dealt with from his point of view. Questions such as the risk of (social) media on democracy, societal issues at large, AI and other miscellaneous topics.
His critical analysis in these topics is not helpful in so far as they reach a conclusive answer, but rather in order to present a methodological and rigorous manner in which to objectively and reasonably develop an opinion on heatedly debated topics.
Practical Ethics covers a range of controversial ethical topics from a preference-utilitarian perspective. Personally I think he does a great job covering most of the topics while providing reason-based objective and impartial arguments on the topic.
Chapter 5 "To take lives: Animals" is perhaps the one that I felt less satisfied with. Singer exposes both existentially-focused and totally-focused view on the interests of beings that are and will be. The investigation becomes rather muddy as soon as he insists that bringing a will-be unlucky child needs, in and by itself, be an unethical choice, regardless of the effects on the parents and society. My feeling is that he unnecessarily complicates his argument. Nonetheless, on the flip side, it effectively presents some other controversial and very interesting points of view such as the one of David Benatar (always wrong to bring a child into existence).
If anything, I would be very keen to hear how other controversial topics would be dealt with from his point of view. Questions such as the risk of (social) media on democracy, societal issues at large, AI and other miscellaneous topics.
His critical analysis in these topics is not helpful in so far as they reach a conclusive answer, but rather in order to present a methodological and rigorous manner in which to objectively and reasonably develop an opinion on heatedly debated topics.
March 10, 2025
Practical Ethics was a fun read, and an interesting look at a consequentialist/ utilitarianist point of view on various ethical issues, e.g. animal rights, abortion, climate change.
Singer has a very clear and direct style. I respect his commitment to the logic of his arguments, even if some conclusions are difficult to stomach. Often he exposes a critical flaw in the status quo approach to these issues, and I was often questioning my own moral instincts as a result.
I found Singer's lack of empathy for the Palestinian struggle to be quite disappointing. While in this book he discusses Nozick's 'historical' principles regarding the justness of a given distribution of goods, Singer seemingly fails to apply this principle to Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian land that has been occurring for many decades.
Overall I would recommend this book for its accessibility and clarity. Just go into it with an open mind, because at one point or another he will make you feel uncomfortable. The fun part is deciding whether he has a point, or if he's lost the plot.
Singer has a very clear and direct style. I respect his commitment to the logic of his arguments, even if some conclusions are difficult to stomach. Often he exposes a critical flaw in the status quo approach to these issues, and I was often questioning my own moral instincts as a result.
I found Singer's lack of empathy for the Palestinian struggle to be quite disappointing. While in this book he discusses Nozick's 'historical' principles regarding the justness of a given distribution of goods, Singer seemingly fails to apply this principle to Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian land that has been occurring for many decades.
Overall I would recommend this book for its accessibility and clarity. Just go into it with an open mind, because at one point or another he will make you feel uncomfortable. The fun part is deciding whether he has a point, or if he's lost the plot.
January 7, 2021
I've given Singer a pretty rough time but I admit now that I was mistaken. I had underestimated Singer as a thoughtful philosopher. This was book was very insightful, and much of it is compatible with other ethical traditions. This has made me want to read his other works, particularly the point of view of the universe dedicated to defending utilitarianism rather than simply applying it.
August 4, 2020
I even make peace with cockroaches after reading this book...
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